You know how you make a player emotionally attached to your characters? By presenting their stories, evolving their personalities by actions they make, showing their imperfections so that a player can relate. It's like the basic principle of storytelling, right?

You know what not to do? Do not just state "Hello, this is your wife, and this is your child, you love them, the 5 minute intro has ended. Now care, care about them...." I don't care about the baby. I couldn't care less about it, there is completely no reason for me to care, except the plot telling me that I should. I am level 28 now, and I haven't done anything from the main quest line.

No one makes a plot revolving around a family, that you as a player experienced in a 5 minute intro. There is no emotional bond. Why Bethesda? It is basically the same deal as the father plot from Fallout 3, "Please, will you care about this father that left you completely alone after one minute introduction? It blows my mind. Who in the world thought it would be a good idea? Why?

You need to make player care for a character. There is absolutely no reason to go after that kid in Fallout 4, none, It is stupid. That is a toddler that you just saw for the first time in your life, what can possibly drive you... please share opinions. Is there anyone, who actually cared about the kid? There were thousands of options to start the story, by building up some lovable character, and then taking him away from player to make a reason to go through all that effort. But this... this is just pathetic...

I pretty much agree with you. Except I felt more of a pull in fallout 3s plot. Showing you growing up, and the various relationships you have gave it some punch when you get kicked out of the vault.

I don't see the problem here. Unlike Fallout 3, Fallout 4 doesn't try to get you to care about the family. You don't need to care about the family. The spouse is just the gender you didn't pick at character creation, and the son is just the McGuffin of the hour, your character's personal motivation for going out and interacting with the world. There's no melodrama here... the story isn't riding on you, the player, caring about your 10 minute virtual family like Fallout 3's did.

Of course you don't need to care about the main story. I understand that sandboxing is a trend now, but lets not forget it is still an rpg and story is kind of a big deal here.

You can buy old bread and only eat out the soft middle, but you can still be mad that you paid for the whole thing... I bought rpg with pathetic main story, I am sad, I share opinion.

I am perfectly aware that it is a great game in general and as you can see I am enjoying it myself very much. It doesn't change that the fact that the main plot could have been written better by basically anyone... I am not going to defend the game flaws.

Now hold on a second, I'm not saying the Fallout 4 story is great, nor am I defending it. I'm saying that it's not about the family. Fallout 4's story is about the major factions in the Commonwealth, the son is just the McGuffin that gets the protagonist involved in the larger conflict as per Fallout tradition.

You the player are not supposed to care about the son, you're supposed to care about the factions.

i don't think a lot of people here will agree with you on that

tbh i think people are confusing sandbox and rpg quite a bit

but eh yeah i agree, looks like beth tried to find a middle-ground with their story by providing enough background info to make it interesting, but not too much so you can still 'be whoever you want'. i think they should have gone one way or the other, either flesh out the story even more or just leave it up to the players alltogether

This game is not made to be a sandbox, because you can't really change the order of things without breaking some stuff. If you don't do it lineary by focusing on main story and doing any side quests that you meet on your way, small glitches and bugs appear. You can see it clearly when you play the way I did. I started the main story line after level 28 and now nothing really fits, because the game ignores a lot of progress that I already did, for the sake of the story.

For example I am already in a romantic relationship with Piper, but when I started the quest with detective and we entered the dialog she resets and acts like I'm a stranger that she doesn't trust, and at the end of the dialog she goes back to worshipping me. There are more parts like that, where NPCs ignore your progress. It appears you can't jump in to the main quest anytime you want without breaking immersion.

I agree that they should've just dropped the main plot totally and use those resources on more open world content. Do it good or not at all.

The intro that made me live through the end of the world was amazing, one of my all time best. But they should've just dropped that family part there and not drag it further... just my opinion.

I agree 100%. they just drag this drama for no reason. The voice actor breaks his voice everytime he mentions the kid, it doesn't work on emotions like it should. It is just annoying, because I can't relate.I didn't see any moments of him with his family. I just went through half of the map murdering half of the population, killing mutated animals with bare hands for at least a month, my character should be more cool by now. That drama feels so forced.

Honestly they could have had a 10 hour intro of soppy family moments and I still wouldn't give the shadow of a [censored] about them. If they wanted me to care about my PC they should have made it *my* PC instead of deciding half their personality before I get to touch her.

This.

Then why make a story about your family if they don't want you to care about your family?

Am I the only one who sees the problem here?

Here's your problem, friend.

I'd argue that the shallow factions are a much bigger problem than how the family was handled - because the factions are what Fallout 4's story is really about.