"It doesn't make sense for your character to be doing these things you want to do because of this restriction the intro has placed on their character" well then there shouldn't have been that restriction (the set marriage, family status, etc...). Will being married and having a kid make for such an amazing and original story that we'll all be glad that we have less freedom, choice, and variation than previous games? Not in my opinion. I can easily see them using it as a crutch to try and force an emotional attachment and create emotional moments (the same way ME3 did with the vent kid). "Real people love their spouse and kids, so the player will automatically love and care about the PC's spouse and kid!" Either the quest will be something generic like "I must save my beloved family!" or "I am angsty and brooding due to the loss of my beloved family!" Ugh.

Yeah, and Laser Weapons and Power Armor, and the fact that states were dissolved into Commonwealths. The Pre-War America's culture was definitely similar to that of the 1950's, but that doesn't mean that it was a carbon copy. America definitely changed over 120 years and there is no reason to say whether the institutional concept of marriage changed or did not change with it.

RDR was a pretty tight game. I really enjoyed it and Western Games are not usually in my taste. However, I gotta say I am more of a Last of Us kind of guy haha

Gnome, I think you're a little more hot under the collar than is necessary. The culture was that of the 1950's, the tech not so much. That is the artistic revisionist history of the Fallout universe. You have to understand that. The culture was still very much into that feel of the 1950's while technology moved forward. Socially, it was stunted. This is the way it is designed as a campaign setting. By construct. It is not a living, breathing thing, that follows realistic social progression or evolution, and not our pooch to screw, that's in the hands of the people who are paid to write this stuff.

Interracial couples were legal since the 1960s... but look at same six couples. Same six marriages was not even a topic until the 90s. Sadly same six marriages is much harder to get than interracial marriages.

This is like someone asking 'why is X illegal?' and another person replying 'it's against the law' and the first person asks 'but why?' and the other person slowly turns to them, looks them up and down as if they're stupid and then slowly reiterates 'because it's against the law.'

Great so it's been constructed this way (assuming it has, Fallout's "50's" departs from ours in a number of important ways) but WHY has it been constructed that way? And more importantly is the way it's been constructed somehow inherently closed for renovations?

Unfortunately I would say it is closed for renovation. Because the Pre-War is not our focus. It is the past. We can't go back to that. We only get fleeting tastes. Even Fallout 4's intro is but a cheese and cracker. That world is dead. The games focus is on living on the remains of an idealistically flawed nation, with scattered remains of its hubris and prejudice.
Where we came from is irrelevant, but it is where we are going that is most important. I say this a lot, and it rings true for the games setting itself.

I happen to agree, actually. Which is why I'm hoping (and dare I say even expecting after what they tweeted) for them to include teh gay as perk and/or dialogue options after we're let loose on the Wasteland. No mourning/vengeful spouse trope here, no sirree.

I agree with your anolysis of Bethesda, RetroMutt. Bethesda seems to be much more "involved" with their fanbase rather than just pumping out games. Though I wouldn't get your hopes up too much about the possibility of the PC being gay. The heterosixual marriage they are in at the start could be disregarded as soon as you leave the vault of course, but I think you may be limiting your experience of the story if you do that. Sometimes things just aren't relateable to your personal life. In Fallout 3 I spent hours on a wild goose chase for "Dad" although I don't have one IRL. Not to mention I'm not American, nor grew up in a vault, nor have I ever fired a gun or detonated a nuke. So the Lone Wanderer wasn't "me" in the literal sense, but it could still be the Fallout incarnation of "me".

Perhaps you could look at it that way, you may be gay IRL but perhaps this fictional incarnation of "you" is not. He could still think like you and act like you and make the decisions you would even though he doesn't love the person you would. In Fallout: New Vegas girls wanted to sleep with me because I brought them vault suits or Deathclaw eggs lol. I have a lovely lady IRL but vault suits wouldn't have closed the deal there. But what the hell, it did the trick for the Fallout incarnation of "me" so that specific "me" was a happy Courier. You are influenced by the world you live in so perhaps for the Fallout 4 incarnation of "you" the straight marriage he is in makes perfect sense.

And I'm all for that. Once we're free of the Vault, people should be free to do as they will. Forge new lives, new loves, new enemies, all that. The past is dead and gone.
Your character may think their spouse is dead and forever gone. And along the way they meet a new special someone, or not at all. That's the ingenuousness of it.

It's these kinds of things that make it harder for me to roleplay more than one character in a Fallout game than in an Elder Scrolls game. From my second Fallout 3 character onward, I had to mentally ignore chunks of Bethesda's enforced backstory in order to roleplay my characters. It is much easier for me to play different characters in an Elder Scrolls game.

I imagine I'll have to ignore large portions of Fallout 4's story after I finish my first character, just as I did in the previous games. Fortunately, I have a good imagination and am able to block out those parts of the games that do not contribute to roleplaying. We'll see...

They should give us the option to roleplay the couple at the beginning as brother and sister. Be whoever you want etc...

Thank goodness! The game is saved.

Fallout would surely have been a failure if i could not play as an omnigendered quantumsixual.

That means nothing. Now if they had used this gay marriage being legal thing to say "and btw you can be in a same six marriage in FO4 too", that had been something. Or "you can be gay in FO4, don't worry". That would have made me wonder how well they had handled it, but at least I'd know they hadn't forgotten it.

(I see the same arguments repeated again and again. The reason we don't listen to "But History!" "But Story!" is not because we don't get what you're saying. It's because we don't think those are excuses to restrict the protagonist's sixuality.)

Hmm, while I recognize that in games like these, freedom to roleplay is rather essential, to put it mildly. I also think we should give the developer the chance to tell stories... Some of them will be straight, some will be gay and alot have absolutely nothing to do with sixuality.

Anyways... I wanna congratulate american homosixuals, bisixuals transsixuals and everybody else on the right to marriage now.

Funnily enough, my uncle will be celebrating his 25th anniversary of being married to an american guy this year.

sign of the end times

Sorry but this overwhelming glorification of homosixuality in all areas of life Needs to stop, people act as if it should become the new norm. Even Video games aren't spared of this trend.

You're not easy to please, are you? There is barely any romance in Fallout. Some minor flirting with Tandi in the original Fallout. You could have a terrible companion as a husband or wife in Fallout 2 but you were basically forced to marry them if you had six with them, also some porm actor stuff and having six with the Bishop women. In Fallout 3 there was Nova the prosttute and some flirting remarks from a brainwashed slave companion.

The story in Fallout 4 will without a doubt involve your spouse and child. The child's appearance is generated according to the parents' looks. How could this possibly work with a gay couple? Having them have an adopted child? A child with a surrogate mother/father? In that case should you be able to play as either one of the two parents for each of the sixes? So just in case someone wants to play as a homosixual they need not two but FOUR voiced protagonists? Having four people record 13.000 lines to accomodate this? What if you want to play as a transsixual? You would need to be able to play as a man-turned-woman and a woman-turned-man? Both the woman-turned-man and the man-turned-woman should be able to have a spouse that is also a woman-turned-man or a man-turned-woman? So four additional potential player characters and spouses? Eight people recording 13.000 lines?

You're asking for something very few people will use, and apparently Bethesda deemed it vital to their story that there is a married heterosixual couple pre-war. It's probably easiest to simply emerge from the vault, breath a sigh of relief that you are finally rid of your wife and never think of her again.

Best wishes for US LGBT.

I hope things will turn better for them than France LGBT. We had a big increase of assault agaisn't LGBT people since the mariage was legalized.

"Overwhelming."

Overwhelming is a strong word but there is a disproportionate amount of attention for it. Yesterday was a historic day, gay marriage legalized in all US states.

Also a person was decapitated in France, 38 people were killed in a terrorist attack in Tunisia and 25 people were killed in a suicide attack in a mosque in Kuwait. But let's forget about that and focus on gay marriage instead. Even on video game forums about a series that has practically nothing to do with sixuality whatsoever. The fact is that for most people in the western world gay marriage is more important than dozens of people getting killed. I'm not saying that's wrong, everyone can focus their attention on what matters to them, but it has become the 'topic of the day' and now apparently Bethesda should let what happens in their games be dictated by this news flash.

So do the Oscars, Madonna's new(ish) music video, whatever One Direction is doing and etc. I don't see what this has to do with anything. The world's preference for focusing on the immediately salient and accessible is well established. On June 16 there was a train crash in Tunisia, 3 people in South Korea died of MERS and the former Egyptian president was sentenced to life in prison but if you ask anyone to recall something pertinent about the day they'll most likely reference Donal Trump announcing himself as a candidate. It's not 'overwhelming attention payed to teh gay' it's overwhelming attention paid to whatever catches society's ADD attention for a few moments. Conflating this specifically with LGBT is unfair.

Dictated huh? Seems to be a day for strong words.

DO you really think this is appropriate for a video game discussion board? video games are art.. or a distraction from life. I'm sorry but you or anyone else who is bringing this stuff here are just really bad and are missing the point of games for a lot of people, and quite honestly should be banned or these threads locked as they come up. There's the door, now please step out and let the door hit your ass on the way out

Yes. For RPGs anyway.

True, true. Gay marriage has a sense of "fighting the good fight" to it though, a political achievement that people see as a milestone in the struggle for equal rights for everyone. It goes beyond One Direction and Madonna. The White House was lit up in rainbow colors on the same day the atrocities in Kuwait and Tunisia happened. It's not just peoples' short attention span, it's that many people in the West prioritize gay marriage above the war and terrorism scenes we're grown used to. No doubt Obama issued a statement saying he abhors the violence, but rather than turning off the lights of the White House in mourning he lit it up in rainbow lights.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm in favor of gay marriage. I simply don't believe it's one of the world's most important issues.

Anyway, I love a political discussion but these boards really aren't the place for it. Sorry for my part in derailing the thread. Let's talk about Fallout.