Though you question role-playing in Fallout 4, you might really want to figure it out for yourself by playing the game, and in that case don't read further!!

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Okay so in previous Fallout series there were some tasks in a post-apocalyptic world. And the killing was good! Anything wrong with that? Yes, and that's the idea to Fallout 4, that's why you need a son!!

You were living fat in a civilized neighborhood with McDonalds tatooed on your stomach happy with your family and son. Role-playing is not about choosing your family, because that's given from start. And you don't object to people just because they happily have a kid??

And in Fallout 4 you accidentally enter late post-apocalyptic period after 200 years' rest. And as a family-man you still need to provide security for the kid, though most others seems to have given up on that. So therefore you immediately begin to build settlement with others as you need safety for the kid, which might be just around the corner!

And while meeting others on the road you also immediately initiate them to settle, because the more settlements - the more secure your settlement is between them!

But then it happens that law-less raiders attack the settlement, and as a family-man you need to immediately put an end to that to secure home for the kid! So you dig out the camp of those raiders and find out, that some are just instinctly attacking because of hunger, and they accept to join the settlement. But other raiders with terrible backgrounds who have long enjoyed senseless killing (like "you" in previous Fallout versions) they can obviously not fit into the settlement, which neither has any prison. So they'll just have to be eliminated!

And that's the point with this Fallout story that a civilized world can afford criminals with prisons and McDonalds while a post-apocalyptic world can not!! Why your impression of lawlessness in post-apo.. is probably ... correct!

I can't choose my parents or siblings, but I sure can choose my wife and whether or not I have a child.

It's not that anyone is objecting to the idea of starting a family, it's that some people feel that the act of starting a family, being financially responsible enough to live in the suburbs, and being a caring husband and father dictates too much about my character.

In Fallout 3 there was a pre-determined backstory as well, but I was allowed to flesh out my character's personality through the tutorial. I wasn't forced to be a soldier, I was able to choose my own desired occupation through the GOAT. I wasn't forced to be a model citizen of the vault, I could bully people and start fights.

So it's not a pre-determined character with a family that many people don't like, it's the fact that it feels a bit more restrictive in Fallout 4. It's not impossible to roleplay whatever character you want in Fallout 4, but the game just imposes a bit too much information onto my character than I would like.

Possibly. It's natural of the body to seduce you into having both whether you like it or not.

But consider yourself in a living-room with a friend telling stories. And so trying to make a point examples are often given. So to prove a point your friend tells you to think about if you were a parent da da though you are not, and to better explain it he even makes a whole Fallout game about it! He may not prove his point, but you're very likely to be entertained anyway! What else are stories and roleplaying for?

I enjoyed roleplaying the character but I'm a little annoyed they did a worse job than Dragon Age 2 in many respects.

You only had three choices for your character's responses but they were consistent.

Humorous
Angry

Noble

But you could have three defined responses people could follow.

Here? It's Sarcastic and....Vaguely Nice.

I think the game would have benefited with giving MORE DEFINITION to the character so we could consistently choose the personality we liked of those choices.

Good Sole Survivor
Bastard Sole Survivor
Sarcastic Sole Survivor

Simple, eh?

The game seems like a beta version as it is, it is not quite playable yet and can definitely be improved!

For example lots of people who enjoy different kinds of machinery often compete in speed, range etc. etc (sports, scores ...) So in those dialogs when you don't really understand all that intellectual verbal stuff, it comes down to the dialog colors - how you successfully press those red lines - and nothing more. That's not really roleplaying.

The question is what would trigger a player to try out apparently completely simple lines without benefits rather than those in red? For example in Fallout it's very common to actually blow off the head of a body with a shotgun or whatever. So let's imagine that the player has done that and then through a quest an NPC asks through dialog your character to dispose of the body, which by the way was "nice looking", and then through dialog the character thinking completely in the ways of usefulness dead or alive chooses to answer something like a redneck "hell no, might as well use it while it's still warm" meaning having six with a headless, that might trigger a lot of players to try out the dumb line instead of another with better colors! and roleplay!!