Really struggling with the Railroad, Deacon, and morality lately. I do love Deacon and I do love the Railroad and I do think the Railroad is a good thing and that without them the wasteland and the people in it would be worse off. Synths would be worse off. But at the same time I think that they do take advantage of people who have been conditioned to believe they are not a person and that they don’t know anything and that they should listen to what they are told. Perhaps not purposefully, but they do.
This is shown pretty prominently in the H2-22 quest line. H2 explains what he should and should not talk about to you when you first meet him. He keeps saying he has been told he should not say much about anything by members of the Railroad. He trusts them, and so mostly stays quiet. It is also shown in how he explains his choice to accept the mindwipe to you in the holotape he leaves to you. He is concerned about the danger and he trusts the Railroad, not even attempting to make his own determination on the matter. And how could he be asked to? He doesn’t know anything about this world or about how the Institute actually operates when it comes to synth retention.
As for Deacon, he is a cruel character. :( The text of the game does a lot to imply that he is taking advantage of you and your tragic story for the benefit of the Railroad and their goals. He is the only companion who seems to know a lot about the pre-war world, his story in his final approval talk is a parallel to yours in many ways, and we know he has been stalking the player for a long time. Likely longer than we’ve been awake. I tend to believe his final approval talk, but everything about him and what others say about him and even what he says about himself tells you that he is a pathological liar and that he can be very good at lying. This is the one (possible) lie that if you call him out on it, he doesn’t cop to, instead he begins to understanding of your distrust and then gets upset and hurt if you keep pushing. Maybe that is because he is telling a very sensitive truth, or maybe it is simply because he thinks it is very important that you believe him this time.
I do think Deacon is a good person with a strong moral fiber, but I don’t think that he treats the player right, I think he manipulates them and put himself above them. I think that he flatters them to get them to do what he wants. What he wants is a noble and important goal, I wouldn’t even go so far as to say that he is wrong for trying to get you on the side of the Railroad, but it does suck for the sosu. Everything points to the idea that they are being manipulated by a liar.
You cannot romance Deacon, I wonder why that is. Ryan Alosio (Deacon’s VA) seems to think that it is because Deacon will never be over Barbara. Ryan believes Deacon‘s final story. I wonder if the writers behind Deacon’s character would say the same. At some point in the construction of Fallout 4, Deacon was meant to have a companion quest and a scrapped asset shows a grave with “Barbara Deacon” scratched out on it. But it was scrapped, can something that is clearly not canon be considered?
Back to the Railroad, they always encourage synths to go through with the memory wipe process because it is statistically much safer. It is the synth’s choice in the end, but how much of a choice is a person who has never been allowed to be a person or make their own choices or think their own thoughts able to make? And who are we as people? Are we our memories? Or simply our sentience or body? I lean towards the idea that a person is their memories, the make up of their life that has shaped them. If you wipe those memories and replace them with new, fake ones, you have effectively killed the old person and replaced them with a new person existing in the same body. The H2 before and after H2’s memory wipes are not the same person at all; personality wise or experience wise. I wonder if they would even have the same likes or dislikes. I don’t think the memory wipes are saving those synths who do them. I think they are killing them and putting an impostor in their bodies.
Still, I doubt that synths like Glory or Magnolia would say that the Railroad is an evil organization that kills synths. I wouldn’t tend to say that either. Glory has many problems with how the Railroad operates and what they prioritize, but she still considers them her family and works with them to help in the same way she felt she had been helped. In the case of G5-19 (the synth body you can put Curie’s mind into), the mindwipe the Railroad promoted to her left her braindead. Her consciousness is gone, she is a breathing husk. Yet Glory still seems to still see her as a person. You have to convince Glory that putting Curie’s mind into G5’s body is a good thing that will give G5 new life. Glory seems to think that the body is what makes the person, that G5 is still here, sitting silent in the pod behind her. Maybe that is why Glory is okay with the Railroad’s practice of mindwipes even if she did not elect for one herself.
It’s a tough situation with both the Railroad and Deacon. Nothing is black-and-white I guess. Complexity of morality and gray areas are difficult.
titsay
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