I will fully admit that I am completely put off by this set protagonist. We have/had a family, we apparently named our son Shaun (meh), and we are prewar. What else is set?

I wouldn't mind a voiced protagonist, but when they pretty much remove all possibility for creating my own backstory, it is off-putting considering every single one of their other games.

I am sure this is like the 1,000th thread on this, but all I am really asking is just how set is our protagonist at this point? Unfortunately this is a pretty big deal breaker for me.

You play as the wife or Husband. John and Jane Doe.... They have a child named Shaun, and lived prewar. The bombs drop, you enter a vault, and wake up 200ish years later. What you do after the vault, how your character is developed, what kind of person they are... is up to you. If you want specifics, best to ask the devs because they're keeping the story under wraps. Lol at deal breaker. As if most rpgs don't give you a basic set background to work with, and you yourself determine how that character is defined.

Beyond those points I think we seen quite a few hints that our protagonist is a ex soldier.

You seem to not actively hate/resent your spouse (which you can headcanon around) and you are (most likely) a war veteran. You live in quiet suburbia and not a city or somewhere more rural. Your house seems kinda small so maybe not terribly affluent but you DO own a Mr Handy which may or may not be expensive. You or your spouse is the kind of person that leaves notes on the fridge. Your house has a lot of ocean related decorations. You or your spouse is patriotic (or maybe just proud of personal achievement) enough to leave their vet flag on display. You're not weird enough to name your kid something like Moonbeam or Sunrise. Either you or your spouse studied law (probably). Either you or your spouse hasn't fixed the HVAC yet.

Thanks at the info, but not for the snark.

It is a deal breaker simply because I see better games on the horizon. Bethesda's gameplay has never been all that great and the idea of them focusing on story isn't even remotely exciting. To me, it is akin to Final Fantasy telling us they have a deep and mature story. So relatively weak gameplay and historically bad storytelling. The major selling point for their games has always been the freedom to formulate your character and define them how you want. Other RPGS are entirely irrelevant here. They have pretty much stripped that type of self-governed narration away in favor of a stronger narrative, which I doubt they will deliver.

Make sense now why I'd view it as a deal breaker?

You aren't the first to call it a deal breaker, and certainly won't be the last. I just find it funny, when we know very little about the story beyond the first 20 minutes or so. It matters not where you come from, but where you're going. The journey is what defines your character and the choices you make while on it.

Actually I'm pretty sure they don't just hint they basically flat out say it

Yeah, I am well aware. Been on these forums awhile lol. Hell, I even made allusions to such in the OP.

Eh, those choices are informed by your past. The journey all builds from there for me. To each their own though.

I personally like the backstory they put in but I definitely understand where you're coming from here. If the backstory was something I didn't like I would definitely be pissed too

Then you should know this discussion has been hashed out in multiple threads already, lol. The information could be gained far better by a google search, or just watching the footage that's been shown. I don't mean to be blunt, but this thread seems to serve little more than stirring the pot.

Not really, it already served its purpose. I meant it, I just wanted to know how predefined the protagonist is. This thread can be closed.

Way to much, so I'm going to ignore all of it.

Even if we are locked in as an ex-soldier, we can define ourselves as a sniper, infantry, pilot, cybernetics, or something else. So if we were a sniper in the army, then we can play as a sniper for the rest of the game. The reason why we have to relearn our sniper skills could be due to whatever process that was used to skip 200 years. The wife seems to have even more freedom since she could have been a mechanic or chinese spy for all we know. You can play the game however you want.

Unless finding your wife and child is the main quest, then you can treat the tutorial as a dream sequence caused by cryosleep or whatever it was so there is no wife and child. The tutorial or even the rest of the game could be Total Recall for all we know. Would actually make for an interesting ending. Protagonist wakes up back in 2078 from a VR pod to a world where the bombs never dropped and they were just playing the latest VR game.

The Fallout games has always gone with the set protagonist. Fallout 1, 3, and 4 are Vault Dwellers. Fallout 2 is a tribal. Fallout Tactics and Fallout New Vegas are the only ones where the history of your character is not revealed. Fallout Tactics is some Recruit while Fallout New Vegas is a Courier where we don't know where they grew up or what they did before they got shot in the head except for the history revealed in the Lonesome Road, but that is only one minor part of the history. It seems like most RPGs follow the set protagonist.

Am I the only one who likes the backstory?

I like it so far

I don't mind a backstory. New Vegas gave us one, and I thought it worked out well.

Beth has never really been known for their great stories, but if they can improve upon Skyrim's atrocious writing at all, I'd consider that a step in the right direction...and if it means giving our character a background, I think I can live with that. I'm just not too sure about the voiced protagonist yet. I'll have to wait and see on that.

Other than that we're a pre-war dude/gal with a spouse and child, a veteran of a war, living in a moderately well-off home and apparently rich enough to afford a Mr. Handy and that one of us apparently went to law school, we're pretty much whatever we want ourselves to be.

Just to recap...

Your character in New Vegas barely had any backstory given to you because it was up to you to make your own past, all we know is he is a courier whether he's a long-time courier or took on that one job to deliver the chip lol.

To the OP: I honestly don't mind that we're given a backstory in Fallout 4, they're still letting your character be whoever you want it to be despite that he/she is voiced. I think everyone can work with a little fine-tuning the character given the backstory you have.

If anything, I would be quite mad if they forced a "hand-made" character with his traits and personality, but we're just given a backstory which is what I can work with. All we know is that he has a wife/husband, has a son and a Mr Handy. That is all confirmed and it is however... likely that we may be war veterans but that is yet to be confirmed.

I guess you never played the DLC then?

Let's just say the DLC is... optional. I disliked it due to the stupidity of some things in it but of course you can chose to have that backstory that is given to you in the DLC. I simply didn't like it and decided it's not cannon for my courier lol.

But originally your courier barely have a backstory, the DLC is a backstory given to you on a silver platter. Take it or leave it lol.

My thoughts exactly. Lonesome Road clearly shows the Courier had a backstory and not a small either.

Yeah, that was the only DLC I hated. I was roleplaying a Good character, and the dialogue choices for when you found out you accidentally blew up a settlement didn't ring well with her personality at all.

The Shivering Isles was entirely optional, yet The Hero of Kvatch is widely considered to now be Uncle Sheo because of it. Both The Pitt and Broken Steel were optional, yet are widely believed to be wholly a part of Fallout canon. Just because you don't like or never have played Lonesome Road, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It exists as a part of your character's backstory, like it or not.

Yeah, thats annoying. I'm fine with what they give us in the beginning, as I can fit a lot of different characters around it. But I don't really want to learn stuff about my past during the game that could contradict it.

Well the backstory does not hinder me. I just select the female char. loiter towards shiny guns and have a great time doing lot of chaos. The backstory does not mean we can be whatever we want in wasteland. You can be snake oil salesman, a ordane minister of new religion, out house cleaner, mercenary, scavenger or even shady doctor. The world is yours.