It's kind of point less in my opinion, that the Railroad risking their life to save those robots who are just programmed to act like human. Even though Nick Valentine is my favorite companion in Fallout 4, it just seemed stupid and pointless. I never really bother with railroad in Fallout 4 so please correct me or tell me the reason why that they want to save them.

Though I usually end up annihilating the Railroad, what I know of them is that they believe those clankers have a conscious and self-awareness and thus should be treated like any normal human being. If memory serves, they actually resort to mild terrorism attacks to either free synths or incriminate the Institute. I fail to accept or understand this.

I always side with the Institute for several reasons, with these lunatics being the biggie. The Brotherhood of Steel is a little too aggressive and Aryan for my tastes, attacking me for just wearing a suit of power armor I found or bought or built. And the Institute has noble goals and keeps a calm demeanor in spite of the paranoia the Railroad tries to build up against it, so I always take their side.

OK so here's how I see it. They are not freeing the older models of synths, correct? The ones who are made specifically for killing or kidnapping but the ones who are supposed to be human. So if they do have a conscious and self-awareness it should be very obvious why they're freeing them. The institute is making slaves which is wrong plain and simple. Making a machine like the older synths or like a washing machine that serves a very specific purpose is different but giving something it's own free will and own awareness and then making it bend to your will is absolutely horrible and it should be completely understandable why the railroad is freeing them.

thanks for the replies guys

To me, the railroad are the sjws of the wasteland and they really don't have anything noble to serve to help rebuild the wasteland back to it once were like how the NCR, BoS, and the Institute are trying to do, I don't think they actually understand how gen 3 synths work, they rely on their feelings than facts which in my opinion is the most stupidest thing to do in a post apocalyptic wasteland, it's all about survival. The game gives me another reason why I shouldn't take Bethesda's fallouts seriously or as canon to the originals.

Thats like saying "why did the underground railroad back before the civil war save black people?"

The Railroads point is that the Synths are more than just robots programmed to do something. That they are self aware beyond the institutes programming and have evolved to become something more, something that deserves to be treated on the same level as humanity. While this is a slippery slope, considering all Synths have some level of connection to the institute, we can see from plenty of examples, such as Nick and Harkness, that not all Synths are bound to the will of the institute.

I think the best example of what I'm saying comes from Fallout 3's quest, before Fallout 4 ever existed. Harkness was a hunter for the institute, most likely a Courser from what we can see of his body type and his job; hunting down escaped and renegade Synths. Through this we learn that Harkness is both self aware of his actions, and extremely guilty for doing what he did. It's a human response, which is pretty telling. His actions cost many synths, who only really wanted to be free, their lives, and now he wants the same thing he denied them. I find it strange that we had no quests like this in Fallout 4. Harkness actually fleshed the character of the Institute quite well. We learn that the Institute thinks Synths are simple tools. The development of self awareness within them is considered a defect, one that must be dealt with via memory purging. Escaped Synths view this as being robbed of their memories and who they are. The Railroad serves to help self aware Synths to gain freedom. It raises a whole issue of when does a machine cease to be just a machine?
I think Bethesda really missed the mark on this in Fallout 4. When it came to Synth self awareness it was all a lot of tell rather than show. We don't see the struggle so much as we're told it exists, and we don't have any characters who we grow attached to outside of one (I won't say who because spoiler, but I think we all know who he is) that we ever need to kill or let live because they're a synth, and even then, it's a very short, rushed side plot that has very little bearing on the overall game. I think the reason people don't understand or like the Railroad that much is because of this. We never really get put into that factions perspective to make them see "this is why X thinks this way, because Y is...", but never get that and instead we just have to trust that what they think and believe is the right way of thinking. That's what really sucks about Fallout 4. In all the other games, the main forces behind the narrative, The Master, President Richardson, Eden, Lyons, NCR, House, Caesar all make their points very clear through a combination of their actions and their words. In Fallout 4, that's just a mess. Maxson says one thing and then does something completely different right after screaming "ad victoriam!" and pretending like this is something the Brotherhood have always done. Desdemona just glares at you and Preston Garvey just likes helping people. Father is the only one who seems consistent and level headed enough in both his words and actions, and had all the makings of a great villain, but once again, all tell, no show. A great character, particularly a villain on the level of what they wanted Father to be, has to have a belief that what they are doing is right and has to attempt to convince the player that it is so. Instead, all of these characters just expect you to be on their side, and get pissy with you when you inevitably say no.

@ThePlagueDoctr not true at all. Have you ever heard of the Followers of the Apocalypse? Totally, way more SJW. Not to mention thats such a silly term to throw into a Fallout game. There are always factions based around liberation or Independence and personal freedoms. And in the context, the Railroad makes a hell of a lot of sense within the confines of Fallout 4, though as I've said, they are so terrible fleshed out. Tell and not show, as I said earlier, just makes everything they do feel super preachy.

While they were made in a laboratory, they still are living, feeling, breathing people. Everyone was made someway, whether it be by the traditional way or the synth way of being made in a lab. So you really can't qualify as just machines. Synths like Glory have thoughts, goals, emotions. etc. So in my opinion they are far more than machines and are the equivalent of people because they are capable of doing and feeling just like the normal human.

I really dislike how the railroad seems almost anti-normal wastelander, or at the best, ambivalent towards them.

I think the ones that end up being close to being human other then a simple synth component. From what i remember they can feel, have emotions, and possibly give birth? I can assume if they are biologically made to be as close as possibly to humans they can give birth/pregnant. What is the difference between humans and synths? The only difference really is just a synth component. They honestly should be given opportunites that every human gets since they are so close to human as is. The older model synths however are cannon fodder and have always been that way. They definitely should be annhilated but, if they were used in the right hands could provide some good use.

What the railroad is doing though is saving those that have become self aware and are close to being human. They are, i feel, risking their lives for a good cause institute just keeps them tied down and doesn't let them be able to be human. The institute are horrible in the fact they don't treat gen-3 synths like humans.

Okay, so here are my two opinions on the railroad.
1. They are anarchists of sort, ''freedom'' fighters so to say. They save synths and then free them.
2. They save synths aaaaaand of course enlist them to their ever growing faction, they are saving more and more synths so they can make their whole faction bigger and thus eventually control the commonwealth, however tho, I still see the Railroad as good guys, but I'd kill them anytime, but for I love Deacon, I dont do that.

I think a good way to understand the Railorad, is to compare the FO4 Railroad to the original Underground Railroad that was freeing slaves. Back then in a time, when slavery was considered completely normal by a majority of the populace, they freed slaves, that others would have just considered property and less than human.

Back to Fallout 4. Synths are consindered less than human by the general populace of the Commonwealth, most people fear them and when confronted with one often react either frigthened or even violent. When trying to get into the mindset of the FO4 Railroad,I think it helps to compare the motives with the Original Railroad. The later generation synths act human, are capable of feeling human emotions and are even capable of bleeding. Only their origin is to be considered non-human.

So when you think about it, they do what in their moral guidelines is the most human thing to do. They save and help the rejected, the unjustly-treated. Just as the Underground Railorad saved the slaves, others would have not even thought of more than property, the FO4 Railroad helps this quasi-human minority, that nobody else bothers helping.

Tl;dr: Railroad in FO4 helps synths, because morale guidelines.

Because they're a bunch of sjws who want to fuck machines and they have no brains and only pose as a mosquito to the brotherhood. Ad Victorium!

19eccho wrote:

While they were made in a laboratory, they still are living, feeling, breathing people. Everyone was made someway, whether it be by the traditional way or the synth way of being made in a lab. So you really can't qualify as just machines. Synths like Glory have thoughts, goals, emotions. etc. So in my opinion they are far more than machines and are the equivalent of people because they are capable of doing and feeling just like the normal human.  

Exactly.

IRORIEH wrote:

The Railroads point is that the Synths are more than just robots programmed to do something. That they are self aware beyond the institutes programming and have evolved to become something more, something that deserves to be treated on the same level as humanity. While this is a slippery slope, considering all Synths have some level of connection to the institute, we can see from plenty of examples, such as Nick and Harkness, that not all Synths are bound to the will of the institute.

I think the best example of what I'm saying comes from Fallout 3's quest, before Fallout 4 ever existed. Harkness was a hunter for the institute, most likely a Courser from what we can see of his body type and his job; hunting down escaped and renegade Synths. Through this we learn that Harkness is both self aware of his actions, and extremely guilty for doing what he did. It's a human response, which is pretty telling. His actions cost many synths, who only really wanted to be free, their lives, and now he wants the same thing he denied them. I find it strange that we had no quests like this in Fallout 4. Harkness actually fleshed the character of the Institute quite well. We learn that the Institute thinks Synths are simple tools. The development of self awareness within them is considered a defect, one that must be dealt with via memory purging. Escaped Synths view this as being robbed of their memories and who they are. The Railroad serves to help self aware Synths to gain freedom. It raises a whole issue of when does a machine cease to be just a machine?
I think Bethesda really missed the mark on this in Fallout 4. When it came to Synth self awareness it was all a lot of tell rather than show. We don't see the struggle so much as we're told it exists, and we don't have any characters who we grow attached to outside of one (I won't say who because spoiler, but I think we all know who he is) that we ever need to kill or let live because they're a synth, and even then, it's a very short, rushed side plot that has very little bearing on the overall game. I think the reason people don't understand or like the Railroad that much is because of this. We never really get put into that factions perspective to make them see "this is why X thinks this way, because Y is...", but never get that and instead we just have to trust that what they think and believe is the right way of thinking. That's what really sucks about Fallout 4. In all the other games, the main forces behind the narrative, The Master, President Richardson, Eden, Lyons, NCR, House, Caesar all make their points very clear through a combination of their actions and their words. In Fallout 4, that's just a mess. Maxson says one thing and then does something completely different right after screaming "ad victoriam!" and pretending like this is something the Brotherhood have always done. Desdemona just glares at you and Preston Garvey just likes helping people. Father is the only one who seems consistent and level headed enough in both his words and actions, and had all the makings of a great villain, but once again, all tell, no show. A great character, particularly a villain on the level of what they wanted Father to be, has to have a belief that what they are doing is right and has to attempt to convince the player that it is so. Instead, all of these characters just expect you to be on their side, and get pissy with you when you inevitably say no.

@ThePlagueDoctr not true at all. Have you ever heard of the Followers of the Apocalypse? Totally, way more SJW. Not to mention thats such a silly term to throw into a Fallout game. There are always factions based around liberation or Independence and personal freedoms. And in the context, the Railroad makes a hell of a lot of sense within the confines of Fallout 4, though as I've said, they are so terrible fleshed out. Tell and not show, as I said earlier, just makes everything they do feel super preachy.

How are the followers of the apocalypse "sjw's" at all? They just like to help people and heal them.