Morrowind had a warning if you killed an essential character and one thing that bothered me in FO3 was being able to inadvertently stumble into Tranquility Lane and bypass steps in the main quest without any notice. I would hope that FO4 has some sort of warning or even goes as far as locking out quest areas so that I don't mistakenly wander into a major event that I'm not looking for.

Funny story, my very first playthrough of FO3 I did exactly that. Ran into my dad and skipped a big portion of the story.

I'm actually glad it didn't give me a warning telling me what was happening, because I felt like I really did something on my own by finding him without a bunch of people telling me "do this/do that".

Morrowind just told you when you killed a story essential npc, effectively destroying the path of the main story. That isn't an issue anymore due to the essential tag.

I'd prefer the game let me do my thing, and if I so happen to skip steps due to dumb luck, so be it

I like to treat my first play as an extended (virginal) courtship and avoid jumping into major events until I'm good and ready to do so. I also wouldn't want to impose on other people's play styles so maybe it would be best if there could be a in game option to keep quests on rails or not.

Feels way to restrictive IMO. As if the game is telling you "WAIT! You need to do X,Y,Z first! You're doing it all wrong!"

I suppose a simple message couldn't hurt, but it would sure as hell be immersion breaking. Plus that might be fine for the first playthrough, but after the 3rd or 4th, don't you think that could get a tiny bit tiresome?

Personally, I think if you go out to explore on your own, just accept that you might stumble onto something. That's the beauty of exploration.

Not a fan of this at all.

I also found my dad on my first playthrough on Fallout 3 by exploring. I go everywhere and look at everything so looking back it was probably inevitable that this was going to happen.

That's way to restrictive in my opinion, no thanks.

It would be cool if games had a fail-safe in place or counter measures for Dora The Explorers, such as myself, accidentally stumbling upon something too soon.

Like in Fallout 3, if you so happen to make Tranquility Lane you first stop out of Vault 101, an alternative quest would automatically replace the intended main story, though still play out like a main quest.

So instead of you accidentally skipping over a large portion of the main quest, the alternative or back up quest would kick in, allowing you to experience the main quest from a different perspective. That way, you can still have a full adventure, and add even more replay value.

It is fun to explore, but there are lots of hidden decisions the game is going to make based on things we do "out of order".

I woke Dad up really early on a recent FO3 play-through. I should have let him sleep.

I hadn't been to Rivet City yet, or GNR. By finding Rivet City with Dad, I lost out on meeting Sarah Lyons in Chevy Chase (GNR Plaza).

No Lyons, no Fat Man for behemoth. Bummer.

As long as they do things "logically" I wouldn't mind being prevented from circumventing parts of the story. Like, they could easily have locked down Vault 112 and if you DO find it earlier than "planned" you simply cannot get in. Then during the course of the proper quest you visit Vault Tec headquarters and find access codes to Vault 112's entrance and you think, "Hey, I tried to get in there earlier and I could not! Now I can!" and it wouldn't feel ~forced~, I think. Just logical. You didn't have the codes, now you do.

But that's the thing.. The game was actually made so that it could happen that way. . You could still go back and do all the quests associated with Rivet City, the Radio Station and Megaton and you didn't actually miss any quest. In fact, the only way to get the key to the Hamiltons Hideaway stash was to actually skip the radio station, find your dad, then go back to three dog and instead of the quest reward being "help find your dad" it'd be the Hamilton Hideaway key.

The "I screwed up the game" feeling you might have had was just you finding out that there was another way of doing quests in an order that lead you around the map.

I agree with this^

Yeah, I'm just a little too OCD about doing quests in scripted order. Heck I typically do TES games in a set pattern of Fighters guild, Thieves guild, Mages guild, Assassins guild, and then the main quest. With FO3 I really liked wandering around aimlessly until I realized I cut a few corners. I also had the thought about locking quests dungeons and areas with keys or codes, but it might be too irksome to people to find many things closed. Another trick could be to just have doors that don't look like they open till the quest is triggered and since FO3 & FONV both had plenty of doors that don't open it wouldn't be a completely noticeable hindrance.