Well i agree with you to a point but you cant decide a past, its done and over with so decision making is gone, like the old probverb "hind sight is 20/20" and id argue with you except they should have a premise of life for your character like an apt you come across that you before you was shot or maybe a person who knew you but cant tell completely since u had surgery to repair the bullet in your head, i dunno but something beside "he is this circumstance in this random guys life, do whatever you want" Might as well of been benny or any other person for that matter as living in that kinda place im sure would be an adventure for anybody if we took over you know. Im just saying and im sure others but not all are as well just want a basic inside to how the guy lived and got by, you would think he had 1 friend or 1 shop keeper might remember him and if he was a courrier you might think he would know most traders and others of that sort but he has to meet everybody brand new. Id like to seen a side quest randomly thrown in dealing with a guy who didnt like you but you dont know him or why and gotta figure it out without talking to him since he didnt like you. But its like you was a courier from some other state and just happened to have to go there.

SentientSurfer:http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Canyon_Wreckage (woops, that's WEST)

I like the free background to be honest, and surprised when there is something about the Courier. Of course it can be just a little pinch to spice up the Courier's background and get players to explore.

Cool. Thanks.

I hated the railroading in F3. That's my dad? Really? No matter what? And I really have all these quests about how I'm obsessed with finding him? Blow me.

FNV did it right. Let me design my character and develop a personality based on genetics and early environments that I choose.

Even a multiple choice thing would be annoyingly limiting.


Obviously the character design system has some limitations. You can't be an octopus because they didn't make time to code octopus graphics. However, within the limitations of what was reasonable for them to code, they left the backstory totally open. You can be a Vault-bred test tube baby. You can be a standard wandering mercenary. You can be a murderous ex-raider. You can be an Enclave agent from out East. You can be the ghost of Elvis possessing a pharmacist. No, they didn't code quests and dialogue for all these options, but honestly most dialogue choices are open enough that you can get a "pretty close to what my character would say" if your expectations are somewhat elastic.

Really King Kong from outer space wouldn't be too hard. Make your guy look as much like an ape as possible, choose Heavy Handed and Wild Wasteland, and refuse to wear anything other than the space suit and bubble helmet. As with all computer RP, you'll have to make allowances for the system's limitations, so you'll need to accept that you got hit with a shrink ray before landing on Earth. You didn't get hired by a courier company; you found a dead guy with a bag full of bananas and there was also a Platinum Chip in it. King Kong can't talk, so close all dialogues as soon as they open (hit "Goodbye" but replace it in your mind with "Ook ook").

I feel sorry for people who can't be bothered to actually make a character and exert a little effort to realize that character in the game world.

I agree with pretty much everything you said, Zombra. :thumbsup:

It's a role playing game, create a backstory.

It isn't laziness, it was likely a conscious choice to allow a degree of freedom to players who don't want to be pigeonholed into a backstory, particularly a bad one like in Fallout 3.

100% AGREE, but you can't escape the blinding fandom as evident by the responses this thread has.

I find the exact opposite to be true. If I am given a character with a set backstory, like in, say, Dragon Age, I have a much harder time connecting with that character. I'd much rather create the backstory for my character. In doing so, I set a system of knowledge and ethics/morality which I then use to determine the character's actions throughout the game. So, my current character is a deep wastelander who grew up protecting what little she had from, well, everyone else. If she feels threatened, she will speak with guns. Very low social skills, very his survival and weapon skills. She might take a job if it seems useful, but she's more likely to disappear back into the wastes. She doesn't much care who is having problems, what the big picture might be, or how she affects the world. Now, knowing this, she can react to the F:NV playverse and choose a path that makes sense to that character. She is level 28 and she hasn't set foot on the strip yet.

My next character might be something completely different, and after I create that character's story, I can approach the game in a completely different way.


This is a sandbox type RPG. There are many story RPGs out there. You might enjoy those more.

You don't need an emotional connection with your character when you are your character. Do you have an emotional connection with yourself? Yes? No? If you say no, you scare me.

I found the forced motivation of 3 to be garbage. I don't want to beg people for information on my father. How pathetic is this kid I'm forced to play? He's an advlt and he's clinging to daddy. Make your own life. I'd rather be me or one of my ideas.

It's an RPG. You're supposed to role play a character, and shoehorning you into an identity (such as is done in F:3) is very limiting, considering the alternative: a blank slate, completely open to new roles and identities. Have you seen the thread on here somewhere where a guy is roleplaying Elvis? It sounds brilliant - and there's no way you could really do that as the vault dweller in F:3.

I understand the your side of the argument, but it's lazy story telling to me. The only thing that you can assume from your character is that you are not from the area, since no one knows anything about you, and that you were predestined by fate to choose who stands victorious over New Vegas. Beyond that, you have to make it all up, which while is nowhere near hard to do, it's still lazy. You can make-believe all you want, but there is no in-game reaction to it. If I wanted to RP a legion soldier, Legion will treat me no different than if I was RP'ing a NCR stripper groupie from mars.

F3's whiny child PC isn't ideal either. You were shoe-horned into that role with no real end-game options. NV is the other extreme, dropped into the world with no story, and lots of options. Somewhere near the middle is much more preferable for people like me. Even just some basic choices that have minor dialogue or a mini free-form quest would be nice; something similar to Mass Effect 1's two background choices that had a very minimal impact on the game, but let you decide some sort of history for your character. I didn't expect an origin story similar to Dragon Age, but something more than "Hey Stranger, a robot dug you up and I fixed your face; here's this pip-boy that's extremely valuable tech and a spare vault suit you can have for no reason. Good Luck figuring out what happened to you. Also, steal everything in my house."

Double Post, sorry.

Interesting response, citing a lack of need for having a pre written story for an imaginary character as blinding fandom. Almost as bad as my own total lack of understanding how someone can think it detracts from the story by having to (more like GETTING to, in my mind) make up your own character history. Lack of imagination? How tragic.

Where do I come from?
What was I like?
Who are my people?
What are my values?
Etc, etc.
I get to make it all up myself. And I can change it around next time! And the time after that! Fandom has nothing to do with my feeling that this is the best way to start a story where I am the hero/villain/neither/all.

It's the last bit (I put it in bold) that spoils the whole 'make your own background up' arguement. How many people in the Fallout world actually have PipBoys?

Giving me a blank canvas and then saying that it’s a great work of art b/c I can turn it into whatever I want is not a compelling argument.

The game shouldn’t force me to play make believe, i.e. invent my own past, and then imagine that it fits in with the pre-existing story. It came with launch packs that were each of a unique affiliation: tribal, merc, vaultie, etc. It wouldn’t have taken a great effort to allow you to choose 1 “past” and then give you a few unique dialogue options when dealing with people who came from the same culture as yourself, or perhaps even 4 back-story quests to enhance replay value.

In F03 the setup with your father allowed you to (1) choose to emotionally grow and act toward him like an advlt (2) whine to him about abandoning you like an immature child (3) vilify him and do great evil. Up to a point, you could choose how your back-story would affect your character – will he grow, mature, or be warped. It was crimped to be sure, but it was at least a good start. . .

The courier’s lack of back-story portrays him as a god, dropped down from heaven, only to be summarily shot in the head. He can’t emotionally connect with anyone b/c he has no shared experience. He has no human experience, which is to say unique personal experiences. He is a cardboard cut-out. An emotionless toy you get to play with, but never connect with, or learn from.

I don’t want to have to invent my dad or my past - no human gets to invent their dad –the fun is struggling to deal with the hand your dealt in life - but here you get to cheat – you are never dealt a hand. You can take a mental cop-out and make one up but that is NOT part of the game, that’s you inventing your own game.

It’s not about a lack of imagination on the player’s part – it simply begs the questions as to whether you should be forced to come up with the “story” of your game or whether the game should be able to stand by itself.

I guess FNV is better for people that role play. You just make your own past. I like it much better this way.

The problem though is what if the Courier's backstory didn't make much sense? You want to be a gun totting badass, yet the only gun you've ever fired was a Red Ryder BB gun. Things like this dragged away from the plausibility of Fallout 3 (at least in my opinion).

By leaving the opening vague, it allows the player to choose what they were beforehand. Maybe you were a friendly Courier, maybe you were a walking juggernaut who just happened to have gotten jumped. All you have to do if you want to be a Vault Dweller is imagine your character came from Vault X (whatever number you wish it to be) and go with that.

I understand where you're coming from, but the difference between this and a book is that you're not following the adventures of a character; you are the character. Thus it should be whomever you wish it to be. If you can be creative with fan fiction you can surely be creative with thinking up if your character was on old fashioned cowboy-esque character or a high tech mercenary or whatever else you could think up from the skills you are given.

Be warned: this may not make sense if you didn't read my previous post.

FEAR ME! TREMBLE BEFORE YOUR NEW MASTER EARTHLINGS! FOR I AM http://zombra.net/images/fnv_shrunken_space_kong.jpg!

See, that wasn't so hard.

@Zombra

I got to hand it to you, that's pretty funny. :clap:

:rofl: Sig'd. :rofl:

The Courior is from New Mexico, his whole family died to Fiends when he was a kid. He grew up and became a Courior. There's a holotape of it at one of the Train stops.. forgot which one though.

Meh.

Even some books don't fill in all the blanks for the readers. Heck some don't even have a physical description of the protagonist. Books in a lot of ways require the reader to use their imagination to fill in the details. So why can't an RPG feature a protagonist with no past? Especially when YOU are filling in that character's role. YOU decide what characteristics the character has (SPECIAL) and what the character's talents are (SKILLS/PERKS). Heck you're even determining what gender the hero is.

Not every protagonist requires a background. It depends on the story. And in FNV, there was none required.

Are you sure? I can't confirm.

Yeah, i read your last post and your solution is not creative or funny. A guy was being dumb when he said he could be king kong from space but i guess you didnt pick up on it... Either way you cant make your guy look enough like an ape to begin with, plus you said to get the space suit but you cant start with it and the story is a fail right there if your supposed to be from space but gotta go get a space suit and king kong was say i dunno 50ft or so but probally even bigger and your solution is a shrink ray huh?? I guess we all should start getting help from tom and jerry cartoons or gi joe from when we was 7 if thats your solution. I also highly doubt there are shrink rays in space let alone in use on a giant ape that also knows english and when your on earth why would you choose to be a courier? Cause all apes in space like to deliver items? D U M B

Problem is a blank back ground is pure lazyness, it dont have to be totally made out but even in FO3 gave you a wide open way to go about how you wanna be and possiblities considering they only gave snips of your life, anything could of happened between then to change you and make you out to what u wanna be. I know it svcks everybody cant just sit in the dark and think up a story then get up and play it out to a point then HAVE to get to a point where you become a mailman pretty much and get shot so no matter how you want your back story you still have to get to a certain point and do it their way so your fight for this so called great nothing of a past is also a great and epic fail. Atleast have some kind of connection to the world, they could of gave you a very defined past then when you get shot you lose your memory then bam, anything you wanna be but OBSIDIAN, not Bethesda are lazy bastards and went cheap all over the game... but i think we all know that, just that [censored] dont admitt much