If you take the Awareness perk, then start VATS and look around your settlements, anyone with energy resistance could potentially be a synth. (If you didn't give them energy resistance armour)

Glory is a human, she has no synth component, even though she's an important character and can die in all 4 routes, you'd think they think of that when creating her.

Maybe Glory is an Alien?

So, who probes who?

Glory is a human that was brainwashed into thinking she's a Synth so that she would work for the RR because they needed another heavy on their team. That's why she thinks she's a Synth that knows she's a Synth while all the others the RR rescued don't recall being synths.

Sturges has that hair. What else matters.

Idk man. Maybe we could probe both Sturges and Glory?

I'll get the alien thingy and some oil.

Using a console command to change a game designation is not 'cheating.' It's simply removing a designation on a character that makes them essential, and unable to die. You can sit around here and wait for an answer from Bethesda for as long as you want, but you aren't going to get one. He's a synth. Plain and simple. If you have a hard time accepting that, then I don't know what to tell you. I don't need to kill every human in the game to verify this. If I did, and some of them dropped synth components, it would mean nothing more than simply that they were also synths. There are a ton of random characters that are synths in the game. You can get synth infiltrators in your settlements. There are synth BRAHMIN in the game. Why is it harder to believe that Sturges, who is a very important person in one of the primary factions of the Commonwealth, was replaced by a synth?

So you think Glory is a human because she doesn't have a synth component?

No, I think that was an oversight on the part of the developers.

Sturges can't be a mistake, but Glory can despite Sturges can't be killed and Glory can be killed in all 4 routes? You would think they would account something like that for someone who will always die and lootable.

It's more likely to accidently make a synth character human in a room full of humans than to make a human character a synth in a group of other humans.

Roger Warwick doesn't drop a synth component either. I think Sturges is either a mistake or a questline cut early in development, so no other traces of it remain.

Personally I thought it would have been cool, in an awful kind of way, if say in the Brotherhood post-game Maxson gave you missions to hunt down revealed gen-3's, since they have the decoded Institute files that damned Danse, and you'd have to run around the Commonwealth offing nice, friendly characters like Sturges or Magnolia. Would balance out the weirdly happy BoS ending where no one seems to have any issues with you or the Brotherhood, not even Nick Valentine.

I think this could quite easily be the case, for the reasons that Irradiatedchipmunk mentioned. It's far more likely to miss adding the synth component to the one synth in the group than it is to accidentally add it to someone in a faction this otherwise consists entirely of people.

Agreed. I don't see how Sturges having the component can really be a mistake.

I think Roger could easily be a mistake in the same way that Glory could be. Roger is a synth surrounded by humans. Someone basically forgot to add it. Generally speaking, it's a lot easier to forget to add something than it is to accidentally add something that isn't intended.

I think Sturges having the synth component is really just an 'easter egg' of sorts that the typical player isn't intended to easily find out about. I think it's entirely reasonable to think that the Institute would want to somehow integrate a synth into the Minutemen. Sturges drops the synth component even if he's killed right when you first meet the Concord settlers, so he obviously wasn't replaced after meeting with the Sole Survivor. Prior to the Quincy Massacre and throughout the history in general preceding the Sole Survivor leaving the Vault, the Minutemen were an influential group. The Institute places synths in many positions of power, such as Mayor Mcdonough in Diamond City. I don't find it hard to believe that they'd want a synth in the Minutemen to keep tabs on them.

I used the Institute relay to board the U.S.S. Enterprise, where I shot Data.

Turns out he's a synth.

But only a Gen 2

I'm just not seeing that. From my own perspective, I don't see why the RR would not have adopted other humans into their operation - especially considering that it seems some humans think the RR is a worthy cause.

I think that was an intelligence community fad that emerged most prominently back in the days of McCarthyism. In those days, the government sponsored psychopaths had quite the obsession with that particular part of the anatomy - hardly surprising considering the two main fixations of McCarthyism.

Aliens, were they around to witness such things, might have been quite perplexed by the whole nationwide state of Bedlam that prevailed in those days.

Interestingly, I think that's the era Sturge's hair evolved from

FO4Edit says he's a Synth. So he's a Synth.

The Synth component is handed out by the game upon death of an NPC if he/she is a Synth. The item name is LL_SynthDeathItem. Supposedly all Synths (and supposedly only Synths) have this.

Woah... really? This just blew my mind! I had no idea that Sturges is a synth! But yea, some of the arguments here make perfect sense. The Institute would certainly infiltrate the Minutemen when they were still a powerful organization (before the Quincy massacre).

So what, there are players who kill every NPC to see whether or not they are Synth? LOL

Not EVERY one....on a console, game won't let me, umm....test children...or essential npcs.

But isn't there a list on a terminal in the Institute that lists their 'agents' topside. I recall Carla being on the list.

If he wasn't on the list that would mean he was a freed Synth who's memory was wiped and the Institute doesn't know where he's at (and he's not working for them).

The list was that of "informants" and pretty much just listed all traveling merchants. I think that they just milked them for information on current events, since merchants heard and saw a lot and get around. I can't see Carla or Cricket giving any viable info to the Institute LOL

Carla is a Synth though. So if they are acting like that it's because they were created to do so. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Most likely the list was before she was replaced by a synth, or she doesn't know. They talk about paying their informants, why pay Synths for info..? And that list is quite small. The mayor isn't even on that particular list.

Well we could assume the most anol scientist in the Common Wealth doesn't update his own records I suppose.

Either way the 'replacement' whom we obviously meet is an oddball by design.