#authur maxon

When I think of sci-fi and social justice, something that comes to my mind and as a powerful story would be the video game, Fallout 4. Despite this being a video game and you can influence the story with your own actions, there are important mentions of discrimination in the year 2287 after the bombs have fallen. This idea is of synths, synthetic human beings, and whether they are human and should be treated as such.

Synthetic humans were created by the faction The Institute, who are unknown by the common man and is often referred to as the “boogeyman” of the Commonwealth. The reason for this is how The Institute can and have kidnapped normal people and replaced this as a synth. They are so human-like that the everyday person cannot tell that they are humans, not even the synth themselves as they share all the same memories the real person has. There is a lot of reasons why The Institute does this and is creating these highly realistic synthetic humans and even replacing normal humans is to gain intel from the surface on how life is like after the bombs dropped.

Often, synths who escape The Institute from their poor treatment, try and live a normal life as they can, having the faction, The Railroad, to help them. The Railroad helps to rescue and relocate synths so they can have a normal life as a human does without the abuse from The Institute. Due to the representation of The Institute, there is a lot of discrimination against synthetic humans, from casting them out of cities from having your main mission to killing them. This discrimination also goes with ghouls, people who have had high levels of radiation, transforming their appearance drastically.

We can see this discrimination especially with the faction, The Brotherhood of Steel, that is run under Elder Auther Maxon. His view is to “cleanse” all the synths, ghouls, and super mutants from the Commonwealth, and to cleanse it as well is to destroy The Institute as a whole in order for them to stop creating synths. This behavior that Elder Maxon brings to the Brotherhood, is translated to his team and to Paladin Danse, who is a companion you can play with during the game. Having rather hostile comments made if you bring any non-human companion on the Prydwin, the airship the Brotherhood is located in at the Boston Airport.

We even see betrayal and no remorse from Elder Maxon and the Brotherhood when they find out the Paladin Danse is a synth. Having the player to be ordered to kill Dance, despite all that he has done for Maxon and the Brotherhood. If sparring his life, Maxon will meet the player and Danse at Listening Post Bravo, and no matter how convincing Maxon, he will not change his mind on Danse, casting him out of the Brotherhood and now having any Brotherhood Soldier hostile towards Danse and even the player.

The quest that these even come from, Blind Betrayal, holds true to this particular character, Danse, as he is what he was trained to hunt down and kill, not having this life to being meaningless as the BOS, was all he knew since his past life in D.C. This shows a truly human side of synths that people often bring up when they discuss why they dislike them, not understanding that they are human and have human feelings. They do question if these feelings are controlled by The Institue, but this quest alone shows how synths are affected by the constant discrimination that they go throw due to something they might not yet know.

While thinking about the story of Fallout 4, despite it being taken place in the post-apocalyptic ruins of Boston and The Commonwealth, the talk of discrimination on something you can’t change is discussed in the main quest of the story. Depending on who you side with, you can get a lot of inside of is “evil” and what is “good”. Despite the heartbreaking story of Paladin Danse and other characters that are non-human, (the story of Nick Valentine is another interesting story of this issue as well as the story of John Hancock and his relationship with his brother who cast him out of Dimond City, the city that Nick is located) it is clear what the motives of these factions are and what actions they want to do to active power in The Commonwealth. 

An idea that keeps repeating within the story of Fallout 4 would be memory, something that we also talk about with the story The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coats. We see the Sole Survivor (the player) gather their memories on what life was like before the bombs fell, what their life was like with their now dead spouse, and the memory of their child, that is taken from them by The Institute , driving them to save and finding their child. We see discussion of memory by synths about their own memories and question if the memories they had were controlled by the very faction that made them and even going to the lengths of wiping out their memories in order to make new ones. We see this sad realization with Paladin Danse as he questions if his memories with his friend, Culter back in DC were fake or not. We even see this with the painful memories that Nick Valentine shares with the player, having his memories and even identity ripped from a cop from before the war, wondering if he’ll ever have his own identity and memories past that very cop. The overall idea of memory and the past is a very big symbol in the game as it is a subtle factor that a lot of characters, especially ones who are non-human, share in their own personal backstory. This alone makes these non-human characters, human.

A quote that makes me believe this to be true is said by the character Paladin Danse, while the Sole Survivor is having their final affinity conversation with him; “Those sons-of-bitches who created me couldn’t even be bothered to implant memories of having siblings or parents. I don’t know how much of my own past is artificial and how much is real. Can you even imagine that? I started out as nothing, and I’ve ended up as nothing… and I don’t know what the hell to do about it.” (Danse, after Blind Betrayal)