EDIT: So, I was gone for most of the day after I posted and was surprised by how popular this topic got. I'm glad everyone is discussing this, aside from a few people who are being surprisingly rude (but that's the internet I guess). A few points I'd like to mention.

1. I'm ok with a pre-defined backstory, to an extent. I just think the line has to be drawn somewhere. 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.

2. To those saying I'm not a good roleplayer if I can't work around having a family, and to Norgrim, who implied I'm "childish" for not wanting to be a family-man: It's not that I can't work around it, only that I'd rather not have to if given the choice. Someone earlier brought up my teenage baseball-player character, who fights evil with his rusty baseball bat, and claimed he is still a viable character in Fallout 4, meaning he'd be a teenage father fresh out of high school who for some reason has his own house. Again, I could work around that, but it's still a bit of a stretch. My psychotic anarchist cannibal has no choice but to start off as someone who at least pretends to love his family and child. Someone earlier stated "he could be a con artist!", but you're forcing my character to be a subtle and calculating criminal when he would rather set a suburban neighborhood on fire than even pretend to raise a family in one. I honestly don't understand how anyone can say that this forced family doesn't limit opportunities to create our own characters, at least slightly.

3. I have a major concern about the voiced character and the mass effect style dialogue trees. Here's a quote from someone who brought this up earlier:

Obviously this is hyperbole, but it raises an important potential issue. Now I may be acting a bit alarmist here, but what do you guys think? How will all of the perk-related dialogue fit in? How do we deal with the fact that we're not seeing the entirety of our dialogue choices, only vague topics? Note, in the demo, when the player chooses the "get food" option, and yet instead of asking for food, the character gives a completely different response than what "get food" would imply. Things like this happen all the time in Bioware games, sometimes forcing me to reload because I viciously insulted a character I thought I was going to be playfully teasing. Having a voiced character also means a forced delivery of each line that may or may not fit your character's personality. This, more than anything, makes me nervous about Fallout 4.

Hopefully I addressed most of the questions people had for me, so let's continue this discussion.

It's not more determined than other fallout games... In F1 you are living in a Vault and you are forced to help your Vault. If you don't do so... game over. In F2 you are forced to be a tribal descedent of the chracter of F1. You couldn't play a civilisated character.

In F4 you are a pre-war guy who was married and had a child... but this don't mean you are hetero. There could be many reasons for this.

I completely agree. I don't make characters quite to the same extremes as you do, but mine are enough so much that being forced into playing as a normal, married woman with a child will completely go against any role-playing that I can do short of pretending it was all a dream.

I don't think this sort of storytelling fits Fallout any more than having voiced dialogue and a chat wheel with only 4 options. I was incredibly hyped after the initial trailer now it's pretty much evaporated. I honestly will not be getting the game if it turns out the way it seems like it's going to.

In NV you were a courier who was shot in the head, and you came from a pre-determined town, having met characters that feature in the game later.

FO3 you were the son of a scientist who had to chase him around the wastes meeting people who knew you.

All the P.C. have been pre-determined to a point.

Even Skyrim to some degree from the start, and then you were forced to become Dragon boy....

Meh, I'll play him however I want. Anything I want to do that doesn't fit his having a family two centuries ago will be written off as the effects of 'cryofreeze psychosis' or something.

There was so little backstory given about the character that it doesn't even matter that much. I don't see the issue, and to be honest, there is less backstory here than in the last Fallout games. Who you were before you entered the Vault goes out the door when you exit the Vault.

As the old saying goes: "Mods. Mods save everything."

As long as the story is good, unlikely, I see no problem. Though it is nice to know I can simply use modifications to not have to deal with this issue from the get go. It will get annoying fast to be generic Amerikan who woke up & noticed the world went down the [censored]ter.

Pretty much this. As someone who liked the intro for FO3, I can see why alternate start mods are so popular for Bethesda games and very much expect to see one for FO4.

I really think people are looking at this the wrong way. So what if you start off in a nice suburb with a wife and baby? We know nothing of your past before that point. Maybe he/she was a part of the rough crowd before? A gang member as a young advlt or a mobster who is now under protective services and was relocated? Maybe he is gay but that time of history wasnt accepting of it or he just never realized it.

I see it as an hourglass, with the opening sequence being the neck where before and after are wide open for your imagination. Dont limit yourselves.

The pre-defined character is the main reason I haven't pre-ordered the game. As it stands now, I am not sure if I will even buy this game. I might - since that power armor customisation looks cool, but I know it will not become a game that I play again and again with different characters, unless a mod comes along that fixes this thing.

It's the same reason I skipped Witcher 3 - sure it looks cool and is most likely an awesome game, but I am not interested in playng as Geralt. The extent, that the character of Fallout 4 is pre-defiened, seems much lesser, but it is still pre-defined and it's not what I am looking for in an open world RPG. Being able to create all sort of characters is the reason I've played Bethesda games, and I am deeply disappointed that Fallout 4 has gone with a pre-defined voiced main character.

I get the reasoning about it enabling a stronger storyline and more cinematic cut scenes, but that is only sensible if the game itself focuses on delivering a storyline. Fallout 4, however, tries to sell itself as a dynamic open world sandbox that you can explore and influence by your decisions, a game where you can play as any kind of character you can imagine. I feel that it's dishonest to keep telling that player freedom is their number one goal, and yet limit this by imposing a fixed narrative on the game. They should've instead concentrated on creating dynamic narrative environment with emergent storylines. Just let us create whatever kind of character we want, or even play as ourselves if we want, and go discover our destinies in the wastelands. They should've popualted the game with characters with their own agendas and goals and let the story come from how we react to these characters and their actions. That would be a true sandbox.

To be fair, this trend has been going on for a while now, and could be seen in Fallout 3 and Skyrim too. The main plot lines in both games urges you to rush towards to the end with a sense of urgency, traveling through large tracks of land full of all sort of stuff that has nothing to do with the main stroyline. The world, and it's happenigns, often feel detached from the main quest and seem superfluos to the story the game is trying to tell. But in both of those games it was pretty easy to ignore the main quest and whatever characterisation the game tried to impose on you and just go do your own thing. Of all the characters I've played in Fallout 3, Oblivion and Skyrim, only one ever has bothered to do the main questline. All the others have used either alternate starts, or gone their own way as soon as the tutorial has ended, ignored teh maing quest and done their own thing. Some lived their lives as noble heroes and others as vile villains. Some were old and wise, while others were young and rash, but all of them were unique and different from each other and they all lived very different lives.

The pre-defined start in Fallout 4 seems much harder to circumvent. I'm sure an alternate start mod is doable as long as you are willing to never pick up the main quest line with that character. The real issue is how much does the pre-defined background show up during side quests? Remember that leaked script from casting? The main character was talking with someone and noted how they used to have a family, a wife and child. So even if you do an alternate start mod, will it muck the dialogue in all quests and not just the main storyline?

The dialogue system itself is also horribly limiting. I am not a fan of picking from short summaries of intent only to have the character say something that is totally against my vision of how they should act. It just leads to saving before each conversation since you have no idea what kind of response your choices will actually bring about. And personally, I like to mull over my options about response, choose one I think fits the sitaution the best, and then have the person I'm talking with to respond. Immediatley, and not watch a mini movie of my character saying what I just processed interanlly. To me that is slow and immersion breaking dialogue system.

Now, I am aware, that this approach has it's fans. Well good for them, now it seems also Fallout 4 is catering to their wishes, just like every other game. Me? I prefer a silent protagonist and this is one less game that caters to what I look for in a game. So all in all, not at all happy about this direction for Fallout 4.

I don't mind that you have to be a married man with a child. That's cool.

When you come out of the vault and realise that 200 years has passed, that everyone you knew and loved was dead, I think that'd be enough to make you go a tad bonkers. You might become so bitter and twisted at the fact you survived and no one else did that you turn in to a crazed serial killer. You might get so depressed that you become a chem-addled psychotic anarchist. This has already been said in the OP, but for me it's no issue. Nothing a bit of imagination can't solve.

Actually my character fits this bill quite nicely, even in fallout 3 i can just pretend the begging story didn't happen and play a cryogenically frozen U.S. Soldier. The same type of character i also played in FO:NV. I also wrote a basic script for this long ago and certain of my aspects seem to be in the game a little bit, its merely a coincidence though because there are many differences.

Personally, this is something I think I'm going to be able to really sink my teeth into, but it already jives with how I approach my characters in videogame RPGs to begin with. I can see how this might not be popular with players who take a different approach to their characters in these games.

Me, I prefer a videogame give me a bit of structure and leave the rest for me to fill in the gaps, adding details and backstory as the game progresses. I don't usually start out with more than a basic concept and fill in more in my head as I see where the game is leading me and embellish on details as they're provided to me. This is also how I approach my tabletop roleplaying when I'm creating a character for a new campaign - it usually takes a couple of levels to really get a feel for where the character is going and how they fit in with the rest of the party, so I keep my backstory and character concept as loose as possible until the character has had some time to evolve a bit.

I usually get more enjoyment out of working within the limitations - even in a tabletop game I find it inadvisable to create a character with no care for how they'll fit in with the rest of the party. Case in point, in our current D&D campaign the other players decided they all wanted to be a group of travelling performers - I could have rolled my Ranger character as whatever I wanted but felt it would be better if I made a character that would have some reason to have a connection to that group. So instead of the character I'd originally conceived I created a Ranger that served as the carriage driver and logistics manager for the troupe - charting routes to different towns to perform in, and keeping track of our loot and budget. It's been a fun character to play, and something I probably wouldn't have come up with were I not deciding to work within some limitations.

Obviously, though, that's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. I can see where other players might prefer more of a blank canvas to create a character with no ties to whatever the narrative to this game ends up being. Can't say that's a wrong view, just that I have a different opinion on the matter. (It also helps that the basic concept I'd wanted for my Fallout 4 character can fit fairly nicely into the defined origin story to begin with...)

Myself, I'm excited to see how this is going to pan out in-game.

If you haven't figured out by now that all Fallout protagonist have predetermined facts about their back stories you've been playing a different game series.

/thread.

From the moment you leave the vault, play as you wish.

I'm pretty sure that the point of the back story is the child. Why make a baby that looks like the player if the family simply dies off?

But, that doesn't mean you will have a child in the game. Two hundred years have passed. Was the child put in suspended animation too? If so, has he been wakened? When? He could have been revived sixty or seventy years prior to the PC's awakening and be an old man by now. He could have never been frozen and grew up and had kids and grandkids and his grandkids could have grandkids of their own.

The story has something to do with the child, but it could literally be anything.

It is more pre-determined than previous games which is a bit disappointing.

FO1 - you are a vault dweller who has been tasked to retrieve a water chip apart from that your background and characteristics are up to you.

FO2 - you are a descendant of the FO1 protagonist and have been chosen to end the drought for your village and are the chosen one. Everything else is up to you.

FO3 - You were raised in a vault, your mum is dead and after a certain age your dad left the vault which forced you out and to help track him down. Probably the most set background until FO4.

FNV - you are a courier who has been shot in a head for what you were carrying. Apart from that you can decided everything else (bit more limited with Lonesome Road as your character has visited a certain town before).

FO4 - your character lived pre-war with a spouse and child, you made it into a vault and survived while apparently they didn't.

Depending on the rest of the vault sequence and what the narrative is it could be the most pre-determined but I'm expecting something similar to FO3 in terms of limitations which is disappointing but I'll still play it.

I don't think you read my whole post. I addressed the amount of backstory given in previous games specifically. I'm also not talking about the hetero / homosixual argument. I barely referenced that at all.

I like the preset background FO4 has. Fits me and my character nicely.

Again, two people who didn't seem to read my whole post, or at least not address any of the points I made, so I'll do it again:

Fallout 3 restricted you to a basic backstory, but you could flesh it out as you went along. Yeah, you were raised in a vault and your dad worked on Project Purity, but after that your character is pretty much a blank slate and you can fill in the blanks with your own roleplaying. New Vegas had even less backstory. Your character had a job as a courier, going back and forth between the Mojave and the NCR and got shot. Anything more can be determined by the player, either using your imagination, or with dialogue options. Lonesome Road was a good example of this, where they took a very basic backstory and allowed the player to fill in the blanks by explaining his motivations, his interpretation of his past, and his reasons for siding with who he's siding with.

Now, some may say [the Fallout 4 protagonist] still a blank slate in a way, that beyond his family we can make him whomever we want. That's true, but only to a point. The previous games treaded a fine line between having a basic backstory and letting you fill in the blanks. No amount of roleplaying and no amount of mods will make half the characters I play make sense in this game. My psychotic anarchist whose spent his whole life getting into crazy situations and causing destruction wherever he goes, just barely lucking out and surviving day to day, who would sooner nuke a city than raise a family is forced to start out as a seemingly loving father. My teenage baseball athlete, who started as the MVP in his vault's team, and now roams the Wasteland beating the [censored] out of villains with his spiked bat, is now forced to have a wife and kids...somehow. Don't even get me started on how little sense my 10 year old genius kid makes.

I'm glad it fits your character, but can you imagine how it may be a little frustrating for others whose character it doesn't fit?

Those few minutes of starting gameplay shown to this point are SO brief, not sure how anyone can make a determination at this point that it will or won't fit with how you like to play RPGs in general, and FO in particular. Personally, I'm putting my trust in the devs that they'll be making the right decisions about which decisions to make or not make "for us."

Could you explain how a father with a wife could possibly fit my teenage character? Or my psychotic anarchist criminal who eats people? Sure, there are workarounds to make this make sense. Maybe my teenage character was a teen father who for some reason had his own house, maybe my psychotic anarchist was a totally normal person who went insane after he was seperated from his family, but the fact remains that this narrows our ability to roleplay in a way that wasn't present before. I'm fine with being some vault dweller who awakes 200 years later. I'm not ok with being forced to have a pre-determined family and lifestyle.

How did you play as a 10-year-old weakling super genius in NV? Little chance that character would gain employment as a courier across a nuke-wasted, radiated-psycho-infested desert.

Preset characters will always restricts things everytime. We Have wiggle room with this character much like Fallout 3 but not as much.