Shaun wants to think the Institute is misunderstood. They're not, though. Everything the Wastelanders accuse them of, are things they actually do. And more. No one knows they're the reason Supermutants are in Boston.
Yeah but you can justify a lot of the things they do. Except maybe for the supermutants. I don't remember why they were experimenting with a FEV in the first place I'll have to look into it.
@@garynumber22which is the big issue with Fallout 4 and a bit of the limits of the voice protagonist is that it limited interactions. So we couldn’t really do deep dive conversation with Shaun to truly understand why the institute does what it does.
@@mactysonkarate Yeah we have to reliably heavily on things like environmental storytelling and notes. Which isn't the best because the fallout community still thinks that the institute murder the Boston Provisional Government when the only evidence supporting that comes from NPCs who hate the institute and weren't even there when it happened. And the only piece of evidence that has some credibility is a hidden note found in a random box inside the institute that if you read gives the impression that in reality the Government's representatives killed each other and the Institute just happened to be there and survived the shootout.
Well that's Bethesda's writing for you. I mean I got to admit, they completel blind-sided me and surprised me with the twist of Father being Shaun (tbh I thought I was headed for the Endgame when it came to porting into the Institute, I was geared up with my best Equipment and every piece of 'oh, I might use this later on' consumable, loaded up with a Minigun, my best Power armor, a few thousands rounds of ammo, a rocketlauncher and my regular gear, expecting a tough fight to 'save my son', only to have the Rug pulled out from under me. But instead of being an amazing twist which reveals a MUCH deeper nature to the Institute etc. it was just as shallow as I expected. The Institute and one's relationship with 'Father'/Shaun could've been SO much more. Then again Bethesda never knew how to properly pull on their player's heartstrings. I mean ALL of that could've had so much more meaning... from the very start when the game could start actually a day BEFORE the Bombs fell. Giving us as players the opportunity to observe the 'old world' through the eyes of the Sole Survivor, the good, the bad and the ugly... Think of it, a Picknick at the Park with our Babyboy and our Significant other, seeing civil protests, general situation, people complaining about the exploding prices, while others are talking how the war is luckily 'almost over', with you possibly also enjoying a BBQ in the neighbourhood... Us being reminded of our 'big Day' - only to be surprised by the Bombs falling. It would've given SO much more impact to EVERYTHING if the Sole Survivor truely found themselves 'a stranger in a strange land' and out of time in a sense. Heck, even solely Shaun properly aknowledging what a shock all of this must be, WHY he did what he did and him being touched by one's efforts (or lack of effort, depending on how long it took you to get to him) and ultimately either aknowledging that you are family, admitting that you are basicly strangers at this point (though at no fault of your own), or possibly even trying to manipulate you as he recognizes that you are an exceptional individual and would make for an ideal field Operative.
Institute isn't morally inconsistent. They are generally inconsistent due to bad writing. It seems that bethesda wanted pure evil faction at some time in development, and then change their minds. Or team developing the world was detached from team developing the Institute.
Bethesda stopped using centralized design documents during the development of Fallout 3. You're right about teams not communicating. It's hard to do that, without proper documentation.
I logged 600 hours in Fallout 4 and I still have no idea why the Institute was doing the stuff they're doing... replacing random settlers with synths, making super mutants... They might as well be Doctor Doofenschmirtz for how badly thought out their plans are. BEHOLD, MY SYNTH-REPLACEINATOR!
What confuses me most about the Institute is their view on Synths. Their goal is to "redefine humanity" and they regularly replace humans with synths, so that implies they see Synths as improvements. But they also seemingly see Synths as nothing but worthless machines, which makes you wonder what their goals even are.
@@mushyroom9569dunno about worthless, but they’re definitely viewed as worth less than humans. The institute views them as just machines acting on code. Any sort of deviation from how they’re told to behave (such as feeling bad about their treatment as servants and wanting to escape) is considered a bug that needs to be fixed by mindwiping them. The railroad story pretty much has a bunch of parts where gen 3 synths tell you how horribly they’re treated by the institute. Which I always found to be weird since I would assume the entire point of creating something completely indistinguishable from a human is to create new life. Not just a more advanced machine to boss around.
@@mushyroom9569 difference is, the gen 3’s are supposed to be part of the institute. Institute humans are treated well. Institute gen 3 synths are treated like gen 1/2 synths (mechanical servants) that, for some reason, keep expressing dissatisfaction from being treated like robots. Then they get mind wiped and put back to work. Wastelanders are treated like test subjects and/or nuisances. Or potential institute recruits (if they’re smart enough). Which makes the point that even a wastelander can be treated well by the institute if they’re talented enough. But a talented gen 3 synth will only become a courser (better trained mechanical servant).
Same thing every group of smart jerks claims when they redefine humanity. To claim everyone outside of their group isn't human to justify all the stuff they are doing. Oh sure you could share those planets that can grow and remove radiation and feed people thus easily making yourself a hero group to be worshiped... But that would be giving those filthy surface people food. Oh sure you could unify the wasteland above you by replacing their leaders with synthetic drones and have them operate for the betterment of everyone as they are programmed to not be corrupt and do what you say. But they want the people above disorganized. They even killed a few people running the settlements with synthetic fakes all for the purpose of being incompetent leaders to ensure nobody could fix their current lousy state their settlements are in. They are people who enjoy playing in the ashes of the wasteland while relaxing in luxury and comfort. Why Father even stopped the cybernetic programs and prevented other people from getting that life extension technology that works... Because he doesn't want his own underlings to have longer lifespans. He doesn't even pick anyone else to lead them and only picks his parent out of his own ego... So even if you don't agree to take up the mantle he refuses to let anyone else be his second in command in case he dies from his very real disease. They are all selfish pricks looking for excuses to justify their actions rather than admit that they are awful people.
Ya gotta be crazy to go up against the Think Tank. . .literally. . .and according to many a player the Courier is that after taking two to the head. . .heck the Courier's own brain feels 'Courier' is looney tunes.
I think they’re 2 sides of the same coin. Only difference is everyone’s heard of the Institute. You gotta be crazy and unlucky enough to even get to the Big MT
The think tank has actual reasons to be the way they are. Before they were being egged on by the US government to create horrors beyond comprehension for the war effort, and when you meet them they’re a bunch of senile old cyborgs. The Institute has no excuse, they are just evil mad scientists because that’s what the setting demands.
The institute's main flaw, in my opinion, is that the script for them seems to have gotten lost. The game has themes of immortality with Nick Valentine, the Cabots, Billy, Vault 111, the cut Nate/Nora synth, and Kellogg. The fact that Father never tied into that is a huge mistake. If some light was shone on him making moral compromises as he gets more and more desperate to either cure himself or transfer his mind into a healthy Gen 3+ synth body, he might actually have been sympathetic. Can you imagine the shameful admission on the university rooftop? Make a speech check about how you don't believe his 'you'd never understand' explanation from earlier and he'd cave and tell you that it's all a front for his selfishness and fear. He's a doctor on the cusp of curing mortality and he's scared he won't be able to do it in time for himself. It's such a simple fix that I honestly get mad about it not being in the base game. I almost want to learn modding and AI speech synthesis just to do it myself... but that seems like a lot of work.
I agree so much with this. That change in motivation would be so effective at contextualizing everything the Institue do, even the creation of Super Mutants (they were originally supposed to replace the human race as well).
That would actually give the Institute a motive and a believable one, too. Too bad Bethesda was more focused on making them mysterious, instead of giving them a goal.
The massive amount of synths is the biggest concern for me. Sit there and watch the things being printed, count the rate and wonder how many are in the room back there. It is enough to wonder why this group hasn't wiped the surface for their own justifications. The Institute could easily have a >1 ratio to all surface dwellers, teleportation technology and other weapon advantages, and enough intel to play covert games with the other factions. A war against the institute would be so one sided, and a real 'evil organization' wouldn't be sitting on that sort of advantage... doing nothing. It would have made sense if that printer took ages to make a synth, so they couldn't just zerg the surface.
This is gonna be a bit of a stretch, but maybe so many of them escaped, it made the population of Massachusets 25% sinth. Maybe the institute is completely losing their shizzle and having their brains cooked due to their "high-tech multitool" taking the "f this, I'm out" option, so they're pointing a proverbial fire hose at a colander; just trying to fill the void.
Recall, the war is over. The Railroad has been infiltrated by Synths and the leadership thereof will soon be destroyed. The Minutemen as a faction doesn't exist... and the Brotherhood... just repeat the line from Fallout 3. But only show up after you off Kellogg. They won't pose a threat either... blow up the Airship... and... the BoS Base of Operations and _Supply_ cease to exist. Why count Gen 3 Synths when you could count all the locations Gen 2 Synths are at? There are more Gen 2 Synths than people in Diamond City and Vault (81?) combined (the only "cities" in the Commonwealth). The Institute could teleport an army into both and have a "viceroy" Gen 3 Synth to act as "overseer" of the cities. The isolated farming communities will surrender immediately thereafter... and the Institute can assign Gen 2 Synth to act as a "watch dog" of the farms. When attacked, they teleport a quick reaction force. Maybe the Institute will take over (or "hire") the Gunners and use _them_ as a permanent "guard" of the Commonwealth... as they shift resources to creating _new_ Synth Creation Labs with their own Teleporters... then they can expand to New York, Vermont, New Hamshire or maybe one of the smaller states, like Rhode Island, or Connecticut. The "playing" area of Fallout 4 map is _over_ 30km East to West and _over_ 40km South to North... This is a good portion of the Common Wealth's real South to North "height" but about a seventh of its real "width". So, maybe the Institute would expand West to capture the entirety of the Commonwealth, like the area around Nukaworld before expanding to other former US states.
Except they did? Why do you think there’s a bajillion generation 2 synths everywhere and the only settlement in the commonwealth is the one being run by a synth mayor?
My big issue isn't that the Institute are evil. Evil factions, like Caesar's Legion or the Galactic Empire, can be a _lot_ of fun to play as. It's that they're _stupid_ evil. Like, no one in their big boardroom ever stopped and asked "Why are we such vicious cunts to everyone else?" What did they gain from murdering the Commonwealth Provisional Government, or Roger Warwick? Why are they kidnapping random Wasters, dipping them in FEV, and then turning them loose on the Commonwealth? Why have anything to do with a dangerous psychopath like Kellog? They have a lot of the same attitudes Robert House did in NV, the difference being that House is _extremely_ self-aware and goes very mask off any time you talk to him about _how_ he intends to bring about civilization's rebirth. The Institute aren't like this; attending board meetings should feel like a Politburu session, where all the Party faithful can speak freely about their real goals instead of just paying lip service to Communism or Science or whatever, but the Institute notably _don't_ do that. They seem to believe all the chaos and misery they sow everywhere is somehow a good thing that will benefit all of humanity, rather than realpolitik to keep themselves in power. Rather than making them intimidating, that just makes everyone involved with the faction come across as very, very stupid.
They're massively flawed because the whole point is keeping the player's choice of faction morally grey. If the Institute were good guys it would be obvious to join them.
@@mattorama I mean, the Minute Men and Railroad are both good guys and smoothbrains still act like there's some nuance to siding with the Institute or Brotherhood. There's nothing grey about the Minute Men, and at best the Railroad are a bit naive. The Institute murder people for the LOLs and the Brotherhood are a racket pretending to be a military order.
@@mattorama They're incompetent. They have a goal, then take the absolute worst possible actions to achieve that goal. The Institute's problem solving ability is like if you needed to light a candle, so you went and bought a bottle of nitroglycerin and a grindstone
There are many scientists inside institute questioning exactly that. Opposing synths , opposing FEV experiments etc. It is a Dictatorship whatever the Fathers says goes.....therefore it's the way it is.
it really is, they dont even paint him as sadistic mf that treated his own father like a mouse in a deadly trap for amusement like he did, hes just "oh yeah I do that because i want the best for the humanity and its worth it" and he left you out of the vault because "yo wouldnt it be fun?" thats sooo lazy, they dont make it evil, they dont make it conflicted, nothing. h He feels like another average npc and not the central point of the game, he's as plain as Strong when the whole premise of the game revolves around him, thats just horrible
the problem is that he's not like insane because of it both Mr House and Caesar in New Vegas gave off calculated psychopath vibes with Caesar power tripping and Mr House acting more like a computer than a person. Father just acts like a moron
I have to disagree, yes I don't think he'd have as STRONG of an attachment as if they had been together from the beginning, but the fact that he continually watched and altered the players chronology shows a slight bit more attachment than most would be bothered to show in the Commonwealth, though the issue comes with whether it was a situation like Deacon's, watching the player to determine if they were worth adding to the ranks or something more in-depth like knowing it was his parent and wanting them to know his accomplishments. I just find it hard to believe he has no attachment especially with the fact that once you join you don't have to do much before Father just says "Yeah, I'm leaving the Institute and all it's stuff to my Mom/Dad, sorry!"
The bigger problem is that since Shaun was infant and we knew he grew up in the institute, Who are his adoptive parent/s? because someone must have took care of him, and Shaun since he was a baby would started to see in that figure a mother/father figure, and thus not care much about its biological father/mother.
Shaun and the previous Director. The previous Director set the whole thing in motion with the Spouse being murdered and Shaun being kidnapped. . .oh, and not putting a short and strong enough leash on Kellogg. I also think that Director was the one who replaced Arthur Maxson's mother figure with a Synth in between Fallout 3 and 4 which turned Maxson into an extreme racist with fascist methods.
@@chadharger9323nah she left for the west coast before fallout 3. He was raised by the brotherhood, most notably Owen Lyons. Are you meaning Sarah Lyons? I guess we don’t know what happened to her🤔
The Institute is exactly as you say but I would offer a further thought. The writing for the faction is superior and smug, they are not making the world better for humanity, they are replacing humanity with synths. How does that work. The whole thing infuriates me.
The institute fails so hard at the 'evil' thing, that one has to question if they are meant to be evil at all.... Which, in and of itself, would be a great thing to explore if we had been presented this option in game.
I think they were meant to be morally grey, and that you can interpret things how you want, if you want to side with them. It's just that everything they do is bad. Nothing they do actually helps anyone but themselves. This is why I can overlook things the Brotherhood does. Yes they're heavy handed, but most of what they do is either stuff I do as well, or stuff that at least indirectly helps people outside their group. That's not true with the Institute.
@@chadnorris8257 I concur, I believe they where meant to be a lot more morally gray. Would be nice if we saw it more in game, then in speculation.... There is a rumour I heard from one of these sites, years ago, that the executives at Bethesda are to blame. That the writing team where forced to add the more obviously evil things in, because Marketing told the board that it would sell better. That people needed a clear hero/villain fantasy....
@@lostbutfreesoul That's a shame, if so. Thinking about Skyrim, I find the civil war much more thought provoking than the dragon crisis. I like beating up an evil dragon god as much as the next guy, but I appreciate factions with no clear good or bad guy in an rpg. Neither the imperials nor stormcloaks are completely right or wrong about their beliefs. It sucks that they made a game to expand on the institute and railroad from FO3, but fumbled the ball on both.
I wish we could’ve started rebuilding with The Institute and like The Courier, introduce new and old technologies to the wasteland to help improve the quality of life for commonwealth citizens. I also think blowing up The Institute is just incredibly idiotic, (of course for Boston BoS and Railroad it makes sense to do so), but for The Minutemen to blow up a faction that has the technology to help rebuild is so bizarre, we should have been able to takeover The Institute ala America Rising 2.
Personally if you love settlement building the minutemen are the bees knees, did a play through where I built an artillery piece at every settlement, made random encounters even better 😂
To play devils advocate I kinda liked father’s portrayal I always thought they were trying to convey his lack emotional intelligence having been raised in a culture of science and logic without his actual parents there able to provide proper emotional support, and the institute can justify their actions completely to themselves because most of if not all of them don’t see the surface as humanity they believe they are the only true humans anymore kinda like the enclave so to them it doesn’t matter if any of their experiments effect the surface because to them there’s no actual humans on the surface it’s just science enclave but that’s how i interpreted it
It is a Bethesda game, so there's every possibility that you are 100% correct. The whole thing feels like it's building the Institute up into something, but is a massive let-down once you actually get there. Like one of those cheaply created, roadside tourist traps in America. They claim it's the world's biggest rat, but it's really a medium-sized dog that someone stuck some whiskers and a long, skinny tail on. Ultimately, very disappointing indeed.
The core concept of the Institute seems to be "Enclave but more Bladerunner" and stops there. Everything about their goals is empty and vague. It started quarter baked and never got in the oven. I do think that many players miss the Institute (like the Enclave) thinks they're humanity and everyone else is a loss. So when they yammer on about humanity's future, its just themselves they want to "save." Everyone else is just something to be afraid of, or a yardstick to measure themselves against and gloat.
When I played through my first time. I went Institute. In my head canon, If I became the leader, then I could better the world. Even though that's not really what happens. But since it's a fallout game, I decided to go with my own headcanon
What I love about the way they made the Institute is how it is absolutely the embodiment of higher academia. They are exactly what you would get if you gave any university faculty supreme power. Their inconsistency and ambiguity is purposely designed to reflect that.
What always astonishes me about this game is that Bethesda made a faction who will do some incredibly vicious and evil, self-serving things in the name of Science a good four years before the Pandemic. I genuinely want to make a mod that just adds "Trust the Science" to random NPC chatter in the Institute, it would be tonally consistent.
I wouldn't say "purposely," since it's clear from interviews that the writing team had virtually no consistency and it was mostly Pagliarulo going around saying "Wouldn't it be cool if?" to the various other writers. I think they were genuinely going for something that's supposed to be too intellectual for the average player to understand, but instead simply came off like the smug ivory-tower academics who manufacture their own conclusions rather than following evidence and then insist they're right even when they contradict themselves.
that could be handled a lot better tho, the most they did with that is when some guy doesnt want you to be the leader and goes on strike, I was so hyped and in the end it was just a skill check/fight that changes some npc dialogues. I feel they could've done something like Nuka world were theres some factions inside the institute that have different visions and how you end up favoring one or another
yea, their lack of a clear goal is what really rustles my jimmies. the only 2 reasons why I settled for them was because I felt kinda bad for Shaun, and most importantly, actually, because they have the tools (if nothing else) to rebuild civilization, and destroying them destroys a lot of potential for the future too. as time goes on, I decided that when I replay FO4, I'll just stick with the Minutemen, at least I know what they want and what they want positively impacts the Commonwealth for real
most of the writing in fallout 4 just doesn’t need to exist. Can you believe people had a go at a fallout entry and this is what story and characters they came up with🤢
The Unity is still the only "main villain" faction in the series that is not idiotically incompetent, although it mostly consist of dumb supermutants. Ironic.
I dunno, The Master hadn't even verified whether his super mutant army was capable of reproducing. That alone makes the Master arguably more incompetent than any other villain throughout the whole franchise.
yeah, and the second he learns that Supermutants are sterile, he decides to unalive himself without giving it a second thought. Even though he has a loyal cult of humans under his control that can be easily used as a breeding stock for generations until he finds a solution. I guess you have a point there...
@@jessep5280 yeah, and the second he learns that Supermutants are stеrilе, he decides to unаlivе himself without giving it a second thought. Even though he has a loyal сult of humans under his control that can be easily used as a brееding stock for generations until he finds a solution. I guess you have a point there...
The Enclave was intended as a satire of the US government under Republican leadership, so it being run by morons was intentional. Caesar's Legion is a bunch of incels under the rule of a pseudo-intellectual with a brain tumor, so their issues were clearly intentional, too. The Institute, though - that's the only one where it's just obviously bad writing. They don't even roll with them suffering from extreme hubris.
Sheesh…Giving Father Shaun an injection of bullets when you first meet him, makes more sense plot-wise than the nonsensical, directionless Institute plot he eventually gives you.
I can only imagine what kind of inventions would be created if Doctor Klein, Doctor 8th, Doctor Borous, Doctor 0, and Doctor Mobius would created if they would get their hands on Institute technological achievments. Doctor Mobius would definitely created a synth versions of his deadly Robo Scorpions.
I personally always felt that being able to join the institute was an afterthought. Like it always felt to me like the devs had not intended for it to be joinable, just an antagonist since every quest you do for them felt very lackluster to me compared to the others.
They should have made them more like FO3's Enclave, were you can help with the Institute goals like poisoning Project Purity in FO3, but you need to join them, also they treat everyone that isn't useful to them as guinea pigs, with the irony being that they act less human than the Synth they see as just Machines and make them truly feel like a treat, they don't have appear at the beginning as the Enclave didn't appeared until Half of the game, but you could have made them more present have the synth kidnaping not be a random encounter but a constant thing, where the majority of the commonwealth does know about the Institute but they are afraid, and latter they go full mask off not only robots start attacking the other factions but inside the cities people are fighting against synth infiltrators and such And like you said you are not needed for the Institute mission, they even start the nuclear reactor without you if you are banned from the Institute, they could have destroyed the BOS without you as well, they can just sent coursers to eliminate the shields, you are not needed at all
I think they work better with Far Harbor because Dima is such a hypocrite. Everything he says he dislikes about the Institute and Railroad are things he does. It's a fascinating look at what people will do in service of peace.
no not really, youre acting like murdering a murderer makes you just as bad as the murderer. the institute replaces people for their own experiments and surveilance, dima has replaced 1 person, possibly 2 depending on ur choices to avoid genocide on the island
@@supahgaming8249 I'd say dima is a massive hypocrite in service to his own ideology, he preaches about how his kind wants to live in peace and be left to their own devices but actively meddles in the affairs of both far harbour by killing captain Avery and having Brooks be basically a spy and the children of atom by killing/removing high Confessor tektus and withholding launch codes. he also screws over his own people either through changing their entire identity like in the fire boat quest or convinces them to replace someone else like mentioned above, not to mention kasumi who had an entire identity crisis all because she talked to this prick even though she isn't a synth. Dima is a person who speaks about peace but does so much fucked up shit you could change him for war crimes
Dima you murdered a woman and replaced her with a synth to control the faction she was leading Dima: oh no. Anyways want to do it again to the children of atom?
DiMa is what the institute should have been. Either "the ends justify the means" or just straight up evil. I think they tried the former approach but it just doesn't feel fleshed out enough?
The railroad never made sense to me but not because they were saving synths. They wipe their memories! How is that not the same as “killing” them? The synth that wanted to escape the institute is no more. And how is it that some of them still know they’re synths (acadia) and some don’t (raider boss at Libertalia)? I know, it all boils down to sloppy writing but still!
a pity we did not get a Expeditionary force line of Institute weapons(the Plastic laser guns, but also a Ballistic pistol, SMG and Shotgun could work, plus a special Institute baton and knife and maybe even Expeditionary Force Gauntlet/Fallout 3/NV powerfists(with punch, saw and shock options), while the Institute Homefront Defense has Future Tech Metal alloy Laser guns, Plasma weapons, Ballistic Assault rifle, SMG, shotgun and Pistol, with knives, Shock batons, HD Institute Power Fists(punch, shock, saw, heated and so on mod options), Laser blade swords, really lean into making the Institute high tech) so the Institute is actually awesome.
The only thing I agree with this video is that I think the Institute is a lackluster faction, I think if they had a much more transformative and influential presence while the player is interacting with the world they would be a much scarier villain, but everything else in this video I completely disagree with. I think the foundation is there and they were on a time crunch to finish it or something like that. Some really good villains, think they’re a good guy.
Just one question: If synths are meant to be slaves, why give them free will? Or hell, make them flesh and blood? If they are meant to serve, why make them fragile like us? No one, and I mean, no one in the entire Institute ever touch on that. Like just stick with your robot gen 1 and 2, you can even pop those head off and they still works.
They do it because they can it pretty much stops there no big reason just sciencing. The second they believe they gained all the info they can, they'd stop till a bigger reason pops up. We're basically just lab rats
I *think* the entire point of gen 3 synths is that The Institute are functionally growing/assembling complete persons around control hardware, and then overwriting their brains and subjugating them, and acting surprised when they don't behave like robots. It's reiterated time and time again that synths are: 1. Entirely biological, and 2. Completely indistinguishable from natural humans. They would be a great way to explore the irrational dehumanization that's fundamental to the practice of slavery, but Bethesda are largely incapable of handling ideas like that, so the entire concept is muddied beneath layers of authorial uncertainty and an unwillingness to engage with complex ideas.
It's more that Bethesda's entire approach to writing fully prioritizes content over meaning. It's largely quest-centric and driven by concepts that are assigned to individual quests and then expanded upon. As I understand it, almost anything that's written anywhere in Fallout 4 or Starfield is there because a quest concept called for it at one point. No writing just to flesh out the world, or to explain important parts of the story. Only enough to furnish the hallway built around a given quest.
At the basic level, it’s smart people creating Gen 3 synths because they can, the satisfaction of overcoming the ultimate challenge. Practically, I guess human-like synths can run on regular food rather power cells or whatever.
The Enclave 2.0 mod which added them as a proper joinable faction did a handy job of providing a proper "villain playthrough", to include dulling the outright genocidal ambition of the Enclave just a tad and usurping the Institute. It does feel as if the Sole Survivor in that context actually does make a significant difference in the affairs of the Commonwealth.
Source: the failure of the CPG If surface dwellers can't stop fighting among themselves, it makes sense that the Institute would decide to prioritize its own survival & prosperity over them. Let's put it this way: when your average settlers are doing something for the "good of mankind", they aren't concerned with the survival & prosperity of raiders. Like it or not, in the post-apocalypse when it comes down to do something for "the good of mankind" you are most likely focusing on your own community, not literally all humans, which actually seems to reflect well on the infighting of the potential members of the CPG, which was falling apart before it could even get a chance.
Shawns big stupid plan: 1.) Be informed the vault dweller has emerged and has started hoarding guns and household appliances in a settlement up north. 2.) Let the dweller wander aimlessly a bit allowing them to hoard upgraded guns and power armor to mow down anything that stands in their way including institute salvage squads as the vault dweller yells "where is my aluminum! Oh and my son I guess!" 3.) Set up a meeting with the institute asset that killed their spouse... this step took two years before they got around to your convoluted plan the terminal cancer being polite enough not to kill you as they lose focus yet again and start building another settlement. 4.) Kellog finally dead after 3 years of waiting you assume they will dig through his brains like a deranged lunatic (this one time Shawn was right on the money) now they have a way to the institute, wait where are they going now and where did they get that fat man. 5.) Two more years later they finally saw Kelloggs memories and now have a route to see the stupid set up made just to screw with them for no reason. 6.) Instead of having a corner capture them from the beginning you decided that having them ally one of your enemies to build a teleportation device that allows them to enter the institute fully armed to the teeth. 7.) See on camera that the shotgun toting death bringer thinks their son is the synth you made specifically to screw with them. 8.) Walk in and get shot by shot gun toting avatar of death before being able to say a single number or word because they do not care because they have no idea that the Shawn synth is a Shawn synth. 9.) Die on the floor as the survivor tries shooting the glass case open 10.) Profit????
This is all because the devs went decided to change everything great about Fallout, and give us settlement building. The factions are all weak. The dialogue is literally Yes, No (but really yes), Maybe (yes), and Sarcastic yes. Not only do the factions come across as shallow, but it is evident that not a single player choice matters.
Why? Why do you think Sean should showing emotions? He was literally raised by morally detached psychos,and his best friends are robots...He didn't even have the loving influence of parents.His detachment seems to be 100% spot on.
@@146zigzag3 obviously, they’re the villain, but it wouldn’t suck to join them. I mean think about it they have a lot more benefits than the other villain factions that we’ve seen in the franchise. Granted in the long run, they wouldn’t do well (similar to the other villains) but some areas in the short run look a bit more tempting. which is the point. A lot better than just “safe roads” in the Mojave.
@@146zigzag3 I don't think so, in fact their epilogue seems to be showing their redemption by straying away from Father's full isolation plan, instead doing what the counterproposal to isolation from the director's recording #52 suggested: deploy large numbers of synths to the surface to help maintain order, which they do with gen 2 synths on the checkpoints.
@@Steel-101 Their technology already make them a potentially much better choice than Caesar's Legion: just having the molecular relay with unrestricted uses thanks to the nuclear reactor being online could mean safe transport of goods & people across the Commonwealth, not to mention emergency dispatches for emergencies, essentially becoming true Minutemen anywhere across the Commonwealth. Being able to mass produce synths, alongside their gear (despite being inferior to the pre-war laser gun, the advantage of the Institute's version is that they can build it from scratch and as many as needed, and it is definitely superior to smaller firearms, specially similarly common pipe weapons) to have them as a security force (particularly from raiders & deathly wasteland wildlife) and labor is another huge plus. And if their research can allow them to produce other beneficial inventions, such as the massive gourds from the Warwick Homestead, you are also addressing problems such as starvation. So, definitely a HUGE step up from safe roads.
8:38 nah. Shaun is depicted like his empathy is low because in the circumstances he lived through, his empathy would be so absent or supposed that he can't enter into the concerns of someone else's feelings. There's real world disorders that Shaun seems to be modeled after (narcissistic personality disorder, for example) but the simplest explanation is that he was raised to believe he was institute property, not raised to experience love and compassion. Even later on when he expressed his views on the escaped synths, or his hope for connection with/disappointment in the sole survivor's betrayal, it's framed as material ownership. He is a person who was treated like a thing, learned to see people as things, and while he claims synths are not people, but things... his last request to you from synth Shaun indicates that this is a two way conflation. Synths are things. People are things. That's Father Shaun's worldview. I can agree that the institute itself falls short, as a narrative antagonist. But Shaun was actually very well written for the circumstance. I just wish there were options to either convince him he's wrong, or to become a super mutant companion or something.
They definitely are. The Enclave has a purpose for the bad things they do. When they attack Project Purity in 3, it's so they can take it over and use it to further their own goals. Which goals, exactly, are the Institute furthering by kidnapping random wasters and dipping them in FEV, then releasing them on the Wasteland?
@@PatGunn Only the Fallout 4 Brotherhood is evil. The west coast Brotherhood wants to be isolated from the outside world so they can horde their advanced technology. The FO3 Brotherhood was trying to be the polar opposite to the Enclave. Bethesda made the FO4 Brotherhood into Enclave lite
It's really a problem with the writers at Bethesda they don't know how to write captivating characters or stories. Everything they do is now getting to be quite weak even the world build in their games is failing.
You are wrong, buddy. You meet your first synth, when you and Piper see the mayor, in Act 1. The reality is: You just don't know how many synths you've met, until you join. That is all.
I've talked about this before with friends, but the Institute could have worked better if they were part of the Enclave; rather than "redefining mankind", they want to make a full, proper return to the surface to reclaim America and the world, which is why they raided vault 111; Shaun and the Sole Survivor would be genetically "pure" in the eyes of the Enclave, and would give the sole survivor a bigger reason to join them, as they were a citizen of pre-war America, ruled by the Enclave. Additionally, if they were slightly less "kill everyone", and more "reclaim America", they could be a more compelling villain, as again, it would be a good way to fall back to the Sole Survivor's pre-war days, and they would still have high-level tech.
The moral inconsistency might make the Institute less compelling as a villain, but the moral inconsistency makes them much more realistic (in that regard)
The Minutemen: We did our best fighting to defend the common man, but failed. Despite that, we are going to pick ourselves up and keep trying because its the right thing to do. Rating: Lawful Goodest Boys The Railroad: These synths deserve equal rights, and we will risk our lives to save them, even if it incurs the wrath of an insurmountable enemy and endangers others. Rating: Chaotic Good Boys The Brotherhood: The Institute is everything wrong with pre-war "advance at all costs" mentality and a threat to all living things. They must be stopped at ANY cost. Also we're fascist-coded. Rating: Lawful Neutral Boys The Institute: "Hey Joe, have you finished blending up all those puppies yet?" "Yeah Jim, fresh batch of puppy juice. Just pouring it down the drain now, like I do every day, for science!" Rating: nonsensically chaotic evil
The institute controlling the world as a shadow government in black trench coats, is great. But the writing in fallout 4 is shallow and the settlement building leaves a lot of empty map.
Can synths have kids? If the answer is no then they are going towards a future with only a population they can create and control. Does this mean they want to destroy the human population all together?
i would put most of this on the railroad more than the institute. everything you say about them applies to the railroad too. unclear goals. save a toaster or an organic machine, morals. kill a synth that wants freedom by replacing their memories and reusing the body. , no real end goal. destroy the machine that makes synths so they will go extinct anyway. good job. and all well saying you're saving them. if anyone is evil it's the railroad.
Seconded, Destroying an individual just to 'save them' is the essence of evil. The Railroad is just better at self-delusion then most groups, which play with this concept.
@@filmandfirearms not really. The bos goal is easy to understand blow up the institute. Is said a thousand times agree or not. it's not evil as that's not changing a person out right with erasing memories. The minutemen want to protect the common wealth. Both don't have synth saving goals so blowing up the institute doesn't cause a moral or objective problem. As far as incompetent. The bos gets liberty prime running even without your help. Institute gets the reactor running if you don't help. Minutemen are only Preston if you don't help so their a non factor. Only the railroad who operates without you does all this saying their the good guys. The bos may mean well but they know their violent. Minutemen too, institute knows how to treat a toaster and synth in their veiw. Only the railroad are confused unaffected by their actions, and moronic in their final actions and goals.
@@filmandfirearmsnah the minutemen might be incompetent but I wouldn't call em evil they're just a faction of patriotic rednecks that want to help out settlements and rebuild Boston with a new government
I think they could have made the dynamic between players and the factions much better if the writing was better and the VA for the player was more emotional later in the game.
IMO, the Institute's quest line is the best, but the Institute is just too evil. It would be nice if they showed that the Institute has some benefits plus the negative parts you already see. Doing that and leaning more into their role as a high-tech Oceania would make the Institute a much better faction
If we couldn't join the institute, people would complain. Instead of videos dunking on their faction, we'd have videos about how the institute deserves to win/are the best hope for the Commonwealth.
For me the nail was the fact they still do experiments with FEV, i do not fuck with people that experiment with FEV, the Mariposa base was such a pain in the ass i vowed my playthroughs to always exterminate anything related to FEV Except Jacobstown, i like Jacobstown
What sucks is people call the institute the villain because they utilize technology to its fullest, “synths” aren’t human they’re robots they’re technological tools to be used. As if using a computer, a radio, a phone.
They're self-aware beings. Literally you can go to the head of the SRB and ask why synths run away if they're jist machines, and he just shrugs and goes, "We're looking into it."
Honestly, Bethesda's poor ass writing is to blame for the inconsistencies in everything, not just the Institute. If you look at Fallout 4, in a lot of ways, it's just an inverse of Fallout 3's story. "Child searches for Father, ends up saving the city" / "Parent looks for son, ends up saving the city." So it's basically just a worse Fallout 3.
I’ve always though of the institute as if you combined the master and the enclaves goals and then made them shitty they claim to try to be the betterment of man kind like the master and this “last bastion of humanity” like the enclave but they don’t have the fear factor of the enclave or the semi-genuines of the master (this may be inaccurate as I’ve never played fallout 1 or 2 but have seen lore videos on them so if I’m wrong please tell me)
I think it would have made better narrative sense, as well as for a more interesting character and villain, if Father was simply an over-controlling, manipulative, authoritarian. He would be driven by his need to control, subjugate, and manipulate, from him learning from the previous director how awful the surface is. Then having that belief bolstered even more, later in life, as he learned about his origin. This creates an overly controlling psychopath who will stop at nothing to bring order to the world by the means of advanced robotics and science. Meanwhile, he's selling others in the Institute a story of redemption and saving for mankind and the Commonwealth. In turn this could also create better characters out of others within the Institute, such as Liam, who in my version could find out the true goals of Father and wishes to stop him or at least delay him. Or Madison Li, which makes her turn to the Brotherhood, should you choose that route, makes far more sense if she wants the Institute gone, seeing them as even worse than the Brotherhood. Hell, even the player gets more out of that. The more you align with Father's ideals and the happier he is with certain events and outcomes, the more likely you'll be made head of the Institute. If not you'll either be seen in a role similar to Kellogg or a courser, or perhaps head of a division.
Something I was disappointed about honestly was that, you either work with the institute, or you obliterate them You can’t use your position as acting director to refocus the efforts of the institute for the actual betterment of humanity Sure I’ll bet some of the puritans would push back against you, but you could sort that out. I can understand why the Brotherhood wants to destroy the institute outright. But I don’t understand why a faction like the Railroad wouldn’t want to take over the institute facilities. A hostile takeover / restructuring of the institute would’ve been REALLY damn cool, and I’m sad we never got to see that
I have a theory that the Institute was inspired by Aperture Science from portal. Both white color scheme underground science organisations with teleportation technology who are both horrifically incompetant.
The other factions are just as incompetent, so I doubt it. At least Aperture was more fleshed out. They were a corporation trying to make as much money as possible and with an AI out of control
My problem with the institute is that their entire story was stupid and boring when it was done 100 years ago in blade runner and it's just as stupid and boring now when Bethesda stole it
The only good point you make is the fact that the player isn't needed for the institutes plans. Of course, father would have no care for a random stranger, which is what the sole survivor is to him. The institute just wants power. The institute is built up fine as the are meant to be a boogyieman and just people you see every day.
I joined them hoping I’d get a synth Nora to pick up where we left off 😂 but they rubbed salt in my wounds when one scientist literally married a synth version of his wife (ugliest npc) 🤦🏿♂️
You’re missing a point. Every good villain doesn’t think they’re bad. Look at Dr. Doom everything he does is because. He believes that he’s doing good. Dr. Doom is trying to make the world a better place. Unfortunately it’s only better for Doom
The institute truly is such a disappointment. They've got the seeds for plenty of cool things in game already but definitely never finished. I like to imagine they were making synths not for robot slaves but rather perfect, eternal, manufacturable serogate bodies. You could further this string of thought from why they need the ability to have a full range of human emotion to even the FEV experimentation. They were making super mutants yes but also specifically testing with FEV organs. Food for thought.
Why would you join? Maybe because the MC's son is part of it. The motivation? They are kinda like Vault Tech they want to rebuild the world, but with them in charge. So by removing the other factions/people they will be solely in charge.
The institute is evil. No denying on that. But, the sole survivor while being the director and working with the brotherhood could take over the institute, all the equipment and personnel, to make them work for the brotherhood. While the institute leadership is evil, yes, their technology might actually be useful to safe humanity. Blowing them up was a waste of resources, in my opinion.
I like the Institute being deluded into thinking they're good and rationalizing what they do; I also like how there's confusion between the different branches as to what the other people within the faction are doing; I like Shaun being a manipulative mastermind and weirdly distant and cold. I like that he lies to you and tries to delude players into siding with him. My issue is that you, the player, have no real option to call them out on this. You're never given an option to bring up the FEV experiments or the kidnapping and replacing. You can't bring up what they're doing at Warwick or what they did at University Point. You can't question their inhumanity. You can do side quests where you do the kind of evil things they've been accused of, things that Shaun has told you was a lie, and yet you're never given the option - as the player - to reflect on this or challenge NPCs about it through dialogue. Siding with them requires that you roleplay as someone who is deluded by Shaun into siding with them and then later convinced to be totally down with their evilness. There's never really a sensible tipping point for the player; it doesn't feel natural. Even worse, I think, is that their motto is 'mankind redefined.' One might think that denotes the synths, but they don't see synths as people, so I don't think that makes sense. I feel like 'mankind redefined' is best understood in a meta sense, where mankind is only those privileged enough to be members of the Institute, hidden underground. But such an understanding can't carry through in game, because it goes against their stated words. Always felt like an example of some of the worst writing from Bethesda for me.
This basically. Shawn being this manipulative asshole makes sense, but the only one who would actually call this out is Doctor Li saying she's been lied to about Virgil.
Shaun wants to think the Institute is misunderstood. They're not, though. Everything the Wastelanders accuse them of, are things they actually do. And more. No one knows they're the reason Supermutants are in Boston.
Lol, true.
Yeah but you can justify a lot of the things they do. Except maybe for the supermutants. I don't remember why they were experimenting with a FEV in the first place I'll have to look into it.
@@garynumber22 nah ur a clown 😂
Mans out here replacing so many people that they dont even know who all they been replacing.
@@garynumber22which is the big issue with Fallout 4 and a bit of the limits of the voice protagonist is that it limited interactions. So we couldn’t really do deep dive conversation with Shaun to truly understand why the institute does what it does.
@@mactysonkarate Yeah we have to reliably heavily on things like environmental storytelling and notes. Which isn't the best because the fallout community still thinks that the institute murder the Boston Provisional Government when the only evidence supporting that comes from NPCs who hate the institute and weren't even there when it happened. And the only piece of evidence that has some credibility is a hidden note found in a random box inside the institute that if you read gives the impression that in reality the Government's representatives killed each other and the Institute just happened to be there and survived the shootout.
> Suffering from an energy shortage
> *_Mass-produce_* their own laser weapons that are *_LESS_* energy efficient than the regular ones
"you dont understand! Our way is the future of the Commonwealth!"
"Than can you explain it to me?"
"No."
Well that's Bethesda's writing for you.
I mean I got to admit, they completel blind-sided me and surprised me with the twist of Father being Shaun (tbh I thought I was headed for the Endgame when it came to porting into the Institute, I was geared up with my best Equipment and every piece of 'oh, I might use this later on' consumable, loaded up with a Minigun, my best Power armor, a few thousands rounds of ammo, a rocketlauncher and my regular gear, expecting a tough fight to 'save my son', only to have the Rug pulled out from under me.
But instead of being an amazing twist which reveals a MUCH deeper nature to the Institute etc. it was just as shallow as I expected.
The Institute and one's relationship with 'Father'/Shaun could've been SO much more. Then again Bethesda never knew how to properly pull on their player's heartstrings.
I mean ALL of that could've had so much more meaning... from the very start when the game could start actually a day BEFORE the Bombs fell.
Giving us as players the opportunity to observe the 'old world' through the eyes of the Sole Survivor, the good, the bad and the ugly...
Think of it, a Picknick at the Park with our Babyboy and our Significant other, seeing civil protests, general situation, people complaining about the exploding prices, while others are talking how the war is luckily 'almost over', with you possibly also enjoying a BBQ in the neighbourhood...
Us being reminded of our 'big Day' - only to be surprised by the Bombs falling.
It would've given SO much more impact to EVERYTHING if the Sole Survivor truely found themselves 'a stranger in a strange land' and out of time in a sense.
Heck, even solely Shaun properly aknowledging what a shock all of this must be, WHY he did what he did and him being touched by one's efforts (or lack of effort, depending on how long it took you to get to him) and ultimately either aknowledging that you are family, admitting that you are basicly strangers at this point (though at no fault of your own), or possibly even trying to manipulate you as he recognizes that you are an exceptional individual and would make for an ideal field Operative.
Institute isn't morally inconsistent. They are generally inconsistent due to bad writing. It seems that bethesda wanted pure evil faction at some time in development, and then change their minds. Or team developing the world was detached from team developing the Institute.
Bethesda stopped using centralized design documents during the development of Fallout 3. You're right about teams not communicating. It's hard to do that, without proper documentation.
@@Mirthful_Midori Source?
I logged 600 hours in Fallout 4 and I still have no idea why the Institute was doing the stuff they're doing... replacing random settlers with synths, making super mutants...
They might as well be Doctor Doofenschmirtz for how badly thought out their plans are.
BEHOLD, MY SYNTH-REPLACEINATOR!
HHAHABAGA
This is just the simple result of letting Emil Pagliarulo write main stories in "rpg" games.
What confuses me most about the Institute is their view on Synths. Their goal is to "redefine humanity" and they regularly replace humans with synths, so that implies they see Synths as improvements. But they also seemingly see Synths as nothing but worthless machines, which makes you wonder what their goals even are.
Where do you get the idea that they see them as worthless?
@@mushyroom9569dunno about worthless, but they’re definitely viewed as worth less than humans.
The institute views them as just machines acting on code. Any sort of deviation from how they’re told to behave (such as feeling bad about their treatment as servants and wanting to escape) is considered a bug that needs to be fixed by mindwiping them.
The railroad story pretty much has a bunch of parts where gen 3 synths tell you how horribly they’re treated by the institute.
Which I always found to be weird since I would assume the entire point of creating something completely indistinguishable from a human is to create new life. Not just a more advanced machine to boss around.
@@Death2all546 But how is that worse than they treat any wastelander?
@@mushyroom9569 difference is, the gen 3’s are supposed to be part of the institute.
Institute humans are treated well.
Institute gen 3 synths are treated like gen 1/2 synths (mechanical servants) that, for some reason, keep expressing dissatisfaction from being treated like robots. Then they get mind wiped and put back to work.
Wastelanders are treated like test subjects and/or nuisances. Or potential institute recruits (if they’re smart enough).
Which makes the point that even a wastelander can be treated well by the institute if they’re talented enough.
But a talented gen 3 synth will only become a courser (better trained mechanical servant).
Same thing every group of smart jerks claims when they redefine humanity.
To claim everyone outside of their group isn't human to justify all the stuff they are doing.
Oh sure you could share those planets that can grow and remove radiation and feed people thus easily making yourself a hero group to be worshiped...
But that would be giving those filthy surface people food.
Oh sure you could unify the wasteland above you by replacing their leaders with synthetic drones and have them operate for the betterment of everyone as they are programmed to not be corrupt and do what you say.
But they want the people above disorganized. They even killed a few people running the settlements with synthetic fakes all for the purpose of being incompetent leaders to ensure nobody could fix their current lousy state their settlements are in.
They are people who enjoy playing in the ashes of the wasteland while relaxing in luxury and comfort.
Why Father even stopped the cybernetic programs and prevented other people from getting that life extension technology that works... Because he doesn't want his own underlings to have longer lifespans.
He doesn't even pick anyone else to lead them and only picks his parent out of his own ego... So even if you don't agree to take up the mantle he refuses to let anyone else be his second in command in case he dies from his very real disease.
They are all selfish pricks looking for excuses to justify their actions rather than admit that they are awful people.
The institute is like the discount think tank
Ya gotta be crazy to go up against the Think Tank. . .literally. . .and according to many a player the Courier is that after taking two to the head. . .heck the Courier's own brain feels 'Courier' is looney tunes.
I think the think tank would end up as the institute if they weren't all nuts
think tank but underground
I think they’re 2 sides of the same coin. Only difference is everyone’s heard of the Institute. You gotta be crazy and unlucky enough to even get to the Big MT
The think tank has actual reasons to be the way they are. Before they were being egged on by the US government to create horrors beyond comprehension for the war effort, and when you meet them they’re a bunch of senile old cyborgs.
The Institute has no excuse, they are just evil mad scientists because that’s what the setting demands.
The institute's main flaw, in my opinion, is that the script for them seems to have gotten lost. The game has themes of immortality with Nick Valentine, the Cabots, Billy, Vault 111, the cut Nate/Nora synth, and Kellogg. The fact that Father never tied into that is a huge mistake. If some light was shone on him making moral compromises as he gets more and more desperate to either cure himself or transfer his mind into a healthy Gen 3+ synth body, he might actually have been sympathetic.
Can you imagine the shameful admission on the university rooftop? Make a speech check about how you don't believe his 'you'd never understand' explanation from earlier and he'd cave and tell you that it's all a front for his selfishness and fear. He's a doctor on the cusp of curing mortality and he's scared he won't be able to do it in time for himself.
It's such a simple fix that I honestly get mad about it not being in the base game. I almost want to learn modding and AI speech synthesis just to do it myself... but that seems like a lot of work.
I agree so much with this. That change in motivation would be so effective at contextualizing everything the Institue do, even the creation of Super Mutants (they were originally supposed to replace the human race as well).
That would actually give the Institute a motive and a believable one, too. Too bad Bethesda was more focused on making them mysterious, instead of giving them a goal.
The massive amount of synths is the biggest concern for me.
Sit there and watch the things being printed, count the rate and wonder how many are in the room back there. It is enough to wonder why this group hasn't wiped the surface for their own justifications. The Institute could easily have a >1 ratio to all surface dwellers, teleportation technology and other weapon advantages, and enough intel to play covert games with the other factions. A war against the institute would be so one sided, and a real 'evil organization' wouldn't be sitting on that sort of advantage... doing nothing.
It would have made sense if that printer took ages to make a synth, so they couldn't just zerg the surface.
This is gonna be a bit of a stretch, but maybe so many of them escaped, it made the population of Massachusets 25% sinth. Maybe the institute is completely losing their shizzle and having their brains cooked due to their "high-tech multitool" taking the "f this, I'm out" option, so they're pointing a proverbial fire hose at a colander; just trying to fill the void.
Recall, the war is over. The Railroad has been infiltrated by Synths and the leadership thereof will soon be destroyed. The Minutemen as a faction doesn't exist... and the Brotherhood... just repeat the line from Fallout 3. But only show up after you off Kellogg. They won't pose a threat either... blow up the Airship... and... the BoS Base of Operations and _Supply_ cease to exist.
Why count Gen 3 Synths when you could count all the locations Gen 2 Synths are at? There are more Gen 2 Synths than people in Diamond City and Vault (81?) combined (the only "cities" in the Commonwealth). The Institute could teleport an army into both and have a "viceroy" Gen 3 Synth to act as "overseer" of the cities. The isolated farming communities will surrender immediately thereafter... and the Institute can assign Gen 2 Synth to act as a "watch dog" of the farms. When attacked, they teleport a quick reaction force. Maybe the Institute will take over (or "hire") the Gunners and use _them_ as a permanent "guard" of the Commonwealth... as they shift resources to creating _new_ Synth Creation Labs with their own Teleporters... then they can expand to New York, Vermont, New Hamshire or maybe one of the smaller states, like Rhode Island, or Connecticut.
The "playing" area of Fallout 4 map is _over_ 30km East to West and _over_ 40km South to North... This is a good portion of the Common Wealth's real South to North "height" but about a seventh of its real "width". So, maybe the Institute would expand West to capture the entirety of the Commonwealth, like the area around Nukaworld before expanding to other former US states.
Except they did? Why do you think there’s a bajillion generation 2 synths everywhere and the only settlement in the commonwealth is the one being run by a synth mayor?
My big issue isn't that the Institute are evil. Evil factions, like Caesar's Legion or the Galactic Empire, can be a _lot_ of fun to play as. It's that they're _stupid_ evil.
Like, no one in their big boardroom ever stopped and asked "Why are we such vicious cunts to everyone else?" What did they gain from murdering the Commonwealth Provisional Government, or Roger Warwick? Why are they kidnapping random Wasters, dipping them in FEV, and then turning them loose on the Commonwealth? Why have anything to do with a dangerous psychopath like Kellog?
They have a lot of the same attitudes Robert House did in NV, the difference being that House is _extremely_ self-aware and goes very mask off any time you talk to him about _how_ he intends to bring about civilization's rebirth. The Institute aren't like this; attending board meetings should feel like a Politburu session, where all the Party faithful can speak freely about their real goals instead of just paying lip service to Communism or Science or whatever, but the Institute notably _don't_ do that. They seem to believe all the chaos and misery they sow everywhere is somehow a good thing that will benefit all of humanity, rather than realpolitik to keep themselves in power. Rather than making them intimidating, that just makes everyone involved with the faction come across as very, very stupid.
They're massively flawed because the whole point is keeping the player's choice of faction morally grey. If the Institute were good guys it would be obvious to join them.
@@mattorama I mean, the Minute Men and Railroad are both good guys and smoothbrains still act like there's some nuance to siding with the Institute or Brotherhood. There's nothing grey about the Minute Men, and at best the Railroad are a bit naive. The Institute murder people for the LOLs and the Brotherhood are a racket pretending to be a military order.
Ain’t reading all dat
Edit: jk man this is exactly correct
@@mattorama They're incompetent. They have a goal, then take the absolute worst possible actions to achieve that goal. The Institute's problem solving ability is like if you needed to light a candle, so you went and bought a bottle of nitroglycerin and a grindstone
There are many scientists inside institute questioning exactly that. Opposing synths , opposing FEV experiments etc. It is a Dictatorship whatever the Fathers says goes.....therefore it's the way it is.
To be honest, I’m not upset with the Institute being a joinable faction.
Father being detached is really not an issue. He was an infant when he was taken. He would have no emotional connection to the player.
The problem there:
We are told his motivations where due to that connection....
it really is, they dont even paint him as sadistic mf that treated his own father like a mouse in a deadly trap for amusement like he did, hes just "oh yeah I do that because i want the best for the humanity and its worth it" and he left you out of the vault because "yo wouldnt it be fun?" thats sooo lazy, they dont make it evil, they dont make it conflicted, nothing. h
He feels like another average npc and not the central point of the game, he's as plain as Strong when the whole premise of the game revolves around him, thats just horrible
the problem is that he's not like insane because of it both Mr House and Caesar in New Vegas gave off calculated psychopath vibes with Caesar power tripping and Mr House acting more like a computer than a person. Father just acts like a moron
I have to disagree, yes I don't think he'd have as STRONG of an attachment as if they had been together from the beginning, but the fact that he continually watched and altered the players chronology shows a slight bit more attachment than most would be bothered to show in the Commonwealth, though the issue comes with whether it was a situation like Deacon's, watching the player to determine if they were worth adding to the ranks or something more in-depth like knowing it was his parent and wanting them to know his accomplishments. I just find it hard to believe he has no attachment especially with the fact that once you join you don't have to do much before Father just says "Yeah, I'm leaving the Institute and all it's stuff to my Mom/Dad, sorry!"
The bigger problem is that since Shaun was infant and we knew he grew up in the institute,
Who are his adoptive parent/s?
because someone must have took care of him, and Shaun since he was a baby would started to see in that figure a mother/father figure, and thus not care much about its biological father/mother.
I feel obligated to shill Radking’s “Hate the Institute? Blame Shawn” video.
Shaun and the previous Director. The previous Director set the whole thing in motion with the Spouse being murdered and Shaun being kidnapped. . .oh, and not putting a short and strong enough leash on Kellogg. I also think that Director was the one who replaced Arthur Maxson's mother figure with a Synth in between Fallout 3 and 4 which turned Maxson into an extreme racist with fascist methods.
@@chadharger9323 Who was Maxson's mother figure? Sarah Lyons (and presumably the Lone Wanderer) was KIA after the end of 3 when she took over.
@@chadharger9323nah she left for the west coast before fallout 3. He was raised by the brotherhood, most notably Owen Lyons. Are you meaning Sarah Lyons? I guess we don’t know what happened to her🤔
@@AJadedLizard There's a computer entry on Prydwin that goes into detail about it.
@@chadharger9323the Institute has nothing to do with Maxson's upbringing. What are you talking about?
3:02 just someguy? Do you know who you're talking to? That's the butcher of Ontario. Nate the rake.
The Institute is exactly as you say but I would offer a further thought. The writing for the faction is superior and smug, they are not making the world better for humanity, they are replacing humanity with synths. How does that work. The whole thing infuriates me.
I have no synthapy for Father.
The institute fails so hard at the 'evil' thing, that one has to question if they are meant to be evil at all....
Which, in and of itself, would be a great thing to explore if we had been presented this option in game.
I think they were meant to be morally grey, and that you can interpret things how you want, if you want to side with them. It's just that everything they do is bad. Nothing they do actually helps anyone but themselves.
This is why I can overlook things the Brotherhood does. Yes they're heavy handed, but most of what they do is either stuff I do as well, or stuff that at least indirectly helps people outside their group. That's not true with the Institute.
@@chadnorris8257
I concur, I believe they where meant to be a lot more morally gray.
Would be nice if we saw it more in game, then in speculation....
There is a rumour I heard from one of these sites, years ago, that the executives at Bethesda are to blame. That the writing team where forced to add the more obviously evil things in, because Marketing told the board that it would sell better. That people needed a clear hero/villain fantasy....
@@lostbutfreesoul That's a shame, if so. Thinking about Skyrim, I find the civil war much more thought provoking than the dragon crisis. I like beating up an evil dragon god as much as the next guy, but I appreciate factions with no clear good or bad guy in an rpg. Neither the imperials nor stormcloaks are completely right or wrong about their beliefs.
It sucks that they made a game to expand on the institute and railroad from FO3, but fumbled the ball on both.
I wish we could’ve started rebuilding with The Institute and like The Courier, introduce new and old technologies to the wasteland to help improve the quality of life for commonwealth citizens.
I also think blowing up The Institute is just incredibly idiotic, (of course for Boston BoS and Railroad it makes sense to do so), but for The Minutemen to blow up a faction that has the technology to help rebuild is so bizarre, we should have been able to takeover The Institute ala America Rising 2.
Remember, Mankind - Redefined, it is not moral inconsistency when you change what is good, what is evil and who is human.
All the factions in Fallout 4 kind of suck.
Minutemen are fine as your personal power to the people playground.
@@volodymyrbilyk555and it will collapse again as soon as the sole survivor dies
@Cthulhuwarlord yes but that's because war never changes
Personally if you love settlement building the minutemen are the bees knees, did a play through where I built an artillery piece at every settlement, made random encounters even better 😂
Majors as minors are all badly written and integrated in game yes.
To play devils advocate I kinda liked father’s portrayal I always thought they were trying to convey his lack emotional intelligence having been raised in a culture of science and logic without his actual parents there able to provide proper emotional support, and the institute can justify their actions completely to themselves because most of if not all of them don’t see the surface as humanity they believe they are the only true humans anymore kinda like the enclave so to them it doesn’t matter if any of their experiments effect the surface because to them there’s no actual humans on the surface it’s just science enclave but that’s how i interpreted it
Fallout 4 spent more time on settlement building than the writers did on building compelling factions.
Its either the result of cut content that would of flushed it out or wasn't fully developed. And shipped half baked
It is a Bethesda game, so there's every possibility that you are 100% correct. The whole thing feels like it's building the Institute up into something, but is a massive let-down once you actually get there. Like one of those cheaply created, roadside tourist traps in America. They claim it's the world's biggest rat, but it's really a medium-sized dog that someone stuck some whiskers and a long, skinny tail on. Ultimately, very disappointing indeed.
The core concept of the Institute seems to be "Enclave but more Bladerunner" and stops there. Everything about their goals is empty and vague. It started quarter baked and never got in the oven.
I do think that many players miss the Institute (like the Enclave) thinks they're humanity and everyone else is a loss. So when they yammer on about humanity's future, its just themselves they want to "save." Everyone else is just something to be afraid of, or a yardstick to measure themselves against and gloat.
They were so cartoonishly, Saturday morning baddies that I couldn’t take them seriously.
The institute has a ton of wasted potential, flaws, and inconsistencies...
but hey at least its not the Scorch Plague
When I played through my first time. I went Institute.
In my head canon, If I became the leader, then I could better the world. Even though that's not really what happens. But since it's a fallout game, I decided to go with my own headcanon
they have ice cold cola
What I love about the way they made the Institute is how it is absolutely the embodiment of higher academia. They are exactly what you would get if you gave any university faculty supreme power.
Their inconsistency and ambiguity is purposely designed to reflect that.
What always astonishes me about this game is that Bethesda made a faction who will do some incredibly vicious and evil, self-serving things in the name of Science a good four years before the Pandemic. I genuinely want to make a mod that just adds "Trust the Science" to random NPC chatter in the Institute, it would be tonally consistent.
It's not really. Academes in reality tend to be full of arguments and squabbles. They're not like corporate leaders.
I wouldn't say "purposely," since it's clear from interviews that the writing team had virtually no consistency and it was mostly Pagliarulo going around saying "Wouldn't it be cool if?" to the various other writers. I think they were genuinely going for something that's supposed to be too intellectual for the average player to understand, but instead simply came off like the smug ivory-tower academics who manufacture their own conclusions rather than following evidence and then insist they're right even when they contradict themselves.
that could be handled a lot better tho, the most they did with that is when some guy doesnt want you to be the leader and goes on strike, I was so hyped and in the end it was just a skill check/fight that changes some npc dialogues. I feel they could've done something like Nuka world were theres some factions inside the institute that have different visions and how you end up favoring one or another
Considering every other faction in Fallout 4 is the same way, I doubt It was intentional
The Institute isn't morally grey, they're morally foggy.
yea, their lack of a clear goal is what really rustles my jimmies. the only 2 reasons why I settled for them was because I felt kinda bad for Shaun, and most importantly, actually, because they have the tools (if nothing else) to rebuild civilization, and destroying them destroys a lot of potential for the future too. as time goes on, I decided that when I replay FO4, I'll just stick with the Minutemen, at least I know what they want and what they want positively impacts the Commonwealth for real
most of the writing in fallout 4 just doesn’t need to exist. Can you believe people had a go at a fallout entry and this is what story and characters they came up with🤢
The Unity is still the only "main villain" faction in the series that is not idiotically incompetent, although it mostly consist of dumb supermutants. Ironic.
I dunno, The Master hadn't even verified whether his super mutant army was capable of reproducing.
That alone makes the Master arguably more incompetent than any other villain throughout the whole franchise.
yeah, and the second he learns that Supermutants are sterile, he decides to unalive himself without giving it a second thought.
Even though he has a loyal cult of humans under his control that can be easily used as a breeding stock for generations until he finds a solution.
I guess you have a point there...
@@jessep5280 yeah, and the second he learns that Supermutants are stеrilе, he decides to unаlivе himself without giving it a second thought.
Even though he has a loyal сult of humans under his control that can be easily used as a brееding stock for generations until he finds a solution.
I guess you have a point there...
The Enclave was intended as a satire of the US government under Republican leadership, so it being run by morons was intentional. Caesar's Legion is a bunch of incels under the rule of a pseudo-intellectual with a brain tumor, so their issues were clearly intentional, too. The Institute, though - that's the only one where it's just obviously bad writing. They don't even roll with them suffering from extreme hubris.
@@youarealwayscorrect He didn't want his street cred clowned on by some blue balled bitch so he decided to nuke himself instead
It seems like their end state is simply just lots of synths
Sheesh…Giving Father Shaun an injection of bullets when you first meet him, makes more sense plot-wise than the nonsensical, directionless Institute plot he eventually gives you.
I too wish I had a meaningful relationship with my father
Kinda sucks? No, they fully suck.
Couldn't disagree more: they are my favorite faction in Fallout 4!
I can only imagine what kind of inventions would be created if Doctor Klein, Doctor 8th, Doctor Borous, Doctor 0, and Doctor Mobius would created if they would get their hands on Institute technological achievments. Doctor Mobius would definitely created a synth versions of his deadly Robo Scorpions.
I personally always felt that being able to join the institute was an afterthought. Like it always felt to me like the devs had not intended for it to be joinable, just an antagonist since every quest you do for them felt very lackluster to me compared to the others.
They should have made them more like FO3's Enclave, were you can help with the Institute goals like poisoning Project Purity in FO3, but you need to join them, also they treat everyone that isn't useful to them as guinea pigs, with the irony being that they act less human than the Synth they see as just Machines and make them truly feel like a treat, they don't have appear at the beginning as the Enclave didn't appeared until Half of the game, but you could have made them more present have the synth kidnaping not be a random encounter but a constant thing, where the majority of the commonwealth does know about the Institute but they are afraid, and latter they go full mask off not only robots start attacking the other factions but inside the cities people are fighting against synth infiltrators and such
And like you said you are not needed for the Institute mission, they even start the nuclear reactor without you if you are banned from the Institute, they could have destroyed the BOS without you as well, they can just sent coursers to eliminate the shields, you are not needed at all
I think they work better with Far Harbor because Dima is such a hypocrite. Everything he says he dislikes about the Institute and Railroad are things he does.
It's a fascinating look at what people will do in service of peace.
no not really, youre acting like murdering a murderer makes you just as bad as the murderer. the institute replaces people for their own experiments and surveilance, dima has replaced 1 person, possibly 2 depending on ur choices to avoid genocide on the island
@@supahgaming8249
I'd say dima is a massive hypocrite in service to his own ideology,
he preaches about how his kind wants to live in peace and be left to their own devices but actively meddles in the affairs of both far harbour by killing captain Avery and having Brooks be basically a spy and the children of atom by killing/removing high Confessor tektus and withholding launch codes.
he also screws over his own people either through changing their entire identity like in the fire boat quest or convinces them to replace someone else like mentioned above, not to mention kasumi who had an entire identity crisis all because she talked to this prick even though she isn't a synth.
Dima is a person who speaks about peace but does so much fucked up shit you could change him for war crimes
Dima you murdered a woman and replaced her with a synth to control the faction she was leading
Dima: oh no. Anyways want to do it again to the children of atom?
@@Pakotugudugudugudugudugudugu at least Tektus deserves it... Do you think Avery was a POS as well?
DiMa is what the institute should have been. Either "the ends justify the means" or just straight up evil. I think they tried the former approach but it just doesn't feel fleshed out enough?
That detestment you feel towards the Institute is what I feel about the Railroad. Worst faction ever.
The railroad never made sense to me but not because they were saving synths. They wipe their memories! How is that not the same as “killing” them? The synth that wanted to escape the institute is no more. And how is it that some of them still know they’re synths (acadia) and some don’t (raider boss at Libertalia)? I know, it all boils down to sloppy writing but still!
0:04 high tech science community living out of a pristine underground shelter almost sounds familiar for fallout antagonists
Blue lasers are cool tho
a pity we did not get a Expeditionary force line of Institute weapons(the Plastic laser guns, but also a Ballistic pistol, SMG and Shotgun could work, plus a special Institute baton and knife and maybe even Expeditionary Force Gauntlet/Fallout 3/NV powerfists(with punch, saw and shock options), while the Institute Homefront Defense has Future Tech Metal alloy Laser guns, Plasma weapons, Ballistic Assault rifle, SMG, shotgun and Pistol, with knives, Shock batons, HD Institute Power Fists(punch, shock, saw, heated and so on mod options), Laser blade swords, really lean into making the Institute high tech) so the Institute is actually awesome.
literally the only cool thing about the Institute.
Not 100% sure but there may be a mod that changes an energy based weapon 'laser' color.
The only thing I agree with this video is that I think the Institute is a lackluster faction, I think if they had a much more transformative and influential presence while the player is interacting with the world they would be a much scarier villain, but everything else in this video I completely disagree with. I think the foundation is there and they were on a time crunch to finish it or something like that. Some really good villains, think they’re a good guy.
Just one question: If synths are meant to be slaves, why give them free will?
Or hell, make them flesh and blood? If they are meant to serve, why make them fragile like us?
No one, and I mean, no one in the entire Institute ever touch on that.
Like just stick with your robot gen 1 and 2, you can even pop those head off and they still works.
They do it because they can it pretty much stops there no big reason just sciencing. The second they believe they gained all the info they can, they'd stop till a bigger reason pops up. We're basically just lab rats
I *think* the entire point of gen 3 synths is that The Institute are functionally growing/assembling complete persons around control hardware, and then overwriting their brains and subjugating them, and acting surprised when they don't behave like robots. It's reiterated time and time again that synths are: 1. Entirely biological, and 2. Completely indistinguishable from natural humans. They would be a great way to explore the irrational dehumanization that's fundamental to the practice of slavery, but Bethesda are largely incapable of handling ideas like that, so the entire concept is muddied beneath layers of authorial uncertainty and an unwillingness to engage with complex ideas.
The writers have 1 INT
It's more that Bethesda's entire approach to writing fully prioritizes content over meaning. It's largely quest-centric and driven by concepts that are assigned to individual quests and then expanded upon. As I understand it, almost anything that's written anywhere in Fallout 4 or Starfield is there because a quest concept called for it at one point. No writing just to flesh out the world, or to explain important parts of the story. Only enough to furnish the hallway built around a given quest.
At the basic level, it’s smart people creating Gen 3 synths because they can, the satisfaction of overcoming the ultimate challenge. Practically, I guess human-like synths can run on regular food rather power cells or whatever.
The Enclave 2.0 mod which added them as a proper joinable faction did a handy job of providing a proper "villain playthrough", to include dulling the outright genocidal ambition of the Enclave just a tad and usurping the Institute. It does feel as if the Sole Survivor in that context actually does make a significant difference in the affairs of the Commonwealth.
America Rising 2?
Congratulations, you’ve caught up to the fallout discourse of 2015
"It's for the good of mankind! Source? I made it the f*ck up"
-Literally the institute
Source: the failure of the CPG
If surface dwellers can't stop fighting among themselves, it makes sense that the Institute would decide to prioritize its own survival & prosperity over them.
Let's put it this way: when your average settlers are doing something for the "good of mankind", they aren't concerned with the survival & prosperity of raiders.
Like it or not, in the post-apocalypse when it comes down to do something for "the good of mankind" you are most likely focusing on your own community, not literally all humans, which actually seems to reflect well on the infighting of the potential members of the CPG, which was falling apart before it could even get a chance.
Shawns big stupid plan:
1.) Be informed the vault dweller has emerged and has started hoarding guns and household appliances in a settlement up north.
2.) Let the dweller wander aimlessly a bit allowing them to hoard upgraded guns and power armor to mow down anything that stands in their way including institute salvage squads as the vault dweller yells "where is my aluminum! Oh and my son I guess!"
3.) Set up a meeting with the institute asset that killed their spouse... this step took two years before they got around to your convoluted plan the terminal cancer being polite enough not to kill you as they lose focus yet again and start building another settlement.
4.) Kellog finally dead after 3 years of waiting you assume they will dig through his brains like a deranged lunatic (this one time Shawn was right on the money) now they have a way to the institute, wait where are they going now and where did they get that fat man.
5.) Two more years later they finally saw Kelloggs memories and now have a route to see the stupid set up made just to screw with them for no reason.
6.) Instead of having a corner capture them from the beginning you decided that having them ally one of your enemies to build a teleportation device that allows them to enter the institute fully armed to the teeth.
7.) See on camera that the shotgun toting death bringer thinks their son is the synth you made specifically to screw with them.
8.) Walk in and get shot by shot gun toting avatar of death before being able to say a single number or word because they do not care because they have no idea that the Shawn synth is a Shawn synth.
9.) Die on the floor as the survivor tries shooting the glass case open
10.) Profit????
This is all because the devs went decided to change everything great about Fallout, and give us settlement building.
The factions are all weak. The dialogue is literally Yes, No (but really yes), Maybe (yes), and Sarcastic yes.
Not only do the factions come across as shallow, but it is evident that not a single player choice matters.
You say no and they give you a "Are you sure?" and then if you still say no you can just initiate dialogue again and get the exact same thing lmao
Why? Why do you think Sean should showing emotions? He was literally raised by morally detached psychos,and his best friends are robots...He didn't even have the loving influence of parents.His detachment seems to be 100% spot on.
I feel like the real point of this video is the Institute sucks as a faction to side with. They were clearly meant to be the villain
@@146zigzag3 obviously, they’re the villain, but it wouldn’t suck to join them. I mean think about it they have a lot more benefits than the other villain factions that we’ve seen in the franchise. Granted in the long run, they wouldn’t do well (similar to the other villains) but some areas in the short run look a bit more tempting. which is the point. A lot better than just “safe roads” in the Mojave.
@@146zigzag3 I don't think so, in fact their epilogue seems to be showing their redemption by straying away from Father's full isolation plan, instead doing what the counterproposal to isolation from the director's recording #52 suggested: deploy large numbers of synths to the surface to help maintain order, which they do with gen 2 synths on the checkpoints.
@@Steel-101 Their technology already make them a potentially much better choice than Caesar's Legion: just having the molecular relay with unrestricted uses thanks to the nuclear reactor being online could mean safe transport of goods & people across the Commonwealth, not to mention emergency dispatches for emergencies, essentially becoming true Minutemen anywhere across the Commonwealth. Being able to mass produce synths, alongside their gear (despite being inferior to the pre-war laser gun, the advantage of the Institute's version is that they can build it from scratch and as many as needed, and it is definitely superior to smaller firearms, specially similarly common pipe weapons) to have them as a security force (particularly from raiders & deathly wasteland wildlife) and labor is another huge plus. And if their research can allow them to produce other beneficial inventions, such as the massive gourds from the Warwick Homestead, you are also addressing problems such as starvation.
So, definitely a HUGE step up from safe roads.
8:38 nah. Shaun is depicted like his empathy is low because in the circumstances he lived through, his empathy would be so absent or supposed that he can't enter into the concerns of someone else's feelings.
There's real world disorders that Shaun seems to be modeled after (narcissistic personality disorder, for example) but the simplest explanation is that he was raised to believe he was institute property, not raised to experience love and compassion.
Even later on when he expressed his views on the escaped synths, or his hope for connection with/disappointment in the sole survivor's betrayal, it's framed as material ownership.
He is a person who was treated like a thing, learned to see people as things, and while he claims synths are not people, but things... his last request to you from synth Shaun indicates that this is a two way conflation.
Synths are things. People are things. That's Father Shaun's worldview.
I can agree that the institute itself falls short, as a narrative antagonist. But Shaun was actually very well written for the circumstance. I just wish there were options to either convince him he's wrong, or to become a super mutant companion or something.
They're not even that evil compared to other factions like the Enclave.
They definitely are. The Enclave has a purpose for the bad things they do. When they attack Project Purity in 3, it's so they can take it over and use it to further their own goals.
Which goals, exactly, are the Institute furthering by kidnapping random wasters and dipping them in FEV, then releasing them on the Wasteland?
Or the BOS
@@PatGunn Only the Fallout 4 Brotherhood is evil. The west coast Brotherhood wants to be isolated from the outside world so they can horde their advanced technology. The FO3 Brotherhood was trying to be the polar opposite to the Enclave. Bethesda made the FO4 Brotherhood into Enclave lite
@@AJadedLizardthe goals of justifying supermutants existence in commonwealth, because Bethesda wants it for the sake of marketing and etc.
It's really a problem with the writers at Bethesda they don't know how to write captivating characters or stories. Everything they do is now getting to be quite weak even the world build in their games is failing.
A villain confused already sounds like a mission title for the institute
Railroad and Institute are both half-baked
We don't know what an Institute Future would look like, apart from The Institute controlling it with an Iron Fist.
The institute is the Temu think tank
1:01 that’s crazy my current characters named Wesley too.
You are wrong, buddy. You meet your first synth, when you and Piper see the mayor, in Act 1.
The reality is: You just don't know how many synths you've met, until you join.
That is all.
I've talked about this before with friends, but the Institute could have worked better if they were part of the Enclave; rather than "redefining mankind", they want to make a full, proper return to the surface to reclaim America and the world, which is why they raided vault 111; Shaun and the Sole Survivor would be genetically "pure" in the eyes of the Enclave, and would give the sole survivor a bigger reason to join them, as they were a citizen of pre-war America, ruled by the Enclave. Additionally, if they were slightly less "kill everyone", and more "reclaim America", they could be a more compelling villain, as again, it would be a good way to fall back to the Sole Survivor's pre-war days, and they would still have high-level tech.
The moral inconsistency might make the Institute less compelling as a villain, but the moral inconsistency makes them much more realistic (in that regard)
My only question is: why did they give their robot slaves tge ability to feel fear and pain? What point was there in doing that?
remember when an ncr soldier would call you out for shooting a memorial
They want to succeed Humanity.
Hence anti-Wastelander hate and Human Synths.
The Minutemen: We did our best fighting to defend the common man, but failed. Despite that, we are going to pick ourselves up and keep trying because its the right thing to do. Rating: Lawful Goodest Boys
The Railroad: These synths deserve equal rights, and we will risk our lives to save them, even if it incurs the wrath of an insurmountable enemy and endangers others. Rating: Chaotic Good Boys
The Brotherhood: The Institute is everything wrong with pre-war "advance at all costs" mentality and a threat to all living things. They must be stopped at ANY cost. Also we're fascist-coded. Rating: Lawful Neutral Boys
The Institute: "Hey Joe, have you finished blending up all those puppies yet?" "Yeah Jim, fresh batch of puppy juice. Just pouring it down the drain now, like I do every day, for science!" Rating: nonsensically chaotic evil
Lmao 3:12 "frozen tv dinner"
The Institute does suck. They were such a let down. Their plan is to keep doing what they’ve been doing with no actual goals to “retake” the surface.
The institute controlling the world as a shadow government in black trench coats, is great.
But the writing in fallout 4 is shallow and the settlement building leaves a lot of empty map.
Can synths have kids? If the answer is no then they are going towards a future with only a population they can create and control. Does this mean they want to destroy the human population all together?
i would put most of this on the railroad more than the institute. everything you say about them applies to the railroad too. unclear goals. save a toaster or an organic machine, morals. kill a synth that wants freedom by replacing their memories and reusing the body. , no real end goal. destroy the machine that makes synths so they will go extinct anyway. good job. and all well saying you're saving them. if anyone is evil it's the railroad.
Seconded,
Destroying an individual just to 'save them' is the essence of evil.
The Railroad is just better at self-delusion then most groups, which play with this concept.
That applies to most of the factions in the game. They're all incompetent and vaguely evil
@@filmandfirearms not really. The bos goal is easy to understand blow up the institute. Is said a thousand times agree or not. it's not evil as that's not changing a person out right with erasing memories. The minutemen want to protect the common wealth. Both don't have synth saving goals so blowing up the institute doesn't cause a moral or objective problem. As far as incompetent. The bos gets liberty prime running even without your help. Institute gets the reactor running if you don't help. Minutemen are only Preston if you don't help so their a non factor. Only the railroad who operates without you does all this saying their the good guys. The bos may mean well but they know their violent. Minutemen too, institute knows how to treat a toaster and synth in their veiw. Only the railroad are confused unaffected by their actions, and moronic in their final actions and goals.
@@filmandfirearmsnah the minutemen might be incompetent but I wouldn't call em evil they're just a faction of patriotic rednecks that want to help out settlements and rebuild Boston with a new government
Whover wrote the Institute dropped the ball hard
And be cool if one if the factions has you takenout the minutemen
I think they could have made the dynamic between players and the factions much better if the writing was better and the VA for the player was more emotional later in the game.
IMO, the Institute's quest line is the best, but the Institute is just too evil. It would be nice if they showed that the Institute has some benefits plus the negative parts you already see. Doing that and leaning more into their role as a high-tech Oceania would make the Institute a much better faction
If we couldn't join the institute, people would complain. Instead of videos dunking on their faction, we'd have videos about how the institute deserves to win/are the best hope for the Commonwealth.
For me the nail was the fact they still do experiments with FEV, i do not fuck with people that experiment with FEV, the Mariposa base was such a pain in the ass i vowed my playthroughs to always exterminate anything related to FEV
Except Jacobstown, i like Jacobstown
06:21 Fifteen minutes from Goodsprings to Nipton?
the biggest villain can be the player. make all the evil decisions, complete the game as the raider boss, lead the Institute down a more evil path
in all honesty all fallout 4 factions suck still the institute isn’t as bad as the railroad 😂😂😂
What sucks is people call the institute the villain because they utilize technology to its fullest, “synths” aren’t human they’re robots they’re technological tools to be used. As if using a computer, a radio, a phone.
They're self-aware beings. Literally you can go to the head of the SRB and ask why synths run away if they're jist machines, and he just shrugs and goes, "We're looking into it."
Good stuff. Many thanks.
Honestly, Bethesda's poor ass writing is to blame for the inconsistencies in everything, not just the Institute. If you look at Fallout 4, in a lot of ways, it's just an inverse of Fallout 3's story. "Child searches for Father, ends up saving the city" / "Parent looks for son, ends up saving the city." So it's basically just a worse Fallout 3.
I’ve always though of the institute as if you combined the master and the enclaves goals and then made them shitty they claim to try to be the betterment of man kind like the master and this “last bastion of humanity” like the enclave but they don’t have the fear factor of the enclave or the semi-genuines of the master (this may be inaccurate as I’ve never played fallout 1 or 2 but have seen lore videos on them so if I’m wrong please tell me)
I think it would have made better narrative sense, as well as for a more interesting character and villain, if Father was simply an over-controlling, manipulative, authoritarian. He would be driven by his need to control, subjugate, and manipulate, from him learning from the previous director how awful the surface is. Then having that belief bolstered even more, later in life, as he learned about his origin. This creates an overly controlling psychopath who will stop at nothing to bring order to the world by the means of advanced robotics and science. Meanwhile, he's selling others in the Institute a story of redemption and saving for mankind and the Commonwealth. In turn this could also create better characters out of others within the Institute, such as Liam, who in my version could find out the true goals of Father and wishes to stop him or at least delay him. Or Madison Li, which makes her turn to the Brotherhood, should you choose that route, makes far more sense if she wants the Institute gone, seeing them as even worse than the Brotherhood. Hell, even the player gets more out of that. The more you align with Father's ideals and the happier he is with certain events and outcomes, the more likely you'll be made head of the Institute. If not you'll either be seen in a role similar to Kellogg or a courser, or perhaps head of a division.
Something I was disappointed about honestly was that, you either work with the institute, or you obliterate them
You can’t use your position as acting director to refocus the efforts of the institute for the actual betterment of humanity
Sure I’ll bet some of the puritans would push back against you, but you could sort that out.
I can understand why the Brotherhood wants to destroy the institute outright. But I don’t understand why a faction like the Railroad wouldn’t want to take over the institute facilities.
A hostile takeover / restructuring of the institute would’ve been REALLY damn cool, and I’m sad we never got to see that
Ah yeah, no shit.
I have a theory that the Institute was inspired by Aperture Science from portal. Both white color scheme underground science organisations with teleportation technology who are both horrifically incompetant.
The other factions are just as incompetent, so I doubt it. At least Aperture was more fleshed out. They were a corporation trying to make as much money as possible and with an AI out of control
My problem with the institute is that their entire story was stupid and boring when it was done 100 years ago in blade runner and it's just as stupid and boring now when Bethesda stole it
The only good point you make is the fact that the player isn't needed for the institutes plans. Of course, father would have no care for a random stranger, which is what the sole survivor is to him. The institute just wants power. The institute is built up fine as the are meant to be a boogyieman and just people you see every day.
I joined them hoping I’d get a synth Nora to pick up where we left off 😂 but they rubbed salt in my wounds when one scientist literally married a synth version of his wife (ugliest npc) 🤦🏿♂️
Everyone who thinks the Institute is cool:
Who cares if they get rid of humans?!
Um...you?
😂
Kinda?
No, they are one of the worst 'bad guy' factions ever.
The gunners would make a much better 'bad guy'.
You’re missing a point. Every good villain doesn’t think they’re bad. Look at Dr. Doom everything he does is because. He believes that he’s doing good. Dr. Doom is trying to make the world a better place. Unfortunately it’s only better for Doom
The institute truly is such a disappointment. They've got the seeds for plenty of cool things in game already but definitely never finished.
I like to imagine they were making synths not for robot slaves but rather perfect, eternal, manufacturable serogate bodies. You could further this string of thought from why they need the ability to have a full range of human emotion to even the FEV experimentation. They were making super mutants yes but also specifically testing with FEV organs. Food for thought.
Why would you join? Maybe because the MC's son is part of it.
The motivation? They are kinda like Vault Tech they want to rebuild the world, but with them in charge. So by removing the other factions/people they will be solely in charge.
The twist was dumb and cliche
11:57 are villains supposed to believe themselves to be in the wrong, now? Come on.
The institute is evil. No denying on that. But, the sole survivor while being the director and working with the brotherhood could take over the institute, all the equipment and personnel, to make them work for the brotherhood. While the institute leadership is evil, yes, their technology might actually be useful to safe humanity. Blowing them up was a waste of resources, in my opinion.
I like the Institute being deluded into thinking they're good and rationalizing what they do; I also like how there's confusion between the different branches as to what the other people within the faction are doing; I like Shaun being a manipulative mastermind and weirdly distant and cold. I like that he lies to you and tries to delude players into siding with him. My issue is that you, the player, have no real option to call them out on this. You're never given an option to bring up the FEV experiments or the kidnapping and replacing. You can't bring up what they're doing at Warwick or what they did at University Point. You can't question their inhumanity. You can do side quests where you do the kind of evil things they've been accused of, things that Shaun has told you was a lie, and yet you're never given the option - as the player - to reflect on this or challenge NPCs about it through dialogue. Siding with them requires that you roleplay as someone who is deluded by Shaun into siding with them and then later convinced to be totally down with their evilness. There's never really a sensible tipping point for the player; it doesn't feel natural. Even worse, I think, is that their motto is 'mankind redefined.' One might think that denotes the synths, but they don't see synths as people, so I don't think that makes sense. I feel like 'mankind redefined' is best understood in a meta sense, where mankind is only those privileged enough to be members of the Institute, hidden underground. But such an understanding can't carry through in game, because it goes against their stated words. Always felt like an example of some of the worst writing from Bethesda for me.
This basically. Shawn being this manipulative asshole makes sense, but the only one who would actually call this out is Doctor Li saying she's been lied to about Virgil.