You can ignore the main quest in all the Fallout games. Hell, in Fallout you even have the option to not even leave the vault (game will end really quick if you do this, though).

I just want to be "a courier" without any set past. I want to create my own past, where I come from, why I became a courier etc...

This is so much a non-issue. I don't understand people, everyone has a past and a family. You'd think people who go on and on about roleplaying wouldn't be so intimidated by roleplaying. The most important part of Roleplaying is what you do during the game. Not the elaborate many thousand word essays on a character concept many people use to ego stroke in the forums while they wait for the game to arrive.

Restrictions are actually what make gaming fun and interesting. It is how you create challenge in gaming. If you could actually do anything in a game it would be boring. Limitations define the gaming space they create obstacles that the player has to overcome using a set of LIMITED tools. This principle extends to roleplaying. Improv is nothing but roleplaying and that is all about restrictions at the beginning and totally open field after. All the fallout games have had a pretty well defined background for the player, which never limited how the player would behave in the actual game.

And if I don't want to "improv" that I'm playing a character who chose to start a family with a husband? What then?

Why should my choices be limited on a personal level that much? That's not a challenge at all, that's arrogant presumption by the developers.

Yes parents.....not a wife I want to choose if I have a wife or not.

The mother with child and father got nuked.

Go back to the trailer, look at how they're dressed, and then look at the people standing ontop of the vault door when the nuke shockwave hits.

So unless there's a pretty guy/girl we hook up with in the vault, I don't see this being imposed on us. Parents maybe, sister/brother possible - but nothing more than that.

Doesn't explain the info in the leak though.

I think so too. Having a pre-set father in FO3 was one thing, but being married and being a father, that's a real game changer. It would really break some RP elements IMO, imposing certain decisions and morality standards upon the player character.

Did they want to go the Max Payne route with it? Or maybe Michael de Santa from GTAV?

Either way, yes, baggage indeed.

This is like one of those topics that's going to be hotly debated until they turn off the lights after the DLC run. Some people are gonna be fine with it, some people will love it, some will not think much of it, and those that hate it.

Besides, if the game IS slated to drop in October, that means the game is done, and they're just ironing out the bugs now. So not like they can change it if this is the case.

I wouldn't mind being able to get married.

Not sure about children, but I have no opinion or response to children.

You either svck it up, don't play or wait for a mod.

You are not as important as you think you are, I can say "what if i want to play a power ranger in swtor???" Well the correct response is grow up. Your wants are not the be all and end all in gaming. You are given a playground to play in but the play ground is created by someone else and they have created various LIMITATIONS. In the elder scrolls you ALWAYS start as a prisoner, What if I don't want to start as a prisoner? TOUGH. Either don't play, svck it up or use a mod. Stop QQing over a non issue.

Don't bring your self important swaggering into my thread, kid.

If you don't like what I have to say, then cry about it in your basemant. I have my opinion on the importance of RP in an open world RPG and I will not "svck it up" because of your ego.

What solid information do we have right now?

We have a cinematic trailer that, in and of itself, only establishes a location and the existence of a vault

I know that the presence of a vault in a Fallout game is a big shocker, I mean really, could anyone have predicted such a thing?

We also have six metric craptons of "leaked information". This leaked information goes back years. As a matter of fact the first "leak" can be found in one of Nostradamus' quatrains.

Most of these "leaks" were debunked long ago. The most credible "leak" is the Kotaku Casting Script leak.

Now if that is the leak you are referring to, and you totally ignored what Kotaku said about the significance of the phrase "casting script", and you believe that everything in that script depicts exactly what is in Fallout 4, then you are going to have to accept that there is NO Fallout 4 game. BGS has been spending all of this time creating a Fallout 4 movie.

Heh, isn't that always the issue that arises?

What if I wanna be this? What if I wanna be this? What if I don't wanna?

A game has to start somewhere, and an RPG need's a story to kick it off, and like most books, they ain't always gonna please everybody.

I really don't believe much about the leak. In it, for example, it sounds like the pc is a soldier. In the trailer however the voice over says "...our soldiers were right..." which implies that the narrator isn't military.

At the very least, details have changed since the leak. At most, and which I find more likely, the leak was false. If they had shown us a close up of someone trying to get his family past that security checkpoint and into the vault, I might be more open thinking that the leak might hold some weight. But at this point, there's nothing solid, and without anything solid I just don't see any reason to suspect Beth would change how they have done things.

You know, there is a more diplomatic way of saying Fallout 4 will be Fallout 4 and an individual's preference may not coincide with what it is.

Actually, the phrase appears to have been spoken by a reporter at a news desk on the radio/tv. There doesn't seem to be any narration in the trailer.

Yes I do mean the Kotaku leak. I'm well aware all others are fake. But the Kotaku leak is credible.

Well, it depends how much of the script is a casting script really. The fact that the script for the male player mentions a wife and son and the trailer shows a father, mother and child along with the clear male player character who looks like the father makes me consider the script to be very relevant.

Maybe I'm wrong, I hope I am.

Really? The reporter has a filter over his dialogue, but the war never changes line didn't. I assumed that meant it was a different person talking. Is it all Ron Perlman?

The idea of having relatives would certainly be interesting. It would add flavor to the RP element of the game, much like having James in FO3. However, a set spouse is much too constrictive to the player character.

If there was a free marriage system, similar to Skyrim, it would not be problematic.

As others have said, this isn't confirmed yet. That being said, it would be bucking the traditional "lone wanderer" image substantially. Suspect the "family" get's lost pretty early if it's the case...

The trailer shows a wife, husband and baby just being close enough to ground zero of a nuclear detonation to be killed three different ways. They were close enough to be hit with a lethal dose of radiation (not fallout mind you, but high speed charged particles emanating from the blast itself). The trailer fades from that scene as the blast wave arrives, which would have killed them considering how close they were. What the trailer doesn't show is what happens just after the blast wave hits and the thermal flash arrives. As close as the depicted family was to the burst. They would have taken a lethal dose of radiation (nothing to worry about though because it wouldn't be instantly fatal), they would have been crushed by the blast wave and shredded by the debris that was carried by the shock wave, and if that didn't kill them, the thermal effect that arrived a few seconds later would have turned them into a cinder. If they weren't burned to a crisp, they were shredded and if they weren't shredded, they died a few hours later from radiation sickness.

Based on the trailer, nobody in that family could have survived.

But we are talking about a cinematic trailer which shares something in common with a casting script. There is not necessarily (as in, almost never) a 1 to 1 correspondence with what we find in the trailer (or script) with what we find in game.

{Edit}

All of that does not mean that the protagonist cannot be a member of a family. It just means that the protagonist cannot be a member of THAT family (the one outside the vault). It also is not certain that the family at the crib is the family at the vault. They look similar, sure, but that does not mean they are the same.

I'm fine with the idea as long as I have the wiggle room to roleplay like Fallout 3 had.

Where is the option to say can't we all be patient advlts and give Beth a chance to say something first before we assume the worst?

You speak BLASPHEMY!