Oh yea I get why they hide I just wish they'd open their doors and recruit people as spokesmen or representatives. They also have the synths that could be used to slowly ease the wasteland into accepting them. Use their archives to show some of the stuff happening was by mistake and demonize shaun by saying they didn't have much of a choice with the whole synth infiltration thing.

I was blown away when I made it to the institute, I played the entire game up to that point kind of hating and fearing them, but something never sat right about the kidnapping to me.

After Shaun is kidnapped you get re-frozen and then wake up again. I always had a sinking feeling that I was in cryo stasis for a lot longer than you're lead to believe.
As soon as I started the game one of my first thoughts was "why am I immediately looking for my son when I don't even know how long I was refrozen for? my son could be dead, I could've been frozen for another 200 years or 2000", my son could be dead having never even known of me"

then when I got into the institute and found "Shaun" I was legitimately enraged and confused, but after unconvering all that mess I kind of want to side with the institute now..... so I'm torn between BoS and the institute.

I agree. And this is where the Sole Survivor comes in. He's perfect to ensure a transition from underground to the surface. He remembers the old ways, got to know and kick ass on the surface, and can now lead the Institute there with their technology and make the surface a better place.

For me the perfect scenario is as the leader of the Institute and the Minutemen, you already have a network of settlements, supply lines, etc. You can now try these new crops produced by the Institute in these settlements and slowly implement other technologies to build better, cleaner, more secure villages and cities on the surface.

It's the only way to really help the Commonwealth. All the other ways consist of having a second Glowing Sea right in the middle of Boston, which is something BOS supporters fail to mention. Diamond City and Goodneighbour will be unlivable. I know they're fine in the game for gameplay reasons, but this massive nuclear explosion would make it impossible to live nearby for a while normally.

FEV Lab

For the record they are my close second favorite faction. I do not believe that an Institute victory is the canon ending. Here's why:

If they are victorious, they are too capable of effecting change in the world and you may as well end the Fallout franchise right here. While some might enjoy playing an overpowered faction's rise to, quite literally, global dominance. I, and I suspect most fallout fans, would not. How could any power, even the NCR, reasonably hope to defeat the mass produced Gen3 Synth armies of an Institute player faction.

Bethesda could, of course, take their victory and turn them into the new Non-Player 'cartoon villain', like The Enclave. But that would svck for all of us, including myself, that became Director with good intentions for the Commonwealth.

Though I prefer a BOS victory as canon, what I expect is that the Minuteman victory that leaves the BOS and Railroad intact will be canon. It keeps Bethesda's options open. I also believe that the emergency evacuation of the Institute will also be canon and that the reason you don't see the Institute people anymore is that they are automatically teleported to another Institute facility.

Seriously, the Institute has had 200 years to prepare. They are the among the most brilliant minds in the Fallout world. They would certainly have contingency plans. Why have an emergency evacuation protocol that just leaves your people to the tender mercies The Wasteland.

They'll be back (terminator voice).

I've always wondered this with Bethesda games: why even play them until the canon ending is known? I mean, nothing you do in service to a noncanon ending will have mattered, so just wait until you know what ending is true, and then build your character around it?

I sort of wish it was more like Bioware, where the next game can always handle the choices you made in the previous.

I am not going to argue to you about Bioware but you big mistake was saying they handle your previous choices better than Bethesda.

Institute getting wiped out is the best possible canon, as their remaining forces (like the sea research base the DLC is going to have) could join with the ever declining Enclave (which probably shares roots with the institution, considering their atrocious modus operandi) and stir some real trouble for the BoS which is seeing its influence also declining, both from the west and the NCR and now in the east with the newly formed government of the Minutemen.

I prefer the Bioware solution too - no canon ending, just take players decision from previous game into account.

Nah, that's boring and messes up with continuity.

A canon ending that is not mine messes up with my continuity. And why boring, if you have played FO4 with more then one ending, you can have different starting variants for FO5

Which would be a technical nightmare, even Bioware screws up nowadays with their "oh you can import your actions" where at most it's just minor dialogue moments. Even Bioware doesn't do a good job at showing it off as a good feature so yea, it's a boring cop-out to make a marketing ploy.

At least it doesn't obviate your prior choices like Bethesda does.

Right but it's a half-assed system used purely to make a marketing ploy. Your past choices don't really matter in the long run and nothing about the game changes if you started a character without importing what you did in the previous game. At most you'll get a NPC saying "Hey thanks for x" or "Hey you killed my father, prepare to die" and that's it. That doesn't make it worth it, one extra fight? Please. One NPC giving you exposition? Please.

Canon endings have more of an impact and usefulness then half-assed systems of "Oh you can import your save for a few filler text and maybe one or two battles that are easy"

I don't think so, ( or at least it don't have to be a nightmare ).

FO5 will be in an other town and maybe a few years later. What happens to Institute, RR or Minutemen may not matter much at a different location. Neither of those factions want to expand so the only BoS seems to be present everywhere. They may start somewhat stronger or weaker depending on what happened.

And that would still be pretty pathetic lol. Especially given that the next Fallout game might not be for another what, 9 years? I'm sorry but most people aren't going to either have their copy or saves and not have the patience to play an entire game that's the length of Fallout 4 just for some half-assed system that is a pure marketing ploy.

This is also the difference, Mass Effect and Dragon Age are what, 12-20 hour games? They're not that long compared to Fallout 4 and the fact they get released so close to when the last game was released make it easier, course it's still a half-assed system used purely as a marketing ploy with no real meaningful impact or change to the game but filler text.

- IIRC you don't have to keep the saves or have to play the game again ( what I did nevertheless ), you could pick the decisions that mattered from a list. And what you call pathetic, is for others an improvement of the game experience.

Canon endings render the PC's actions completely worthless if they happen to not follow said canon, to the point where one wonders why alternate endings are included at all. Yes, I do find it entirely worth it.

Easy: just make a Dragon Age Keep-esque system. And I think that many of the games, especially Inquisition, are longer than that.

It would be an improvement of the game experience if it did anything, which it doesn't. Filler text is not making it useful, filler text is making it half-assed. If it opened up questlines? Made certain parts of the game locked or changed settlements? Yea then it would be useful but it doesn't do that, it doesn't even come close because why? It takes up resources and time and it's not worth it. So that just brings why is it better then just saying screw it and making an official ending? it's not better, it screws with the continuity of the series (a series that always had canon endings) and limits what the devs can do for the future installments of the games.

Again, if the system wasn't so half-assed and purely used as a marketing ploy you'd have a point but as a whole it's nothing but a cheap marketing ploy and even other companies fail at making such a system worth it.

I'd rather have a stable continuity then cheap marketing ploy so a few fans don't get angry their faction lost.


So solve the problems a cheap marketing ploy makes with another cheap marketing ploy that once again DOES NOTHING USEFUL. Not to mention it spoils the other games by saying "Hey these are all the events that happened in the last game because screw you lol" which might dissuade new players from playing previous games. At least Fallout doesn't tell you everything that happened during the last game so you can still play it and remain mostly spoiler free.

Again, stable continuity > cheap marketing ploy, especially for the long run. I don't want to have to fill out an entire exam just to play a game because a few people can't handle canon endings and prefer a crappy marketing ploy.

The roleplaying component of roleplaying games.

So numerous franchises lose a role-playing component because they don't do a cheap marketing ploy one company does? Canon endings for RPG franchises isn't a new thing and will continue not being a new thing and prefer over stupid things that in the long run will mess with the franchises continuity.

Canon endings isn't new for Fallout games and it absolutely does not ruin any role-playing component for the past games. You can play Fallout 1 and roll a character that destroys shady sands, you can play Fallout 2 and roll a character that ends the NCR. Just because a future game says said faction or settlement is still around doesn't mean it ruins role-playing a character in a past game. You're not being restricted to a certain playstyle for an older game simply because an ending was picked and saying so would entirely be on you and you alone.

The problem with systems like this is not only a cheap marketing ploy but it also screws with continuity and limits what developers can do with a game. It's either never mention it again or retcon things whereas if you just do the SMART option of picking an ending you can improve on certain locations, expand the lore, use old characters etc etc. it's more worth it to just do continuity then saying "hmm a few players think it'd be better to have your choices get imported QUICK WRITE THE FILLER TEXT FOR THE ILLUSION"

Because that's what these systems are, it's not about role-playing components or any sort of nonsense, it's filler text and exposition for the illusion of your choice mattered and what companies like Bioware don't take into account is how it'll screw up with continuity in the long run and limit what they can do with their world because it risks retconning things or having to fill out a questionnaire but that's ignoring the fact that implementing a system that would allow them to do something where your choices mattered is just a huge cost of resources and time.

Bioware is not doing a good thing, in fact eventually this system will be a shot in their own foot as they realize their fanbase has gotten to use to this cheap ass system that retconning or making canon choices will cause a flood of negative feedback.

[censored] me, when the Enclave have wicked science and callously exterminate people everyone's like "Oh no, that's evil." But when the Institute do the same and far worse people are lining up to pipe them off.

Hypocrits I tell ya

You are right about that and its because it would cost too much to make a game like that. No one company wants to spend that much money then see the game flop or the pay out being in the negatives despite having a huge fanbase to it.

What companies should do when it comes to these choices is canonize the popular choices, maybe have a system that sends your choice to their online thing and the choices we get to see moving forward are the ones the majority of people made. No one whats to see their choice be noncanon but I am sure people would understand if systems like majority rules were in place. I mean I heard Bethesda wants player feed back before making dlc and if thats true maybe they should take feedback on what ending we would like to see move the Fallout world forward.

I like the Institute ending, I just don't like having to destroy factions completely. I would like an option to make them allies or mutual alliance to destroy a even bigger threat. Or agree to let the Brotherhood oversee the operation and put a kill switch on all the synths. I didn't like the Brotherhood this game because they were all about taking over instead of making the land better, so I guess more West Coast BoS made it to the East after FO3 and made it more militarized. But the BoS was about destroy all and I really didn't like that side of them but didn't want to destroy them either lol. I just wish charisma meant something in the game like being able to talk the Institute and BoS to become allies for the greater good of the Wasteland lol.

Well in Fallout 3 we didn't really have a choice in the Enclave we were forced to kill them

We also never got to interact or talk with any of the Enclave personnel aside from a few people. Eden, Autumn, Lt. Williams, and Stiggs (who wasn't even Enclave) and....that's pretty much it. The longest of which was like a 5 minute conversation with Eden.

I imagine its harder for people empathize with a faction who are basically portrayed as Storm Trooper clones. Hell in Fallout 3 its almost like they wanted us to pretend The Enclave don't even have children or families. Whereas now you can interact with and learn the thoughts and objectives of each of The Institute personnel, and we can outright see they have innocent children walking around and husbands/wives etc. So empathy naturally comes easier.

Of course the fact that you can become their leader is another factor.