So in the end, what was even the point of the Synths?

Walpknut

Walpknut

This ghoul has seen it all
Like the title says, what was the point of their inclussion at all? And I don't just mean in-universe, I mean narratively. Their precense never amounted to anything other than Railroad radiant quests, the Institute kidnapping people and replacing them with Synths similarly went nowhere and the plot itself wasn't even about them but about a reversed Fo3 Father/son dynamic. Hell they are so irrelevant that they don't even get a mention either on the intro or ending narrations.

To justify the Brotherhood there? They could've replaced Synths with anything, hell they could've come up with a more compelling goal for them while they were at it.

What are your thoughts?
 
The institute itself doesn't seem to have a purpose. They replace random wastelanders, why, it's just as easy to simply infuse gen 3's into the populace organically. It couldn't be slave labor, any rational scientist would have scrapped anything past gen 1 after they started showing cognitive thought. If there was some form of brain transfer plan to both toughen and prolong the people of the institute wouldn't "Father" have used it?
 
I don't get the point of synths or The Institute, I can't understand what purpose to replace people with synths besides "Wanting to take over Boston". I don't know why since only 10s of people live in this shithole. What do they want to take over this place for if that's the case?
 
Perhaps had they not included them people replaying Fallout 3 would have thought "What the hell was the point of the Blade Runner Ripoff Quest"?

But yeah, the Institute was just a missed opportunity. It was like a less coherent and organized version of the Think Tank, except one is made up of likely insane bickering brains in jar with no clear plan and the other was the Institute.
 
I think, apart from Synths beeing somewat alien to Fallout-franchise in general, I believe the problem lies completely with Bethesda, and not the idea itself. Fallout is not Blade-Runner, arlight. But I still feel it could be used as a plot-device and idea that could spawn a lot of very interesting scenarions, be it with moral dilemas or the narrative. I could get used to the idea. If it's done well.

But yeah ... Bethesda should be really known as Those-That-Waste-A-Lot-Of-Potential, in the same way as how you say He-Who-Could-Not-Be-Name for Tom Riddle.

I guess they simply came up with it in some meeting, thinking about the Replicated man, and trying to find something else to shoot for their pew-pew-gameplay. Oh, oh! I know, I know! We have, shoot masses of Robots, Cyborgs, Mutants, Humans, Ghouls! But you know what we have not done yet ... ANDROIDS!

It's simply symptomatic for Bethesda. Instead of treating nuclear weapons the way how F1 and F2 did, they make it a toy, instead of creating a real threat with the Super Mutants, like the Master, it's just another Orc to shoot. So, why should Synths be any different here ...
 
When the leak Streams popped up I was actually excited when the player reached Diamond city and the Noir-esque plot of the Institute controlling Diamond City from the shadows, kidnapping people and replacing them with synths for REASONS to be discovered by the player apparently unveiled.... then I played the game... Diamond City is barely relevant to jack shit, the Institute's precense is hardly felt on the plot aside from the Synth infested ruins, hell if you play for the Institute apparently their Synths are incompetent enough to regularly get kidnapped by Raiders and they just can't handle it apparently... It's just all so stupid, a complete waste of any potential anything has.
 
Walpknut said:
When the leak Streams popped up I was actually excited when the player reached Diamond city and the Noir-esque plot of the Institute controlling Diamond City from the shadows, kidnapping people and replacing them with synths for REASONS to be discovered by the player apparently unveiled.... then I played the game... Diamond City is barely relevant to jack shit, the Institute's precense is hardly felt on the plot aside from the Synth infested ruins, hell if you play for the Institute apparently their Synths are incompetent enough to regularly get kidnapped by Raiders and they just can't handle it apparently... It's just all so stupid, a complete waste of any potential anything has.
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I kind of got excited myself when I saw Goodneighbor and Nick, then to add insult to injury Deckard and Batty are on the list of names Codsworth can say.
 
That is one reason, the other is to have super mutants in their latest game because Fallout wouldn't be a Fallout game without braindead orcs. I would like to know how they find enough guts to fill up their gore bags, they can't get them from humans as that's only around 10% of the population. Are they cannibals?
 
RangerBoo said:
More mooks for us to shoot? :shrug:
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It's not like they couldn't have just invented new mooks for us to shoot. It's not like Fallout 1&2 came loaded with Yao Guai, Cazadors, Tunnelers, Trogs, Nightstalkers, Bloatflies, Spore Carriers, *lurks, Swampfolk, etc. and most of those things fit in pretty well with existing canon or could at least be justified in the text much more easily than Bethesda's weak attempts to justify FEV ending up on the East Coast.

I mean, what do they need to be? Hostile, physically impressive, humanlike, and weapon-using right? There are any number things you could invent that could fill that role.
 
They couldn't even give them different names than Wasteland 2. Asking them to think of reasons to use the Synths is way too much work.
 
TorontRayne said:
They couldn't even give them different names than Wasteland 2. Asking them to think of reasons to use the Synths is way too much work.
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It sort of seems like another instance of the BSG remake (which was great, but...) when they said "The Cylons... had a plan" the writers had absolutely no idea what said plan was, they just figured they would figure out what the plan was sooner or later before the plot got that far, but they never did.

Like "the Institute has this sinister plot involving synths" is all fine and good as a starting point for your plotting, but you really ought to eventually figure out what the plan is so you can reveal it in the narrative.
 
I'm not sure why radscorpions are even in Boston, I'm probably in the minority on that. They rehash every enemy and make some of them them(like ghouls) look even worse then New Vegas'. Maybe it wouldn't be so boring on the shooty side of things if they could think of an original enemy for Fallout 4 instead of having to say "Oh look I just killed my 1,000th super mutant which were featured in all the other Fallout games", of course the game has big time balancing issues so there's that too.
 
On top of the lackluster enemies themselves enemy placement is the worst I've ever seen; I was at an intersection of Gunnars, Orcs and there was also a synth patrol, all within shooting distance of each other, but I'm the catalyst that makes them all turn hostile.
 
Hah that AI, makes me think:
"Welcome to Fallout 4, after 7 years in development we hope it will have been worth the wait."
 
MercenarySnake said:
I'm not sure why radscorpions are even in Boston, I'm probably in the minority on that.
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I think that if you're setting something in the post-apocalypse, you should probably limit the mutated animals to mutated versions of animals that either live in that region before the apocalypse, or could thrive in it afterwards. The thing about mutated insects/arachnids? Those animals are cold-blooded, and the big difference between Massachusetts and California/Virginia/Maryland/Nevada/Utah is that Massachusetts gets a lot harsher winters at low elevations (Plus there's nothing in the existing lore that says anything about the nuclear war making it hotter, except temporarily, quite the opposite actually.)

So if you're going to have mutated bugs in your post-apocalyptic playground, you should probably have them be versions of bugs you actually had around beforehand. Considering we've seen scorpions before, Fallout 4 would have probably been better off with giant mutated acorn weevils, carrion beetles, pelecid wasps, assassin bugs, hercules beetles, earwigs, dragonflies, ichneumon wasps, or any of a wide variety of spiders found in Massachusetts.

There are scorpions that do well in cold climates, but you find them in mountainous regions in Eurasia.
 
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