[Spoilers] All factions are awful

[GiorgioArmani®xMinecraft]

First of all, Minutemen don't count -- you really can't side with them and them alone in the main questline. If not for that, they would be the best faction, story-wise. Also, Preston is annoying (bet you never heard that before), and they don't have any cool armor, and laser muskets suck.

BoS are Nazis. That's not hyperbole, they're literally facists, with no good side. They want to take over the commonwealth, kill all the synths, etc etc. If you wanna be evil, be my guest, but I personally noped out of their questline as soon as I realized this. If you like power armor, however, you should side with them, just because they are the power armor faction and for no other reason.

Railroad are cool, and I agree with their mentality -- synths deserve freedom, and to be treated like humans. But, their base is kind of ♥♥♥♥, especially compared to the Institute. Theres no "cool factor" to them at all, and they pretty much wanna kill the Commonwealth's last chance at fixing the world (the Institute). To combat this, Beth just put the best stuff into their faction (ballistic weave, the deliverer, railroad rifles) -- without these additions, anyone who didn't deeply care about the lore of synth rights wouldn't side with the railroad. Basically, the railroad became the min-maxer's faction, plus a few people who really focus on the roleplay aspects of the game (no offence to anyone who does that).

Institute sucks ass as well. Beth started out making them the coolest faction -- a massive base, synth troops roaming the wastes and starting battles, the option for real power as you become the leader, and plus your son asks you to take it over and follow his legacy (which, honestly, was the weakest reason. I had no attachment to Shawn when I met him, plus he's a prick, which removes any "oh he's my son" motivation for me).
So, again to balance out the factions, Beth just made them unnecessarily evil -- emphasis on unnecessary. Did anyone ever figure out WHY the institute "kidnapped people", or had their synths invade towns, etc etc. It makes me absolutely furious how weak this plot point is. It's as if Beth was like "oh, the institute are super powerful, but they also do evil things to further science" -- but they couldn't figure out any legitimate evil things, so they just said "they kidnap people lmao idk".
And Beth can't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stop drilling it into my head how evil the Institute is. Every 5 seconds walking through the institute base I get "HEY YOU! SYNTHS AREN'T REAL PEOPLE AND THEY SHOULD BE TREATED POORLY FOR NO REASON EXCEPT BC WE'RE EVIL LOL". And if you dare side with the institute, you get complaints of "THE INSTITUTE IS GONNA RUIN EVERYTHING YOU ARE SUCH AN IDIOT", the only real responses being "I don't care" or "I agree I am dumb I regret everything".
The institute did a good thing by destroying the BoS -- they're awful, and basically wanna control all of the commonwealth. But suddenly, the same people that once said "I don't know if I trust these BoS fellows" are now telling me I messed up by killing them.
And why would the institute need to kill the railroad? I tried to convince Shawn to let them be, since I really agreed with them on synth humanity, but he was just a ♥♥♥♥ to me and insisted that they had to be massacred. The institute was just the less-edgy more futuristic version of BoS, instead of being the "hope for the future" that they were promoted as. I suppose this could be cool (the institute looks nice on the outside, but are really corrupt on the inside, and are even worse than the BoS), but it was done poorly in the actual game, since there's no real evidence of the institute being evil, nor a reason for them to do anything bad. If they really wanted to do this, there would have to be some extra option, where you side with the institute, but when you realize that they are evil and Shawn is a ♥♥♥♥, you can double-cross them and go over to the railroad. Instead, the game just punished me for siding with the wrong people, by making everyone hate me.

In the end, I sided with the Institute, for roleplay reasons. Since I was the leader of the institute, I could theoretically do things like collaborate with the railroad to improve synth conditions, help out settlers in the commonwealth, and reform the institute into a better thing. However, if I was to replay the game, I'd side with the railroad, just for the gear -- this was my first playthrough, and by the time I learned about all the loot, I was already too deep into the institute's questline to side with anyone else.

tl;dr: I love this game, but Beth messed up the factions. Instead of having to pick between positives from each faction, they're just all a bad choice. And I hate the Institute, but not for the reasons Beth wanted me to.

[Honor Guard]

One Synths are machines

2. BOS kill ferals,and SMs as well as raiders

3. Instute goal is staying in there hole for rest of time

4. Do i need a 4th o well


Moreless BOS is a good faction,only real EVIL faction is the instute

MM count also since you can do the ENTIRE main story with them

[HoroSaga]

Originally posted by -=GHS=- Honor Guard:

3. Instute goal is staying in there hole for rest of time

While they also routinely send up monsters to murder people on the surface.

If they just wanted to have a peaceful, isolated existence underground then that would be one thing. But the fact that they also routinely terrorize the primitive "surface dwellers" is what makes them cartoonish villains.

The Commonwealth is full of cannibalistic super mutants, body-snatching terminators, and hordes of murder robots, all because of the Institute. Each time the surface dwellers start forming any significant society or find some interesting tech, the Institute sends in assassins to murder them. It's kind of hard to pretend that they're innocent scientists who just want to be left alone. :)

[GiorgioArmani®xMinecraft]

Originally posted by -=GHS=- Honor Guard:

One Synths are machines

2. BOS kill ferals,and SMs as well as raiders

3. Instute goal is staying in there hole for rest of time

4. Do i need a 4th o well


Moreless BOS is a good faction,only real EVIL faction is the instute

MM count also since you can do the ENTIRE main story with them

BoS only kill ferals etc. because they are a military organization that lives on the surface. They kill enemies to protect themselves, not to protect anybody. They just want power over the commonwealth, and don't really care for the people living in it -- i.e. they're evil. On the other hand, the institute (except for Shawn) wants to help out the commonwealth.

I agree that the institute is evil in the current game, but there isn't a reason for them to be evil. It doesn't benefit them in any way, Beth just put it in so the institute isn't a perfect faction.

And I don't know what you mean by doing the main story with MM, unless you mean ignoring all 3 others and only helping the MM. If there IS some way to do it, my bad, I must've missed it somehow.

[titanopteryx]

Regarding kidnapping, the intitute had 3 reasons shown. Firstly it was to experiment on them. Examples are Shaun and the victims in stasis in the FEV lab. Second is to replace with a synth. Like Diamond City's mayor. Lastly in a mission you do late in the institute questline the institute tries to kidnap a scientist to help the institute with sciency stuff, though you need to help because minutemen interfere.

[GiorgioArmani®xMinecraft]

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

Originally posted by -=GHS=- Honor Guard:

3. Instute goal is staying in there hole for rest of time

While they also routinely send up monsters to murder people on the surface.

If they just wanted to have a peaceful, isolated existence underground then that would be one thing. But the fact that they also routinely terrorize the primitive "surface dwellers" is what makes them cartoonish villains.

The Commonwealth is full of cannibalistic super mutants, body-snatching terminators, and hordes of murder robots, all because of the Institute. Each time the surface dwellers start forming any significant society or find some interesting tech, the Institute sends in assassins to murder them. It's kind of hard to pretend that they're innocent scientists who just want to be left alone. :)

Yeah, I've heard that from pretty much every character in the game. But, WHY would the institute do any of that? You're 100% right in calling them cartoonish villains, because that's what Beth made them out to be, but they were too lazy to come up with a motive for a scientific institution to mess with the commonwealth.
The only explanation I can figure out is the super mutant thing -- they were a failed experiment, which the institute let out onto the surface so that they didn't have to deal with it. But that doens't really make sense, since there are super mutants in Nevada and theoretically the rest of the wasteland, while the institute is located in Boston. On the other hand, the institute really doesn't benefit from the terminatiors and kidnappings they apparently perform.

[HoroSaga]

Originally posted by Zeke, from Zeke and Luther:

I agree that the institute is evil in the current game, but there isn't a reason for them to be evil. It doesn't benefit them in any way, Beth just put it in so the institute isn't a perfect faction.

The Institute just seems evil in general, in that they have no regard for the life of anyone who doesn't live in the Institute. Even before Shaun took over as director of the Institute, they were seen doing terrible things.

For example, the previous leader of the Institute (the "Old Man") is the one who ordered the mission to kidnap Shaun from Vault 111, along with explicit instructions to kill all of the other people in Vault 111 with the exception of the Sole Survivor.

Likewise, the "Broken Mask" incident occured well before Shaun could have taken over the Institute, because Shaun would have been two years old when it happened. That incident involved the Institute sending a prototype Gen-3 synth into Diamond City, where it malfunctioned and killed five people.

Both of those incidents show that the Institute was rather amoral, with little regard for life, even before Shaun took over as their new Director.

[your literal mum]

"No cool factor to the Railroad"

The faction of Deacon and Tinker Tom has no cool? How can you even be that wrong.

[GiorgioArmani®xMinecraft]

Originally posted by titanopteryx:

Regarding kidnapping, the intitute had 3 reasons shown. Firstly it was to experiment on them. Examples are Shaun and the victims in stasis in the FEV lab. Second is to replace with a synth. Like Diamond City's mayor. Lastly in a mission you do late in the institute questline the institute tries to kidnap a scientist to help the institute with sciency stuff, though you need to help because minutemen interfere.

Fair enough points. I can understand Shawn's kidnapping, and the "unmutated DNA" thing satisfied me as a reason. And I suppose replacing the mayor with a synth could be usefull, so that they can control Diamond City. What bothers me still is the seemingly random stuff -- like why replace random settlers with synths?

I guess it could be escaped synths, but when they're discovered people just blame the institute.

[GiorgioArmani®xMinecraft]

Originally posted by Banned on Television:

"No cool factor to the Railroad"

The faction of Deacon and Tinker Tom has no cool? How can you even be that wrong.

Haha, maybe I was too rough on the railroad. I really do like the "secret resistance" thing, but the fact that they're restricted to a single basement kind of annoys me. I wanted them to be cooler, and felt that Beth just shoved a bunch of gear into their questline and didn't bother with it otherwise.

[HoroSaga]

Originally posted by Zeke, from Zeke and Luther:

Yeah, I've heard that from pretty much every character in the game. But, WHY would the institute do any of that?

From what I've gathered, it's because the Institute want to prevent the surface-dwellers from ever getting too organized. A strong, united local government might make it difficult for the Institute to remain hidden or might interfere with their goals.

The Institute seems to be guilty of routinely sabotaging or compromising settlements that get too large, for example. They killed and replaced the mayor of Diamond City, the largest settlement in the area. They wiped out the settlement at University Point, which was apparently rather sizable.

There are also some conflicting rumors indicating that they were the ones who wiped out the Commonwealth Provisional Government, which was the first (and last) attempt made to unite multiple towns across the Commonwealth under one government. Nick claims that the Institute sabotaged the effort by sending Gen 1 synths in to murder all of the leaders, but Shaun (who's far from trustworthy) claims that the leaders killed each other because of infighting and backstabbing.

Of course, the Institute also seems to have no qualms about killing people just because it's convenient for an experiment. They killed and replaced the owner of the Warwick Homestead, for example, just so they'd be able to run some experiments on his crops. Once the experiment is over, they plan to murder all of the other farmers to cover their tracks.

[titanopteryx]

Obviously they replace random settlers to further their war effort against water pumps. Haven't you ever had a synth infiltrate your settlement just to destroy your water pump? And maybe your power generator was a witness?

[GiorgioArmani®xMinecraft]

Originally posted by HoroSaga:

Both of those incidents show that the Institute was rather amoral, with little regard for life, even before Shaun took over as their new Director.

I didn't really consider this at first. I guess that's what Beth intended -- the institute isn't directly evil, they just don't care about everyone else. Beth was just a little ham-fisted in their delivery, and in trying to push the whole "science and the institute before human life" thing home, they went a little overboard (like is there a reason why the rest of Vault 111 had to be killed?). You've restored my faith in Beth's plotline a bit more.

[casualsailor]

The Railroad?

I think Virgil sums them up pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY8ysmYKzYI

[GiorgioArmani®xMinecraft]

Originally posted by titanopteryx:

Obviously they replace random settlers to further their war effort against water pumps. Haven't you ever had a synth infiltrate your settlement just to destroy your water pump? And maybe your power generator was a witness?

That must be the real reason Sturges is a synth. He's secretly dismantling my water pumps at Sanctuary Hills, as an Institute double agent!

[Zatheron]

I personally feel the Institute is kind of just a giant hivemind of mad scientists, with lofty goals clouding their judgement. Sure, EVENTUALLY they might be able to fix the area(like F3), but they're stuck in this cycle of making synths so they can function. They don't have the resources to do anything but continuously make synth technology better. They HAVE to have them on the surface, secretly hiding among humanity to gather resources just so they can survive in their finite location.
So, now everyone is all pissed at the Institute because of the synth issue. The minuteman are literally a small group of 5 people at one point, so they're basically non-exhistant at the beginning of F4. The railroad is a bit more powerful, though still a small secret faction, with a fairly difficult riddle to get into their own heavily fortified hideout as their only security, poses little threat towards stopping the terror that is the Institute. The BoS, meanwhile, has been gathering resources with relative ease in the DC area thanks to the events of F3. After hearing of a serious threat to the population's well being, they basically send a giant hammer to obliterate it.
I don't see anything facist about them. They don't even care much about reclaiming technology from the Institute, they want to stop them from terrorizing the Commonwealth. I would guess that eventually they would try and form a society, with help from the minuteman. The Railroad could never succeed, due to too many sour memories of synths, as well as a lack of place for them in a society other than labor.