for HIM to say.... what more do you need to infer it's only him? I hope to Todd they didn't waste time recording 1000+ names for a bunch of other characters

oooh...a death bed confession.

"[Name]...I have...not been entirely honest with you....We...My mother/father and I...We've been through much...And she/he tried to...give me as much as she/he could...We always held out hope...She/he did anyway...That...That I would one day know my fathers/mothers face...I...I know this is...you may hate me for not telling you truth, [name]...but...It fills me with joy...knowing that I got to see you again...As you are...And not the blurred eyes of a babe..."

Sole Survivor: "...Shaun...?"

"...Yes...Yes mother/father....Please....Call me by my name...one last......."

Sole Survivor: "...Shaun....? Oh my god, Shaun?!"

HNNNNGH the feels.

We know so little about the games main plot, but based on the blurb on the Steam page about joining various factions im thinking its going to come down to a factional conflict as one of the main driving forces just like the last two Fallout games.

Fallout 3 had a story of Man vs. Environment and Man Vs. Man intertwined with each other. All of the major forces in the game were dealing with the harsh environment of the Capital Wasteland, and had different goals and solutions to those goals. The BoS wanting to fight the super mutants and reclaim lost tech while building goodwill with the local populace to lead towards new development, and the Enclaves goal of genocide of the local inhabitants to pave the way for their own groups development. The whole Project Purity thing was the ultimate solution to the Man Vs. Environment conflict that caused a Man vs. Man conflict over who gets control of the solution. Purifying the water in the Potomac would first allow heavy agriculture to thrive that would serve as the basis for other kinds of development. The BoS being interested in the development alone while the Enclave wanted to also use the water to go with that whole black armoured and long coated people believing in supremacy and wanting genocide that is always very popular in western storytelling.

Its pretty much the same thing going on in the Mojave, just that the Man Vs. Environment issue has been mostly cleared up, with heavy development already happened and the main conflict being over the source of keeping that heavy development alive while that source also serves as a vital military chokepoint. The idea of having a well developed wasteland still drives all of the major factions in the game, the NCR wanting to annex a new territory, Caesar himself saying he sees New Vegas as what would be his new capital and make his empire truly Roman, and Mr. House wanting to become a mercantile city state. There's also secondary themes of it being on the front lines on the conflict between the two great nations of the east and west, so it holds both strategic and economic value.

We don't know what makes the Commonwealth special right now, and what would cause a war between the factions. I could also be wrong in it following suit with the last two games and being a factional conflict over something that solves the issue of the Wasteland but War Never Changes is a major theme in Fallout. We've already done mass purified water in a land where there is none and electricity supporting what could be close to the America of old, maybe the conflict instead originates in The Insitutes advanced technology and the Brotherhood wanting to get their mitts on it rather than anything in the land itself.

There is literally zero evidence that anyone else uses your name soooo...

Seriously, think here for a second. There is no magical technology that takes a written name and then speaks it in the same voice as the VA and also in the correct tone. That I know of. Which means for there to be more than one person to say your name you would have to have various VAs take the time to say a thousand names, possibly multiple times to fit a variety of contexts. Add to this the idea that they'll somehow say your spouse and child's name? Please. That's utterly inane. I think VAs get paid for every day they're in the studio and eating up studio time to have them rattle off hundreds of names is loopy.

I suppose I did say antagonist, and the environment certainly is that.
What I meant, in the conversation's context of our family being part of a faction, was Antagonistic Faction.
It is my hope that there are multiple factions which may or may not be main antagonists and more still which are merely potential opposing factions.


I expect that much will stay the same as previous games- That isn't lost on me. But that doesn't stop the hope that among newer things, being able to side with a multitude of different factions for the endgame.

all the while throughout the game he'd help you with information on the wasteland or give you tasks to help the community where as the player would be oblivious of the truth until it was too late. In a way you were able to spend time with your son, making that gut punch all the more worthwhile.

Oh yeah, I did kinda go off on a tangent there

On the Steam store page for Fallout 4 they have this as one of the "Key Features":

Freedom and Liberty!
Do whatever you want in a massive open world with hundreds of locations, characters, and quests. Join multiple factions vying for power or go it alone, the choices are all yours

That makes me think we're going to have a setup similar to New Vegas where we can join factions in the endgame, just like you had hoped for. I think you're right in that if our family isnt killed off at the start, it would tie into the faction dynamics somehow. I wish they would show us more about the faction dynamics, since depending on how it could go it could mean major things for world reactivity and C&C. With it being confirmed there isnt a ending I can see the factions being able to take over parts of the map as part of the normal gameplay.

Of course WE get to decide, I was just speaking of the "Canon/Bethesda" version of events. We know that one of the items equipped on your character is your Wedding Ring. To me, that indicates a person not yet ready to move on, and possibly trying to cling to any shred of hope. Now, those hopes may be dashed, or appear to be dashed. Or the person may just decide that the odds against anyone else surviving are just too great. Codsworth's comment on paranoia is not very relevant here because 1) he's just seen his Master for the first time and doesn't even know how HE survived (unless he knows more than we think), and 2) paranoia isn't a correct diagnosis anyway. A closer diagnosis would be something along the lines of delusions. Now, maybe the writers just got it wrong. Wouldn't be the first time people just grabbed a mental illness out of thin air because it sounded good. But either way, how does Codsworth know if the spouse or child are alive? He thought the Master was dead for the last 200 years up until a moment ago.

That would be a decent story.

Man. Thing with me and characters in this game so far is that I can't trust what any of them say. I'm constantly considering that any NPC could be giving out misinformation.

Just to play devils advocate, it is possible Codsworth could know that the other members of the family are alive and still think that the PC is dead. If it is a situation of the other dwellers being taken, or freed at a different point and he isn't taken as well, there needs to be a reason for that. My guess is faulty monitoring equipment showing that he is dead. Or that there was a cave in, and he became isolated.
So if the other family members are alive, they most likely think he is dead.

Only need to record each once (maybe a few intonations), then you 'merge' them in-game by coding it, Its not has much work as you believe, this is done dynamicly without interfering with the conversation. its a X variable in the middle of a voice over file.

To save more time you can link to save game file and have every X replaced with a reconized name on the list so the game does not have to reconize every time the variable show up once your name is fixed.

Which would sound like garbage. The way you say a name, especially in a language like English, relies entirely on the context of the sentence and where it falls in the sentence. "Bob, they're closing in on us!" is different from "They're closing in on us, Bob!" and both are different from "You haven't seen Bob in action."

The reason it will work with Codsworth is because he is a robot, and thus has an excuse for using weird inflection when speaking.

Even if Bethesda did it your way, it would mean (Number of Voice Actors x Number of Names x Number of Inflections = Voice Files). We are easily talking about tens of thousands of additional audio recordings. It isn't going to happen. I'm betting even Codsworth has a limited number of lines where he uses your name.

I still don't understand why everyone is so excited about a video game NPC saying your name anyway. Better get used to nicknames like "Sole Survivor".

Just stating that its not that much work really even if you drop 5-10 intonations per compagnion. Takes a few seconds to say a name. 10,000 very small files which will be compressed in .bsa.

Game industry already does it, a cinematic (pre-rendered) is seperate from the voice over, so you can switch language without having to install 10,000 heavy video files. They just added another variable.

Personally i think the kid and spouse die when the bombs go off and wont be heard from again. now why would beth talk about the kid having a face made up of both playable characters? simple, because now all kids in the game will have unique faces depending on their parents instead of the the exact same faces that kids have had in previous games. No massive story hook just beth showing off new tech

Interesting... one of my favorite theories yet

This.

/thread

Nah man his little ass got blown up

There's a bit of off-topic debate going on in here - there are already others threads on here where you can discuss which characters are or are not going to say your name.

It has been confirmed that Codsworth will call you by name if you pick one that happens to be on that list.

It has not been confirmed if he is the only one who does that. It has not been confirmed that any other NPCs will call you by name. Either case is speculative at this point. For the record, if we want to point fingers about "spreading misinformation," then both parties are equally culpable at this point. I'm rather of the opinion that it's more likely to be just Codsworth, and a bit of a fun gimmick (if I had my druthers, for all the trouble it's caused, Todd would have just kept his mouth shut about this until the game's release.) But I don't know any more than anyone else, and it's just my guess.

Please continue further debate on that in the appropriate thread.