Yeah but I really hate synths so I killed them all

I don't buy the idea that the people of the Institute would be okay with you just taking over. I know some of them rebel against the idea but Charisma can save the day in that.

I don't give a crap about the Minute Men. I hate synths so that leaves the Brotherhood. At least they aren't a bunch of incompetents this time around.

Well its not The Enclave. Their initial objections are mostly about you not being a scientist, and having no (known) qualifications other than being Father's Father. Not something as inherent and impossible to change as genetics.

But after you've proved your worth as both a military leader, administrative leader, and your overall loyalty to The Institute. They're quite happy that you've been appointed. And even Higgs and Loken admit they were wrong about you. Heck, even Dr. Ayo eventually admits he's impressed with what you've done.

Its a gradual earning of trust and respect. Writing-wise I don't see anything wrong with that. The Institute is one-part Technocracy one-part Meritocracy. Father joined them as a lab-rat basically. And he ended up being one of their most respected leaders.

I figured there was a lot more the Institute then the Commonwealth boogeyman. I get that we can make them like us and that they don't have a "you must be a scientist who was born here" policy.

From what I can tell Shaun is why I hate the Institute.

The whole Synth thing even with the option to end the program. I agree with the Brotherhood. It is dangerous technology and the Institute has proven they have misused it. They also have other things to answer for.

But yeah I should do a game with them in mind to learn more.

Its never really stated why the program continued. Despite years of the project leader saying it was going nowhere.

One of the larger of unresolved plot points in Fallout 4. Mostly because you can never bring this up to him in any dialogue. Did he have a good reason? Was he just doing it for kicks? Well we'll sure as [censored] never know because we can't ask him.

Lack of dialogue options really disappoints me.

Agreed that is super annoying. Two people involved heavily in the project and we can't talk to either of them about it. Or anyone else. Only one person worked on it?

Still why would you keep such a project going even with the head guy telling you it is going nowhere? And most importantly of all... why would you send the super mutants to the surface if you aren't trying to cause chaos and destruction?

The only answer I can think of for why the Institute would send Super Mutants to the surface would be because Father wants the Commonwealth to be unstable. If people like the Minute Men could make the Commonwealth a safe place to live... then the Commonwealth wouldn't need the Institutes Synths or it's leadership.

Father is also behind the pointless kidnap and I assume kill and replace people project. Why do that if you want to help? Why not just use an army of synths to act like the Minute Men. Form safe communities and such?

Also we learned the Institute in the past tired to take over the Commonwealth before. They must have killed a lot of people to be seen as the Boogeyman. So who or what stopped that Commonwealth take over? I could be wrong but wouldn't that have also been under Father?

Pure speculation here but I wouldn't be shocked if the Father was behind Gunners. Do they have a leader? If so did anyone check to see if s/he was a synth?

I agree with all of what you've said, but one small correction: the Institute didn't actually try to take over the Commonwealth. They tried to work with the people once, and when relations went bad, and the two groups couldn't cooperate, they retreated back underground. A couple surface dwellers who weren't there speculate that the Institute is responsible for breaking up the united Commonwealth dream, but Institute records claim the opposite. In this case, I'd be inclined to believe them over the wastelanders with a biased "They're the Boogeymen" opinion.

I inferred that he was trying to find a cure so he could turn himself into a super mutant to cure himself of cancer, and then cure FEV and return to humanity.

But how did it go wrong? If the Institute is so advanced and awesome, how did they screw things up?

Was it before or after Father? If it was before the synths, they how do does the Commonwealth know about the synths? If it was after the Synths then it makes less sense for the Institute to screw things up with an army of synths at their disposal.

I've never seen that inferred anywhere.

Sure its one theory that's been floating around on the forums here, but doesn't have any more evidence backing it up than the one about Father using the FEV program to prepare for an invasion from the Zetans.

Which also doesn't make logical sense because Super-mutants are a constant threat to valuable Institute scav operations.

The whole FEV subplot was just half-assed and shoe-horned in to be completely honest. Really don't understand why the mutants couldn't have just been Capital Wasteland migrants. Much like Gammorin's army in tactics.

I didn't say that the game spelled it out.

Makes more sense than just doing it for [censored] and giggles. None of the scientists knew he was dying. He kept it secret to appear strong. If he could cure his cancer, he wouldn't need to tell them.

Occam's Razor.

Ok, I misunderstood you I guess. My bad.

I agree its one possible interpretation or theory, and it does make more sense than nothing. But it would have been really nice if they'd have given more of a hint that this is the actual reason. As it stands, we really have no evidence to suggest its the case. So it could be this, or it could be because Father was looking for something else. We don't know and probably will never know (unless a DLC happens to give more information).

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfO2p2qNEkA

Does the game even have any dialogue choices that would suggest such a thing though?

An unfortunate consequence of post-gameplay. One reason I wish we'd had a New Vegas hard ending rather than what we got. Which is basically nil.

The game of course shows that The Director's position is basically that of a dictator (the Directorate is subservient and basically just an advisory board) but no, we can't, for instance, order Robotics to shut down. But you also can't do alot of things as a Brotherhood Sentinel either.

Now the game does imply that the "speech" you make to The Commonwealth is your statement of policy going forward. In which you can 1. Declare The Institute to be The Commonwealth's master, 2. Declare you will remain underground, or 3. Declare your intent to help The Commonwealth.

I agree it is shoehorned into the game because "it isn't Fallout without Super Mutants."

Yep Father is behind the Super Mutants. He continued the project , he would be behind sending super mutants to the surface. He is behind the Synth program. He is behind the kidnapping of people and replacing them.

The synths were under Father right? If so he stopped the Commonwealth/Institute working together.

I am starting to wonder is Father's real name isn't Daniel Littlehorn?

Unless declare your intent to help the Commonwealth = unleash more Super Mutants. Lol.

That would be the "[censored] em' all" option.

Thus far, I've yet to find any real evidence either way, but it seems that the Institute was the force behind the collapse of the Commonwealth's first attempt at a provisional government. And Father is most certainly not the messiah but a very naughty boy for what he's done, and what he's allowed others under his watch to do. They are the definition of the phrase, 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions', because they've turned into basically top-tier Raiders while pursuing knowledge for their own survival, and then purely for it's own sake, taking whatever they want at gun-point and dismissing the lives of those not of their group as immaterial. They are to the Gunners what Gunners are to the Raiders and Forged, and it would take a very charismatic leader and a very intensive program of social experiments and adjusting to alter this shared mindset between the Institute Dwellers.

Logically, I can understand, even applaud, the Institute's goals, even some of their actions, but the rest? Razing a farm after an experiment is done and killing everyone who lived there? Forcibly kidnapping people from the surface to replace with Synths purely to test the infiltration programming and using the kidnapped people as guinea-pigs? Sending in armies of Synths to strip whole settlements of every available resource and shooting down anyone who lived there.

With the exception of the Minutemen, and even their claim is dubious for several reasons, not the least of which is their recent history, but the joinable factions are all morally ambiguous at best and downright zealous at worst. Brotherhood of Steal (not a typo) have apparently stripped the Capital Wasteland of the bulk of metal and technological supplies to build their flying fortress after the Enclave base-salvage ran short of building materials and the bulk of their forces are on the Prydwen, leaving only a skeleton crew to keep the peace back home, and Deacon mentions a few times that under Brotherhood rule, the Capital Wasteland has become an oppressive place where the Brotherhood rules like feudal lords, untouchable by the law and controlling the populace with an iron fist.

There's also a troubling undercurrent when you read up between the reign of Lyons and the reign of Maxson in that 'every' leader after Lyons was lost to 'misadventure' or 'ineptness', lending credibility to the theory that members within the Brotherhood who disapproved of Lyon's 'protect the people' angle actively subverted and betrayed the following leaders until they found a suitable puppet/figurehead in the form of the young Maxson. And let's be honest, his predecessors were all seasoned veterans in their own right, for them to just up and die and/or fall victim to malfunctioning equipment or obvious ambushes seems ... odd to me?

Also the fact that the Brotherhood, in it's current incarnation, has drifted so far from the original reason of their creation, to defend the populace against a cruel, ammoral government and powerful super-corporations that practiced inhumane experiments on the populace and recklessly wielded technology and science without a care for the side-effects that it's not funny. They have become a toxic imitation of the very entities their beloved Founder so despised ...

The Railroad is ... on the one hand, they are freeing sentient beings, and people will say that Synths go rogue, but Samwise in the Bog contests this best, by asking how many times a Human has just turned homicidal for no reason when talking about how his people were ejected from Diamond City. On the other hand, as much due to the loss of the Switchboard as Desdemona's obsession with freeing Synths at all costs, the Railroad has stopped helping people who are kidnapped or enslaved.

It's also unclear if the Railroad was founded to protect the Synths, or adopted that cause after encountering a 'rogue' Synth wandering the Wasteland.

It's also unclear if the Railroad was first contacted by Rogue Synths who had escaped the Institute (which further lends credibility to the concept that Synths are independent, self-aware entities on-par with Humans in mental/emotional capacity) who were seeking refuge, or if the Railroad actively tried to save the Rogue Synths, believing them to be normal humans at first before discovering the truth after saving the 'slaves'.

I applaud Bethesda for the depth of their plots in this game even as I curse them for the feels I suffer when I turn against one faction or another to progress the story. Every faction, even the Institute, has valid reasons for their actions, at least to their own form of thinking, and has goals outside of Crush-Kill-Destroy-Swag.

Historical records basically prove Valentine's story about the CPG is incorrect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfO2p2qNEkA

The Institute has done alot of bad things. Ending the CPG is not among them.

But they did decide to end the CPG and go underground. So in a way they did end it.

What is the timeline on all this?

But they didn't decide to end it though. It fell apart due to infighting despite their best efforts and four years of work to keep it together.

What the guy (no idea who he is) is talking about on the tape is the plan of what to do once it did inevitably collapsed. Most of the Division Heads wanted to just go underground and leave the surface world alone after the CPG failed. The guy on the tape wanted to use the new androids to protect settlements instead because "we can't give up on these people."

Obviously the "hide underground" camp eventually won out.

Seems to be sometime before the android program took off. Whether that means the Gen-1's, Gen-2's, or Gen-3's we're not sure.

Probably the Gen-1's though. Since the guy seems to suggest androids are a new thing.

I guess we will never know why it fell apart. Unless Bethesda has a real trip of a DLC in which it turns out we were unfrozen before about a hundred years ago and got caught up in the events that caused the CPG to fail and got our minds wiped by the Institute or someone else and put back in frozen storage.

Still the Commonwealth could figure out how to make things work? Even if it was somehow completely out of their control. They could have still maintained a surface settlement and try to win some people over. I guess it was an all or nothing for the Institute.

My guess is something must have happened to trigger The Institute's fear of remaining up-top to continue helping.

[censored] hit the fan. And after the various settlements started arguing and fighting between each other, guns were drawn, and some of them began to be directed at The Institute along with everyone else.

At that point the 'Stute just said "http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9s06d0Ex31rbrlneo1_400.gif" and went home and locked the door.

Could be why there aren't that many settlements in the Commonwealth, the CPG's fall lead to a war between settlements and lead to the major one (Diamond City) using the Institute as a scapegoat since they had the whole Broken Mask incident happen. They probably used this to make their settlement look the best place to hide against the Institute in order to gain power and more people.

Thats what bugs me the most, alongside with Virgil's story because i am eager for infos and backstory knowledge, i spent like 20 hours just around the institute facilities , searching, looking every terminal, getting rekt by the assaultron in the fev lab, etc.

Somewhat normal after every npc in the game speak about somebody that much and in such frightening shape,and my first playthrough was just "hey shut up they're not-so-bad people!"

Imho the control thing might be an answer, prolly they were expecting people to endorse or support to their experiments and support them in exchange of something, but wasn't considerated?

If somebody started shoting on sight at their synths all over the place, it would raise some issues....

p.s. they can't wipe human minds, only synth's.

Why not take over the Institute, work with the Railroad to monitor the Synths that show free will and use them to help protect against Raiders, Super Mutants and bugs. Or set up relays to shut down rouge Synths that have gone postal. Tell the Brotherhood that Washington DC could really use their help against the Enclave. Everybody lives and everybody is happy trying to rebuild the world.

Has anyone tried to take out just the Institute and leave the other factions to them selves?