So, we started having this debate about whether or not the institute is evil on the Nexus...and yeah..
I was just thinking GUN would be more open to debate/ discussion..

So, do you think the institute is evil?

@SgtSpectre: Evil, I'll say no. Amoral, definitely. Evil would more be doing it for the heck of it or for nefarious purposes, but the Institute from what I've seen so far does want to fix things for humanity. They just have a terrible way of going about it.

Personally they're not evil as the people of the Commonwealth misunderstood the actions of the Institute which is understandable but they are planning to improve the human race, underground doing experiments that can or will be humanity's hope. Like the food synthesizer which could be the only food that is pure in the entire Commonwealth,Using synths to rid the monstrosities of the Commonwealth and enforce it is a good idea. So in conclusion its matter of your perspective I personally think they are the hope of humanity because of the words as I mentioned above and those are only some, but things can go wrong  very fast if something malfunctions also I think its very relatable to our own future because we are dependent on technology.

Evil, no. Seriously misguided, yes. I was greatly disappointed in how the Institue dealt with the railroad. Not to mention I had to do the dirty work. Scientists aren't always the most moraly aligned and tend to push the boundaries. They also can become caught up in their arrogance, prime evidence being how they treat synths. I think if they treated their synths with more respect and as equals, or even as their succesors instead of tools, then people would have less issues with Institute.

Interesting, Everyone is providing excellent food for thought, for my opinion as the Institute is acting in the game, I am more inclined personally to think that they are more evil than good.

Kidnapping people and disposing of them so they can replace them with Synths.  Like the Mayor of Diamond City, so they can better control the security to stay away from investigations to ensure faster and easier abductions.  (kidnapping and killing is bad to me..)  The wandering Synth Art was it? wants you to help him kill the human who he was trying to replace as the institute would be upset with him if he didn't.

Also, I haven't even chosen a faction yet, and already they are sending Synth Infiltrators to my settlements to pretend to be people, you can tell they are doing this because the happiness starts getting effected as well as turrets and things will suddenly be damaged. (At first I thought this was a bug)  But you will notice some settlers that will not sleep no matter what, they will also no go to another settlement even if you tell them to... and in the final stages they will be running around your settlement with their weapon out and later when you leave, you get a large GEN 1 synth attack at that settlement.  Also, when you kill the infiltrators, they have "Synth Components" on them, so you know they are Synths.  As well as in fallout 3, when you return the free synth to the institute you get negative karma... that's like the creators of the game saying "Yup that wasn't nice"

Starting the FEV research again, continuing the human experimentation of the Pre-war Government and Vault-Tec on rather unwilling subjects (the abducted people, and is this where more super mutants are coming from???)

Plus the whole story of the game... they killed your spouse... and took your baby for parts and genetic material also claiming you were the Spare/ Backup...

While they seem to claim that they are doing things for the good of mankind, they are replacing mankind with compliant drones.. and the noncompliant drones (runaway synths) are hunted, captured/ killed and possibly being reprogrammed.  It seems they don't believe in freewill for humanity or the synths that they created and would rather like to have a compliant empire of machines ruled by scientists.  The heads of the institute are pissed when Father names you as his successor solely because you are not one of them, a institute scientist.  Now what you do after that who knows... but up to that point.. they are almost striking me as cookie cutter bad guys.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, Like ethnic cleansing, removing "genetically inferior people" so that resources are more abundant for the genetically superior.  (I do not condone/ support this at all...)

The food synthesizer, is a good idea, Vault 81 is also doing clean foods, and Curie has done work on purifying the foods and the sugars in foods to help increase healing I believe.  Making more healthy food is good definitely.  Its just their methods I don't like, if they were willing to give food to people I imagine their image would improve.  But replacing people with Synths and then using the copied Synth people who are now devoid of will as cold enforcers for the institute is kind of not so cool.  The Synths that appear loyal to the institute like the Mayor and Art, were very violent, and Art wanted you to help him kill the human because he knows Art is a synth and it would be an inconvenience to him.
For 200+ years humanity has lived and adapted to the radiation, some have even become immune to it or healing from it without turning into ghouls.  It just strikes me that the Institute according to the actions given them by Bethesda are the new Enclave.

@SgtSpectre: Well, the Enclave just wants to wipe everyone out. The Institute, not so much. It all depends on where you draw the line as 'evil': for me, that is killing for the sake of killing.

Yes They're evil! they even try to attack your settlements and replace settlers!

For me the mere fact that they are willing to kill your wife, granted that was Kellogg's doing, and kidnap your son is enough to warrant the term evil. On top of that raise and brainwash your child to believe their ideology. But lets be honest evil is a relative point of view. One persons terrorist is another's freedom fighter. I have to say that the fact that their self aware androids didn't come to the conclusion that they don't need their masters any sooner is surprising. But for the fact that this is a video game I can conclude for story purposes that they gave the synths a rate of learning equal to and not greater than humans.

dazzerfong wrote:

@SgtSpectre: Well, the Enclave just wants to wipe everyone out. The Institute, not so much. It all depends on where you draw the line as 'evil': for me, that is killing for the sake of killing.

Well, the Enclave wanted to wipe out mutants, basically, ghouls and the mutated people living on the surface, not so much everyone.  But basically in FO3 they were going to use part of the FEV  to genetically attack people through the water.  Leaving pure strain humans (like the Enclave) alive to repopulate the surface.

But kidnapping people and experimenting on them with the FEV isn't evil?

I don't think they're necessarily evil, but I don't think Shaun specifically has good intentions. The rest of them seem to want the best for the Commonwealth, but they're being misled. I think the Brotherhood is the more obvious of evils in Fallout 4 who are also being misled by Maxson who feels more like a dictator like House did, although I sided with the Railroad/ Minutemen.

Ah, well I wouldn't say evil for the sake of evil... because a very few people along the lines "I want to hurt, kill and torment people, because it makes me happy" atleast few when compared to the whole of the planet. Some like Shaun, were essentially programmed to be and think that way, not evil, but the results are not wholesome and have a very ends justify the means type of approach. Every single person in the institute isn't evil, but the actions of the body known as the institute are what I would classify as evil.

Now, my opinion on the Brotherhood really, they got a lot more edgy.. Im not sure why they became this way from Lyons BOS.. something had to have happened to change little Maxon into the guy he is now.. Sarah isn't there anymore so I can only imagine.

When the BOS show up they occupy, they take extra food stocks and expect the locals to help them by providing information on synths and the like. I can also convince Maxon to spare a synth, Paladin Danse, so if I can convince him to spare a synth an enemy of the BOS, I imagine its possible to convince him of the same with non feral ghouls. I think it shows that Maxon probably was trained to hate them more than having grown to hate them. As his sparing Danse shows a bit of shock that someone who was by "birth" the enemy was by virtue an ally. I don't think Maxon fully comprehends the Synths as sentient and perhaps thinks they are just following a very detailed script and programming. Afterall the BOS views machines as machines, to think that they have achieved a level of sentience would be astonishing, especially beyond the level of protectotrons, Sentry bots and the like.

I was never prompted with choices to stop abductions and FEV experiments on captives, though possibly as the leader I should be able to, but with those below me vehemently disagreeing with my position as I am not one of them, a scientist I don't think I would be able to have their loyalty and see them continuing.

The Minutemen I have no problems with, they are your very limited good guys. Though uneffective, they want to ask everyone to come together and get along but have no way of ensuring people get along and it already caused the minutemen to crack multiple times before as no help, support or supplies came. I guess that's why I always see them losing in every fight unless I jump in.

The Railroad, I am still doing quests for and its fun, will comment on them when I know more.

@SgtSpectre: As you said, the Enclave just wanted to do genocide on everyone through their FEV strain on water. That's pretty evil to me.

The Institute and the FEV, however, is a bit of a strange one. For one, while they were trying to experiment with it, I don't think they intend to unleash it on the Commonwealth: I think they were more intending to play around with it and see what they could learn from it. I might be wrong though, as I'm hardly exploring the Institute.

Not necessarily "evil", but definitely not the right ideology.

dazzerfong wrote:

@SgtSpectre: As you said, the Enclave just wanted to do genocide on everyone through their FEV strain on water. That's pretty evil to me.

The Institute and the FEV, however, is a bit of a strange one. For one, while they were trying to experiment with it, I don't think they intend to unleash it on the Commonwealth: I think they were more intending to play around with it and see what they could learn from it. I might be wrong though, as I'm hardly exploring the Institute.

The Enclave wasn't going to kill everyone, just the mutants (ghouls, supermutants and the mutated wastelanders) the poisoned Enclave ending for FO3 shows the wasteland being repopulated by unmutated humans. So it wasn't a against everyone then?
Well playing around, if they are abducting people and the abductee's are the unwilling test subjects that strikes me as evil.

sgtspectre i fell like your wrong about the encalve they ensalved people and forced fev on them

Boodaliboo wrote:

sgtspectre i fell like your wrong about the encalve they ensalved people and forced fev on them

I don't recall them enslaving, but they definitely planned on force feeding the capital wasteland an FEV water supply.

Both the Enclave and the Institute are forcing FEV on people. The Enclave Planned on releasing it into the water purifier, and the FEV would kill super mutants, ghouls and mutated humans (as per the ending you got for helping the enclave) Leaving the unradiated humans (enclave and vault dwellers) to repopulate. The Institute abducts people, replaces them with synths and uses the FEV on the abducted people.

Both are baddies and not receiving a Christmas card from my Vault Dweller/ Lone Survivor... unless said card includes a not-so-mini nuke.

The institute wasn't evil. Just like the brotherhood of steel, they were radicals in their ideas and pushed people around with their technology. They had good intentions, just lost sight of the goal they were going for.

craigross93 wrote:

The institute wasn't evil. Just like the brotherhood of steel, they were radicals in their ideas and pushed people around with their technology. They had good intentions, just lost sight of the goal they were going for.

I would definitely agree, the institute was good in their beginnings, they made the synths to help people, but people were scared of them and rejected them and things kind of degraded from there for them... this was long before the Gen 3 synths and the idea of slavery and such though.

@SgtSpectre: if we're nitpicking, fine: everyone but themselves. Still pretty evil to me.

In a war torn and desolate planet, who is to say that Synths aren't the future? Replacing humans with perfect copies and memories. Resistance to the environment, don't need sleep or food. I'd say that's a worthy upgrade. Bethesda dropped the ball on the whole story and didn't fill things in enough. So who knows why they are replacing people or what the ultimate plan is/was. I didn't do any quests after Fathers death so I might be missing some info.

In terms of the FEV, I'm not sure if it was ever explicitly explained why it was started, but I think it had to do with Father dying.

The Enclave captured vault dwellers in Fallout 2 to create a reverse FEV virus. They would have killed the dwellers along with everyone that wasn't Enclave.