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Diamond City appears to have a strong anti-Synth sentiment, to say the least. For instance, shopkeepers will refuse to do business with you if you don't protest your humanity loudly enough, and then there's:

The guy who's about to gun down his brother because he suspects he's a synth, and then the guards gun him down and loudly declare "this is Diamond City, there are no synths here!" (or something roughly to that effect).

So it seems like a very bad place to be a synth. Yet Nick Valentine is one, runs a prominent business, and seems to be wholly tolerated and non-controversial. That seems out of character for a city that's already purged a race of nonhumans (ghouls) for...being nonhuman.

Is there any explanation given for the incongruity? I thought that when I got to chat with Valentine I'd get to ask him not just "you're a synth?" but also "how is it that the people in Diamond City haven't torn you limb from limb and shoved the pieces in a trash-compactor?", but that doesn't eventuate.

Are there any dialog options with other Diamond City NPC's that shed light on exactly how/why Nick Valentine came to be accepted in a city that seems to be heavily anti-synth (and generally anti-nonhuman)?

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  • I wondered the same thing about all the points you raised. Especially the part that you spoiler'd, since that is clearly a straight-out lie. In the end, the conclusion I came to was that I was thinking too hard about the writing in a Bethesda game. :P
    – Unknown Zombie
    Commented Dec 15, 2015 at 15:17
  • In all seriousness, though, I think Nick or Piper at some point makes a comment along the lines of Nick being accepted only because he's helped find a number of lost people. I don't remember who or details, though, so I don't think I can create an actual answer.
    – Unknown Zombie
    Commented Dec 15, 2015 at 15:26
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    While the answer has a spoiler which makes sense - Also remember that the synths they fear are the ones they don't know aren't human. Nick is clearly not human, and so can't pretend to be human (and doesn't).
    – djsmiley2kStaysInside
    Commented Dec 15, 2015 at 15:30

2 Answers 2

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If you travel with Nick as a companion, you'll get dialog sections (just like with any other companion). In one of them he'll tell you about it:

Nick saved the kidnapped daughter of the mayor, and afterward the mayor sided with him, allowing him to stay in Diamond City even though the population didn't trust him at first. Eventually, they got used to it.

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    In addition, despite what the asker says in their question, common people in Diamond City do make offhand remarks about not trusting Nick and wondering why he's allowed in the city. I hear these all the time just walking around in town.
    – DCShannon
    Commented Dec 15, 2015 at 22:34
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    Thanks for that. I took all the 'Lone Wanderer' perks so would never travel with Nick to find that out. Trying to travel with anyone just gets me an immediate "You're carrying to much and cannot run" alert.
    – aroth
    Commented Dec 15, 2015 at 23:02
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    Indeed, in fact one Diamond City vendor refuses to serve you if Nick is your companion unless you argue with her about it first (and Nick jumps to your defence).
    – Michael Campbell
    Commented Dec 17, 2015 at 8:57
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Nick is also an older style synth, and no one will mistake him for someone else, or for being human.

The real opposition in Diamond City is the unknown Synths who are masquerading as human.

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    While there's some truth in this, the whole issue with the Synth infiltration is the association with the Institute and their shadowy organisation. Nick is still very much associated to that, hence the distrust he received, though as the other answer explains, mitigated by his helpfulness around Diamond City.
    – Topperfalkon
    Commented Dec 19, 2015 at 1:30

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