I think they both die for "feels"

I don't think what Bethesda is doing is bad, trying to make the player more invested through emotional ties, but if I had to critique them it would be that they are possibly forcing the player's character to have characteristics that the player doesn't want. I say possibly because for some players such as myself I like the idea of having a family in the game, or they may give you the option of whether they live or die, which while still forcing them in the players history it allows the player to self determine in a major way.

I hope they die personally. A traumatic event like that could cause a major change in a person. Then at least all the complainers (Is it weird that almost every person I've seen constantly complain has an anime related avatar?) can have their roleplay. Aside from that it's also too obvious of a plot point to have the "family reunion" thing happen. Give us a unique story for Fallout 4, not Fallout 3 in reverse, or Post-apocalyptic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GdoXUmeLXw

As far as getting to customize the husband and spouse, that means nothing. It's just trying to be a unique and immersive forum of character creation (and if you recall, Todd specifically mentioned that they want no sliders, so there wasn't really any other way to go about it).

While yes it would be a lot of work to have the baby 50-50 dad and mum, I hope that the furthest it goes is to make you feel attached, like your character made that, so you feel loss when they die (kinda like the reason they say we get to start pre-war)

That's my preferred theory too, that the spawn being modeled after the parents and deciding what the spouse looks like is because if you personalize NPCs you'll feel more attached to them. Basically, you created them so they're "yours" and you feel worse when they get destroyed, because they broke "your" things that you care about because you made them so they belong to you, instead of just killing pre-made NPCs and simply be told you care about them as a matter of fact. Even though besides looks, they *are* just pre-made NPCs who we're supposed to like just because they're "our" family, and you only care because you feel like you created them yourself.

The lack of "have you seen my family?" Question when talking to tunaworths implies we find out what happened to spouse&child while in the vault.

Your spouse and child will come into the story towards the end of the main quest, as this will allow you the freedom to explore as much as you like without being tied down. It will also give you an incentive to strive forwards, as suggested by Brian Delaney during his interview.

Your spouse (who also breaks you out of vault 111 by remotely triggering a system failure) will have been subjected to several years of DNA extraction and other experimentation inside the Institute. As such, they will likely not have long to live when you finally discover them.

Your son will have been genetically enhanced over his lifetime, and will be faced on the battlefield as the game's main protagonist. The twist will be that he actually believes himself to be a synthetic, and you will be tasked with proving otherwise using the Memory Den.

If they are alive at the games beginning, they will no longer be once the epilogue sequence comes to pass. I'll make sure to that...

My guess is that Shaun somehow left the vault around 100 years earlier. Over time he became a cyborg and became the leader of one of the factions - most likely the villain of the game. You meet him as an old man near the end of the main quest (or he is dead but you meet his descendants). (Your spouse is probably dead).

[censored], we literally couldn't even have the cake in Fo3 either. Thanks a lot Andy you big dingus.

That is totally possible, well played.

I hope the sole survivors family is alive.

I want them to die in my arms not to be evil but to allow me to create my story of moving on but the child will probably be live dammit Shaun!!! But I'd like to spouse to die in my arms create a last dramatic moment to say goodbye.

They're both dead because they both obviously have fixed names. They die for plot reasons.

Interestingly, the only real memories Shaun would have of ever being human are during the first six weeks of his life, culminating with the day of the Great War and going into stasis. But due to the way the conscious mind develops, any memories at such an early age would be nothing more than sensory imprints. But the Memory Den could actually be used to properly trigger some of these memories, specifically the scene in the tutorial where we interact with Shaun in his crib, but actually played out from his viewpoint.

This would be all the evidence he needs to confirm that the Institute have been deceiving him his entire life. Cue huge plot twist and turn around of events.

EDIT: changed the 'six years' above so that it correctly reads 'six weeks'. I blame sleep deprivation for that one lol!

You mean "first six months", right? Otherwise, that's a damn small six-year-old!

Um...pretty sure that's not a six year old. Unless Shaun has some sort of genetic condition of which we're unaware of that stunts his growth process.

I want them to be a false memory and never have existed.

Kid is dead.

Spouse is a Ghoul.

our child actually takes the fev virus and mutates into a supermutant and the whole questline revolves around the idea of "can we accept/love our son in his current muteted state?"

Um...that would make me like him waaaay more...

WE GET IT, YOU DON'T LIKE THE FAMILY

I swear, the same people who complained about it three weeks ago still won't stop talking about it.

I'd get used to it, 'cause they'll be complaining about it until Fallout 5 is announced. We're one of the few who don't mind the fact that Sole Survivor has a family.

I think there will be a twist, you will eventually find out that your character is a clone and that the original you, spouse and child are a long time dead and that your memory鈥檚 where implanted so you the clone would be more mentally stable. Like how in blade runner some of the replicants had implanted memory鈥檚 in an experiment to see if they would be more mentally stable.

As bad as it sounds I hope they're dead. Otherwise it's just going to be a rehash of Fallout 3's plot with a little twist.

I hope that they are dead or just not overly important to the main plot once found. I don't want the family to be the focus of the entire game, as that would be too similar to Fallout 3.