I'm telling you what Todd Howard himself has revealed.

I also do not have any interest in building any elaborate stories behind my characters. Nevertheless, if I'm enjoying an RPG, I start reacting to the game world as if I were in it.

As an example:

In skyrim, once I emerged from the ruins of Helgen out onto the snowy plateau, I looked west and saw the dim outlines of what I would eventually discover was Bleak Falls Barrow. It was just a vague, intriguing structure on the slope of a far away snowcapped peak, and I felt drawn towards it. So I moved forward.

Ya see? That's the key. A good game world svcks you in so that you want to explore, discover and experience it. That's what I mean by 'immersion.'

The voiceovers of player characters, though, ruins that for me. It's actually jarring.

The "main quest" tells the story of a character that had a spouse and child before the war, who escaped death in a vault and apparently slept through the past couple centuries in suspended animation before awakening to the setting of the game. But, in Bethesda games the whole game doesn't center around the main quest ... in fact, it can usually be ignored. Many players choose to play Skyrim, for example, without ever triggering the main quest or ever having their characters discover they are dragonborn. You indicate that you use mods, and you have to know that one mod that's virtually guaranteed is some sort of alternate start mod that will dispense with the background and allow you to play the game as anything you want. Even console users will get to use mods this time around.

I really don't think it's going to be a problem. Enjoy the main story on the first play-through, then use mods to sidestep it on the next and play what you want.

Can't say I like the voiced protagonist thing, though. I'm sure I'll get over it, eventually.

To an extent I agree with you, but it's still a shame that I'd have to sidestep the main quest entirely like this, especially I think the previous games struck a better balance between a blank slate and a pre-made character.

Just like you said, the voice is still going to throw me off though.

There are a lot of roles within the military. not all of them are Combat focused. There are Doctors, Drivers, "Desk Jockeys," Basically, anything that's in the civilian world, it exists in some form in the military. The Military training might just serve as knowing how to use 200 year-old guns and how to make new guns out of them.

A lot of people don't want to roleplay as a military man at all. Now it's been decided for us. Like I said, don't have a problem with a pre-determined backstory to a point, but I preferred having something between a blank slate and a pre-determined character like in Fallout 3 than having my family, lifestyle, voice, AND profession chosen for me, which will remain the same in every playthrough.

No, it's what we've come to expect from TES games. Bethesda has only done one Fallout game to date, and it had a predetermined character with a far more set-in-stone backstory than any TES protagonist. It was handled completely differently from all their other RPGs in this regard, and now that this one is being handled the same way, people are freaking out. I don't get it. It's completely in line with the trend they have set.

I agree on the voice, but for a different reason. Frankly, I just don't think they can give Mr/Mrs. 111 that much dialogue and have the voice acting be satisfactory.

Maybe he just did his two-four years minimum as an enlisted 18 year old and go out at 21. It was a time of World War III after all. Or maybe he was a Career man with over 20 years of Experience. Maybe he was drafted, maybe he Volunteered. Length of Duty, Role, and Willingness to Participate are all in your hands.

I suspect that part of the problem is gamesas remained silent for too long, allowing people to get their own ideas of what Fallout 4 would be about set in stone in their own minds....now that they have unveiled what we are actually getting, they are upset that it differs from their own vision. I was less than thrilled with Skyrim's changes from Oblivion, but at least so far FO4 looks to be a potentially epic game.

What if... now hear me out... your past is a lie.... what if Vault 111 experiment had to do with memory alteration? Sure maybe you were frozen for two centuries before being thawed out and finding yourself the sole survivor of Vault 111... or maybe that's what they want you to think.

But what if...y'know...the past is NOT a lie? And everything in the tutorial actually happened?

Then learn to DEAL WITH. Or substitute reality for my lie.

Certainly it was easier to RP a teenager in FO3--at the expense of being harder to RP an older character. It's not so much that 4 is more limiting, but that the limits are different. I'm personally pleased at not being pushed to play yet another young protagonist.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own." I love Mythbusters. Bolded reminds me of them (I heard the quote from them).

Just a quick question, but where are people getting the military man theory from? Was it implied somewhere?

We do know, you're just grasping at straws. Codsworth recognizes you, you recognize Codsworth. There isn't any "we don't know" nonsense.

I actually really liked Adam Jensen's VO. It was tough, gritty, and coarse, but it also had audible tones of passion, especially when he was talking to his (ex?) girlfriend. It was certainly a step up from the first Deus Ex, but even that VO made me smile quite a bit because of how cheesy yet funny it was.

I thought about saying "or substitute reality my own." but I don't actually mind the predetermined back story.

Maybe it was a nightmare you have as you're being thawed out and you wake to find the spouse and baby's pods empty and everyone else long dead. Imagine the tears when some people realize they are going to have to go looking for them.

And maybe it wasn't. No information either way.

Hence the "maybe". The blast would have killed everyone at the door, yet the PC is alive somehow and I doubt the husband would have left the wife and baby topside to die to save himself.....if offered a place inside he would have given it up to them, or at least the baby.

He has 13,000 lines of dialogue. New Vegas had 65,000 written lines of dialogue (including the player options if I remember right). So 13,000 lines is not few. They take 2 years for the recordings.

Pluses are you should get a tighter story. Minuses are you're playing a (semi) predefined character.

Although, in case anyone forgets, you were pigeonholed as a courier in NV and it worked.

What people seem to be missing is the difference between FO3/FO:NVs pre-determined features and FO4s.

In FO3, all that was pre-determined was out of your character's hands; its personality, its character was left alone (well, limiting you to "can live with other people" personalities).

In FO:NV, all that was pre-determined was that you were delivering a package, and got shot. Everything else was left alone (And Grant, or whatever his name is, from the last DLC (which was terrible), was a liar.)

In FO4, what is determined is.. quite a lot more. You're a person that married, had a child, and staid with your family, in your house, where you had a robot butler. That says a lot about a person.

Oh, and the mods that would fix this? They've been practically ruined by voice-over & terrible conversational UI.

Bethesda should just accept that their stories are mostly uninteresting. They should stick to fantastic world-building, and leave the story-telling to us.

Exactly. People seem to be missing this. There's objectively more being determined in 4 than in 3 or New Vegas.

I believe it was 13,000 voiced protagonist lines in total. Half of those would be the woman's and half, the man's. Maybe I'm wrong. Regardless, it's not quantity I'm worried about, but the quality. I've never played a game with a voiced protagonist that was as customizable as a Fallout one (with stats that determine who we are) that didn't massively disappoint me. Bioware is the closest thing I know of that exists, and I've hated it in every game of theirs that I've played (try play of Inquisition without ending up regularly sounding like a snarky dike or a childish whiner. I dare you). You get 3-4 words per choice, and then the character says something that may or may not be at all aligned with what you had in your head. Maybe I gave my guy high charisma or low intelligence. I'd like the way he speaks to reflect that, and right now I don't see that happening. The one conversation I have seen had something along the lines of "Go get food." as the option, and "What?! Why would I want f- ... forget it. Yeah, go get me some food." as the actual dialogue. That's exactly what I meant. If that is representative of the game's dialogue as a whole, then I can see a lot of points where they say something completely unlike the character we have designed them to be.

Well, we've reached 200 posts. As I recall from my times on the forum, that means this thread has reached its post limit. If you guys want to keep discussing this, I've already created a new thread. See you guys there.