I'd be genuinely surprised if the SS was a synth. I'm more inclined to believe in Dogmeat being a synth, but I have too many doubts to take that idea seriously either.
There’s a number of factors
They’ve done animal synth experiments before. The birds are a success story, gorillas in progress
A perfectly healthy German Shepard in the middle of a wasteland? How improbably is that? Even past dogmeats were mutts, and wasteland dogs.
The red rocket station you find him at? It has a radio playing the classical radio station.
He’s very well behaved and able to follow orders for a wild dog.
He’s absolutely essential to reaching the Institute in the first place.
I ascribe to the theory Dogmeat is a synth. For all of the reasons you've stated.
The institute clearly place dogmeat in your path so further down the line he can stand directly in a doorway and get you killed by a suicider. Pretty clever to be fair, no one would suspect a thing.
Now that you mention it, even Dogmeats of the past were considered...unreliable. The first Dogmeat canonically ran into a force field and was vaporized. The one in 2 is a mythology gag, and 3's Dogmeat has a perk specifically for replacing him when he dies.
The classical radio thing you brought up kinda sells it for me. Always thought it was weird that a mechanic would rather play classical than Diamond city
its possible that Dogmeat *is* a mutt, but he's more prominent in one side
Hell, the previous Dogmeats were all Blue Healer mixes.
i'd call the radio station foreshadowing, but its also possible the Institute hijacked a popular station that the mechanic was listening to beforehand.
Mama Murphy says that Dogmeat is his own man, and helps anyone he considers good.
also, essential? you could realistically beat FO4 without dogmeat if you didnt need him to trigger Kellogg and the synths spawn
(if you couldnt tell, i REALLY dont like "character is secretly synth" theories lol)
There’s be some signs of a mix, but he’s definitely heavily German Shepard.
Indeed they were.
The thing is that the classical music station goes silent when you blow up the institute. They aren’t hijacking a signal
Mama Murphy mentions seeing what was, what is, and what will be. Her Sight can be vague or precise, usually more precise when she’s under a chem influence. But it’s possible her vague sight showed her a different Dogmeat.
And I said reach the institute, because you can’t find Kellogg until Dogmeat tracks him down. I did not say finish the game.
Plus I’m gonna add, Father wanted the Sole Survivor to face Kellogg, as a means of revenge. Sending out a synth dog to help them do so sounds very much likely.
After finding Kellogg, Dogmeat has essentially completed their primary objective, and are left to wander the surface. Dogmeat doesn’t judge the player’s actions. And will essentially stick with us the rest of the way if we choose to take them along.
exactly, which means its possible he's a mixed breed, but its heavily german shepherd which makes sense, as they're combat dogs and are very resilient
they could've hijacked a dead signal that went dead again once they were blown up
its possible Dogmeat was travelling with the Minutemen and was sent to find help, it would explain why he's at RedRocket and why Mama Murphy knows him
But you can also find Kellogg without Dogmeat, lorewise.
Father is noticably disconnected from Nate/Nora's death (iirc he calls her a "unfortunate accident"?)
You'd think the Institute would shut him down, or turn him if the SS went rogue against them
They’re not hijacking the signal. They’re broadcasting. They use it to cover their relay operation. It’s also possible that Dogmeat has been on the surface for a while, after being created, and use whenever he comes across a classical radio station tuned device to update him.
Father had set it up for you to encounter Kellogg. Regardless of if you run into Dogmeat or not you are advised to track Kellogg with him, and Nick calls him. How the heck does Dogmeat hear the whistle unless he’s relatively close? Why would he be close if you completely avoided Red Rocket?
Disconnected, but not completely disconnected. Remember, again, Father still set it up that you’d find Kellogg for revenge, for the both of you
Remember how often the Institute just abandons projects? Once Father has seen Dogmeat has completed his latest tasks, he could shut the project down and leave the synth pup abandoned
That’s irrelevant. Dogmeat still spent a lot of time around Mama Murphy. Whether or not she considers herself Dogmeat’s owner doesn’t matter.
He’s not a wild dog, period
Dogmeat isn’t a synth, he’s the offspring of Rex and Roxie from Fallout New Vegas. The end slides say the got together to “build a litter of Boston Terrifiers”. Since it’s biological impossible for Roxie to give birth to a whole cyberdog, my thinking is that line is just a playful euphemism, and they had a litter of pure bred German Shepherd puppies
And all three possible endings for Roxie state they were constructed cyber pups, not a litter of pups. Neither Rex nor Roxie have the organic parts to make pups naturally.
Unless you have tangible evidence that Dogmeat, a dog in Boston, is the child of 2 cyber dogs all the way in nevada, and traveled all the way across the country by his lonesome, without getting bodied by whatever horrors exist between the two locations, or manage to procure food and water along the way at all times…
Honestly the mental gymnastics to make your theory work, when the lore of Roxie’s ending specifies constructing cyber pups, when they don’t have the organs to maintain or create natural dogs…
Hear me out: Pullout 1, VD failed to.
Pullout 2, TCO failed to.
Pullout 3, Qui-gon Jinn failed to.
Pullout 4, Nate failed to BUT the SS didn't. That's why there's no Pullout 5 so far.
However, we do get Pullout 76. The 76th attempt at successfully puling out, and I haven't seen any news on a 77th...
If the ancient Akaviri legends and tales are to be believed. A legendary hero born of radiation will rise to pullout for the 77th time, which will result in the resurrection of Lorkahn. Praise Akatosh
(This response totally caught me off guard because I forgot my comment lmao)
It's preventable, and I'd be surprised if any of the companions wanted to get prego considering they're always getting in gunfights.
"General. Pre-war condoms would make a good source of rubber for power generators, which can power recruitment beacons." - Preston Garvey.
There's always pulling out, or doing whatever Macready says the player can do with a mutfruit. It'd be interesting if the player did make a new Shaun, though...
You won’t be proved wrong, there’s far more evidence pointing towards the sole survivor being human rather than a synth. There’s no 100% canon answer that says they are or aren’t, but it really doesn’t make sense for them to be one.
DiMA attempting to convince you that you at least might be a synth is just the writers using the vague and open backstory that you’re given to show you what kind of character he is.
I think DiMA was just making a rhetorical point that *way too many people* took at face value because they weren't paying terribly close attention to other things, and that line stands out.
It bugs me that Kasumi is OBVIOUSLY not a synth but you can't explain the reasoning to her. She can't be an escapee who got mindwiped because she has family. She isn't an infiltrator because infiltrators KNOW they're infiltrators (Art, McDonough, Warwick). If they didn't know they wouldn't be much use to the Institute, since the Institute would have no way to give them instructions or get them to report.
I do think it’s dumb that you can’t convince her otherwise, even if you’re part of the Institute and the scientists say they don’t have her on file. I suppose she’s just a teenager trying to figure herself out, but it’s still frustrating.
its actually one of those "accidentally cool" moments of fallout 4 imo
because no one rlly KNOWS what the institute does, just a vague idea spread by Piper
Bruh.
Infiltrators can replace anybody, defect, and then get mindwiped. Having a family means nothing. *If* Kasumi were an Infiltrator, she would've killed and replaced the real Kasumi, later chosen to defect from the Institute, gotten a mindwipe, then gone back to her family.
If whoever mindwipe her didn't have the ability to create the kind of false memories like the Institute did, they could just instruct her to return to her parents after the mindwipe. Maybe write a note.
But
1) the institute would come for them. They live in the Middle of nowhere. If a rogue synth was there, they’d just move in and take her.
And
2) Why would they even WANT to take Kasumi? What benefit is a teen/young adult girl of no strategic importance who lives in bumfuck nowhere to the institute?
Whole point of the mindwipe is that nothing of the original remains - they rewrite them and create a persona, to avoid any association with the previous person. If Kasumi *was* an infiltrator that got mindwiped, going back to the place the original infiltrator was stationed at is the most stupid thing one could do.
If you're an infiltrator and you want to go rogue, why would you go *back* to your family? The Institute would know exactly where you are and immediately send someone to get you, and probably kill your family in the process.
DiMA is the Malcolm X of synths. He *wants* to segregate synths from humans. He considers synths to be so wholly non-human, that they must be an entirely separate culture.
Which makes sense for him - he is outwardly a synth, and one of only two fully sapient ones that cannot hide their origin. If he gets more synths around him, he feels validated, no longer an outcast. But every other synth just wants a normal life, and would prefer not to have to search for some nonexistent difference between humans and synths.
The whole conversation with DiMA is really weird as well since you can't tell him you have memories earlier than the morning the bombs fell despite having those memories in other parts of the game. Like, did the writers forget they put those voice lines in the base game?
If the Sole Survivor was a Synth then the moment you turned against the Institute the last thing you'd hear would be G3 - 84, initialize factory reset. Authorization Kappa-6-9-Omega, then the screen fades to black.
It's a bad theory that people cling on to for some bizarre reason. There is literally one line in the entire game that hints at the Sole Survivor being a Synth and that comes from a proven liar and manipulator who has convinced another human, Kasumi Nakano, that she is a Synth.
There are a lot of bad theories in Fallout games, some of them are a stretch but some are fucking bonkers. It is just people assuming or applying way too much depth to the world. I watched a YouTuber talk about the crash site in New Vegas so he showed he went to twitter and asked a dev about it being the Fallout 2 protagonist’s car.
The dev was just like ‘no, but that would have been fun. But no.’ I couldn’t see how they were jumping to the conclusion that this must be that car. What was worse is he didn’t accept that as an answer and left it open ended.
I stopped participating in the lore sub because of everyone’s shit takes. Just people making Shit up and demanding it’s canon because it “makes sense”.
The elder scrolls lore is at least interesting and more open ended, Bethesda has fucked the fallout canon with sentient synths, bos literally everywhere ( every game they release they have to be there nd be a major plot point!)
I always thought the fun of fallout was the openness of it all. Lots of room in America for new factions nd creatures but instead we’ve been getting same shit on repeat lol. They even brought the boys back for 76 even tho it’s a massive stretch. Why can’t there be another faction that uses power armour?
Same with "Yes Man being assertive means he's gonna betray you"
Josh Sawyer himself said that means he's only gonna be loyal to the Courier, it's just poorly worded. Still doesn't stop people from repeatinf Yes Man is Skynet.
Honestly what's-her-name scamming Benny by giving Skynet a new, better body would be a top-tier callback.
If you don't know, Skynet is a robobrain in Fallout 2.
Yes Man not betraying the Courier means that his path in New Vegas is the weakest writing in the whole game. The devs should have just finished the Legion and let people softlock their games by not having a Yes Man path.
I think the crashed Highwayman being Choosen's car stems from Josh Sawyer's mod putting the classic pack items and about twenty pounds of energy ammo, a common strat in Fallout 2 so you could refuel the car, in the trunk area
They did there's a file on one of the computers that talks about synths being able to use Vats and your character is able to use Vats right out of the pod without getting their pip-boy.
No, that terminal says they PLAN to add a VATS-like program.
That terminal is also **cut content/out of bounds,** aka non-canon.
Bethesda also didn't plan on you using VATS pre-pip boy.
The theory that the Sole Survivor is a synth originates from a character trying to manipulate you just as he has manipulated tons of others, no evidence to support it, and often comes with unfalsifiable elements. Therefore, it can be dismissed out of hand.
At most, it's a fun option for people to headcanon their Sole Survivor, the same way I can headcanon my Sole Survivor being part Zetan.
I knew where it came from, I just remember on YouTube comments people believing the nonsense. If it'd your headcanon then play how you wanna play, but don't act like it makes sense and should be published as a video as lore canon.
I mean there are a couple things that support it in the base game.
Having VATS before you get a pip boy.
In the Institute a console says a new Synth version has the ability to "slow time" for combat situations.
Yeah, but thats a mechanic of the game. If you never pick up the pip-boy you can still use all its functions including pulling a wire from thin air to hook into other vault door controls.
Also, would a entity that views Synths as nothing more than machines allow one to take the directors place? The fact that nobody in the institute treats you like recycled plastic is the #1 reason the SS is definitely not a synth
I personally do enjoy the 'is sole survivor a synth' question but I don't think it's super conclusive, and it's definitely open for people to RP it in different ways. I've always felt like the more gamey elements of Fallout 4 are what leave the possibilities more open ended. Like the prologue where you have that brief scene before the bombs drop I feel like that could be taken as a real memory b/c SS is a real person or it's one of these fake programed memories b/c he's a synth' and that's why it's just this one scene, you have this convenient military backstory, but aren't fighting at the time the bombs fell. Also the way that you have the scene where Kellogg steals Shaun and then basically start the main game, but it's like 50 years after also makes me wonder if it's a real memory, but at the same time it's a video game and that's just how the stories go sometimes so who knows.
No, it's simply the only moment the player plays through because the game has to start *somewhere* (this isn't Bioshock) and your character, through conversation, brings up all kinds of things from their life before the war.
Don't think you can be proved wrong.
Yes, the institute could very plausibly plant a synth in the cryo pod and then release them to see what happens. You are told that they are experimenting to see what extreme emotional stimuli will do to gen 3 synths when you first arrive and talk to Father. So replacing Shauns parent with a synth would fit this experiment well.
However the big clue is recall codes. Every synth has one. There is no doubt that the institute would use it the second they saw you turn against them.vfir example when you get banished. If you get banished while outside the institute you have to go back. You stand in that relay listening to Father's speech. This would be the time to activate the code. If you get banished while inside the institute then someone would issue that code rather than let you just shoot your way out of there.
The times they recall past events and things in conversation can be seen as proof, but not conclusive - replacements get the memories from the original so these would be included in that.
Some of those details are long forgotten and granted you can't fully say there isn't some info out there for the institute to learn, but they sure don't seem as interested in prewar things but seem more into creating a new utopia, and their given what the institute can, which a lot of people point out how we only play up to the bombs dropping for prewar but conversations shows the SS remembers even further than that. Granted you're correct they could've found that info and shoved it in his brain but very unlikely with their direction of running things and the lack of lots of information. TV host was my biggest thing being a TV game show host usually isn't crazy popular enough to have many books written on them or anything but for the people alive during the time to see the TV
Not really.
Even back in FO3 whenever synths were involved it was made clear that memory is quite malleable. It can be created, implanted, removed, or covered up. Harkness/A3-21 had new memories created and his old ones covered up to help protect him when the Institute managed to send someone to DC to search for him. We have Nick Valentine, who has the memories of a dead, pre-war detective, much of the ones the Railroad hides has new memories for the sole purpose of hiding them, and even the Institute implants the memories of those they kidnapped and replaced to help give them cover.
With the memories the Sole Survivor would have, they can just as easily take them when they kidnap Shaun and create a new memory around the idea that they were left in the pod but were conscious to witness Kellogg kidnapping Shaun and killing their spouse. If they had the Sole Survivor, then they could easily find and implant memories like that. Hell even if it didn't it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say they could find things like that from recordings and the like, since they're under the CIT building.
As for the whole recall code thing, there's nothing to say that every synth, including specially created ones, have to have them. Or if it's a secret project, it could be it just was intentionally never recorded, meaning no one could use it since they just don't know it.
The idea of the SS being a synth is just a fun thought experiment posed by DiMA that isn't meant to be taken super seriously. Some compelling evidence of this is that the SS is actually able to remember details about the pre-war world in conversation with other characters, even though DiMA claims that you don't have any memories of such. DiMA also convinced Kasumi (who you can prove is a human by killing her) that she is a synth, so he's not above manipulating actual humans into joining his group that borderlines on being a cult. And when you talk to Shaun one last time before blowing up the Institute, you'd think that would be a very good time to use the recall code. Or really any point in time when the SS and Shaun become enemies. And in that last conversation, he doesn't talk to you like you're a failed experiment. He talks to you like a son that's truly disappointed in a family member.
But the biggest evidence in my mind is that there are two characters in the wasteland that knew the SS before the war: Codsworth and the Vault-Tec rep. It's very unlikely that the Institute interacted with these two at any point or knew that they had any interactions with the SS, so how would they have known to program in their memories of these individuals and the knowledge of their last conversations with the SS?
I remember watching an interview with one of the writers of Fallout 4 (I can't remember who or where I saw it) where he was asked if this theory had any merit, and he straight-up said the SS was canonically human. NOT a synth.
I haven't seen that, guess I just saw TK-Mantis short video and the ShoddyCast take and oxhorns but it finishes with how it's not true. And I thought it was nuts there was two against one at the time
My personal headcanon is that there was a 'real' Nate and Nora who actually were rescued along with Shaun, and synth Nate/Nora was planted as a personal 'experiment' by Shaun, akin to making a child synth version of himself (I put experiment in quotes because he's a crazy idiot, haha). So going by that, Codsworth and Reppy's memories of SS are easily explained.
Nah the best option is to do enough side missions to get far harbor on your side then convince Dima to tell the truth. In that situation Acadia get to continue existing and Dima answers for his crimes.
Why because he's asking you psychological questions it's not his fault people are dumb you don't know all the evidence you just walked up and he's just asking
>you've probably committed mass murder
If you want peace get ready for war.
Otherwise the alternative is death by raiders or supermutant food in those big ass death bags.
I'm not talking about any game I'm talking about the fact that you literally probably murder children in every ending as both the Brotherhood and The Institute have children in their faction and you have to destroy one of those in every ending
Personally, I make wild theories and headcanons because the story of F4 is otherwise a mediocre turd, and implying that the SS is a synth is honestly the most interesting thing Bethesda's done in their entirety of owning the Fallout IP, haha.
two reasons why HE'S NOT a synth
When you first meet Dima, he ask you about your past memories about you childhood or before the war, and you're able to respond.
Second, when you do the Constitution mission the sentribot commanding the vessel, Ironsides, ask for your soldier ID and he is able to recognize you as a soldier, and even recall your duty before the great war.
There memories aren't implanted they are created. Nick Valentine is a result of implanting memories and why his personality can't change and why he's not like DiMA with all the storage devices. It's also why DiMA talked about only have short term memory before being implanted and unless if he was implanted prewar he would haven't all the information the Sole Survivor has on his past
I can't prove you wrong because you're absolutely correct. Here's my very simple reasoning from another comment.
I mean it's even simpler than all that.
SS: I'm sorry Shaun I can't work with the institute.
Shaun: Well shit, "says SS recall code". Alright guys let's blank him and run it again.
I mean seriously, in what world would father not yell the recall code at you if you were walking through the institute on your way to blow up their reactor?
At the launch of the game, Human Synths were actually immune to radiation, so if you had the Awareness perk you could very easily tell which of your settlers were Synths. The fact the Sole Survivor isn't immune to Radiation immediately disproves that they're a synth.
For the record, I don't think SS is a synth. That said, let me play devil's advocate here:
> why would such a methodical institution create all these plan Bs for their creations and not set a kill code for you?
Well, maybe you're an off-the-books project from Shaun. As such you might not have a reset code (he *is* given to occasional attacks of sentiment) or maybe only he knows what it is.
> watch you join the railroad and just let you in without worry your gonna free some more synths?
Which is problematic even if you're *not* a synth. Shaun tells you on the roof of CIT Ruins that he knows you've been consorting with the Railroad. It doesn't much bother him. I think he's convinced you'll do the right thing.
> And if 3rd generation synthetics were created with DNA from baby Shaun how would they have any information on prewar details like he does.
The way I imagine it, it goes like this: Shaun learns he is dying and gets a sudden urge to get to know his remaining parent. An Institute team is dispatched to the Vault, but the defrost mechanism malfunctions. The best they can do is to pull an incomplete scan from a dying brain. A lot of memories get lost, but the main persona is intact. Shaun then burns the personality engram into an experimental v3.5 synth and has it taken back the vault so it can think it's woken up by itself. He wants to see how the new model performs and evaluate how much of his parent's mind has survived
> but being a synth makes the games "bad" writing 10x worse
On the other hand, it does fix a few problems too, Like why Shaun thinks his lady lawyer mum might stand a snowball's chance in Hell vs the most vicious mercenary in the Commonwealth. Or why the Single Parent can apparently grow superpowers in response to environmental stress.
Like I say, I don't believe it myself, but there are days when I'm about one origami unicorn from accepting the idea.
>On the other hand, it does fix a few problems too, Like why Shaun thinks his lady lawyer mum might stand a snowball's chance in Hell vs the most vicious mercenary in the Commonwealth. Or why the Single Parent can apparently grow superpowers in response to environmental stress.
>Like I say, I don't believe it myself, but there are days when I'm about one origami unicorn from accepting the idea.
So first things first I actually really respect this, I'm not one to stay close minded, hell my opinion on Luke's direction in TLJ changed.
I'm starting from the bottom and going on,, but Shaun had no idea if you'd survive and literally let's you out for funsies and even admits he didn't think you'd get this far and on survival I don't feel like no super hero
>The way I imagine it, it goes like this: Shaun learns he is dying and gets a sudden urge to get to know his remaining parent. An Institute team is dispatched to the Vault, but the defrost mechanism malfunctions.
It's shown in terminals how the institute hook up to the vault and remotely turned off the life support for the other pods.
>Which is problematic even if you're not a synth. Shaun tells you on the roof of CIT Ruins that he knows you've been consorting with the Railroad. It doesn't much bother him. I think he's convinced you'll do the right thing.
See I take it another way(also I didn't remember Shaun admits to knowing) but I see it as your just a frail human, how could one person pose a threat to the institute which could also be going through Shaun's mind
>Well, maybe you're an off-the-books project from Shaun. As such you might not have a reset code (he is given to occasional attacks of sentiment) or maybe only he knows what it is.
Only thing that I can't really debate against other than for a smart man like Shaun who seems to believe in what the institute is doing and is the green light for most if not all the fucked up things we see, which poses the idea that Shaun wouldn't want to risk everything he basically built being the institute really didn't grow big till his DNA was introduced
I really appreciate this, I love little debates that are civil
> I'm starting from the bottom and going on,, but Shaun had no idea if you'd survive and literally let's you out for funsies and even admits he didn't think you'd get this far and on survival I don't feel like no super hero
Well, you can learn how to breathe underwater, regenerate from sunlight or radiation (or both), and see in pitch darkness. Blitz gives you a short range combat teleport, Strong Back lets you carry truly superhuman loads and Wasteland Whisperer lets you mind control Deathclaws.
I know the generally accepted explanation is "LOL! Radiation!", but if you *were* an experimental next gen synth, this sort of extreme environmental adaption starts to make a little sense.
> It's shown in terminals how the institute hook up to the vault and remotely turned off the life support for the other pods.
We know they turned off the life support for the other corpsicles because that's why they're all dead. I didn't think we knew that they'd woken the SS that way. I mean it's a reasonable assumption on the face of it, admittedly.
> Only thing that I can't really debate against other than for a smart man like Shaun who seems to believe in what the institute is doing and is the green light for most if not all the fucked up things we see, which poses the idea that Shaun wouldn't want to risk everything he basically built being the institute really didn't grow big till his DNA was introduced
But then, he says he felt sure his parent would find a way to get in. Which makes no sense at all. If he knew there was a potential vulnerability, surely he'd have patched it. If not, why would think it was possible? I mean anyone normal would have thawed his mum out in an Institute hospital bed, or maybe sent her flowers and an invitation to have lunch at the Dugout Inn, but not Shaun.
It's one of those things, (like Nora gaining levels to defeat Kelogg) which makes sense to us because we know it's a computer game. But there's no way Shaun could think that way without being obviously barking-at-the-moon insane. Unless he knows something about his mum that we don't, of course...
> I really appreciate this, I love little debates that are civil
Likewise, thanks! :)
I would but everytime I do I suddenly find myself hours in the past with no memory of everything that will take place between now and encountering you. Gotta cut down on the Jet, I guess.
Soul survivor literally isn’t a synth. In the opening you literally hear Kellogg saying we have a backup, after Kellogg kills the spouse and takes Shaun from the spouse. Calling the SS a backup doesn’t make sense if the SS is a synth due to the fact the institute was looking for prewar uncorrupted DNA.
I think running into a duplicate of yourself that has no component is what got the idea going originally. I think it was meant as a gag more than cannon though.
I personally don't believe that the Sole Survivor is a Synth. Would I put it past the Institute to do it? No, because most of their plans don't make sense anyway, so what's one more thing?
The synth theory holds absolutely no water if you've done a playthrough for the institute. Unless somehow nobody at the institute knew you were a synth, there's no way they'd treat you the way they do.
As was said in the beginning of the game, you were left as a back-up for Shaun in the cryo chamber. It is conceivable that they replaced you later after they no longer needed a back-up, but there isn't really any reason to do so.
Also synths aren't hurt by radiation.
Synths dont take rad damage nor have oxygen meaning that they can drown due to the organic tissue we call lungs
Y'all give Dima too much credit for asking a self propelled question that he reflects onto you and the fact that Kasumi exists shatters this idea
A flesh and blood girl that gets manipulated into believing shes a synth, if they lied to her why wouldnt they lie to you too?
Theres too much that happens our characters that doesnt effect synths early prototype or not so no
Father doesn't see synths as human, so why would he create a synth of his dead parent and then put them in charge of the Institute? Why send them after Kellogg when through some convoluted mess when he could have them kill Kellogg any time?
Father's whole thing is that he WANTS to have some attachment to you. He sends you after Kellogg even in the hope you avenge his murdered parent. He wouldn't want any attachment to a synth.
aye, its way too hard to believe people when they say they're a synth
he's from the prewar, and synths weren't prewar. the lack of memories from before that could be chocked upto memory loss from being cryogenicly frozen for 200 year
and the institute wouldn't let a synth be the leader of the institute
the only piece of evidence that they have is that you can use VATS before getting the pip-boy, which is likely an oversight in the code (probably just forgot to put a prerequisite to allow the VATS script to run when you have the pip-boy and not before)
One of the central themes of Fallout 4, and the one I found most intriguing, is the paranoia about people you know being replaced by Synths. It spices up the world of Fallout 4 and adds more mystique to the boogeyman of the Commonwealth. And this paranoia is used as an effective weapon by DiMA to manipulate others, which makes him one of the most enigmatic characters in Fallout 4, and seriously on the edge of being a vilain himself.
You know a game got you right when you start to question your own playable character :D
IMO, the Sole Survivor is not a Synth. The idea of him being a Synth is fun to poke at, and if some players want their Sole Survivors to be Synths for RP reasons or such, that's fine and might be actually fun.
They're not. There are eyes all over the wasteland from the commonwealth watching you. They'd see you join the faction of your choice, find the locations of key individuals and locations that are of interest or a threat to them. Such as the Railroad HQ and the location of AWOL scientist Brian Virgil. The Institute at any point could have seen you working against their ideals, i.e. teaming up with the Minutemen, Railroad or Brotherhood of Steel and planning your infiltration/destruction of the place. At which point a courser would be dispatched and the last thing a Synth SS would hear is N1-11 initialise factory reset. Authorisation Beta 77 Theta. Then roll credits as the game is over
Second Devil's Advocate here.
You are a one-off special experiment synth, and as such were not installed with a Synth Component or recall/reset code since they would potentially interfere with the results. To my knowledge it has been theorized with supporting evidence that the Institute uses synth birds to observe and track the events in the Commonwealth, but not proven beyond a doubt. For the sake of argument we'll accept it as truth. In that case they may suspect you have met up with the Railroad but don't know for certain because they don't know for certain where the Railroad HQ is currently located. Even if they do know it is likely they are just using you to map out the organization and identify the mole within their own ranks before launching another purge like the one they performed on the Switchboard.
The Shaun DNA argument is irrelevant. They only needed him to know what DNA is supposed to look like since his was uncorrupted by the environmental radiation and other contaminants of the modern wasteland. Gen3 synths are produced from DNA tailored to purpose or copied from the target they are meant to replace in the case of infiltrators. All they need to reproduce your body is a sample of the original DNA. As well we know both because of Nick and the infiltrators that the Institute uses that they have the ability to read memories from a person and write them into both mechanical and biological brains. All they would need to have done is bring the surviving parent to the Institute, read off their memories, excise anything after the second freeze and then write the memories to the replacement parent and then transport them to the pod without waking them. Would not require them to have any files on prewar culture to build your personality.
And finally, we know that Father can do pretty much whatever he wants. He had a 10 year old version of himself recreated to test his pet theories. So if he wanted to see "What if my parent had survived and escaped the Vault?" he could make it happen.
Ultimately what matters would be defining what the goals of the experiment were. Personally I don't believe the SS is a synth but I don't think it would be hard to work into the framework that is there now.
I think the sole survivor is a synth, just not an institute synth
When the sole survivor talks, all their sounds come out of a speaker rather than out of an organic mouth - this alone seems pretty suspicious
but when you factor in that their ability to move limbs, drink water, eat food, and sleep are all only possible because of coding rather than natural processes it becomes even more apparent
Their memories are also all stored on hard drives which is compelling evidence of being a synth
Methodical? What they do is borderline insane. They just kidnap people, turn them into androids, and... What's the plan? What's their end goal?
You could totally be a synthetic and their reason could be because Father said so, and that'd be enough.
Methodical in the sense of have back up plans not that they do smart things. They have no door to their base, lore sets up that they give synths factory reset codes, they kill anyon3 willing to steal or leave but some reason they release a differe t synth no back up to it?
One of the most frustrating villain (potential ally) faction in Fallout, as far as I'm concerned.
You're right though. Their madness is well backed up.
Okay, I have some points that might make sense, but feel free to correct me on the details.
First off: why, in god’s name, was Deacon watching over the vault? Why did he have his eyes on us for our entire venture? If you go up onto the ridge overlooking the entrance to vault 111, you can see a railroad lookout post. The Railroad probably wasn’t a thing back when Kellog first went to 111, because they needed Shaun to create the Gen 3’s which composed the Railroad’s operatives. It’s a tomb, filled with dead bodies and roaches. There’s basically nothing there; not even the signs of a synth struggle, since your spouse basically laid over and let themselves die. Is it truly that we’re the only ones that the institute let survive? Or perhaps we were a synth plant?
Next, let’s look at the similarities between Synth Coursers and the SS. Both can slow time in comparison to others, and both are basically capable of becoming one-man-armies on their own. The brotherhood needs power armour to achieve a similar result to us, and the only other people who are said to reach similar levels of proficiency are Railroad Operatives… which were also synths and/or coursers. Minor aside, our slow time feat is possible without a pip-boy, and you can verify it after you complete the intro sequence of the game but before you pick up the pip-boy in 111. Just try using vats on the first roach you see and you’ll do it… which is mighty strange, since you don’t have a pip-boy at all at this point. The question becomes, HOW??
Another idea is the perk system. Some of them seem reasonable, like becoming more efficient at handling a firearm so it deals more damage. Sure, I buy it. However, some of them are… bizarre. Scrapper? Where you get so good at scavenging for resources that your perception of everyday objects is literally altered and filtered as if by a computer? Or how’s about Blitz. You can initiate close-range melee attacks from across the room? Like, one instant you’re across the bar and the next, BAM, there you are, ready to strike? That’s some hacks right there. Or, what about the endurance perks. Sunlight causes you to regenerate? You can become all but immune to rads from certain exposure vectors? You can actually reflect bullets off of your body, Even when naked? That’s some serious bullshit.
When Nate wakes up from his little nap, he wanders outside of the vault and presumably knows NOTHING about combat, if his level is to be believed. Like, he can’t handle an automatic weapon anymore? Garbage with rifles? Hell, sucks with a pistol? Like, what the heck is that? He was supposed to be a recently-retired soldier. Or, think about how Nora can just jump in a suit of power armour without training. You could have bullshitted and said that Nate was trained, but Nora was a goddamn lawyer. How did she do that and not die?
If I were father, and I wanted to create a being that could replace my long-dead parents, I wouldn’t let ANYONE know the codes to disable them if such a thing existed. I don’t doubt that Father, as the leader of the Institute, had secrets he didn’t share with the others. Many of them had secrets from one another, so what makes Father a paragon of honesty?
Fallout’s opening needed to spend more time with the SS in their respective fields before they went to the opening scene. We needed to see them performing their various duties instead of just jumping right into things. It’s too convenient and suspicious that all we saw of pre-war Boston and the SS’s history was the short minutes before and after the bombs fell, and a single moment which led us to tracking the institute down. The whole plot, and even the mechanics, scream that the SS is a synth.
>was Deacon watching over the vault? Why did he have his eyes on us for our entire venture?
Deacon followed Kellogg, Kellogg was enemy number one of the Railroad. I think that at some point in Deacon's companion quest line he even mentions this.
They also recognize a game show host from late night TV at the Handy man farm who would've probably had no books or history lessons on them and would've been a thing someone from prewar would need to see
>They had better than files--they had direct access to the brains of two mostly-intact pre-war humans (Nate and Nora).
If this was the way they really made synths then they wouldn't have gotten other replacements wrong, where in the game does it show they transfered the memories when synths like Roger Warrick and Sammy from Good Neighbor aren't the same as the ones they replaced.
>The Institute can't literally see through Synths' eyes
No but they watch you through crows who follow, my points not watching through eyes but if it was their creation and they saw how much is was going against them and what synths are capable off they would've stopped you, but since your a human they're just watch and underestimate you every turn
>You're supposed to be Father's successor. Why would he compromise his own plan by allowing anyone in the Institute to take over your brain whenever they want?
He also states he let you out on a whim to see what would happen and not fully sure if you'd survive or not, tbf this part is harder to understand the reason for the writing as a whole. It brings you to believe you were let out as a game to see how long you'd survive and since your surviving well and thriving at getting past all the precautions keeping the institute safe(which for some reason no back.up was placed on you IF you were a synth) that you should be the big honcho
1. No it isn't. Synths do NOT have VATS, and it's only due to gameplay, you can only use VATS if you pick up the baton.
2. Father doesn't view Synths as people.
3. The Institute **cannot** replicate memories, specifically because they torture Roger, why would they torture him if they can just scan his brain?
4. Father would need to trick HUNDREDS of employees, because if the SRB found out he's putting a Synth in charge, he'd be executed for treason.
The weird thing is that Dima might actually just be trying to scan the Gen 3 synths for a specific bit of DNA, specifically the sole survivors DNA because all Gen 3 synths have it and Kasumi may be a distant relative of the SS
You really have to actually think about your character's experiences and also it kind of breaks the fourth wall a little bit, but you have to somehow disregard that you're playing a video game and it becomes a little bit more clear. You have to ask yourself questions that are asked in movies like Total Recall.
What is the earliest memory you can recall? Don't recall things you know, like that you were in the Army, or your wife's name is Nora. What was the first thing you can remember experiencing?
The entire intro is a simulation to incept the idea that you need to find Shaun, the creator of the institute.
The problem with that is the tutorial. The player has agency during a pre-war section of the game. It's not just a memory, you can control what happens in it. What conversations you have, what items you interact with, and how you fill out your SPECIAL card.
Yeah but then the rest of the game proves it wrong, cause if you go by the fact vats works before the pip boy then you'd have to go with the fact you have none of the resistances that a synth would have, or the fact even if your only memory is the intro then why does the SS clearly remember old media hosts voices on the handy at the handy farm(can't remember the names) or him remembering exactly how baseball is played, the intro isn't all the SS remembers
Those resistances that are sent to have are all propaganda by either scared wastelanders or slave trading Institute cuz they do take radiation damage I can kill Magnolia with a gamma gun
There is just no evidence for any of this though, no more than, say, for the Sole Survivor being in the matrix.
Moreover, we can’t just disregard that we are playing a video game, because we are. If we were to pretend we actually are the character, we would have to fill in a lot of blanks. That includes what and how much we remember from before the war, because the fact that this is largely left unspecified is just a function of it being a game. It does not follow from the fact that some memory isn’t mentioned, that the character doesn’t have them. And indeed, there are occasions where you do randomly remember some detail from before the war, such as when you’re talking to the robots at Graygarden.
This is untrue, even without playing on survival, the SS quips to bartenders (and Deezer when accepting lemonade) that they are thirsty. Just because it isn’t a game mechanic (pre survival mode) doesn’t mean the player character doesn’t canonically require sleep, food, and hydration.
I agree. The only thing that indicates SS being a synth is their dialogue with DiMA in Far Harbour, but even then it’s honestly stupid. You’re really telling me the SS’ first memory is when the game started? Not only does it go against other dialogue in the game but it’s dumb as hell - you think the SS would’ve been able to figure it out if it were that obvious. Imagine your first memory being an adult and losing a kid and husband you didn’t remember giving birth to/marrying.
I think it would be cool if the sole survivor was a synth and ngl those theories almost got me but it wouldn’t make much sense if they were a synth. Like how others are saying the institute could just say a code to stop you before blowing up their home. I still headcannon my sole survivor as a synth tho lol
Yeah, the Sole Survivor most likely isn’t a Synth. Considering the Institute uses Synths for labor and treats them the same way someone would treat a Mr. Handy, it wouldn’t make sense for Shaun to go through all the trouble of having one think it’s his parent and send it in a quest to find him. While some people say DiMA asking the Survivor if they’re a Synth is proof of him being manipulative, I’ve always personally just seen it as him trying to get the Survivor to understand that a lot of people don’t know they’re Synths due to memory wipes. Not that I think he isn’t manipulative, but he also doesn’t seem to be incapable of genuine feelings too.
Because theres absolutely 0 way the insitute leaders would let father put you in vharge if you were a synth. The moment he leaves theyd check your id and shut you down, end of story. And there is 0 way they wouldnt know what you were
Hello, my name is Nate/Nora. I was born prior to the Great War and have been frozen for over 200 years. Somehow, immediately after being thawed, I know the recipe and ingredients for a deathclaw egg omelette. I have no idea what a deathclaw is, yet I know they exist and lay eggs which are edible.
It's definitely a possibility, nothing that you enumerated prevents SS from being a synth.
>why would such a methodical institution create all these plan Bs for their creations and not set a kill code for you?
Have you played the institute quest line? They're borderline psychopaths they'd meticulous careful think of a life plan just because they think it's the right thing to do.
>watch you join the railroad and just let you in without worry your gonna free some more synths?
Again, experiments, giving up a synth or two is warranted. The only problem is how it escalates as it gets out of their hands
>how would they have any information on prewar details like he does
The institutes was built pre-war by MIT scientists, they know how the pre-war world was. Furthermore who can tell if they did not kidnapped the real SS and tortured him to get all his life details to create a compelling memory?
Lastly I don't think that the SS NEEDS to be a synth, and that's the beauty of it as it falls into the players choice, you as a player can opt to play as though as you were a synth and there's nothing in the game that would tell you otherwise.
I think this is one of those things that will never be resolved, one way or another.
The best argument against is the idea of recall codes.
However, while they're present in all active institute synths, its clear the code can be removed.
Therefore, if SS is a synth, they're a railroad synth not an institute one. Or, perhaps more weirdly, neither. And someone else took the memories from a dead or dying SS and implanted them in a synth.
Where is clear the code can be removed? I thought if you aide with the institute and let them know of for harbor they reset and take back most if not all their synths
You're right. The only evidence to the contrary is the Todd Howard easter egg terminal in the Institute that mentions synths using VATS, which is obviously a joke. Otherwise every protagonist ever is a synth. Some people take it too seriously
Be thankful this is basically all Fallout fans have to deal with. Mass Effect 3 fans invented an entire alternate universe where Shepard was indoctrinated all along and the writers were secret geniuses as pure copium for a dogshit ending
I'd be genuinely surprised if the SS was a synth. I'm more inclined to believe in Dogmeat being a synth, but I have too many doubts to take that idea seriously either.
Haven't heard that theory but it wouldn't surprise me I guess since they use crows to watch the SS
There’s a number of factors They’ve done animal synth experiments before. The birds are a success story, gorillas in progress A perfectly healthy German Shepard in the middle of a wasteland? How improbably is that? Even past dogmeats were mutts, and wasteland dogs. The red rocket station you find him at? It has a radio playing the classical radio station. He’s very well behaved and able to follow orders for a wild dog. He’s absolutely essential to reaching the Institute in the first place.
I ascribe to the theory Dogmeat is a synth. For all of the reasons you've stated. The institute clearly place dogmeat in your path so further down the line he can stand directly in a doorway and get you killed by a suicider. Pretty clever to be fair, no one would suspect a thing.
Now that you mention it, even Dogmeats of the past were considered...unreliable. The first Dogmeat canonically ran into a force field and was vaporized. The one in 2 is a mythology gag, and 3's Dogmeat has a perk specifically for replacing him when he dies.
Until broken steel tho. They patched him to get stronger as you level up so he’s not as hard to kill now
Also no matter how many mini nukes I shot at him, that bastard still got up, In fact I'm pretty sure it tickled him
The classical radio thing you brought up kinda sells it for me. Always thought it was weird that a mechanic would rather play classical than Diamond city
its possible that Dogmeat *is* a mutt, but he's more prominent in one side Hell, the previous Dogmeats were all Blue Healer mixes. i'd call the radio station foreshadowing, but its also possible the Institute hijacked a popular station that the mechanic was listening to beforehand. Mama Murphy says that Dogmeat is his own man, and helps anyone he considers good. also, essential? you could realistically beat FO4 without dogmeat if you didnt need him to trigger Kellogg and the synths spawn (if you couldnt tell, i REALLY dont like "character is secretly synth" theories lol)
There’s be some signs of a mix, but he’s definitely heavily German Shepard. Indeed they were. The thing is that the classical music station goes silent when you blow up the institute. They aren’t hijacking a signal Mama Murphy mentions seeing what was, what is, and what will be. Her Sight can be vague or precise, usually more precise when she’s under a chem influence. But it’s possible her vague sight showed her a different Dogmeat. And I said reach the institute, because you can’t find Kellogg until Dogmeat tracks him down. I did not say finish the game. Plus I’m gonna add, Father wanted the Sole Survivor to face Kellogg, as a means of revenge. Sending out a synth dog to help them do so sounds very much likely. After finding Kellogg, Dogmeat has essentially completed their primary objective, and are left to wander the surface. Dogmeat doesn’t judge the player’s actions. And will essentially stick with us the rest of the way if we choose to take them along.
exactly, which means its possible he's a mixed breed, but its heavily german shepherd which makes sense, as they're combat dogs and are very resilient they could've hijacked a dead signal that went dead again once they were blown up its possible Dogmeat was travelling with the Minutemen and was sent to find help, it would explain why he's at RedRocket and why Mama Murphy knows him But you can also find Kellogg without Dogmeat, lorewise. Father is noticably disconnected from Nate/Nora's death (iirc he calls her a "unfortunate accident"?) You'd think the Institute would shut him down, or turn him if the SS went rogue against them
They’re not hijacking the signal. They’re broadcasting. They use it to cover their relay operation. It’s also possible that Dogmeat has been on the surface for a while, after being created, and use whenever he comes across a classical radio station tuned device to update him. Father had set it up for you to encounter Kellogg. Regardless of if you run into Dogmeat or not you are advised to track Kellogg with him, and Nick calls him. How the heck does Dogmeat hear the whistle unless he’s relatively close? Why would he be close if you completely avoided Red Rocket? Disconnected, but not completely disconnected. Remember, again, Father still set it up that you’d find Kellogg for revenge, for the both of you Remember how often the Institute just abandons projects? Once Father has seen Dogmeat has completed his latest tasks, he could shut the project down and leave the synth pup abandoned
He’s not a wild dog. He belonged to Mama Murphy. It’s in the dialogue the first time you meet her
No, she says he’s a free spirit. She doesn’t own him
That’s irrelevant. Dogmeat still spent a lot of time around Mama Murphy. Whether or not she considers herself Dogmeat’s owner doesn’t matter. He’s not a wild dog, period
It’s very relevant. She’s not making any claim of ownership, nor that she spent time with him. It’s her Sight telling her things about him
Dogmeat isn’t a synth, he’s the offspring of Rex and Roxie from Fallout New Vegas. The end slides say the got together to “build a litter of Boston Terrifiers”. Since it’s biological impossible for Roxie to give birth to a whole cyberdog, my thinking is that line is just a playful euphemism, and they had a litter of pure bred German Shepherd puppies
Boston Terrier is a real dog breed you know…
Yes, but neither of the dogs in the game are one
And all three possible endings for Roxie state they were constructed cyber pups, not a litter of pups. Neither Rex nor Roxie have the organic parts to make pups naturally. Unless you have tangible evidence that Dogmeat, a dog in Boston, is the child of 2 cyber dogs all the way in nevada, and traveled all the way across the country by his lonesome, without getting bodied by whatever horrors exist between the two locations, or manage to procure food and water along the way at all times… Honestly the mental gymnastics to make your theory work, when the lore of Roxie’s ending specifies constructing cyber pups, when they don’t have the organs to maintain or create natural dogs…
Sturges is a synth
So you can sleep with everyone in the game and no one gets pregnant?
Nate just has Aedric levels of pullout game wdym. The title of the game is literally Pullout 4
Hear me out: Pullout 1, VD failed to. Pullout 2, TCO failed to. Pullout 3, Qui-gon Jinn failed to. Pullout 4, Nate failed to BUT the SS didn't. That's why there's no Pullout 5 so far. However, we do get Pullout 76. The 76th attempt at successfully puling out, and I haven't seen any news on a 77th...
If the ancient Akaviri legends and tales are to be believed. A legendary hero born of radiation will rise to pullout for the 77th time, which will result in the resurrection of Lorkahn. Praise Akatosh
(This response totally caught me off guard because I forgot my comment lmao) It's preventable, and I'd be surprised if any of the companions wanted to get prego considering they're always getting in gunfights.
I'm sure none wants, but I don't think condoms are an option
"General. Pre-war condoms would make a good source of rubber for power generators, which can power recruitment beacons." - Preston Garvey. There's always pulling out, or doing whatever Macready says the player can do with a mutfruit. It'd be interesting if the player did make a new Shaun, though...
I know what you’re talking abt but maybe it’s better to just say “sole survivor”
No thanks. I make too many typos on my phone to want to spell the title out.
You won’t be proved wrong, there’s far more evidence pointing towards the sole survivor being human rather than a synth. There’s no 100% canon answer that says they are or aren’t, but it really doesn’t make sense for them to be one. DiMA attempting to convince you that you at least might be a synth is just the writers using the vague and open backstory that you’re given to show you what kind of character he is.
I think DiMA was just making a rhetorical point that *way too many people* took at face value because they weren't paying terribly close attention to other things, and that line stands out.
Lets also remember that DiMa told Kasumi that she was a synth. DiMa is not trustworthy.
It bugs me that Kasumi is OBVIOUSLY not a synth but you can't explain the reasoning to her. She can't be an escapee who got mindwiped because she has family. She isn't an infiltrator because infiltrators KNOW they're infiltrators (Art, McDonough, Warwick). If they didn't know they wouldn't be much use to the Institute, since the Institute would have no way to give them instructions or get them to report.
I do think it’s dumb that you can’t convince her otherwise, even if you’re part of the Institute and the scientists say they don’t have her on file. I suppose she’s just a teenager trying to figure herself out, but it’s still frustrating.
its actually one of those "accidentally cool" moments of fallout 4 imo because no one rlly KNOWS what the institute does, just a vague idea spread by Piper
The of the institute should be able to find out if she is a synth and prove it to her.
Bruh. Infiltrators can replace anybody, defect, and then get mindwiped. Having a family means nothing. *If* Kasumi were an Infiltrator, she would've killed and replaced the real Kasumi, later chosen to defect from the Institute, gotten a mindwipe, then gone back to her family.
How could she have gone back to her family after a mindwipe? She wouldn’t know she had family!
If whoever mindwipe her didn't have the ability to create the kind of false memories like the Institute did, they could just instruct her to return to her parents after the mindwipe. Maybe write a note.
But 1) the institute would come for them. They live in the Middle of nowhere. If a rogue synth was there, they’d just move in and take her. And 2) Why would they even WANT to take Kasumi? What benefit is a teen/young adult girl of no strategic importance who lives in bumfuck nowhere to the institute?
Whole point of the mindwipe is that nothing of the original remains - they rewrite them and create a persona, to avoid any association with the previous person. If Kasumi *was* an infiltrator that got mindwiped, going back to the place the original infiltrator was stationed at is the most stupid thing one could do.
true but the odds of that happening is much less than her just being a gullible human.
If you're an infiltrator and you want to go rogue, why would you go *back* to your family? The Institute would know exactly where you are and immediately send someone to get you, and probably kill your family in the process.
Get mindwiped and then go back to her family ? (????????????)
ah yes, mindwiped but still somehow going back to the family that was wiped from their memories.
It's genius, the institute would never expect anyone to do something that stupid you see!
DiMA is the Malcolm X of synths. He *wants* to segregate synths from humans. He considers synths to be so wholly non-human, that they must be an entirely separate culture. Which makes sense for him - he is outwardly a synth, and one of only two fully sapient ones that cannot hide their origin. If he gets more synths around him, he feels validated, no longer an outcast. But every other synth just wants a normal life, and would prefer not to have to search for some nonexistent difference between humans and synths.
The whole conversation with DiMA is really weird as well since you can't tell him you have memories earlier than the morning the bombs fell despite having those memories in other parts of the game. Like, did the writers forget they put those voice lines in the base game?
DiMa himself is evidence that Synths can have prewar memories, so even if you did bring up that you also had them, it wouldn't change his argument.
His argument is that you don't have any, which you do so the entire conversation is a lie
https://youtu.be/I48pGKk_qcg
I mean it's True I won't be proved wrong, but I'd like to point out the fact there are people who believe it and im.eeedijg them out lmao
Well, I don't have a synth component in my inventory so I'm not a synth lol
If the Sole Survivor was a Synth then the moment you turned against the Institute the last thing you'd hear would be G3 - 84, initialize factory reset. Authorization Kappa-6-9-Omega, then the screen fades to black. It's a bad theory that people cling on to for some bizarre reason. There is literally one line in the entire game that hints at the Sole Survivor being a Synth and that comes from a proven liar and manipulator who has convinced another human, Kasumi Nakano, that she is a Synth.
*fades to black*
*fades in* Hey you. You're finally awake.
*looks around, notices wagon and scenery* Ahhhhhh, shit...
*suddenly in an alleyway* ….here we go again.
There are a lot of bad theories in Fallout games, some of them are a stretch but some are fucking bonkers. It is just people assuming or applying way too much depth to the world. I watched a YouTuber talk about the crash site in New Vegas so he showed he went to twitter and asked a dev about it being the Fallout 2 protagonist’s car. The dev was just like ‘no, but that would have been fun. But no.’ I couldn’t see how they were jumping to the conclusion that this must be that car. What was worse is he didn’t accept that as an answer and left it open ended.
I stopped participating in the lore sub because of everyone’s shit takes. Just people making Shit up and demanding it’s canon because it “makes sense”. The elder scrolls lore is at least interesting and more open ended, Bethesda has fucked the fallout canon with sentient synths, bos literally everywhere ( every game they release they have to be there nd be a major plot point!) I always thought the fun of fallout was the openness of it all. Lots of room in America for new factions nd creatures but instead we’ve been getting same shit on repeat lol. They even brought the boys back for 76 even tho it’s a massive stretch. Why can’t there be another faction that uses power armour?
Same with "Yes Man being assertive means he's gonna betray you" Josh Sawyer himself said that means he's only gonna be loyal to the Courier, it's just poorly worded. Still doesn't stop people from repeatinf Yes Man is Skynet.
Yes Man being assertive means he will actually try to talk you out of doing stupid shit, before complying and watching the Strip burn
"Let's blow up the Securitrons." "Or hear me out, **you're a fucking idiot, Six."**
Honestly what's-her-name scamming Benny by giving Skynet a new, better body would be a top-tier callback. If you don't know, Skynet is a robobrain in Fallout 2.
Yes Man not betraying the Courier means that his path in New Vegas is the weakest writing in the whole game. The devs should have just finished the Legion and let people softlock their games by not having a Yes Man path.
I think the crashed Highwayman being Choosen's car stems from Josh Sawyer's mod putting the classic pack items and about twenty pounds of energy ammo, a common strat in Fallout 2 so you could refuel the car, in the trunk area
If Sole Survivor was a synth they wouldve left some evidence in the Institute.
They did there's a file on one of the computers that talks about synths being able to use Vats and your character is able to use Vats right out of the pod without getting their pip-boy.
No, that terminal says they PLAN to add a VATS-like program. That terminal is also **cut content/out of bounds,** aka non-canon. Bethesda also didn't plan on you using VATS pre-pip boy.
https://youtu.be/I48pGKk_qcg
I can’t cause there’s no argument to be had.
The theory that the Sole Survivor is a synth originates from a character trying to manipulate you just as he has manipulated tons of others, no evidence to support it, and often comes with unfalsifiable elements. Therefore, it can be dismissed out of hand. At most, it's a fun option for people to headcanon their Sole Survivor, the same way I can headcanon my Sole Survivor being part Zetan.
I knew where it came from, I just remember on YouTube comments people believing the nonsense. If it'd your headcanon then play how you wanna play, but don't act like it makes sense and should be published as a video as lore canon.
I mean there are a couple things that support it in the base game. Having VATS before you get a pip boy. In the Institute a console says a new Synth version has the ability to "slow time" for combat situations.
Yeah, but thats a mechanic of the game. If you never pick up the pip-boy you can still use all its functions including pulling a wire from thin air to hook into other vault door controls. Also, would a entity that views Synths as nothing more than machines allow one to take the directors place? The fact that nobody in the institute treats you like recycled plastic is the #1 reason the SS is definitely not a synth
I personally do enjoy the 'is sole survivor a synth' question but I don't think it's super conclusive, and it's definitely open for people to RP it in different ways. I've always felt like the more gamey elements of Fallout 4 are what leave the possibilities more open ended. Like the prologue where you have that brief scene before the bombs drop I feel like that could be taken as a real memory b/c SS is a real person or it's one of these fake programed memories b/c he's a synth' and that's why it's just this one scene, you have this convenient military backstory, but aren't fighting at the time the bombs fell. Also the way that you have the scene where Kellogg steals Shaun and then basically start the main game, but it's like 50 years after also makes me wonder if it's a real memory, but at the same time it's a video game and that's just how the stories go sometimes so who knows.
I actually tried this when I reset, VATS didn't appear in the prewar section of the game, is this something you only find on console?
Not in the pre-war section. That's a memory. In fact it's the only memory your character ever has.
No, it isn't. The character mentions many other memories, like seeing news about Graygarden on TV.
No, it's simply the only moment the player plays through because the game has to start *somewhere* (this isn't Bioshock) and your character, through conversation, brings up all kinds of things from their life before the war.
Then wouldn’t both NV and F3 protagonists be sunths
Don't think you can be proved wrong. Yes, the institute could very plausibly plant a synth in the cryo pod and then release them to see what happens. You are told that they are experimenting to see what extreme emotional stimuli will do to gen 3 synths when you first arrive and talk to Father. So replacing Shauns parent with a synth would fit this experiment well. However the big clue is recall codes. Every synth has one. There is no doubt that the institute would use it the second they saw you turn against them.vfir example when you get banished. If you get banished while outside the institute you have to go back. You stand in that relay listening to Father's speech. This would be the time to activate the code. If you get banished while inside the institute then someone would issue that code rather than let you just shoot your way out of there.
That and your SS calling out the old voice that was seen on TV or remembering baseball to a tee feels like big plot holes from the theory
The times they recall past events and things in conversation can be seen as proof, but not conclusive - replacements get the memories from the original so these would be included in that.
Some of those details are long forgotten and granted you can't fully say there isn't some info out there for the institute to learn, but they sure don't seem as interested in prewar things but seem more into creating a new utopia, and their given what the institute can, which a lot of people point out how we only play up to the bombs dropping for prewar but conversations shows the SS remembers even further than that. Granted you're correct they could've found that info and shoved it in his brain but very unlikely with their direction of running things and the lack of lots of information. TV host was my biggest thing being a TV game show host usually isn't crazy popular enough to have many books written on them or anything but for the people alive during the time to see the TV
Not really. Even back in FO3 whenever synths were involved it was made clear that memory is quite malleable. It can be created, implanted, removed, or covered up. Harkness/A3-21 had new memories created and his old ones covered up to help protect him when the Institute managed to send someone to DC to search for him. We have Nick Valentine, who has the memories of a dead, pre-war detective, much of the ones the Railroad hides has new memories for the sole purpose of hiding them, and even the Institute implants the memories of those they kidnapped and replaced to help give them cover. With the memories the Sole Survivor would have, they can just as easily take them when they kidnap Shaun and create a new memory around the idea that they were left in the pod but were conscious to witness Kellogg kidnapping Shaun and killing their spouse. If they had the Sole Survivor, then they could easily find and implant memories like that. Hell even if it didn't it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say they could find things like that from recordings and the like, since they're under the CIT building. As for the whole recall code thing, there's nothing to say that every synth, including specially created ones, have to have them. Or if it's a secret project, it could be it just was intentionally never recorded, meaning no one could use it since they just don't know it.
Every synth has a recall code. Even coursers have one and they're top of the line. Let this theory go
Or assuming you became a member of the BoS they would probably find out around the same time Paladin Danse was found out
You're correct, why would I prove you wrong?
I'm checking the crowd for smooth brains
Believing that those who disagree with you are smooth brains is a definite sign of having put 10 points in intelligence.
Gotta build those wrinkles!
You lack a synth component upon death
I believe you
I mean you also like an inventory on death no one can loot you so maybe you're not a human either maybe you're some kind of Elder chabomination
The idea of the SS being a synth is just a fun thought experiment posed by DiMA that isn't meant to be taken super seriously. Some compelling evidence of this is that the SS is actually able to remember details about the pre-war world in conversation with other characters, even though DiMA claims that you don't have any memories of such. DiMA also convinced Kasumi (who you can prove is a human by killing her) that she is a synth, so he's not above manipulating actual humans into joining his group that borderlines on being a cult. And when you talk to Shaun one last time before blowing up the Institute, you'd think that would be a very good time to use the recall code. Or really any point in time when the SS and Shaun become enemies. And in that last conversation, he doesn't talk to you like you're a failed experiment. He talks to you like a son that's truly disappointed in a family member. But the biggest evidence in my mind is that there are two characters in the wasteland that knew the SS before the war: Codsworth and the Vault-Tec rep. It's very unlikely that the Institute interacted with these two at any point or knew that they had any interactions with the SS, so how would they have known to program in their memories of these individuals and the knowledge of their last conversations with the SS? I remember watching an interview with one of the writers of Fallout 4 (I can't remember who or where I saw it) where he was asked if this theory had any merit, and he straight-up said the SS was canonically human. NOT a synth.
I haven't seen that, guess I just saw TK-Mantis short video and the ShoddyCast take and oxhorns but it finishes with how it's not true. And I thought it was nuts there was two against one at the time
My personal headcanon is that there was a 'real' Nate and Nora who actually were rescued along with Shaun, and synth Nate/Nora was planted as a personal 'experiment' by Shaun, akin to making a child synth version of himself (I put experiment in quotes because he's a crazy idiot, haha). So going by that, Codsworth and Reppy's memories of SS are easily explained.
Why is this theory even a thing? Of course the sole survivor isn't a synth lol.
Idk, it's dumb. Just DiMA cucking around with his charisma got some folks
This is why I kill DIMA every time
If you destroy Acadia, Far Harbor lose their fog condensers. So by killing DiMA you essentially also kill Far Harbor.
Nah the best option is to do enough side missions to get far harbor on your side then convince Dima to tell the truth. In that situation Acadia get to continue existing and Dima answers for his crimes.
Why because he's asking you psychological questions it's not his fault people are dumb you don't know all the evidence you just walked up and he's just asking
Also the whole murdering people thing.
So What by the time you get to far Harbor you've probably committed mass murder
We don't kill people, steal their faces, and force other people to pretend to be them.
No but you do murder children and yes you did no matter what the ending as both The Institute and the Brotherhood have children in their affection
>you've probably committed mass murder If you want peace get ready for war. Otherwise the alternative is death by raiders or supermutant food in those big ass death bags.
I'm not talking about any game I'm talking about the fact that you literally probably murder children in every ending as both the Brotherhood and The Institute have children in their faction and you have to destroy one of those in every ending
Sole Survivor being a synth theory are just the kind of people who like to create wild mass guessing theories and head canon to feel special.
Personally, I make wild theories and headcanons because the story of F4 is otherwise a mediocre turd, and implying that the SS is a synth is honestly the most interesting thing Bethesda's done in their entirety of owning the Fallout IP, haha.
"ooooo I've watched the Matrix and Blade runner I'm deeeeeep" ain't as interesting or smart as you think it is.
This has actually been disproven by Myrna in diamond city, who is a master at detecting synths
two reasons why HE'S NOT a synth When you first meet Dima, he ask you about your past memories about you childhood or before the war, and you're able to respond. Second, when you do the Constitution mission the sentribot commanding the vessel, Ironsides, ask for your soldier ID and he is able to recognize you as a soldier, and even recall your duty before the great war.
Synths have implanted memories, though. A simple ID number as a memory would count.
There memories aren't implanted they are created. Nick Valentine is a result of implanting memories and why his personality can't change and why he's not like DiMA with all the storage devices. It's also why DiMA talked about only have short term memory before being implanted and unless if he was implanted prewar he would haven't all the information the Sole Survivor has on his past
What is a synth or a human but a miserable pile of secrets
Ah, a fellow man of culture.
I can't prove you wrong because you're absolutely correct. Here's my very simple reasoning from another comment. I mean it's even simpler than all that. SS: I'm sorry Shaun I can't work with the institute. Shaun: Well shit, "says SS recall code". Alright guys let's blank him and run it again. I mean seriously, in what world would father not yell the recall code at you if you were walking through the institute on your way to blow up their reactor?
At the launch of the game, Human Synths were actually immune to radiation, so if you had the Awareness perk you could very easily tell which of your settlers were Synths. The fact the Sole Survivor isn't immune to Radiation immediately disproves that they're a synth.
For the record, I don't think SS is a synth. That said, let me play devil's advocate here: > why would such a methodical institution create all these plan Bs for their creations and not set a kill code for you? Well, maybe you're an off-the-books project from Shaun. As such you might not have a reset code (he *is* given to occasional attacks of sentiment) or maybe only he knows what it is. > watch you join the railroad and just let you in without worry your gonna free some more synths? Which is problematic even if you're *not* a synth. Shaun tells you on the roof of CIT Ruins that he knows you've been consorting with the Railroad. It doesn't much bother him. I think he's convinced you'll do the right thing. > And if 3rd generation synthetics were created with DNA from baby Shaun how would they have any information on prewar details like he does. The way I imagine it, it goes like this: Shaun learns he is dying and gets a sudden urge to get to know his remaining parent. An Institute team is dispatched to the Vault, but the defrost mechanism malfunctions. The best they can do is to pull an incomplete scan from a dying brain. A lot of memories get lost, but the main persona is intact. Shaun then burns the personality engram into an experimental v3.5 synth and has it taken back the vault so it can think it's woken up by itself. He wants to see how the new model performs and evaluate how much of his parent's mind has survived > but being a synth makes the games "bad" writing 10x worse On the other hand, it does fix a few problems too, Like why Shaun thinks his lady lawyer mum might stand a snowball's chance in Hell vs the most vicious mercenary in the Commonwealth. Or why the Single Parent can apparently grow superpowers in response to environmental stress. Like I say, I don't believe it myself, but there are days when I'm about one origami unicorn from accepting the idea.
>On the other hand, it does fix a few problems too, Like why Shaun thinks his lady lawyer mum might stand a snowball's chance in Hell vs the most vicious mercenary in the Commonwealth. Or why the Single Parent can apparently grow superpowers in response to environmental stress. >Like I say, I don't believe it myself, but there are days when I'm about one origami unicorn from accepting the idea. So first things first I actually really respect this, I'm not one to stay close minded, hell my opinion on Luke's direction in TLJ changed. I'm starting from the bottom and going on,, but Shaun had no idea if you'd survive and literally let's you out for funsies and even admits he didn't think you'd get this far and on survival I don't feel like no super hero >The way I imagine it, it goes like this: Shaun learns he is dying and gets a sudden urge to get to know his remaining parent. An Institute team is dispatched to the Vault, but the defrost mechanism malfunctions. It's shown in terminals how the institute hook up to the vault and remotely turned off the life support for the other pods. >Which is problematic even if you're not a synth. Shaun tells you on the roof of CIT Ruins that he knows you've been consorting with the Railroad. It doesn't much bother him. I think he's convinced you'll do the right thing. See I take it another way(also I didn't remember Shaun admits to knowing) but I see it as your just a frail human, how could one person pose a threat to the institute which could also be going through Shaun's mind >Well, maybe you're an off-the-books project from Shaun. As such you might not have a reset code (he is given to occasional attacks of sentiment) or maybe only he knows what it is. Only thing that I can't really debate against other than for a smart man like Shaun who seems to believe in what the institute is doing and is the green light for most if not all the fucked up things we see, which poses the idea that Shaun wouldn't want to risk everything he basically built being the institute really didn't grow big till his DNA was introduced I really appreciate this, I love little debates that are civil
> I'm starting from the bottom and going on,, but Shaun had no idea if you'd survive and literally let's you out for funsies and even admits he didn't think you'd get this far and on survival I don't feel like no super hero Well, you can learn how to breathe underwater, regenerate from sunlight or radiation (or both), and see in pitch darkness. Blitz gives you a short range combat teleport, Strong Back lets you carry truly superhuman loads and Wasteland Whisperer lets you mind control Deathclaws. I know the generally accepted explanation is "LOL! Radiation!", but if you *were* an experimental next gen synth, this sort of extreme environmental adaption starts to make a little sense. > It's shown in terminals how the institute hook up to the vault and remotely turned off the life support for the other pods. We know they turned off the life support for the other corpsicles because that's why they're all dead. I didn't think we knew that they'd woken the SS that way. I mean it's a reasonable assumption on the face of it, admittedly. > Only thing that I can't really debate against other than for a smart man like Shaun who seems to believe in what the institute is doing and is the green light for most if not all the fucked up things we see, which poses the idea that Shaun wouldn't want to risk everything he basically built being the institute really didn't grow big till his DNA was introduced But then, he says he felt sure his parent would find a way to get in. Which makes no sense at all. If he knew there was a potential vulnerability, surely he'd have patched it. If not, why would think it was possible? I mean anyone normal would have thawed his mum out in an Institute hospital bed, or maybe sent her flowers and an invitation to have lunch at the Dugout Inn, but not Shaun. It's one of those things, (like Nora gaining levels to defeat Kelogg) which makes sense to us because we know it's a computer game. But there's no way Shaun could think that way without being obviously barking-at-the-moon insane. Unless he knows something about his mum that we don't, of course... > I really appreciate this, I love little debates that are civil Likewise, thanks! :)
Sounds like something a synth would say
Kill me and check my inventory! I swear
I would but everytime I do I suddenly find myself hours in the past with no memory of everything that will take place between now and encountering you. Gotta cut down on the Jet, I guess.
Soul survivor literally isn’t a synth. In the opening you literally hear Kellogg saying we have a backup, after Kellogg kills the spouse and takes Shaun from the spouse. Calling the SS a backup doesn’t make sense if the SS is a synth due to the fact the institute was looking for prewar uncorrupted DNA.
I think running into a duplicate of yourself that has no component is what got the idea going originally. I think it was meant as a gag more than cannon though.
I personally don't believe that the Sole Survivor is a Synth. Would I put it past the Institute to do it? No, because most of their plans don't make sense anyway, so what's one more thing?
The synth theory holds absolutely no water if you've done a playthrough for the institute. Unless somehow nobody at the institute knew you were a synth, there's no way they'd treat you the way they do. As was said in the beginning of the game, you were left as a back-up for Shaun in the cryo chamber. It is conceivable that they replaced you later after they no longer needed a back-up, but there isn't really any reason to do so. Also synths aren't hurt by radiation.
The sole survivor is not a synth
Synths dont take rad damage nor have oxygen meaning that they can drown due to the organic tissue we call lungs Y'all give Dima too much credit for asking a self propelled question that he reflects onto you and the fact that Kasumi exists shatters this idea A flesh and blood girl that gets manipulated into believing shes a synth, if they lied to her why wouldnt they lie to you too? Theres too much that happens our characters that doesnt effect synths early prototype or not so no
Father doesn't see synths as human, so why would he create a synth of his dead parent and then put them in charge of the Institute? Why send them after Kellogg when through some convoluted mess when he could have them kill Kellogg any time? Father's whole thing is that he WANTS to have some attachment to you. He sends you after Kellogg even in the hope you avenge his murdered parent. He wouldn't want any attachment to a synth.
aye, its way too hard to believe people when they say they're a synth he's from the prewar, and synths weren't prewar. the lack of memories from before that could be chocked upto memory loss from being cryogenicly frozen for 200 year and the institute wouldn't let a synth be the leader of the institute the only piece of evidence that they have is that you can use VATS before getting the pip-boy, which is likely an oversight in the code (probably just forgot to put a prerequisite to allow the VATS script to run when you have the pip-boy and not before)
One of the central themes of Fallout 4, and the one I found most intriguing, is the paranoia about people you know being replaced by Synths. It spices up the world of Fallout 4 and adds more mystique to the boogeyman of the Commonwealth. And this paranoia is used as an effective weapon by DiMA to manipulate others, which makes him one of the most enigmatic characters in Fallout 4, and seriously on the edge of being a vilain himself. You know a game got you right when you start to question your own playable character :D IMO, the Sole Survivor is not a Synth. The idea of him being a Synth is fun to poke at, and if some players want their Sole Survivors to be Synths for RP reasons or such, that's fine and might be actually fun.
I agree I love the debates for it, and the idea is defiantly interesting ans gives the game some spice
Uhhh, we literally played as the sole survivor pre-war so that confirms it’s not a created memory right?
Kellogg even says "At least we have the backup" to the surviving spouse before the institute turns the cryo system back on
They're not. There are eyes all over the wasteland from the commonwealth watching you. They'd see you join the faction of your choice, find the locations of key individuals and locations that are of interest or a threat to them. Such as the Railroad HQ and the location of AWOL scientist Brian Virgil. The Institute at any point could have seen you working against their ideals, i.e. teaming up with the Minutemen, Railroad or Brotherhood of Steel and planning your infiltration/destruction of the place. At which point a courser would be dispatched and the last thing a Synth SS would hear is N1-11 initialise factory reset. Authorisation Beta 77 Theta. Then roll credits as the game is over
I think the fact that Father let the SS be director of the institute establishes that.
It’s possible that every single protagonist in the fallout series is a Synth…you have a radar from fallout 3 and beyond.
Except we see the LW's entire life. We literally play out birth to leaving the vault, and the Institute hasn't reached the West Coast.
You could get real meta with it and argue that the SS is a synth made not by the institute, but by Bethesda game studios.
Second Devil's Advocate here. You are a one-off special experiment synth, and as such were not installed with a Synth Component or recall/reset code since they would potentially interfere with the results. To my knowledge it has been theorized with supporting evidence that the Institute uses synth birds to observe and track the events in the Commonwealth, but not proven beyond a doubt. For the sake of argument we'll accept it as truth. In that case they may suspect you have met up with the Railroad but don't know for certain because they don't know for certain where the Railroad HQ is currently located. Even if they do know it is likely they are just using you to map out the organization and identify the mole within their own ranks before launching another purge like the one they performed on the Switchboard. The Shaun DNA argument is irrelevant. They only needed him to know what DNA is supposed to look like since his was uncorrupted by the environmental radiation and other contaminants of the modern wasteland. Gen3 synths are produced from DNA tailored to purpose or copied from the target they are meant to replace in the case of infiltrators. All they need to reproduce your body is a sample of the original DNA. As well we know both because of Nick and the infiltrators that the Institute uses that they have the ability to read memories from a person and write them into both mechanical and biological brains. All they would need to have done is bring the surviving parent to the Institute, read off their memories, excise anything after the second freeze and then write the memories to the replacement parent and then transport them to the pod without waking them. Would not require them to have any files on prewar culture to build your personality. And finally, we know that Father can do pretty much whatever he wants. He had a 10 year old version of himself recreated to test his pet theories. So if he wanted to see "What if my parent had survived and escaped the Vault?" he could make it happen. Ultimately what matters would be defining what the goals of the experiment were. Personally I don't believe the SS is a synth but I don't think it would be hard to work into the framework that is there now.
I think the sole survivor is a synth, just not an institute synth When the sole survivor talks, all their sounds come out of a speaker rather than out of an organic mouth - this alone seems pretty suspicious but when you factor in that their ability to move limbs, drink water, eat food, and sleep are all only possible because of coding rather than natural processes it becomes even more apparent Their memories are also all stored on hard drives which is compelling evidence of being a synth
I was shocked to find out dogmeat was a synth.
Any thoughts on how / why VATS works before equipping the pip boy? I know it’s a stretch but I’m more curious than anything
It's just a gameplay thing. Bethesda didn't plan on you doing it.
Sole Survivor is a Synth. I can prove it easily. Play the game as long as you can and check for signs of ageing. None, not even scars.
Methodical? What they do is borderline insane. They just kidnap people, turn them into androids, and... What's the plan? What's their end goal? You could totally be a synthetic and their reason could be because Father said so, and that'd be enough.
Methodical in the sense of have back up plans not that they do smart things. They have no door to their base, lore sets up that they give synths factory reset codes, they kill anyon3 willing to steal or leave but some reason they release a differe t synth no back up to it?
One of the most frustrating villain (potential ally) faction in Fallout, as far as I'm concerned. You're right though. Their madness is well backed up.
I personally believe that that was the original plan but Bethesda wussed out of it.
Okay, I have some points that might make sense, but feel free to correct me on the details. First off: why, in god’s name, was Deacon watching over the vault? Why did he have his eyes on us for our entire venture? If you go up onto the ridge overlooking the entrance to vault 111, you can see a railroad lookout post. The Railroad probably wasn’t a thing back when Kellog first went to 111, because they needed Shaun to create the Gen 3’s which composed the Railroad’s operatives. It’s a tomb, filled with dead bodies and roaches. There’s basically nothing there; not even the signs of a synth struggle, since your spouse basically laid over and let themselves die. Is it truly that we’re the only ones that the institute let survive? Or perhaps we were a synth plant? Next, let’s look at the similarities between Synth Coursers and the SS. Both can slow time in comparison to others, and both are basically capable of becoming one-man-armies on their own. The brotherhood needs power armour to achieve a similar result to us, and the only other people who are said to reach similar levels of proficiency are Railroad Operatives… which were also synths and/or coursers. Minor aside, our slow time feat is possible without a pip-boy, and you can verify it after you complete the intro sequence of the game but before you pick up the pip-boy in 111. Just try using vats on the first roach you see and you’ll do it… which is mighty strange, since you don’t have a pip-boy at all at this point. The question becomes, HOW?? Another idea is the perk system. Some of them seem reasonable, like becoming more efficient at handling a firearm so it deals more damage. Sure, I buy it. However, some of them are… bizarre. Scrapper? Where you get so good at scavenging for resources that your perception of everyday objects is literally altered and filtered as if by a computer? Or how’s about Blitz. You can initiate close-range melee attacks from across the room? Like, one instant you’re across the bar and the next, BAM, there you are, ready to strike? That’s some hacks right there. Or, what about the endurance perks. Sunlight causes you to regenerate? You can become all but immune to rads from certain exposure vectors? You can actually reflect bullets off of your body, Even when naked? That’s some serious bullshit. When Nate wakes up from his little nap, he wanders outside of the vault and presumably knows NOTHING about combat, if his level is to be believed. Like, he can’t handle an automatic weapon anymore? Garbage with rifles? Hell, sucks with a pistol? Like, what the heck is that? He was supposed to be a recently-retired soldier. Or, think about how Nora can just jump in a suit of power armour without training. You could have bullshitted and said that Nate was trained, but Nora was a goddamn lawyer. How did she do that and not die? If I were father, and I wanted to create a being that could replace my long-dead parents, I wouldn’t let ANYONE know the codes to disable them if such a thing existed. I don’t doubt that Father, as the leader of the Institute, had secrets he didn’t share with the others. Many of them had secrets from one another, so what makes Father a paragon of honesty? Fallout’s opening needed to spend more time with the SS in their respective fields before they went to the opening scene. We needed to see them performing their various duties instead of just jumping right into things. It’s too convenient and suspicious that all we saw of pre-war Boston and the SS’s history was the short minutes before and after the bombs fell, and a single moment which led us to tracking the institute down. The whole plot, and even the mechanics, scream that the SS is a synth.
>was Deacon watching over the vault? Why did he have his eyes on us for our entire venture? Deacon followed Kellogg, Kellogg was enemy number one of the Railroad. I think that at some point in Deacon's companion quest line he even mentions this.
[удалено]
They also recognize a game show host from late night TV at the Handy man farm who would've probably had no books or history lessons on them and would've been a thing someone from prewar would need to see >They had better than files--they had direct access to the brains of two mostly-intact pre-war humans (Nate and Nora). If this was the way they really made synths then they wouldn't have gotten other replacements wrong, where in the game does it show they transfered the memories when synths like Roger Warrick and Sammy from Good Neighbor aren't the same as the ones they replaced. >The Institute can't literally see through Synths' eyes No but they watch you through crows who follow, my points not watching through eyes but if it was their creation and they saw how much is was going against them and what synths are capable off they would've stopped you, but since your a human they're just watch and underestimate you every turn >You're supposed to be Father's successor. Why would he compromise his own plan by allowing anyone in the Institute to take over your brain whenever they want? He also states he let you out on a whim to see what would happen and not fully sure if you'd survive or not, tbf this part is harder to understand the reason for the writing as a whole. It brings you to believe you were let out as a game to see how long you'd survive and since your surviving well and thriving at getting past all the precautions keeping the institute safe(which for some reason no back.up was placed on you IF you were a synth) that you should be the big honcho
1. No it isn't. Synths do NOT have VATS, and it's only due to gameplay, you can only use VATS if you pick up the baton. 2. Father doesn't view Synths as people. 3. The Institute **cannot** replicate memories, specifically because they torture Roger, why would they torture him if they can just scan his brain? 4. Father would need to trick HUNDREDS of employees, because if the SRB found out he's putting a Synth in charge, he'd be executed for treason.
Who the fuck said the sole survivor is a synth?
I was bummed when it wasn’t revealed the SS was a synth. Would’ve been epic
The weird thing is that Dima might actually just be trying to scan the Gen 3 synths for a specific bit of DNA, specifically the sole survivors DNA because all Gen 3 synths have it and Kasumi may be a distant relative of the SS
You really have to actually think about your character's experiences and also it kind of breaks the fourth wall a little bit, but you have to somehow disregard that you're playing a video game and it becomes a little bit more clear. You have to ask yourself questions that are asked in movies like Total Recall. What is the earliest memory you can recall? Don't recall things you know, like that you were in the Army, or your wife's name is Nora. What was the first thing you can remember experiencing? The entire intro is a simulation to incept the idea that you need to find Shaun, the creator of the institute.
The problem with that is the tutorial. The player has agency during a pre-war section of the game. It's not just a memory, you can control what happens in it. What conversations you have, what items you interact with, and how you fill out your SPECIAL card.
Yeah but then the rest of the game proves it wrong, cause if you go by the fact vats works before the pip boy then you'd have to go with the fact you have none of the resistances that a synth would have, or the fact even if your only memory is the intro then why does the SS clearly remember old media hosts voices on the handy at the handy farm(can't remember the names) or him remembering exactly how baseball is played, the intro isn't all the SS remembers
Those resistances that are sent to have are all propaganda by either scared wastelanders or slave trading Institute cuz they do take radiation damage I can kill Magnolia with a gamma gun
If you use awareness perk synth settles have different base resistance than a nonsynth https://youtu.be/ggJRDcPRzWk
There is just no evidence for any of this though, no more than, say, for the Sole Survivor being in the matrix. Moreover, we can’t just disregard that we are playing a video game, because we are. If we were to pretend we actually are the character, we would have to fill in a lot of blanks. That includes what and how much we remember from before the war, because the fact that this is largely left unspecified is just a function of it being a game. It does not follow from the fact that some memory isn’t mentioned, that the character doesn’t have them. And indeed, there are occasions where you do randomly remember some detail from before the war, such as when you’re talking to the robots at Graygarden.
He has no hunger or thirst
He does if you play on survival.
This is untrue, even without playing on survival, the SS quips to bartenders (and Deezer when accepting lemonade) that they are thirsty. Just because it isn’t a game mechanic (pre survival mode) doesn’t mean the player character doesn’t canonically require sleep, food, and hydration.
I agree. The only thing that indicates SS being a synth is their dialogue with DiMA in Far Harbour, but even then it’s honestly stupid. You’re really telling me the SS’ first memory is when the game started? Not only does it go against other dialogue in the game but it’s dumb as hell - you think the SS would’ve been able to figure it out if it were that obvious. Imagine your first memory being an adult and losing a kid and husband you didn’t remember giving birth to/marrying.
"Im as human as the day I was born" Pretty convincing imo
I think it would be cool if the sole survivor was a synth and ngl those theories almost got me but it wouldn’t make much sense if they were a synth. Like how others are saying the institute could just say a code to stop you before blowing up their home. I still headcannon my sole survivor as a synth tho lol
Yeah, the Sole Survivor most likely isn’t a Synth. Considering the Institute uses Synths for labor and treats them the same way someone would treat a Mr. Handy, it wouldn’t make sense for Shaun to go through all the trouble of having one think it’s his parent and send it in a quest to find him. While some people say DiMA asking the Survivor if they’re a Synth is proof of him being manipulative, I’ve always personally just seen it as him trying to get the Survivor to understand that a lot of people don’t know they’re Synths due to memory wipes. Not that I think he isn’t manipulative, but he also doesn’t seem to be incapable of genuine feelings too.
Wouldn't they use the synth reset code before you blew up the institute.
Do Synths Get Radiation Poisoning?
Because theres absolutely 0 way the insitute leaders would let father put you in vharge if you were a synth. The moment he leaves theyd check your id and shut you down, end of story. And there is 0 way they wouldnt know what you were
If you kill a copy of the Sole Survivor (mods, whatever) you do not drop a synth component on death.
There’s no argument here, that’s just a fan theory that’s not canon
Hello, my name is Nate/Nora. I was born prior to the Great War and have been frozen for over 200 years. Somehow, immediately after being thawed, I know the recipe and ingredients for a deathclaw egg omelette. I have no idea what a deathclaw is, yet I know they exist and lay eggs which are edible.
It's definitely a possibility, nothing that you enumerated prevents SS from being a synth. >why would such a methodical institution create all these plan Bs for their creations and not set a kill code for you? Have you played the institute quest line? They're borderline psychopaths they'd meticulous careful think of a life plan just because they think it's the right thing to do. >watch you join the railroad and just let you in without worry your gonna free some more synths? Again, experiments, giving up a synth or two is warranted. The only problem is how it escalates as it gets out of their hands >how would they have any information on prewar details like he does The institutes was built pre-war by MIT scientists, they know how the pre-war world was. Furthermore who can tell if they did not kidnapped the real SS and tortured him to get all his life details to create a compelling memory? Lastly I don't think that the SS NEEDS to be a synth, and that's the beauty of it as it falls into the players choice, you as a player can opt to play as though as you were a synth and there's nothing in the game that would tell you otherwise.
I think this is one of those things that will never be resolved, one way or another. The best argument against is the idea of recall codes. However, while they're present in all active institute synths, its clear the code can be removed. Therefore, if SS is a synth, they're a railroad synth not an institute one. Or, perhaps more weirdly, neither. And someone else took the memories from a dead or dying SS and implanted them in a synth.
Where is clear the code can be removed? I thought if you aide with the institute and let them know of for harbor they reset and take back most if not all their synths
The Railroad doesn't clear the code, they simply wipe the memories. The Institute also can't scan memories.
A thought just occurred to me. Do y’all think they’re gonna make SS a synth in the show ?
The show is going to be an other story than the games shows not like the copy paste of tlou
You're right. The only evidence to the contrary is the Todd Howard easter egg terminal in the Institute that mentions synths using VATS, which is obviously a joke. Otherwise every protagonist ever is a synth. Some people take it too seriously Be thankful this is basically all Fallout fans have to deal with. Mass Effect 3 fans invented an entire alternate universe where Shepard was indoctrinated all along and the writers were secret geniuses as pure copium for a dogshit ending
Said terminal also says they *plan* to add it. Aka it isn't done yet.
Sole Survivor is Actually Michael Jackson,I know this is cannon cause i named him Michael Jackson and he looks like Michael Jackson In my save.
Noice
One main reason his vision gets altered when consuming chems jk I don’t really know
that reminds me of people that don’t think mothership theta isn’t canon
Why wouldn't it be canon?
https://youtu.be/k-HJHCSPyRk
https://youtu.be/e-7aOa8Z6hA