I started Fallout with Fallout 3, something I know is fairly common as it outsold the previous entries by a wide margin. I still plan on playing those older games, and already own copies, but forgive me that I’m not sure if karma-based companions were in previous Fallouts or if Bethesda introduced them.
Yes, companions who would only follow your orders if you met a specific karma threshold, except for Dogmeat and my boy Charon. When the helm was handed over to Oblivion, companions focused more on faction alliances than the karma scale, which is something true for New Vegas as a whole: The karma system taking a backseat to the faction alliances despite still being a mechanic.
I bring these games up before diving into X6-88 as he’s a Fallout 4 companion, and the companions of Fallout 4 are a combination of these two ideas despite the fact the karma system was removed this time. In Fallout 4, all of the main factions have one companion who swore allegiance to them, and yet also, every single companion can be neatly put into the exact same karma scaling that we saw in Fallout 3. There are good companions, evil companions, and even a good handful of neutral companions.
The companions of Fallout 4 remain one of the most beloved aspects. A lot of the better writing in the game is saved here and it’s a welcome decision. Just to be straight up, I cannot make an article on any of the companions in Fallout 3 or New Vegas. New Vegas’s companions are very interesting, some of my favorite parts of the game, but I don’t find any of them to be villains or even heroes honestly. New Vegas is touted as the morally gray Fallout, and that is completely true for the companions, as every companion is morally gray with the only possible exception being Dean Domino from Dead Money.
As for Fallout 3, its two evil companions are the least interesting. Clover has an interesting idea in terms of how brainwashed she is but that makes her hard to call evil, and Jericho is so blatantly boring that I have nothing to say about him.
So for my first look at a Fallout villain, I would love to start at X6-88, the morally evil companion who swore loyalty to The Institute.
X6-88 is a Synth courier. The Synth’s being human-like machines created by the Institute as means of, well, it’s kind of just full-on slavery. Hell, the group rescuing Synth is called The Railroad and there’s another group of Synths hiding out in Acadia National Park! Sorry if that second one is a bigger history reference than you expected from Bethesda.
The Institute does fancy themselves better than the destroyed Capital Wasteland, and the only people capable of restoring the world into something livable again, but any argument they have falls flat as the game also treats Synth rights as inarguable. There’s nothing gray about it, no matter how other characters treat the narrative. Bethesda wanted players to realize Synths have human emotions and an outright soul, it’s not a moral dilemma to ponder over, it’s just another case of Bethesda giving you a clear-cut good or evil choice.
As for what a Synth Courier does, well, those are the Synths created by the Institute to track down Synths who ran away. Even if their memories were already wiped by The Railroad, as Couriers are trained to be cunning and/or brutal enough to find a way to track down even Synth with no memory of the Institute. They are slave catchers, again, it’s that cut-and-dry.
Big Beak Entertainment, a fellow Fallout 4 defender, recently released a video on the game with a running joke mocking the fact the Institute really had no good reason to program humanity into the Synths. Like I said there’s no real moral question here for that exact reason, but while this usually means you don’t need to think too hard about which side to take, it gives a layer to X6-88 that honestly makes his evil. Scary in a sad sort of way.
X6-88 is a humanoid machine, like all Synths. And like all Synths, he is completely capable of independent thoughts and feelings. And the more you spend time with X6-88, the more he continues to drone on and on about how the Institute is great and the rest of the Wasteland is worthless, and the more the light bulb starts to glow above your head.
The first time I played an Institute ending, I was surprised at just how much I liked being around X6. I knew I had to spend time with him, as I’d just plain killed him by proxy on my original Minuteman playthrough so it was the needed change to see what I missed. He’s a chatterbox despite the quiet tone, incredibly calculated along with the power to back up his plans. And once you gain high affinity with him, he’ll pull you aside to admit he had a lot of doubts about you at first glance but has come to consider you exactly what the Institute needs.
And all of those things, seem far too human for a cold killing machine. Which is when I realized exactly how evil, and downright terrifying, that X6-88 was. Just like the Synths he tracks down, X6 knows deep down that he’s more than just a machine and capable of real emotions. But unlike those Synths, X6 completely relishes being a cold and unfeeling machine. As much as he is following orders and his programming, he’s only really doing it because he enjoys it.
For further proof of this, there’s a quick test I’ll be doing for every evil Fallout 4 companion, and that’s seeing their reactions to very specific black-and-white quests. There are quest lines that give grey results, which split the companions apart more, but I have found the three quests I feel truly judge only the evil companions.
The first is the easiest, and it’s the repeatable good quest lines of helping the Minutemen. Even companions sworn to other factions such as Paladin Danse and Deacon find it good to help out the Minutemen, it’s just that clean cut of a morally good think to do. That said, there are three companions who don’t like helping the Minutemen. X6 happens to be one of them. After all, he hates the Commonwealth, wants to see if fail and the Institute take over. He actively dislikes helping others unless the Institute calls the shots.
As for the next question, it’s a quest you likely assumed: Kid In A Fridge. A fairly infamous quest for being pretty silly, and also having a very cut-and-dry karma option in a game that doesn’t have a karma mechanic. At the end of the quest, you can choose to sell the titular kid to a raider named Bullet. Most companions are appalled if you take the money, but not X6. X6 is happy if you take the offer, being only one of two companions glad to accept a deal as evil as selling a child into slavery. What he doesn’t like is if you take the high ground and refuse the offer, which is about as diabolical. Perhaps he sees the parallel between slavery and his job after all.
The last is a quest you may have forgotten about, but when you first enter Vault 81 a pet cat named Ashes runs out into the Commonwealth. The cat’s owner Erin will ask you to get her back, in a quest called Here Kitty Kitty. And as fucked up as this sounds, you can go outside and just kill Ashes if you want. And should you do that, X6-88 will gain affinity. Not joking. X6 will watch you kill a little girl’s pet cat and be completely on board with you. He also likes it if you extort the poor girl for more money. Tell me exactly where in his programming this was? Why the Institute would have a Courser be this callous to something fully unrelated to Synth captures? It’s obvious. It’s not in his programming, he’s just a cold monster who happened to be built for the right position.
X6-88 is a strange case where he was what he seemed from the start. A cold-blooded killer who just cycled through the motions on behalf of the Institute. But when the layers are peeled back, this simplicity only makes him more evil. I’m weirdly fascinated with him after all that, to just find out that the cold machine was in fact a cold machine.
But not because he was built to be one.
It’s because he’s proud to be one. He’s following orders, but he’s not “just following orders”. He’s a pawn of someone else’s making and yet impossible to feel sorry for. He’s the boogieman that he seemed to be. Just like the Institute itself, and just as self-righteous about it.
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Sourced from Fallout Wiki