Everyone is so far ahead of me, it's actually great because I get my questions answered pretty quickly.

I'm enjoying the game a lot but I see that others came out of the vault as male characters. I (in real life a male) came out female...No problem. I don't think it really matters.

But, I and Piper have become "lovers" and things are good. I enjoy her company...Anyway, after several rounds of clearing ghouls or raiders from one settlement after another, repeatedly,

I have been asked to join the "brotherhood."

Is this how the game progresses, beyond the constant settlement assistance to something a bit different? Is it necessary? Will I have to give up Piper if I join? Or is there no difference at all in the gameplay? It does get a bit tedious at times. I have read, in other posts, about factions, which I have yet to encounter (I'm at level 32 or so).

Just curious as to how things progress or ratchet up.

Thanks!

There are 4 main factions in the game. You join one of them to progress the main quest. You don't have to join one early on, in fact it might limit you later if you wanted to work for the other faction. I think you can do some things with each faction to get to know them before you decide which one you want.

So, just keep the invite in mind as you play, then once you decide what Faction you want to support, then you can join them.

Or, make a forked save (new save slot) then do the Brotherhood stuff. Then go back to before you forked the save and take that character through one of the other factions.

You can be a member of all four factions at one time. There will come a time, as you progress through each factions quest line, that you have to decide if going forward with that faction is worth the cost of turning another faction into an enemy. You will be warned when you reach this point via a pop up in game.

My solution to the issue was to make four different characters and each one would join one faction and run their quests to the ending. To keep them straight I gave each one a name that started with the first letter of the faction they were a member of. For example, for The Minutemen I named my character Megan.

Or you could just get to a point where you have to choose on one character and just reload that save and go a different route the next time. Be sure to write down the save name and how much time is displayed so you get the correct save when it comes time to load it again. That is my one beef with Bethesda and saves, you can't rename them to keep them straight when you want to find one certain save.

During the character creation scene, you can switch between male and female. Then, at the end, when you are done creating your character, the one that is in front of the mirror will be the one you will play.

And yes, you can join all the factions, get more quests that way and you will meet more companions that way as well. Piper can still follow you where ever your road may take you!

Have fun and be careful out there!!

As has been written in the thread you can assist the Brotherhood without making a final commitment:

So you can go along with the Brotherhood and do some of their quests.

You can go along with some other factions at the same time and do some of their quests.

Personally I think the game encourages you to get to know the factions by talking to the faction npc and doing some of the quests they offer.

That's how I played the quest line.

Instead of playing all possible endings i just followed my personal gut feeling.

This affects the way you respond to some of the dialogue options and leads you to one of the endings.

In my mind i put the settlers first.

Anyway if my memory serves me correctly and you want to do a technical playthrough, I have seen a thread in this subforum that details how far you can go with all the possible faction quests before your destiny is decided.

In other words how to do the maximum number of faction quests in one play-through.

For me the point of no return started when I was given a particular faction quest but refused to finish it and broke cover, as it were, because i couldn't stomach what i was asked to do.

I remember in Oblivion (and maybe Skyrim) I could name savegames by using the "savegame (insert name)" console command, and it'll save the game under that name. I haven't been able to get that to work with FO4, though. The saves do appear in my computer, but I can't seem to access them from the Load/Save menu. It is annoying, I agree...

I did this as well. My character's last name begins with the first letter of the faction. The "best" solution ending character's last name begins with "H" for happy. Glad to see I'm not the only person who has to use tools and tricks to keep the characters straight.

Probably because Fallout 4 now organizes saves by character. I think when you get the option to select a character in the load menu, you can select "Show All Characters" and that should show your named saves.

All companions you gather can be placed in any settlement you want, just fasttravel together with them (safe way to not loose them on the way) to the wanted settlement and dismiss them. Some companions only availbable if you join certain faction, like Danse (BoS), Deacon (RR) and X6 88 (The Institute). By joining one faction doesn't make you hostiles to the other ones. The game will tell you what kind of quests (MQ lines) whitch have no point of return, meaning one or more factions will turn hostiles if you progress the mainquest. The BoS and The Institute do have some nice radiant quests, so stay friendly you may earn alot of xp doing quests. MM and RR also have some nice quests to do.

You cannot travel to The Institute with any companions but X6 88. All companions will give you boost to your character if they like you very much (romance options or be best friends forever). The easy way to be find all the factions HQ, follow the MM questlines. BoS have their HQ at Cambridge police station. Some companions likes you when you do bad stuffs and some companions dislike any bad behaviour. How to make friends with all factions at the same timehttp://www.gamesas.com/topic/1581396-how-to-make-friends-with-all-factions-at-the-same-time/, to be able to do most quests as possible before you want to finish the MQ. By finish the MQ or doing quests of no point of return may reduce the options to gather companions and getting quests from certain factions.

Save the game often and if you did not like the way things happens, just reload. Many players also restart the game, just to see if things could be done differently or they forgot something that should be doner earlier. What I did before I started to play, read about all the quests (wikis) and info about all the companions so I knew what have to be done. That way I did not missed anything.

Cheers,

-Klevs