Well, on the one had I agree with you (don't want to play a reverse Fallout 3 (you are looking for your wife and child now instead of your dad, like in Fallout 3) that much after all), on the other hand:

Why would they go through all this trouble (making both advlts customizable, creating the baby based on them) only to kill them off after a few minutes (our hours...I mean we don't know how long the pre-war section of the game is - many think it was streamlined in the presentation at E3, which is what I hope, too as I want to spend more time in the pre-war era (go explore a bit etc.)) into the game?

Food for thought

greetings LAX

Aaaaaaand I still don't get why the baby's six matters.

More like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t0uCWjQ6Og

The ability to randomly go nuts and scream.... Is a feature sorely lacking in games.

I think are realistic limits to what is under the player's control and what isn't. Quite frankly I see this two ways:

1) The baby dies in vault 111, and so it's gender is in the long run meaningless, and thus using the English neutral of male is perfectly acceptable.

2) The baby survives and is used in the story line in which case using a single developer chosen gender is more financially viable. Why record twice the lines (especially when you're already financially backing two fully voiced protagonists)? Not to mention that creating a believable character/NPC does require an understanding of their gender. Every book I've read that used a female protagonist definitely reads differently to that of a male, even if written by the same author.

While Bethesda have taken a great many efforts to make the PC gender optional I don't see them putting that effort into the child as well realistically. Honestly, I personally wouldn't expect them to either. Maybe I'm just a realist.

You can't really choose the gender of your baby in RL... how would you do it?

That would be the point of the baby being either gender. Having a different experience. With this new technology, why not record the lines twice? Mass Effect succeeded with it and that was off last gen tech.

Besides, why go through all the trouble of recording thousands of popular baby names for Cogsworth to say, if all the baby names are male? I would assume they also recorded popular female baby names as well.

Plus it would be a waste of time to have all those baby names recorded just for the pre war section of the story if the baby dies and is never seen of heard of again after you wake up 200 years later. If that's the case, they could have just recorded one or two generic gender names.

That's the beauty of Fallout and all video games in general. Suspension of reality and disbelief. How many things can you do in Fallout games that you can actually do in real life? I'm glad Fallout doesn't take itself too seriously. It's goofiness is part of Fallout's charm.

That's some Red Dead Redemption plot twisting right there.

There is a limit to suspension of disbelief and reality.

I think you missed the point. Mass Effect succeeded in allowing the player be either gender, not whole other characters; can you imagine how much work it would've taken BioWare to make Saren or TIM either gender?

Fallout is now doing no less or more than Mass Effect did. It's not a small thing either studio have done to record lines twice for the protagonist, either financially or in man-hours. Doing that again for another character, plus re-writing aspects to ensure their gender is correctly worked and makes sense. It's not as simple as you're trying to make out.

I don't deny that the potential aspects of doing it are exciting but the fact is that realistically it makes both financial and story-telling sense to not.

I also think you missed the options Codsworth has. Todd said he has 1000 player names to say, not baby names; "You heard him say my characters name. That's not for the demo, we've recorded 1000 popular names for him to say" [Paraphrased].

Sadly many people don't seem to know that baby names = personal names = first names... and not name for your baby.

I definitely think that our child will always be a boy, and will always be called Shaun. This way, he can be associated with a specific advlt male character (most likely the main antagonist) later in the game. Obviously, his appearance would vary depending on your choices in the tutorial, but this is no difference than what we see with your father in Fallout 3.

Note that the name "Shaun" is the Irish equivalent of "John", which could be connected to the concept of John-Doe (a placeholder name used for a party whose true identity is unknown). It is also possible that this name is a nod to the missing child of the protagonist in Minority Report, which would tie in with the futuristic setting.

Well, I was using the terms "player" and "baby" to differentiate the characters. Apologies if there was any confusion there. It's simply my understanding of Todd's quote that the player's chosen first name can be said by Codsworth; he didn't indicate that this was also changeable for the baby, which in the situation would've been a good extension to make if this were the case.

I believe the baby is always named Shaun, and that's his character. This is not changeable by the player.

Not choosing it per say, but it might be possible with invitro sorting today (? and perhaps possible in the fallout universe) and they certainly have tried their best some places. -..-

The son will obviously be the antagonist in the main quest story line so it is a lot less work for Beth if they control the gender.

A female would require double the voice recording and may not work with whatever story line they are planning. For some reason killing a male character is always more acceptable.

Well that's sorta what I meant (except the part about people caring more about killing women, maybe, but Fallout hardly seems to care about that) I just don't understand why people seem to think there'd be a bigger emotional payout if your baby's six was somehow deterministic.

I think the baby's name and gender are fixed; the only thing that can be changed are your own gender, name, and physical appearance (as well as your spouse's as he/she is the potential other PC.)

And probably Arthur Maxson in my opinion...

i think the baby's name pretty much determined by it's name. which appears to be shaun.

I honestly can't see why they would kill off the child. The spouse might be dead, but they already said that the child is going to appear as a combination of the two parents, which would be pointless if you only saw it as an infant. For all we know, the child's name and six are randomly generated.

Indeed, I don't even think you can kill children in games anymore if your trying to sell your game in Europe so we won't see it in this game.

The kid will have somehow been awakened early and left the Vault and grew up, probably taking the opposing side of the faction your on is my bet.

wonder what they'll base that on...

might come in handy for people pondering procreation...

hit chargen up with your and your significant other's face, and preview what you'll get... )

My pet theory is that he's Preston Garvey. What? It makes sense to me.