Personally, no.
But considering the character goes "My baby! My baby!" at anything remotely related to the main quest line, it is pretty hard to justify ignoring it.

So i found most comfortable to play the game with the character i envision as a psychopath, and the "My baby! My baby!" part a well rehearsed act to gain sympathy and favors from the clueless wastelanders

A big part of the reason why i don't even have F4 installed, by the way. You should remember your level of writing, and not attempt the clearly impossible, BGS.

Care to elaborate on how it's a knock off of New Vegas?

It borrows a lot more heavily from Fallout 3 if you ask me.

Every Fallout game: Go on a quest to find a thing, get mixed up in the fate of the Wasteland after finding the thing.

Could have all been a nightmarish dream while I was thawing out and REM stages came about. Still was confusing, wife dead, infant gone, and no idea what time it is. I eventually did make it to the institute, but the reasons were more external than internal. Still haven't taken a side yet, cause no one is really on mine that much. Piper maybe, Cait is questionable, and Curie.... I,m probably just her science project...... The minutemen seem to want my help, more than to help me, everyone else is too busy just surviving, while trying to force their own warped principles to the head of the class.

I like the story better than FO3, but mostly the game encourages living your own head canon, which is what I really like about open world games.

I'm more referring to the specifics of looking for a family member (it's just a generational flip this time) and the Brotherhood of Steel trying to solve all its problems with a giant stompy robot.

Yeah, it must have gotten moved. I'm pretty sure it was in general. Unless I just wasn't paying attention and thought it was in general.

To do list:

- take ninja 2 at level 16

- get Overseer's Guardian

- remember to get sneak 4 at level 23

- plant water purifiers at Sanctuary

- unlock Ballistic Weave at Railroad

- get at least 3 settlements for the economy

- remember to get lone wanderer 3 at level 40

- dress my settlers in armor

.

.

.

- farm the Glowing Sea at level 50 for legendaries

- complete adding points to charisma and int at level 80

- start a new char cause my char is too op

Did I miss something ? Oh yes, there was a son somewhere, what was his name again ?

Forget which youtube video it was, but one of them asked the question "Who is Shaun?" At least it is not as bad as having to find Zombrex in Dead Rising 2 every 24 hours or your kid dies. If you want to play Settlement for years, then you can. It is no like your son is going anywhere.

Yeah, this started in General and got moved.

True, but what ultimately matters to me is specific moments and story beats. You can talk about general things like the parent/child dynamic, finding a GECK, hunting down the man what wronged you, or the Enclave using Modified FEV; but compare the quests one to one and the stories are pretty unique. Bear in mind I haven't actually played to the end of the Brotherhood questline yet, so I don't know how Fallout 3y it is - but there are worthwhile differences in how it gets brought online and what the Institute can do with it.

As a player, I personally was eager what happened to Shaun, but I realized, as in any other game, rushing through storyline won't do you good. The game will be boring, you'll miss a bunch of fun, and you wouldn't know the bigger story surrounding your game.

Well, even if it's not shown, the gaping gunshot wound in the spouse sort of suggests that it really was NOT "just a dream".

I was expecting him to be a ghoul or a super mutant. That was probably some theory I read before the game was out.

That would be a creepy and sad existence. A 200 year old ghoul baby has to be a sadder existence than a kid stuck in a fridge for 200 years.

It's nice to see the varied comments and thoughts on this subject. I initially brought this subject up as I found it odd that my dialog choices were so concerned about him and where he was but I wasn't. As I walked out of the vault and saw my hometown in ruins, I assumed all that I knew was gone.


I hadn't noticed anyone else bring this up so I was curious. From the very beginning I was looking for something that I didn't even think existed, or hate to say...cared about as again, I felt that was 200 years ago.


As has been mentioned, I can see the point that it also could have only been a couple of years. Everybody has their own thoughts, feelings and ideals that drive them. Finding him wasn't mine however having the mindset that it could of been more recent is a bit more appealing and easier to digest.

i got side-tracked when timmy fell in the well, and blake lost his wife/daughter/dog. but yeah, finding my son steve was a priority.

One of the issues with the game is that this task seems important from the character's perspective, but not the PLAYER'S perspective. We don't have any emotional connection with shaun as it's not developed. Other games have more of an emotional weight since you spend time getting to know a certain character which has a greater chance of getting the player invested. I mean look at games such as The Last of Us, Tell Tale's Walking Dead, heck Even games like Mass Effect where you may get attached to certain characters because of how they are written and portrayed. It's not surprising that many players find themselves in no particular rush to find shaun, and in some cases forget he's even a plot device. It doesn't help that many players probably saw "the big reveal" a mile away.

I think there should have been a lot more emphasis on the Pre-War world. Have you do character creation at your wedding or something, skip to you buying your house, bringing your kid home, etc. Just a couple small vignettes to give a greater sense of attachment to the Old World and your family in particular.

Say what you want about Fallout 3, I think the opening before you become things go to hell is one of the best parts of the game, and actually gave me an investment in James. He was a person that both me and the character cared about, so making a B-line to him made sense. Shaun starts out as a maguffin. A plot device that's important to the character, but not necessarily the player, as there isn't enough time to make the player as invested in his return as the character clearly is. Nor is there a way to lessen the character's attachment to the child, creating a bit of an incongruity.

Yes, those entries and the skeletons tells you that the vault went down long time ago - but the fresh looking corpses in the cryochambers tells you that the kidnapping must have been recently ( which turn out to be wrong ). That is why I thing Beth cheated here for the sake of the story twist

1st run through, strung it out.

2nd run through, who's Shaun?

If you look at the corpses, they seem pretty frozen. They weren't frozen in a way that would keep them alive like they were originally, but there's lots of ice and what not on their bodies, and the pods themselves all look like they're still at extremely cold temperatures. The low temperature, combined with being in an air tight chamber like that, would slow down and prevent decay.

I did actually spend more time than probably expected around the tutorial area (and some time in front of the mirror, too) so Nora really grew on me. I'm a family person, so I could emphasize with the situation rather quickly; even though I understand just as well why so many were left unbothered. Well, the fact that her default appearance and expression did something for me right off the bat somehow helped, too. To the point where I don't romance anyone, because it just seems totally out of place in my head canon.

My point being, while I did want to find Shaun, from the start it was more about vengefully finding out whatever they did to him, rather than retrieving my infant son alive and well. I was rather bothered over the course of the game, especially because these things were set in stone on the other hand, how little my character cares about his murdered wife. You can sneer at Kelogg, you can tell the horny Ghoul lady as a lame excuse. Lastly, you can confront "Father" with one clause about it briefly as you rant about how bad Kelogg is, and then never bring it up to him ever again.

Personally I decided at this moment that I had lost two people forever. We debate over how human synths deserve to be considered, but I have no idea what makes this guy my son by the same margin.

I agree on that...son Shaun is something I'd get in trouble for saying.

Says a lot for nurture over nature...bred a monster.

I really didn't care, I was not emotionally invested in finding the brat, thankfully I finished the first playthrough to see what the MQ had in store and now I can ignore it(or attempt with everyone shoving it down my throat) and play my characters.

At least with James in FO3 they took time to build up that connection, here I just rolled my eyes when they killed the spouse(I only knew them for a few minutes) and sighed when they stole Shaun.

I've often been accused to be overly melodramatic about this (much like the game I reckon), but since I read this a lot by basically 90% of the reviews, and I ask myself "Any random woman desperately screaming & struggling to clutch her baby and just getting shot like a dog, means nothing to you?"

I was going crazy in that pod to do something about it, regardless of the nature of my relationship really.