So I finally beat the game last night after 4d 5hr play time.

Chose to side with the brotherhood and it left me wondering if the brotherhood repeated the sins of the past.

If you visit where the CIT ruins once stood you now have a miniature Glowing sea. The brotherhood so feared the institute that they were willing to repeat the sins of the old world to stop them.

Does anyone else feel that by being willing to destroy the institute in this manner they did more harm than good.

Yeah, that's more or less what Nuclear Option's ending cutscene suggests when the Sole Survivor says "It is the end of the world all over again."

It is not only BoS however. The Minutemen and Railroad get the same ending. The Institute does not get it, but they are another bowl of sins entirely.

That's actually up at TVtropes.org as "fridge horror."

It gets better because the BoS were FOUNDED TO PREVENT NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON FROM HAPPENING AGAIN.

Arthur Maxson has not only betrayed Elder Lyons but his own namesake.

The traditionalist BoS existed to never USE the weapons they confiscated.

That's the POINT of the BOS.

Which is why I wanted a solo option to destroy the institute.

I got in without the BoS, RR, or MM helping. Popped 'Father' in the head. All doors locked. No way out of two rooms & two elevators. Hadn't disclosed it to anyone yet. Was armed to the teeth, in a fresh T-51d. I was SO looking forward to murdering my way through the institute, but no. Had to wait for McCarthyBot 2.0. It was simple and environmentally sound. Murder everyone. Place epic Bosnia-esque concentration on land mines. Leave. No, instead I have to follow a 50-foot bullet magnet halfway across the map, watch it nuke what would have been a GREAT place for a new housing project, and lead a bunch of raging murder boners around looking for the s**t.

I hate humans so much...

You can actually leave the Institute after that, can't you?

I believe I made a grave choice by siding with the BoS.

Next play through I may have to go Institute. I though I was doing the right thing being a Paladin in the brotherhood, but seeing that nucleur cloud and the aftermath and having a glowing sea in the middle of Boston....my god, what have we done.

I joined the brotherhood to save the Commonwealth. In the end I realized as long as Maxson is in charge they are no better than pre war China, and in the end have become what they hated most.

You, sir, are now a Space Marine!

You do get to address the Commonwealth after finishing the nuclear family right if you go Institute?

Its unlikely the CiT explosion would create a glowing sea area.

Its specifically mentioned in loading screens that the bomb that created the glowing sea was a high yield nuke, a rare thing in the Fallout universe.

You blow up an experimental super-nuclear reactor.


You do it before you go after the Brotherhood actually.

Yeah, but was that enough?

Obviously not as we see a nuclear crater just like any other instead of an actual glowing sea.

Did you go there? It turns all green and rads skyrocket just like the Glowing see.

That's what sealed the deal for me. Going there irradiates you and even surrounding areas out to a certain distance now have rads.

Well it is Point Zero.

I am more worried about the fact that it happened underground. Won't be fun if part of Boston collapses due to this or if underground water gets irradiated.

No. Had to revert to a previous save. Couldn't activate the thingy to teleport out of the institute, couldn't go further into the Institute from Father's quarters. Just me, Father's corpse, Li'l Shaun. Bunch of red dots just outside the not-unlockable doors. It svcked.

Turning a thriving community into a radioactive hole in the ground?

Just another day in the glorious Imperium Brotherhood.

Again, I was all for murdering the God-players and their synths, and turning the above-ground institute into low-rent housing.

When you commission the Exterminatus, one does not build "low rent housing" upon the ashes.

Semper Invicta.

I would.

But again, the game limited me to creating a gaping nuclear hole. Bummer. The CIT ruins was a good spot with lots of space, pretty easily defensible against anything other than nuke-wielding giant robots, with plentiful green space and a nice riverfront.

Opportunity lost.

The way Elder Maxson acts and the things that the BoS do, if any faction could be considered evil I personally believe it would be the BoS. They disrupt and destroy so much of the Commonwealth that they couldn't possibly be considered anything else. All for their own selfish agenda. At least the Institute has the goal of bettering existence for all. Their methods may be a little questionable though.

You do know he didn't use the weapons he confiscated right? He placed a bomb on the new nuclear reactor.

You DID do the Brotherhood quest where you find a silo full of nuclear weapons, right?

Yeah for Liberty Prime's backpack

but those things don't do [censored] but explode and kill folks.

Gameplay and Story Segregation.

I'm not saying Lyons didn't start the ball rolling.

OH, and facilitate the infiltration of the institute by an armed force with, among other things, a bomb designed to destroy an advanced power reactor and the facility it powers.

Yeah...

The PEACEFUL atom, after all...

I feel like every faction was made [censored] and evil in order to be "morally ambiguous" but it just made me unable to feel satisfied siding with any of them so I stopped playing and will probably never beat it.