... and can partner up with you at some point in the game? I think it would be cool to meet your son again after two hundred years or so all grown up as his own man, maybe he was frozen like you and awoke years earlier along with the other parent you didn't choose and they both left the vault without the protagonist due to believing you were dead or something along those lines.

I think it would be interesting, and I think it would also be rich if your son has aged more then his father/mother (assuming they're young advlts when having their child.) due to him being our in the wasteland for a longer period of time. It would be pretty hilarious actually.

Thoughts?

Hopefully he turns out to be the crazed evil dictator of some mega settlement, and we get to have a reverse "Darth Vader is my father?" moment.

Wanted to say just now that he might turn into "Mr. House" type who's stays behind The Institute, making androids to rebuild and all that.

There is no point in creating a baby based on the look that you created for the parents unless you encounter the baby later in the story. Preferably as a teen or advlt. If the baby wasn't in the 23rd Century, then there is no point in having a baby in 2077 since it is just wasted resources. The story could have started with a couple of newlyweds.

Would be interesting if they did a shr?ddingers NPC idea, assuming the whole railroad vs institute things is the main plot your son would be a prominent Institute member if you support the railroad up to a point, or vice versa if you work for the institute.

Before the final battle with your son, the parent stares at their wayward child and states:

"Son/Honey, I brought you into this world. I think you know the rest."

The same could be said of why are they showing us pre-war though. Todd said they want us to FEEL the loss of everything. We see it, we have it, then we don't.

I expect an epic story that makes me cry at the end... :/

After leaving the vault... The sole survivor returns to his/her home... Where Codsworth is waiting. He/she has a conversation with codsworth... and proceeds to enter their old home. Looking around, they enter the master bedroom.... and laying on the bed is the wife/husband and shaun. Both, merely skeletons. Looking around the room, we see signs of struggle.... and a corpse of a raider at the foot of the bed. His clothes burned and slashed... clinging to the skeleton. Codsworth, after finding them dead avenged his former master/mistress and their child... before going on with his daily routine.

The wife/husband and son were revived only 10 years after the bombs fell and went home. After thinking it was safe, they went to sleep... never again to wake up. After their discovery the sole survivor loses their mind... and begins their journey into the wastes.

It could be possible that the pre-war assets are used for other things like VR simulations or time travel. Developers like to create assets that are used for more than just a one-time thing.

I kinda doubt they would leave you behind as dead. I'm guessing they were taken. Clearly, their bodies are at least not in the vault, which suggests that they were removed against their will. Could also be a malfunction in your cryo tube that prevented your family from getting you out when they woke up, but my guess is that they were taken and you were deliberately left behind as a back-up plan for DNA reasons or something.

But yeah, it is an interesting question about whether Bethesda chose to let us reunite with family or not. I'm guessing it is somewhere in the middle, such as one of them is dead/ghoul/mutant/etc and the other gets reunited at an older age. Either way, I would be pretty surprised if we did not at least see pictures or video footage of our kid at an older stage in his life.

Shaun is the villain. I'm calling it now.

Like others said, there is NO REASON to make a baby based off the features you design for your wife/husband unless you see that baby later as an advlt. But just meeting Shaun grown up isn't going to be enough of an emotional gut-wrench. Bethesda is going to make him the leader of some faction doing awful things. You'll be forced to agonize over whether he can be saved or if you'll have to kill him. Expect a mini-climix where you confront the villain, come this close to beating him, and then get a dramatic "I'm your SON!" scene. ("You ABANDONED me! What else was I supposed to do?!") Queue you hesitating long enough to lose the chance at a killing blow, and him escaping. Queue lots of drama as you prepare for round two.

Trust me.

I dont think the wife and child made it into the vault.

Or Todd just wanted to uppercut us in the feels. I mean who knows. With such vagueness it could go a million ways. Or they could be dead as [censored] lol

I believe Bethesda will want us to think they are dead. (And the spouse we aren't playing as probably WILL be.) I think the nuke explosion we see on top of the Vault 111 door will be the last thing we see before we wake up from cryostasis. The baby will have been saved too, without the player's knowledge, but woken from cryostasis earlier. The player WILL be the last occupant of Vault 111, but I'm betting not all the others died in stasis. We'll see empty and opened pods in addition to the failed pods. My personal theory is that Vault 111 has been acting as cold storage for the Institute (hence the dead scientist the player finds in the elevator where he gets his Pipboy). The baby was thawed 30 years or so prior.

See that's where I kind of doubt some of what people are assuming. Todd mentioned that we would be able to rework out SPECIAL before leaving the vault, "after we've had a chance to play a while". This leads me to believe something happens and we are required to fight before we leave the vault. Otherwise how would we know how to use our SPECIAL and why should we respec? Fallout 3 did exactly as he mentioned, we had a chance to play a while before leaving the vault and respec'ing if we needed. We fought before that

Todd point that events happen on the vault, probably not fight, but maybe something like Fallout 3 vault part, or maybe the Pod where we go to "sleep", is a VR like on Fallout 3 and we need to deal with something there, more, maybe is a Military VR and there where we learn to use PA and Guns. =D

Or you know, the Vault has radroaches, molerats, or some other type of easily dealt with vermin to teach us the basics of combat. Maybe some simple lockpicking, hacking, options, etc. Or maybe it's just because Bethesda knows their player base will want to make a save at a certain point to keep from having to replay the opening every time they start a new game, and what better place than right before you are turned out to freely roam the world?

maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe

we don't know lol

maybe they'll take from Shelter and it's a deathclaw attack that slaughters everyone and little Shaun gets eaten. maybe

What if Shaun (somehow) becomes a Super Mutant? Not a regular Super Mutant, but a super intelligent and extremely powerful one, like Lou Tenant, Marcus, or Fawkes?

And he's the one leading the Commonwealth Super Mutants?

I'd believe it. I read somewhere that in the original Fallout 3 plot it was written that you discovered your dad being transformed into a Super Mutant by some blokes, he basically begs you to kill him with his last breath before becoming a super mutant. You'd basically have to kill the entire reason for leaving the vault. They obviously discarded this plot point for the one where you help pops complete Project Purity. But, I don't think they would abandon the idea in of itself, in fact they likely tweaked it a bit to raise the stakes in Fallout 4.

A parent being forced to kill their child is raising the stakes a bit more and would be extremely emotional.

Either way, I think it's not improbable to assume that Shaun may appear as a character in the game wither it be as a villain or a recruitable companion.

I mean.... I could get down with that lol

Kill son orrrrr save world? Like he's gonna drop FEV into the glowing sea, which due to it's high radioactivity, would evaporate into the air rapidly making FEV airborne. I made all that up. I'm a writer now.

God I hope not, sounds cheezy as hell...Oh well he just gets on my list of who to eliminate...

Well we know your chosen character survives and gets lowered into the vault so I don't see why the spouse and child would be killed off......the whole child and spouse are just too rich plot devices for later to just be killed off immediately I think. Still....I wonder how we even survive 200 years without aging to begin with.....maybe through some kind of cryo sleep or perhaps our character is now a brain in a robot body designed after his/her real one. Boston is supposed to be where the androids and robot tech are at with the Commonwealth being there and all. Fun times.