Boy I did....

The last choice made me LOL so I chose that one. And for real, it doesn't bother me, as long as the story is good. Really good.

Little Lamplight.. ugh. The name alone still makes me shudder.

If that wasn't an act of deliberate trolling on Bethesda's part I don't know what is.

And the current system is better... how?

Let's take a tally of how gamesas has been cajoling a clean-slate player into the main quest, shall we?

Arena: Locked in a dungeon by a very powerful person. You can die in there, or escape, and have to kill him at some point because "hiding" is not a long-term solution.

Daggerfall: You've accepted a mission by the Emperor already. Do it already.

Battlespire: You're in the middle of a daedric invasion. You're likely to die no matter what you do, so the thing that will most likely end in survival is to try and stop it.

Morrowind: You've been paroled by the Emperor and given orders. It's probably a bad idea to ignore them.

Oblivion: You are given an order by the Emperor and given the one item in the world no Fence will touch with a ten foot pole. You're basically a target now.

Fallout 3: Stay put and get shot. Finding dad is probably the most producive use of your time after getting forced out of the vault.

Skyrim: Dragons are attacking, nearly kills you. Letting someone with power know is probably a good idea, and at the very least makes you less of a target by dragons.

Common theme? The player is FORCED into the main quest by events beyond their control. Once or twice can be good storytelling, but seven times? At the very least, having a predefined background gives a bit more variation: Leave 111 to try and find the family you left behind, or their graves? That's a significantly better start than yet another variation of "guys are after me because I'm involved in the MacGuffin."

Semi-invulnerable demi-gods. The only two that get out of Megaton alive are Moira and Dogmeat, everyone else dies.

Think the Protag will be the baby, grows up in vault then goes into Cryogenic sleep etc.

Recycled and mashed up from Rage and Fallout 3

Eh, I don't mind them being a major part of the story. It's good for your character to have a driving force that they can believably be attached to. But I agree that anyone should be killable. In New Vegas, the only person the story depend on entirely was you. Anyone else could die or be missed entirely without the MQ auto-failing. I'd love to see that done again.

Marrs has a point...We are always thrust into situations that confront our illusion of free will.

Thing I loved about Morrowind is that you absolutely could ignore your orders and never visit Caius Cossades.

Which is kind of funny, since the whole point of being a hero in TES games is that you actually have free will.

Which you can ignore after a certain point or almost immediately depending on the game.

How can you ignore a background where your character at some point chose to marry and have a child?

I wasn't forced to do anything in Dagggerfal,infact I could ignore them and the quest failed.

Morrowind and all non Legend TES too I don't need to follow it.

Most Fallout games start with a dire situation presented.

Fallout 1: Find a water chip, or we all die from thirst/ Stop the super mutants, or we all die.

Fallout 2: Our village is dying, find a GECK before we die.

Fallout 3: Your dad did a thing and now you're exiled from home, thanks dad (not so dire)

New Vegas: Someone shot you in the head, you lived. They went thatta way. (Not so dire)

Fallout 4: ........nooooo idea. MIGHT involve your theoretical family? Maybe?

In one way or another there is ALWAYS a MacGuffin in any game. If the game doesn't provide it, the player will.

In my most recent Skyrim play I ignored the MQ for a very long time, and felt I could justify doing so. For starters it was just one dragon, and it attacked the town, not me. My PC felt like he was imprisoned wrongly so why would I want to go warn anyone about anything. His best course of action was to go somewhere and keep his head down. Surely news as big as a dragon attack would get to all the major towns in the realm without me running the news in personally. What the realm decided to do about it is up to them.

Also your PC starts as a unskilled and unarmored person, what is he to do against a dragon??? I have no issue with the game trying to give my PC a reason to start the path, but something as big as already having a family ties you down and limits character freedom as everything you do will be based off of that premise.

True. Point is, however, that you don't need to have to hit the players over their heads with the MacGuffin immediately after chargen. Having an innocuous start, something personal to the character but otherwise irrelevant to the plot, would be a welcome change and help tell a more personal story.

I was thinking about how the main quest could involve a set family but not necessarily include you. I think being a friend of that vault 111 guy who is looking for his family is much more viable as a story than being the husband or wife. It would fit with a more open style and even include letting the family die through inaction. The main point of all the fallout games though was you are going to affect the wasteland around you with your actions. The game only ends if you do something, so there has to be a motivation and main quest for you to finish. I think it would be hard to find a game you could just be in a sandbox and do whatever you wanted until you got bored with it, with no "win" condition in an RPG.

I've never understand why people attack Fallout 3 for not giving you a clean slate. Were Fallout and Fallout 2 not the same?

Fallout 1, you had a mission. But were otherwise a clean slate. FO2?

Well, true. But I think everybody just likes to forget Arroyo. I've often played that game and ignored the main quest entirely.

Heck people complained in New Vegas's development that we had a starting quest.

There is a certain demographic of Fallout fan, who will not be happy unless they simply start at one end of a map, with basic armor, and a single weapon, with a message that reads "Welcome to Fallout. Good luck f---er." A total clean slate.

While I think that is compelling to people I don't think it would sell, honestly. It's hard to define what would make a game like that work. The games always conclude with your actions affecting the wasteland so I don't know if you could make a "fallout" game without that.

Sometimes I just feel people like to attack Fallout 3 because it's Fallout 3. It's still a fantastic game, and this is only one time where people have gave a reason to dislike Fallout 3 despite it being the same in previous games.

I'm all for a clean slate, however, and would hate to have a family in the game. At least I can dispose of the wife. Children are immortal. The child will always be there. Not that I'm saying children should be killable, just that I don't want to be forced to have a child in game

Open console, click on child:

> Disable

I'm ok with it as long as the character is still customizable as in previous games and the son is projected in a similar way the father was in F3.

Be great if I both had the room and money for a computer to do so.