In previous Fallout titles, player characters began their lives within the Vault, or in the case of Fallout: New Vegas, being dug up from a shallow grave after suffering a gunshot to the face.
Things are set to differ in Fallout 4. We know that the beginning of Fallout 4 takes place before the bombs go off. The introductory sequence revealed at E3 2015 shows us as much, revealing what it's like to create a player character and giving us a feel of the game's 1950s-inspired retro-futuristic setting. The player character makes it into a vault by the time the bombs fall and wakes up 200 years later, dazed and confused, with everyone he's ever known already dead and gone.
In a new interview with The Guardian, Fallout 4 game director Todd Howard talked about how Bethesda is taking a different approach to the player's origins in the upcoming game. Instead of starting at the end of Fallout 3 and adding to that, the developers decided to imagine what a new game would feel like.
Howard says that the opening narrative of Fallout 4 is intended to establish the themes of loss and self-sufficiency and connect the player to the character they're in control of.
“We all have bad things that happen in our lives, and a lot of us wonder how we can go back to before the event, whatever it is. Fallout 4 is about realising that your life has a new normal. We want to put you in the shoes of someone who knows what life was like before this.
“For the other people in the world, this is all they know – it’s normal to them. But the player character is coming in with a sense of the world beforehand. That kind of emotion plays heavily in our story. Any time we can connect the character on screen with the player – any time you both feel the same way – that’s great.”
Howard says that with Fallout 4, there's a sense that players must start over their lives, a theme accentuated by the game's new settlement construction element. The developers admit to borrowing the concept from Minecraft, and state that it allows the players to feel a tangible connection to the digital worlds in which they live.
Fallout 4 comes out on November 10 for the PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Elsewhere, Bethesda revealed details about the game's modding tools.
