Father, Shaun, and the Institute

[VultureTX]

Cancer ? Been visting MDA in Houston since 2013 'nuff said.

 

You explanation does not cover the basics, terminal notes say that Gen 3 organs are based on Father, so

1. either they learned what bad sequences were there and fixed them

2. gen 3 can get Father's cancer.

3. somehow in creating Gen3 with massive cell replicaiton they cured cancer (not unlikely since it about understanding cell systems) and they did not bother to tell Volkert about the posssible spin off applications.

 

 

/and my point on cybernetics was about terminal info as well since Father canned the project not wanting scientists to undergo the process and "lose" their humanity. Thus my theory that Cybernetics ~~ eveentual psychosis.

[Moraelin]

Basically I'm saying sorta 1. Sorta. Telomerase for example doesn't even need to be "learned", and its transcription is known to be a necessary factor in several types of cancer. In fact it's currently estimated to cover about 90% of all human cancers. And it's primarily needed for reproduction and child growth. But we know that Synths can't reproduce and are 3D-printed directly as adults, so "commenting out" telomerase by removing the start and stop markers would be a no brainer. There you go, that alone gives you a lot of types of cancer that Father CAN have, but synths would be physically (well, physiologically) unable to get.

[RelicDuDe]

 

With respect.. tell that to his victims. Or the family of his victims,

 

You can say Kellog did that, not he himself.. but as director, he was, and is responsible.

 

 

So trust me when i say: If it looks looks a Rat, sounds like a Rat, smells like a Rat, acts like a Rat... chances are... its a Rat.

Squirrels are members of the rat family...

 

 

 

Is that so ?...

 

I guess i will have to adjust the level of respect i normally give to Squirrels then.

 

Down the ladder they go....

[RelicDuDe]

Ah yes, again the topic of life extension for Father, and why I wrote the previous conjectures: he's not dying of old age. He's dying of a very aggressive form of cancer, that their doctors can't cure.

 

(Long and ultimately irrelevant science background, that you may want to skip: bacteria can reproduce indeffinitely, because they have circular DNA loops. Vertebrates basically have a maximum division counter at the end of each chromosome. They're called telomeres. Each cell division chops off one unit of the counter. When it reaches zero, it can't divide (safely) any more. When enough cells reach the end of the line, more and more wear and tear can't be repaired for lack of cells which can divide to repair it. So eventually you die of old age.

 

However telomeres are also a main line of defense against cancer. Anything that triggers dividing out of control, including any herpes infection, would be guaranteed to end up killing you. Except, as long as that safeguard is still working, eventually they reach the end of the counter and the division stops. Cancer needs an extra mutation, one that activates resetting that counter.

 

Any form of rejuvenation would involve resetting the counters, basically, but that doesn't help with an existing tumor, and may even create a new one. So basically Father can't do that once he has cancer. And he may or may not have gotten a cancer by trying to do that.)

 

 

So that's what going on... interesting... But what if there isn't a Tumor ?... like in blood cancer ?.

[RelicDuDe]

What if Father is a synth based on Shaun's genetic material (which would explain his appearance and perhaps his monotonous voice and cold nature), and the child synth is a copy of the Father synth, but the real Shaun is long dead? I only finished the game once - siding with the Institute out of interest - and what I noticed was that after Shaun had died and the ending cinematic had played, his deathbed and his body were nowhere to be found. They seem to have been disposed of almost immediately by the good (cough) people of the Institute.

 

Is it possible, perhaps, that the question of what really happened to Shaun will be settled in one of the DLCs? For example, if Shaun died of a rare, aggressive form of cancer, perhaps it had something to do with him being a 'pristine pre-war specimen, sealed tight', but being briefly exposed to the changed conditions of the new world before being taken underground. This would mean that the player could develop that particular form of cancer as well, look for a cure, and in the process find out the truth about what happened to Shaun, whatever that may be.

 

 

 

Now wouldn't that be an interesting turn of events....

 

Cancer as well in the game i play.... i guess i will laugh my ass off if that is, what the first DLC is about....

 

Kinda hoping it is, now... ;)

 

As for "Father" .. i never get that son feeling...

 

(now.. that's a weird sentence if i hear anything...)

[charwo]

I think that's the point, you are biologically related to a complete stranger. That's a huge sense of loss to react to. How deep does your character's love for their child truly go. And believe it or not, not every parent loves their child unconditionally, and not every parent will stand by their child thick and thin, especially if the child doesn't deserve it. It's supposed to be a kick in the gut.

[pinzig]

Taking, as a given, that "Father" is in fact the sole survivor's son plus 60 years.


The intitute has, on a personal level:
Brutally murdered the survivor's spouse (not to mention all the other frozen people in 111)

Stolen their son.
Stolen 60 years of upbringing and life experience of said son.

The man that confronts the survivor in the intitute is son by biology only, any chance of teaching... learning.. passing on, by nurture, those things that a parent does for a child.. gone. Stolen, destroyed in cryostasis.

That son has been, after 60 years, completely brainwashed and turned morally bankrupt. Justifying things like:

Roaming synth bands.
Kill and replace humans with synth infiltratiors: Art, McDonough, Warwick, etc. This is not stuff that happened decades ago under the bad old Institute chief, these are things that are occurring RIGHT NOW.

There are other things, but the bottom line is that even if "Father" IS Shaun, he is a product of the Institute, raised and taught and practicing evil for 60 years, who flipped the switch on thawing his bio-parent as a golden years hobby.


Not much good there, not at all.

[Talwyn224]

The design of the Institute, well for me at least, was quite well done. They are the acme of science without any moral compass, research for knowledge's sake but not for the "good" of humanity. In a way the actual Institute itself [its physical space/setting] is an inversion of the cliché of the Ivory Tower. They have burrowed underground and built their inverted tower and have perverted science and discovery to the extent that they now stand in the despised company of the Nazi death camp scientists. Shaun was taken by the Institute as a source of "pure" DNA for their gen 3 synth project. After his DNA was harvested they raised him as one of their own which is curious because normally once they have what they need they tend to move on and tie up the loose ends. But anyhow... Shaun for his entire life drinks the cool aid down there and ends up climbing the pyramid and gets the top job with the complete knowledge of how he happened to be there.

 

And he is fine with that.

 

 

For me this proves he is a pure sociopath - utterly devoid of any true feelings. He toys with the SS, releasing his one remaining parent from Vault 111 just to see what happens to them. At no time does he bother to help them at all. Instead he only becomes interested once the SS kills Kellogg and makes their way into the Institute. Shaun/Father now tries to dazzle the SS with the wonders of the Institute and manipulate them into becoming the latest catspaw of the place.

 

My regret now, as a player, is that I wasn't as vengeful as i could have been in my parting conversation with Shaun as he lay dying on the med bed when we were tearing up the place. With further retrospection both he and the Institute all deserved to be gut shot so that their deaths are lingering and painful rather than the rather painless death by nuclear fire.

 

I personally find the Institute horrific - their history is awash with blood and what makes it worse is that they earnestly believe that what they've done is totally justifiable, all for the greater good they say. Utter rubbish but at least there are a few in the Institute that see this.

 

Its obvious that when the CIT survivors sheltered down in the basement there were no history academics with them as they would have quickly pointed out the dark parallels that the Institute was taking. I also suspect that most of the survivors must have had a lot of high functioning asperger science based academics among their number - and not the funny ones like Sheldon from the Big Bang which would explain the total lack of empathy with the surface suvivors and their very quick retreat from any attempt to help once it didn't go well the first time.

 

The Institute are as evil as Vault Tech and the Enclave, maybe more so... it's hard to tell but at least they're all dead now.

 

I still prefer not picking either the Railroad or BoS for my ending, rather leaving both factions at peace and the BoS gradually pacifying the Commonwealth through death from above. I do find it a little amusing that many among the BoS are pretty miffed at not being the ones to take down the Institute but Proctor Quinlan notes that by using the Minutemen to take down the Institute you've saved the lives of many of the BoS which in his mind is good plus the Institute and all its tainted research is gone forever.

 

I'm going to be really curious to see how this ending is handled by DLC's.

[robhartman9]

I read all 4 pages of the thread and find it pretty funny you should end on the point I was going to raise. DLC's will probably clarify some issues or possibly confuse them even more. Personally I think Shawn is who he says he is but he is so broken by the institute I have no problem killing him with the rest of them. Its not like he ever tried to help you and was just hoping you would take care of Kellog before you got killed out in the wasteland. The child synth Shawn is nothing more than an attempt to subvert your emotions to turn you into an institute asset should you ever find a way in. The snyth did not play along the way it was supposed to when you arrived but that doesn't stop it from trying that subroutine in a last ditch effort of self preservation when you leave.

[bushwackAR15]

I read all four pages as well. I found I don't have near the intellect needed to keep up with the conversation. Please, bare with me on this. You meet with Valentine & through his deductive reasoning, he comes to the conclusion that the kidnapper was Kellogg. Kellogg, a man both he & Ellie knew as buying the shack in DC & having a ten year old boy with him. Now Valentine would certainly say that that was fifty years ago, but unless Ellie is a synth too, she's much to young to remember fifty years ago. So, it seems to me that this happened more recently. Did "Father" allow Kellogg to take synth Shawn out on field trips or what? Doctor Amari said that the memory of Kellogg & Shawn in the DC shack was more recent. Somehow I don't think we're getting the whole picture here. As Desi would say "Lucy, you got some 'splainen to do!".