I would vote if you had an option for maybe, depends on what the institute is about.

Poll needs an option for "Depends on storyline". If they are the bad guys than I probably won't. All we know is the Zimmer came in search of his 'droid. Zimmer could have been just a bad person in and of himself, but is no indication of what the rest of the Institute is like as an organization.

While i would agree that having a ability to side with a good faction and play a vault saint (faction being the railroad maybe) or being totaly evil and joining the Institute (being a bit of a slaver organization since they enslave androids, despite some being verry much sentient) i would not want it to be another clich?storyline with two clearly good and evil ways to go about the MQ. I loved being able to do good deeds and still be cold against both NCR and Legion as i liked neither. I prefered independant myself.

The Legion enslaved and crucified people. You can join them happily.

The nature of synths hasn't really been explored. As a member of the Synth Retention Bureau, Harkness was an extremely advanced model, designed to be as close to human as possible. I don't really think 'slave labor' is the right way to describe the purpose of synths. They're supposed to be machines that are programmed to perform complex tasks. Because of their advanced programming, some gain self awareness, and try to flee. The SRB merely tries to recover them and reset their factory programming, which is a relatively humane way of dealing with the issue. Self-awareness in synths is a bug, not a feature. What the Institute does is a bit of a grey area, but I don't think that makes them bad. We also see synths that appear to have gone 'feral' in a way, which could be extremely dangerous.

Ya, it's not like they deliberately manufacture sentient beings with emotions for the express purpose of enslaving them, that would be stupid evil.

What if they were? I mean, why create a synthetic human who could learn that he/she stands as an individual with the same freedom as a human? Just program them to only follow orders, no questions asked.

rather they are good our bad depends on your point of view some mite view them as good others mite view them as bad due to the fact they "slave" androids. to me its like this if i build a car that drives itself. it is still mine to do with as i wish

That's why I called it stupid evil, it'd be smarter to make automatons with scripted programming than synthetic people. The only reason would be if they want robo-servants to have emotions because "enslaving people is only fun if it makes them suffer" or somesuch.

They're a highly advanced tech-enthusiastic faction. Why the hell wouldn't you atleast try working for them?
Wealth and technology beyond compare in the wasteland - who cares if moral restrictions or a few wastelanders step in the way? Face full of lazer rifle and walk off happily augmented

They do it for science... for a scientist it's a great goal to creat synthetic life.

They can do that for the experiment and still make dumb AI automatons for labor.

to put it nicely, if this has not ALREADY been implemented, it is not being implemented at all, since it would require a MAJOR addition to the game

As long as it wasn't written stupidly, yes. To clarify better, usually when we see evil depicted it's written like all evil is essentially sociopaths and psychopaths doing monstrous things Just Because.

For example, in Jade Empire, there were two martial art paths one could go with. The Closed Fist, and the Open Palm. Open Palm was mostly kind acts and selflessly helping out, and Closed Fist was described as being harsh so that people could learn and be self sufficient rather than depending on help from outside. However, Closed Fist ended up being monstrous acts being done because they could. As it had been described, that sounded intriguing to me, but as it was executed, it was Stupid Evil.

To go with another example, in the Classic Star Trek episode Conscience of the King, the much reviled colonial governor who'd massacred half the population had done so because of a food shortage and he'd taken the extreme choice of killing people to try to mitigate the starvation and riot control. To me, that's more nuanced and something worth exploring compared to being monstrous just because.

Looking at the previous posts speculating on the Institute with the androids, them being depicted as cold, callous antagonists wouldn't be appealing to me, but as a group who perhaps because of low population had to develop androids for their community to survive and are willing to take extreme measures to continue their way of life, I'd be interested in seeing how it played out.

I always play through these games as a villain, the first time around at least, and if the Institute is bad then yeah I would like the option to side with them. I would very much like if the Institute and all the other factions were more different shades of grey than just black and white though. I mean, the Unity was grey and I liked them more than say, the Enclave. At least The Master had somewhat good intentions in the long run, and he becomes horrifed once he realized the effects of his actions. The Legion isn't totally evil either, something that made more interesting to work with. I would be a little upset if the Institute was just cartoonishly evil. I'd rather the game sort of make the player question what is really the best option. An ideal situation would be that if you help the Institute with their goals in the game, then the result would be that the region would become a foundation for technological marvels and the advancement of society, although at the cost of the Androids remaining in servitude and perhaps those not liked by the Institute suffering, The flipside would be that the Androids are free, but there is less law and order, and the region would decline compared to what would have happened if the Institute gained control. Something along these lines would make for a very interesting game, better than a situation like Fallout 3, where everything was much more black and white in comparison.

Oh we know. We just like to speculate.

To be honest, I plan on blowing open the door to that place, recruiting an Android for a buddy, then murdering all of them to free the droids. I freed the slaves in the same way, so I will do the exact same thing here.

But they aint human.

Are you going to go on another crusade to liberate all the toasters from their oppressive overlords?

I would love to side with them. The way I imagine (although I do hope it doesn't) it playing it out is that although the Institute could be considered an 'evil' faction, it's not just as plain as that. I mean, at the end of the day, these androids they're creating are just that - androids. They're NOT human. They're MACHINES. Although they do have cases where they get androids who think for themselves and believe themselves into thinking they are human, the bottom line is simple - they're not humans, they're machines made by man, they're robots.

I just hope if you're able to join them, you don't get other factions being so black and white about it. "Oh you're with the Institute. Now you should die!"

They do use these androids as slaves, sure... but what's the difference between using androids and using Misty Gustys as house butlers pre-war? The people in Fallout 3 and 4 who say otherwise are actually hypocrites in my eyes. Both are designed to serve humans and both are robots.

Yes I'm aware some androids are so advanced beyond anything we've ever seen that they actually think for themselves and believe they're human, but they're not. The Institute does not use human slaves (as far as we know), they only use ROBOTS, which is what everybody else has done anyone by using Misty Gusty.

XDD Love this.

Terrible poll options.

I think these types of "I want to be able to do X,' polls or threads all fail to grasp that no player should have absolute free reign to do what they want in a game. Most games have some sort of narrative being told be it a FPS or and RPG. The options available to the player should SERVE the narrative whatever it may be. If the narrative doesn't fit with you being a pro [insert faction here] character then you shouldn't be able to do so.

Like others have said, I really hope The Institute has nuance and members who aren't sociopaths (you can be a humanitarian but still be backwards about machine personhood).

This. If the writers at Bethesda don't think that us fighting for x faction fits the story we won't be able too and for a good reason. We couldn't join Alduin in Skyrim and we couldn't join the Thalmor for the same reason, it wouldn't fit. It is also the same reason why we can't start without a family and such,because it would hurt the narrative.

legion was evil, you can't NOT be evil when you are a bunch of slavers, rapists, and raiders who crucify people...........

all the "good things" about them were never shown, of were proven they were hypocrites when it comes to it.