I've watched multiple videos and read essays on the protagonist form Fallout 4 being a Synth. They center on a few instances of interest.
First is that The Institute had already damaged the Vault computer system for life support and may have been able to rig up something so as to put a Synth duplicate of you in the Vault. It is true that yours is the only registered as working cryopod in the Vault, and that, maybe, The Institute would spend time and effort to re-enable it and place a synth in there that looked like you. It is to be noted that Vault-Tec equipment is not always up to par, and with a social experiment that was done at the last minute, the ability of The Institute to even figure out the system being used is questionable. This system is custom made, unique and done on a shoestring budget after diverting Vault 111 away from whatever its original purpose was.
- If The Institute was able to do this, then where is the cryogenics technology in The Institute? Surely, just for life saving measures, they would have a few of these ready to handle accidents or diseases that cannot be easily cured and need to be researched. It's telling that your son, Father, has cancer (which was cured in the Fallout timeline prior to the Great War) isn't stuffed in one while The Institute seeks out the old cure for him.
- The use of VATS as an Institute form of targeting, seen in a terminal inside The Institute, is put in the protagonist, because you can use it without having a Pip-Boy, then why isn't it more widely available with Coursers? Coursers offer a much better field test agent then you, the protagonist, and from observation only, Coursers are little better in combat than Gunners or even Raiders. Higher tech equipment for more damage, yes, but accuracy leaves something to be desired. This is either a coding error by Bethesda that didn't want to tie VATS to Pip-Boys (and given the Vault-Tec expansion one can see why that is the case) and tied it to the protagonist.
- Does anyone really trust the readouts of the cryopod system after it has been tampered with? One can see keeping track of life signs during the early chilldown phases, in which a couple of individuals did perish according to the logs, but once you get frost on the skin, there should be no life signs at all. A proper inhaled substances that prevents the blood from freezing would be in use, and the lack of life signs might actually be normal, though it is registered as deceased. That brings up the point that this is a Vault full of non-radiation exposed individuals without mutations in their genome due to radiation, so why take Sean? Why not cycle everyone out and take them back to The Institute to help bolster the genetic stock of the people there via slow replacements children from pre-war couples? That is a plotline problem of the first degree beyond the protagonist being a synth or not, and as this is glossed over by both sides of the argument, I'll bring it up and point to the actual problems of The Institute itself. Whoever authorized this kidnapping wasn't thinking straight or knew so little about genetics that they were 'winging it' on this decision. This is the missed opportunity of Fallout 4: finding out that the people in the cryopods were actually in a deep freeze and could be recovered from it. Combine Vault-Tec equipment problems, custom made equipment, Institute ineptitude and blindness as to the situation, and then putting in a remote recall system and the people of Vault 111 just might be saved.
Second up is the lack of memories on the part of the protagonist, and this is usually cited due to the Far Harbor DLC. There are extreme problems as you do have memories from before the Great War and you can explicitly state them to others.
- Going to Graygarden you can remember what Dr. Gray was doing, and marvel that the experiment is still working. That is an explicit memory made before the Great War of using Mr. Handy type robots by a RoboCo engineer to make a self-sustaining food producing farm.
- When arriving on the Prydwen and getting a medical exam, you can bring up a sarcastic incident when you were in college, about a one night stand with someone who was ugly enough that they may or may not have been human. Yeah, that is going back to the college days of the protagonist and is long before the Great War or even getting married to their spouse.
- When you talk to Kent Connolly you can call up memories of episodes of The Silver Shroud and even remember sitting around and listening to the show with your family. That is not something you would do with your infant and spouse as adults. This is an event that would be a childhood memory of the protagonist listening to the program with their family as they were growing up.
- The Far Harbor DLC wants to railroad the player into not having pre-war memories beyond the day of the Great War, yet in the base game you do. In fact you can go through the base game, recount ALL those memories and then immediately forget them when going to Far Harbor. That is bad writing and plot development, and as a player I fully expected to bring these incidents up to disprove that the protagonist was a synth. You aren't ALLOWED TO DO THAT, and that is robbing the player of Player Agency.
Third is that the protagonist takes environmental damage from radiation, like radstorms, while Gen 3 synths do not. This is not brought up on either side and yet needs to be addressed as the player must deal with environmental radiation. Gen 3 Synths do not have that problem as described by The Institute in their entire Gen 3 endeavor. It's such a small thing that it needs to be brought up. I've played with a mod that actually does that, though it doesn't remove rads from ingested material, it does prevent any rad damage to happen from the environment, and with that you have a lot more leeway in where you can go and what you can do than a normal human does. Far from being a minor point, it is a huge one, and if you were a synth this would be part of how you were built from the inside-out.
Fourth a recall code. If you turn against The Institute why not just use the recall code to stop you? Plenty of loudspeakers in the place. If you were made there, then you will have a recall code and you would be stopped. Never happens. Could there be 'reasons' for this? Sure. But who would violate basic safety protocols for 'reasons' that aren't explicitly stated? The Institute believes that free will for synths have limits and that would include you. No one in their right mind inside The Institute would ever authorize such a thing.
Fifth is that all the personnel of The Institute refer to you as a parent of Father. Now there is either a large amount of humoring going on here, or they actually believe that. Creating a parental duplicate synth would be an important project in The Institute, even if 'secret', word would get out. Particularly to those hostile to the protagonist, they could unlimber some harsh words under duress to point out you were made, not born. They don't. Even other synths treat you as human, and that includes Coursers. It's a small point to be glossed over, of course. Yet you do not find ANY project updates ANYWHERE in The Institute referring to you. Not in SRB, not in Father's Quarters, not in Robotics, not in Advanced Systems, none. If you are an experiment they would keep track of you and record results for analysis. Doesn't happen.
Sixth is the curious cases of Synths that are identified as Synths that don't drop Synth Components on demise. This one is easily overlooked by pro and con, but does deserve mention. The first case is Gabriel, that you have a mission to recover this rogue synth that is leading the gang at Libertalia. You can pre-visit the place and get rid of the gang there, which is drawn from Minutemen breakaways who went Raider. It's interesting to note that group isn't there when you arrive on the mission. At the end of it, when you get to Gabriel, you can go against orders and actually kill him. On his body there is no Synth Component which only drops on death of a synth. So what happened? Obviously this place has been set up for this 'mission' to prove your abilities to retrieve a 'dangerous synth'. To get to that point, however, if you didn't pre-visit the place then what happened to THAT Raider gang? They are gone and this 'new' gang is in its place. Could it be that The Institute actually went in, got rid of the ex-Minutemen turned Raiders and then installed a compliant gang in its place with its leader brainwashed to go cataleptic if a recall code was stated? That fits the facts. Of course that can be marked down to Bethesda just not properly putting in the component on death...
- But there is a second time this happens and is a bit more difficult to pull off but can be done. The place is Warwick homestead and the synth is Roger Warwick. Join with the guy who suspects Roger of being a Synth and off him. Roger Warwick does NOT drop a Synth Component on death. Institute records report him as being a synth replacement, but he doesn't drop a the necessary component when killed. Again, another coding mistake by Bethesda, right?
- When playing the game it is stressed how high value Synths are as property to The Institute. They are willing to risk more assets to return a rogue synth. Yet in two cases of individuals identified as synths, we can find that these were not synths due to lack of component drop. So which is more likely? A rogue synth forming up a Raider gang, or a paid-off agent who is a gang leader asked if he would like to relocate and get a hefty fee for playing patty-cake with The Institute? It would have to be an awful lot of bottle caps, but I'm sure they could to that. And as for Roger Warwick, was he ever really killed? Synths are...unreliable...even when pliable, and isn't it more likely that Roger Warwick was brainwashed and sent back believing himself to be a synth and only a few problems with the brainwashing leads to a nervous farmhand to thing he is a synth?
- Would The Institute put a highly valuable, customized Synth into a Vault to 're-awaken' with some rudimentary memories and then not have a recall code installed in it? Would it let such a synth go around without constantly monitoring it? And that would mean more than a few crows or traders supplying information, because The Institute would want feedback on their project, wouldn't they?
- They did this with Zimmer and he hasn't been in very good contact with The Institute for years, would they want to repeat that mistake on an advanced Gen 3 with built-in combat capacity? While Zimmer was a synth in charge of the SRB...or 'commonwealth police', he was a KNOWN synth that was the head of the SRB and he has gone out of contact for far too long. Would they repeat that mistake with the protagonist? Unlikely. And it should be noted that Zimmer was a unique synth that also designed other synths, and his mission is to track down high profile cases in the Capital Wasteland. Perhaps he was a bit TOO good at his job and being out of communications might be an indication that HE has gone rogue. Once bitten, forever shy in this case, and trying to put a Synth in charge of the entire Institute is going a bit too far for the place in question.
- Father as acting director of the Institute points to another problem, and one not brought up that often. If he is an acting director then who is the actual Director of the Institute. Be it upper or lower case 'acting' that institutional designation for any organization indicates the individual is only acting in the stead of another person who cannot be there to make decisions and participate. Father has had a few years in this position, but no longer than Dr. Ayo has had working as the Acting Director of SRB. What this means is that there is an individual, organization or group (take your pick) that does actively run The Institute, but who cannot be there and have put Father down in the acting position for them. Even if you take over his position, there are no changes in policy that you can make: there is no post-game for The Institute to reflect the values of the new head of the organization. As policy determines the direction of an organization, the titular spot you can get at the end of the game is meaningless: all directives remain in place and you don't get any policy choices because they have already been determined by someone else and cannot be changed until they return. If the player is a Synth, then the question of how those who actually run the place in the way of policy will view the new leader comes into focus. Indeed, it is expected that SRB, at the very least, will do a deep dive into the PC and see just what it is they can find, because it really is something closer to a Secret Police than just the SRB. And if you were a specially ordered up Synth by the directives of Father, then there will be a paper trail or trail of information on that, and would require willing accomplices in Robotics. You cannot find such individuals in the game, not even if you are the one in charge. Is The Institute really fine with replacing its own people with Synths? I suspect not, as Synths were supposed to be a subservient class, though they might have some talent at certain jobs they are not fully human. If the objective is to replace humanity with Synths, then that underclass treatment would have stopped the first time actual sentience showed up in any Gen 3 Synth.
There are good, solid reasons and rationale behind the concept of the player not being a Synth. The arguments for it are few, and involve an instance of VATS working before it should, and the false set of choices presented by DiMA in Far Harbor. There are other and better ways to have a player question the humanity of the PC they are playing, and the few that we do get to put the question into play are weak. As an advanced Gen 3 Synth the PC would not have the problems with radiation that they get in the game. Also, by setting the various Synth patrols out as hostile to the PC, The Institute is putting a highly valuable and expensive piece of property at risk. Father shows little emotional attachment to the PC and letting you loose was an 'experiment' and he attempted to give you 'closure' by letting you kill off Kellogg. That level of detachment not just from the PC but humanity as a whole is one that would value the life of the PC more if they were property created inside The Institute than a human being. By treating the PC like a normal surface dweller, they show the disdain that one would expect for a human. They don't marvel that their creation has survived and come home, which would have been the expected reaction to the PC getting back to The Institute.
It is the removal of Player Agency that brings this topic up from Far Harbor, and it is surprising that DiMA's question isn't rebutted easily. I fully expected that after giving responses to Daisy, Supervisor White and the doctor on board the Prydwen that I would get multiple instances of memories from before the Great War, and if I had talked with Kent and was the Silver Shroud, I should get memories going back to my childhood. Do humans retain all their memories? Yes, though not on a conscious level, so asking someone what they remember as their earliest memory means having that person pull up something from their early life after having most of it edited out of the conscious memory. It is a way to save on internal cognitive overhead, and some people actually lack that and can have severe problems later in life with having remembered everything at a conscious level. The question is unfair for self-perception which is something DiMA should know and recognize. He has to off-load memories to continue functioning and humans have a similar system of internal suppression to gain unimpaired cognitive function. People do have gaps in their memories, and using that as a chance to ask if you are a Synth is an effort in instilling self-doubt to the PC, if not the player. Why not ask if you take external, environmental radiation damage? That would be fair and an easy question to answer, and definitive of being a Gen 3 Synth.
Over all of this is The Institute's motto of 'Mankind, Redefined', and no one, not once, asks what the original definition of mankind is and what it is being redefined to. No one can even state it, which makes it a handy excuse to trot out for anything done for any reason. A few people have to be replaced? Well that is just part of redefining mankind. Entire factions need to die? Mankind, redefined. Thwarting an effort in governing of the surface? Well that needed redefining. Any atrocity that treats those who have suffered from radiation damage as sub-human that need to be 'redefined' out of the picture is not from an organization that cares all that much about humanity in the first place. Curie will tell you that ghouls are a victim of the Great War, and that would include anyone with radiation damage that can still function as a human, too. The Institute doesn't see those on the surface as victims in need of help. Thus their own humanity is called into question. As a Synth you would be highly valued by The Institute, as a surface dwelling human you would need some 'redefining' if you hadn't gotten to them. And The Institute only has one means of 'redefining' humans and it involves lots of bodies and rivers of blood, and only humans could get so obsessed with such an idea as to lose track of what makes them human in the first place.
