I'm pretty sure they were after whatever energy reactor research data the University Point team had discovered. Fully completed or not, The Institute could have improved on it.

Because they give me a clean bed, a crown, and because I personally do.

That's pretty rich coming from the King of Lies.

Not anticipated, but certainly used to great effect, no?

And yet you get access to all their facilites, with nearly no restrictions. The FEV lab is off limits to ALL Institute personnel.

Believe what you want.

Its a game mechanic. Institute water is worth less because its cheaper to produce. Settler water is worth more because its more *rare*.

I can sell them pieces of mutated bloatfly. Why they hell do they pay for that? Stop trying to rationalize everything.

Well, yes, that is part of the point he is making.



Meh, the scientists who created the Deathclaws I think are the winners when it comes to this sort of thing.






"Have a tour of the Institute, we have nothing to hide... except for those terminal entries and a semi-hidden FEV lab. Trust us. We know what is best for humanity."



Well, that's my plan when it comes to roleplaying, yes.



http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/5c/ee/7e/5cee7ebe9b4ab38d032fac8b565ec26a.jpg

Don't recall this but that would be such a poor explanation. After releasing droves of killer gen 1 synths onto the surface as well as the supermutant population - and after wiping out university point -the institute is suddenly concerned about their 'image'. Bizarre. Be a better start to at least deactive those killer robots roaming the surface...or put a dent in the supermutant population with all those coursers.

Once you retrieve the synth, choose the top option about why he cares about that. Maybe they're concerned with the things they are not responsible for. That is what he said, I guess you can interpreted it however you like.

I still have to give it to Dr. Holdren for creativity. Robo-Gorillas ftw.

Which is why we might as well agree to disagree. We're arguing about roleplaying styles. Your characters are more suspicious than mine.

Might as well be having an invisible gun battle with fingers. "I shot you" "No I shot you."

Still be entertained by debates though. For some odd reason I like having my beliefs and understanding of things questioned and tested.

And I totally have the best gun. It's a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time.

@ the OP: Thought the post was a good read. You articulated well a lot of thoughts I had initially. It was hard to actually choose a side I wanted to be on, such that by the end I just felt like I was getting bounced around to the option that would be most palatable. I will say that I don't think that there is any hidden part of the Institute where you will find your son. I think things feel so strange in the workings of the Institute, and the other factions as well, because of somewhat poor writing. I feel like Beth had a great idea for how to make this awesome tense story, but didn't quite get it nailed down, from a tonal perspective, before they had to wrap it up and call it a day. With the way that the story concludes, I doubt future DLC will be devoted to a part of the game that most people will be through by the time the dlc launches. I could be wrong, but I feel like we would get post-story dlc, as opposed to in the moment stuff.

I wish I could talk with Bethesda and see what the split is in their own office about who supports who. If they ever do an AMA or something, that would be my first question. I'm honestly surprised that more people don't support the Railroad. In most of the opinions I read, a lot of people hate the Railroad for either being uninterested in helping the Commonwealth or being blind to the risk of synths/sacrificing human lives for machines. The first point is pretty hypocritical, since the Institute itself outright states they have no interest in saving the people on the surface, but the Brotherhood at least carries that as its main goal, even if they are a bit fanatical.

The attitude toward synths is at least, defensible, although it seems to me that it takes an insane amount of confidence to say that synths are absolutely not sentient and should/can be treated however. Leaving aside RP considerations, I feel like a sensible person in this situation, after going through the events of the main story, would have to give it some serious thought. If anything, I feel like the story sets up a great kind of social experiment... looking at how we do or do not justify our actions. So kudos to Beth on that front!

I personally always end up siding with the Railroad. Meeting Valentine is what always does it for me, especially if you finish his quest and listen to his speech at the end. He definitely has a soul of his own. Honestly, the whole debate makes me a little sad. If you have any appreciation for history, you can see parallels between what people say here and horrible events that have occurred throughout time. It is of course just a game, but the spirit of the discourse follows the same tired paths. It is especially sad because the PC is the hero and doesn't have real constraints that might otherwise be factors in the decision making. You can literally choose whatever you want to do, the end events are hardly impacted (except obviously for who survives) so I always found it surprising that the Railroad wasn't a more popular option. But I digress.

I think it's pretty poignant actually. I mean who better to render that advice than someone who knows how to process and sling the most epic of BS? More importantly, I think you are misinterpreting Deacon's character. His pathological lying doesn't seem to be a method of manipulation or survival but rather just a coping mechanism. Think about how preposterous his lies are (and disregard the reaction to his lies, I feel like the delivery of the lines is ridiculous... a rare misstep in what I otherwise thought was pretty solid voice acting) in relation to when he tells them. Lying is basically a joke to him and I wonder if that isn't because that's how he copes with the trauma of what goes on in the wasteland. You'd have to be a little unstable to not be crazy in the post-apocalypse.

Maybe they did... perhaps they sent Kellogg with an army there to say "okay, we're going to try this one. more. time. Give us the data we need.


Except the UP guys panicked and shot first, the synths reacted, etc.

There is no proof that fairys don't exist in the fallout universe. We simply haven't found them yet.

There is no proof that Keyna wasn't the one that started dropping bombs that started the great war.

There is no proof that Maxon isn't secretly gay for danse and is trying to cover it up with that whole "blind betrayal" thing.


See where I'm going with all this? This is not how https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

If it is a hoax, you have to prove it.

Well, I think that I play the game with different mindset when it comes to the Institute and the BoS. The Institute is basically the end justifies the means, seeing as Mama Murphy already predicted the future where humanity is saved because of the Institute, where you stand alongside with the scientists for a bright new future while the BoS with laws and orders would be best to maintain and help the settlers. I feel like the Minutemen would be too loose to achieve such a goal, the Founding Father tried the MM approach before, but it didn't work, which is why a central government was formed to deal with the protests and riots. However, the Minutemen could evolve into something more while I'm against the Railroad because I feel like all of their accomplishments were for nothing. They choose to save synths but end up with more deaths than people they save and in the end, the world just ends up more chaotic with the threat of the BoS returning. This is something I've expanded on another thread.

As for how I view synths. There is a very interesting dynamics. I don't care about any random synth just as I don't care about any random human. I care about the people I know personally, so basically, I don't view Nick or Danse as a synth but as friends. With that being said, I don't let personal relationship interfere with how I view to be best for the faction I side with. I side with the BoS not because they hate synths but because I feel like they could bring stability to this world, and maybe expanding to other regions once the Commonwealth is under control. I side with the Institute because I view synths as valuable workforce for the Institute, machines that can be programmed to do what I want in order to rebuild the Commonwealth.

My personal view on synths independent of the game would be that they're of a different races, we are not exactly the same, but they should have all the freedom that we have. That however doesn't mean in the game, I would think like that. Synths in the end are just a small player, it's like people are too focus on one single issue that they don't care about how the rest of the world may be affected by that decision they make. In the end, we are all selfish in a way. We could never make everyone happy, we could only make the people who we are side with happy. Justice is a contradictory idea in the very beginning. You can only bring happiness by create more unhappiness to the side you side against, there is no good guys and bad guys in this war, even the Institute has many innocent people, many good people who sympathize with surfacers and the synths themselves, while the synths may be saved, there may even more people getting killed without anyone killing Supermutants and ghouls. No one ends up unscratched.

I just provided my reasoning for why I roleplayed how I did in the OP. My character is fairly observant and intelligent. He is going to pay attention to his surroundings. He is going to have noticed the leftover construction in several rooms of the Institute, the deleted terminal entries, and so on. He is going to notice that Father treating him as an extension of an experiment is very abnormal behavior for how a son treats his father. He only has Father's word that things are actually different, despite being able to see with his own eyes that they replace people with synths, capture and experiment on people, destroy towns, employ those of questionable morality, and so on.

One of Bethesda's greatest strengths in game creation is their ability to tell a story about what happened/is going on via level design. Consider all those skeletons you can discover posed to show what a person's last moments were when they died, and so on.The game is full of little references and nods.

And so, since the game itself encourages coming across all these little stories and such, would I suddenly stop doing so in the Institute?

There's even a character in the game, Deacon, who flat out tells you to be wary of those that try to spin you a story despite contradictory actions. That's as hand-holding as it gets to clue you in that not everything you are being told is going to be true. From himself included.

Did you mean for the first part of your post to be an example of providing a lack of proof for your reasoning?