Ever since I started playing this and found out that your character not only has a horrible, commanders shepardesque, voice but they also force this good guy family (wo)man back story down your throat, I have wanted to get my severe sense of disappointment off my chest. I loved Fallout 3 because I could define my character they way I wanted as I played and could be as good, or evil as I wanted. I also did not have to listen to some generic hero voice which is as bad, if not worse, than the commander Shepard voice which is one of the reasons why I despise mass effect.

I was also very disappointed about them getting rid of the morality system but this is probably related to their need to give the bland backstory for the player character.

I do not know if there is already another thread that deals with these issues but was frankly too impatient to look.

Fallout isn't like Elder Scrolls.

The heroes have always had defined backstories.

The Vault Dweller
Chosen One
Lone Wanderer
Courier

and so on.

Yeah, you and me both. I wouldn't say I despise it, im certainly able to work around it, but I would prefer if this remained a Fallout 4 thing and in future TES or Fallout or whatever games Bethesda decides to make this isn't continued. You touched on a lot of the points as to why, I feel like I have less control in creating my character than I did in Fallout 3, which is where I previously felt the most restricted.

Not much you can define backstory wise with a 17 year old that spent most of their life in a a vault lol

Like Charlemagne said, fallout protagonists have always had defined back stories. I don't know why people pretend otherwise.

Just wanted to point out that Courier is an Occupation, not a Backstory. Aside from the fact that the Courier and Ulysses crossed paths at some point, and that the Courier did some odd jobs for the NCR, you know literally nothing about the Courier life.

The Courier is the closest one and even then, you can't do quite a few backstories because it begins with you as a Postman.

I haven't tried playing as an evil character yet, so I have no idea what it's like, or if it's even possible within the confines of the voice acting system.

I've played the game for 30 hours now, and I don't have a huge problem with it in general. The one time I DID have a problem was right off the bat. The idea that any realistic human being would:

1. bear firsthand witness to a nuclear mushroom cloud and the end of the world,

2. stagger into a cryogenic pod and get frozen for ~200 years,

3. watch his wife get MURDERED and his son get KIDNAPPED, right in front of his eyes,

4. emerge into a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with giant mutant cockroaches and other monsters,

5. and then, after talking with his robot butler for two minutes, skip merrily down to Concord and start doing quests, tra-lala-lala-lala! oh, hey, what a nice doggy!

...is COMPLETELY UNBELIEVABLE to me. It completely KILLS any semblance of actual humanity on the part of this character and makes everything that follows entirely unbelievable.

They could have fixed it easily too. All they needed was one brief cutscene. After the character talks to Cogsworth, he staggers over to the wall of his house, leans against it, slumps down with his hands covering his face. Fade to black. Fade back in after an indeterminate amount of time has passed, good to go.

You know, something to show some kind of actual representation of human grief and suffering!

Instead, your character doesn't feel like an actual person. He feels like the protagonist of a video game. The fact that he adapts immediately to the Wasteland without so much as a moment of weakness, grieving, or any normal human emotion ruins him. It was a cool idea what they tried to do showing the world pre-armageddon, but it's killed by the poor execution.

I meant to reply to the post about the not being able to get much backstory from being 17 year old vault dweller made by imitenotbecrazy but it apparently did not do it.

Regarding this, I liked it this way. You get to start the game at the beginning of the character's advlt life and define them the way you see fit.

Weird, because I think the game does a pretty good job of giving you ways of reacting to the horror around.

Sarcastic Survivor is a guy who is horrified and appalled by everything but deeply traumatized.

Idealistic Survivor wants to make things better but there's a few voice moments where he shows he's just barely holding it together.

Rage Survivor is well, angry.

It doesn't all come together but there's a theme that's lightly touched on with Cait and Preston where both of them are suicidal but find a new reason to keep on living because of what you do for them.

The Minutemen saved the Sole Survivor, really, because saving them gave him a purpose in life even though his son was probably dead.

But yes, I loved the Cogsworth option, "This isn't happening. It's a nightmare."

Some people liked it, others thought it was absurd to have this teenager doing the things he was doing haha there is no winning with personal preference

Jinx.

They knew most people wouldn't give a crap about Shaun so no need to do any more emotion. We play Fallout to build and shoot and explore, not to cry . The writing does svck but the game is good enough to make up for it.

I actually forgot the Lone Wanderer was really a 19-year-old at some point. I just role-played that you were a citizen of Vault 101 who escaped and that was it.

As for Sole Survivor: Plenty of the dialogue options I've seen shows that he/she is just barely trying to cope with the horrors of the Wasteland. A number of times, I've heard my character say that seeing the world slowly recover from the nuclear war was bringing her some hope, and likely a reason to live and keep going. People like Cait also fill in a void for her so she can be motherly to them. Well, especially Cait as I'm getting the feeling that my character sees herself as Cait's surrogate mother. For once I'm glad there wasn't a "Hug" option as I'm sure she'd deck my character across the jaw for that.

But yeah, there are dialogue options that touch on how Sole Survivor is handling the whole thing.

Apparently I cannot quote anything. Looked at the help but was not helpful. Anyway in response to what Charlemagne said...

I will admit I only played fallout 3 before but from what I have seen titles like the "Lone Wanderer" where just there so the narrator and others could refer to the player character who has a name which cannot be said out loud.

If they don't do this same thing with the voice and backstory in the next Elder Scrolls game I will be very pleased to the point of even feeling a bit better about this game. The problem is that I am afraid that this will be a trend which will continue with the next Elder Scrolls.

Sadly, this is my prediction as well. TES VI with voiced protagonists for all the nine races and the dialogue wheel.

His voice seems pretty good, bad idea to force it on players though, that is the price of corporate homogeneity in gaming today though. There is no choice just like what they tell you to like.

It isn't really evil just more of being a A-hole. Maybe that will change at some point but I am doubting it i mean I can totally kill some poor sod in cold blood and all I get is Piper doesn't approve I suppose this would matter if I cared. Does this game even have slavers? I guess it is just me.

The fact is the evil/good karma system is not needed you can play however you like. You can kill pretty much anybody that is not essential to the main quest line.

And the number of people who are absolutely essential is rather small. This game more than any before it TES or FO3/FNV gives you choices and consequences.

The karma was fun because it not only kept track of how evil/good you were, but also created a moral reputation for the character, mostly through the 3Dog radio broadcasts but there was a few other places of recognition as well. Personally I loved playing as pure evil which is just not possible anymore. Not only is your character in FO4 a normal, sane person who had a family before you started playing but all the cool moral choices seemed to have been removed.

I hated the whole "Chosen One" backstory in Fallout 2 and the beginning which placed you in a large temple....in California?

That said, I still love that game. I dislike haVing a child and having to search for him but it's the story Beth wanted to chose, I guess.

I enjoyed Fallout 3 more because I could relate better with the story. Fallout 1 probably had the best opening that allowed more freedoms once you found the water chip, and even before then.

I rarely like a forced backstory in a RPG, but Beth has always given us something to work from. Still, I don't even like the fact that there's a main quest that I can put off indefinitely. "Yeah, my kid is totally missing and I have to find him, but first I'm going to spend 3 or 4 game months scouring the Wasteland for hot plates so I can build more turrets for this post-apoc commune franchise I'm setting up all over the Commonwealth".

I wish our backstory was a little less urgent. In FO3, we were essentially abandoned by our father, then forced out into the Wasteland, a blank slate - we could search for Qui-Gin Dad if we wanted, but since he ditched us there was a clear motivation for us to go "Eh, screw him" and just do your own thing.

In FO4, I'd expect the Protag to be hearing crying babies in his fitful sleep - I feel like I'm going in for Worst Parent of the Apocalypse every second that I'm recovering lockets for NPC's and not grabbing them by throat and screaming "A baby! Did you see anyone come thru here with a baby!?".

How much do you know about this character?

Ex military with 1 child.

Happens in every open world RPG I can think of. Hazard of the genre.

No, there are no slavers in this game - I seriously wonder why though. I suspect to avoid any form of negative response and appeal to a more PG crowd

That svcks for you.

Also, nothing in the backstory provided says that you are a 'good guy'.