So how long do you guys reckon we will spend in the old world before the events of the bomb?

Just the tutorial really. You create your character (in the morning when you wake up and go to the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror), get breakfast/look around the house, play with your baby, meet the vault tec salesman, the news reports the bombs falling, run to the vault, bombs fall, somehow you get in, wake up 200 years later.

There will probably be a bit more tutorial in the post-war era considering you don't get your pipboy until you are about to leave the vault

My estimation based on previous Beth Games, probably around 20 minutes, maybe 5 if you speed run it. It won't be super long though, which is fine.

5 minutes.. No chance to walk around or explore.. just 5 minutes.. See some trees through your window.. That's it.

This is my theory:

? Character customization, naming, and stats picking, including basic moving and selecting controls are in pre-war. It's roughly what we've seen in the demo, give or take a few minutes.

? The VATS and fighting tutorials are in Vault 111.

I guess my hopes for walking round the neighbourhood are down the toilet then.

yes, yes they are lol. But that's okay because that's what the devs want you to feel. Regret and remorse that you will no longer have that ability. They stated that the whole reason they are even giving you a glimpse of pre-war life is to make you miss it when it's taken away from you. It will make for better story telling

I think we are supposed to go to the 'event' that night and give our speech. Some cut scenes there to maybe elude to what VT is really doing in the vault. The next day is the bombing. Still I say 10-15 minutes tops with a save/edit spot soon after.

Similar to FO3 I expect.

My guess is, 30 minutes at the most.

What we saw in the e3 demo mainly. Maybe 20 minutes outside the vault and another 20 inside vault 111. I hope we do get the option to skip the pre war and vault 111 sections.

Although I'm sure we will see more pre war mods, due to the pre war assets used in the intro. Maybe even a recreation of the game world in its pre war state

No it's not. Just get out of your house and walk around.

I think there is some pre-war stuff they haven't showed. This link from another thread indicates that the player will be making a speech somewhere: http://cdn2.pcadvisor.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3498996/Fallout_4_script.png

Enough time to appreciate what was lost when the bombs dropped.

Beth wants us to miss those oh so vibrant colors.

I would like it to be similar to Fallout 3. Maybe hop around a few years in a few different scenarios up until the moment the bomb drops. But even if everything that happens in the introduction sequence is during the day the bombs fall I won't be disappointed either.

I just hope that Vault 111's social experiment is a bit more interesting than vault 101's. Don't get me wrong, it was still fun but it was a rather bland social experiment compared to the others.

Well it would make sense that Vault 101s experiment was rather bland since, in essence, the only difference from it and a control Vault as that it was never meant to open and that the Overseer was given more power than usual.

Every other non-control vault that we know of has failed too, except for Vault 21.

As others stated, the usual toturail time. Then once your a little ways into the story and travel back in time with the Institutes time machine youll spend another couple hours there. Clearly they want to use those art assets more than for the hour or less toturail, so Ive just announced time travel is Fallout 4s gimmick for the story. Youve heard it here first folks. Time Travel!!! (Insert jazz hands)

I've heard theres more than just that before you wake up in a nuked boston..
It'd kinda make sence, building up the sence you lost something.. But then again, they claimed something similar to this with your character growing up with a vault, i recall something like this in an article for fallout 3; "all of a sudden you wake up. Your dad is gone and you're forced to leave the vault or die - your whole way of life is changed. Theres that sence of growing up with the character and loosing everything"
It really didnt though.. It was a few flashes of *set time later*.. Games n e v e r quite live up to story expectations because at the end of the day - we know its a game. the player will never really feel any emotional ties to loosing an ingame wife or child, especially given the acclaimed companion relationship system.

In all fairness, an extended pre war segment would be pointless.
What kind of player is going to miss that tranquility over the actual game?
"Weapon crafting, settlement building and badass tank like power armour!?!?! The apocolypse svcks, i miss my wife :(:(:("

I don't know, in all the interviews the developers seemed to want to emphasize hoe much they wanted to attach you to the pre-war world. That way the apocalpyse will seem that much more emotionally resonant.

Literally no way to engage players THAT much though because - we know its not real - you can roleplay it, yeah. But you still know theres no real ties to the character you play as.. game depth and stuff like this seems to get over hyped..
Yeah, they want to make you feel like you lost something. And you will realise the fact your character has but you will never feel asif youve lost something yourself - if anything in a post apocolyptic setting youve gained alot.

When fallout 3 was getting hype they implied something similar due to the fact youre raised in a tranquil vault then -- all of a sudden -- your dad runs away from you and you blindly head on into a world you know nothing about to try find him

Dont get me wrong, i felt very connected to karmic choices like murdering a beggar or saving a slave and seeing the characters dad at project purity was a special moment in the game but i never felt THAT connected or related to my character. You dont really feel sad when his dad dies, its merely a turn in the plot.


Cynical, i know.. But again - games never quite live up to hype. Im excited for fallout 4 but more for the gameplay aspects. Having a back story is cool - but i want to shape a new future for my character in this strange, new world i awake to. Not sit crying about his past

Worked for the courier. Not again, though

Yeah, it's going to be rather difficult for me to miss the pre-War world.

Howard/Nora: "Gee, I really miss my old life where I just sat around in a home doing nothing all day.."

Me: "Now that we're in the actual game, let's start kicking some ass!!"

There's that disconnect, same that was felt in Fallout 3. Just because our character might miss the old days doesn't mean we will. Some, if not most of us playing Fallout 3 likely forgot about dear old Dad the minute we stepped out of Vault 101 for the first time.

Not even (I think). I would expect a couple minutes of spousal banter ~to finalize the PC and introduce Cogsworth and the baby, sign the Vault-Tec forms, then disaster, and a run for the vault. My [totally out of the loop] guess would be that the PC gets ushered into the cryopods, and awakes Idiocracy style... though in the vault; with an option to undo absolutely everything leading up to that point, before leaving the vault.... just after the reveal of the mcguffin.

*Less likely, but not impossible, is that the option to undo it all comes before the run to the vault, but I think that might screw up the pacing.

I think it would be very odd and a mistake if FO4 starts out like Postal 2; with a trip to the store for milk, and/or other errands first. I consider any showing of the pre-war world a mistake, except as old recordings... It should have remained a pre-war relic of days past ~and never shown in-game ever in the series. Showing it immediately defines it, and makes it less of a fascination.

Vault 15, which spawned the Vipers, Jackals, Khans, and the NCR, wasn't a control vault, and it didn't fail.

At least not in the sense that everyone in it died.

I don't think the vault that the New Canaan Mormons came from was a control vault either.

My only sadness is that we wont get to see a new version of the Tunnel Snakes. There will be no Butch Deloria, no Wally Mack. We will be the sole survivor of a dead vault!