So I had this huge BRAINSURGE in terms of Fallout!Max all of today

He’d be a companion in the Old World Blues DLC (maybe you’d be able to take him out of the DLC too?? Not sure how that would work) but the Thinktank had dug his (and Sam’s) ‘bizarrely well preserved’ corpse(s) from rubble and outfitted them with cyborg parts as a sort of continuation on their cyborg dog experiments. Something went off with Sam and he fled the experiments shortly after being reanimated, and they kept Max in cryosleep after the episode with Sam. The Courier wakes Max up (and one of the scientists probably quips about a glitch in his loyalty chip as he’s waking up) and you expect the worst but…he’s pleased to see you! Because that loyalty chip fuckup, coupled with his own ‘hey i was dead my brain is kinda fucked right now’, he thinks The Courier is Sam. Like…he sees and hears Sam with The Courier. So, he very willingly follows, and acts as if this is just another Freelance Police caper, except now he has robot parts and it’s the nuclear apocalypse. His personal mission ‘How long is that in dog years?’ would be focused around trying to convince Max that you’re not Sam, and finding Sam himself. I’m….still working out the sort of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways to end the mission, but you’d probably have a fight with Sam because he’s still sort of ‘bugged’ out and that would trigger Max into ‘HEY WAIT YOU’RE NOT SAM HE’S SAM’ sort of thing before you can actually ‘kill’ Sam.

and if you root through personal records and shit from the scientists they’ll mention Leah in Max’s memories and you can inquire about that and he’ll look like he’s TRYING to remember and it hurts him but his cyborg side sort of sparks and fizzles and he quick resets like ‘what’ and he doesn’t do that when inquiring about Sam because remember; he thinks The Courier is Sam so he doesn’t have this panic/reset moment