| For the unique legendary weapon in Fallout 76, see Sole Survivor. |
In 2227, the Sole Survivor and their spouse are reawakened by two seen unknown individuals and one off-screen, who open the spouse's cryogenic tube with the intent of kidnapping Shaun. (1) Fallout is at its core a game about loss. By having your spouse and child die at the beginning (they didn't awaken and are dead) its a great way to create emotional impact on the player. This is classic Fallout, the whole world is lost and destroyed. Every game has at its core a dark and terrible world where life is short and often unpleasant.
The Sole Survivor, overlooking Boston with Dogmeat | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Sole Survivor is the conjectural name of the player character in Fallout 4. The player takes on the role of either a male or female protagonist, married to Nora or Nate respectively.
- 1Background
Background
Life in Sanctuary Hills
Before the Great War, the Sole Survivor lived the 'American Dream' with their spouse, newborn son Shaun and butler-robot Codsworth in the suburban neighborhood of Sanctuary Hills outside of Concord. Nate is a veteran of the Anchorage Campaign (2nd Battalion, 108th Infantry Regiment),[3] while Nora is a trained lawyer.[4]
Vault 111
On October 23, 2077, the family was spending a quiet Saturday morning at home, when they were visited by a Vault-Tecrepresentative who approved them for admittance into Vault 111. Shortly afterwards, the family's day was interrupted by a news bulletin warning of an impending nuclear attack, followed by air raid sirens. They ran and sought shelter in Vault 111 with their family and made it to the Vault's blast door, along with other residents, as the bombs fell and a nuclear warhead detonated further into the city.[5]
They and their family were ushered into the Vault, and duped into being cryogenically frozen without their knowledge as part of the Vault's experiment. In 2227, the Survivor was briefly awoken from their cryosleep, only to have their spouse killed by a mysterious man and their son abducted and taken out into the wasteland, before being refrozen.[5] The life support systems for all the other experiment subjects were left deactivated, leaving the dwellers to suffocate within their cryo pods while the Vault-Tec staff was already dead due to a security mutiny over the overseer in 2078.[6]
Escape into the Commonwealth
In 2287, the cryo pod malfunctioned, releasing them after more than two centuries. They were now the Sole Survivor of Vault 111; with nothing else for them within the Vault, they escaped into the blinding sunlight above ground, returning to their old neighborhood of Sanctuary Hills in search of their son. They were reunited with Codsworth who, after bumbling around the neighborhood in search of the infant son, suggested the Sole Survivor investigate the town of Concord.[7] While there, the Sole Survivor found a group of settlers led by Commonwealth MinutemanPreston Garvey, under attack from Gristle's raiders.
The Survivor helped repel the attack and learned from one of the settlers, Mama Murphy, that their son was alive and well, but she could not go into further detail, urging the Sole Survivor to head to the Great Green Jewel of the Commonwealth, Diamond City. After a treacherous journey to the center of the Commonwealth, they met Piper Wright, newspaper publisher extraordinaire, who clued them in to Valentine Detective Agency in the city.[8] Unfortunately, the namesake detective Nick Valentine had gone missing. In order to employ the detective's help, they had to track him down to Vault 114 where Valentine was being held hostage by Skinny Malone's and his gangsters from Goodneighbor. After rescuing Nick, they both returned to Diamond City to get down to brass tacks.[9]
Tracking the missing son
Fallout 4 Spouse Alive 3
After a few questions, Valentine deduced that a man named Kellogg fit the bill for kidnapping, and the two investigated his house in the city. When only a few more clues turned up, the Sole Survivor enlisted the help of Dogmeat to track down Kellogg. Dogmeat was successful, bringing the Survivor to Fort Hagen where they were forced to murder Kellogg and his entourage of synths before learning much more about Shaun's whereabouts.[10]
Fortunately, before he died, Kellogg has been kept alive for over a hundred years by a myriad of synthetic implants, allowing Nick Valentine to be implanted with Kellogg's artificial brain and relive the man's memories in the Memory Den. This allowed Valentine and the Sole Survivor to discover a way into the mysterious Institute via teleportation.[11]
From here, the Sole Survivor had to decide who would help them access the Institute and find their son: the antithetical Railroad, the technology-controlling Brotherhood of Steel, or the network of Commonwealth Minutemen. Regardless of who helped them, the Sole Survivor was teleported into the heart of the Institute, and reunited with their son... although he was now old, grey, and dying, having weathered sixty years since he was kidnapped from Vault 111.[12]
Legacy
After discovering the fate of their son, the choices the Sole Survivor made remain a mystery, but it is certain that the Survivor had a vast affect on the region. They saved the Commonwealth from the robotic rampage of The Mechanist;[13] they tracked a young woman up to Mount Desert Island, Maine and influenced the vicious rivalry between the coastal town of Far Harbor, the Children of Atom and a refuge for synths;[14] they uncovered an unfinished vault near Quincy and opened it to the wasteland and all of its denizens;[15] they became the Overboss of Nuka-World and revitalized the theme park.[16]
Regardless of whether the Sole Survivor chose to redefine humanity with the help of the Institute; save the people of the Commonwealth from themselves with the help of the Brotherhood; ensure synths were free from servitude and wastelanders free of kidnapping with the Railroad; or connected the entire Commonwealth with the Minutemen, one thing is for sure: the fate of Commonwealth was forever changed by a vault dweller and a small handful of wastelanders.
Notes
- The Sole Survivor holds a number of firsts for the series:
- First fully-voiced protagonist. Ironically, this makes them the quietest protagonist of the series.
- First protagonist to have been alive before the Great War, making them the oldest protagonist in the series.
- First protagonist where both the male and female versions exist at the same time.
- First protagonist to have different character histories based on their gender: the male Sole Survivor is a military veteran, while the female Sole Survivor is a lawyer.
- First protagonist to have a significant other in the context of their backstory.
Appearances
The Sole Survivor appears only in Fallout 4.
Gallery
The Sole Survivor emerges from Vault 111
A Brotherhood paladin, the Sole Survivor, Dogmeat and Preston Garvey.
References
- ↑Brian Delaney Twitter
- ↑Courtenay Taylor Twitter
- ↑Lookout: 'Scanning. Scanning. Accessing pre-war records. Record found. 108th Infantry Regiment. Second Battalion. Ahoy there. 'Tis Providence a member of the Congressional Army is delivered to us in our hour of need.'
(Lookout's dialogue)
Note: only if the player character is a male Sole Survivor. - ↑Lookout: 'Scanning. Scanning. Accessing pre-war records. Record found. Driver's License S91328862. Lawyer. Ahoy there, citizen. You are hereby conscripted into the Congressional Army.'
The Sole Survivor: 'You're doing what? You don't have the authority to do that.'
Lookout: 'We are in desperate times, madame. Proclomation 22 allows all crew members to conscript citizens for the war effort. The captain requests your presence on the bridge. At the double quick, madame.'
(Lookout's dialogue)
Note: only if the player character is a female Sole Survivor. - ↑ 5.05.1War Never Changes
- ↑Vault 111 terminals, Overseer's Log, Mutiny
- ↑Out of Time
- ↑Jewel of the Commonwealth
- ↑Unlikely Valentine
- ↑Reunions
- ↑Dangerous Minds
- ↑Institutionalized
- ↑Automatron
- ↑Far Harbor
- ↑Vault-Tec Workshop
- ↑Nuka-World
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Content of the article: 'Anyone Else Feel Like the Fallout 4’s Opening Could Be Stronger?'
Having put 900 hours into the game, I feel comfortable saying that Fallout 4's opening could be a bit stronger. The character creation, and moments before entering the vault are pretty strong, but when entering the Vault I think in some aspects it could be improved.
Namely in the moments you enter the cryopod.
I definitely feel like they could have made your Spouse's death more impactful to the player and at least twice as brutal.
The death works for great motivation to the player, but it could be even stronger if the image were to be more haunting.
Now I don't know about you, but I can tell you a .44 Magnum to head at point blank, isn't gonna leave a clean wound.
No, that skull is gonna pop like a watermelon.
The Fallout Series is not shy when it comes to gore, and I feel your spouse's death should be no different. I mean, in New Vegas (All hail our lord and savior courier 6), many of the interiors and massacres you see all have really strong blood and gore effects. I mean you can follow a trail of blood that leads to an injured NCR ranger in Vault 3.
I think if you wanted to make the spouse's death feel more impactful and linger here's a how I'd do it.
Kellogg takes aim with his pistol and pulls the trigger, the gunshot echos, and murders your ears. Your spouse's head breaks apart in a spray of viscera, brain matter littering the floor in grey, bloody chunks. The back of the pod is caked in blood as your's spouses body thuds back into the seat, their mouth hanging open.
All you hear is ringing in your ears, the figures seem to be talking in incoherent words, your throat burns. Somewhere off in the distance you can hear screaming. Who could it be? is there someone still alive?
But then you realize your the one screaming.
Kellogg turns to your pod, his face splattered with the gore of your spouse. He goes to reach for the controls, but his hand stops just short of the handle. Looking back at you, as you furiously pound on the pod, he takes a step back.
'Na, it's not worth it. We need the backup. Put 'em back on ice.' before turning and leaving.
After coming out of cryo-sleep, you fall out of the pod, and collapse onto the ground, crawling over to your spouse's pod, you pull the handle. Your heart is pounding, your stomach drops, as you look at the remains of your spouse's body.
Pulling them out of the pod, the two of you collapse. You holding your spouse in your arms, sobbing uncontrollably. You let out a wail that echos through the vault, unable to do anything. Your breathing becomes labored, as you slide the wedding band off their finger and hold it close to your heart.
'I'll find who did this. And I'll get Shaun back.' You say.
'You promise?' you hear your spouse's voice say.
'I promise.' as you pull yourself to your feet, pacing along the floor.
To me, this leaves a MUCH stronger impact then the vanilla opening scene that I have seen so many times. Even in the vanilla game, while the opening is shocking, as soon as I left the vault I almost instantly forgot it happened. This, would likely stick with the player much more, and last longer then the original does.
Source: reddit.com
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