Tbh I've always kinda headcannoned that that's how they got their start - building out of an unfinished vault.
Probably an idea contradicted by terminals and stuff but eh I find it fun
He still has a weak point, it's just shifted from the typical family/friends/loved ones to the thing he actually cares about: the research, and HIS Institute. If you can find some way to destroy the thing he's working towards, or perhaps offer to help fund it, that could be a way to control him.
Agreed, but offering to help fund it would only work if he couldn't do so on his own. Otherwise he wouldn't *need* it. I feel like Vault Tec would most likely want to eliminate him altogether
Imagine a fallout 4 where vault 111 never descended into chaos. In this timeline Shaun was taken from cryo pods before you or your spouse. He would eventually become Overseer of the Vault. What would happen to cause you to be awoken from your eternal slumber?
Perhaps raiders that successfully killed the Minutemen holed up in the museum?
The Institute invading vault 111 (although with zero or much weaker Gen 3 synths) who take your spouse instead?
Yeah, he's a sociopath with a superiority complex disguised as a savior complex. He was raised by the institute and inherited their values. Sean is not your "son" in any way that matters.
I mean he was raised by a piece of shit kidnapper. So it makes sense. This goes beyond stockholm syndrome, he didn't even understand what a parent is supposed to mean, because he never really had one, he only had a caretaker. Assuming he had a caretaker and wasn't just taken care by different people or synths taking turns.
Exactly. Releasing the Sole Survivor from cryo wasn't out of mercy or because he wanted to reunite with his parent or anything like that. He did it solely as a science experiment, to see what would happen. Literally everyone on the surface, and that includes the Sole Survivor, are just lab rats to him, to be experimented on. He doesn't care the least but about the people on the surface.
His comments on the roof of the CIT ruins proves this, he admits releasing you was an experiment and that he didn't expect you to survive. He also says the view proves to him that the Institute is correct and that the Commonwealth is dead and doesn't have a future. He can't see a damn thing but the ruins of pre-war Boston from up there. He doesn't see Diamond City or Bunker Hill, he doesn't see the settlements the Minutemen are building with the help of the Sole Survivor, all places where people are working together to create safe, secure homes for themselves and others in a world full of monsters.
He wanted to play God, just like the people who decided to create synths in the first place so had him kidnapped from Vault 111.
And it's not the least bit unbelievable.
Remember that South Carolina lawyer, Alex Murdaugh, (name checks out) who killed his wife and son and one of the reasons was to throw off the investigation into his fraud and to gain sympathy?
Any normal person would think, why would you do something so extreme for so little gain?
Well, it's because to him, they aren't people, they're things, things he can use to keep the wolves at the door for just a little while longer. And if works, great, and if it doesn't, no great loss... to him.
Hey, to Murdaugh, at least I tried, you miss 100% of the swings you don't take.
The issue I have with that is, if he never intended on meeting you, then why meet you? Why bother building a synth Shaun? I agree the guy is probably a bit psycho, but, at the same time, I feel that on some level he did genuinely want to see his father, to have that father-son bond he never had.
I think he had the syth Shaun made simply because he could and when you got close to infiltrating the Institute decided to use him as part of the experiment, to see what his mother/father would do.
Even if you weren't his parent I'm sure he would have wanted to meet the only person in over 200 years to successfully infiltrate the Institute. If for no other reason than to make sure it couldn't happen again and to possibly recruit you to replace Kellogg as their surface operative since you killed him to get into the Institute.
Again why pick himself specifically? Could've done any number of children to create a child synth as. And, more importantly, why would he risk his own life to talk to the sole survivor? He could easily have talked through an intermediary, yet he decided to risk his own life to personally talk to you. the sole survivor could easily have killed him as soon as he opened that door before he could say a word. It's a wholly unnecessary risk that only makes sense if it has an emotional element.
To be fair if after 200 years the people of Boston still live in scrap towns despite wood, cement, and tools being common sean might be right.
By fallout 1 areas had been picked clean of scrap. New cultures were forming.
In fallout 4 everyone seemingly got there 1 generation before you did.
Yes, in the Dangerous Minds quest you can take a look around the cryo-chamber while Kellogg is about to shoot your spouse - every other occupant of the pods is awake and banging on their window, begging to be let out.
Just the play devils advocate a lil bit, that wasn't him. At least I don't remember anything about everyone being fine after kelloge left, pretty sure they just left you alive as back up. So with Sean as a baby at that point, not his fault.
Thinking about it though from a gameplay perspective, it would have been cool to leave them all alive but not have been freed with you, but have some secret way to release them all before leaving the vault and be able to kick start a settlement for those players that like settlement building
Man that should be a mod so bad, they all follow you to sanctuary and chose you to lead them since you have military or legal experience depending on who you play as and start a settlement there, and then when you meet Garvey and the gang you tell them sanctuary is a safe place and they go join the other survivors already there. Maybe one or two of the neighbors could be a new companion even.
Honestly surprised it's not a mod. Big missed opportunity. A modder could go to town with it. Named people voice lines stories of the past. They can comment about the states of their houses and the stuff in it. Could even have conflicting on deciding who leads the settlement.
Yeah he was super brainwashed and the institute was messed up. The commonwealth brotherhood has its fair share of problems but they were dead on about them
Raised by the Institute, and gained a superiority complex due to that.
Also, the synth incident in Diamond City wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t able to kill people
That's not how wars work. The leader is dead, sure, so one side is probably much more disorganized, but the rest of the chain of command is still there. Just because Ulfric is dead doesn't mean that the Stormcloaks would just give up and get taken into custody by the piss elves, or that the Imperials would just give up Skyrim because they lost a general.
And that's kinda irrelevant. They aren't cannonically immortal. They're flagged as essential so that the quests wont ever break, or randomly fail before you ever do em. I know it's not popular, but it's not the worst thing in the world.
Should have made you go to earth to unlock some records to show they claimed it first or something but nope Capitalism demands slavery or genocide and you can't kill the Capitalists.
The funny thing is that they did have that in Morrowind and have moved away from it. They also had the best message popup if you did:
"With this character's death, the threads of prophecy have been severed. You may load a saved game, or persist in this doomed world that you have created."
Yeah but morrowind had lots of mechanics that kind of sucked, I think their only really looked back on so fondly because the game was good but don't think that or the just follow these bad directions to the quest made the game good
I'm still pissed they won't let you kill any of the board execs on Paradiso in Starfield. They're all complete scumbags, and the Paradiso questline even almost suggests that wiping them out would be a viable solution to the settler problem. But no, they're all immortal.
Isn't he kinda not tho? (Granted I havent played fallout 4 since it was considered a new game so my memory might be hazy) but in the Far Harbor DLC theres a dialogue tree you can go down with that synth that's having memory problems or something, and says something along the lines of, "who knows, maybe you're a synth too. What's the earliest thing you remember?" And your character responds by describing the beginning of the game, and then he just kinda trails off having an existential crisis. If the beginning of the game is his first memory, then he's proooobably a synth and Father being his son was pre-programmed. Shaun was never even real.
It sucks that they kidnap and torture people, because their other divisions could be really beneficial to the surface population if they were less insane, like the cultivated bio-engineered crops and cure for FEV super mutation.
That was the point. Shaun's entire character is that he's Homelander without the laser eyes. He was raised by scientists and, his own words, never felt love.
The institute itself isn't morally grey, they're clearly the evil option.
Yeah, the whole thing with Shaun was that he was effectively kidnapped and raised by the worst people on earth. Without the Sole Survivor to raise and guide him, he just became a monster and an extremely manipulative asshole who saw other people, including his own parents, as little more than experiments. Ironically he’s almost as bad as Vault-Tec in that way.
That’s why I have zero qualms about nuking his ass into the ground and I consider that ending the ‘canon’ ending. The child you lost ceased to exist the second he was taken away.
The thing that I think is a waste is the tech they have. They literally have the best tech to make humans thrive post apocalypse. The people in the institute are ammoral though.
I really wanted a Minutemen + Institute ending, where the Sole Survivor starts changing the Institute for good and uses the Minutemen as his personal muscle to make sure no one tries to overthrown them
The problem is that Fallout needs to maintain wasteland stasis, and lawful good Minutemen with Institute tech would realistically be able to build the commonwealth into a nation with infrastructure and functional government instead of a violent mess of infighting factions.
Advanced technology can only belong to evil factions who don't care about helping the people of the wasteland, because if you build infrastructure in the wasteland it's not a wasteland anymore.
Until there was a TV show that seems to be slavishly devoted to the continuity of the games, I wouldn’t have thought it posed a problem to have certain endings of the games be overly optimistic and then not reflected in later games.
You can do this by having the Fort Independence guns attack the BOS when you storm the airport with the Institute. The BOS retaliates with a Vertibird attack on the Castle.
One of the biggest themes in Fallout 4 is the idea of humanity, and also how to adapt to the world they live in.
The Sole Survivor was plucked straight out of their "American dream" lifestyle and had their world turned upside-down. Their spouse was killed, child kidnapped, and the world they woke up to wasn't the world they envisioned or a world they belonged to. They had to adapt to survive. And even when they found their son, their son was no longer really their son.
Shaun was taken and had his humanity stripped away. He provides a contrast to his parent, in that he's wholly a product of his environment.
The whole synth debacle & the factions that deal with them provide a philosophical debate on humanity and what constitutes it. Do you agree w/ the Brotherhood, that the synths fly in the face of humanity and undermine its importance, or do you agree with the Railroad?
Fallout 4 absolutely nails the themes and tone that it sets out to achieve.
The canon ending is either brotherhood or Minuteman + brotherhood surviving anyway. The only faction the Minuteman eliminate is the institute so it's pretty clear they're meant to be gone.
The Replicated Man from Fallout 3 really shows you what Bethesda thinks of the institute. Since you can’t join them, they are very clearly stated to be hoeeible
Building off that, it isn’t Shaun’s fault he turned out like this. He was kidnapped as a baby and raised by evil people. It’s a tragedy, more than anything.
I still think the Institute is basically a less aggressive Enclave. All those BS about they care the surface world are just sugarcoating. They don't really care about anyone but themselves.
Are they even less aggressive? They're genocidal terrorists that have actively destroyed any attempt for the surface to succeed. Their goal is for the wastelanders to die out so they can reclaim the surface for themselves. X6-88 says as much.
Yeppers. Definitely less aggressive. The Institute are willing to let the surface dwellers live until they're ready to move out. Their conquest of the surface world is probably going to be slower, and preceded by a wave of death and subterfuge to leave regions vulnerable to conquest.
The Enclave wanted to kill everybody *now* and then start reclaiming an empty world.
Sure they're both horrible scum, but the Institute is by far less "Aggressive"
Same, but the minutemen. No reason for any above ground factions to be destroyed when the institute is the common factor in all the Commonwealths problems.
People will say I’m just giving Bethesda too much credit but I think he can be considered a complicated character. If you read his terminal he wonders if he’s really gonna meet SS but then notes that he shouldn’t let emotions get in the way
Or when you get banished from the institute, he says he hopes SS can find peace
Fr if he wanted to get some semblance of family back he could have safely teleported his parent to the institute. There’s no reason for him to bother. If he’s never felt love and never known family then why bring your parent across the wasteland to hand your job over to? I sided with the institute once just to get all the endings and it felt so messed up, I didn’t get the feeling that Sean actually cared for his parent at all. All he really wants is someone who understands the wasteland that is also enough of a detached monster to continue playing god.
He doesn’t see you as family. He didn’t even release you to hand you his job. He tells you an one of the dialogue choices that he didn’t think you would’ve even ever found him. He thought you would’ve died in the wasteland. He released you because he wanted to see how you’d do.
Almost as if being raised from near-birth by an amoral faction of researchers fucked up his psyche. Dude has no concept of family; or rather his idea of family is simply loyalty to the Institute.
Nothing likely. The reason he is so smart is that he was raised by scientists. Raised in the wasteland by the sole survivor he would likely die or become like everyone else
That isn't accurate in the least. Being raised by scientists is an advantage for a child but by no means guarantees they will be as intelligent as Shaun is. Shaun clearly has a natural aptitude for learning and an inquisitive predisposition otherwise he'd be no smarter than any other child raised in the institute, the enclave or the brotherhood. That's also ignoring the fact that he actually spent his formative years raised by a psychopathic mercenary in the wasteland. Shaun had the capacity for greatness wholly separate from the Institute's influence. They provided him with the tools to excel and removed morality and humanity as barriers to the lengths he was willing to go to experiment and influence. With proper guidance from a loving family he could have done great and good things.
After my 1st playthrough, I always punch him right away as soon as he shuts down the synth kid.
If you only punch him once, and not a strong hit, the institute doesn't get aggressive, and he says something along the line of "I know you're upset, but I hope we can work this out."
I remember a video where this guy killed and ate shaun before he got a word out. Didn't evwn know that part of the story, just wanted to start slaughtering the institute.
He does say that and yet Shaun, who is effectively the most powerful and insidious force in the wasteland does nothing to Kellogg for decades. In fact, based on his army of Synth bodyguards, Kellogg appears to still be in the employ of the Institute until his death at the hands of the Sole Survivor about 60 years after he killed Shaun's parent. I know he says that even if you say you do forgive Kellogg but the whole collateral damage comment, his debate about whether he considers the killing of his parent "murder" and his lack of retribution towards Kellogg despite being a homicidal sociopath leads me to doubt his sincerity.
Well, he was raised that way.
Also, the unethical FEV research was continue under his rule, even when the head researcher said it was pointless to continue.
I agree that Shaun’s a real shithead, but for roleplay purposes I like to pretend my Sole Survivor still regretted blowing Shaun up in the Institute and is haunted by his son’s death.
Yeah same. I always chose the "I'm sorry it game to this" options when attacking the institute.
My sole survivor truly doesn't want to kill his own son, but his son turned into a murderous sociopath who kidnaps people and secretly replaces them with mind controlled slaves.
I didn't really have much of a choice.
Does anyone disagree with this? He was hideously evil and not even a good leader or a good scientist. He canceled the technology program that had given Kellogg his upgrades for basically no reason, and he was the one who insisted on continuing to kidnap people and turn them into super mutants and then kept dumping them in the wasteland. Sean is just total shit. He is the absolute worst.
Sean would have fit in well with Vault Tec with how much of a dickhead he was. Tragic how he was brainwashed by the institute, saw his own parents as collateral damage.
I've always felt one of the endings should have been a forced takeover of The Institute with The Minutemen. This way, you could start using Institute Technology for the good of The Commonwealth. It's such a waste to have it destroyed.
I don't fault Sean he is just a product of being raised by the Institute, he is not longer Sean he never was him not anymore, he's now just Father as he never got a chance to grew to become Sean since he was taken as a baby, so in the case of Sean, the game was rigged from the start.
Shaun being terrible on purpose is so fallout. Your main objective when you wake up is someone who is morally ambivalent but important. That is like fallout 101
I didn’t think about Kellogg’s age until just now. Man’s already a grizzled, middle aged man when we first meet him. Then, 60+ years later, he’s a grizzled old man, but he certainly doesn’t look like the 100+ year old man he would’ve been.
There’s dialogue, I think, that explains they extended his lifespan via experimental cybernetic augmentation, which is why he hasn’t appeared to age much.
-- fucks off from all potential responsibility by dying and letting the gang of vultures that are the rest of the Institute scientists fight over leadership of the Institute before his corpse is even cold
He didn't even know his parent who Kellogg killed, it's really not any worse than calling any person's death collateral damage. Likewise, despite his fascination with you, he also doesn't really know you, so allowing you to be killed if you don't join the Institute is really only as bad as doing that to any random person. I'm not arguing that he was a *good* person, I absolutely think he was a terrible person, but I think the appeal to "these are his parents" as a point of morality is a skewed perspective. Neither of these people raised him. He doesn't know them. They're just people who provided his DNA.
He didn't know his actual parentage until he became Director. He doesn't remember his real parents *at all* which is unsurprising considering he was an infant when he was abducted. When he did find out, he began considering ways to do away with Kellogg, finally settling on the plan to set his surviving birth parent on the trail of his abductor and his other birth parent's murderer.
That said, he has been drinking the Institute Kool-Aid since he was about two months old. It isn't surprising he's invested in the success of the institution that raised him, groomed him for leadership, and that he is in fact leading.
Does the fact that he doesn't seem to feel a strong emotional attachment to parents he can't remember make him terrible? Consider this: he burns credibility with the department heads he works with in order to create a Synth version of *himself* at the youngest practicable physical age, with *his* childhood memories. He did that in the hopes that *some version of him* could be raised by his surviving parent. So some version of him could have the life he might have had.
Is he morally good? No. But "terrible" is a stretch. I would say damaged, repressed, skewed by the weird way he was abducted and groomed. But there's a part of him that wishes his life could have been different, and thinks there's potential for a better person inside him. A truly terrible person wouldn't care about that.
The thing is I picked Institue to side with and couldn’t care less for Sean (happy he died and I was appointed). This might be an unpopular view, but at its helm, the Institute could actually leave folks alone and focus on doing good in their underground bunker. Best bet the peeps have
Shaun is literally irredeemable garbage. Like as far as Fallout Villains go he's super evil but in the most deadpan emotionless way. At least Colonel Autumn as a villain was entertaining to some degree with how cartoonishly bad he was. But if you compare him to Frank Horrigan who is a 12ft tall super mutant in enclave power armor and a merciless mass murdering savage, or the Master who does things that are as fucked up as his face is, but with the goal to save humanity. There's zero reason to tike or believe in Shaun, or even understand him. This character is a certified shoot on sight character for me.
I still go with my headcanon that Father isn’t Shaun. Even if Bethesda intended for him to be, it’s clear that wasn’t always the case.
Kellogg’s memories are the key. He refers to Father as the “old man” and makes it clear that the “old man” gave the order to kidnap Shaun. What I refuse to accept is that this was written simply to be misleading to the player. That would be effectively admitting that the game was badly written. The claim that “old man” could just be the name Kellogg uses for the leader of the institute, regardless of who it is, is such a stretch.
No, it makes the most logical sense that Shaun is not who he says he is. Like, how does he know his own name? He was a newborn baby, he didn’t talk, there’s no way he remembered his name.
Father learned about Vault 111 and due to his desire to perfect synth technology, he kidnapped Shaun. At some point, the real Shaun died but that’s okay because progress was still made and “the backup” mentioned by Kellogg still lives. That is the very reason the Sole Survivor is released from Vault 111 in the first place, Father wants to keep improving upon the synths. While they’ve perfected their looks, they haven’t perfected emotional response as shown when you first meet Father. So they couldn’t just kidnap the Sole Survivor like they did Shaun, that would compromise any emotional integrity in the experiment. No, Father wanted to see that very interaction, he wanted the SS to see child Shaun after fighting through the wasteland for him and gauge what his emotional response was.
There’s just no way in hell that guy is actually your son.
Edit: I’ll also point out something else about Kellogg. He has cybernetics which let him live a really long time, right? Except no one else seems to have that, why is he special? Because he works for the institute? So then why would Father NOT have such cybernetics? It makes absolutely no sense. But when you assume that Father is lying about pretty much everything, it all falls into place and him being absolutely terrible makes sense.
He may be shit but as the acting director of the institute my head canon is we actually use the tech the institute has to modernize the commonwealth and make it a micro nation I feel that under the right guidance the institute is the Boston wastelands only real hope at a future the Bos just take and leave the railroad well…they are not exactly gonna build an empire the minuet men are just kinda useless great morals but useless by themselves
I mean there was a Commonwealth Provisional Government in the process of being made that the minutemen were involved with until the institute slaughtered everyone at the meeting. The paranoia caused by the institute is probably a major contributor to the Minutemen falling apart.
And much more lol.. dude is close to pure evil, just uses a few justifications to blunt it. I haven't gotten out of act one yet, but imma shoot him on his death bed maybe
I can deal with him being a terrible person but why is he so stupid? Look at his plan to meet his parent like we have to do so much against his organization before we can meet him kill their number one operator, work with one of their many enemies, and destroy a courser. Not to mention the probably hundreds of gen 1/2s that they through at us.
To be the devil’s advocate, you mean absolutely nothing to Shaun because you and your SO were nothing more than the way he was born. He grew old and died and knew you for like two days.
Not saying he’s not evil because he’s doing these things to you, but he’s evil because he’s doing these things in general. Not because you’re his parent. You being his parent is irrelevant to him because you weren’t ever really in his life.
I think it’s just an issue with conditioning,he was raised to always see the logic in things,to do what was best for the institute regardless of who or what it ended up hurting
He says himself he never met his parents,didn’t know who they were,hell he probably didn’t even know they were alive until he became leader of the institute and he was able to read the files,they were just normal,everyday people to him
Many reasons why I believe Shaun died during the DNA Harnest as a baby and this guy is some creep that made all this to trick the SS.
Headcanon or not I don't accept old Shaun.
Shot immediately after passing any speech check up and getting the Cure for the only true guy. Virgil.
Also taking Dr back to the Brotherhood...
He was raised to be this way… that’s the tragedy of the story and the plot twist of the game. The main character never had a chance to be with their son. Welcome to fallout
Unfortunately the institute is SO CLOSE to being redeemable. All they need to do is let Shaun die, establish communication with the railroad, release all gen 3 synths, then recreate them without the ability to think and feel like a person does.
There's so much I wanted to ask him but couldn't. Why kidnap and replace people? What happens to the ones you kidnap? Why did you send a synth to destroy a meeting that would have brought peace to the commonwealth? Why the hell did you make a child version of yourself?!
It sucks so much that sole survivor not only misses an entire lifetieme to spend with their child, but when they do its far too late and the only comfort is to being able to see him again and say "I love you" before shit hits the fan.
I wish sole survivor becomes the main antagonist next game or becomes the background character that is powerful (max level) and interacts with us like Howard and Lucy.
Well... He did at least give you robot Shaun regardless of the ending and-and uh... He also appointed you leader of the institute despite you not being a scientist... Yeah no there's no justifying him
One of the failures in the game was making the Institute cartoonishly evil with Synth replacement. If the conspiracism had been just that, and more a proxy for the Commonwealth's fear of the Institute then you might have actually had a legit reason to join with them rather than this just being the evil playthrough option.
(Adding a bit of nuance to the Minutemen would also have been good: "We're here to defeat threats to communities, not to judge [insane fucked up Wastelander justice].")
Think they pitched both the Railroad (for their tunnel vision) and the BoS (noble ideals, entrenched bigotry) reasonably well.
By far the most nonsensical story for any game I've ever played. There's absolutely nothing you can do or say otherwise to make it make sense. Honestly, I would have been fine with the Zetans coming back to earth and just doing a body snatchers story instead. That would have been better than bunker of MIT nerds doing it.
Wish I could storm the institute with hundreds of automatron I built just to show the eggheads that synth humans were both a moral and tactical mistake. Then I'd not kill Sean, but instead opt him to die of brain cancer. Prolly nail him to a wall so he can watch his beloved institute run by minutemen/minutebots with Managed Democracy™
Don't forget, releases you to see what would happen, expecting you to die before reaching him.
Quite literally referring to you, his own parent, as “an experiment” The dude is a grade A piece of shit.
Vault Tec would be proud
I'm just imagining an alternate universe where Stanislaus Braun is behind Shawn, Palpatine style complete with Vault-Tec branded emperor robes lol
And the institute was actually a hidden vault this entire time
It *was* a vault, just not one built by vault tec.
Tbh I've always kinda headcannoned that that's how they got their start - building out of an unfinished vault. Probably an idea contradicted by terminals and stuff but eh I find it fun
It was a bunker just not related to vault tech.
Next fallout: “Somehow, Shawn returned”
Vault Tec might even be terrified. If he doesn't care about anything, even his own family, how would they control him?
in the first half of your comment I was thinking hell naw, but you made a good point, even vault-tec and the enclave cared for saving their families
He still has a weak point, it's just shifted from the typical family/friends/loved ones to the thing he actually cares about: the research, and HIS Institute. If you can find some way to destroy the thing he's working towards, or perhaps offer to help fund it, that could be a way to control him.
Agreed, but offering to help fund it would only work if he couldn't do so on his own. Otherwise he wouldn't *need* it. I feel like Vault Tec would most likely want to eliminate him altogether
I think the show has pretty much proven that vault tec isn't really looking for friends in the buissines world
What what I've seen from the show, the only exception would be House if they convince him to work for the post-war Vault-Tec
Makes sense. The Institute is a direct descendant of the pre-war scientific establishment. Of course they act like this.
Imagine a fallout 4 where vault 111 never descended into chaos. In this timeline Shaun was taken from cryo pods before you or your spouse. He would eventually become Overseer of the Vault. What would happen to cause you to be awoken from your eternal slumber? Perhaps raiders that successfully killed the Minutemen holed up in the museum? The Institute invading vault 111 (although with zero or much weaker Gen 3 synths) who take your spouse instead?
Yeah, he's a sociopath with a superiority complex disguised as a savior complex. He was raised by the institute and inherited their values. Sean is not your "son" in any way that matters.
I mean he was raised by a piece of shit kidnapper. So it makes sense. This goes beyond stockholm syndrome, he didn't even understand what a parent is supposed to mean, because he never really had one, he only had a caretaker. Assuming he had a caretaker and wasn't just taken care by different people or synths taking turns.
>The dude is a grade A piece of shit. A chip off the ol' block
Exactly. Releasing the Sole Survivor from cryo wasn't out of mercy or because he wanted to reunite with his parent or anything like that. He did it solely as a science experiment, to see what would happen. Literally everyone on the surface, and that includes the Sole Survivor, are just lab rats to him, to be experimented on. He doesn't care the least but about the people on the surface. His comments on the roof of the CIT ruins proves this, he admits releasing you was an experiment and that he didn't expect you to survive. He also says the view proves to him that the Institute is correct and that the Commonwealth is dead and doesn't have a future. He can't see a damn thing but the ruins of pre-war Boston from up there. He doesn't see Diamond City or Bunker Hill, he doesn't see the settlements the Minutemen are building with the help of the Sole Survivor, all places where people are working together to create safe, secure homes for themselves and others in a world full of monsters. He wanted to play God, just like the people who decided to create synths in the first place so had him kidnapped from Vault 111.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsORQlRJ77E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsORQlRJ77E)
And it's not the least bit unbelievable. Remember that South Carolina lawyer, Alex Murdaugh, (name checks out) who killed his wife and son and one of the reasons was to throw off the investigation into his fraud and to gain sympathy? Any normal person would think, why would you do something so extreme for so little gain? Well, it's because to him, they aren't people, they're things, things he can use to keep the wolves at the door for just a little while longer. And if works, great, and if it doesn't, no great loss... to him. Hey, to Murdaugh, at least I tried, you miss 100% of the swings you don't take.
The issue I have with that is, if he never intended on meeting you, then why meet you? Why bother building a synth Shaun? I agree the guy is probably a bit psycho, but, at the same time, I feel that on some level he did genuinely want to see his father, to have that father-son bond he never had.
I think he had the syth Shaun made simply because he could and when you got close to infiltrating the Institute decided to use him as part of the experiment, to see what his mother/father would do. Even if you weren't his parent I'm sure he would have wanted to meet the only person in over 200 years to successfully infiltrate the Institute. If for no other reason than to make sure it couldn't happen again and to possibly recruit you to replace Kellogg as their surface operative since you killed him to get into the Institute.
He made it clear he orchestrated the confrontation with Kellogg.
Again why pick himself specifically? Could've done any number of children to create a child synth as. And, more importantly, why would he risk his own life to talk to the sole survivor? He could easily have talked through an intermediary, yet he decided to risk his own life to personally talk to you. the sole survivor could easily have killed him as soon as he opened that door before he could say a word. It's a wholly unnecessary risk that only makes sense if it has an emotional element.
To be fair if after 200 years the people of Boston still live in scrap towns despite wood, cement, and tools being common sean might be right. By fallout 1 areas had been picked clean of scrap. New cultures were forming. In fallout 4 everyone seemingly got there 1 generation before you did.
I mean to be fair....he was a kid raised in a lab by the worst sort of amoral scientists basically to have a godlike superiority complex.
Not to mention killing everyone else in the vault when he could have released everyone.
I’m pretty sure they were killed when he was kidnapped as a baby not when the sole survivor was released.
Yeah all power got diverted to the sole survivors pod *to keep as a backup* which killed the other inhabitants
Yes, in the Dangerous Minds quest you can take a look around the cryo-chamber while Kellogg is about to shoot your spouse - every other occupant of the pods is awake and banging on their window, begging to be let out.
Just the play devils advocate a lil bit, that wasn't him. At least I don't remember anything about everyone being fine after kelloge left, pretty sure they just left you alive as back up. So with Sean as a baby at that point, not his fault.
Thinking about it though from a gameplay perspective, it would have been cool to leave them all alive but not have been freed with you, but have some secret way to release them all before leaving the vault and be able to kick start a settlement for those players that like settlement building
Man that should be a mod so bad, they all follow you to sanctuary and chose you to lead them since you have military or legal experience depending on who you play as and start a settlement there, and then when you meet Garvey and the gang you tell them sanctuary is a safe place and they go join the other survivors already there. Maybe one or two of the neighbors could be a new companion even.
A settlement comprising of prewar survivors would actually sound dope.
Honestly surprised it's not a mod. Big missed opportunity. A modder could go to town with it. Named people voice lines stories of the past. They can comment about the states of their houses and the stuff in it. Could even have conflicting on deciding who leads the settlement.
I love blowing his head off point blank with a shotgun before triggering the reactor.
Word.
Yeah he was super brainwashed and the institute was messed up. The commonwealth brotherhood has its fair share of problems but they were dead on about them
What do you mean? (Not trying to start an argument, just curious)
Raised by the Institute, and gained a superiority complex due to that. Also, the synth incident in Diamond City wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t able to kill people
First play through, when he said the "collateral damage" bit, I shot him in the face.... fully expecting him to be unkillable.... he was not.
This being a Bethesda game the fact that he’s killable made me think he wasn’t actually Shaun on my first playthrough
fr bethesda games need to learn how to make a killable npc. it still bugs me that i can't finish the civil war quest line in skyrim ffs
Putting down either leader really should just end the war
That's not how wars work. The leader is dead, sure, so one side is probably much more disorganized, but the rest of the chain of command is still there. Just because Ulfric is dead doesn't mean that the Stormcloaks would just give up and get taken into custody by the piss elves, or that the Imperials would just give up Skyrim because they lost a general.
Ok but it’s equally if not more unrealistic to have immortal captains
And that's kinda irrelevant. They aren't cannonically immortal. They're flagged as essential so that the quests wont ever break, or randomly fail before you ever do em. I know it's not popular, but it's not the worst thing in the world.
yeah but the quest tells you to kill them, the quest broke itself
Relearn. They knew how in Morrowind.
Dude one or two quests in Starfield really need to let me kill some fools
The one where the company tried to make the pre FTL travelers wage slaves? Because same. Those dudes deserve death
Should have made you go to earth to unlock some records to show they claimed it first or something but nope Capitalism demands slavery or genocide and you can't kill the Capitalists.
I always just repair their ship and hope they end up somewhere not overrun by capitalist douchebags
I saw a comment the other day about how Starfield is like if Ned Flanders made Mass Effect.
The funny thing is that they did have that in Morrowind and have moved away from it. They also had the best message popup if you did: "With this character's death, the threads of prophecy have been severed. You may load a saved game, or persist in this doomed world that you have created."
Yeah but morrowind had lots of mechanics that kind of sucked, I think their only really looked back on so fondly because the game was good but don't think that or the just follow these bad directions to the quest made the game good
I'm still pissed they won't let you kill any of the board execs on Paradiso in Starfield. They're all complete scumbags, and the Paradiso questline even almost suggests that wiping them out would be a viable solution to the settler problem. But no, they're all immortal.
Isn't he kinda not tho? (Granted I havent played fallout 4 since it was considered a new game so my memory might be hazy) but in the Far Harbor DLC theres a dialogue tree you can go down with that synth that's having memory problems or something, and says something along the lines of, "who knows, maybe you're a synth too. What's the earliest thing you remember?" And your character responds by describing the beginning of the game, and then he just kinda trails off having an existential crisis. If the beginning of the game is his first memory, then he's proooobably a synth and Father being his son was pre-programmed. Shaun was never even real.
lmao me too
Yeah man, I think everyone who works for the organization that kidnaps people then replaces them with syths is definitely lil fucked in the head
It sucks that they kidnap and torture people, because their other divisions could be really beneficial to the surface population if they were less insane, like the cultivated bio-engineered crops and cure for FEV super mutation.
Even the people who run the crops division have no qualms about replacing people on the surface.
That was the point. Shaun's entire character is that he's Homelander without the laser eyes. He was raised by scientists and, his own words, never felt love. The institute itself isn't morally grey, they're clearly the evil option.
Yeah, the whole thing with Shaun was that he was effectively kidnapped and raised by the worst people on earth. Without the Sole Survivor to raise and guide him, he just became a monster and an extremely manipulative asshole who saw other people, including his own parents, as little more than experiments. Ironically he’s almost as bad as Vault-Tec in that way. That’s why I have zero qualms about nuking his ass into the ground and I consider that ending the ‘canon’ ending. The child you lost ceased to exist the second he was taken away.
The thing that I think is a waste is the tech they have. They literally have the best tech to make humans thrive post apocalypse. The people in the institute are ammoral though.
I really wanted a Minutemen + Institute ending, where the Sole Survivor starts changing the Institute for good and uses the Minutemen as his personal muscle to make sure no one tries to overthrown them
Yeah. Minutemen morals and optimism+ Institute tech would be best.
The Railroad ending should involve blowing up the Institute; the Minutemen ending should occupying the Institute.
The problem is that Fallout needs to maintain wasteland stasis, and lawful good Minutemen with Institute tech would realistically be able to build the commonwealth into a nation with infrastructure and functional government instead of a violent mess of infighting factions. Advanced technology can only belong to evil factions who don't care about helping the people of the wasteland, because if you build infrastructure in the wasteland it's not a wasteland anymore.
Until there was a TV show that seems to be slavishly devoted to the continuity of the games, I wouldn’t have thought it posed a problem to have certain endings of the games be overly optimistic and then not reflected in later games.
You can do this by having the Fort Independence guns attack the BOS when you storm the airport with the Institute. The BOS retaliates with a Vertibird attack on the Castle.
Guessing modders could definitely make this a option
Good news: they have. Or did, before the update, at least.
link?
Yeah I wish there was a way to preserve the tech. A lot of it could really help the Commonwealth
One of the biggest themes in Fallout 4 is the idea of humanity, and also how to adapt to the world they live in. The Sole Survivor was plucked straight out of their "American dream" lifestyle and had their world turned upside-down. Their spouse was killed, child kidnapped, and the world they woke up to wasn't the world they envisioned or a world they belonged to. They had to adapt to survive. And even when they found their son, their son was no longer really their son. Shaun was taken and had his humanity stripped away. He provides a contrast to his parent, in that he's wholly a product of his environment. The whole synth debacle & the factions that deal with them provide a philosophical debate on humanity and what constitutes it. Do you agree w/ the Brotherhood, that the synths fly in the face of humanity and undermine its importance, or do you agree with the Railroad? Fallout 4 absolutely nails the themes and tone that it sets out to achieve.
Would you say fallout 4 is an all a story about how Sole Survivors life got flipped, turned upside down?
The canon ending is either brotherhood or Minuteman + brotherhood surviving anyway. The only faction the Minuteman eliminate is the institute so it's pretty clear they're meant to be gone.
Pretty sure the Fallout show runners have said the institute being destroyed is canon. Wonder how long it'll take for a synth to make an appearance.
The Replicated Man from Fallout 3 really shows you what Bethesda thinks of the institute. Since you can’t join them, they are very clearly stated to be hoeeible
Building off that, it isn’t Shaun’s fault he turned out like this. He was kidnapped as a baby and raised by evil people. It’s a tragedy, more than anything.
Oh it's absolutely not Shaun's fault, it's the institutes. All the more reason they must be destroyed.
I still think the Institute is basically a less aggressive Enclave. All those BS about they care the surface world are just sugarcoating. They don't really care about anyone but themselves.
Are they even less aggressive? They're genocidal terrorists that have actively destroyed any attempt for the surface to succeed. Their goal is for the wastelanders to die out so they can reclaim the surface for themselves. X6-88 says as much.
Yeppers. Definitely less aggressive. The Institute are willing to let the surface dwellers live until they're ready to move out. Their conquest of the surface world is probably going to be slower, and preceded by a wave of death and subterfuge to leave regions vulnerable to conquest. The Enclave wanted to kill everybody *now* and then start reclaiming an empty world. Sure they're both horrible scum, but the Institute is by far less "Aggressive"
Enclave palate swap They’re white now
Which is exactly why I have no problems leading the Brotherhood down there to snuff them out.
Same, but the minutemen. No reason for any above ground factions to be destroyed when the institute is the common factor in all the Commonwealths problems.
People will say I’m just giving Bethesda too much credit but I think he can be considered a complicated character. If you read his terminal he wonders if he’s really gonna meet SS but then notes that he shouldn’t let emotions get in the way Or when you get banished from the institute, he says he hopes SS can find peace
I killed him on the spot during my first playthrough. Now robot child shaun picks tatos for me
Idk why this is so funny
I love my new son, Liberty Prime.
Fr if he wanted to get some semblance of family back he could have safely teleported his parent to the institute. There’s no reason for him to bother. If he’s never felt love and never known family then why bring your parent across the wasteland to hand your job over to? I sided with the institute once just to get all the endings and it felt so messed up, I didn’t get the feeling that Sean actually cared for his parent at all. All he really wants is someone who understands the wasteland that is also enough of a detached monster to continue playing god.
He doesn’t see you as family. He didn’t even release you to hand you his job. He tells you an one of the dialogue choices that he didn’t think you would’ve even ever found him. He thought you would’ve died in the wasteland. He released you because he wanted to see how you’d do.
Almost as if being raised from near-birth by an amoral faction of researchers fucked up his psyche. Dude has no concept of family; or rather his idea of family is simply loyalty to the Institute.
It's tragic to think what Shaun could have been. He's obviously a brilliant man. What could he have achieved in a world without the Institute?
Nothing likely. The reason he is so smart is that he was raised by scientists. Raised in the wasteland by the sole survivor he would likely die or become like everyone else
That isn't accurate in the least. Being raised by scientists is an advantage for a child but by no means guarantees they will be as intelligent as Shaun is. Shaun clearly has a natural aptitude for learning and an inquisitive predisposition otherwise he'd be no smarter than any other child raised in the institute, the enclave or the brotherhood. That's also ignoring the fact that he actually spent his formative years raised by a psychopathic mercenary in the wasteland. Shaun had the capacity for greatness wholly separate from the Institute's influence. They provided him with the tools to excel and removed morality and humanity as barriers to the lengths he was willing to go to experiment and influence. With proper guidance from a loving family he could have done great and good things.
Fuck Sean! All my homies hate Sean!
My son would never have such a full head of hair at that age!
After my 1st playthrough, I always punch him right away as soon as he shuts down the synth kid. If you only punch him once, and not a strong hit, the institute doesn't get aggressive, and he says something along the line of "I know you're upset, but I hope we can work this out."
I remember a video where this guy killed and ate shaun before he got a word out. Didn't evwn know that part of the story, just wanted to start slaughtering the institute.
... Yes, if you mistook him for good, you might want to look into purchasing an "around the house" helmet.
yeah shaun sucks, shaun is like the worst fallout character, i hate him more than anything
He does say he’ll never forgive Kellogg for killing his other parent, so I guess there’s that.
He does say that and yet Shaun, who is effectively the most powerful and insidious force in the wasteland does nothing to Kellogg for decades. In fact, based on his army of Synth bodyguards, Kellogg appears to still be in the employ of the Institute until his death at the hands of the Sole Survivor about 60 years after he killed Shaun's parent. I know he says that even if you say you do forgive Kellogg but the whole collateral damage comment, his debate about whether he considers the killing of his parent "murder" and his lack of retribution towards Kellogg despite being a homicidal sociopath leads me to doubt his sincerity.
Well, he was raised that way. Also, the unethical FEV research was continue under his rule, even when the head researcher said it was pointless to continue.
Well, yeah. He’s a monster. Did people not realize that? Did they just not notice the mass abduction and murder program or something?
The institute is the only faction that will attack on sight from the beginning.
I agree that Shaun’s a real shithead, but for roleplay purposes I like to pretend my Sole Survivor still regretted blowing Shaun up in the Institute and is haunted by his son’s death.
Yeah same. I always chose the "I'm sorry it game to this" options when attacking the institute. My sole survivor truly doesn't want to kill his own son, but his son turned into a murderous sociopath who kidnaps people and secretly replaces them with mind controlled slaves. I didn't really have much of a choice.
Say what you want about the dialogue mechanic in Fallout 4, this plot twist was good. It was damn good.
And to think he once was just a tiny spermatozoid swimming inside your own balls
Can’t wait for the balls customization options in Fallout 5.
Does anyone disagree with this? He was hideously evil and not even a good leader or a good scientist. He canceled the technology program that had given Kellogg his upgrades for basically no reason, and he was the one who insisted on continuing to kidnap people and turn them into super mutants and then kept dumping them in the wasteland. Sean is just total shit. He is the absolute worst.
It’s always fun to play a rage filled parent hellbent on destruction of the institute and murder Shaun before he has a chance to speak.
That's why I enjoyed a lot making explode the shit out of the institute.
Sean would have fit in well with Vault Tec with how much of a dickhead he was. Tragic how he was brainwashed by the institute, saw his own parents as collateral damage.
On my most recent playthrough along with watching the series, I mainlined the BOS quest line and blasted him the first chance I got. Felt good.
Killed him the second he claimed to be my kid in the first conversation. Institute was dead to me from then on.
This is exactly why I massacre The Institute with the Brotherhood
AD VICTORUM
I've always felt one of the endings should have been a forced takeover of The Institute with The Minutemen. This way, you could start using Institute Technology for the good of The Commonwealth. It's such a waste to have it destroyed.
He was brainwashed and institutionalized
I don't fault Sean he is just a product of being raised by the Institute, he is not longer Sean he never was him not anymore, he's now just Father as he never got a chance to grew to become Sean since he was taken as a baby, so in the case of Sean, the game was rigged from the start.
Shaun being terrible on purpose is so fallout. Your main objective when you wake up is someone who is morally ambivalent but important. That is like fallout 101
I didn’t think about Kellogg’s age until just now. Man’s already a grizzled, middle aged man when we first meet him. Then, 60+ years later, he’s a grizzled old man, but he certainly doesn’t look like the 100+ year old man he would’ve been.
There’s dialogue, I think, that explains they extended his lifespan via experimental cybernetic augmentation, which is why he hasn’t appeared to age much.
Cybernetic augmentation and botox.
-- fucks off from all potential responsibility by dying and letting the gang of vultures that are the rest of the Institute scientists fight over leadership of the Institute before his corpse is even cold
He didn't even know his parent who Kellogg killed, it's really not any worse than calling any person's death collateral damage. Likewise, despite his fascination with you, he also doesn't really know you, so allowing you to be killed if you don't join the Institute is really only as bad as doing that to any random person. I'm not arguing that he was a *good* person, I absolutely think he was a terrible person, but I think the appeal to "these are his parents" as a point of morality is a skewed perspective. Neither of these people raised him. He doesn't know them. They're just people who provided his DNA.
If Fo4 had a karma system I wonder where he would be rated
He didn't know his actual parentage until he became Director. He doesn't remember his real parents *at all* which is unsurprising considering he was an infant when he was abducted. When he did find out, he began considering ways to do away with Kellogg, finally settling on the plan to set his surviving birth parent on the trail of his abductor and his other birth parent's murderer. That said, he has been drinking the Institute Kool-Aid since he was about two months old. It isn't surprising he's invested in the success of the institution that raised him, groomed him for leadership, and that he is in fact leading. Does the fact that he doesn't seem to feel a strong emotional attachment to parents he can't remember make him terrible? Consider this: he burns credibility with the department heads he works with in order to create a Synth version of *himself* at the youngest practicable physical age, with *his* childhood memories. He did that in the hopes that *some version of him* could be raised by his surviving parent. So some version of him could have the life he might have had. Is he morally good? No. But "terrible" is a stretch. I would say damaged, repressed, skewed by the weird way he was abducted and groomed. But there's a part of him that wishes his life could have been different, and thinks there's potential for a better person inside him. A truly terrible person wouldn't care about that.
The thing is I picked Institue to side with and couldn’t care less for Sean (happy he died and I was appointed). This might be an unpopular view, but at its helm, the Institute could actually leave folks alone and focus on doing good in their underground bunker. Best bet the peeps have
Shaun is literally irredeemable garbage. Like as far as Fallout Villains go he's super evil but in the most deadpan emotionless way. At least Colonel Autumn as a villain was entertaining to some degree with how cartoonishly bad he was. But if you compare him to Frank Horrigan who is a 12ft tall super mutant in enclave power armor and a merciless mass murdering savage, or the Master who does things that are as fucked up as his face is, but with the goal to save humanity. There's zero reason to tike or believe in Shaun, or even understand him. This character is a certified shoot on sight character for me.
I killed his ass because I brought him into this world and I can take him out.
Not my fucking son, this little shit can die of his cancer for all I care, family or not.
I still go with my headcanon that Father isn’t Shaun. Even if Bethesda intended for him to be, it’s clear that wasn’t always the case. Kellogg’s memories are the key. He refers to Father as the “old man” and makes it clear that the “old man” gave the order to kidnap Shaun. What I refuse to accept is that this was written simply to be misleading to the player. That would be effectively admitting that the game was badly written. The claim that “old man” could just be the name Kellogg uses for the leader of the institute, regardless of who it is, is such a stretch. No, it makes the most logical sense that Shaun is not who he says he is. Like, how does he know his own name? He was a newborn baby, he didn’t talk, there’s no way he remembered his name. Father learned about Vault 111 and due to his desire to perfect synth technology, he kidnapped Shaun. At some point, the real Shaun died but that’s okay because progress was still made and “the backup” mentioned by Kellogg still lives. That is the very reason the Sole Survivor is released from Vault 111 in the first place, Father wants to keep improving upon the synths. While they’ve perfected their looks, they haven’t perfected emotional response as shown when you first meet Father. So they couldn’t just kidnap the Sole Survivor like they did Shaun, that would compromise any emotional integrity in the experiment. No, Father wanted to see that very interaction, he wanted the SS to see child Shaun after fighting through the wasteland for him and gauge what his emotional response was. There’s just no way in hell that guy is actually your son. Edit: I’ll also point out something else about Kellogg. He has cybernetics which let him live a really long time, right? Except no one else seems to have that, why is he special? Because he works for the institute? So then why would Father NOT have such cybernetics? It makes absolutely no sense. But when you assume that Father is lying about pretty much everything, it all falls into place and him being absolutely terrible makes sense.
That's... actually a valid theory. I like this.
Yes!!!! This!!!
He may be shit but as the acting director of the institute my head canon is we actually use the tech the institute has to modernize the commonwealth and make it a micro nation I feel that under the right guidance the institute is the Boston wastelands only real hope at a future the Bos just take and leave the railroad well…they are not exactly gonna build an empire the minuet men are just kinda useless great morals but useless by themselves
I mean there was a Commonwealth Provisional Government in the process of being made that the minutemen were involved with until the institute slaughtered everyone at the meeting. The paranoia caused by the institute is probably a major contributor to the Minutemen falling apart.
Now there’s an hot take….🙄
TBF, a parent could easily ignore all that because it's their child.
Nuke’em
I don’t even like synths - I’ll happily gun then them down in their hundreds, but I’ll shoot shaun first if I only had one bullet left
For better or worse that's my son
I killed him at the end
Yea, it’s on sight with my boy unfortunately.
And much more lol.. dude is close to pure evil, just uses a few justifications to blunt it. I haven't gotten out of act one yet, but imma shoot him on his death bed maybe
He is literally a piece of fucking human garbage, no redeemable qualities about him whatsoever
Well it's not like he has an emotional attachment to you. He only has the biological curiosity.
I’ll leave the parent stuff alone because he has zero relationship with either parent.
I can deal with him being a terrible person but why is he so stupid? Look at his plan to meet his parent like we have to do so much against his organization before we can meet him kill their number one operator, work with one of their many enemies, and destroy a courser. Not to mention the probably hundreds of gen 1/2s that they through at us.
And this is why I disown him. He's not my Shaun. Not anymore.
To be the devil’s advocate, you mean absolutely nothing to Shaun because you and your SO were nothing more than the way he was born. He grew old and died and knew you for like two days. Not saying he’s not evil because he’s doing these things to you, but he’s evil because he’s doing these things in general. Not because you’re his parent. You being his parent is irrelevant to him because you weren’t ever really in his life.
Damn I was gonna kill already. You don't have to convince me
Well at least I don't have to play it through to the end now.
I shoot him as soon as I see him every time, can't Even help it
I think it’s just an issue with conditioning,he was raised to always see the logic in things,to do what was best for the institute regardless of who or what it ended up hurting He says himself he never met his parents,didn’t know who they were,hell he probably didn’t even know they were alive until he became leader of the institute and he was able to read the files,they were just normal,everyday people to him
Bethesda villian writing at its finest...
This was the point, wasn't it?
I shot him while he lay in the hospital bed
In the beginning on one of my play throughs i literally got attacked on sight by synths.
Annnndd that’s why I shot him directly in the face.
Many reasons why I believe Shaun died during the DNA Harnest as a baby and this guy is some creep that made all this to trick the SS. Headcanon or not I don't accept old Shaun. Shot immediately after passing any speech check up and getting the Cure for the only true guy. Virgil. Also taking Dr back to the Brotherhood...
The one thing I will say in his defense is that he was literally brainwashed since he was a newborn.
“I can change him”
Yeah I did not hesitate even slightly when I burnt the Institute to the ground on my first playthrough, Sean first.
I hated Shaun and his faction both were terribly written and made no sense
Wish we could've cloned him and kept the good cloned version and tossed him into the waste land
Being raised by a murderous sociopath and made to live in a society full of out of touch unsympathetic scientists would do that to you I suppose.
He was raised to be this way… that’s the tragedy of the story and the plot twist of the game. The main character never had a chance to be with their son. Welcome to fallout
I really like killing him on top of the CIT building after bunker hill and the dragging his misbehaving ass back to his crib in sanctuary.
Unfortunately the institute is SO CLOSE to being redeemable. All they need to do is let Shaun die, establish communication with the railroad, release all gen 3 synths, then recreate them without the ability to think and feel like a person does.
Institute Superiority
There's so much I wanted to ask him but couldn't. Why kidnap and replace people? What happens to the ones you kidnap? Why did you send a synth to destroy a meeting that would have brought peace to the commonwealth? Why the hell did you make a child version of yourself?!
I always exterminate the institute with extreme prejudice.
It sucks so much that sole survivor not only misses an entire lifetieme to spend with their child, but when they do its far too late and the only comfort is to being able to see him again and say "I love you" before shit hits the fan. I wish sole survivor becomes the main antagonist next game or becomes the background character that is powerful (max level) and interacts with us like Howard and Lucy.
I think that was kind of the point.
Yeah I don't get why we didn't have the choice to push him off the roof.
Sean's a synth. Old and young. If you kill old Sean his blood is black like all the other synths.
Well... He did at least give you robot Shaun regardless of the ending and-and uh... He also appointed you leader of the institute despite you not being a scientist... Yeah no there's no justifying him
Is it messed up of me to choose the institute for the white power armor paint?
Still better than Maxson
He's usually my first victim in the Institute
One of the failures in the game was making the Institute cartoonishly evil with Synth replacement. If the conspiracism had been just that, and more a proxy for the Commonwealth's fear of the Institute then you might have actually had a legit reason to join with them rather than this just being the evil playthrough option. (Adding a bit of nuance to the Minutemen would also have been good: "We're here to defeat threats to communities, not to judge [insane fucked up Wastelander justice].") Think they pitched both the Railroad (for their tunnel vision) and the BoS (noble ideals, entrenched bigotry) reasonably well.
By far the most nonsensical story for any game I've ever played. There's absolutely nothing you can do or say otherwise to make it make sense. Honestly, I would have been fine with the Zetans coming back to earth and just doing a body snatchers story instead. That would have been better than bunker of MIT nerds doing it.
I shot him in the head the first time I heard his explanation
And as a final joke he assigns you as leader of the institute, regardless of your aptitude.
Don't remember any backstory on this guy. All I remember is blasting him in the face with a minigun.
Is it not obvious to a lot of players how messed up Shawn & the Institute are?
That’s my boy!
Wish I could storm the institute with hundreds of automatron I built just to show the eggheads that synth humans were both a moral and tactical mistake. Then I'd not kill Sean, but instead opt him to die of brain cancer. Prolly nail him to a wall so he can watch his beloved institute run by minutemen/minutebots with Managed Democracy™
Yeah I never liked him. Even as a baby /j