The Early Plot (Fallout 4) - How I Would Change It

This is a part of that questline project, but this one focuses on the beginning of Fallout 4 with the intent being to tighten up the storytelling and get the player more invested in what's happening. Maybe I did a good job, or maybe this was just a 17 year old's ramblings. I'm 21 now, definitely old enough to tell the difference lmao

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Main Quest Prologue - Before We Begin

WARNING: There is no voiced protagonist for the game with these mods. Absolutely no voice for the player character aside from the grunts and stuff that appear in every game regardless.

• The game’s introductory cutscene will be different. The narrator’s perspective won’t be that of the player, but instead that of an unknown person looking back on the Pre-War world with the luxury of hindsight. The content will be more or less the same, but with a different point of view and different lines to reflect that, along with different visuals to reflect the new lines and narrator perspective. The person speaking will more than likely be that of the Director before Father - the one who ordered Father’s abduction from Vault 111 as a child - and will almost definitely be revealed during the Institute epilogue as part of this holotape collection that he had made in order to document his plan for the Commonwealth from start to finish. Framing the game in this manner, as one big plan being laid out by the previous Director and played through by the player, will provide a much more cohesive feel to it all.
• The introduction cutscene will end with a fade to black and an end to whatever music was playing, followed by the normal character creation of the vanilla game. The player decides to be either male or female, designing the way both your character and their spouse look, then having an average morning. But, this isn’t the day that the bombs fell. The player has the talk with the Vault-Tec salesman, sets up their name, age, and SPECIAL stats, then spends the day going around Sanctuary Hills, interacting with the people there. Getting their tutorial to quests, how consequences are handled, and how all the crafting mechanics work. This sets up a knowledge of the Pre-War world and the people living in it, as well as an idea of how the actual game will function when it comes to gameplay. That bit of a tutorial ends once all the little objectives are complete, or once you go back to your house and talk to your spouse again.
• Then, the game goes through a time jump of eight years. It’s a day just like that previous section, but with a few key differences: Codsworth is gone, your spouse is gone, there is no car in the driveway, Sanctuary Hills looks a bit different, and Shaun is now around nine years old. In the years since that day, your spouse died of unknown causes, Codsworth had to be sold due to money troubles, the car was sold since gas prices skyrocketed beyond reasonable numbers that would warrant owning one, and the other people of Sanctuary have also had to go through rough times to make things work. Shaun misses his dead parent, and has begun drifting apart from his surviving one (the player). This section involves the player exploring the house for a bit, seeing the ways that time has changed their lives, before talking to Shaun. He asks the player if the two of them can go out and do something that day, and the player has multiple choices of how to respond to him. Regardless of how they respond to him, there is a bit of time to wander around the house and interact with stuff some more before Shaun, who has turned on the TV, asks the player to come look at what's on the screen. The same ominous music plays like in the vanilla game when this scene happens, the same news broadcast, same everything up until the player actually gets put in cryosleep. The only story differences are those that I’ve shown above.
• The Kellogg cutscene plays, with changes to accommodate for the fact that there is no spouse and Shaun is about nine or ten. Shaun’s pod is opened, he freaks out, an Institute scientist injects him with a sedative, Kellogg calls you the backup, and then they leave. Now, we get into the actual game.

Main Quest Act One - Whole New World

1. “Out of Time” quest is the same as vanilla, except there is absolutely nothing living in Sanctuary Hills. No bugs, no roaches, and (obviously) no Codsworth, meaning the player might have no idea what year it is until they reach Concord. The player explores Sanctuary Hills, finding out what happened to the neighbors who couldn’t get into the vault, and then realizing that the best plan is to find Shaun; and doing that means following the road south, towards Boston, in the hopes of getting information from someone along the way. The quest ends when the player encounters the raiders outside Concord and is forced at gunpoint to help them draw the settlers out.
2. “Jewel of the Commonwealth” quest is the same as vanilla, except it’s gained by one of the Concord settlers instead of the Minutemen (since the Minutemen are in Lexington, not Concord), and nobody mentions an infant or a baby at any point. Shaun is like ten this time around, so that doesn’t make sense. This quest is given at the same time as “The Midnight Ride”, which is the first quest of the Minutemen questline to go warn the Minutemen in Lexington of the raiders closing in.
3. “Unlikely Valentine” quest is the same as vanilla, except there is no mention of an infant, a baby, or of the player’s spouse being killed by Kellogg.
4. “Getting a Clue” quest is the same as vanilla, except there is no mention of an infant, a baby, or of the player’s spouse being killed by Kellogg.
5. “Reunions” quest is the same as vanilla, except there is no mention of an infant, a baby, or of the player’s spouse being killed by Kellogg.

Main Quest Act Two - Mission Impossible

1. “Dangerous Minds” quest is the same as vanilla, except there is no mention of an infant, a baby, or of the player’s spouse being killed by Kellogg.
2. “The Glowing Sea” quest is the same as vanilla, except there is no mention of an infant, a baby, or of the player’s spouse being killed by Kellogg.
3. “Hunter/Hunted” quest is the same as vanilla, except there is no mention of an infant, a baby, or of the player’s spouse being killed by Kellogg.
4. “The Molecular Level” quest is the same as vanilla, except there is no mention of an infant, a baby, or of the player’s spouse being killed by Kellogg.
5. “Institutionalized” quest is the same as vanilla, except there is no mention of an infant, a baby, or of the player’s spouse being killed by Kellogg, and Father has different lines.

Main Quest Act Three - Total War

This is when the faction questlines become the game’s focus. After completing Institutionalized, the goal of the story is to make the Commonwealth better, however you see fit.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:

• Codsworth is still in the game, he just isn’t at Sanctuary Hills. I’m thinking of making it so that Whitechapel Charlie in Goodneighbor is actually just a reprogrammed Codsworth whose memories can be unlocked after doing all the quests that directly involve Whitechapel Charlie, so as to prevent any conflicts with his quests.