So, here is my theory - totally inferred from just a few statements by Father and fits my head canon, so I'm going with it.

By the end of the game, Father has come around to realizing that synths are sentient and that he and the Institute have done a terrible wrong by keeping them as essentially slaves.

My reason for this conclusion is synth Shaun.

When you listen to the holotape that synth Shaun gives you from Father - Father speaks of Shaun, not as a piece of machinery or a bit of cool new tech, but he speaks of synth Shaun as a person. He says:

Nuclear Option: If you are hearing this, then whatever conflicts you and I have endured are over. I have no reason to believe you'll honor the request I'm about to make, but I feel compelled to try anyway. This synth, this... boy. He deserves more. He has been re-programmed to believe he is your son. It is my hope that you will take him with you. I would ask only that you give him a chance. A chance to be a part of whatever future awaits the Commonwealth.

Nuclear Family: If you are hearing this, than the time has come. I am gone. I can no longer look after young Shaun. I hoped that you might be willing. He has been reprogrammed to believe he is your son. I hope that was not too presumptuous on my part. Both he and you deserved a chance to... To be a family. Please, take care of him.

The fact that Father speaks of Shaun as "deserving more" indicates an awareness that he is something more than just a toaster or even an AI like a Mr. Handy - machines do not deserve anything - we have no moral debt to them, but Shaun, in Father's view deserves a chance to "live", a he deserves a future. This is a big step away from Father's previous rhetoric that synths are merely property. Father had previously admitted that synths AI were "approaching sentience" so now perhaps Father realizes that Shaun is something more than just a machine. Something more than a cyborg facsimile of son you lost - but an actual boy (or something very close to it) in need of a parent.

So, in addition to entrusting Shaun to your care, Father also gives you control of the Institute knowing (depending on your gameplay choices) that you may very well take the Institute in a new direction regarding how synths are viewed.

Father, at one point, tells you that here at the end of his life, he has regrets and that is one reason that you were thawed out. Perhaps one regret is what has happened to the synths under his leadership and he hopes you can take the Institute in a new direction (if you side with them - otherwise, he just want you to give Shaun a chance at life).

So, I think Father's views on the synths are evolving and complicated and the way he speaks of synth Shaun indicates that he realizes that they can be something more than just machines and so he entrusts Shaun and the Institute to you to care for.

This theory works for me. Perhaps it is just head canon or wishful thinking, but I think that a case can be made for Father wanting you to move the Institute in a new direction recognizing 3rd gen synths as something more than machines, but as persons that deserve more than what they have so far been given by the Institute.

Of course, there is no gameplay mechanic to support this - the game does not allow for us to sit with the department heads and shape new policy for the Institute, but from a narrative point of view this supports my pro-Institute but also pro synth role-play.

I feel like he's just narcissistic and the feels the child deserves a chance because it was created in his image. Because it's a synth version of himself. Reading some of the terminal entries others have made about the synth child is what makes me feel this way.

Pretty much.

Father views the Synth-Child Shaun as special because its not just the first child synth. But because its intended to be his replacement. Loaded with his memories and personality.

He seems to deeply wish to recapture the childhood he never got to have with his parent. And SynthShaun is the only way he can do it. I doubt it reflects a general change in attitude towards Gen-3's on the whole though.

Regardless, my SS honored his wish. Although he looks at SynthShaun as more of a grandchild than a child.

Dr.Li's terminal. Father is a calculating person though I would not say he is outright cold. I infer that there maybe more to this synth, this boy, whatever the outcome, posited there is already a uniqueness to this model. My own speculation can only question what "dark matter" lies with in this image of innocence.

I do not agree that Father's view have changed. Reprogrammed and believe nag at me, nor is there evidence that the pronouns used bear a greater significance. You are after all his father or mother, that "chance", that risk has already been calculated in Father's favor whether or not the player is the ideal "parent."

Not a bad concept "Father", just too few quest for all factions to flesh out their leaders :/

My question becomes: Can Synth-Shaun grow up? Or will he forever be about 12 years old??

I'm guessing yes. Gen 3s are biological, so they should age and die, just like people.

More so since their purpose was infiltration and deceit. People would notice if they didn't age.

Synth!Shaun is the first and only Gen-4 Synth with True AI and the only synth with sapience and sentience. And he can grow up. Calling it now.

Why couldn't he download his memory and brain into the synth? I would rather have him than a false memory implanted. I choose the Institute, and I feel a connection to Shaun. With my BoS ending, I understand he doesn't want to since everything he had were destroyed. With the Institute ending, we could live together again as a family if he lives through a synth body.

Yet they do not have to eat and cannot gain weight (as terminal entries in the Institute prove), nor do they have to sleep (the Warwick synth can be heard making up excuses to his 'son' when the boy asks why he never sees him sleeping), so their 'biological' makeup must be seriously different from human.

i assume synth Shaun is a next level synth with more human-like traits, since otherwise the creationof a 'synth child' would not be the breakthrough some scientists seem to regard it as, it would just be a smaller sized ordinary synth.

Maybe. Perhaps. Personally, I think this was born out of two reasons:

(1) Nostalgia, and regret for what could have been. "With old age comes regret, asking 'what if' more often..." as he said.

(2) Experiment. He wanted to see how you and Synth!Shaun would react. As we've witnessed, he found it disappointing that the results were of us screaming, "I'M YOUR DAD/MOM!" and Synth!Shaun screaming back, "I DON'T KNOW YOU! GET AWAY! FATHER!!"

He probably still thinks the Synths are just meant for labor and nothing more. Synth!Shaun was just an exception. The only exception.


I would hope so, otherwise the poor kid will watch his daddy/mommy grow old and die while he's still the physical and mental age of a small child.

Wouldn't Danse or other brainwashed synths realize it when they don't sleep? Or do their system shut down? I guess they have to feel hungry to at least eat when they feel like it, even if they don't need it. It would be strange for Deacon to live with his wife for years and not realize she's a synth if she doesn't sleep or eat.

Unless his mommy and daddy drink blood from a maniac to keep themselves young forever.

Most likely there's some sort of programming embedded in the Synth which simulates intervals of hunger/thirst. Which would be logical to program in so a synth doesn't accidentally "forget" to eat and drink when they're moving among humans. Which would be a major tip-off.

Danse probably would have figured it out real quick if he was stranded somewhere without food or water and suddenly realized he didn't die.

Father's views may well be distorted by wishful thinking. Or else synth!Shaun is a true Gen4, but no one has said that in game that I know of. It is also possible that the way some synths hero-worship him has made him want to believe that their opinions matter. Finally, it may be his idea of a gift as implied in the Nuclear Family text.

And yet Curie, who has no Institute programming becomes confused having to deal with the biological needs of her new synth body, including the need to eat and sleep and deal with emotions.

Points up at Morchai...... yep plus a certain Mayor eats a bit to much according to the institutes own terminals.

What 2-caps has figured out just like real life not everyone is telling you the truth, just go with what your gut tells ya.

NIck " I dont need to sleep or eat like you flesh bags do, so you know if you need to rest say something"

Me "Ok cool i guess" Turn my back for a second

Nick instantly makes his way to raman counter grabs a seat and starts scarfing down a bowl of noodles at diamond city, and whats he gen 1/2.

Danse and Deacon's wife were mind-wiped, so I assume their 'human' programming simulates those needs, or indeed they would figure out something's not right about them pretty quick. Institute programmed synths probably just pretend when infiltrating.

I haven't used Curie as a companion so idk myuh about her, but this sounds either like a Bethesda goof-up, or she's talking about those simulated needs. Like I said, I don't know her exact lines or the context.

Afaik it doesn't say anywhere the Mayor 'eats too much'... he's a synth made for the sole purpose of replacing McDonough, so it stands to reason he was created with McDonough's own body type. The only bit of info on his size I remember is someone in the SRB mocking his desire to become a Courser, since he 'wouldn't even fit inside a Courser uniform'. Liam Binet's terminal clearly says synths can't gain weight, and I don't see any reason for him to lie in his own scientific notes.

And I'm sure we're all aware Nick eating and drinking is Bethesda reusing idle animations... My gen-1 synths in Diamond City really like to stir that pot for some reason.

Good catch. I must have missed those entries. Thanks.

Need and want may be two different things. They may give previous synth sense of taste for cooking for some other purposes. It's depending on whether Nick can enjoy the food as previous synths in comparison to Danse or Curie.

Well my BoS character just left the synth child to die.

My RR character left him also (felt he was a mockery to her child), but I think Tom said he was taking him anyway (thanks for nothing Tom).

Current RP is for Institute so I guess the child will live.

I have to say though that just the fact that in Father's messages he says the synth has been 'reprogrammed' just screams to me 'Not Real', 'Artificial', FAKE. It just works to convince me even more that synth are just machines programmed to behave and act like humans. Gen 3 is very good at it, but they are still just machines that have been programmed. Hell even the RR seems to insist (though they claim it's the synth's choice) those they rescue are reprogrammed. Seriously how are you rescuing anyone if you remove all memory of what you were rescuing them from? What they are really doing is just reprogramming the synth again to not only pretend it's human but in many cases to be believe it's so. Talk about playing God, the RR is just as guilty of this as the Institute in these cases.

Just curious, why did you side with the RR if you don't think synths are people? I would never side with the RR because I can't think of making a character that can think like them.

Or, gamewise, he might just share idle animations with other human shaped companions.

In regards to Father, he himself says why he's been rethinking things -- he's a dying old man filled with regrets.

Those regrets aren't enough to stop experimenting long enough to actually have been waiting in Vault 111 with a reception committee to sit his grieving parent down and have a long talk with them the moment they dethawed. Nope, he threw them out into the wild to, as he himself says, 'to see what would happen'.

The synth-Shaun is the same thing. Madison Li's holotapes show that Father's become obsessed with the program, creepily so, and this last step is the final experiment -- can the child be loved by a parent? So he copies the face of a child that he knows the Sole Survivor has been yearning for, after the bitter disappointment of learning Shaun is now an old man, and unites them in the hope that the Sole Survivor will displace some of that lost affection onto the synth. He'll never see the results of the experiment, but he knows it's running and that's enough for him.

I don't think there's any remorse or regret beyond the pangs of old age and oncoming end of life. There's the complete inability to divorce real life from constant experimentation and his obsession with synth development, though.

In my second role-play I used the RR to help get my son. Playing a female, smart and charismatic, but not a military person. The RR seemed the best route for her. She told the RR she wouldn't die for a Synth, but they let her in anyway after she did some quests for them based on the fact that she's an enemy of the Institute and thus an ally. Course after the whole reveal with Father the whole role-play of getting her son back kind of gets screwed up. She felt the Institute stole her baby and brain washed him into an evil uncaring person, so at that point she just wanted to remove all the institute stood for. Rescuing the Synths was just her way to paying back the RR for their help.

he isn't growing to grow up unless he also survived being at ground zero of the nuclear explosion I detonated.