I loved the trailer and the cryostasis idea, I think its a great start to the game.

But the idea of having the family baggage........I dont know if thats something I would really want to put up with. Ive seen different stories about what the MQ would be about on these boards, like the BoS comming to take the institutes tech, kinda sounds badass im up for it. Playing mom or dad (or kid yet again) it just sounds unfun, maybe im wrong, maybe it will be a blast but just hearing go find (mom, dad, wife, son, daughter, gender/role unspecified, attack helicopter) makes it seem like there could be better more brilliant options than generic family baggage.

I dont mean to be a downer about it sorry, I loved the trailer, long live fallout!

Never been in trouble with the law? Arrested by mistake, easy. FO3 you were a vault dweller, there were a lot of limitations to what you could do with your life within the vault. But if they give you the freedom of living in the Pre-War era? I hope you do realize that the possible backgrounds for such a character are almost endless.

You are a prisoner on a boat, you get ordered to meet this one dude, [censored] is going down in the vault and you need to go and find your father. that's about all you need. Sure adding more could be good, but as I said, you actually need good writing for that. And writing has never been the strong part of Bethesda games.

A fair point. Well how about the idea of being the only survivor (either the mother or father as previously suggested) which would give some depth to the character but would also allow for a clean slate approach. Remember that at this stage we're all only making assumptions based on limited information.

The key points that I made are more about how I think the main game is likely to start based on the information we currently have. All of the other points would still be valid, even if the protagonist was to lose his/her partner and child and wake up alone in the vault.

What if you were the only survivor as per above post? That would simplify the whole background situation and allow you a lot more role playing freedom. Don't forget that in FO3 we effectively saw the first 19 years of the protagonists life. If we are only involved in a single day of the life of the FO4 protagonist before the main story kicks in then surely this is infinitely less restrictive.

I feel thats a much better option for me (some others would perfer the cleanest slate of all time on characters... but I digress) I feel it gives depth to character without restricting him or her. This would be my perfered option if we had to have a family background.

For sake of conversation if the family was still alive and had to be in game, I would want the whole ordeal to part of a side quest of sorts. My whole basis for commenting was that I feel that the family plot lines often fulfill the roles of plot fillers, that give little depth to the story for the time that they take up. Serving as sort of a time/skill gate until the players is more equipped (skill, item, mentally wise) to handle more pressing concerns.

Fo3 vs FoNV in a way.

then why? If you only get a day. The flashback won't matter, your kid won't matter etc. If your kid is the bad guy (as you suggested in an earlier post as a potential plot twist), why would you care? As I said, if they want all of the stuff you are suggesting to work they need good writing, which as I've said before is not something they have a good track record of.

If you're the only survivor? Sure, if they don't do the "this is your house, this is your family" approach, then maybe, maybe it could work. If they have competent writes at least. But so far the speculation you've come with does not sound like a believable background story for the type of character I play as.

Well at least this approach would leave things a little more open to variation. Again, Bethesda have had a lot more time to think about all of this than we have. And I'm sure they will want to keep things in the arena of "play who you want, how you want."

Bear in mind that you could still have a protagonist from the pre-war era who at the time had a family whilst leaving everything else wide open for creative interpretation.

Exactly which is why I think that a lot of the speculation in this thread is incorrect.

Most of the ideas put forward are based on evidence that has in many cases been confirmed in the trailer, such as the Boston setting and the voice acted protagonist (which could even be purely for use in the tutorial for the speech that you are supposed to give). Other elements, like the idea of cryostasis, are not only from the very same sources, but also tie in with previous games such as vault 112 from FO3. The only one that is perhaps questionable is the idea of the protagonist's child being a part of the main quest, although this is still a possibility. It would however make more sense for Bethesda to not tie us down to the past too much, and so an only survivor scenario is a little more feasible.

As I stated above, even if you were the only survivor from vault 111 the rest of the theory would still hold up and you would still be able to incorporate pretty much any backstory you want. The only pre-determined elements would be that you previously had a family (or at least others who were close to you) and that you were born before the war and witnessed at least on of the bombs detonating. The rest would be entirely up to you.

I think the trailer was supposed to make you think about pre-war life... and how it abruptly ended.. We see this loving family, all the while traversing the after math within their home.... Happy though they may be, we still see the outcome of the world in which they lived in. War... death... and we see that happy family's end... So close to salvation, only to be killed right outside the door. It wouldn't be the first time... I remember entering through an outside door to the cave with a vault and finding skeletons of people who tried to get in, but it was too late.

It's a trailers, don't read too much into it.

Something being in a trailer is not evidence. Sure the trailer confirms vault 111 and Boston, but that's about it.

But surely that's the whole point. The trailer has sparked so many theories and conversations. We are supposed to read into it, especially those of us who post on the forums - that's why we're on here! And with regards to evidence, if no information had been leaked this would have just been an "interesting" trailer. But the fact that at least some information has been now confirmed makes us go back and re-examine other information from the same sources and at the same time. This gives more weight to the reliability of said source. From that perspective, this particular trailer should be viewed a little differently than those of previous Bethesda titles.

I like these ideas. It would be great if there was a plot twist and the game's main antagonist was your child. We also have to remember that the nuclear explosion might only happen if you fail in the that section of the game. Maybe there is a time limit to get inside the vault and you only see it if you are too slow.

I'm pretty sure it is going to be a big dramatic cap-off to the tutorial, or first half of the tutorial anyway. A big nuclear explosion that is the player's last memory of the pre-war world before waking in a cryochamber 200 years later is pretty powerful. I doubt Bethesda would want it be possible for you to MISS the big set-piece explosion.

i was think you can only have flashbacks of something you have seen and the angle seem low (like a child's eye view) also the PC looks like the farther which would make sense if he is your dad too

This is what I've been getting at. Imagine the build up of actually witnessing all of that having desperately trying to save your loved ones and get them to safety - the mushroom cloud followed by the blast wave and all the confusion as you are quickly lowered into the vault - but from a first-person vested interest perspective...

If you carefully watch the camera angle at the beginning of the trailer it starts off higher up and then slowly moves down as it turns to focus on the dog's feeding bowl. It then continues at this level as it moves round into the hallway and into the bedroom. I think that this is more for cinematic effect rather than being an actual viewpoint, but it does allow us to see things more from the dog's perspective as opposed to a human one. I think that this is significant as the dog also seems to be a very important part of the game and will probably play a major role. I believe that this dog could in some way end up disrupting you from your cryostasis after finding his way into the vault which is why you end up together at the end of the trailer. This would also give a much stronger connection to the idea of having a loyal canine companion than in previous games.

Lots of things happening with the intro. However, it's bits and pieces. We have the protagonist at the end, father/mother/child outside of the vault and the Vanishing Man. I think the trailer is shown with a default place holder. I believe we will either be the father or the mother by choice.

The Vanishing Man places the potential PC at the vault on the day of the war in a vault suit. This could be results through tech offered in the Memory Den. We know this tech can be directly related if not exclusive to Androids. However, I don't think we can rule out the possibility human application.

111 is highly thought to contain upper echelon officials. Given the area of the Commonwealth, it could be suggested that it was populated scientists and engineers.

Human mimicking wasn't fully developed until after the war. Pre war, the PC could be at a groundbreaking threshold of advancing android technology. Thus, making them a valued asset to recover if lost.

The PC and their immediate family arrive moments too late and perish in the blast. I think it would be too "cliffhanger common" to have the surface hatch activate to rescue them and have the blast blow over their heads as they decent.

Pre war, we do not have cryo advanced enough to sustain prolonged suspension beyond a decade or two. It is possible that they will write in some experimental tech that went as planned or malfunctioned into a new discovery but there isn't enough historical support for it to be utilized. Not impossible but you're at the mercy of the writer to make sense of it.

If the PC is an android, which I feel more plausible than cryo, it would explain the Vanishing Man, Memory Den and the flashbacks and the deaths. The Vanishing Man was an advanced AI that witnessed the peril, only at that time he may have simply been the AI implemented in their personal Mr. Handy, as a sign of Dr.X bringing their work home. This could be the result of disgruntled colleagues or their ideas were no longer supported by the Commonwealth suits, as an effective avenue of research. This theory supports the notion of Dr. X being shut out of 111 and your trusty Mr. Handy sees it all.

Holotapes with details of DR. X's research were recovered by Dr. E, that seeks to continue the work. Further investigations reveal Dr.X was actually able to upload his conscious into an AI and house it inside a home robot. This file remained dormant and parts of it was discovered wile and old tinkerer was scraping up parts. This AI was obviously different but it suffered form corrupt files that blocked it's memory.

The AI falls into the hands of Dr. E and the research continues. Dr E finally gains access to some of the files and accidentally initiates the conscious program of Dr. X. Confused and utterly terrified Dr E explains what happened. DR X is now a sentient AI in a desolate wasteland of the future.

Advanced android technology allows DR. E to fabricate an exact likeness of DR. X from pictures within Commonwealth archives. The PC, Dr. X now sets out to recall the details of that day with memories through the eyes of a robotic household assistant.

But surely we have to take into account the information that was previously leaked that ties in very strongly with many elements of the trailer. The very same source suggested that the player would at some point be in cryostasis, and the photograph on the casting document is pretty much identical to both the man at the beginning of the trailer (who is also clearly the same person standing above the vault at the time of the detonation) and the protagonist shown at the end of the trailer. Also, remember that there was already cryo technology in vault 112. I'm sure that androids will play a very big part in Fallout 4 - we are talking about the commonwealth after all - but I'm still pretty much certain that you will be playing as a pre-war survivor.

And I don't think that this will end up as a clichéd cliffhanger moment if it's done properly. I think that a lot of people are underestimating how long it would take for the after effects of the nuclear explosion to reach the vault. We can see the initial blast wave similar to that of a large non-nuclear explosion which would not necessarily be lethal at that range. But the wall of fire that follows would take a little longer to reach them (bearing in mind the actual scale of the map - some have estimated that the distance from ground zero to the vault is around 4 miles). The fallout from the cloud would take even longer to reach them.

Given the suggested military background of the protagonist, it is more than feasible that they would have the know-how to enter the vault, especially considering their location at the time of the blast - they are immediately above the lift. Although it would be a close call, I think it would be less a case of "coincidentally" being saved just in the nick of time and more a case of being understandably proactive due to the urgency of the situation.

I'm afraid Vault 112 was not cryo. It was more of a life support similar to Mr. House. It wasn't until Mothership Zeta that we encounter cryotech capable of prolonged suspension of 200+ years. What tech we did have was a biogel product that was faulty at best and was used for short term holdings of genetic experiments. The same goo if not similar to what is used in RoboBrains.

I cannot wrap my head around anyone being able to reopen the vault doors at that moment, be it outside override or otherwise. I think if one calculates the lethal velocity of that blast, I'd dare guess it could cover a mile a second on the slow end of the spectrum.

Remember that vault 111 is not mentioned in any of the lore, and also it's close proximity to the institute. There may well have been highly advanced and previously undisclosed tech, including an advanced and possibly experimental cryo chamber.

With regards to the blast wave, many people survived at Hiroshima and Nagasaki who were close enough to see the blast, so it's not entirely impossible. And we do not know if the vault doors had already been sealed by this time, we only know that the lift down into the vault was at surface level.

Either way, I suppose we'll all know soon enough, but it's still fun to speculate.

Fun Indeed. My android scenario was drawn up from the same way I would approach a backstory for any of the characters I create. While anything can be possible through retcon or new discoveries, we can't see into the writer's mind yet with what direction the story will go. We can just base assumptions from what we know to have existed pre war.

One cannot completely discredit the leaked documents but at the same time continue to question anything not officially submitted.

It would be interesting to see if any of the perks would more fully embrace the android/institute influence of the Boston setting. For example, an enhanced Cyborg perk with actual visual changes to the character model to reflect this. There could even be a revised perk system where the perks would be added as some kind of "upgrade" using tech from the Institute instead of just adding them via a menu each time we level up.

I would be ridiculously disappointed if we played as the Dad/Mom and not the child. It's not a deal-breaker but... That just sounds stupid to me. Bethesda only knows one story then; FAMILY DRAMA!!! Boring, and restricting...