being forced to do something says less than nothing about someone's personality, being happily married with kids says a lot

It says quite a bit about the hero from FO2 considering the offspring of the hero has been groomed to become their new leader. That says quite a bit about ones personality.

Hence the whole quest to the temple.

Anyway, complain all you want really.

This is an RPG game and the role you are playing is that of a person with a child and a spouse.

Other games usually have roles and those games are RPGs just fine, if you're thinking Bethesda owes it to anyone to maintain some continuity (despite past games having a backstory as well) you're just being egocentric.

If you're not a fan of said backstory, there's this ingenious idea not to play the game.

Or just ignore it like you have to ignore the backstory in past games.

This is so unlike any other acclaimed role-playing games.

The courier is a blank slate, in the sense that he's had bullet-trauma amnesia and literally no connection to his former life.

You can take him anywhere, any way, since he's completely disconnected from what was before and - if you chose to follow the main quest - you make the decision to re-connect with your previous life and explore who and what you were.

It's a nice way to combine blank slate & character with a story.

Well its set in stone. Beating a dead horse is futile.

Sorry, I can't help but read the title of this tread as "What if I don't have an imagination?"

You are still role playing a character, even if they have a set backstory. For everything else- headcanon.

Yes ,but you're not playing a character you might want to roleplay as.....

This is definitely a factor for some of us. I won't play The Witcher games, for instance, because I do not want to play as Geralt. And my refusal has nothing to do with "imagination."

hence the "for everything else, there is headcanon."

I've played something like 12 playthroughs on F3. Guess how many of those had me playing as James' son or daughter? Sure, I gotta find James to progress the storyline, but certainly not because of feels- he just happens to have info that I need.

Also, Why are people still comparing this PC with a limited backstory to Geralt, who is a named character?
This character is still so much more generic than a named protagonist who looks the exact same on every playthrough. It's certainly not a good comparison to use. The Protagonists name is "The Survivor" Not "Steve" Or "commander Shepard" or "Geralt". Apples and oranges, if you ask me.

Use your imagination? Isn't role-playing all about pretending? Why does it all have to be spelled out in the game or why can't the parts you don't care about, be ignored?

Not really, no. Past the divide there was no more information about the character. That's not the same as pushing a spouse and kid onto our character, putting them into a vault and forcing us to have some stupid connection with a dead spouse and kid.

Our Vault Dweller isn't even a Shepard, let alone a Geralt.

A glass half empty kind of person? Just kidding.

I also can't tell what were the circumstances that led to your parents getting married or later divorced.

I'm not just arguing for the sake of it. Many people aren't happy about this, I'm trying to get them to see it as an opportunity for roll playing, not a hindrance.

In case you missed my earlier comments, this happy life you seem to have at the beginning could just be an illusion. For all sorts of reasons.

And that's not the same as your character building a community with his courier job, and then nuking that community and getting shot in the head later for also being a courier. How can I be a pacifist when my character has killed an entire community with a nuclear bomb?

NV IS KILLING ROLEPLAY.

Past the intro in 4 there is no more information on the character. You get to make the rest up. Yay.

no, lol what makes you think the courier has amnesia? Dude brings up his past in a handful of conversations. I've actually seen a lot of mods also think the courier is an amnesiac, nothing in the game supports this.

edit:spelling

Who were the courier's parents? Did the courier come from a tribe or a city? Where is the courier wanted in? Was the courier ever a criminal? Did they come from a vault? Did they come from the east, west, south or north? Were they ever married or had a kid?

There are numerous more questions I could ask that you can't answer because NV never tells us whereas with the other fallout games we can answer such questions. The courier having a hand in building a community is not the same as Fallout 3's start or Fallout 4's start.

to be fair the courier neither made hopesville or destroyed it. He did his job and the town sprung up along one of the routes he discovered. Ulysses was just being dramatic.

Another point to make is the idea of voiced protagonist ruins role-plays as I can not longer role-play a snarky character, we have to deal with a pre-set voice instead of creating our own voices for the character. It's downright stupid add in the fact that we're limited to four options in dialogue that so far seem vague as hell.

Yea, it's much bigger.

What if I want to RP as an anarchist.

Obsidians awful writing is forcing me to be some character who cares about the wellbeing of others.

And are you seriously asking where his parents are from? The only character we know who's parents are from is the PC from fallout 2 and 1. We only know James is from the wasteland somewhere.

There's numerous questions about the sole survivor I could ask that you can't answer, like where did he go to college. Did he kill anyone during his time in the army? Where are his parents from. Is he a native to Boston.

None of these matter to RP, just like the courier's parents are irrelevant for the same purpose.

Just out of curiosity, how would roleplaying a scientist who gets total amnesia be different than roleplaying lounge singer who gets total amnesia? Your only conversation option when talking about your self before you were shot would be, "I don't know." Astronaut, Law Officer, Politician, Brick layer, married, single, it wouldn't matter because the only thing you can say is, "I don't know."

You can build any back story you want, but there is only one role you can play, amnesiac. And because you are an amnesiac your back story is worthless because you cannot remember it.

I don't know why, but I can't shake the nagging feeling that we're talking about two completely different franchises here. Maybe I'm missing something...




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Seriously, there is a reason why it is "somewhat unusual for them": They're different games. TES is not Fallout, Fallout is not TES. Bethesda bought a franchise that had a different RP style than their own TES, and rolled it into a similar gameplay style. They however stuck true to the game's history by giving the protagonist a backstory.

We've seen two conversations. One of which was with a dog.

Yup. It's totally time to make all kinds of ignorant deductions based off that.

Two years spent recording and 13000 lines recorded means you can be as snarky and edgy as you want, don't worry. Bethesda is going all out on the whole voiced protagonist thing, so I wouldn't worry about that.

I like the entire argument saying once we get out of the vault/tutorial/pre-war stuff that you can roleplay as any character you want.

We don't know how the story will play out and I'm betting it will go against forming a character of your own when you talk to NPC's, or continue the main quest, or have dialog choices that constantly have your spouse and child thrown in your face for hundreds of hours.

I wouldn't say it's anti-roleplay. But it's pro-mass effect. Let those other rpg's be what they are. Fallout/BGS games aren't meant to be like this.

inb4 you are not the developer

You can't read more then the one sentence?

13000 lines recorded doesn't really prove a damn thing.