When I read stuff like this I really gotta wonder if people even remember what it is like to find a good quest. This quest has one option. Kill the people or don't and kill the merc(kill x or kill y). Your choice is who to kill. That is a lot of thought? Not to mention the majority(if not all) of the companions want you to kill them, because hmm well, they are torturing people. Where are the different options and outcomes? Can you end it peacefully? No. Can you try another approach and sneak in and break the girl out? Nope. Can you bribe em? Nope. Can you do a reversal and use the goat exam on the lead scientist and say get her to fail(so the others in her group freak out she may be a synth)? Nope(my favorite option which doesn't exist). These are options I came up at the top of my head, and required minimal thinking.
I'm not saying the quest is horrible, but there isn't much of a consequence, I mean the people are kidnapping and torturing people, so they deserve to be punished, you lose a merchant and a doctor and you gain a walled in settlement. It cool and all they basically using the Goat exam to test people, a funny little thing and a blade runner-ish type thing, but that is about as interesting as the quest gets. As far as what you get to do in the quest, well, lock and load because you are just gonna kill someone.
For a lengthy fetch quest, it isn't bad, mainly saved because Nick is one of the more interesting characters in the entire game. I wish that there were more detective quests in the game we could complete, I found it odd that in a game which pushes this whole "Institute is kidnapping people and replacing the with Synths" there wasn't a Nick quest involving a mystery of a suspected Synth. The Silver Shroud is good, and it would have been nice if they added a few select Shroud dialogue lines outside of the quest(like with the Nick detective quests) because it would have added some good humor.