Fallout 4's Missing Villain

[Music] hey how's it going guys it's nate here and welcome back to fallout 4 and it's beautiful irradiated world let me just straight away say that this video is going to be about a certain villain or i guess maybe hiro who's missing from the game you see if the player character joins the institute and listens very carefully you'll occasionally hear about this scientist named dr zimmer who apparently once occupied an incredibly important role in the organization but hasn't been heard from in years there are no quests about him or anything dr zimmer is only mentioned in passing a couple of times and in a few conversations that randomly play out between institute staff however if you dig deep enough there is a very interesting story here one that we're going to be investigating today now as many of you know while dr zimmer is merely mentioned in fallout 4 the dude literally appeared in the flesh as a character we could meet in fallout 3 which takes place 10 years ago what was he doing in the capital wasteland back then well he was involved in this certain side quest called the replicated man which we'll analyze as a matter of fact there were a handful of very well hidden yet huge secrets in fallout 3 about dr zimmer that i don't think i've seen anyone else talk about and i literally just uncovered after 12 years yes despite fallout 3 having released in 2008 there are things i've just found out like there are a couple of details we can only uncover with console commands and these really elaborate clues bethesda hidden places you wouldn't expect i personally must have played through the replicated man at least 15 times and never noticed anything however enough hyping things up let's actually get started with the investigation we'll begin by pointing out every single instance dr zimmer's name is mentioned in fallout 4 whether it was in dialogue or written down on a terminal somewhere this will give us a neat little trail to start following as well as introduce us to a lot of information that's going to become helpful later on i'll also dissect a few noteworthy things about zimmer in fallout 4's game files and creation kit that aren't available in normal gameplay then we'll move into fallout 3 and look into the man's role in that side quest as well as point out all those secrets i hyped up so much when all said and done we're definitely going to be left with a lot of questions more than what we started with honestly but more importantly we're going to make a discovery or two that'll change the way you look at the institute for the worse anyway without any further ado let's do further and figure out what happened to fallout 4's mysterious dr zimmer alrighty so as promised we're starting our investigation by analyzing what fallout 4 tells us about dr zimmer chances are the first time you'll hear his name will be during the player's first visit to the institute's headquarters which is frankly just such a big moment in the game it's difficult to pay attention to more minor details it's during this initial visit we're hit with the shocking plot twist that our son sean who we thought was kidnapped by the institute just 10 years ago was really taken around 60 years ago and is now their leader sean whose official title is director provides us with a brief overview of the institute's history explaining that the organization was originally founded by some professors and researchers at the old commonwealth institute of technology who managed to survive the great war by fleeing in some bunkers that were evidently beneath the campus over the next 210 years those lucky survivors and their many many descendants continued to live underground and greatly expanded the first bunkers into the giant futuristic subterranean biosphere the institute inhabits today notably sean reveals that for the last century or so the organization has been manufacturing human-esque androids called synths that they basically use as workers and sometimes soldiers the first two generations or versions of synth ever made were quite impressive pieces of technology in their own right but our son reveals that when the institute abducted him 60 years ago they used his uncontaminated human dna to create the third generation or version of synth and these gen 3 synths are so advanced they're indistinguishable from actual human beings wow okay cool story nate but where does dr zimmer fit into all of this again well after your history lesson is over sean will ask that the player go introduce themself to a number of the institute's highest ranking members one of the people were specifically told to meet is a man named justin ayo who is the acting head of the synth retention bureau or the srb as it's often abbreviated to the srb is an elite branch of the institute whose sole job is to prevent synths from escaping and tracking down those that do you see the generation 3 synths are just so advanced they sometimes become self-aware and try to run away hence the srb now father has asked that i provide you with a brief overview of the synth retention bureau our primary responsibility is the recovery of escaped synths that are hiding among the human population on the surface we can't allow sophisticated institute technology to fall into the wrong hands the results could be disastrous though wait a minute i just said that dr ao is only the acting head of the srb who is he filling in for well thankfully you can ask him take a listen to what he says if you're the acting head of the esrb who are you filling in for dr zimmer holds that position he's supervising the retrieval of some of the more high profile units in his absence i keep things running smoothly ah so dr zimmer is apparently the head of the institute synth retention bureau but he's out of town right now searching for some high profile units those must have been some very important androids oh well hope he's doing all right now apparently some people at the institute aren't very happy with how eo's been running things in zimmer's absence ao has an aggressive personality and has been picking fights with members of the facilities department accusing them of being too lazy and not following orders despite the fact that ao doesn't have the right to order anybody around who isn't in the srb it's possible to overhear a couple of scientists chatting about how annoying dr ao has become and how much they wish that dr zimmer was still leading the synth retention bureau take a listen you'd think justin ayo would have better ways to spend his time than to make ridiculous accusations all i want is to be able to work in peace is that so much to ask oh i do miss dr zimmer if he were here none of this nonsense would be happening so many people here still miss zimmer and viewed him as a much more reasonable leader the only time dr zimmer's name will come up again is during the quest plugging a leak which the player will only receive if they've joined the institute and progressed rather far with their quest line during this mission we learned that justin ayo suspects someone within the organization is helping since escape for some reason and he asks if we can help him find out who long story short after a brief investigation we discovered that the culprit is a young boy named liam benay who's been letting since escape because he feels sorry for them now after making this revelation we can immediately turn liam in and he'll be banished from the institute or we can instead choose to frame dr ayo and get him banished instead why would we do such a thing well eo is kind of a huge jerk to everybody in the faction the player character included and as we just mentioned he has a reputation for being aggressive and resorting to violence way more often than is necessary liam on the other hand may be breaking the rules but he's only doing it because it's what he believes is right and by contrast mr binet is always super nice to the player and will even confess to his crimes when asked politely furthermore liam says this about ao look now that you know you have a choice to make you could tell justin but i have a proposal for you i want to frame justin ayo look ever since dr zimmer left he's been out of control he and his coursers have been pushing people around and threatening them to get what he wants huh i guess zimmer really was a better boss nonetheless if you decide to go through with framing dr ayo he'll be banished from the institute and a scientist named elena sikord will take his place as the head of the synth retention bureau after assuming her new role she may say this first dr zimmer then dr ayo how many people is srb gonna lose i personally thought this statement was kind of funny because dr zimmer is supposedly still active working on behalf of the institute and will be back soon he's not lost in the same sense dr justin ayo is yet elena seems to imply he's gone however maybe bethesda didn't mean anything here regardless that's the last time zimmer's name is spoken in fallout 4. it's not featured in any other dialogue files although there are still a couple of terminals that mention him sean's personal computer features a status report from the srv that explicitly states quote director zimmer is still offline end quote offline is a term used by the institute to describe agents and or since whom they're no longer in communication with so dr zimmer wherever he is is not currently communicating with the institute and not even they can be sure of his whereabouts or come to think of it we don't even know how long he's been gone in the first place so it's entirely possible the man is dead somewhere and will never be returning now aside from that there's one other terminal entry we can find that directly mentions dr zimmer by name interestingly it was written in july of the year 2277 years ago the entry was written by the leader of the institute's bioscience division who had been testing the effects of something on live humans at zimmer's request supposedly i'll just read it to you quote latest round of testing complete results are all within expected parameters inform dr zimmer directly as he had ordered the tests personally he seemed annoyed with the results unsure what he was looking for he declined to specify why he wanted the tests run to begin with end quote given what we know about the institute's bioscience division the exact thing they were probably testing on zimmer's behalf was a man-made virus known as the forced evolutionary virus or fev that would end up creating super mutants why would dr zimmer an srb agent care about that stuff what was he hoping to find in the data who knows now that we've gone over all the terminal entries and dialogue though let's pause for a second and consolidate everything we've learned dr zimmer was once the leader of the synth retention bureau and left some time ago to pursue some rather important escapes since we're unsure how long he had been out on that mission but he's currently not active with the institute he was definitely around back in 2277 when he ordered those tests from the bioscience department a decade ago those motivations were unclear alrighty with all of this information in our minds let's finally jump into fallout 3 and meet the man in the flash first things first fallout 3 begins in october of 2277 10 years prior to the events of fallout 4 and just a couple months after dr zimmer observed the bioscience department's fev experiments huh what a coincidence we specifically get to meet dr zimmer at rivet city an old aircraft carrier turned sprawling settlement in the capital wasteland he can be found in the laboratory of the town scientist a woman named madison lee where zimmer will be arguing with her assistant as we enter the man apparently needs to see dr lee personally but she's unavailable at the moment much to his frustration when approached by the player zimmer will ask if you're interested in some work and claims to have a big job for you oh just let him explain the rest this could be an opportunity of a lifetime for you i've misplaced some very sensitive property and you will help me find it hmm how do i put this in a way you'll understand all you know of robots are those buckets of bolts those mr handshakers and whatnot well that's not all a robot can be you see in the commonwealth we've made artificial persons synthetic humanoids programmed to think and feel and do whatever we need and occasionally they get confused and wander off nonsense this is a machine we're talking about can you enslave a generator or a water purifier of course not the same principle applies but let's get back to your mission you are to find this missing android i've tracked him to somewhere here in the capital wasteland he must have done something drastic like facial surgery and a mind wipe or else i would have found him by now it will be no easy task he may not even realize he's an android don't upset him by talking with him just come get me immediately i'll handle it pause right here clearly zimmer is looking for a synth on behalf of the institute though he doesn't mention the synth retention bureau or anything like that which honestly makes sense given that fallout 3 came out in 2008 seven years before fallout 4's 2015 release bethesda probably just didn't have the institute's lore very well flushed out when writing this quest anyway after agreeing to help him out you can ask dr zimmer for some more information and take a listen to what he tells the player about the droid by god you're as annoying as you are clever very well i'll tell you what you want to know if it helps you locate my property the duty of this particular unit was the hunting and capturing of other escaped androids yes others have escaped it's one of the side effects of having such an advanced ai machines start to think for themselves fool themselves into believing they have rights and so this particular android may have believed he'd done something wrong immoral and wanted to forget those deeds satisfied now this particular android designation a321 is different special the most advanced synthetic humanoid i've ever developed the others like my escort armitage there are all older models easily replicated ah but a321 it will take years to recreate him so you see this android must be located at all costs the others are all acceptable losses but a321 he is irreplaceable ah so this spot is very special because it was one of the first ever made by the institute to hunt down other robots in fallout 4 we can meet this type of synth they're called coursers and they are some of the most powerful characters in the entire game they boast incredibly advanced technology that makes them exceptionally powerful in combat incredibly strong and they're even capable of teleportation so it makes perfect sense why dr zimmer really really needs to get this one back especially if it's one of the first ever models nonetheless after the conversation is concluded and you've accepted the mission the quest the replicated man begins and you'll be sent on a bit of a search throughout rivet city where you'll have to talk to other characters gather evidence and locate a number of holotapes that the synth apparently made before suffering a mind wipe and changing his appearance sometime in the middle of our investigation a woman named victoria watts will approach the player and beg that you stop what you're doing she claims to work on behalf of an organization known as the railroad sound familiar victoria explains that members of the railroad have been secretly helping since escape from the institute for years and it's her job to make sure zimmer doesn't find that robot rather than continuing your manhunt she asks that you go back to dr zimmer and tell him that the robot's dead it's gone that way he'll stop searching for it and it can live freely once again you really want help take this it's an internal component from the very android you're searching for don't ask how i obtained it present it to dr zimmer in rivet city tell him the android is dead and that was on the corpse he'll believe you do that and zimmer will go back to the commonwealth and leave that poor soul alone do that and you'll save a man's life just understand that this android is now for all intents and purposes a man he looks human he acts human he believes he is human but even if he's not even if he's a machine he's capable of rational thought and emotion so you see his soul is as human as yours or mine this person and he is a person deserves a chance at freedom please if there's a shred of decency in you don't take that away from him if you agree she promises to pay you 50 caps which honestly isn't a lot but it's all she can offer now after speaking with victoria the quest can immediately end right here if you decide to accept that offer just go back to dr zimmer tell him yeah bud sorry your robot's dead and that will be the end of the replicated man he'll apparently leave the capital wasteland for good and you'll even earn some positive karma this is a neuroservo unique to the a321 i and you say you got this from his corpse i suppose there's no other way you could have obtained it oh damn it i was afraid this would happen out here in this this wasteland well here's 50 caps for your troubles try to buy yourself an education out here in this hell good day let's be honest though being the good guy is no fun and 50 caps just ain't enough of a reward so if you forget about what victoria asked and just continue with your search you'll eventually learn about this man named horus pinkerton who secretly lives towards the bottom of the ship in its bow evidently very few people in rivet city know about horus existence but long ago he was once a scientist and was part of the original group of settlers who founded rivet city in the first place after some disagreements with other researchers he entered the self-imposed exile and started secretly living where he does today horus apparently performed the facial reconstruction surgery on the synth we're looking for and therefore he's the only person in the city who actually knows what the robot looks like one way or another we can get him to confess that the android we're looking for is actually named harkness and believe it or not he's the chief of rivet city's security team indeed the robot arrived decades ago and after horus performed the mind wipe and changed his appearance he somehow rose to the ranks of the town's guard and became its very leader what are you talking about boy i don't know anything about any of that and uh what did you call it an android what's that fine whatever this android calls himself harkness now comes in and wants a memory job i took new memories and replaced his old ones don't believe anyone's done that before certainly not down here that commonwealth tech isn't all that fancy when it comes down to it after we've learned this we'll have a very very important decision to make if we tell dr zimmer everything he and his bodyguard will confront harkness and use some sort of strange code to cause harkness to fall unconscious after which zimmer will reward you with some caps and a very powerful unique blaster rifle he'll then promise to take harkness's limp body back to the commonwealth and put him back to work there you are i must say you had me completely fooled you're very clever a3-2 but not clever enough now come with me what the hell are you talking about zimmer i swear i've got enough crackpots on his damn boat you're coming back with me to the commonwealth you're a very important android you're just a bit confused your memories have been altered i'm going nowhere i want you off this boat immediately i'm done suffering your nonsense you want to do this the easy way or the hard way of course we will be doing things the easy way i have no intention of harming you it's time to bid your farewells harkness zimmer that's it you leave me no choice but to use force a3-21 initialize factory reset authorization code beta 5 3 alpha what a3-21 awaiting initialization protocol parameter a3-21 awaiting initialization protocol parameters alternatively we can go back to harkness and tell him everything we found out at first he won't believe you remember he did have his mind wiped but we can show him a hollow tape to prove it after reviewing the holotape he'll remember everything and become very very terrified harkness does not want to go back harkness will then go find dr zimmer and kill him you can also ask for the honors of killing the doctor either way that's another way this mission can end and i've certainly no man's property did zimmer put you up to this you have exactly five seconds to explain what it is you're trying to do here or you'll be leaving rivet city by way of the nearest porthole [Music] all right i'll humor you but this is impossible i can't be a robot i'm a human being i breathe i eat hell i cut myself shaving this morning i was bleeding robots don't bleed i'm not sure what to say i'm not sure what to even think about all this i'll admit this is pretty convincing evidence but it doesn't make any sense how can this be possible my god i i remember i remember it all from before zimmer the commonwealth the institute my god all those runners i brought down you you made me remember why how i never mind i just my god what am i going to do my life everything it's all a lie i'll tell you what i'm going to do i'm going to shove him into a very small box and send him north where he belongs thank you for warning me about zimmer and for keeping this a secret here's a little token of my gratitude best weapon a man can ask for just do me a favor and don't go blasting up my boat people discharging weapons on my boat tends to get me nervous unless i'm the one doing the shooting to kill dangerous thieves from the commonwealth for instance now here's what's so interesting about this ending if dr zimmer is killed he'll drop an android component android components of course are the miscellaneous items dropped by androids when they die in fallout 3. similarly since in fallout 4 drop synth components upon their deaths so it seems dr zimmer must have been a synth too wow importantly and i can't stress this enough dr zimmer's component isn't in his inventory until he passes away so it's not like he was just holding on to the component of another synth or something no no he was one himself this is a pretty incredible curveball for obvious reasons it means the institute literally trusted a synth to manage an entire division there are some even bigger implications of dr zimmer's synthetic nature that we'll talk more about later but now that we've summarized the replicated man's general story and its possible endings let's dig a little deeper and point some other fascinating details out remember pinkerton the guy who performed harkness's facial reconstruction surgery well he's always labeled as an essential character and no matter who the player sides with or what choices you make he can never be killed even after the quest has been completed he retains his essential status however if killed with console commands pinkerton will drop his own synth component just like zimmer yeah he's a secret synth too there's no possible way to reveal this fact in normal gameplay you can't get him to confess or anything and he's only killable with console commands again but this is some pretty concrete evidence there's also a funny dialogue option where bethesda's writers appeared to have ironically hinted at this reality maybe i am maybe i'm going to have my android army rise up against you and your human ilk [Laughter] sorry oh sorry i couldn't resist horus pinkerton being a synth is a huge deal from a lore perspective and has consequences that go way beyond just the replicated man quest remember how earlier in the video when i was just introducing him i mentioned that horus was a part of the original group of settlers who founded rivet city 40 years ago but eventually entered this self-imposed exile well there's more to that story you see that original group of settlers were actually the remnants of a scientific organization called the naval research institute and horace pinkerton was their leader they moved into the old aircraft carrier that we now know as rivet city 40 years ago when they were looking for a new lab space and eventually more and more people started moving in too after they set up shop pinkerton created a leadership council to manage this new town and all was well for a while until around 18 years ago when another team of scientists led by a woman named dr madison lee remember her moved in and ended up taking over the council and forcing pinkerton out these new scientists were apparently obsessed with some project to fix the wasteland's water supply and make it drinkable that pinkerton was opposed to and thus had to go hence why he's now hiding beneath the vessel more than likely pinkerton came to the capital wasteland after escaping the institute of the commonwealth with the help of the railroad and his story about some naval research institute and whatnot was just a lie or an implanted memory in fallout 4 we learned that since the railroad help escape from the institute are usually sent to the capital wasteland as it's much safer than keeping them in the commonwealth and the institute usually doesn't bother to try to get them back so it makes a lot of sense how both pinkerton and harkness could have ended up in rivet city together a somewhat popular theory on reddit is that maybe horus pinkerton was the synth dr zimmer was really after and that harkness was the wrong one well i absolutely love that idea and think it would be an even better plot twist it's probably incorrect dr zimmer used a specific individual recall code when he captured the chief of security which wouldn't have worked if pinkerton was the real target the last detail i'd like to point out before we start drawing conclusions and looking into cut content is that zimmer specifically states he made the robot he's looking for and that he was its creator human so no he may not be just an ordinary robot but he's certainly not human no matter how badly he wishes it so i made him i want him end of story this could just be a little hyperbole and it's likely that the entire srv helped out but it may explain why dr zimmer ordered those fev virus tests from the bioscience division in fallout 4 we find out that the institute was experimenting with the fe virus with the sole purpose of trying to create and isolate genes that could be used to make their synth stronger and more durable it's possible that in july of 2277 when the terminal entry was written that the doc was in the process of creating the robot that would become harkness and was just trying to get more data no matter theories completely aside so far in this investigation we've definitely learned a lot we learned zimmer's a synth we learned that the synth he's looking for was helped by another synth and we learned that the dude who replaced zimmer at the institute isn't a very popular leader however even with all of this we're still no closer to answering the original question that prompted this video where is dr zimmer now what's he doing in 2287 well it seems pretty obvious that bethesda purposely gave him vague whereabouts during fallout 4 so as to make it seem like any ending to this quest was feasible i mean if you killed the dude in fallout 3 only to find out that he's alive and well in the institute of fallout 4 it would have meant your work was for nothing but by making his status as mysterious as possible bethesda allows players to believe whatever they want what's so weird though is that it appears the developers may have at one point wanted to do something different as in fallout 4's game files there's actually an unused voice type file for a mail npc named zimmer there's no dialogue attached to it and there's literally no other related unused content but it's here even stranger is that by checking its logs we can see that the last time anyone at bethesda edited this file was in may of 2013 more than two years before fallout 4 released i can't stress just how weird that is enough i mean cut content is fairly common but generally speaking the latest day any of the game files were modified was in the year 2015 even other unused ones so zimmer must have been discarded very very early on in development here's what i think happened i believe that when bethesda was riding their replicated man quest in fallout 3 they already had a very very good idea of what role the institute would play in their next game and had originally anticipated for dr zimmer to return however sometime very early in fallout 4's development they decided not to include the character and scrapped whatever they were originally planning instead choosing to simply include a few vague references here and there thus here we are where is dr zimmer well he's in fallout 4's game files unfortunately anyway on that note we are going to wrap up the mysterious story of fallout 4's most interesting missing character thanks so much for stopping by everybody what do you think happened do you think dr zimmer was really meant to have passed away in the capital wasteland or do you believe he came back leave a comment down below as always like readings are very much appreciated again thanks for watching and hope to catch you all in my next video peace out everyone you

Channel: TheEpicNate315

Views: 716,112

Rating: 4.9128304 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: a5CmNIg4pRY

Length: 35min 17sec (2117 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020