I don't know, personally, I felt that seeing as Father was nothing like the Shaun they used to know (i.e. a baby) he might as well have been dead to them.
Maybe it's because I played as Nora. She would likely have had a much stronger bond with him, even with never having known who he would become as a person, because she carried him for nine months and went through the pain of labor for him. It just strikes me as odd that she wouldn't want to at least stick with him until he passed, even if he was a bastard, if for nothing else than as the last flickering spark of the life she used to have.
Which is part of what makes little "synth Shawn" such a baffling turn of events. Never mind the absurdity of Father telling you literally the whole time you know him that Synths are just very convincing machines... yet in his final breath asks you to love this new model synth as if it was your real child. Wait what? Consistency much? Can you imagine someone coming in and killing your family member, and then replacing them with a robot and saying - "it's all good, I got you a new one". It doesn't matter if they're a perfect replica or not. They're still just a replica. They're not the one you lost. And their looking like your lost loved one would just be a constant reminder of your loss - preventing you from ever truly getting through the grieving process since that reminder is always there re-opening the wound. It's grotesque. How could anybody think that's appropriate? How could you see that as anything other than an act of supreme cruelty? Literally any other synth child would have been a better option, because at least that's a chance for a new start with this machine-child being it's own entity and forming a new bond. Either Father was supremely autistic, or he fucking LOATHED Nora and hid it fairly well.
Though, admittedly, I plowed through pretty much through most of the main quest without paying too much attention to my own character's dialogue.
I saved a lot of neurons that way.
See, I did a low int run, by which I mean I was actually dumb enough to pay attention and try to follow that train wreck.
I don't know if this was actually ever said in-game, but synths are dangerous. They're a race indistinguishable from our own but superior in every way whose history is one of violence and infiltration and who have come to see humans as oppressors; even if they didn't coordinate to attack, they would still have the potential to cause a lot of deaths on their own.
Yeah, it's said several times, but it's never shown in actual gameplay. There's that one mission where you have to recapture that synth-turned-bandit-king, but he's never shown as ever doing anything a regular raider couldn't have accomplished on his own. Part of their ability to pass so well as human, is that they exhibit all the same limitations as regular humans. If they took advantage of their power, they'd be outed instantly... and since the synths themselves are getting mind wipes, they don't even know they have super-human abilities. What lesson about the dangers of synths am I supposed to learn from that? That they're doing the same shit apparently 90% of the regular humans are doing anyhow?
Coursers are built up to be these kinds of "Terminator" type super-soldiers, but they're barely more powerful than any other enemies in the game. Oh, wait, they can turn invisible... but then, so can any asshole waster with a stealth boy. Stronger and more durable than any human? What about a human in Power Armor? The BoS doesn't seem to be the slightest bit concerned that I have a three-story garage packed full of Power Armor in every shade of recolor in the game. They're not harassing raiders to get their power armor. They're not busting down the doors of Diamond City to confiscate Arturo's weapons. They don't give a fuck. They're not acting like they should, to be consistent with both the lore and their own damned storyline. If you join them, they give you your own suit of power armor. Hmm.. uh, yeah.. thanks. I'll just throw it on the fucking pile with all the others. (But if Bethesda had written them to act properly, no player would want to join them - because they'd be harassing the player for their own tech, and only maybe give it back once you've proven you're trustworthy and capable to join their ranks).
And none of this addresses the BoS being ok with Cyborgs - which present exactly the same threat (even the threat of being hacked and taken over, or blackmailed) as presented by the synths. Ghost in the Shell and Deus Ex are some of the latest in a long line of media which has already handled this topic, and in a much better way than FO4 ever attempted. But maybe there just aren't enough cyborgs around to make them "swarm" human settlements the way synths can. Oh, but what's this, the Automatron DLC which is setting up pretty much this exact scenario except with generic robots... and the BoS doesn't give a single fuck about this abuse of tech. They never try to stop the Mechanist. Surprise, surprise.
Even the stories of "abductions & replacements" seem overblown a bit. There are only two times that I've seen in which you actually see it happening, and in one of them - the Institute is trying to reason with the guy and ask him nicely to come along. They just stand outside his door and whine about how he's not cooperating. It's up to YOU to decide whether to convince him to come along willingly, or to abduct him by force, but the institute agent themselves seem hesitant to actually abduct the guy. So how many of these other kidnappings are just people going along willingly because they can offer something to the Institute? There's Art, but that makes no sense, because he was somehow cloned and mind transferred even before the institute kidnapped him? And the synth didn't seem to want to replace him, the human Art started the fight. Synth Art was just trying to save himself. So was Art abducted, cloned, and then
released?
Sure, in the past, abductees were used to make Super Mutants... but that's not any inherent fault of the Synth. It's not their
nature. Their nature seems to be to run away and live their own lives in peace, since that's what they keep doing despite supposedly being programmed not to.
Don't feel obligated to respond to this wall of text if you don't want to. I've already given this piece of shit far more credibility than it probably deserves just by taking the time to pick holes in it.
