[Salone]

Nick Valentine, Fallout 4

For once, I will be actually using the spoiler tag for its intended purpose. Obviously the below contains spoilers for the game Fallout 4. Obviously it contains spoilers.

Nick Valentine is an old gen 2 Synth (Synth being a robot built in the likeness of a human, going from gen 1, the frames with no covering, to gen 3 with living tissue who can pass for human). However, instead of having the usual standard Synth personality (none), he has the mannerisms and attire of an old pre-war detective. His fake skin has been ripped and torn, and you can tell he and his clothes have been put through the ringer multiple times. Nick knows he's a Synth, and explains that all of his memories and personality comes from an actual detective named Nick Valentine from long before the war started.

Obvious love of Noir meets sci fi robot aside, Nick himself is a very sad character. While he calls himself Nick and has all the mannerisms of the old Nick, he is fully aware that he is simply a machine and that everything he knows and feels are not even his to feel. He struggles with the 'What the hell am I?' question and spends quite some time attempting to come to terms with it. As a quest, you can help him get revenge on a mob boss who hurt the real Nick Valentine before the war, who was able to escape the effects of the war and old age because ghoulification as a plot point. It's during this time that it's hammered home just how much of a copy he is, nothing more than a robot mimicking feelings and thoughts and that he isn't a real person, despite how much he attempts to act like one. The girl he loved before the war wasn't his. His memories aren't his. His desire to help those around him aren't his. He's just a blank slate that someone was copied to as a project and then abandoned to the wasteland, and it burns him up inside knowing that everything he is will never let him be his own person.

For those who don't want spoilers: A badass noir styled robot who fancies himself a hard boiled detective who actually has a very deep and troubled past.

Have a Nick.