When MIT Becomes Evil

On November 10^th, 2015, humanity was given the gift of Fallout 4. Fallout 4 is a video game that takes place in a dystopian future where nuclear wars caused the world to enter the dark ages again. The game takes place in Boston, Massachusetts where the world-renowned college, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has its center of operations. In Fallout 4, the remnants of the school are renamed and called The Institute by the wastelanders. The Institute is the main antagonist of the game, depending on the player’s choice. They are responsible for the creation of mechanical abominations called Synths.

***Spoiler Warning***

The Synths are humanoid robots that the Institute uses to do their bidding across the wasteland. With each new model, the Synths became more and more like a human. The first-generation models were just walking skeletons and organs, and were easy to distinguish from real humans. The second-generation models had skin, but it was obviously plastic and fake. When the player starts the game, the Institute have created the generation three Synths. Most of these Synths are agents of the Institute that uses them to kidnap and replace individuals in the wasteland to spy and monitor the world. The only way that these Synth body doubles can be distinguished from the original is by the way they act. For example, when the player enters a town known as Goodneighbor, the town militia guns down a man. They explain that he was a Synth, and they were able to tell because he was acting like an upstanding citizen when everyone knew him as a lazy, unfaithful drug addict. Fortunately this man was indeed a Synth, but there have been multiple occasions where innocent people were accused and killed.  People live in constant fear of having either themselves or a loved one being kidnapped and replaced by a Synth double. I have not gotten far enough in the game to know what happens when the Institute kidnaps a person, but I assume they do not get to live.

The generation three Synths are indistinguishable from a human on the outside. They have skin, hair, and even blood. They eat, sleep, use the bathroom, and can get sick. They can even understand and express human emotions, the only thing that robots had lacked. One of the player’s companions, a robot named Curie, is given a Synth body and one of the first things she notices is the feeling of grief when she thinks about the death of her previous owner. With the introduction of emotions, the line between robot and human really starts to blur. The only thing that the wastelanders believe that differentiates them from a real human is their lack of free will. However, even that comes into question.

Most of the citizens of the wasteland believe that these Synths are like every other robot, and are just tools that obey every command of the Institute. However, there are several Synths that seem completely independent and autonomous. Many of them actually escape and hide from the Institute, since they do not want to work for them anymore. These Synths are treated like the African slaves in the United States’ past. There are people that view them as tools that are to be used by the Institute and do not think of them as humans. There are people of the opposite that think of the Synths as their equal, and do whatever they can to help them. In fact, there is an underground railroad where people help escaped Synths run and hide from the Institute. The reason that most believed that the slaves were not human was due to religious or societal beliefs that only people of white color had a soul or intelligence. The Synths are also believed to be soulless instruments of the Institute. Minus the ability to reproduce and blend into society (due to obvious differences like skin color), these Synths are no different from the African slaves. The game gives the player several opportunities to express their thoughts about these Synths, though most options to harm Synths tend to feel “evil”. Still, the choice is ultimately up to the player. The game questions the players to decide on their own what it means to be human.

On a side note, in the game there is a robot named KL-E-O that is a regular robot, not a Synth. Completely off topic, but this robot identifies itself as a sultry woman. This seems relevant to the topic of sexual identification that is an important issue currently, but I don’t want to assume and seem like a bigot. In fact, the whole town of Goodneighbor has citizens like her where they are regarded as unnatural and strange. They still hate Synths though.