you cant choose the circumstances of your birth or control outside forces, you can and do choose the way you respond to situations and what you do in your life. in fallout 3 you were born and circumstances that you wouldn't have been able to control took you to vault 101, after that you decided how you act and how you feel. beth has set in stone who our character was and saying "insanity" like everyone says we should is a horrible excuse to change a personality, not to mention the voice may or may not force a personality as well.

i like a good story but i also like defining my character, and beth doesn't have the best track record with good stories

Then again, Codsworth has somehow managed to stay in his original house for 200 years without being stolen and re-purposed or blown to pieces by raiders for laughs so maybe he was actually planted by whoever gave you the fake memories to validate those memories and act as a spy so that they can keep tabs on you. Yeah, that's the paranoid ticket!

So far it seems to me that FO3 had a more predefined character though

In Fallout 3:

• Both your parents had to be scientists
• Your Mother had to be dead
• You had to grow up in the vault
• Your Dad had to be the doctor
• Amata had to be your friend
• You didn't have many other friends (speaking to people during the Goat makes it clear you're considered the weird kid)
• You had to leave the vault & follow your Dad

So far in Fallout 4:

• You were married
• You had a kid
• You were in Vault 111
• You're the Sole Survivor

At the moment the Sole Survivor seems much less defined than the Lone Wonder

The difference here is that getting married and having kids are life choices that would be made BY the character, not FOR them. The Lone Wanderer's background is created, in large part, by circumstance, not his own life decisions. That difference is not insignificant.

In either case, Bethesda has not done a good job of maintaining the anonymity of past Fallout games or their own previous rpgs.

I like the story and I hope the wife and son will have an important role later in the story (almost certain for the son)

Partly coz of the story and partly to piss off special snowflakes on these boards.

Lets be honest even a blank slate character has to have some form of background, cause he/she has parents after all. Difference is that in comparison to both FO3, FO4 and FNV, a true blank slate character has a background defined by you the player, by having NPC perhaps asking you about your past and then letting you fill in the details perhaps. Such a character is however the bane of any writer, as the sheer amount of randomness that could sprout up can fundementaly hinder any story telling. To tell any sort of story, parts of the character must be pre-defined prior to you the player adding your own flavour.

Given, you could have been given more leway with the character background for FO4, as it does box you in a particular direction, but i do feel no more then FO3 did with giving you that whole dady issue and being forced to be the odd one out in class. Right from the start nearly half the vault hated you, makes for a pretty narrow RP setting to me too.

Neither FO3 or FO4 are verry fiendly to the RP'ing player.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PS: Despite my above post, i do like the premise of this storyline myself, since i am not that deeply invested in RP'ing, but i do understand some of your reservations about the stories start sofar.

People complain and Bethesda not having good storytelling abilities, then complain when they make moves to change that while still giving the layer tons of freedom. You try to help in one regard, appease not just us, but themselves, and then everybody jumps down their throat because of it.

Bioshock: Infinite would have been a MUCH different game has he stayed quiet, and yes I know Jack was but that was a more linear experience. An open world is different to write and you need all the help you can get when trying to mesh crazy crazy with emotional and impactful. This also goes for Mass Effect. The game would have been much less emotional if Shepherd didn't say anything at all as he watched his friends die or helped other rise from emotional pitfalls.

They're trying something new, at least give these guys a break!

I don't agree.

With the Sole Survivor I could create an entire backstory around what they were like when they were younger, what the relationship to their parents where like, what their life was like before the bombs etc

The fact that at some point the Sole Survivor choose to settle down & have a family doesn't change that fact.

I can't do any of that with the Lone Wanderer, what I was like when I was younger & my backstory is all much stable.

Since I know the circumstances in which the Lone Wanderer was raised,I found it hard to rp an evil character, James seemed like a great Dad and no pre leaving vault 101 dialogue let you come across as a psychopath or sociopath, but Serial Killers, Mobsters, Former Mercenaries, Spies etc have all married & had kids in an effort to seem normal

Since I don't know anything about my characters back story, I could've been raised a Communist spy, in a military family or orphaned at a young age & decided to become a masked vigilante.

My backstory is much more open & flexible

I disagree, from what we have seen we can make up the protagonist's backstory. The limiting factor is that it has to be a pre-war backstory so you can't be a raider or some dude from a neighboring faction. We just know by 2077 s/he is married and they have an infant child. It also seems like the two characters are pretty fond of being married, so we have to work with that as well.

But with a little bit of creativity you can make a pre-war character like most post-war characters. If you wanted some type of Brotherhood soldier you could say your character was a retired war veteran who served in some T-51b unit, or is on a leave of absence. Of course they won't have the same ideology, but skill set could be similar. Normal jobs are pretty easy to do, instead of being an engineer for whatever group you can be an engineer for whatever company.

Once the game comes out I fully expect the character have a more developed backstory though... We'll see I guess.

I guess the way I see it is that one is telling you "this is where you came from, these are the 18 years of your life that you had little control over, what is the rest of your life going to be like?" much like a student moving on after high school, the world opens up and the future is theirs. (and by the way, you can be a sociopath in the vault, in many ways) The other is telling you "no matter what your controlled years were like, or what you did after them, this is where you end up."

Neither one is very good, as I mentioned before, and this same thing was argued over plenty when Fallout 3 was shown. Bethesda seems to think their traditional starting points are somehow really important, Elder Scrolls in prisons and Fallout in vaults, but thinking outside the box and allowing their writers more leeway might make for some more appealing work.

As long as guns shoot bullets... Raiders bleed... My dog stays loyal... And my power armor stays sturdy... I think I'll manage in Boston!

I'm calling it now though... Android companion!

I suppose it's because I don't see having a family as an end point, but rather a point on a journey that I don't mind the backstory.

In a perfect world I always prefer some back story over a blank slate, because I like to use the back story as a jumping off point for roleplayig.

Personally I don't see one approach as objectively better than the other, I just have my own personal preference.

I admit the first time I saw the trailer I got excited up to the point of the guy exiting the vault.

It's like "What's it gonna be this time? Automated Water Recycler?" Maybe he's searching for the vegetation project in Vault 22?

I really wanted another Courier type character. There's still a chance the guy is just a Prospector who happened to be leaving Vault 111 after looting the place.

An Ideal Fallout game for me would be playing as Vic from "A Boy and His Dog." A simple 18 year old boy scouring the wastes for some puss3h.

No. Its confirmed he was a member of Vault 111. Sorry my friend haha.

And I guess you still could be this Vic. It has been 200 hundred years, don't marriage licenses expire

Spouses probably dead anyways.

Actually, I've never complained that Bethesda are bad at storytelling.

My personal opinion is that some of their writing is good, while some is not so good.

When you say "people", are you sure it is the same people who have both opinions? And also, it's harder to create good stories when you also need to keep player freedom in mind, but it's not impossible. Morrowind is the best example of this imo. But I've seen some criticize Morrowind's main quest too, so what people consider a good story seems to differ wildly.

I'd be surprised if there wasn't an android companion, all things considered. I suspect the 'minutemen' will be android rebels. It might help explain why they had a suit of powered armor ready to go in the demo.

Rather, by the character, not for the player. I see no problem with this. Most RPGs that I've played ~that were any good [IMO], had fixed preconditions that defined the character's early life, and were events in their life, long before the player is given the role. What's wrong with roleplaying the role one is given? They usually come with quite a lot of freedom.

Both Fallout and Fallout 2, allowed the player to pick from four completely different characters.
..And allowed the player to either accept them as-is, modify them, or (if they really wanted to) they could make their own, down to the last detail... But they all had the same fixed preconditions of course.

Exactly.

In Fallout 3 we didn't have a choice in the matter with certain things regarding our background and it did limit what roles we could play but ultimatey the story did not force any defining characteristics onto the Lone Wanderer. In Fallout 4 the character we play as 'chose' to make certain life choices. These life choices define the character we play as.

Amata isn't a friend you 'chose'. Amata is a clingy little sod who wants to be your friend no matter how badly you treat her.

You never chose to live in a vault.

You didn't choose to kill your mother in childbirth.

You didn't choose to have a father that would run out on you forcing the entire vault to go into a chaotic state that ultimately forced you to leave the vault lest you want to die.

But in Fallout 4 you did choose a bunch of things. To marry, to commit to the care for a child, to buy a robot and let it be around your infant son, to buy a house in a nice neighbourhood instead of getting an apartment in the city.

That's the problem here.

What happened in previous game is 'not the same thing' as what is happening in Fallout 4.

The background does define your character, but it an be vague and allow lots of room for roleplaying.

But if that background consists of choices your character made then definitions of your characteristics are already set in stone.

The background is whatever happened before the player gains influence; that's the PC's past.

*If the player decides that the PC regrets things in their past, that's a good thing, no? It lets the PC have past regrets; that's better than the usual... nothing; I would think.

Yeah, and?

The more defining characteristics that the background sets for the PC the harder it becomes to roleplay for me.

This ^ This is exactly what I don't like. The rest of the story will probably be fine, never had a problem with Bethesda stories.

I have yet to have anyone properly explain how this Fallout game background setup is any more restrictive than Fallout 3 was, Frankly, the backstory of both is fairly set in stone prior to your input (or you have little choice in the outcome despite your input).

If the comparison is to the backstory / start of Elder Scroll games, I don't accept that as a fair comparison just because they were developed using similar tools, gameplay mechanics and development houses. Since when can't an author take license to use differing story devices in different franchises? The idea to me that Bethesda can't use different story development methods in Fallout than they do in Elder Scroll games is laughable to me.

While I fully understand how fans (taken from the word FANATIC, btw) have a vested belief that these games are THEIRS, it is not, and MANY need to take a HUGE step back and realize a few facts about THEIR favorite game franchises:

1) You as a player do not own the game or any characters in the game.

2) Bethesda develops the game as a form of entertainment for anyone willing to pay to participate.

2) You participate in the game as a form of entertainment. Nothing you pay for EVER implies ownership of any assets sans the media the game may be distributed on.

3) You have no rights to generate any part of the entertainment nor make any decisions on how the entertainment is written, produced or distributed.

4) You have EVERY right to not pay to participate in the entertainment when it is made available.

5) You have every right to determine if you were sufficiently entertained by the game.

Go look up the word FANATIC and you can quickly see where the disconnect between the above facts and what most gamers FEEL about a franchise exists. Bethesda have given most of here hundreds (if not thousands) of hours of entertainment so how about we give them the benefit of the doubt for now. You are certainly welcome to voice your opinion on how restrictive you felt the backstory was once you actually get a chance to play the game.

Yeah the dog too. He is probably behind it all.

Not true at all. You can play as a female who is also fully voiced so you're not gender-locked at all. Also, past Fallout games did not take place during the Pre-War era so this is new and exciting, at least to me. I personally like the voice acting of the protagonists because our voice actually means something in-game rather than talking to a TV. It got pretty annoying when talking to someone but being mute and they gave an instant response. More on the story though, Fallout's stories have also been blanketed with death, it's a tradition. I have no problems with how the story has been presented so far and I'm excited to get my hands on it and finally enjoy a new Fallout game after 7 years.

I think the back story is a refreshing change of pace. It will be nice to play a character who actually understands the past, for a change.