Institute or Legion?

Wayward Son · Sep 5, 2016

Which one is morally worse? Me and my brother have gotten into this arguement several times, and I figured with all the playtime Codex users have in F4, they would have more knowledge about it than me.

Zerginfestor · Sep 5, 2016

I'd say the Institute, since their entire logic on the human population on the world surface is a hilariously bad excuse to make synthetic people (which turn out to be humans with a chip jabbed in their brain), created Super Mutants with a Mcguffin FEV because "Why the fuck not", destroyed an entire settlement while they obviously could just barter the item they wanted so badly, switch humans out with synths for no fucking reason other than to spook people, since 'spying' in that manner apparently makes people a nervous wreck, who the fuck knew! Finally, they act like they're humanity's only hope of survival, yet they make NO fucking effort into proving this or into making settlements secure and improved upon into small towns. They just sit in their labs and fuck around.

Caesar's Legion has some actually good points in how they view in restarting society, and have some nice values in keeping the place safe of raiders and abominations, acting like something of a cleansing wave, cleaning the entire area of 'corruption', which includes raiders, super mutants, abominations, chems and alcohol, to let folks settle down in the areas and not have to worry. Sort of like an extreme version of NCR, without the debates. Only main issue with them is they bit off more than they could chew (NCR), and their leaders and footsoldiers see Caesar as a god and support him, not his ideals. Hell, even their Legate Lanius is nothing more than a furious, brutish monster.

Edit: Oh, and I voted Bethesda because they created the Institute and their fucked up thinking process in the first place.

The Dutch Ghost · Sep 6, 2016

Hmm, Institute or Legion?

Well the Legion never got the opportunity to be completely fleshed out, most of the information we got about the going on's in their territory comes from second hand sources or Legion members themselves who are of course not biased.
The Legion is a flawed thing in many ways, it is a cult of personality centered around Caesar, even if Caesar perhaps intend that his followers continue his teachings and examples long after he has passed away.
From what I understand he purposely does not want any of his followers to read books, at least not the pre war books that detail human history or the historical Caesar's memoirs, for the risk of his followers finding out where he really got his inspiration and ideas from.

The Legion also practices slavery and we don't know that much how non Legion members in their territories are treated, well the ones that are not enslaved by them. Though apparently their territories are quite save for regular wastelanders as the Legion deals harshly with raiders, non member tribes, and probably various mutants including wildlife, and probably the occasional pre war relic.

But there is somewhat of a plan here, a design, even if it has chockfull of holes. Caesar thinks the NCR is flawed and is already repeating the mistakes of the pre war governments, being internally divided and suffering corruption and self interest, and he is not wrong at that.
And other governments and factions such as the Brotherhood of Steel don't really have an answer either.

I wouldn't call them pleasant but they are definitely much better than the Institute.

What does the Institute really want? From what I understand about their motives and goals they just want to be left alone to create synthetics and do some other experiments, apparently to preserve what they think is human civilization.
But for some reason they keep meddling with the populations on the surface and it goes way beyond self defense, they actively seek to replace individuals with look alike synths for no reasons, perform terraforming experiments which serve no purpose (wasn't there some mentioning about it in a quest), and just plain seek to terrorize everyone with their older synth models for no good reason.
(plus for some reason they really wanted to provoke the Brotherhood of Steel. If they did not want the BOS to come looking for them why not just hide their own presence? They are already underground, there is no need for obvious clues like synths attacking BOS forces or infiltrating their ranks)

If the incident with the synths that turned the surface population against them was so devastating that it would prevent any form of diplomatic contact with surface settlements and wastelanders, why not completely remove their presence from the surface?
It is obvious that most people in the Commonwealth can't put two and two together and realize the Institute is located under the MIT ruins, they pose no danger.

They are just fucking around on the surface for no clear reason. Do they want to rebuild the Commonwealth? Do they want to cleanse it of all other life?

The Institute is not so much worse as incredibly stupid, which is terrible when you think that these guys are supposed to be the most advanced society outside the Enclave, even surpassing those in some fields of knowledge.

Bethesda. Well first of all, I accuse them for not having much of an idea of what Fallout is about other than the bits that stood out for them and they have been copying ever since.
They are not story writers or world builders, they most pick their ideas from other popular sources in the genres in which they make games. Now that is not a crime as there are barely any new ideas these days, but Bethesda does it in a blunt and bad way.
As their result their games barely have any personality of their own as they keep looking at what other games are doing and pick what is popular and profitable about those.
However they have found an audience that gulps this all up and call them brilliant for it, if anything I would call their audience worse as they make it possible for Bethesda to continue and Todd to collect his big paycheck despite producing games that have low quality when it comes to creativeness in role playing. They just make very standard products.

I am pretty sure that if Minecraft and Borderlands had not been around that Bethesda could never haven gotten the inspiration to take elements from those franchises and put them in their own products. They are not imaginative enough for that.

So in the end it is Bethesda for me but I would really like to select its audience.

Excidium II · Sep 6, 2016

Neither is really evil.

Genma:TheDestroyer · Sep 6, 2016

Zerginfestor said:
I'd say the Institute, since their entire logic on the human population on the world surface is a hilariously bad excuse to make synthetic people (which turn out to be humans with a chip jabbed in their brain), created Super Mutants with a Mcguffin FEV because "Why the fuck not", destroyed an entire settlement while they obviously could just barter the item they wanted so badly, switch humans out with synths for no fucking reason other than to spook people, since 'spying' in that manner apparently makes people a nervous wreck, who the fuck knew! Finally, they act like they're humanity's only hope of survival, yet they make NO fucking effort into proving this or into making settlements secure and improved upon into small towns. They just sit in their labs and fuck around.

Caesar's Legion has some actually good points in how they view in restarting society, and have some nice values in keeping the place safe of raiders and abominations, acting like something of a cleansing wave, cleaning the entire area of 'corruption', which includes raiders, super mutants, abominations, chems and alcohol, to let folks settle down in the areas and not have to worry. Sort of like an extreme version of NCR, without the debates. Only main issue with them is they bit off more than they could chew (NCR), and their leaders and footsoldiers see Caesar as a god and support him, not his ideals. Hell, even their Legate Lanius is nothing more than a furious, brutish monster.

Edit: Oh, and I voted Bethesda because they created the Institute and their fucked up thinking process in the first place.

And that's...that. /Debate.