Is Fallout 4's Main Character A Synth? Every Reason Why (& Why Not) (2024)

Since the 2015 release of Fallout 4, players have had plenty of time to explore the vast lore of the game's world, and many have come up with interesting Fallout theories about some of the hidden details that they've discovered. The series has a breadth and wackiness to it that lends itself to fan theories, from truly bizarre characters to a wealth of audio and text logs found throughout each expansive RPG. One question that continually resurfaces in fan discussions is whether Fallout 4's player character, the Sole Survivor, could be a synth.

Fallout 4's main character is unique among the Fallout games' protagonists, being the only one to have lived before and after the bombs fell. While Fallout 4's introductory hours present the player character as the one human survivor of Vault 111, there are a few hints in the narrative that have led many players to think that there's more to the Sole Survivor than Bethesda initially let on. The popular theory posits that the Sole Survivor is actually a synthetic humanoid, or a synth, created by the Institute, and not a survivor of the Great War.

Reasons Fallout 4's Main Character Could Be A Synth

An Elaborate Plot By Shaun & The Institute

The theory first started to gain traction after the release of Far Harbor, Fallout 4's biggest and best DLC expansion, which introduced a character named DiMA. One particular conversation between DiMA and the Sole Survivor has them ask about the player character's memory, which seemingly only extends as far back as the beginning of the game, when the bombs dropped. DiMA then goes on to suggest that all the Sole Survivor's memories have actually just been implanted.

Given their connection to the Institute, particularly its leader – Shaun, the Sole Survivor's kidnapped child – it seems relatively believable to think that the Sole Survivor could have been planted in Vault 111 rather than genuinely being the only one to survive its cryogenics experiment. The act of humans getting replaced with synthetic counterparts comes up frequently in Fallout 4, making it all too real of a possibility.

The Sole Survivor's pod in Vault 111 is the only one of many to not suffer catastrophic failure, an exceptionally convenient circ*mstance for the game's main questline. Shaun and the Institute's meddling in Vault 111 is already confirmed outright by the game; the Sole Survivor isn't let out of stasis by chance, they are deliberately freed by Shaun. Fallout 4 claims the other cryopods failing was Kellogg's doing, a direct order from the Institute to not reactivate their life support – a convenient cover for swapping the test subject with a yet-to-be-activated synth.

Even stranger, the Sole Survivor can use V.A.T.S. before picking up the Pip-Boy near the vault's entrance. Typically, V.A.T.S. is a gameplay mechanic explained in-universe by wearing a Pip-Boy, a combat technology developed by Vault-Tec. However, a facsimile of V.A.T.S. is programmed into the brains of third-generation synths, those that look like humans. This idea can be extrapolated to explain many of the Sole Survivor's incredible characteristics, such as their resistance to damage, ability to learn new, specialized skills, and even their limited dialog tree compared to past Fallout protagonists.

Gen-3 synths are the product of Institute research using Shaun's pre-war DNA, so the Fallout timeline perfectly sets up the Sole Survivor as an elaborate plot by Shaun. He wishes for the Sole Survivor to succeed him as leader of the Institute, but releasing a pre-war human from Vault 111 and hoping they survive long enough to find and side with the Institute is too risky. A third generation synth, unaware of its own identity, but programmed with a disposition that favorably continues Shaun's legacy, is a much safer bet.

Evidence Debunking The Theory That Fallout 4's Main Character Is A Synth

Too Convoluted To Be Enitrely Plausible

There's also a chance that the game's subtext is just being read into too much. Throughout other parts of Fallout 4, the main character makes reference to various pre-war concepts, such as baseball, which has hilariously been misinterpreted by post-nuclear wastelanders as some sort of blood sport. Unless these memories were also implanted, it suggests that the Sole Survivor remembers the entire scope of their human life. Additionally, if the Sole Survivor was meant to be a synth, it likely would have been brought up more frequently within the story of the game, or at least hinted at more overtly.

Vault 111's records would have been a perfect place for this – there's no evidence to suggest the Institute tampered with the Sole Survivor's cryopod, aside from Shaun opening it 60 years after he himself was kidnapped from the vault. Fallout's modern era, particularly Bethesda's two RPGs, suffer from these sorts of plot gaps. Fallout 3's Lone Wanderer, for instance, has no idea their father, James, isn't originally from Vault 101, a subject that would've been widely known in such a small community, and probably would have reached the Lone Wanderer as a rumor or gossip.

Similarly, if Shaun had some ingenious plan to be succeeded by a gen-3 synth, it's woefully misguided, and even contradicted by the game's branching narrative. Sure, synths can be liberated from the Institute's control, but the Railroad suggests this requires distance from the Institute, thus their smuggling operation to get synths out of the Commonwealth. It's Fallout 4's various endings that really poke holes in the idea, though. If the future of the Institute as Shaun envisions it depends solely on this synth, why would it be afforded enough free will to side with another faction and possibly destroy the Institute? Why not just create a synth and keep it in the Institute for this exact purpose?

In the same way V.A.T.S. is used to support the Sole Survivor synth theory, Fallout 4's Survival mode is evidence against it. Max Loken, an Institute robotics scientist, tells the player that third generation synths don't require sustenance and are immune to disease, both of which are contradicted by the Sole Survivor's need to eat and the ability to contract illnesses in Survival Mode. The V.A.T.S. angle is an interesting point in the theory, but more than likely just boils down to a gameplay oversight.

As it is, virtually no characters other than DiMA make any reference to the possibility of the Sole Survivor being a synth. Given that Fallout 4 has a major emphasis on one of its synthetic companions, Nick Valentine, it seems like there should have been plenty of opportunities to bring the idea up. Ultimately, given the lack of solid evidence to neither fully support nor outright dismiss it, it's unlikely that Fallout 4's synth theory will be disappearing any time soon.

Fallout 4

Bethesda's action RPG Fallout 4 puts players into the vault suit of the Lone Survivor, a pre-war soldier from an alternate future cryogenically frozen inside Vault 111. After their infant son is kidnapped, they venture out into the irradiated wasteland of the Commonwealth to scour the ruins of Boston for any sign of him. In doing so, they encounter various factions and companions and use an array of skills and abilities to navigate the apocalyptic remnants of society.

Franchise

Fallout

Platform(s)

PC , PS4 , PS5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S

Released

November 10, 2015

Developer(s)

Bethesda

Publisher(s)

Bethesda

Genre(s)

RPG , Action

ESRB

M FOR MATURE: BLOOD AND GORE, INTENSE VIOLENCE, STRONG LANGUAGE, USE OF DRUGS