So the more I've played this game and explored the story, the more I've been leaning towards that the Institute is really the evil group in the game. First off, you start of the game witnessing one of the few clearly evil characters in the game, Kellogg, killing your SO and taking your child. He's clearly evil, as opposed to just being ambiguously evil, like Elder maxson. The further you go into the story, it's clear that he works for the institute and does their dirty work by killing people or doing whatever they want on the surface. Then, you get to kill him, get his clothes, and his gun. Later on, you can join the Institute, and they basically say "hey, want to take over as Kellogg for us and do a bunch of missions for some sweet xp?" You can pretty much put on his outfit, and just name yourself Kellogg (...just this gave me an idea for a Kellogg playthrough.) You become Kellogg, who the game already established as pure evil, and continue the Institute's evil agenda for them. So now, you're part of the Institute, doing their evil work. Also, the Institute doesn't give you any rewards for completing missions (I'm looking at their radiant quests), unless you ask them. They just make you feel like a jerk having to ask for something, after doing a mission.

Everywhere the Institute has been in the game, has a bunch of dead people. Such as University point, which is a whole group of settlers murdered by the Institute because they had some info. When you go to Fort Hagen, the parking lot entrance has a dead settler, who is most likely killed by the synths before you show up. There are many more examples of the Institute being followed by settlers being killed for no reason.

So the Institute is evil, and you're evil for joining them.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1555618-do-not-post-spoilers-in-this-board/

I would necessarily agree, the institute, like almost all other factions are more a shade of grey, sure they have very cold methods to further there goals, but they do posses a technological advancement that could help lift mankind out of ruin, its a kind of ends justifies the means kind of faction.

my fault...i didn't know that board existed.

From my point of view The Minutemen are evil!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z03rlruHnmY&t=1m8s

I don't see it as "The Institute" is evil, just that some people within the Institute are misguided. They don't see themselves as evil, but as saviors. You can say the same thing about the other factions as well. BOS will kill anything that is not pure-strain and perfect human and they horde technology so it cannot be used by anyone other than themselves. The railroad has no problems with killing mass numbers of people who don't believe synths deserve protection. Even the Minutemen have no problems killing off every raider they can find. I would say the Raiders, especially some of the more organized bunches are far more evil than the Institute. They kill for pleasure. At least Super Mutants kill to protect themselves or for food. We may not like it because they see humans as food, but they vegetarians can argue that humans are evil for eating meat. For my Institute character, my mind cannon says there is a way to change things as Director to benefit more of mankind than just CIT alumni.

This game deals more in grey moral areas than straight up good or bad. They all offer different points of view that in the end conflict with other factions or opinions of others.

I personally find all factions have good ideas/plans for the future and with what they want. But the problem turns up when they actually reveal how they want to fix things or when they show certain weaknesses/behaviours that are unforgiving. Some might be to extreme for what you believe and others might make you like them. Personally one faction was too appealing until I met the leader and he explained how he wanted to fix things.

That's where you start making the real decisions haha. Based on my views and such I agreed with 3 groups and personally would have liked to join those 3 if it wasn't for certain radical beliefs and game mechanics. I would have liked this better because 2 of the groups seem under prepared compared to the rest ( and help from that third would probably have given the wasteland the best option for being repaired ) but morally I sided with the under dogs in the end. No point living if were gonna make the same mistakes and become monsters.

POTENTIAL SPOILERS ALERT

To me they're more like isolationist nerds. Not even bad ass nerds, wimpy nerds. They're afraid of everything in the wasteland, and instead of facing that threat themselves they created the synths, as well as the coursers to protect them. Now, you could also argue that the FEV lab is "evil" but you don't really know how long father(Shaun) has been in charge of the institute, or even if everybody in the institute knows about the FEV lab. Father doesn't like Kellogg, but rather than let him loose in the commonwealth, he has him on a short leash to minimize collateral damage.

I would say that he wasn't originally supposed to murder your wife, he just sort of did out of homicidal rage. If something happened to shaun it would be better to have two backups than just one.

Now everyone blames the disappearances on the institute, but in most cases, they replace them with a synth. Now there could be many reasons for this. They now could just be inviting people into the institute that offer a lot in the means of knowledge, or they could have more than one Kellog, and you just not know about it. It's easy to blame the institute as the boogie man, but lets face it, even today people run out on their families all the time. My father was an alcoholic who left me and my mom before I was even born, I can only imagine how many more deadbeat fathers exist in the Wasteland.

The only thing that you can really argue about is are they evil for "enslaving" the synths. Now I'm generally a very pro-freedom person, especially if a machine has become self aware, sentient, and has emotions, but I just finished the railroad ending and when Glory died, she stated how she thought there was supposed to be a light, hinting that they may not even have souls, and could truly just be malfunctioning machines.

Now it is all a game, and I don't like to get real serious with it, and I used to say I'd never join the institute, but I have joined the brotherhood of steel, and did brutally murder the railroad, which was very hard for me to do, and I did feel kind of guilty, but I don't like to think to seriously into these moralistic ideals that are presented in the game. I believe that the evil faction is usually whoever you want it to be, and is entirely based on how you want to role play the game, and I would really like for there to be an institute DLC based after the end game, where you could potentially use your position as director of the institute, and the leader of the minute men to put an end to all the fears that the commonwealth citizens have about the institute.

I really want a DLC like this for all endings, more than just radiant quests, maybe establishing more safe houses, you getting to do missions for the rail road outside of the commonwealth, say in the capital wasteland and moving the synths somewhere safer since its become a brotherhood nation.)

Kellogg was simply solving a problem the way he solves all other problems. That person in the cryo chamber wasn't any more important to him than all of the other "problems" he has had to kill on missions. I don't see it as homicidal rage, just frustration. As for the kidnappings, consider one farming family you meet. Father used to be an alcoholic bastard, but one day he became a decent father and husband. The family had no reason to complain at all. There is another person, who probably started out as a good person/synth, but situations forced them into the role of raider with a really evil attitude. It wasn't the Institutes fault he became infamous. Then there is the one situation where the kidnapped person was not replaced, but was given a chance to do something productive.

I do agree fully, that the game leaves things vague enough you can explain things any way you want and even change your mind later. You can feel sorry and be sympathetic to most of the named villains in the game. You can also find really bad things about any of the good guys.

When it comes right down to it every single faction is willing and ready to murder countless innocent men women and children to remove the people they don't like.

None of the factions are evil but do have flaws. All of them are misguided and misunderstood. The worse thing about the Institute is the FEV thing.

To be fair we don't even know if souls exist. So I wouldn't put too much stock into not seeing a light.

Many eggs will be broken on the path to order


Civilization that do not deal with their problems will stagnate and fade away and be forgotten until someone takes those first perceptively evil steps in order to clear the way.

Most factions in RPGs are generalized in a grey area, even those that appear evil usually have a noble cause. For me the most evil faction in every Fallout game has been the Brotherhood of Steel. They are evil in the eyes of scientific progress.

Well like I said it would all depends on how one wants to interpret or RP the game, because I've also used the argument that since we don't know if souls even exist, and we are just beings that somehow came to be on this planet, would it really matter if the gen 3 synths don't have a soul, and there is no heaven or hell, even when humans die? To me they have organic organs that can create blood, and experience genuine pain. They probably also have a organic brain, that can just be programed through circuitry or something like that.

They certainly have an evil past with a massacre, mass murder, kidnapping, human experimentation, releasing super mutants on to the surface population etc........

The difference for me is that unlike other evil Fallout factions, the legion, the enclave, the masters army etc, is that you get lots of evidence that they have done evil deeds but also that the majority of Institute personnel and families are largely unaware of those acts.

So you are put in the position of either helping the Institute change or destroying it, after pointing out that its not the black and white evil faction and letting you meet the nice people inside.

The thing about the Institute is that they are basically operating on the same 'moral' scientific system that produced the pre war FEV experimentation on POWs and the Vault Tech experiments, so is the Institute evil.......I'd say yes (although the player can reform it), but those scientists involved are simply continuing the same beliefs that existed pre war, they didn't lose their morals in dealing with the surface they are simply a branch of the pre war US scientific community that continued through to the post war era.

For some reason, when I rewatched Kellogg's memories, I got the impression that he wasn't really keen on killing Nora, but did so because she didn't let go. Maybe she was also supposed to serve as another backup, but he looked he was trying to calm the situation down but it didn't work out.

The Institute are certainly the most antagonistic of the main factions in the Commonwealth (and they are hostile by default until you make your way there), but I wouldn't call them collectively evil. They have some very reasonable and good people in there, but overall, as a sum of its parts they probably are the most anti-social of the factions (not counting the Railroad who are barely a faction). Still, it's what you can do with that sort of faction under your control that defines why people choose their ending. You can't control the direction of the Brotherhood, which, while less hostile than the Institute, is hardly the benevolent, altruistic big brother which YOUR Institute is going to be. The Minutemen will always be fighting the good fight against the symptoms of the wasteland without ever being able to really advance humanity and help it recover from the devastation - they will do their best and make it better, but their ability will not be anywhere close to what the Institute can do. The Railroad are just happy hippies after the end, and you can do whatever you want with their (extremely) limited resources.

Like I said a bunch of Isolationist nerds hiding in a tricked out basemant with robot body guards to protect them from everything in the big bad wasteland, while they just enjoy doing nerd stuff, and make bad ass nerds like one of my SS look like wooses purely for being nerds. Probably a bunch of draft dodging communist sympathizers (sarcasm, because the SS is a war veteran, so even if he was a scientist, he'd of been considered a scientist that served in the army)

this made my day

I would like to point out that with the Institute, there is a lot of evidence of them killing settlers. One example is the story about the synth in Diamond city, who goes haywire and kills a bunch of people. There's university point, and the dead settler at Fort Hagan (I can't remember where else). If you side with the Institute, there's a quest to stop the Bio lab from protesting your assignments as Director. You can choose to execute those people by passing a speech check.

What I'm saying is that even though the Brotherhood may seem evil, you don't see them killing settlers. Maybe they seem evil for how they fight the Institute, where there's no question for diplomacy or talking to some people. It's very black and white with the Brotherhood where you're with them, or against them. And if you side with them, then that's fine. They are sorta like Batman, where they use evil to fight evil, but try not to hurt the people in between. But they are mostly protecting people (even if that may be like a mafia protection scheme type of protecting) rather than killing them.

I think your confusing Fallout 3 BoS with Fallout 4s. Under Lyons rule I would agree with but under Maxon they clearly don't care about anyone outside the BoS. Danse even thinks Lyons was too nice.

If they get their ship blown up by the SS they do start attacking his settlements....

1. The diamond city broken mask incident was an accident. Someone messed up and sent a prototype to the surface that wasn't meant for the field. The then Director promised to roll heads over it.


2. They greatly prefer if you don't kill the two scientists. Killing them earns the institueS disapproval for being too harsh. The optimal solution that earns their praise is to put them under house arrest.

They've done more evil things than the Railroad or the Minutemen, but they aren't systemically evil. In many ways, I'd argue the Brotherhood is more evil. They steal tech and kill anything they consider a mutant.

I'd say they're probably the most evil of the four factions, but it's not as if everyone in the Institute is evil or enjoys hurting and exploiting people. I think Father and some of the others seem to have an "ends justify the means" morality, but I kept hoping that I'd have a chance to actually debate this with them or persuade them of a different view. Doctor Li seems to be a fairly sensible (if not especially friendly) person from her portrayal in FO3, but I gather you can only persuade her to defect if you're doing the BoS path. Father and the Directorate ask for my opinion about their conflicts with the BoS and the Railroad, but if I tell them that I think they should cool it, they just ignore me and insist on staying with their original plan. (And yet they want me to take over as the next Director?) And some of their more benign research probably wouldn't scare anybody at all if they just conducted it openly instead of keeping everything secret, kidnapping people, and generally freaking out the rest of the Commonwealth.

I just finished the game for the first time with the Railroad ending, and in the end I really wasn't sure what, if anything, the game is trying to get at with how the factions are portrayed. My own view regarding AIs in general (I've had similar debates with people over the Mass Effect games) is that if an AI passes the Turing Test and generally behaves as if it's sentient, we should give it the benefit of the doubt and treat it as sentient. Consciousness is a subjective experience, so there's no scientific way to prove whether an AI is experiencing consciousness or just simulating it. So with that in mind, I really couldn't justify turning against the Railroad. I had hopes that I could convince the Bos and the Institute to try a different approach instead of getting in a fight to the death with them, however. Why not, for example, negotiate a deal with the Brotherhood whereby they can salvage any technology they find first but can't forcibly take it from civilians, or something like that?

At times it seemed like maybe the game was *trying* to make me feel like a heel for all the violence. Some of the Brotherhood on the Prydwen seemed like ordinary, reasonable people when I stopped to talk to them, and there's even a cat on board in the lower deck, but I couldn't find a way to convince any of them to defect or even trigger an evacuation alarm like I did in the Institute. A few of the Institute Scientists were running away during the last battle instead of shooting at anybody and yet the Rebel Synths shot at them anyway, including that guy Wallace that I previously talked into joining them to avoid a shootout between the Institute and the Minutemen. But again, it's not like the game gives me an option to recruit more defectors or otherwise negotiate a less violent solution. If they're trying to make a point about excessive violence, then "instigate an unnecessary bloodbath or don't finish the game" is a pretty annoying way to do it. (I gather that Spec Ops: The Line took that approach, but isn't that also a relatively short game?)

The RR don't want peace, they just want to kill anyone who thinks about hurting a bunch of robots. They gladly doom the commonwealth into anarchy for robots. The questline and ending quite obviously was intended for you to see them as a bunch of short-sighted fanatics.

You have to live with the fact that you killed people just for a bunch of robots. Is defending robots really something you want to spend the rest of your life doing.