I've been playing Fallout only since Fallout 3, and I absolutely love it, but I feel that if there was a really good relationship engine that got involved in the main story, BUT, was optional. Like it made the ending different if you had a partner, kidnapped or something.
I would feel so much more connected to my character if I could come home to my house and have a conversation, "We're running low on food, could you pick some up?" SIDE QUEST: Shop de whoop. Then you can bring them their favorite things and make them like you more, they'll give you gifts, Like they could make a unique weapon that you get from getting their like meter all the way up. I just think that they do it good enough and it would really change things, and then your partner can be a follower. I think it could use it for the immersion aspect, I just feel like my fallout character doesn't have the ability to love, sure you can get hokers, but where's the love? I mean come on, it's a nuclear wasteland, IF you're not sterile, you gotta re-produce....just not in game, I hate the kids in game, they annoy me.............

Thoughts? Ideas? I think it should be in the next game, or maybe add it into a longer DLC for New vegas, new missions and the love feature just added onto the original world. Comment away.

Fallout: Harvest Moon

minus the farming, add guns and mutants

This is why I like Bioware games and the old Baldur's Gate type games, the relationships in them actually work. There were a number of people in NV that could potentially be romantic options (not necessarily companions). Cass or Veronica for the males, Boone and Gannon for females, and I guess Betsy for the gay/bisixual females.

There's something similar in game

Gannon's gay.

Well then, a better prospect for gay/bi guys. The making of romantic options are there... Just that they didn't do anything with them.

The extent of relationships working as the original post suggested sounds outright awful-as someone else said, basically Harvest Moon's system. Which, in my opinion, sort of ruins a Fallout game. It's not a dating simulation, after all.

On that note, I don't think it would be horrible to at least obtain more friendships/family sort of relationships as options-or something sort of like that. The problem is it would have to fit with a sort of Fallout style-and giving gifts and getting sappy with another person really isn't Fallout's style...at all. The sappiest relationship I've seen in the series' entirety would probably be the main character's (in Fallout 3) relationship with their dad-and that isn't THAT sappy. (In comparison to a lot of horrible, sappy crap out there anyways)

As people have mentioned, there was that whole marriage situation and all in Fallout 2, and there was the Lone Wanderer's father in Fallout 3-and that sort of stuff I'm fine with. But if it was like Harvest Moon, and pretty much any other typical dating/life simulation sort of thing, it could ruin the game(at least quite a bit). =\ Just, yeah, Fallout doesn't fit that sort of genre. And, in my opinion, has more depth typically(including Fallout 3) than most games of that sort of genre.

...And Veronica.

And they were the best two prospects for a love subplot, IMO.

MAYBE... dare I suggest it? We could have a game with same-six relationships?

Or just allow them to be bi, for user convenience.

Yes, I know it's a cheap shortcut... but would still be nice. Though Veronica needs to do something about that hat.

Quite apart from the fact that I've never seen a romance element in a game done without the writing being massively awkward and hamfisted, the general idea of a romance kind of flies in the face of some of Fallout's major themes. The world is supposed to be isolating and harsh.

If anything, I'd like the characters and settlements the player encounters to be more suspicious and mis-trusting, something that wouldn't really sit well next to romances.

Maybe they should just make every single character in the game, including the PC, bi for user convenience. That would make as much sense and be about as much offensive. If you're not going to have true homosixuals, it's better to just not bother with sixuality at all.