» Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:26 pm REVISED AND UPDATED:
First, a question..
Why would Bethesda have gone to so much trouble to create what seems to be a full-blown FPS mechanic within Fallout 4, even consulting with Bungie and Id software? Also, what about all the base-building elements, the custom weapons and armor, and features like calling in vertibirds and possibly even giving squad commands? My guess, they want us to go to war. And I'm not talking about another nuclear armageddon either, but full-scale tactical warfare in an open-world battlefield.
But in order to get there, we are going to need a story. The following is my take on Fallout 4's story based on a huge amount of research using the trailer, the E3 gameplay, and various other sources including all of the interviews. And so most of the ideas you will read below are evidence based. I have assumed a male protagonist in my description, but this can easily be interchanged if playing as a female. Please read with an open mind, and remember that this is currently just a theory.
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Before the Bombs Fell
Saturday 23rd October 2077, the day of the Great War.
At the start of the tutorial, our couple are getting ready to attend a veteran's event during which our male protagonist will be delivering a speech. Evidence suggests that he was a high ranking officer in the navy, and as such will be delivering the speech to former colleagues (I believe it will always be the male giving the speech). At some point early on in the tutorial, we will see him reading the speech, after which he asks his spouse to look after it for him. She agrees, and puts the folded sheet into her pocket for safekeeping. We then go back to the part of the tutorial we saw at E3, where we interact with our infant son, Shaun. Immediately after this, we are alerted to news of nuclear detonations.
As the news comes in, we hear air-raid sirens, and we see our family running out of their home and towards vault 111, with our son being carried by our spouse. In the case of a female protagonist, I believe it will be the baby's father who carries him to the vault. Upon arrival, we pass a vertibird that has just landed with a soldier standing next to it. We see a vault security guard running in front of us, and then we see 5 civilians standing above the vault on top of the lift. 2 of the civilians are immediately behind each other, but there are definitely 5 in total, in fact they are the same 5 we see in the trailer. We also know from the trailer that there is a scientist standing topside of the vault as well as another soldier, this time in power armor. Our family joins the 5 civilians above the vault, and then the bomb detonates. This is what I think happens next:
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Into the Vault
Spoiler
The scientist and the security guard are carrying the red metal valve seen in trailer and are knocked to the ground by the blast. But they survive due to being positioned downhill. 3 of the civilians are knocked backwards and killed (as per skeletons seen in E3 footage), but 2 survive along with our protagonist and his family. The 2 soldiers try their luck by getting back into the vertibird which takes off, but they are subsequently killed when it crashes due to high winds. The scientist gets up and continues up the hill. He then locks the red valve onto the lift access controls and quickly turns it until it stops. This depressurizes the lift-shaft ready for access. He then pushes the silver lever we see in the footage and makes his way onto the lift. After a brief warning sound the lift starts to descend taking our 7 survivors down into the vault. The outer blast doors close above them, sealing them in as they go down. The noise of the nuclear winds above them can still be heard through the blast doors.
Spoiler
Once the lift stops, they all make their way along a metal walkway towards the vault door, and the scientist hits the door controls. Air is expelled at high speed from around the sides of the door as the next zone is depressurized. Once this stage is complete, the massive door is pulled back into the vault and is then rolled to one side until it stops. A mechanical 'bridge' then extends out through the open doorway and locks in place. Our survivors then enter the vault. The scientist goes off to the left to seal the door using the control panel, and the other 6 survivors go straight ahead and into the main vault, led by the security guard. But just as the main vault door closes, the inner-door is sealed by one of the survivors and the vault door area is repressurized, killing the scientist whilst he is still standing in front of the control panel. This is where we later find him when we collect the Pip-Boy. Meanwhile, inside the main vault, a countdown begins warning of repressurization. Our 6 remaining survivors find themselves in a large open area with 8 pods arranged in a circle, and it becomes apparent that they are actually cryogenic pods. Although alarmed at the prospect of being frozen, it becomes clear that with the countdown quickly running out, and with no way of unsealing the outer door, they must enter the pods or they will be crushed to death.
Spoiler
So the 2 civilians take one pod each, the security guard takes another, our spouse and son take a fourth, and the protagonist takes the fifth. The pods are then sealed, and the air-pressure inside the vault is greatly increased. But one pod did not seal properly, and so one of the last 2 civilians is killed by the immense pressure. This leaves us with 5 survivors. Note that the experiment inside vault 111 would actually benefit from the inclusion of a baby or infant in order to test whether or not the ageing process can be halted, which would explain why our family were selected. However, the protocols for the required duration (most likely around 10 years) were never put in place as the scientist did not survive, and so the experiment was never given an end-date. The 10 year deadline passes, and then after an unknown number of years, the pods containing the other civilian and the security guard eventually fail, leaving us with our protagonist, his spouse, and their baby.
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Sole Survivor
Spoiler
We now move forward to 2285, four years after the events of New Vegas. Our protagonist is awoken from stasis due to a system failure in the vault. It would seem that this has to do with an unexpected depressurization. As he becomes more aware of his surroundings, he notices the 3 pods now containing skeletons, but when he looks to where his spouse and child should be, they are not there. The entire pod is gone. Our protagonist searches the rest of the vault, but there is no sign of them, they have simply vanished. Deeply confused, he tells himself that there must be some rational explanation, and he determines that they may have somehow made their way outside. And so his quest begins as a search for his missing family. He takes the armored jumpsuit he finds inside the vault, as well as the security guard's pistol and the Pip-Boy from the dead scientist. He makes his way out of the vault after unlocking the main door, and then leaves via the lift. Once he reaches the surface, he is taken aback not just by how drastically everything has changed, but also due to the sudden slight shift in air-pressure as the blast doors open.
Spoiler
The first place to investigate is the protagonist's former home. Upon arrival, he is surprised to find Codsworth, his robot butler. We are quickly told that we have been out for around 200 years (actual timeframe is 208 years). We search the house, but there are no clues. We bid farewell to Codswoth, and then begin the next step of our journey, to look for signs of other settlements and survivors. Maybe we will find someone who knows something about our family. Before we leave, Codsworth tells us that there are many people living in the wastes, one of them was even kind enough to repair him. Our protagonist heads off in search of the nearest settlement. Soon afterwards, he finds the garage we see in the trailer, as well as our now famous dog. Eventually on our travels, we happen across a group in need of assistance, namely the Comonwealth Minutemen. We engage in combat, and find out a little more about what has been going on in the wastes. We eventually part ways, but a friendship has been formed, and I am quite sure that we will be revisiting this group in the not so distant future. We continue with our quest to search for our family. We ask around, but nobody seems to have any idea where they are.
Spoiler
At some point during the early part of the story, we are approached by a mysterious individual, who speaks to us with a sense of high urgency. It is revealed to us that our movements have been tracked since we left the vault, and that we are in danger. An item is placed in our hand, and we are told that we must act quickly. Before we can find out any other information, an armed assailant shoots and kills our new 'friend'. We again engage in combat, and manage to take down our assailant, but when we approach their corpse we find out something a little odd. Close inspection reveals that our adversary was not human. We then inspect the body of our friend, but there is nothing to identify who they are. We leave the area to find somewhere a little more discreet, and then we read the note that was handed to us earlier. At the bottom of the page are the words "trust no-one". But far more alarming is what is written on the rest of the page. It is the speech we were supposed to give on the day the bombs fell.
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Sanctuary
Spoiler
To explain the following section, we will now move to the viewpoint of our spouse. She gradually wakes up, and finds herself in what looks like a treatment room. She remembers being in the vault and seeing everybody dead, the lifeless body of her son Shaun in her arms, and what was left of her husband in the next pod. She also remembers her rescuers, although she didn't see their faces. As they took her out of the pod, she begged them to let her stay with her baby. But they would not. They carried her out of the vault, and into a waiting aircraft. As they did, she saw the horror of what was left. Every tree, every building, all gone. The world as she knew it was destroyed. And that was all she remembered before waking up in this room. She suddenly notices somebody standing next to her bed. A doctor? She is told that she is lucky to be alive, that they only found her due to a distress call from the vault. And that she was the sole survivor of vault 111. She finds out that the holocaust she glimpsed as she entered the vault had all but destroyed mankind. But for now, in this room, she was safe. Although feeling surprisingly well given the circumstances, she is told that due to the effects of being partially exposed, as well as being in long-term stasis, she will need to be closely monitored for the foreseeable future. Finally, when she asks how long it had been since the war, she is told that nobody really knows, but that it has been 'a very long time'.
Spoiler
We now move forward 4 years. The doctor eventually becomes a close friend, her only real companion in this unusually sterile place. Very little is seen of the others, apart from an occasional glimpse. She is by now more than used to the constant testing, the blood samples, and all the questions. And although saddened by the loss of her family, she is grateful to be alive. She would often speak of her family, telling stories of the birth of her son, and how she met her husband. Sometimes when she was alone, she would think about what could have been. On one such occasion, she reaches into her pocket and carefully takes out the one thing that still connects her to her family, and to the time before the war. It is her husband's speech. Her friend enters the room and she quickly puts the speech back into her pocket. Something is different, her friend is speaking quietly and looks rather concerned. She discretely tells our spouse that she must come with her, and it seems to be very important. They go into another room, and the friend begins to talk. She explains that everything she has been told so far is a lie, that there are many other survivors in the outside world. And that 'they' have been watching her the whole time, experimenting on her. She is then told that they are both in danger and must leave immediately.
Spoiler
The two make their way through the enormous complex and eventually reach a partially destroyed area. They go through a crumbling archway, and then a large wooden door, and finally they reach the concealed entrance of an old disused tunnel. Inside the tunnel, our spouse is told that her memories have been altered to make her believe that her family died inside the vault. She is also told that her husband is most certainly still alive, and that there are rumours of a child being hidden away in the complex. Finally, it is revealed that all the testing to ensure that she had not suffered long-term effects from the blast and from being in stasis were actually to extract DNA. The organization who took both her and her child from the vault have been working on a top-secret project, and when they finally unleash their 'secret weapon', many will die. Our spouse is overcome with emotion at the thought of her child being held against his will, and suggests that they go back for him. She is told that this would be far too dangerous at this stage, and also that there is a far more pressing matter at hand. They must seek the assistance of a discrete underground organisation on the outside. And they must also enlist the support of one other individual with valuable pre-war information. It is time for our spouse to break her husband out of the vault.
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EDIT: added new 'Sanctuary' section above.
We're getting a little further into the plot now, and of course I have many more ideas to progress the story even further. I'm not going to reveal what I think is the ending, but I may expand a little more on what I have suggested above, when the time is right.
