Cyborgs in Fallout 4?

[Earth]

I was just wondering, as someone who hasn't played Fallout 4, are there cyborgs in the game? I know there are androids, but are there people mixed between human and machine, kinda like the Courier from Fallout New Vegas post-Old World Blues?

I was thinking cyborgs might have been the more interesting of the two, if the Institute were developing cyborg technology rather than androids. You could've had the whole Unity deal again, but this time with people transforming themselves entirely into machines or something like that. Anyway, thoughts?

 

[R.Graves]

Yes, there was a character named kellog who was essentially a cyborg.

 

[Citrate]

The synths seem a bit too advanced and nonsensical for fallout so Cyborgs probably would have been a better fit.
The institute lacks any real motivation for the things it does aside from "Because we can". Giving them the whole Unity deal might have made them a bit more interesting as a faction.

 

[R.Graves]

The synths seem a bit too advanced and nonsensical for fallout so Cyborgs probably would have been a better fit.
The institute lacks any real motivation for the things it does aside from "Because we can". Giving them the whole Unity deal might have made them a bit more interesting as a faction.

I agree But on the other hand they stole enough from classic fallout in fallout 3. But if they were essentially taking people and making them into technology... That would certainly give the BOS a better reason to be there IMO.

 

[Citrate]

I agree But on the other hand they stole enough from classic fallout in fallout 3. But if they were essentially taking people and making them into technology... That would certainly give the BOS a better reason to be there IMO.

I wouldn't mind the re-use of old ideas too much if they actually did something interesting with them, Bethesda's original ideas aren't very good. "Haha we stole your baby to make sentient robots for no reason. We also killed all these perfectly healthy pre-war people because we are the bad guys". Not that their implementation of the rehashed ideas was much better.

All the factions suffer because synths are so plot central. I can think of 1 or 2 ways to make the factions motivations more interesting while still synth focused but synths themselves just feel so lazily implemented, like the writers thought synths were cool but couldn't be bothered to put any thought into it, like they went with the first draft or something.

 

[Brivoo]

It could've been a better fit for the entire "synth rights" debacle. The Institute repurposes old world tech with some of their own to create unthinking, unfeeling cyborgs. To them, they are merely tools; they have taken every precaution to turn them into simple machines and by all means it seems as if they have succeeded; cyborgs do not express any emotion or thought other than a willingness to complete orders. Only criminals within their society and volunteers are turned into cyborgs, mitigating the ethical backlash. The prologue could be modified to include a reference to the husband's combat cybernetics and how well his body accepted them, justifying the Institute's need to kidnap Shaun; he and his father are uniquely compatible with cybernetic enhancements, a la Adam Jensen.

The Railroad would gain a new depth as their mission statement would go from "Liberating clearly sentient, human-like beings" to "liberating what may very well just be just a machine in human form". There would be no way to make them appear more human other than to just have them keep their mouth shut and even then they would act strangely; cyborgs would need a carer at all times or be left in isolation, both of which come with their own set of complications. The organization would start falling apart from the inside as members would begin doubting themselves and an ideological divide would form.

The Brotherhood of Steel could be the DC one, originally moving to Boston to make a grab for the territory but eventually deciding that the cyborg threat has to be eliminated after several infiltrations from specialized units or they could be the Midwestern BoS, which I think could be more interesting. The MBoS were already showing signs of being overzealous in their loyalty and goals and unlike the DC BoS, they already had the necessary resources to conduct a large scale migration to a new area. Not only that but they have a sour history with androids and machines in general, creating a cultural hostility towards the Institute which would lead to a situation much like the one actually portrayed in Fallout 4.

The idea of the Unity wouldn't necessarily show up at all, but it'd be interesting to see as a raider group. These would be Cyborg hunters and they believe that true peace can only be achieved if people 'upgrade' themselves and create a machine society, so they hunt down cyborgs to dissect them and steal their parts for themselves. The situation could also be made poignant by having them start hunting wastelanders to forcibly augment them, at which point authorities like Bunker Hill would start to take notice and look for affirmative action even if they ignored the problem as long as they only hunted cyborgs.

TL;DR Cyborgs would have been better

 

[Earth]

I agree But on the other hand they stole enough from classic fallout in fallout 3. But if they were essentially taking people and making them into technology... That would certainly give the BOS a better reason to be there IMO.

That reminds me of a Doctor Who episode where the robots on the ship killed all the original human occupants to use their organs to fix different parts the ship. You had hearts wired into the mainframe and stuff like that.

It just makes sense to me that if you have robot technology you would have people trying to mix themselves with said technology. It would make sense if the Institute were kidnapping people to experiment on them classic Mad Scientist-route.

@Brivoo "Liberating clearly sentient, human-like beings" to "liberating what may very well just be just a machine in human form"

It would make a lot of sense if people were being lobotomised or turned into half-human half-machines or whatever that people would build some kind of liberation movement against it. Either to free those still with sentience (or with a new sentience) or attempting to bring the original person back "curing" them.

 

[Earth]

@Brivoo again

Love the raider idea. While it's not strictly "cyborg", I think something like this would fit really well within the Fallout universe:

A raider faction so obsessed with robot and cybernetic technology that they'd be willing to remove limbs for a robotic arm or whatever.

 

[Brivoo]

@Brivoo "Liberating clearly sentient, human-like beings" to "liberating what may very well just be just a machine in human form"

It would make a lot of sense if people were being lobotomised or turned into half-human half-machines or whatever that people would build some kind of liberation movement against it. Either to free those still with sentience (or with a new sentience) or attempting to bring the original person back "curing" them.

Aye, precisely, but in my version the Railroad doesn't have some bullshit magic memory machine; rather, they're essentially trying to relocate and take care of a group of mentally deficient men and women, while trying to find a cure with their own limited resources that may very well never exist.

On top of that, although they wouldn't know it, you'd eventually find out that these lobotomites are either criminals or volunteers, which could shake the ground under their already crumbling ideology even further, should you wish to tell them.

As for the idea of a new sentience, I don't think they'd do that; the Institute in my version is still trapped underground (or at least very paranoid about the surface) so they've developed into a resource efficiency-focused society. Giving cyborgs a new sentience is both redundant to the overall plot (the Railroad wouldn't really have a reason to exist if cyborgs were basically just amnesiacs) and very resource-intensive I'd imagine. Rather, specific units (perhaps coursers) would be given a personality subroutine similar to those found in robots but advanced enough to pass for human under light scrutiny, allowing them to be used as infiltrators against organizations the Institute finds to be a present or future threat.

@Brivoo again

Love the raider idea. While it's not strictly "cyborg", I think something like this would fit really well within the Fallout universe:

A raider faction so obsessed with robot and cybernetic technology that they'd be willing to remove limbs for a robotic arm or whatever.

This is essentially what I thought the Rust Devils from Automatron would turn out to be, but alas they were just generic raiders again.
Logistically speaking, even as a specialized faction of cyborg hunters these raiders would still outnumber the amount of implants available by a fair amount so it's not exactly far-fetched for them to make their own prosthetics or adapt them from robot parts.

 

[Earth]

As for the idea of a new sentience, I don't think they'd do that; the Institute in my version is still trapped underground (or at least very paranoid about the surface) so they've developed into a resource efficiency-focused society. Giving cyborgs a new sentience is both redundant to the overall plot (the Railroad wouldn't really have a reason to exist if cyborgs were basically just amnesiacs) and very resource-intensive I'd imagine. Rather, specific units (perhaps coursers) would be given a personality subroutine similar to those found in robots but advanced enough to pass for human under light scrutiny, allowing them to be used as infiltrators against organizations the Institute finds to be a present or future threat.

I was thinking more along the lines of sentience developing on its own. It would be stupid for the Institute itself developing it. I'm thinking along the lines of Robocop and how certain memories came back but he never really found his former self.

 

[Brivoo]

I was thinking more along the lines of sentience developing on its own. It would be stupid for the Institute itself developing it. I'm thinking along the lines of Robocop and how certain memories came back but he never really found his former self.

I suppose it could feasibly be integrated as part of the Railroad's questline to find a cure and it could develop into something interesting if the Institute catches wind of it (or decides to tell you about the defect, as I'm sure they'd already know); after all, the human brain is a fickle thing.

My main issue with the Institute is that they never seem to act in their best interest; they just seem to commit random acts of violence for no reason. Even fearmongering isn't a potential excuse because there's no possible reason why they'd need the people of the Commonwealth to be scared of them.

Or, to put it another way, they're simply too overpowered.
They're so technologically advanced in so many areas it makes you wonder why they'd need to interact with the surface at all. The only possible reason I can think of is sample collecting and there're a million different ways for them to do that without revealing themselves.

Here's an example; why didn't they just bomb the Prydwen with their teleporter? You can comfortably travel to the Institute from anywhere, so it follows that they can do the same. I do seem to recall the Brotherhood having some sort of anti-teleportation thing going on (miraculously, given how when you found Danse they didn't even know the Institute was a thing) but why can't they just send a synth agent to disable it? Or just unleash a ton of robots and super mutants? Or detonate a bomb in close enough proximity to the field projectors to destroy them?

Assuming that the Railroad was piss-easy to find for gameplay reasons and is in actuality pretty hard to uncover, why not have synth agents claiming to be refugees in order to find them? Why not send a Courser (allegedly unstoppable badasses) to follow this "freedom trail"?

Also, why was finding Virgil such an issue? Nick himself says that synths are immune to radiation, so what's the problem? It can't be the wildlife because, again, the Institute can just teleport wherever they like; even if they don't know where Virgil is they can just keep looking and instantly escape and return to the same spot later if things go south.

In essence, why would the Institute care about what's going on topside and why are they having such a hard time achieving their goals?

TL;DR Institute is dumb

 

[Earth]

TL;DR Institute is dumb

Pretty much. I was just thinking about androids and how personally I don't think they really fit within the Fallout aesthetic, but then I figured cyborgs would work pretty well. Plus, we've already seen it with cyberdogs, and I'm pretty sure Frank Horrigan and the Master could both be described as such.

So it seemed like a neat premise to expand on. And if there were to be androids at any point in Fallout, building up to it with cyborgs would make sense. But as usual with Bethesda, zero thought was put into anything like this and we have to constantly sigh and wonder what could have been.

Not that their ugly engine would be able to produce any decent looking cyborgs anyway.

 

[Irwin John Finster]

I think you're giving Bethesda too much credit OP. Bethesda did not make this game as an intellectual exploration of a post-apocalyptic society. It's a dumbed down arcade shooter and they just threw a bunch of crap ideas at the wall and that's how Kid in the Fridge and Ancient Aliens made it into a Fallout game.

"Not interested in discussing ______ in a post apoc world with talking mutants and ghouls" - just put whatever topic you want in the blank, that's pretty much their attitude. They hate RPGs.

TL;DR Institute is dumb

The Institute is supposed to be a collection of the brightest scientists with the best technology. They have actual Terminators at their disposal and have magical teleportation technology, and yet they can't figure out the Railroad has a public announcement of the location of their secret base with literally a red line drawn on the ground leading to their base, or that the password to this secret base is "Railroad."

The "factions" of Fallout 4 have one purpose: to give you more MMO quests and to choose the generic "winner" of Fallout 4 when you get bored.

 

[Brivoo]

snip

The Institute isn't a terrible idea in itself (not like bringing back the Enclave for an encore in Fallout 3, anyway); in fact, I basically like the main idea behind most factions in Fallout 4, Minutemen notwithstanding.

The problem with the game, as with most Bethesda games, is with the execution of these ideas. Cyborgs are only one of the several paths they could have taken over synths, but even then it wouldn't have mattered much if they didn't also hire an actual writer on their team to replace whatever mad libs generator they're using now.

snap

As for how canon cyborgs are, lobotomites aside I'm sure there must be some manner of character we could refer to (that Fallout 3 paladin aside); if not, well, cybernetic augmentation has been around since Fallout 2.

I also think that, in the magical parallel universe where Fallout 4 doesn't suck we've constructed, Kellogg could have then been worked in as the very first Courser you encounter, instead of this frankly bizarre cross-country backstory he has.

What I think happened there is probably that Bethesda was trying to extend an olive branch to the likes of us and other more reluctant fans, showing that they acknowledge and respect the canon of the west coast. Of course, what they didn't realize is that we wanted them nowhere near the rest of the franchise, but live and learn.