So what IS the date?

[Aintiarna]

 

Well, he's around 110 I think when you kill him, so I guess he's around 50 when he kidnaps Shaun.

Wut

 

 

Read some of the terminals in the Institute. He was the only subject in a human augmentation project that Shaun shut down when he became director on the basis that he wanted to advance humanity and Kellog represented something else, more cyborg than human.

[TakaraPRG]

They predict that because of his implants he may live to 150 or 200. Also the Shaun you see in Kellogg's head is the fake Shaun that the real Shaun created to test child synths.

If you listen to the dialog it sounds like Shaun planned it all as a way to punish Kellogg for his violent and ruthless nature. Honestly, I just think it's all fluff. The institute plays at being a good guy but the evidence says otherwise if ya ask me. Specially if you look into Virgil and his experiments along with the the University point story.

[Talwyn224]

There are numerous terminals etc that give time stamped/dated entries throughout the game which make it abundantly clear what the current date is in game, 2287 AD.

 

 

 

The institute plays at being a good guy but the evidence says otherwise if ya ask me. Specially if you look into Virgil and his experiments along with the the University point story.

 

Excellent point. Okay, I'm going to invoke Godwins Law here and use a Nazi analogy here. I see the Institute and Shaun in Particular as not being too dissimilar to the Nazi scientists and specifically in Shaun's case, Dr. Joseph Mengele.

Mengele was the Nazi doctor who performed horrific experiments on death camp prisoners all in the name of advancing medical science for humanity, in his case he saw the Nazi'sas humanity while the prisoners were just untermensch [less than human]. In his mind all he was doing was justifiable because it was for the greater good plus it was for SCIENCE just like how Shaun tries to sugar coat all of what the Institute has done to the people of the Commonwealth. Kidnapping people and subjecting them to the hideous experiments, murdering them and replacing them with replicas is also abominable.

 

In IMO the Institute is worse than the Enclave.

[TakaraPRG]

There are numerous terminals etc that give time stamped/dated entries throughout the game which make it abundantly clear what the current date is in game, 2287 AD.

 

 

 

The institute plays at being a good guy but the evidence says otherwise if ya ask me. Specially if you look into Virgil and his experiments along with the the University point story.

 

Excellent point. Okay, I'm going to invoke Godwins Law here and use a Nazi analogy here. I see the Institute and Shaun in Particular as not being too dissimilar to the Nazi scientists and specifically in Shaun's case, Dr. Joseph Mengele.

Mengele was the Nazi doctor who performed horrific experiments on death camp prisoners all in the name of advancing medical science for humanity, in his case he saw the Nazi'sas humanity while the prisoners were just untermensch [less than human]. In his mind all he was doing was justifiable because it was for the greater good plus it was for SCIENCE just like how Shaun tries to sugar coat all of what the Institute has done to the people of the Commonwealth. Kidnapping people and subjecting them to the hideous experiments, murdering them and replacing them with replicas is also abominable.

 

In IMO the Institute is worse than the Enclave.

I didn't really believe much of the hype but then I wandered into University point. After some investigation there, it turns out the institute killed an entire town because they THOUGHT someone there had something that might help them. No one did....they just thought someone did.

 

And yes I agree with your analogy. Generally they are simply using it all as an excuse to live their own life away from hardships. They could use their technology to actually help people above.....and they have plenty of it to do so. Instead they attempt to hide and manipulate people through synth replacements. They are attempting to control real people the same way they control synths. *shrugs* I look forward to returning and smashing it all into the ground with my super sledge.

[Talwyn224]

Actually I have to say i felt a real sense of regret in having to destroy the Institute. I just finished the game last night by going for the Minuteman ending. The whole Shaun father/son thing was really well one. He genuinely wanted to make a connection but he was just so far gone into the Institute propaganda that there was no redemption for him.

[TakaraPRG]

Yea I had a little regret...but then I realized that they should have been smarter then trying to rush a room when the person inside had a gattling laser with power armor O.o

[Moraelin]

Lol, you're one parent after me own little black heart. Respect :p

[Scribblesix]

Honestly the institute just suffer from incredibly bad writing. Nothing they do makes the slightest lick of sence. Melengele performed amoral experiments that at least (where intended to) advance human knowledge, the institute performs amoral actions that degrade it. Take warrick for example. they replaced him with a synth to test the new fruit variety. They would have been far better served by surreptitiously changing the seed without replacing anyone. So the institute spent vast resources to murder someone to f*#@ up their own experiment. This isn't Nazi level villainy its bad writing.

[Moraelin]

Not really. A lot of what the Nazis did was of questionable scientific purpose at best, even when talking researchers like Mengele. Most of his experiments on twins for example were 'testing' stuff that his medical training should have already told that it's nonsense. Such as infecting one twin with a disease and seeing if the other remotely gets it too. I'm sorry, but this was not the middle ages, and we as a species already knew enough about that to know it can't work that way. Or unnecessarily amputating a limb from a twin and seeing what happens to the other. Predictably, nothing. And then try again on another set of twins. And another. Then do the same with giving one radiation poisoning via a high dose of X-ray, then see what happens to the other.

 

That wasn't advancing medicine, that was testing magical mumbo-jumbo ideas that contradict everything he should have learned in university.

 

Also, a lot of his motivation was not as much learning how to treat anything, but proving the supposed superiority of the Aryan race. Probably most of those experimented on and killed were not to find some cure or anything, but just his personal goal to show that, see, they're weaker than proper Aryans.

 

And that was the researchers. Outside of those, there was a lot of pointless villainy just for lulz. There were a lot of sadistic supervisors, including at least one gal who apparently loved her job to orgasm (no, really, she tortured female inmates as her personal BDSM kinda live porn show), who weren't trying to advance any science. They were in it just for the sake of causing pain.

 

By comparison, the Institute does seem to have SOME reason for a lot of their stuff, even if the means obviously don't justify their goal. E.g., they're explicitly experimenting with emotional responses and family ties, in for example the whole 10 year old synth-Shaun episode. Roger Warwick could basically be a part of such an experiment. They also have a big infiltration problem, namely that their synths get spotted because they act differently. Again, Roger Warwick could very well be a part of trying to improve that. So, yeah, they murder yet another guy to experiment with that a bit.

 

So basically I'd say it's exactly historical Nazi villainy level, in a nutshell.