Synth Alternate Life (Geck of course) (SPOILERS)

[Rallik]

There's something I've been thinking about, given the gaps in the timeline. 200 years have passed since the Lone Wanderer was put into cryogenic stasis. That is a lot of time, and it seems like the Institute is aware of the various people kept in cold storage in Vault 111. When Kellog shows up, its almost like they're there to do some shopping. Like it is routine to pull people out of cold storage. Why is that? Have they been there before?

 

Maybe, just maybe, they've visited before. With tools equivalent to the mind transfer devices in the Memory Den. An exact copy of you, or your spouse. Perhaps they just needed Sean for his genetic material. Maybe the one you meet is a synth, but an earlier generation who's body is failing. Or who's mind is incorrectly interfacing with his Gen3 synth body. Perhaps they all breakdown, eventually. He might not be aware of this, if the Institute is actually all Synths, and a grand Vault-tec experiment. The ultimate Vault, that thinks it built itself. How did Dr. Amari travel hundreds of miles across the Wasteland to arrive at the Institute? Perhaps it was not voluntary. She may have been "removed" from the Washington D.C area, and just a copy of her mind was brought back to the Institute.

 

Where are all of those Gen3 synths going, when they walk through that door after being made? 1,000s. Maybe millions. Enough to repopulate the world. Enough to allow any faction who controls it to take over the remnants of the world. Perhaps, having lost it's original purpose, it has now been twisted to serve the Conclave. Anyone notice that a copy Nick Valentine's brain was made before the Great War? How many others were copied? 1,000s? Maybe millions.

 

All very entertaining, but what of the mod:

 

Backstory:

~50 to 100 years after the great war. The Commonwealth is harsher than the one that the LW eventually sees at year ~210. No quests from FO4 are active. Radioactivity is higher. Good thing you're a robot. The Institute is more active on the surface of the Commonwealth, and they just became kill-on-sight to the remaining humans.

 

Following the beginning pre-war part of the story and the initial fade to black in the cryo chamber, your character wakes up on Spectacle Island as a discarded and broken Gen1 synth, who powers on and has the memories of the Lone Wanderer. Not understanding what is occurring, the LW must rebuild themselves using discarded junk from the area. Once they are more or less mobile, they begin exploring the surrounding area, only to discover a substantially altered world. Creature levels modified slightly to allow for a relatively safer corridor from Spectacle Island up towards Vault 111. The character is KOS to everyone. The player cannot communicate with anyone (see what I did there?). Their goal will be to rebuild themselves to the point that they are on the high end of Gen2, so they can pass for a human, and then proceed towards Vault 111. To the southwest, radiation is so high that nothing lives. Feral ghouls and supermutants infest the area, and are significantly more powerful than your character. To the northeast, humanity has gone into lockdown and is only emerging to fight off the Institute near Diamond City. Most of the northeast is similarly irradiated (Crater House, Mass Fusion Containment, Old Gullett Sinkhole). This sets the stage in the player's mind for why those areas are harder later on. In order to keep the character out of those areas, perhaps they cannot advance in experience as a robot. They can only make themselves tougher to some extent.

 

This mod would require a rather substantial design of a robotic component body that progresses from Gen1 to Gen3. Interchangeable body parts, allowing for an in-game alteration of the players body as they saw fit. For the first part of the story, the player would upgrade from Gen1 through to high Gen2 (a bit better than Nick Valentine). Parts would fit together perfectly and make them appear human on the outside at the high end of Gen 2.

 

Once they've accomplished this, they proceed to Vault 111. Codsworth would not recognize the player, as they are a Gen2 synth. Once the player gets to Vault 111, they encounter a small Institute laboratory setup aboveground. The Institute observes you, and coursers quickly disable the player. You are then brought into the laboratory, and hooked up to a diagnostics computer. Upon review of your artificial intelligence, the Institute scientists find it remarkable that you would travel all this way in pursuit of your family, and answers to what has happened to you. Perhaps this experiment can be continued, fade to black...

 

The character then transitions to the Kellogg cut scene in the cryo chamber. Events unfold as they would in the normal storyline. You, the player in real life, would have knowledge of your previous attempts to get to the vault as a synth. Depending on the context you choose to believe, you are either waking up for the first time and seeing Kellogg take your son, or you are being awoken on purpose, as a partially mind-wiped synth, to see your son taken and your spouse killed. As far as your character is concerned, you went to sleep in the cryo chamber, then saw the Kellogg cut scene, see him refer to you as a "backup," and then you awaken from the cryo chamber as in the normal game beginning. You are level 1. Everything plays out exactly like the standard new game.

 

So are you the original human Lone Wanderer? Or did the Institute dispose of the "human" you, and stick the Gen2 version in the cryo chamber to see what would happen, after wiping its memories of everything in the post-war Commonwealth, if it was set loose to find its son? What can be learned from either? Don't Kellogg and Father find you to be an interesting little experiment? One that they've been watching carefully as you explored the Commonwealth?

 

Are you willing, as the player in real life, to explore the question of if you are, or are not, a synth?

 

This can be pursued as an optional large questline across the Commonwealth, tied into interactions with Kellogg (and finding out that he is a cyborg). You begin to find it odd that you seem to be the only one immune to losing your limbs. Everyone else seems to be a bloody mess. But maybe that is nothing. Maybe you'll blithely ignore that gut feeling you have that something isn't quite right, and you'll jst play the game as a human. (As far as game mechanics go, perhaps you specifically have to go to the Memory Den and ask them to check if you are a synth. Then again, if you are installing this mod, chances are you want to play as a synth).

 

Eventually, this would lead to the player being able to actively change their synth generation (Gen1, Gen2, Gen3) at the Memory Den. In each generation, they would have body alteration options (mechanical for Gen1, cybernetic for Gen2, and biomechanical for Gen3). Crafting could be conditional on mechanical, medical, and science perks. Gen3 would be functionally equivalent to the player being human, with optional bionics. A long road to being human(ish) again.

 

Aside from your own character, you would then have to decide if you'd like to "share" your condition with your companions. The 3 synth companions would likely be amenable to the idea voluntarily. The others may have to be compelled. Perhaps an incurable disease. I bet Curie has some laying around.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Rallik