Right?! See the thing is, when I completed it...
I had Fawkes with me. And in this moment of intelligence, I thought "Oh yes! He's a super mutant, they're totally fine in radiation! That way he can enter the code and nobody has to die!" And they even had that option in there so I thought that must be a way to get the really good ending. But no. Pick that option and Fawkes tells you that he doesn't' want to, because it is your "destiny" to go into that chamber. What a load of shit. And this was before the Broken Steel DLC so when you beat the story, you beat the game. You can't go back.
In a way, the Broken Steel DLC actually made it worse. I've seen the opening and after asking Fawkes to go in his dialogue was changed to say "Ah! Of course! That makes sense!" YES IT DOES MAKE SENSE YOU FUCKING IDIOTS. They completely retconned the ending in that regard and worse yet, there's a narration piece by Ron Perlman at the end of it and if you chose for Fawkes to go in, the game practically calls you a pussy. "The hero, refused to go in...giving the task of sacrifice, the noblest task, to a true hero." Oh yeh I refused to go in because I WAS SMARTER THAN THAT, TAKING A PATH THAT MEANT THAT NOBODY HAD TO DIE.
It isn't a matter of killing yourself in a radioactive chamber being your destiny. That's bullshit. When you're touting your game for offering the player a choice into how events unfold based on their decisions, you can't turn around and chastise them for making the one choice that makes sense, basically making you feel like you've done wrong just because you didn't want to commit suicide. Bethesda was straight up telling you how they wanted you to finish the game. It seems like they were pissed off that people called them out on the Fawkes option.