Spolier Alert:Finished the main story arc choosing BOS and the Instute,on 2 characters.

[Falshire]

Finished the main story arc choosing BOS and the Instute,on 2 characters.

 

BOS gave me the Jet Pack,possibly one of the best bits of kit in the whole game.

Plus the armor you get from these guys is exceptional.

 

But i find working with and for the institute a more rewarding experience.Not quite as xenophobic as the brotherhood and merely wish to be left is peace.

 

Both chose the destruction of the railroad ,something which i found a bit tough to take at the time,from a non-gaming standpoint.

 

In the end the brotherhood just seem to want to dominate the world ,plus kill anything remotely different from the norm.

The institute will let the world die out so they can take over.

Neither side is innocent,but the institute seems to have a better set of values overall.

Anyone else found siding with the institute more interesting, than the lets kill everything impure brotherhood attitude ?

Edited January 11, 2016 by Falshire

[CyrusAmell]

I would hardly say that the Brotherhood of Steel is more villainous than the Institute.

 

The Brotherhood of Steel takes it upon itself to make the world a better place for mankind by studying and, if need be, restraining advanced technologies. They help standard people in an indirect manner, by hunting down and eliminating Super Mutants and other dangerous mutants which make the Wasteland a dangerous place. Heck, they made the Capital Wasteland so safe that MacCready had to leave it in part to find good mercenary work elsewhere (on top of the need to find his son's cure). In particular, the East Coast Chapter has all but overshadowed the West Coast Chapter and is a true military force whereas their brethren in the West still hide in their bunkers for fear of the NCR.

 

The Institute while not completely evil of course is also not the great good they make themselves to be. One has to respect them because they started out 200 years earlier as essentially college students digging in their basement for survival. However, despite being a society dominated by pre-war ideals of scientific advancement they have complete disregard for ethics when it concerns human life. Take the Warwick homestead where they "replaced" the patriarch Roger Warwick, all to test how some modified seeds grow. Now it is bad enough that they kidnapped and killed a man (even an imperfect one as the original Roger) over something as silly as seeds, but research terminals on the matter also refer to the need to later retrieve their synth and purge all evidence of the initiative which seems to entail the need to then kill the man's family and the rest of the settlers. And this is all just coming from the Bioscience division, the guys who grow the food for the Institute.

 

And don't get me started on speculating how the Institute could not only bring itself to study the FEV on live subjects but then somehow end up releasing new Super Mutants from the otherwise completely enclosed Institute back into the Wasteland. That was just Bethesda being lazy in trying to come up with a way to include Super Mutants in the game. But if you talk to Piper, she will refer to a past event where the Institute massacred an entire meeting of people trying to establish a government in the Commonwealth. Preston Garvey will also speak of how the Institute has kept the Commonwealth divided for centuries. So really, the Institute tampers with the world above often enough for their own ends and in ways the Brotherhood never would.

 

Still, it's possible you as the new director could put a stop to this sort of behavior. You're no dictator for life but if you could put a temporary halt of some sort on kidnappings and kill missions on the surface to await your review then perhaps the harm caused can be mitigated and the Institute's energies put to more positive outcomes.

 

All in all, to a regular wastelander the Brotherhood of Steel is definitely the less "evil" faction of the two, if only because they won't bother you unless they see you with a Plasma Rifle they think needs to be confiscated (a rarity most would never own anyways).

Edited January 11, 2016 by CyrusAmell

[SiNNeR]

I'd say the two factions are both good examples of well intentioned extremists who also have full fledged villains amongst their ranks. ultimately though both factions condone the enslavement and/or slaughter of innocents and the majority of them are aggressively intolerant of those who do not share their views, however both also have their more open minded members who would prefer their factions agenda be less extreme but consider them to do enough good that they can either overlook the bad or accept it as a necersary evil or lesser evil

 

the railroad have their share of extremists as well, but are overall a much more open minded group who tend not to see violence as the first solution to any problem and whose goals are oriented more towards helping others than towards helping themselves

 

the mintuemen are sadly lacking in personality for the most part as they only have one member who's much more than a generic NPC and the ones who are slightly more than generic have nothing to do beyond their initial quest

 

ultimately I would have liked the option to attempt to negotiate a treaty between two or more factions (even if there was no outcome where it actually worked), to try to steer the Brotherhood to a less extreme agenda, to stick with the Railroad's original plan of a stealth rescue (not that I completely disagree with their decision but I do resent not having the option to oppose it), for the minutemen to serve some actual purpose beyond "backup faction in case you screw the others up" and maybe an option to attempt to sabotage the Institute solo (again, even if not possible to succeed)

[jcdenton2012]

I keep seeing this thing about the FEV research being done by The Institute and I keep thinking that people are being a little bit 'unfair.' Yes, they did do FEV research on live human specimens, but when you actually explore the FEV labs... well... assuming the research continued right up until Virgil fled for the Glowing Sea, one could state that the FEV research was certainly either: off the books, or severely underfunded, given the state of the labs themselves. Those labs... were rundown ruins filled with rust and leaking water.

 

Furthermore, the research being performed was never exactly specified; however, what we do know for certain is that Virgil did numerous unethical experiments on people... and somehow managed to develop 'A CURE' for FEV. Not a counter virus meant to kill everything like the Enclave, but a cure. Despite the methods being employed to develop a cure, I can't help but feel as though the sacrifice of a few innocent people might have been worth a peaceful end to the Super Mutant threat by making them all human again.

[CyrusAmell]

 

Furthermore, the research being performed was never exactly specified; however, what we do know for certain is that Virgil did numerous unethical experiments on people... and somehow managed to develop 'A CURE' for FEV. Not a counter virus meant to kill everything like the Enclave, but a cure. Despite the methods being employed to develop a cure, I can't help but feel as though the sacrifice of a few innocent people might have been worth a peaceful end to the Super Mutant threat by making them all human again.

 

It's Bethesda's fault, they wanted to add a ton of Super Mutants just like in Fallout 3 but they did not show how so many came to be. The Fallout Wiki seems to conclude that most of the local super mutants somehow originated in the FEV experiments of the Institute. But this is questionable given that the Super Mutants don't seem to have a supply of FEV on hand like they did in Fallout 3, or what they call "green stuff" which they are constantly looking for in the ruins.

 

There really is no good explanation or clear picture. Even if the Institute was abducting tons of people for these off-the book experiments it makes little sense that they would expend the energy to teleport so many back into the Wasteland with the means to create more Super Mutants. Flooding the Wasteland with these creatures also serves no purpose as the Institute could destabilize the region easily enough and continue experiments without such a dangerous variable needing to be introduced. As for the need for such "sacrifices" I find little compelling need for such unnecessary cruelty on the part of the Institute, even a cure for the Super Mutants seems to be outweighed by the slaughter and horrors wrought by the Super Mutants of the Commonwealth that seem to originate from these experiments.

 

So basically Bethesda flubbed it, and the wiki is at a loss to present a better explanation. Now, it is entirely possible that these Super Mutants came from outside the Commonwealth, likely the Capital Wasteland, or that there is a completely different explanation that will be shown in future content.

Edited January 12, 2016 by CyrusAmell

[HitokirinoOni]

The brotherhood just wants to kill everything. Proof of their madness is shown when they try to kill dance.

They don't compromise. You cannot take over. s#*! will never change.

 

The Institute is guaranteed to save the commonwealth. Mama murphy said so.

They've developed a cure for the FEV virus which will make them supremely popular no matter where they end up.

The Seeds they've developed will feed the country.

The Human augmentation tech they gave Cornflakes will make you live at least 3-4 times as long as a normal human.(or at least you get shot by a fatman)

They have the mindset to reverse engineer the immortality serum from Cabot house.

They have a f*#@ing teleporter.

Synths aren't human. Not yet. As soon as all the kinks are ironed out of these Gen 3's. We can begin production of a true successor race to the human being.

 

All they need is someone to point them in a new direction. Someone who knows how to handle PR.

And someone who can solve problems without shooting it. That person is PC.

 

Speaking of Mr. Rice Crispies. His actions were destructive and damaging to the reputation of the institute, His termination is a boon.

Switching over to the Courser project was good but not optimal. The people still don't trust us and are still uncooperative.

Steps will be taken to deal with this issue in a responsible manner.

 

Now. Time to retrieve some data from those crazy people living in a sewer.

They have some valuable insights as to how to improve syth infiltration ability.

 

 

 

Note: I hate all the endings.

[HitokirinoOni]

I keep seeing this thing about the FEV research being done by The Institute and I keep thinking that people are being a little bit 'unfair.' Yes, they did do FEV research on live human specimens, but when you actually explore the FEV labs... well... assuming the research continued right up until Virgil fled for the Glowing Sea, one could state that the FEV research was certainly either: off the books, or severely underfunded, given the state of the labs themselves. Those labs... were rundown ruins filled with rust and leaking water.

 

Furthermore, the research being performed was never exactly specified; however, what we do know for certain is that Virgil did numerous unethical experiments on people... and somehow managed to develop 'A CURE' for FEV. Not a counter virus meant to kill everything like the Enclave, but a cure. Despite the methods being employed to develop a cure, I can't help but feel as though the sacrifice of a few innocent people might have been worth a peaceful end to the Super Mutant threat by making them all human again.

Perhaps the initial super mutants were Commonwealth Supermutants. They then attracted an outside source of new growing/renewable source of greenies.

That would explain why, that no matter how many I kill. There are still more coming.

[Moraelin]

I still don't see how the institute can count as anything but evil when it:

- kidnaps and murders people, but also

- is into slavery

- murderized every single delegate when the Commonwealth tried to form a provisional government, plunging it back into chaos

- and have been actively destabilizing the Commonwealth ever since

- killed family members of the Railroad as retaliation

- beta-tested an early Gen 3 (and presumably a prototype courser, by the results) by sending him fully armed into a major settlement, causing the Broken Mask massacre

- experimented on people with FEV, and killed them afterwards (and no, they didn't develop a cure. Virgil's serum only counteracts the one FEV strain HE created.)

- exterminated whole communities just for something they wanted from them (e.g., all the rest of Vault 111),

- or even for something the Institute wanted and THOUGHT they had, but the poor barstards didn't actually have (e.g., University Point),

- are still letting their Gen 1 and 2 exterminate whole communities for nothing more than the scrap,

- sent a hitman to murderize a top Institute scientist for trying to run away from the Institute. Mind you, he didn't sell any secrets, nor join any enemies. Just for running away.

- freed you and led you to chase their top hitman just to see how long you'd survive in an unfamiliar hostile world

- proclaim you an enemy on account that, literally, "whoever isn't with us is against us", and start actively sending synths to kill you or murder your settlers, if you don't agree to join IMMEDIATELY

Etc.

 

I mean, I'm used to apologetics, but this is just taking the mickey. Even the raiders or gunners don't add up to anywhere near a similar list of sins.

[jcdenton2012]

Moraelin, you are correct on the cure thing because it was technically a cure for his strain. That having been said Fallout lore is kinda botched regarding FEV because in order for President Eden's strain of FEV to effectively end all mutation (by killing everyone mutated), the FEV strain itself would have to target a highly selective genetic archetype, meaning that all FEV shares some sort of mutual base genetic coding which can be collectively manipulated and in this case cured.

 

The problem with this is that it also suggests that FEV mutation termination must insert some sort of nucleoside analogues into host cells to sabotage FEV cellular mitosis. There-go any attempt to cure mutation should result in the host body eventually sub-coming to cellular deterioration (cancer) and eventual death. This means that there should be no cure for FEV at all beyond a certain stage of cellular corruption... like Virgil becoming a supermutant.

 

Honestly, FEV being used as a plot point is kind of bad now because the story telling really doesn't match the science of what exactly a virus can and cannot do.

[CyrusAmell]

Concerning the Super Mutants, I find that the only explanation I can think of is that Father (Shaun) as director, not only ordered that the FEV experiments continue but also ordered that the Super Mutants created should also be sent back to the Wasteland in either an attempt to keep the Commonwealth divided into small settlements which would act as large petri dishes for Institute experiments or perhaps solely to allow the FEV virus to grow for future harvesting (which the head of the Bioscience division does seem to capitalize on for his sidequests). Taken to its logical conclusion, this may also explain why the Super Mutants had enough FEV on hand to make more of their numbers.

 

This is really the only explanation that gets the Super Mutants from point A to B, and it is frankly uncomfortable to consider.

 

Still, one could say that while taken as a whole the Institute has acted evil it may also be said that the worst crimes could be traced to only a few individuals whilst the rest of the Institute is more or less neutral (as would be the case with most societies). But that still means that our son in the game has quite a lot of blood on his hands.

 

I wish we could confront Father about this and get an explanation, because this is certainly a level above the whole enslavement of the Gen 3 synths we quibble with him about.

Edited January 12, 2016 by CyrusAmell