This is true, Harkness was stated to be a VERY advanced model that would take years to make again.

Presumably years have elapsed from Fallout 3 to 4 ?

That leaked image of the android walking in Scolay square (presuming it is indeed one) portends a boring and trite story.Seriously where can you go with an android centric story that hasn't been done before or is utterly vapid?

The geck in mass effect 2 (legion specifically) are the closest thing to an original story centering on advanced A.I in a AAA rpg and it's still laden with banol tropes, it's only saved by Bioware's excellent character development, an ability Bethesda doesn't possess.

i'm more into the dog theory actually

Just about as far as you can go with a boring and cliche story about the pros and cons of democracies and dictatorships..... nowhere near at all.

But people ate that overused [censored] up in NV so...... Fallout 4 has a good chance.

Yes, but the point was that the Harkness level level androids wouldn't be that commonplace given the extreme effort needed to make them.

Boring and cliche?

Most of us live in a democracy, autocracy or a dictatorship.As a species we still don't have an answer as to what is best We are still appraising these boring pros and cons.

I also wouldn't expect Harkness level androids to be ubiquitous, but if they are made in batches every 4 (speculative figure) or so years their presence won't be nominal either.

It's literally one of THE most overused topic in media that attempts to be "smart".

And it always brings up nothing more then the same points made in my freshmen year of high school government class.

Its so overdone, and all these same points have been so overstated, I am honestly surprised anyone who has been even halfway connected to media in the last decade+ can find entertainment in hearing it YET AGAIN.

It's funny how many people seem to assume that the main story is going to revolve around androids and some kind of Institute Vs Railroad confrontation, when we really have so little information about the game at this time.

Also, I wonder how many people are going to be playing the main quest line, with a constant nagging doubt in the back of their minds "am I really an Android?" That could be quite interesting in the way that it may (or may not) affect the players choices as they play, regardless of whether or not they are revealed to be an android at the end. Just casual implications from NPCs along the way that you might not be human, with no final explanation, is going to mess with peoples' heads.

The "Android Angle" actually has huge potential, both for a great story experience, and of course for the complete cliched mess that many are dreading. Rather than force people to accept that "androids are people too!", maybe the story should ask: "What does it really mean to be Human?".

Oh....

....that will be amazing.

Could be a permanent unarmed weapon.

A story about an android saying, "I deserve the same rights as a human" is as old as the sci-fi genre itself. I really would rather not play a game that features this plotline, thank you.

What if it's just a side plot? I'm pretty much confident we're going to see the Railroad in Fallout 4.

Why not? Androids, like old vacuum tube robots, are a big part of the classic science fiction that Fallout derives inspiration from, and we've already seen much of the technology that would be used in them even before the war. True, it's not like anything we saw in the first two games, but I don't think that's a bad thing, to introduce new elements into the setting, especially when they derive inspiration from the same sort of classic science fiction that much of what we've already seen is inspired by.

As for the matter of microtechnology, it doesn't really matter whether or not it relies on vacuum tubes or something else, what is clear is that the Fallout world has plenty of examples of highly advanced miniaturized computer hardware, from the Pip-Boy to the Platinum Chip to (non-android) robots that can form opinions about their own programming.

I'm going to take a shot in the dark, and say that most androids will play some sort of Robo-cop like position in the Commonwealth. Which if true, I won't be too happy about. But they're basically just programmed to stop crime, and secure the power of the scientists working in the Institute itself, by doing various tasks.

Well, we know from Fallout that The Institute uses some androids to hunt other androids who have escaped.

They work for a department/organization called the "Synth Retention Bureau"

Yeah, there's that. But I have a feeling we'll get some sort of Robo-cop thing happening. Maybe not all, but some of the police force or whatever it is, that the Institute uses to project it's power out into the wasteland, will be Robo-cop like, and that android in the trailer could be like that.

Still wondering how the SRB got approved...

Institute Head: So let me get this straight, Zimmer. You built androids for labor use, and the first thing that happened is they decided to run away?

Zimmer: That's right.

Institue Head: And so, having established that your android slave labor force doesn't want to be your android slave labor force, you then decided to build another android slave labor force, this time to have them hunt down the escaped members of the first android slave labor force.

ZImmer: Correct.

Institue Head: And after this android slave hunting force was established, its members eventually decided that they also didn't want to be part of a slave force, nor did they want to hunt down their own kind, and so they too ran away?

Zimmer: That is how it happened, yes.

Institue Head: And how quickly did this happen?

Zimmer: Almost immediately, sir.

Institue Head: ...ZImmer. We've decided to cut off your funding. It's nothing personal. It's just you're an idiot. Your projects have yielded no results except lost resources and a bunch of wandering androids.

Zimmer: Wait! You haven't seen the crown jewel of my creations. A3-21! It is an amazing android, practically indistinguishable from humans! It eats, drinks, bleeds, it even excretes waste!

Institue Head: ...Why?

Zimmer: Why what?

Institue Head: Why would you make an android that can poop? I mean, what do you gain from it?

Zimmer: ...Unimportant. What is important, is that A3-21 will amaze you!

Institue Head: Very well. Bring it in.

Zimmer: Um... Right now?

Institue Head: Is there a problem?

Zimmer: No, not at all. It's just that A3-21 seems to have...

Institue Head: Don't tell me. It ran away.

Zimmer: ...Could we reschedule this for next week? I'm just going to pop off to the Capital Wasteland and pick it back up. Should be back by Wednesday.

I can't remember the last time I ran into an android plot line in a video game set in a post apocalyptic wasteland.

Hell, the only thing remotely similar is blade runner, and that was a few decades ago? But I guess a few decades between android stories is tried and over used.

The classic, hey these guys are bad, that every fallout has given us (save NV, which gave us, hey these guys are bad depending on who talk to first)

Would someone kindly point me to the last game, or any form of media, that had to do with androids, an under ground movement to protect them, nuclear wasteland and the main character being thrust into said nuclear wasteland with 0 knowledge on how to survive in it.

I'd love to read about it to see if it has any similarities to FO4.

If the PC were an android, would there be a way to find out on accident? Radiation seems like something that wouldn't be a problem.

Wasteland 2. It was released less than a year ago.

Okay more cyborgs than androids but that's really splitting hairs particularly if based on that screenshot most androids in Fallout 4 look like that and are not indistinguishable from humans like the ones in Fallout 3 were. Which was probably just a result of not having a unique character model for them anyway.

The Institute is the only interesting thing I've heard about happening in Boston so I'm sure androids are gonna feature heavily, in some capacity. And I wouldn't be even vaguely surprised if it turned out SURPRISE! you were an android all along. Cliched writing? Yes. Have you played the main quest of Skyrim? Or Fallout 3?

Hahaha never thought about it in that way. But to me the Institute seems like a place where they would see how far they can go instead of questioning whether it's practical or not.

Anything can be made to sound stupid by reducing it to the point of absurdity.

Not to mention that nothing suggests the turn of either the slave androids, or the androids made to hunt other androids happened immediately, or even quickly. Harkness himself even states he hunted down MANY androids before he began to really think about his situation.

Also, when facing a machine that would logically be several times stronger and faster then a human being, one would logically want an equally strong machine on your side as well.

It's a joke. Also, in my defense, I didn't have to reduce it that much.

Regardless of when the droids went rogue, it seems weird that their solution was building more of them until the problem was sorted out. More importantly, A3-21's creation shows that Zimmer isn't thinking that clearly. His robots have gone rogue enough that an entire bureau has to be founded dedicated to reclaiming them, and he decides to make one indistinguishable from humans? How does that even begin to make one iota of sense.

It astonishes me that the slavers are smart enough to put explosive collars on their merchandise to keep them from breaching a perimeter, but the Institue apparently hasn't thought to apply the same principle to their androids after knowing that they will try to escape! I can understand the Gen 1 models not having bombs implanted in them, or requiring daily recharging or something that, but after they started going rogue there's still no failsafes except more of the things that already went rogue?

Logically, you'd want a superior machine. Playing with equally powerful pawns is for chess.

I'll be searching for the inevitable Rick Deckard and Roy Batty easter egg/cameos.

We don't really know what they do to escaped androids they recapture. They might reprogram them to be less rebellious, or give them a memory wipe to get rid of all those memories and experiences that pushed them towards rebelling (not unlike the procedure in Star Wars, which was used to keep droids from developing abnormal behaviors). After all, A3-21 served the Institute for some time and I imagine it wouldn't be hard to turn him back into an efficient android catcher. We also have no idea how tight a leash the Institute keeps on its androids, or how hard it is for them to escape.

And despite bomb collars, there are still plenty of escaped human slaves running amok. Who knows what precautions the Institute puts on their "property"; or how it gets bypassed for escape.