Well the Enclave just gunned everyone down really in Fallout 2 (they were the cookie cutter bad guys then, an idea Bethesda wants to get away from), but that was more akin to the original concept of fallout.  In Fallout 1 and 2 the Vaults were not experiments, that only happened with Fallout 3 and NV.  The Enclave in 2 was a lot bigger and more powerful, so they had the numbers to essentially be the assholes they were in 2.  In 3, they didn't have the numbers so they didn't just massacre Vault Dwellers as per the opening of fallout 2 anymore.

As far as who is to say, I guess the people they are killing would object.. the humans, and as I human I would object to really.

A lot of the stuff they had the institute do was really just to make them "dirtier" just like they did to the brotherhood, in hopes of really getting rid of the obvious good guy factor.

In Fallout 3, they were the obvious good guys, they were changed so much from the original brotherhood that the Brotherhood Outcasts were formed, whose goal is the preservation of technology which would then preserve humanity by not allowing technology to be abused again.  Atleast that was the plan for the original Brotherhood.

The Enclave also created Frank Horrigan, the perfect FEV soldier with power armor.  The Reverse REV was to be made to turn people back into humans. But yeah, in FO3, they were kinda following the Nazi racial purity thing. The people in the vaults, the enclave vaults and the enclave bases like the oil rigs would be allowed to survive.

Diddles wrote:

Spoiler:

A cool, a necessary evil approach to thinking then.

So basically the other groups are not able to affect change fast enough or severe enough. So for progress in one form or another you chose them.

Originally you had the option of replacing Maxon as the elder of the BOS.. but sadly they seem to have removed it. But they left the Audio files there, as Danse is talking to you about it, after you defeated Maxon in single combat and took control of the BOS...

maybe for the DLC?

Diddles wrote:

Spoiler:

ahhh, well the story of the Matrix (Keanu Reeves) happened because humanity abused and attacked the sentient machines they made instead of simply opting to talk or listen to them... so abusing them and enslaving them ended rather badly for humanity in that outcome as opposed to Terminator where they took over because they deemed themselves superior to the inferior peoples of the world with their free will.

The Minutemen were good for me, I could see them as kind of a good start, they wanted to help and had a good heart, they just lacked the ability and fire power to survive and thrive in the wastes unless supported by another faction.

The Railroad were good, idealistic, but the idea of Synths living their own lives as simply opposed to living replacement lives and contributing to society appealed to me.  Their actions would always be secretive its what they needed to do to survive an overt railroad would be easily infiltrated and destroyed.... so as far as effecting large change on the Wasteland.. not really a power player.

The Brotherhood I definitely like because, well they are militaristic.  They are organized and efficient.  Which helped a lot for things in real life when we set up emergency shelters and repaired an airport to get more doctors and supplies in (real life personal example) where the army was already on the ground providing food and aid while the ICRC was still trying to figure out who was to lead their endeavor.  Also the military are usually the major source of scientific advancement (Microwaves, Capri-sun, Space Program, Trauma-care)  The BOS already reverse engineered and improved upon the Enclaves work even going so far as being able to use power armor parts for cybernetics to help people who have lost limbs.

With the Institute... they killed your spouse, abduct your child...abduct families replacing them with Synth insurgents whose goal is to violently destroy settlements (they keep infiltrating my settlements and attacking my settlers in game... really getting annoying now).  Their goal is to remove the surface humans and replace them with their Synths so that we no longer have a free thinking human race but instead a more goose stepping race of yes-man machines and enforcers devoid of anything close to morality... with those that do develop morality being hunted and reprogrammed by the Institute unless the Railroad can help them escape.  That and the humans they abduct become unwilling experiments for the FEV tests to see what else it can do to people like the FEV abominations in FO3... so with Kidnapping, Unwanted Human Experimentation, Slavery and the overall undermining of free will... they just felt kinda bleak to me. It seems like they are focusing so much on if they can, and not enough on if they should.

Excellent Debate BTW, Points and Counter Points very entertaining, especially considering the limited number of examples we can post coming from a game.

I think they are not inherently evil, just their means to their end.

jmcatap1 wrote:

I think they are not inherently evil, just their means to their end.

ah so they are not evil, but their actions as a group are un-wholesome?

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 disagree. brotherhood of steel did NOT abduct innocent civilians and commit all sorts of cruel experiments on them. IMO the institutes evil as fuck.

Progress demands sacrifice. If you were able to completely cure FEV and tame the wasteland, is that not worthy of the cost of a couple hundred humans? If you gain many more from curing mutants and curing the mutants that you released?

I'm probably coming off crazy at this point. Nothing is black and white, there is so much grey, Evil is such a dirty word

I think the Institute is not evil because they just try to save the Commonwealth, but for sure abduct inocent civilians is bad sometimes we need to make some sacrifices... They just try to save the world and upgrade the human race with the synth, for sure it's bad but that's not just for their interest.

Peace.

They have a good goal, but the way they're trying to get to that goal is slightly* inhumane.

*EXTREMELY

Evmeister wrote:

Progress demands sacrifice. If you were able to completely cure FEV and tame the wasteland, is that not worthy of the cost of a couple hundred humans? If you gain many more from curing mutants and curing the mutants that you released?

I'm probably coming off crazy at this point. Nothing is black and white, there is so much grey, Evil is such a dirty word

Well that's just it, they were not working on a cure with the FEV, they were just playing with it because they had extra surface human guinea pigs.  They were working on science projects just for the sake of science largely focusing on if they can and not caring about if they should.  I could try to agree if they were working on curing them, but it was just for the sake of experimenting that I have a problem with, because if the humans they captured were already replaced with Synths and effectively dead on the surface world of Boston.. then playing/ toying with these men, women, and children is of no consequence they believe so its like "hey free lab rats!"

Lil'T wrote:

I think the Institute is not evil because they just try to save the Commonwealth, but for sure abduct inocent civilians is bad sometimes we need to make some sacrifices... They just try to save the world and upgrade the human race with the synth, for sure it's bad but that's not just for their interest.

Peace.

Well they are not upgrading humans, they are replacing humans with mindless machines blindly loyal to the institute. The Machines that are not mindlessly loyal to the institute fled and are being helped by the railroad, which in turn is being hunted by the institute...

So they are not simply.. upgrading people. They are replacing people with robots that look like people but are simply just robots that obey what the institute says without question, remorse or thought. That isn't really saving the world... that's conquering it...

Evil is a subjective term and it'll come down to personal opinion. I'd say yes, they are evil, with a caveat that they are easily redeemable. And given one of the ending options it could be easily assumed that they could become a force for good if the right person is in charge. Sadly the game doesn't let you expand on that but it could certainly be assumed

@deathcast

Im curious...
Their goal is essentially replace the people on the Surface with Loyal Synths by killing off all the people on the surface... isnt that.. genocide?
Didnt the Enclave want to do that in FO3? So... do you mean the Enclave had a good goal then to?

SgtSpectre wrote:

@deathcast

Im curious...
Their goal is essentially replace the people on the Surface with Loyal Synths by killing off all the people on the surface... isnt that.. genocide?
Didnt the Enclave want to do that in FO3?  So... do you mean the Enclave had a good goal then to?

It's pretty fucking complicated. They don't kill the people, they REPLACE them. So no, It is not suicidal.

But for the enclave they were REALLY FUCKED up and genecidal

Just going to throw my thoughts out there, the Institute is definitely evil. Not directly malevolent, but purely selfish, narcissistic, and showing a blatant disregard for their own actions.

Father takes one step outside, glances around, then says the commonwealth is doomed and its residents are a lost cause, no better than an experiment.

Father released you into that awful wasteland, not because he wanted to re-unite with you, but because you were just another experiment to him. If he wanted to actually see you, he would've simply sent a courser to pick you up.

The Institute spent decades kidnapping people and injecting FEV into them, then releasing them on the surface rather than giving them the mercy of death as another experiment. They had nothing to show for their decades of FEV experimentation.

The Institute happily slaughters anyone that finds anything of technological interest. Case in point, University Point. A girl there found a holodisk on reactor efficiency and the Institute slaughtered the entire settlement rather than simply asking or bartering for it.

The Institute doesn't replace people with synths for any good reason 90% of the time. Art is a random wastelander they made a synth of for kicks and giggles. The father at Warwick was killed and replaced with a synth so they could test some crops. The Institute doesn't do it for a good reason, they do it because they can. They get so caught up in seeing if they can that they don't stop to see if they should.

People in the Institute KNOW what they're doing to wastelanders, but they ignore the repercussions of their actions because they believe wastelanders have no future in the first place, so they're going to take what little hope they have away from them.

The Institute purposefully creates synths as close to human as possible, then are surprised when their slave labor starts rebelling and escaping. It's almost like they have a will to survive or something! They don't need human synths, but they make them anyway to kill and replace wastelanders for no real reason and because they're too cowardly and weak to do anything themselves.

Even if you think the Institute isn't directly evil, they cause evil through their selfishness, neglect, lack of remorse for their actions, and their god complex.

@deathcast

Actually they do kill them in experiments when captured/ replaced, and many times the Synth that replaces them is suppose to kill them.

Some of the "Lucky" ones get to die as FEV experiments.

Just to weigh in here as it's something I've thought about. In my opinion, I don't believe the Institute to be evil. I don't agree with their actions, and some of them are downright immoral, but they strike me as ignorant in the same manner that a god might be ignorant to accidentally creating life.

Not to go too deep, but what I'm thinking is, for them to say oh synths are just tools, machines, nothing more, is to be ignorant to what they've accomplished in the same way an artist might say it's just a sketch, when it's actually a work of art. They're thinking on a totally different level. It wouldn't even occur to them. That's my two cents!

SgtSpectre wrote:

@deathcast

Actually they do kill them in experiments when captured/ replaced, and many times the Synth that replaces them is suppose to kill them.

Some of the "Lucky" ones get to die as FEV experiments.

Well okay this is enough. THEY ARE EVIL

i have come across a settler getting replaced with a synth and i passed a speech check so the correct person told me he was a synth so i could kill him and tbh all the factions are morally ambiguous and in my personal opinion the institute are the enemy