[QUOTE=DChapsfield;49828555]Okay, that point actually is actually beginning to convince me. if the Institute has miles of manufacturing facilities hidden in the walls, well, i could believe that. it would make much more sense to me if there were a factory wing we could explore, but i can settle for that.[/QUOTE]
Well there sort of is in the shape of the synth creation center. They really couldn't make miles of factories interesting to look at or explore, so I can understand why the most you see of it is essentially the assembly chain at the end and the door that takes the newly created synths to treatment.
[editline]28th February 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=WillerinV1.02;49828565]video games aren't like movies or books, though. the plot isn't the only thing driving the game forward. in fact, to some, it's one of the least important aspects of a video game. especially in bethbyro games, a rich setting with proper world building is actually the main appeal to some people.
in an open world game with an emphasis on exploring the world and learning about it's inhabitants, almost every question is important.[/QUOTE]
There is such a thing as a question that's out of the subject, or too specific to be fair in the context of a made up world.
I'm writing my own lore pretty much 24/7, and while it is definitely fun to try and solve every single detail, when it comes to actually writing a story in it, or when it comes to certain aspects, there [I]are[/I] times when you need to accept the fact that you simply can't answer every question or show every detail without turning your work into a boring waste of everyone's time. Unless you are writing your entire lore in wiki form and dedicate entire pages to iron mining and silicon mining, you're not going to be able to cram these details in there, video game or otherwise.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;49828570]
There is such a thing as a question that's out of the subject, or too specific to be fair in the context of a made up world.
I'm writing my own lore pretty much 24/7, and while it is definitely fun to try and solve every single detail, when it comes to actually writing a story in it, or when it comes to certain aspects, there [I]are[/I] times when you need to accept the fact that you simply can't answer every question or show every detail without turning your work into a boring waste of everyone's time. Unless you are writing your entire lore in wiki form and dedicate entire pages to iron mining and silicon mining, you're not going to be able to cram these details in there, video game or otherwise.[/QUOTE]
once again i think you're addressing the posts too literally
of course there's stuff that's too specific to answer - but the foundational aspects of how a faction has come to be is not one of them
i'm not saying to dump exposition on the player about "iron and silicon mining", i'm just saying that putting a little more thought into how the institute went from basement dwelling CIT nerds to the institute in 200 years would have made them feel more natural.
i write my own lore too, since you mention it, and i have almost no issue coming up with solutions and details to pretty specific stuff even if it never, ever gets mentioned in the story or plot. just me knowing those details makes other details in the story come across a lot more naturally. tolkein spent 20 years on his lore for lord of the rings, and theres far more stuff that we never learn about that world than what we [I]do[/I] (i'm not implying you take 20 years to flesh out your work, either)
if beth practiced this for the institute, you probably wouldn't have so many people confused with how they act, or think they act in an irrational or stupid way, or think they're impractical, or think they operate on the 'rule of cool', etc
ElectricSquid's problem is specifically with how and where the Institute's raw materials are gathered, so that's what I'm addressing.
It is true that the exact ways the Institute came to this level of power is cloudy, but I think we know enough for the story to make sense. They were a group of relatively small, likely well prepared survivors who lived in seclusion and progressively grew in size and power until they could essentially live as a self-sufficient scientific community that eventually threw almost all of their ethics out the window in the name of progress.
Their means of gathering resources is completely irrelevant to understanding this.
Bethesda has always favored a more visual approach to story telling in their Fallout games as well. The TES games have a lot more literature in them to convey the lore, sometimes in obtuse ways (ie including skewed perspectives of events from past games to establish the fact such and such events weren't quite known to the public, or voluntarily censored), but Fallout is more based on showing rather than just telling - and when something is not shown, it's either because it's written somewhere, or because it's ultimately unimportant. They have missteps like everyone else (see Megaton's "what do they eat" problem), but I feel like the Institute is pretty well explained.
Another thing is that there really isn't anyone to tell you that the Institute is flawed or makes shitty decisions, because there's not really any outsiders who came in contact with them. In New Vegas, the problems with the Legion or the NCR are established clearly because a lot of characters will openly spell out the problems with these factions, problems that may also not be very apparent in the absence of these characters. For instance, if it weren't for Veronica telling you exactly why the local BOS chapter is falling apart, it would not obvious at all and would require the same kind of thought process as determining why the Institute takes stupid decisions in Fallout 4. If Mr House didn't explain to you exactly why the NCR's strategy in keeping Hoover Dam is stupid and won't work, it'd also take the same kind of thought process for the player to establish how and why.
[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;49828466]I mean, where are they getting their silicon from?
Or their iron ore?
Or any of the other variety of raw materials required for producing robots? Lubricant? Coolant? Assuming they're nuclear powered like everything, where are they getting the nuclear material? Are they just [I]scavenging[/I] all this? If so, why isn't the Commonwealth stripped clean of anything containing these materials?[/QUOTE]
Nuclear [i]Magic~♫[/i]
[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;49828437]An airship is not the same as a teleporter, cloning facilities/organic life synthesis, energy weapon mass production, and android manufacturing. We figured out airships in the 1930s, ignoring the Prydwen's excess weight; the rest of the shit the Institute conjured out of thin air in their basement either hasn't been achieved or requires access to a massive quantity of raw materials and fabrication equipment. If the teleporter and/or the origins of the other projects existed beforehand in the basement, then [I]maybe[/I] you could excuse it with them going out and scavenging materials, but otherwise, they've essentially whipped up highly advanced technology out of nothing.
I mean, let's look at just [I]one[/I] of those technologies, the old generation synths. So you've got A) their bodies, which are robots complicated in excess of what we can even make today, and B) their 'brains' which I can only assume use microchips. They mass produce these bodies - where are they getting the copper? The steel or aluminum? The silicon? The fucking [I]polymers[/I] that are used for anything non-metal - which, might I remind you, very frequently are derived from petroleum, something the Fallout universe was kind of running low on by the war's end. Where are they getting all this shit, and in such quantities that they can essentially crap out swarms of robots that they literally treat as disposable?
Second, have you seen the kinds of facilities required to manufacture microchips?
[t]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/GLOBALFOUNDRIES_Dresden.jpg[/t]
That's a modern semiconductor factory in Dresden that makes AMD CPUs. It's massive. How the fuck are they going to just... jury-rig something like that in a damn college basement?
My point is not that their rate of advance is absurd, it's that they're even able to do they shit they do while supposedly being confined to a glorified basement.[/QUOTE]
there are a ton of plastics that aren't made with petroleum. galalith, catalin, bakelite, crystalate, micarta, and novotext being examples off the top of my head.
simple microcontrollers aren't so complicated to make that a group of people with 200 years worth of nothing to do couldn't pull it off either, just a bitch to miniaturize. plenty of real people have built their own microcontrollers and microprocessors from scratch without a massive facility and expansive cleanrooms
[url]http://www.6502.org/users/dieter/mt15/mt15.htm[/url]
[url]http://www.homebrewcpu.com/[/url]
[url]http://www.bigmessowires.com/bmow1/[/url]
[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;49828500][I]From where?[/I]
Plausibility and internal consistency are completely valid though. The Fallout world stretches beyond belief, yes, but in ways that are pretty clearly established. They can miniaturize nuclear fusion, but nowhere else has anyone proven themselves able to pull a fucking robot army out of their assholes.[/QUOTE]
What about that securitron army hidden away in that vault thingy you needed the Platinum chip for
[QUOTE=Pvt. Martin;49828676]Nuclear [i]Magic~♫[/i][/QUOTE]
Just like Cabot House~♫
[QUOTE=DiscoInferno;49828745]Just like Cabot House~♫[/QUOTE]
Nuclear [i]Lovecraft Magick. Ia~♫[/i]
Maybe the resources were synths as well.
[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;49828466]I mean, where are they getting their silicon from?
[t]http://garethnunns.com/silicon/silicon_files/Macraes-mines.jpg[/t]
Or their iron ore?
[t]http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/7-7-iron-ore.jpg[/t]
Or any of the other variety of raw materials required for producing robots? Lubricant? Coolant? Assuming they're nuclear powered like everything, where are they getting the nuclear material? Are they just [I]scavenging[/I] all this? If so, why isn't the Commonwealth stripped clean of anything containing these materials?[/QUOTE]
They are even more scarce when you consider THE RESOURCE WARS.
[QUOTE=UnidentifiedFlyingTard;49828975]They are even more scarce when you consider THE RESOURCE WARS.[/QUOTE]
well if you thought about it for a second you'd also realize that there was a nuclear war that cut the population by 99%, so those "scarce" resources don't seem so scarce when there's way less people.
especially think about all that resources still in electronics, buildings, cars, and other man-made things that the dead population don't utilize anymore. Those resources didn't magically disappear when those objects were made.
[QUOTE=ClarkWasHere;49829020]well if you thought about it for a second you'd also realize that there was a nuclear war that cut the population by 99%, so those "scarce" resources don't seem so scarce when there's way less people.
especially think about all that resources still in electronics, buildings, cars, and other man-made things that the dead population don't utilize anymore.[/QUOTE]
Not enough to do what the institute does.
[editline]27th February 2016[/editline]
Also the war probably would have fucked up what little resources the world had even more.
[QUOTE=UnidentifiedFlyingTard;49829044]Not enough to do what the institute does.
[editline]27th February 2016[/editline]
Also the war probably would have fucked up what little resources the world had even more.[/QUOTE]
Debatable. (and again, the "little" resources isn't little when there's almost no people left) We already know that the institute sends or sent out parties of people and synths to gather resources, so how about this:
Because the institute is in the city, we can assume that the institute sends parties out to recover silicon from office buildings' computers, and because of the abundance of steel from buildings in general, and the fact that you really don't need that much silicon if the computer tech can easily fit in the human form that gen 1 and 2 synths have, you can argue that there's plenty of resources for them to mass produce until they went the other way around and [sp]started building synths out of almost completely organic materials.[/sp]
Then you could argue that they'd have plenty of materials for gen 3 synths from [sp]growing organic material or sending synths out to raid farms for organics[/sp]
But as Ganerumo was arguing, does this really matter for the actual theme of the story? No, but it's nice backstory that the game should have to answer any niggles nitpickers like us would have.
Also, I don't think the nukes would ruin the silicon and steel that much considering that in the Fallout fiction the cities buildings are still somewhat standing. Either testament to future human engineering or weak nukes.
Speaking of the Institute I visited it after the ending and I didn't realize [sp]how much of the land just disappears after blowing them up.[/sp][url=http://i.imgur.com/a1O7mrv.jpg](Ending spoliers)[/url]
[QUOTE=yellowoboe;49829091]Speaking of the Institute I visited it after the ending and I didn't realize [sp]how much of the land just disappears after blowing them up.[/sp][url=http://i.imgur.com/a1O7mrv.jpg](Ending spoliers)[/url][/QUOTE]
Yup, leaves a good ol' nice crater. You can almost smell that self-righteousness still lingering about.
[QUOTE=ClarkWasHere;49829099]Yup, leaves a good ol' nice crater. You can almost smell that self-righteousness still lingering about.[/QUOTE]
That's weird, I thought I wiped the brotherhood out before doing that. Is the smell that strong?
[QUOTE=doomkiwi;49829159]That's weird, I thought I wiped the brotherhood out before doing that. Is the smell that strong?[/QUOTE]
well, the smell isn't that unique among the smoking craters of each faction.
5 minutes into fallout 4 and
[thumb]http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/j403/megadave94/download_zpscu8hjml9.jpg[/thumb]
there we go
[QUOTE=Megadave;49829235]5 minutes into fallout 4 and
[thumbhttp://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/548682046884529891/9B263F5AE82AD4B96DCD1EA3226EBC9BEE59A680/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside|1024:640&composite-to=*,*|1024:640&background-color=black[/thumb][/QUOTE]
This completely broken tag still probably represents your picture.
[editline]28th February 2016[/editline]
oh nvm, I think its chisel faced Jimmy Neutron.
[QUOTE=Megadave;49829235]5 minutes into fallout 4 and
[thumb]http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/j403/megadave94/download_zpscu8hjml9.jpg[/thumb]
there we go[/QUOTE]
Looks more like Groose than Jimmy.
Which means you have to play Groose's Theme everywhere.
Is there any mods out there that allows you to choose, when using a VATS attack, between the fast animation when you don't want to waste time in combats and the long but beautiful camera travelling on the bullet hitting a Mutant Suicider nuke and blowing up an entire group of mutants that you want to savor?
I'm sick of it being pretty much totally random.
[QUOTE=Minelayer;49828708]What about that securitron army hidden away in that vault thingy you needed the Platinum chip for[/QUOTE]
To be fair that's pulling a robot army out of someone else's asshole.
[QUOTE=Janus Vesta;49829635]To be fair that's pulling a robot army out of someone else's asshole.[/QUOTE]
Mr. House predicted the Great War a few years ahead of time, so it's not hard to explain why a pre-war billionaire had a robot army stashed in a hardened bunker somewhere. Honestly, if House predicted it, I don't see why the guys at C.I.T. couldn't.
[QUOTE=Minelayer;49828708]What about that securitron army hidden away in that vault thingy you needed the Platinum chip for[/QUOTE]
That made sense tho because it was the massive robot army buried by [i] the eccentric and wealthy CEO of pre war america's leading robotic manufacturing corporation[/i]- who had used his immense resources to put it there before the war with the intent of using it as an army dedicated to putting the world back together after the fallout cleared. And even with all the power of a megacorp at his disposal the plan still failed in the chaos of the nuclear war.
It was Not built after the war by [i] just a bunch of nerds that got trapped in a basement and somehow built something akin to the aperture science testing facility[/i] that was then used to build hundreds of hyper advanced of bio-mechanical replicants just so the nerds could treat them like common protectrons. I don't care how smart they are, or how much time they had, it doesn't seem plausible because it's not explained properly.
I mean fair enough it's a bit far to start asking where they build the micro-chips and obtain their silicone (although it wouldn't be too hard for them to have explained this "most of our gen 2 synths are built from components brought back and recycled by our gen 1 scouting patrols") , but I feel it's equally as bad to just go "lmao fuck it, it's a sci-fi game!" whenever people start to point out plot holes and bad world-building. A lot of fallout 4, The institute especially, has a bit too much "shut up its cool just go with it" for my liking and it makes it hard to take the plot or any characters involved seriously.
Yes, fallout has a running theme of powerful factions living under flawed ideals, but the institute doesn't have justifiably flawed motives- it has vague references to saving humanity through science, despite doing absolutely nothing to that end at all throughout the game, and an overly complicated system of producing technological slaves that are capable of thinking that they then go on to punish for thinking. it's hard to get invested in a story if none of the character's motivations are explained properly and just end up making very little sense.
I think calling students, graduates, and professors in MIT "just a bunch of nerds that got trapped in a basement" undervalues the skills of those people and the resources at the institute's disposal. It isn't unreasonable to assume MIT/CIT had underground facilities for either experiments or storage, this is a universe where every other building has some kind of fortified shelter under it. There's also a ton of shit for the other colleges in the game to suggest the military was using Boston as a hub for research, it would make sense for the biggest institute of technology to be in on all that. You don't find much of that in CIT itself because it's practically a crater.
The Institute getting their start as an underground powerhouse of technology is entirely plausible in the Fallout universe. How they kept that stuff up for 200 years is shakier, but less plausible shit has happened.
Funny you should mention House, because House's existence and plan practically prove that the Institute can perfectly work within the confines of Fallout's universe.
His army, the casino and all of that were built [I]before[/I] the war, back when he still had money and power. House admits that the sole reason he was delayed by two hundred years, and why it took that long to get things started, is because he had to rely on minimal funds and resources to convince third parties to work for him, while being nothing to them but a face on the screen display of a bunch of big robots. When you talk to him about the Platinum Chip, he says in his exact words :
[quote][I]"With all that money pouring in? Give me 20 years, and I'll reignite the high technology development sectors. 50 years, and I'll have people in orbit."[/I][/quote]
And while there may be some exaggeration in here, the point is clear : give a genius an unquestioning and loyal workforce, and his productivity will exponentially grow.
Back to the Institute. First of all, it remained a bunch of nerds (who happened to be the top graduates of the most prestigious technological center in the United States, which going through Fallout's 50s "Great America" lens, translates into literally the smartest motherfuckers on earth) dwelling in a basement for about thirty years, after which the descendants decided to fund the Institute. So already, it's clear that they did not in fact magically become a huge science center. It was simply a new generation getting a bit self-righteous about their credentials.
Until relatively recently, the guys were hiding in essentially boiler rooms - if [url=http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/7/7f/Kells_meeting.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20151126181336]Kellogg's Flashback[/url] is any indication, their headquarters were nothing glamorous. This is furthermore proved by the fact Nick Valentine was physically dumped out of the Institute in a pile of garbage, which is kind of a low tech way to go about things for a group like that.
Then cereal brand comes along, finds them a way to get Gen 3 Synths going (similarly to the courier giving House his army), and now that they have access to a cheap, obedient and efficient workforce, their productivity will exponentially increase to stupid levels - and unlike House, who is a single mind behind an industry, this is dozens of people behind just raw scientific research. We don't know when the original Gen 3 breakthrough occurred exactly, but the first Gen 3 synth spotted outside of the Institute was in 2229, giving them roughly sixty years to develop to the point we've seen. If House, exaggerations in mind, said he could get people to space in fifty years, it's fair to assume that a large group of people could get shining new headquarters and a teleporter up and running in sixty.
[t]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/548682046885382532/555E337411F9FF6EDD27DF22DF4D6FEE7806E935/[/t]
D'you think this could be a [URL="http://wasteland.wikia.com/wiki/Toaster_Repair"]Wasteland reference[/URL] or is that just wishful thinking?
Now that you mention it, That was another thing I liked about house- he actually has a tangible plan for the future, he lays out what he hopes to achieve and expects you to be on board with his glorious vision. [sp] shaun [/sp] Says something incredibly vauge about re-defining humanity with the synths that he insists totally [i]aren't[/i] human and expects you to be on board with his glorious vision.
Also I was going to point out that they clearly have factory's under CIT because you [sp] blast into one during the brotherhood ending [/sp] so i suppose that answers the dude who asked where microchips would be made.
I'm not defending the institute or anything but I recall thinking early in the game that gen 1 synths were used by the institute as mechanised locusts, stripping areas of resources to dump into the institute's workbench.
I can't remember if the game backs this up or if the gen 1s are just on the surface for no apparent reason.
[QUOTE=fear me;49829903][t]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/548682046885382532/555E337411F9FF6EDD27DF22DF4D6FEE7806E935/[/t]
D'you think this could be a [URL="http://wasteland.wikia.com/wiki/Toaster_Repair"]Wasteland reference[/URL] or is that just wishful thinking?[/QUOTE]
Don't you find several of these throughout the game ?
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