I like Valentine, but he doesn't remember being an institute synth. In fact, every single institute synth has attempted to murder the crap out of me on sight.

So I'm having trouble feeling bad for synths, because I've had no good experiences with them... so why did you join the railroad? Did you meet a synth who needed help somewhere in the game and convince you they could be good people, is there a character who made you want to help them escape?

Maybe we'll get some dlc about synths being on the run, some kind of story to help us see things from their perspective, but for now, what made you decide to help the railroad?

yea the factions arent that great TBH

i understand what your saying - and it was hard for me to associate that faction with being 'good' - but the NPC's in it are too damn nice. Its just literally such a stupid faction and cause that they are fighting for. I see the inspiration in the civil rights movement and all that , but seriously, give me a break lol

Trust me, when if you went to the end of their questline, you would utterly despise them.

You could always join to fight the Institute. Until the BoS get to the Commonwealth in force no one else seems to fight them. And once you get there you can talk to Glory and start to care.

I gained their trust, and pulled an Anakin and slaughtered them in their hideout to a man with my brotherhood buddies, stole their robot (which they didn't need anymore) claimed the railway rifle as a prize...and never looked back.

Honestly when slaughtering them to a man I didn't really care, not as bad as I felt when Mr. House sent me to kill off the Brotherhood...that just made me feel low.

No they haven't. You just don't know it.

Empathy, principles and a reasonably good grasp of history.

My rationale for helping the Railroad was that having visited the Institute and seen what my Minutemen was up against it was clear that I needed all the allies I could get. The Railroad had helped me decode the courser chip, so I was acquainted with them already.

So killing children and shooting unarmed civilians is ok? Don't even get me started on patriot.

Personally, I tend to view the Railroad as being at least as dangerous as the Institute. If the Institute were in the business of making explosives, then the Railroad would be in the business of hiding them so no one knows where they are.

My issue with the Railroad was more driven by strategy than by morals (though I found the moral problems dubious enough). I knew the Institute possessed amazing technology and that they had kidnapped my son. Why would I side with a bunch of scruffy misfits in a basemant who's very first mission is about how they got their butt handed to them against the most technologically savvy outfit in the Commonwealth (if not the whole US) in order to save a bunch of robots? My son just got kidnapped. I want him back. Existential philosophy about sapient toasters and 10 people in a basemant aren't going to cut it.

There is none......unless you want the human race to go extinct in Fallout.....same for the Institute and the Minutemen is just another way of achieving the Railroad ending.

you know you can make it to were the brotherhood lives in new vegas right?

NOt if you side with House

The Railroad seems to mainly want to help the Mark 3's as the Mark 1's aren't much better than a Protectotron and the Mark 2's are still obviously not human. Glory mentions this if you play through the Railroad path and she's a Mark 3 synth.

Poor Patriot, killed himself for seeing his home and loved ones go up in smoke. However, that was his personal choice. The Railroad lamented his loss, and made the decision to evacuate any Institute personnel they could.

My reasoning for going Railroad was simple: Institute sees surface-dwellers as abominations and cattle, and Brotherhood's strict pro-human policy is harmful to too many of my friends and allies (even if a number of their zealots, Elder included, can be sympathetic in the right circumstances). They gave me the means to take down the Institute, without asking me to genocide anyone.

It isn't like siding with the Railroad means that they're now the governing body of the Commonwealth. That's what the Minutemen are for. The only reprehensible thing they've made me do is eliminate the Brotherhood's presence in the Commonwealth, but that's worlds better than eradicating surface-dwellers like cockroaches for the sake of a "brighter future".

Only reason to help the railroad is for the ballistic weave really helps out if you wanna run with light armor

I felt really bad for slaughtering all of the railroad people, they put up hardly any fight at all. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. I only had to kill two unnamed railroad agents and they screamed in fear while fighting me.

Just got ballistic weave and deliverer, so Its time for them to die.

I feel bad for stabbing them in the back but they are seriously the most faulty faction. Even Deacon straight up says he does not know what the Railroad would do if the Institute would no longer exist and that the Railroad gives only very minimal care to the rest of the commonwealth so they would be purposeless as soon as soon as the Institute is gone.

To be fair, they'd have ended slavery in the Commonwealth and that, by itself, is pretty awesome.

But the (questionable) slavery of, what? A hundred synths? How many synths actually feel enslaved, compared to the number of those who are perfectly content with what they are, like X6? At the cost of how many victims? Is a Railroad victory really a positive outcome in any way?

You're having trouble because no reason actually exists. They're a synth-loving menace.

I haven't gotten that far in the game, but reading your discussion and your arguments, I'd say Beth can't have failed completely on the ambiguity front here.

Just sayin'...

I dunno, there's enough Synths to form a revolt against the Institute and the Synths don't inform on their superiors about the revolt. So, honestly, there seems to be a lot. Also, the scale of the number of people is difficult to gage because what we see isn't literal. How many people live in Diamond City?

A couple of dozen NPCs are shown but it's probably not that and more like several hundred or even a few thousand.

Maybe more.

We don't know how many live in the Institute. A few thousand? Ten thousand? How many are Synths?

We have to use our imaginations.

The scale issue is certainly true, but it's still presented in such a way that I get the impression the synths actively seeking freedom are isolated cases. And a revolt inside the Institute doesn't really require high numbers - the only combatants there are the Coursers and a number of fragile and fairly dumb gen1s and 2s.

And that still leaves open the question - why are the 'rights' and desires of one group of synths more important than those of another? So, you're making life better for, say H2-22, but also effectively ruining the life of X6-88. Is that 'justice'? Why should you/the Railroad be allowed to be the judge of that?