Omnimmotus

That's actually a very interesting point. Though if they don't believe synths are human, why would the child synth be any different? Besides that, that's one of the best potential explanations I've run into. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! :laugh:

Look at the inconsistencies I described earlier. Those inconsistencies are more story-telling and logical inconsistencies. Out of what is available in the Institute, I don't believe any of it directly contradicts what he has told you. The inconsistencies that exist seem to be from poor writing rather than the story itself being broken. (In my opinion.) None of them are direct contradictions. The biggest inconsistency might just be Father dying when they kept Kellogg alive. Sure there might be some difference between their problems, but is there really no solution? Not even giving him a new body? But I don't think this is because they are tricking you, it is simply because this was poorly thought out. :laugh: (Then again, maybe I'm not giving them enough credit.) My general guess is that Father had an illness that they couldn't cure and Kellogg never did. That doesn't explain why they have no other solutions whatsoever even though they are masters of artificial human biology, but that's more a general fail than an inconsistency. The Institute seemed to have internal conflict, especially over the idea of you replacing Father, so I think someone would have said something if there was any possible solution. (Again, this could all be an elaborate act, but that's hard to believe. As charwo mentioned, Occam's Razor suggests poor writing rather than insanely good acting.) I'm sure some won't agree with me, and that's alright. :smile:

Could you possibly give us some of that supporting evidence? It would be really helpful for the debate. Eh, it's been a while... not sure I can remember all the things I found. On terminals in the Institute you can find comments clearly made on the assumption that Father is indeed Shaun and you are indeed his father. Those could be fake, so it's not the most conclusive evidence, but I don't remember running into any contradictions. Other people in the Institute mention your relation while you're talking to them. Again, this could be planned, but maintaining an illusion on a large scale can be difficult, and keep in mind these are scientists rather than actors. They don't avoid the topic either, so they seem to think it's a topic worth discussing. (Or they're doing a great job faking it.) There are also various notes about the young synth Shaun, further supporting Father's claims. More than anything, I was looking for contradictions. I didn't really find any; everything seemed to support what he was saying, though never in a way to eliminate all doubt. If nothing else, I found it clear that the writers meant for Father to actually be your son. Part of the fun of art, however, is that you are welcome to interpret it your own way. :happy: Let me know if you think there are indeed any contradictions present on the terminals in the Institute.

Only in Fallout 3 were the Brotherhood the moral high-ground. If you ask to join the Brotherhood in the first Fallout, they send you on a suicide mission. It's only when you come back alive and successful that they, shocked, decide to maybe give you a chance. Though I do feel the FO4 Brotherhood is too willing to destroy technology. I can understand wanting to eliminate the Institute, but why blow it up when there is so much of value there? They didn't, they died because of the malfunction. You woke up because of it and because wanted your baby back. Actually, you woke up because Father used remote access to trigger the opening of your pod to begin his little "experiment". For everyone else, he shut off the life support. I don't care about the moral implications of that (considering circumstances), but it does seem like a strange waste of resources.

My first thought was "Yeah right, lies." Then I realized he had just shut down the "younger" Shaun, aka the synth. At that point, I was instead thinking "Oh great, Bethesda wrote this so he's telling the truth, didn't they?" I then wandered around looking for any evidence for or against his statements. I could not find anything that I felt truly disproved his statements, and I found multiple things that supported it. While I did briefly consider that he might have set up the entire thing beforehand... eh. I got the impression he really was supposed to be Shaun. Not the best writing I've seen. I like the whole "It was actually 60 years, surprise!" thing. That's pretty fun. But beyond that... a little lackluster. Honestly, I wish he HAD been lying. That'd be far more interesting. Then again, might be more fun to just decide that he actually is lying, regardless of whatever Bethesda intended. Also, I've not yet tested if Father looks any different depending on how your character and spouse look, since it supposedly generates a face from what you make. I'll admit that Father supposedly dying after they were able to keep Kellogg alive for so long... what? That really confused me. It just feels poorly thought out in my opinion.

I doubt he would be responsible for poor delivery of the main quest, and the main quest's core concept isn't bad. (Delivery needs work, but the idea itself isn't a reason to get the pitchforks.) One of my biggest problems with the main quest might simply be how difficult it is to pretend it doesn't exist in dialog sometimes, even if your actions make it clear you couldn't care less. Sometimes it seems I have three ways to say "I'm looking for my son" and one way of saying "I don't need your help. After all, I'm looking for my son". Which leaves the fifth option of walking away and acting like it never happened. If you're trying to roleplay a random wastelander/vault dweller who doesn't have a son, this can be frustrating. Hopefully some excellent mods can help with this situation. I have a lot of praise for aspects of Fallout 4. Being limited to four dialog options isn't among the things I praise. (Should this topic be in the spoilers section?)

I bet you wer elike "really Shaun? you sent a handful of synths against hordes of power-armored gatlin-laser-armed soldiers and it's MY fault they died? Are you implying me, your father, should have tried to go up against a full BoS assault team and their aircrafts on my own?". Nevermind the fact that he never fully explains why he did things like send synths to replace people in settlements etc. His answers are always like "yeah we do bad things up there but hey, science mortherf*cker!". Later I broke into the Institute with the BoS and told Shaun "what's the problem man? I thought you said you could easily handle a few paladins, here take this gun and show them". Yeah I dropped a 10mm on his deathbed and went to nuke the reactor without even talking to him. Now that you mention it, there were a couple other synths there, weren't there? Forgot since they got obliterated so quickly. Just the image of that Courser getting wasted repeatedly burned into my mind. Made the Brotherhood's general combat superiority pretty clear, though. At this point, needless to say I was questioning Father's judgment. Not only did he seem to think it's my fault... but he's still talking to me for some reason? In fact it seems like he's more adamant than ever to support me? Was he senile as well as dying? Or was his faith in the rest of the Institute really so low that he thought it'd have a better chance surviving in the hands of someone who quite possibly/probably wanted it destroyed? Kind of makes you wonder how the Institute got to where it is in the first place.

Took me a while to remember after seeing this thread, but oh man did one part drive me crazy. The "Battle of Bunker Hill" with the Courser. At this point, I had previously sided with the Brotherhood but wasn't sure how I wanted to deal with the whole Institute/Shaun thing. Because of this, I didn't really feel comfortable picking a side during this battle, and just stayed on the sidelines. I hadn't informed the Brotherhood about the upcoming battle, but they showed up anyway. It was strange enough that both sides treated me completely as an ally no matter what I did or where I stood. The worst part, however, was how the Courser is a protected NPC and can only be killed by the player. See, a single Courser is apparently no match for a small squad of Brotherhood Knights and Paladins. Actually, it became pretty obvious this Courser was no match for a single Brotherhood Paladin with a Gatling Laser. I watched as the Courser repeatedly got mowed down by the Gatling Laser, only to stand up a few moments later. The Courser eventually managed to take down a single Paladin, only to go around a corner and find another one, starting this process again. Eventually I was so frustrated I just shot the Courser in the head since he would have clearly been dead at that point. Afterwards, Father seemed to find it hard to believe that the battle didn't go in the Institute's favor, perhaps implying it had been my fault. Not really sure what he expected from a single Courser against multiple squads of guys in power armor. Don't know if the Brotherhood showing up without being told was a bug. Either way, this was a poorly designed encounter. ...Oh, and it also frustrates me that all power armor seems to require regular replacements of Fusion Cores, even though (if I recall correctly) one of the biggest reasons the T-51b was an improvement over earlier models was because it didn't constantly need to have its power source replaced. (Which had made wide-spread military deployment of power armor unreasonable until this issue was resolved.) I assume that was ignored for gameplay reasons, but it still seems ridiculous.

Godmode allows you to build while ignoring settlement costs. (It lists all resources as 999. You will also gain no experience from building, which is an acceptable and logical trade-off in my opinion.) To enable godmode, enter the console and type "tgm". (Short for "toggle godmode") Keep in mind that this will also make you invulnerable with infinite ammo/AP while on. To turn it off, just open the console and enter the command again. Try to avoid forgetting to turn it off before heading out for some non-construction gameplay. :laugh: I frequently do this while building, sort of like a creative mode. Scavenging is fun and all, but sometimes I just want to build. For better results, I suggest also using the rug technique to clip furniture into objects, and the drop-and-store-in-workbench-then-repeat trick with weapons to bypass the size limit. Hopefully these little tricks won't be patched out!

Poor Dark0ne. His excellent Nexus websites are just too popular for their own good. :blush:

Indeed the tools were just released, and boy are they wonderful. The world/dungeon building especially is a snap to figure out and start using. Once you understand chunks and the basic dungeon configuration dialog, you can easily make your own completely custom randomizing dungeon with as much variability in sections as you please. Or you could just add chunks to the existing dungeons, and while they'd get thrown in the mix with already present chunks and would only show up sometimes, it's slick and easy. I actually have the editor open right now, and I was hammering out the entrance chunk to a randomizing outdoor custom dungeon based on archaeological digs. For those who want a little more power in their mapping and creations, there's also a visual logic system to create triggers that perform whatever special map functions you desire. The modding community will probably kick into high gear now, and if you check back in a few weeks or months you might start seeing some pretty amazing things. To be honest, I was just looking at both the Runic Games Fansite and the Steam Workshop, and neither seemed very intuitive. The Runic Games Fansite was better, but in both I felt unable to find what I was looking for effectively.

I've been starting to have this issue in the past few weeks. I'm not sure when it began, but it slowly got worse until it became very noticeable, and then very problematic. Now it is more common for a page to not load for me than to load. When they do load, however, they load quickly, so it's just a matter of refreshing until I get lucky. In my experience it also goes in spurts; for a few seconds the site will be completely and perfectly responsive even across multiple tabs and loading of large images. Then I will be unable to connect to any page on the website for another few seconds, typically a longer period than the functional periods. Were the site not so intuitive or if I hadn't had the years of experience with it I have now, this would be a serious deterrent from using the site. Thankfully, I have always found the site very effective at what it does, so I painfully push through these connection issues. I've just assumed it had to do with more load than the servers can handle and would be fixed in time, but it has continued for a while now and only gotten worse. For reference, I live in the suburban Midwestern USA, center of the country. My internet is absolutely smooth and perfect otherwise, the issues only appear with the Nexus site. It also only appears to be an issue with the main site, not the forums. EDIT: Downloading the mods has actually not been much of a problem for me, though sometimes the download would fail part-way through. Once I can get the mod downloading, it downloads fast, it's just getting through the site to the download link that is difficult. I use the Nexus Mod Manager, by the way. (Sometimes when starting up the NMM fails to log in to the Nexus website, but I just try it again and it works.) Watching the NMM download tab, I can see it shuffles through servers (trying five times on each one) until it finds a download server that is responding.

Dang! I was just coming onto the forums to suggest a Torchlight 2 Nexus, because I love Torchlight 2 and feel very comfortable with the Nexus format. (It feels like home, at least for the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games.) If I had the option, there is nowhere I'd rather release my own Torchlight 2 mods than on a Torchlight 2 Nexus. Not only that, but it advertises the game to those who play Skyrim and the myriad of other Nexus site games. (And bringing more people into the Torchlight 2 modding community would be a wonderful thing!) Still, I understand and respect Dark0ne's stance on the issue. I wonder what the Runic Games Fansite staff's stance on the issue is? Their input would be invaluable.

For anyone interested in the result, I also posted this thread on the official Stardock Fallen Enchantress forums, and that thread got much more in the way of responses: Stardock Forum "Sovereign Model Editing" Thread: http://forums.elementalgame.com/437243 Even if no answers were posted here, the above links in the first post should be very helpful for new modders trying to get static or skinned meshes ingame, and 3DS Max users might find the above thread on the Stardock/Elemental forums helpful as well. Good luck to all modders. :happy:

I've been interested in modifying existing meshes and making new armor meshes. While the Elemental: War of Magic "Sovereign Modding Pack" (Stardock Forum Thread) is an excellent start, exactly how it all works together I still find confusing. It's possible this is just because I'm a 3DS Max user, not a Maya user. I've used the Havok Content Tools to import meshes to the game that I can use as static props when creating buildings, goodie huts and improvements, but I'm not sure where to start for modifying sovereigns. Anyone have any tips or useful files, especially any related to 3DS Max? Ideally, I'd love to have the base sovereign models skinned to their skeletons and set up with their material settings all in one file for each gender. That would provide a perfect foundation for creating and skinning new equipment. Better yet, I'd love to be able to extract the existing armor meshes from the game to modify them, though last I'd heard we had no way of doing that yet. Same for weapon models. Any news on that front? (A little chiming in from Heavenfall might come in handy right now, among others.) ;)