Bethesda says that player freedom is their number one concern when making games.

Does this mean our character can remain neutral in terms of alignment and just be a hired merc with assistance from settlers/mercs at their own tavern/bar that you can recruit rather than 'joining' any one faction per say. With this new settling option I can guarantee that I will spend several months constructing the ideal Base of Operations. If all that occurs is simply raider attacks... rather than faction/bigger attacks from larger factions as well as new quests then I will be gravely disappointed.

I also hope that the leveling system will be more like skyrim... make legendary skills and level up almost indefinitely and whatnot.

Well, I guess that depends if you piss of a faction adequately they MAY send attack squads...

Plus it's always possible they can add more functionality to the settlers system as DLC's come out. I certainly hope so

I think your going to be disappointed. I don't think building settlements is going to be that big a part of the game. It's FO4, not sim city

Well, Todd Howard has said that there's a questline involved with the base building. Whether there's more to it than what we saw at the demo or if the quests are just glorified tutorials we'll have to wait and see.

totally neutral is EXCESSIVELY hard.

deliberately tried an all neutral skyrim.

still, ~100h into the game, storm cloaks started having a problem with me.

can't even really tell why, must have eaten some wrong apple by accident or stg

It's clearly the direct Sequel to Fallout Shelter. I have much hopes regardless.

Well I always hated how in TES games they made the PC the 'leader' of factions. It would never make sense that some newcomer becomes the new leader, yet every faction in Skyrim is open. I liked FO games much better in that you can aid a faction, maybe join, but you never take over the faction.

Personally I hope the faction interaction in FO hasn't gone the TES way. If so I can't see they helping much with the settlement unless it's to just let me hire mercs from them.

The feature texts on some pages hinted to this, yes. They say you can join a faction or do it alone. So a independent part should be possible.

Fallout has never really allowed players to join many factions though - it's different to TES in that way. I actually wish the player could join more factions or at least do more things for certain groups, like raiders even. I mean sure, you could join the slavers and you were sort of a member of the BoS in Fallout 3, but the faction system has always been a little underwhelming IMO.

The area we see being rebuilt in the E3 demo is actually Sanctuary Hills, the player's former home 'town'. And Todd also tells us that there are several other similar locations across the wastelands where we can rebuild if we choose to do so. All of this would suggest that we're not just talking about defending against raider attacks, but actually something significantly more threatening.

And let's be honest here, as a matter of reality you can't please everyone. If you could, it would be immersion breaking because life is not that way. And the guy trying to please everyone is the

biggest target on the map. If others start thinking like him, then someone's power or fortune is at risk and bullets are cheaper than propaganda campaigns. So long as the game mimics real life

where psychology is concerned, being the neutral/good guy is gonna get you whacked. Eventually you gotta make some judgement calls and pick a side - even if it's your own.