Warning: This is the spoiler forum, so you should probably expect to find spoilers. In the event that you don't, please expect to find them in this post. Thank you.

It just occurred to me: Father and Shawn are not the same person. Shawn was taken away and rendered down into little tubes of Baby DNA that was subsequently used to put flesh on the Type 3 synths. Father is some ageing psychopath who saw a dangerous but mentally vulnerable mercenary somehow break into the Institute and decided it would be easiest to manipulate them into joining the team. He was about the right age, so he poses as your lost son. He's about the right age to give it creedence, and because the player character is too stupid to find Abernathy Farm on the fifteenth attempt without Preston Garvey marking it on her map, he believes it.

Father gets a replacement for Kellogg (who he honestly hadn't expected to lose) and a weapon against the other factions. As his ill health progresses, it occurs to him that his best chance of preserving his policies beyond his death is to persuade his supposed parent to mindlessly support his edicts. He doesn't have to understand, just make it so that the department heads are terrified of the consequences if they stray from the path ordained.

And because the player character is an utter moron, they buy into the whole thing uncritically.

It explains so much!

I have absolutely no problem with this explanation. Others Likely will and go into all the reasons its likely not true.

_{I prefer your ending to the actual one.}

_{anyway, why doesn't father/shawn bury your mum. he just leaves her in a cryogenic pod forever? no respect whatsoever}

_{shawn/father seems to have no attachment to the player.}

_{still hoping the dlc allows you to bring your other half back to life.}

^{what I mean is, hes that inhuman to me that your ending is one I think could happen, whether your technically correct or not.}

Holy [censored]...that makes him much more terrifying if that were the case...

I like this idea much more.

I still Liberty Prime'd the Institutes ass though. Commonwealth is better off.

Even though in a 4th wall sense I suppose his story is 100% true, it's still even worse than Shaun's infant death. As someone who befriends Synths as peers, by that same reasoning purely biological relation means little to nothing to me.

I haven't raised him, he doesn't care to know the slightest about his supposed family or their/his/our past - nor for any of my general ideals or principles. He doesn't even care to "become my son" belatedly, my supposed identity or role is purely symbolic and political to him. He finds the fact intriguing, as any scientist would, and it stops there - my character can learn to adopt his views, but it's a one-way street.

He's an awful strange person I have nothing in common with, and who has no interest in changing that. He could be my second-grade cousin, or just any wicked old man for all I care.

Shawn has no reason to bury the dead parent. Burial customs differ in many cultures, evidently in this culture few people get buried, people just move the skeleton or body to the side and live around it. If they really care, they decapitate the head as a remembrance of their special someone and put it up on display or in the fridge (next to the fornicating teddy bears). Besides, Vault 111 is already a tomb. Much better then being stuck in the ground for worms.

Plus Shawn has no emotional remembrance of either parent. People keep thinking Genetics creates some bond. It doesn't seem to do that for me. It's mostly environment and learned behavior that defines my identity. I understand Genetics has that effect on some people. Mostly the ones who identify themselves as being better than me because of whom they crawled out of and not what they have actually done. I mean, I set a really low bar to get over either way. It don't get any easier. You just have to care to try.

What's so bad about using a Vault for your mothers internment place, her remains are well preserved there. Heck you can still visit Lenin in Moscow.

While your 'head canon', is farfetched given that the entire population of the Institute continues the deception, even when no reason exists to do so, if that works for you then it's all good.

I use a similarly unlikely avenue with my BOS character, where Old Shaun is a fraud and Little Shaun really is my, now cybernetic enhanced, son. That also requires denying the evidence in the institute and assuming its a vile Institute conspiracy.

I think we would have been given hints about this if it were the case. That would be a pretty big bomb to drop without giving any kind of clues about it. Plus, wouldn't someone in The Institute know that Shaun was [censored]ing you? I mean, at least some of the older folks have to have known Father from a child.

Personally, I prefer the story where Shaun is your flawed, but still biological, son. Having Father just be a guy who manipulated you into thinking he was your son seems like a cop-out IMO.

Allie is his right hand man, she shares his ideology, so if he really wants to reserve his ideology, she could have easily been made a director.

I firmly believe that little Shawn that tries to get you to take him with you when you are about to nuke the place is none other then Father. The man and the Institute is without any moral fiber and unless checked will be the end of humanity not the salvation. I don't see eye to eye with much of anything the BoS thinks but on this issue they are spot on.

That is if you ignore Mama Murphy's prediction that's a 100% correct about the Institute saving humanity.

Like I believe anything that drug addicted crazy old woman says. The very first thing I did was get her off the drugs so I wouldn't have to listen to her any longer. Personally what I should of done was just give her so many drugs that she OD.

Mmm. This isn't so much a "this is the absolute truth" thread, or even a "I think this is what the developers intended" thread. It's more of a "the story makes more sense this way than the way it was intended" thread. If that helps any.

But Father's actions as presented are barking, howl-at-the-moon insane.

• Ignore mother for years


• Thaw her out one day for no particular reason


• Leave a trail of breadcrumbs to leader her to Kellogg


• ... because you want to see who would win in a fight


• ... between a lady lawyer and a vicious, cybernetically enhanced assassin


• ... backed up by a dozen synths


• ... because pre-war lawyers are just that well trained in combat


• Then, when against all odds she wins the fight, offer her a job and start grooming her to assume leadership of a group of elite scientific researchers working in fields that that she's almost certainly never heard of before, much less has any idea how to administer.

If that was any more insane, Father would be contractually obliged to paint his face white, dye his hair green and commit crimes in Gotham City. And this for he leader of the most pragmatically rational group in the game.

That's what i like about him not being Shawn - his actions at least have a core of rationality ot them in that scenario.

The more I think about it, the more I'm liking the idea that the son is really the little boy Father says is a Synth. Maybe he's had some implants that triggers sleep/unconsciousness when the right code word is spoken?

It would be just like the Institute to do that to a small child and the bereft parent looking for him. It would also explain...

- Father not giving a damn about you until the last few months of his life when he thaws you out.

- Lets you risk a HUGE certainty of death by getting out into the Commonwealth rather than simply teleporting himself and a few coursers into Vault 111, thawing you out, and taking you with him.

- As DocClox said, lets you go after a vicious, well-trained assassin who had spent the past century killing far worst than a pre-War vet/pre-War lawyer. Honestly, had we not been controlling Nate/Nora, Kellogg would've killed him/her almost instantly during their fight.

- Leads you to believe you're looking for a ten-year-old boy, then convinces you that NOPE, he's the sixty-year-old man you see standing before you.

- Does all this as "an experiment", just to see what would happen.

People can make whatever story they want while playing a game. Especially, one that can be easily modded as a Bethesda game. I could make Skyrim be about a T-800 that had a slight accident with the Time Displacement Equipment and somehow gains the power of the Dragonborn.

If people want to believe that Father is Shaun, young Shaun is Shaun, or Shaun is dead, then it is up to them. It certainly makes playing the same old content more interesting by having each character experience a different story. Father is Shaun, then join the Institute. Young Shaun is Shaun, then nuke the Institute and take young Shaun. Shaun is dead, then nuke the Institute and leave young Shaun to be vaporized in the explosion.

I could understand Father being Shaun if he was trapped within some laboratory for his entire childhood. So he was treated as a laboratory subject for his developmental years which resulted in Father having a lack of empathy. Most of the other people in the Institute don't seem to be as messed up as Father. If Father had anything resembling humanity, then he would have rescued his parent from the Vault instead of risking their live to kill an experienced assassin and suffer the horrors of the Wasteland just for some worthless experiment.

The argument starts to fall apart when you consider that Father actually takes traits from Nate and Nora.

Let's be honest, the only reason why you are made director in the first place is so players actually consider siding with the Institute. Seriously, would any Institute supporter actually still support them if they never became director?

Ah, okay gotcha. Even still, I think a better solution to the problems surrounding Father's writing is to just iron out some of the issues people point to. Leaving their Father/Mother in the vault etc. Rather than making him a random evil dude who's manipulating you.

I still prefer the current story twist, and the concept of coming to grips with a flawed son over the idea of a clear baddy being responsible for all this. Plus then it kind of takes away from a bit of the heatbreak of having to kill your own son if you side with any of other factions. Just my opinion though.

I mean, I can't say I found the "twist" of Shaun being the leader of The Institute all that surprising. I had kind of been suspecting something like it. But it was still a good "Whaaaaaaat?" moment.

I would have sided with them regardless.

Becoming Director was just icing on the cake.

That doesn't make sense to me. Why would he choose the person who is probably least likely to continue with the same line of thinking and ethical code as his own? The directorate already knows the Institute in and out. They don't need the ethics or moral code of the Institute to be explained to them, and they don't need to be convinced by it...because they're already a central part of it.

OP: "Shawn was taken away and rendered down into little tubes of Baby DNA"

But Kellogg tells you that Shawn is safe and doing well, however, he is just a bit older than you thought.

He has no reason to lie since he thinks he will be killing you abyway. And he would have had to collude with Father for the lie pre-assuming that you did kill him and against all odds find a way into the Institute.

OP: "Father is some ageing psychopath who saw a dangerous but mentally vulnerable mercenary somehow break into the Institute"

Then who was it that freed you from the cryo tube, and why?

And Kellogg doesn't seem like the sort to intentionally mess with your head. Maybe HeroOfKvatch99's idea is better and SynthShaun is also RealShaun. Kellogg gets to tell the truth and it still leaves room for Father to improvise.


Well, they thawed you partway out so you could see the baby get snatched, and then re-froze you. That's probably not how the device was supposed to be used, so I'm speculating it may have left the pods control systems in what software professionals sometimes call a "funny state". So they were going to kill everyone, you included, but because the pod didn't finish it's first thaw cycle it ended up thawing you gracefully rather than killing you.

All pure speculation obviously.

DocClox that is a very good point. What I Never understood was why they thawed you when they went to kidnap your son. There was NO purpose to doing that, it was just a convenient way for the writers to let your character know what was happening. This entire story has soooooo many holes. Very poor and or lazy story writing with no effort whatsoever to clean any of it up before release. Don't even get me started on the sub quests which ALL amount to go kill every thing in this building then get back to me. Even one of the best sub quests the USS Constitution was left unfinished.

This has to be one of the worst written games I have ever played. Toss in the clunky I/F and bugs and I really do have to give this game a failing grade. I can tell you for certain that the next Fallout will NOT be a day one buy, I will wait and see what is being said about it before I put my money towards another very poor product.

Well, isn't he a psychopath ? I mean he put you through all this tests before you met him, knowing that you have a high chance of being killed in the process. And if you couldn't pass all those tests and would be still alive through a miracle, I doubt he would have contacted you. If my son would have done that sh 1t to me, then I wouldn't even want to see him. Complete psychopath, putting my life in danger for no reason at all. Ok, I understand, he released me from the vault, but for what ? To use me like a lab rat to see if I survive or not ? (excuse my english)

The idea of someone going into hibernation and waking up much younger than other people has been used fairly often in science fiction. I can recall a few Twilight Zone episodes with this idea (e.g. "The Long Morrow"). I'm a big TZ fan, and yes, please believe me, I guessed the secret pretty much at the beginning when my character got out of the cryo-chamber.