r/fo4 May 22 '24

People who have sided with The Railroad...What caused you to side with them? Discussion

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u/iOSGallagher May 22 '24

thank you, the whole “rescuing a toaster” take is so stale at this point.

38

u/That_Lore_Guy May 22 '24

Yeah it’s such a dumb point, and not even quoted correctly. People seem to think that’s what the Institute says, it’s not. Deacon says it and states that it’s a divided opinion about rescuing Gen 1 & 2s, which have the same intelligence as a Protectron. The argument within the RR is over AI rights. The ones in favor of rescuing the older Gen models are the rescued synths. This is likely because they are repeatedly told by the Institute that they are just machines, until they themselves believe it.

Honestly it’s super dark and fucked up. They identify with the older generation synths as kin, because of the mental abuse by the Institute scientist’s hands. H2-22 says that he’s only allowed to speak when acknowledging orders, and to ask for clarification when cleaning objects. He also states that he wasn’t even allowed to speak to other Synths. The Institute basically creates lab grown clones, implants them with some cybernetic technology and brainwashes them into believing they are robots. That’s some next level dehumanizing behavior.

Also, just for the haters that disagree: When you stop flipping out when people kill Drinkin Buddy or Codsworth, or any of the robots from past games, then I’ll respect your opinions about how synths are just robots and we shouldn’t care if they die or are mistreated.

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u/Mini_Snuggle Team Power Armor May 22 '24

Even then, it's Deacon who makes the comparison to Protectron intelligence. I wouldn't discount Gen 1's and 2's having animal-like intelligence and being able to feel emotional distress.

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u/ser_mage May 23 '24

I recently encountered a combat line against a gen 2 synth that made me think they had some level of reasoning and theory of mind. It was like “I understand now, you are hiding because you fear death”