I've decided to play the good old Fallout 1 again along with some unofficial patches/mods (Mainly stuff from russian TeamX).
Well, straight to the point: What should be the most "canon-friendly" Vault Dweller ? Judging by the 'memoirs', F1 poster(Male guy) and http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/c/cf/VaultDwellerYoungFace.png, I would say that Albert, the pre-made character is the choice.

P.S.: Speaking about the picture, where did it appeared in the game ? It was a loong time since I've last played Fallout 1 or 2 and I don't really remember this face(As a matter of a fact, I've just stumbled across it on the Fallout wikia). Somebody care to enlighten me ?

P.S. 2: Ausir ? :hehe:

P.S. 3: Bugger, I've just realized that perhaps this should be in the lore section.

It didn't - it's from the manual.

So it's official. It's http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Albert ! :hehe:

No, it could be any good, male character. Canonically the Vault Dweller has no preset details beyond gender and karma.

If you want to be sure to play a character that won't be useless later on chose one of the pre-made characters. Playing with custom made characters can lead to a bad experience if you don't know the game well enough.

Uh, no no no! The premade characters are the worst characters entirely. Excuse me, but some of the tagged skills and stat distribution svck outright. Oh look, the melee guy has just 6 AGI? He's gonna need all the Action Boy and Bonus Move perks to be an effective combatant.

Yeah, the ones in Fallout 2 are much better, though (e.g. Narg vs. Max Stone).

He has other benefits, and also has small guns and heavy guns tagged. You only need two action points to compensate for his bruiser trait.

Natalia and Albert are more difficult to role-play but it's possible. They will solve quests without confrontation or violence.

PS: Anyway my initial point was someone must have play tested these characters to make sure you can play the game with them and finish it. They are a safe bet for someone who is playing the game for the first time and don't know yet how everything works. It wouldn't make sense to create perfect pre-made characters either because it would be stealing the player the fun to do that himself.

Even the FO2 premades are bad. If I want a melee character, I'll make one. 5 STR because I know I'll be doing a Navarro run and taking Slayer, allowing for me to forgo higher points of Luck. The other points could go into INt and remainder into END of all things. Actually, the END of 9 on my new melee guy has actually saved him from being 1st-turned by an enclave patrol a few times on the way back from SanFran.

Yeah although in Fallout 2 I didn't really have to worry much about my SPECIAL stats. 3 of them can be enhanced with those BoS modules, and strength will increase by up to 3 points (or was it 2?) when you wear the power armour. I always end up with an all round great character.

But you'll never come to that conclusion when you're playing your first character. Heck, playing a character that doesn't wear Advanced Power Armor is possible. Though the premade characters are a good introduction into the Fallout world, because they show us the different ways of solving certain problems, I'll have to agree that they are not even remotely as effective as a self-created character, in which you can adapt to certain attribute-specific opportunities you have in both games.