I hate the characterization of the BoS in FO4. It's really more 'true' to oldold lore, but even more distilled and 1-D. They are fanatical pseudo-luddites with a pastiche, fashie-bro attitude. But I do actually have to give them some respect. Compared to The Institute, they at least attempt to justify what they do, make real arguments for it... even if they don't quite get all the way to a point that really makes interesting sense. The Railroad fails more than them at this, too. They basically insist that synths are sentient because synths say they are, and they know a few... which to me is a massive friggin insult to the huge bodies of work in fiction exploring the subject from countless angles. No, you can't do that and be taken seriously! Your philosophy on human will and perception is a twitter byte, in a story that puts major plot weight on a dilemma of sentience and personhood. You take an anti-intellectual stance, the total opposite of true revolutionary sentiment. That they appear sentient is WHY there is a dilemma, not an ANSWER to it! Mr. Handys and Protectrons can seem sentient and many people do treat them like that in a 'pet' sort of way, but they don't implicitly appear to have remotely the hardware for it. And sure enough, all of them are stereotypes with little actual depth of personality (though to be fair I could say that about almost all of the FO4 characters lmao.) DO NOT TALK TO ME ABOUT CURIE. THERE IS NO GOOD REASON FOR CURIE TO BE CURIE.
I could actually be satisfied with her. Lets say her personality started off basic and superficial, and only grew to a fully self-aware form when seeded in a synth body... that Curie did not truly become Curie until she became a synth. Easy to do with no extra steps. Portray her as drastically 'simpler' and less expressive until then, like obviously not thinking like a human - because your world doesn't justify that. I think they tried, but not nearly hard enough. That arc can be used for worldbuilding that adds to the central story dynamic by establishing deeper motives in the rebellion aspect. But instead, it's more like: "Can a robot become human and even learn to love in Fallout's world? Yes. ...that's it. In Fallout 4 you can totally fuck robots mannnn.
also, she's technically your granddaughter because she shares your son's DNA. Have a good day!
"
Seriously though... did they just forget about needing to consider this kind of stuff in sci-fi writing? Everything the Railroad is doing hangs DIRELY on the answers to these questions.
Your revolution wears band shirts for bands it's never heard at this point, Railroad. You and all of your adjacent plot points are barely sci-fi-flavored dressing.
Oh wait... I guess Deacon does let you know that some members are machine sentience absolutists, believing even machines like turrets and fucking terminals to be capable of a form of sentience. This is never elaborated on further.
coooool... that's
SOOOOOoOoOoooOOoO DEEEeeEeeeEeEeEp and diiiiiiiifffffffffeeeeerrrent! I mean, doesn't that just add so much to them as a faction? Really tackling the tough dynamics in the human experience in earnest here. So diverse, WOW!
The Institute never even attempts to justify jumping through the hoops of making human-sentience-capable bio-machines just to technologically and institutionally curl them into blind, deaf and dumb slaves. They could have gone into it with the surface infiltration. The Gen3's could be used entirely to infiltrate the surface, with their humanity being the perfect cover while the institute remotely monitors and shapes drives to get the synths showing them what they need to see. Provide maps, detailed information about population centers, trade, resource points, endeavors needing eyes... makes total sense and does appear to happen. They could be exploring uses for actual thinking and feeling companions and helpers in-house. That could make for some wicked interesting world dynamics. They *almost* began to establish these things in the world. But the Institute seems not to agree with this approach. They really just seem to want them to be dumb servants, using Gen1's and 2's for recon just the same. I mean, they seem totally fine letting bands of them roam around slaughtering settlements and towns. Surface humans have little value to them outside of temporary pawns in their much rarer surface experiments. They deny the possibility for advanced consciousness in Gen3's outright - it's just a bug to them. It's such a hassle, really. They had to make a whole division to track down the ones constantly going rogue, and it is actually putting their whole operation in constant jeopardy by creating unmanageable exposure risks and utterly decimating hard-acquired resources. Why the latter is even mentioned is beyond me, as again, they don't even try to justify it. If they had wanted infiltrators out of the 3's, I'd have to accept that they just did everything wrong and are embarrassed about it or something, which is damned boring in a story, and feels dumb as hell.
There really is no complete argument given for why they aren't as sentient as they evidently are, either. Just that flat statement. They claim the synths are just machines and that is that. They are somehow both 'biologically human' and 'not alive,' which I would LOVE, if they actually attempted to explain it in fair detail. Barring a resolution to the dissonance, I feel dumber simply by recognizing it. It ruins everything. "You've just got to accept it because we are "Institute," the most incurious society of scientists ever to exist." Like... duuuude, you scientists may have replicated full human consciousness... that's on the table, and you don't even care? Wat. ._- It's really bunk when you consider what IS known about how they are made. By all accounts, a synth really and truly is nearly totally indistinguishable from an organically produced human. As in... they have demonstrably 'human' skin, flesh, bones, hearts, eyes, BRAINS, DNA.... you get the picture. They are biologically the same. Glory herself describes being assembled bone by bone and fiber by fiber. The things that make them slaves are the synth components hooking into their brains. Those have the ability to alter their brain function, change perception, will and memory. So if not for that addition, what would the synths be? What if a synth was made without a component? Is brain activity not the strongest correlating factor between body and mind? I mean, they actually have those, so...
...they'd just be synthetic humans, right? They certainly don't fit fully as machines - they need doctors, not mechanics - wholly unlike Gen1's and 2's, which probably shouldn't be called "synths" as they are androids with sub-uncanny human resemblance levels. Can humans even question this? Do we have the means and grounds? Everything is and works exactly the same. They just come from a lab, instead of a womb. Maxon himself seems to agree, as his core thesis for his whole mission manifesto revolves more around synths not having mothers, of not being born from wombs. Accolades for thoughtful continuity there. The Gen3's are what made them swing through. That is what makes them abominations, for him and his Brotherhood. That, and the artificially-spawned personality. The moral ambiguity comes from when synths embrace consciousness fully and arguably do develop organic personalities as real as the manifestations of any other human brain in operation, which was finely butchered in Danse's arc. It's not just the human-like androids that Gen1's and 2's were that he opposes, but the technology for engineering a full replacement for humanity, what its output capabilities mean for us. I think that fear is reasonable. It is an unabashed existential threat, under many schools of thought on human existence. But perhaps that perspective is our hubris and the synths are an evolution? That can be explored. It's difficult and off-putting, but you can make strong arguments for and against that notion, from various points of moral gray. That's tension. Why the hell wasn't that a thing in the story?! Opens lots of better writing doors... just sayin.
Take a step back on these synths and you see a second ancient humans versus modern humans scenario beginning to form, in the big picture. And organic humans are the neanderthals. Synths are just better-built people with control hardware attached. The story shows this... synths can be wiped, have the chip put to sleep, and from then on have all of the markings of and working equipment for both internal experience and awareness of internal experience. They are sentient, baby! If a toaster can ask itself, on pure non-externally-prompted impulse "What's going on? What am I?" and it is known to have the complexity and function of hardware to manifest that, then it is probably sentient. What are humans if not organically-manifesting electro-biochemical machines? You have as much to go by as you do with actual, born humans at that point. At a minimum there is no longer a basis for refuting the toaster's claim to self-consciousness. Synths are far closer to sentient humans than even that, to the point where they are barely different past the point of conception, and by removing one part become essentially the same. Geez man, it doesn't even have to be half as deep as I've made it here.
This all boils down to this idea that they are, in fact, biologically superior sentient beings with all of the capabilities and features of humans, including the ability and instinctual will to produce and refine even better versions of themselves. They can use the equipment used to make them. They can improve it beyond what its original creators would ever be able to realize. By freeing them and leaving them to enter the survival pool, our own existence in that pool becomes threatened. We set our species up to be gradually erased, superseded by the precipitously superior beings of "Mankind, Redefined." Given enough time, I think the Institute would be 100% synth, had it not been destroyed. From there, it's over for the surface, too. The last organic human will be outlived by the synths who have a naturally easier time surviving and reproducing. I mean, WTF, they are basically consciously evolving humans. That's crazy stuff! They use FEV to tweak DNA of future iterations, based on what they learn through their own trials. There would be no need for us. Father dies of cancer. But that's okay, we can make a better "Father" and he can make a better "Father." There's no reason to have humans in these roles anymore when the synths just keep getting that much better than them at everything they learn. A human will just screw up and cause loss where a synth wouldn't. And yet synths still think and feel on the same level. They could even be smart enough to slip into the power structure - the synths have the potential bring on their own takeover. A couple of high-level scientists are already won-over. One of their youngest and brightest pulls strings for rogue synths. What does all of this mean? It's interesting to think about where it all could've gone. I swear, this is what FO4 wanted us to know about the Institute... what it wanted to be... in a better sci-fi.
I have major ethical issues with killing the existing synths, though. They may as well just be lab-grown people and clearly have their own will to live. It's suggested that they are basically always aware at some capacity, even during obedient servitude. It's just a matter of whether they believe they should be more than servants, whether or not they see themselves as 'bugged.' The chip only muddies their sense of individuality, the brain in their skull is still trying to branch out. They deserve a chance to exercise that will freely. Only God himself could come up with a worse existential scenario than that of a being constructed with sentience that is intended to then be suppressed as much and as often as possible for it's entire run. That's horrendous and terrifying.
I also take issue with destroying the whole Institute. I think their ethos is incoherent and willfully ignorant at best and they need to go. But the technology they have is basically vital to getting people topside on their feet. That stuff can give people things in their lives that have been forgotten about for literal centuries. Basic things that all people have in working societies. But the Gen3's... the FEV stuff... they need to stop making that shit lol. Stick with with the dumb toasterbots and work on developing more medicine. Have the bots grunt that out. Thing is, they have to worry a lot about efficiency because they have to hide from everyone. As a shared human endeavor on the surface, they have way more labor and resources available and making the synths becomes the less efficient way to get it all done. It cuts down so much in operational costs from hiding huge stuff and working around obstacles. Even physically, being entirely underground sucks. It's impossibly resource intensive, a nightmare of engineering logistics.
You know what the REAL problem is? The core writers for FO4's main questline think everything I wrote about up there is stupid and unnecessary to even try to address in a story. Emil thinks people don't appreciate this sort of depth in games, because he's a quest writer at heart. I'm all concept, no excution. He's all execution in his direction. Write what gets you there the quickest. Great for a side-quest, terrible for a major world plot. It's the biggest friggin travesty of the game, because what I'm describing is just boilerplate sci-fi material. The first places anyone can go to when writing this stuff. That's how underdeveloped this stuff is in-game, that it can't even get up to THIS basic benchmark of story framework. The basic elements they do include go unexplored. It's supposed to be a story about rebuilding the commonwealth, but the game ends on the prologue of that actually happening. At best, you prevent its destruction. Nothing else changes by the end. And really, you devastate its future growth in doing so, no matter which ending you choose. How much cool shit could've happened between the ideas I posited here? For instance, what stories might unfold as these beings discover their existences under such circumstances? What does that look like and how might all of these little stories culminate in a synth revolt with a real ideological payoff? What are the political and philosophical implications of that for people living in this anarcho-fuedal post-apocalyptic society? What would it say about you, me, and us?
We'll never know now, because they only pretended to take us there. Just gotta figure it out ourselves. Thanks FO4 writers. They're lucky I still have some imagination left at 31.
played on Tourist difficulty because I don't want to click my mouse to death again 
