Next to the Brotherhood of Steel, The Railroad, and Minutemen, the Institute is one of the major factions of Fallout 4. Unlike the other factions, though, they are quite isolated and the most secretive. Depending on the players' choices in the game, The Institute can be enemies or allies. Outside what they do in Fallout 4, the Institute has a long and rich history that goes back to before the Great War.
This powerful faction has humble roots, starting off as just a school for higher education. After the bombs fell, though, what survived of the school slowly developed into a juggernaut of post-war science. They developed robotics, synths, and bioscience facilities and slowly became known as the boogeyman of the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth Institute Of Technology
Before the bombs fell, the Institute was a campus called the Commonwealth Institute of Technology. Professors, staff, and students were brilliant in terms of scientific discoveries. One staff member invented the Assaultron-class robot, some graduates later founded the Cambridge Polymer Labs, and some went on to work for Vault-Tec. Under the university, there was an experimental nuclear reactor. When the Great War threw down the bombs, many staff members and students fled downwards where the nuclear reactor was.
Those that survived underground began to dig out more space and build what would later be the Institute. Due to their backgrounds, what was built had more than residential spaces, as they also built laboratories. Living safe from the horrors of battle above, these survivors also began to have families.
Becoming The Institute
The Institute known in the games was not founded by the survivors of the Great War, but by their children. At first, they had open communication with the outside world. As they made their first generation of synths, they used them to work with the people of the Commonwealth to try to create a new stable government. However, mutual distrust on both sides made these plans collapse. The Institute decided it was better off in isolation.
As more scientific achievements happened underground, the more isolated the Institute became; not just in terms of physical distance from the wasteland, but in terms of goals and thinking as well. They began to believe no one from above would understand the significance of the science they performed. They had surpassed pre-war technology in both their synths and in inventions like the molecular relay, which could teleport people and things in and out of the Institute. These huge strides psychologically distanced the scientists from those in the Commonwealth, and the Institute decided to send synths to experiment and scavenge on the surface.
The New Generation Of Synths
The Institute's favorite and defining project was their synths, but they eventually reached a roadblock in terms of further developing synths. After their second generation, and as of the year 2178, the Institute wanted to create synthetic flesh. They had limited resources and tried using FEV samples as their starting point while kidnapping Commonwealth citizens from above to experiment on. The Institute used the FEV on these victims and would monitor their mutations before tagging and discarding their bodies. The research stopped in 2224, as the scientists concluded that despite developing two perfect FEV strains for synths, the radiation-induced damage in the DNA of subjects proved too difficult an obstacle.
In 2227, the Institute made a breakthrough when they stole a pre-War baby from a Vault-Tec cryo-lab with a genetic code untouched by radiation. The baby, Shaun, had his DNA produce the third generation of synths. Due to this, Shaun became known as "Father" since he was the father of all the new synths. With the third generation of synths complete, the FEV research slowed to a halt and was abandoned.
Fallout 4 is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.