Is it not obvious?

I thought that'd be rather clear.

My idea of a middle ground is Fallout 3. You're a kid who grew up in a vault and had a scientist father. Very simple,and you can build a lot around that. I feel like forcing me to be a parent who seemingly loves his family and settled down with a house of our own is a bit too much. It's just like you said, a lot of the characters I like to make CANNOT work without obscene levels of mental gymnastics.

Was not my intention to be rude, I was just asking is it not rather obvious who the special snowflakes are in this thread.

I will only say this... the limit to what you can imagine about role play is up to you. There are no limits to imagination, and looking it from another perspective, every character everywhere had a background story that helped forged who we are at a determined point.

So if you want to imagen the impact it had such lose and all the things that mentslly challenge a person kwnowing his been out for 200 years could cause him to go bannanuts and turn into a cold killer. Or you can say he decided to make things right just like they were in honor to his 200year old mentality. You can decided never to fsll in love again due to fesr of another lose......

I can't help thinking that creating complicated backstories and all for your character are possibly going to be a waste of time.

This prewar flashback stuff with our family has a whiff of Harkness about it, if you know what I mean. The child can be important because if he survives somehow he might be able to prove you died 200 years ago.

I will only say this... the limit to what you can imagine about role play is up to you. There are no limits to imagination, and looking it from another perspective, every character everywhere had a background story that helped forged who we are at a determined point.

So if you want to imagen the impact it had such lose and all the things that mentslly challenge a person kwnowing his been out for 200 years could cause him to go bannanuts and turn into a cold killer. Or you can say he decided to make things right just like they were in honor to his 200year old mentality. You can decided never to fsll in love again due to fesr of another lose......

It's not just a matter of imagination though. Some characters literally can't fit this backstory. My teenage baseball player can't work within this backstory without some insane mental gymnastics. I'm not against pre-determiend backstories. I'd be fine if you played as a random person who lived before the war and awoke 200 years later, but forcing to be someone whose at least pretending to be a family man, whose settled down with his own house, has a wife and child is a bit much. It's not that I CAN'T roleplay with this, it's that I'd rather not.

I'd rather not roleplay as american,

I'd rather roleplay as an african tribesman who deep inside wants to be japanese.

This game does not cater to me, I demand it be changed.

Hyperbole is fun. Clearly you're not listening, but I'll try one more time.

I'm fine with a predetermined backstory. I just feel as though this backstory is a bit too limiting.

Ok how about this

You live on the planet earth.

I mean that's super restricting right?

I can't be an alien, I can't be a secret saiyan, I can't be in the star wars universe?

Hey hey guess what, "limiting" is subjective.

Clearly you have no desire to actually have a civil discussion with me, so I'm just going to ignore you from now on.

Actually, someone pointed out on Reddit the Sole Survivor might be military. At the beginning, the wife says something about a "Veteran's Ball" and after the PC comments on the Sugar Bombs, you can see a folded up flag on the shelf, which is given to veterans. I wonder if the wife will have an army background as well, or is it just the husband? Met in the army? They didn't show us much of the wife, so we don't know if the husband will have similar comments. But yeah, I guess that little titbit is a bit of backstory for the character.

Though uh, then again, the wife does make a vague/open sort of statement about the veteran's ball (something like "you're gonna kill itat the veterans ball tonight" and it implied both were going) that could be taken anyway - that either of the characters are military now that I think it. So people can either interpret either their character or spouse being in the army.

Regarding the whole pre-determined thing, at first I was a bit salty about it but I think I'm okay with it now. I do get where you're coming from though, OP. I suppose Beth wanted to capture the whole 50s traditional family feel?

If all we have is this trailer and game play to determine ... then it appears out of all the Fallout titles this is the cleanest slate character we have been given.

Unless the pre-war story keeps interjecting itself into your post war experience. Much like the Fo3 main quest did.

However I'm willing to bet they took some cues from since they made that title of how people did not like having to do that linear story line.

And possibly have given the player the ability to skip/ignore what would be called the main quest line.

I'ts already time to let Obsidian make another Fallout. At least we know they won't cut things and dumb it down.

I disagree that it's the cleanest slate we've ever had.

Let me re-post something I stated a bit earlier on the issue:

The difference between Fallout 3's pre-determined story and 4's story is that most people have a childhood of some sort and parents in some form. It's easy to make almost any character imaginable. Not everyone is a parent with a nice house and children, and some characters just don't work very well unless you really want to stretch it. Sure, both games have a somewhat restricting backstory, but one is easier to work around. One has objectively less details than the other. New Vegas has even less restrictions, allowing me to easily use mods to create literally any character I want (A ghoul, a child, a super mutant, etc). 4's story will be a bit more difficult to create mods like this around, because no matter what, you have a spouse and children that are seemingly important to the main plot, so certain character types can't work.

Some characters literally can't fit this backstory. My teenage baseball player can't work within this backstory without some insane mental gymnastics. I'm not against pre-determiend backstories. I'd be fine if you played as a random person who lived before the war and awoke 200 years later, but forcing to be someone whose at least pretending to be a family man, whose settled down with his own house, has a wife and child is a bit much. It's not that I CAN'T roleplay with this, it's that I'd rather not.

That is actually a good point, it seems there is a good chance our character's prewar life is already determined as well. It would make sense with how easily he adapts to the power armor like he has experience with it (i realize power armor training was not a thing in one or two, but basing this off since Bethesda took over)

Suspension of disbelief time. I know all my RPs are only going to start after they leave the vault and I've completely ignored all "backstory." Don't know who's backstory that was, but it wasn't any of my characters.

I sincerly hope this isn't the case. There's a place for games with their own characters, but I play Bethesda games to roleplay a life I want to live in a virtual world. Again, I'm fine with a basic backstory, but this is too much for me to be interested in. I likely wont be purchasing this game until it's on a discount and mods have been released that completely negate all of this.

Didn't one of the 'hoax' rumors say something to the effect that you play the prefab protagonist the first time around but could play anything after that?

While I don't expect that to be true, it would be kind of cool if the game had a built in 'alternate start' feature that allowed you more diversity on subsequent play-throughs.

I've been disappointed too many times to even pretend that would be true, but if it were it would literally solve every single problem I have (other than the limited dialogue options mentioned earlier). I could enjoy Bethesda's story in one save and have my own personalized character in another.

Again, this would never happen though. It's too cool.

I bet even that a lot of characters that could fit the "married with a child" restriction won't work.

I'm almost sure they won't let you play any kind of loveless relationship, which will make playing Renegade Shepard even harder to justify.

Fallout 4 is shaping up to be the most restrictive Bethesda RPG to date, and all of that because they want to compete with EA/Bioware in the dead-horse-yearly-franchise olympics.

Mass Wasteland: Terrible Effect

That's what this game is.

I think you are overlooking a larger issue with character freedom; the voice. While headcanon and a bit of "mental gymnastics" can get you out of a restrictive character background, that voice is gonna be there the entire game. No way I'll be able to play a chem-addict raider, an old mechanic who's seen some [censored], or a sociopath scientist when the voice will always portray a cookie-cutter Male Lead#2245. Even though I am extremely excited about this game this one thing will really change how we play a beth RPG, for the negative I think. Alot of people are saying how Beth are chasing ME or Witcher 3, but the thing is both FO3 and Skyrim sold [censored] gangbusters, like it or not. Bethesda is almost at the Blizzard level of not having to worry too much about marketing because all their games are eaten up and swallowed whole by both media and costumers, and I can't imagine them feeling terribly threatened by either Bioware or CDPR.

I think what's happening is we are seeing Bethesda differentiating their two main franchises, making FO the more story-centric, while retaining the strict sandbox mentality in TES. To do this they are sacrificing some of the more "RPG" qualities of the game. It would make sense, because even though FO is very popular TES is the flagship and I think they are more willing to experiment on FO. I really hope I'm wrong because I'd hate for FO to become another ME but again, I think it would make economic sense.

TL:DR the voiced character is a much bigger problem for RPing

Whose to say your forced into the pre war story being forced upon your post war experience to begin with.

The protag may just be the descendant of the pre war char created.

For every assumption your making , there is atleast a few other possibilities. And from what we know about it ... it is the cleanest slate to date.

But I guess if you want to be caught in your negative nelly loop ... thats your business ... I guess you probably get some enjoyment out of it?

The voiced protag is another issue all together. However ... I see no reason they wouldn't have given option to disable that sound out put individually.

Plus with advances ... we should be able to mod or just effect it player side tweakable. Not a big issue post production side since its been done already.

The issue would have been pre production side before committing the time and assets.