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It's literally that simple.
Next up, why did The Institute kidnap Shaun specifically in the first place? Adults' DNA is just as good as children's and it's not difficult or painful to extract; they usually just take some hair or a mouth swab. The Institute's the cushiest place in the Commonwealth; I'm sure they could've convinced most of Vault 111 to come and donate DNA willingly. Why have just one "backup"? If nothing else, all those vault dwellers would diversify their gene pool a bit.
(N.B. Even a heavily irradiated person would still have plenty of undamaged DNA in their body but radiation's basically magic in Fallout so I'm willing to look past that.)
Finally, I don't understand The Institute's obsession with synths. Yeah, they want to infiltrate and control the Commonwealth because they're typical, straw man, Machiavellian scientists. But they seem to do nothing else. In 50 years, they've developed Gen 3 synths, courser synths, child synths and gorilla synths. Where's this grand vision for the future driven by science? It's a pretty clear example of coming up with plot points first and backfilling motivations later.
They see it as inhuman, shaun clearly states this, and as to why he refuses to expand his life with technology.
First and foremost, child dna is more pure, there's less of a chance that the body will retain any radiation if at all (and he didn't have any until he left the surface 60 years later) and the fact that he would be able to grow up there and be a valuable asset being raised by the genius minds that inhabited The Institute.
It's a rather obvious conclusion If you think about it.
As for the rest of the inhabitents, they only need partial strains of dna and wouldn't need the rest of them, the "backup" Is just Incase something would happen to the strain they had, they'd have extremely similar dna to add to the pool.
It's not an obsession with synths, rather the growth of mankind as a whole.
Being able to create humans without the womb of a loving mother, to mass populate the wasteland and to create the perfect race to some day rebuild the wasteland.
The rest of them are simply used so that The Institute has a foothold on the surface, Mayor Mcdonough being one of them so they're able to gather intelligence.
As for synths, one thing to realize is that the Institute's involvement with the surface settlements is far less extensive than everyone on the surface thinks. They've only made a few actual synth replacements (about four, as I recall), and they don't have any real interest in controlling it. The surface has heard of the few bad incidents where the Institute messed up an operation, while the Institute stays mostly at home doing science. Even the abductions people talk about (which involve just a few people per year) are for an old experiment that's completely independent of the synths.
Most of the surface actions of the Institute are either scavenging for raw materials, or chasing down rogue synths (which wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a problem without the Railroad). If they cared about taking over the surface, they could have systematically wiped out every settlement decades ago. Since they've got an army of synths and the ability to teleport them almost anywhere, even Diamond City wouldn't have stood a chance.
Remove the need for manual labor, and you remove the need for explosive population growth to fill that manual labor gap. Synths are a necessity of how the Institute operates, they can't afford to have a huge population of mediocre workers consuming resources, nor can they afford the send their brilliant minds to the surface for petty scavanging missions. Hence, the Synth.
Not to mention, None of those residents would be 'clean' as if you're that close enough to see a bomb go off, You would be flooded with Gammas. And there's no argument that, "Gamma doesn't work that way in fallout" because during a rad storm that's EXACTLY how it works. Flash of lightning, Get gammas. Not a one person who was on that lift at the moment of detination was 'clean' by any stretch of the imagination. Just another plot hole.
yea theres a lot of sloppy writing here; im betting they rewrote the story in places and had to try and fit it together without totally re-doing all the dialog.
the fact that Kellogg refers to both the previous director and the current one as "the old man" really bothers me because hes older than the NCR. i dont think hed see shaun as an 'old man' regardless of his appearance since kellogg was already well into middle age when shaun was kidnapped as an infant.
theres another thing- the reason you were left alive was as a backup- but thats not all. you were released via 'remote override', as noted in the terminal in your cryo room. the 'previous director' had, for some reason, left a way for you to be revived remotely.
the way kellogg says one of the final lines in the memory, where he wonders if he himself was just another loose end tied up by 'the old man', makes it sound like hes talking about the original director again.
man this story is a mess. its very likely the director wasnt supposed to be shaun, and they wrote that twist in later, having to restructure the entire story around it. kellogg's stupid long lifespan is probably also a result of that, as someone else pointed out.
The memory in Diamond City Kellogg calls the director the old man is right before you arrive in Diamond City. The Shaun you see in the memory is the synth Shaun you are offered later. The courser takes Shaun back to the Institute because Kellogg is needed to go chase Virgil.
Coursers are a recent development. If the Shaun in the Diamond City was the real Shaun then the courser would not exist because that would have taken place like 60 years earlier. Which would have been around the Broken Mask incident, which means Gen 3s did not even exist yet.
In other words, you did not pay attention to the details and you confused yourself and made the mess. Just like the mess you made digging this up from years ago.
i dont know why you thought i didnt think this. theres no mix-up on my part; i know the shaun in diamond city was the synth shaun. thats why its weird he refers to the director while in the vault memory and the director in the diamond city memory as "the old man". THE old man. singular. it seems to me hed come up with a new nickname for the new director that hed known since infancy.
its really just something thats bothered me for years but im on a replay right now and realized id never looked it up to see if other people noticed it too. i remember people being so worked up about the jet plothole, but this is a way bigger offense.
We're pretty sure that kid is actually the 'synth shaun' created by the original. For one thing, it looks just like the synth shaun we see in the institute. Second, nick valentine specifically mentions that kelogg was seen with a kid recently. I realize nick is also a synth, but I'm guessing 'recently' is not 50 years to him.
And kelogg was about to go after virgil. That's why there were so many synths in that fort. The glowing sea is F-ING dangerous, and I'm not talking about all the radiation everywhere.
The Institute may have just patched themselves into existing systems that included that function, or they may have put remote controls in place to monitor or control the cryogenic system in a variety of ways. Just because they only used it to release you doesn't mean that's the only thing that could have been done remotely.
Because he is, since that memory is from the time with the earlier director.
Kellogg talking about different directors with the same term is apparently a deliberate red herring. It's intended to help the player think that only 10 years has passed and that the boy seen in Kellogg's memories is the real Shaun.
Precisely.
I think in the end, besides perhaps some mismanagement of the story, they didn't feel the need to flesh out a previous Director because the focus wasn't on them, or maybe it was to make you think like DouglasGrave said. Either way, I'm more disappointed that we didn't get some more Kellogg moments (after the memory den when he comes out to speak via Nick, or being able to not kill Kellogg to begin with).
Something that is more interesting to me is apparently all the crows you see in the commonwealth are actually synths. There are pictures shown in the Institute that show different locations of the commonwealth, and upon going there, there are crows. Not to mention in-game files that further support this idea.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/9afqxp/some_crows_in_fallout_4_are_actually_synths/
Also, why the necro on an already necro'd thread?
People also tend to refer to people in charge with nicknames, chief, boss, jefe, etc so why is old man any different? How many people you know refer to their wife as the old lady? (behind her back.)
A person like Kellogg and as old as Kellogg would not really care enough about others to remember their names and would use nicknames.
You are trying to tear down an entire plot and insult it because of the use of a common nickname.
So Bethesda just gave the one who destroyed a whole families future with ordering the kindapping of an infant boy and killing a spouse and that infant as adult the same nickname because they didnt think that the player could be intressted in seperate those two institute leaders in their in game investigations?
That would be very narrowminded and probably more offensive to the devs of Fallout 4 than assuming they simply did gave a ****
The use of the same name subtly helps to make players think of the two "old man" mentions as the same person only because the evidence required to distinguish them isn't available in the storyline until you get to the actual revelation about Shaun.
It's only after you're in the Institute and learn about when Shaun was taken and why that you have the necessary information to distinguish that there were two different old men being described by Kellogg.