You know it's gonna happen!

That nuke was far away not to incinerate everyone...but close enough to cause radiation burns.

I think the baby got tenderloined, and your holding your burnt spouse in your charred arms, as the lift goes down.

Your spouse being completely devistated about the dead baby, cries her last breaths as you feel your vision failing, blurring.

Next second, your on a gurney being brought to the infirmary by the vault garrison, escorted by the Pip Boy doctor. You are quickly treated with an ungodly amount of stimpaks and anti-rad. "Stat.... CLEAR!" *Booomph!*

Emergency protocols are enacted as radiation leaks are detected coming from the vault elevator. Doc tosses you into Cryochamber to stabilize you and protect u from further radiation exposure. Doc goes away to help as many poeple as he can, and fights to contain the radiation. He eventually succumbs and dies next to the Pip Boy table....

How do you think it's gonna play out?

Considering you can spend time on creating spouse, that generates the child.

Wake up from cryosleep

wife and child left an unknown time before you.

You find a skeleton that has your wife's ring,

but it turns out to just of been a raider.

Find wife later.

Kill Her.

as long as I'm not a toaster

Idk I liked the toaster in Old World Blues, so maybe the android thing wont be so bad.

Interesting theory. I can see the player blacking out when the bombs drop and the next thing you wake up 200 years after, all alone in the empty darkness of vault 111...

Uhh, well since no sane woman would marry 2-caps I expect he was a very low level Vault tech employee. Perhaps the fellow that made sure the toilet paper dispensers were full. During a routine toilet Patrol the bomb sirens start going off, Deftly evading the guards (thinking he would most likely be shot cause of course he was not Vault cleared) he made his way to the cyro-lab and hide is the first pod, Not long after some techie came in with a fellow who did not look so good over his shoulder, tossed em into the same machine and pushed a button. Next thing I (thats 2-caps) know I wake up with the same fella yelling who the heck am I and where is his family.

I promptly club him with my plunger and steal his wedding ring and wallet... And then work my way out into a whole new world

The rest is history so they say

Dude that is way too macabre, and what would be the point? Why would the devs decide to make the story take place 200 years later if your family is dead?

am guessing part of the main story will be to find out what happened to them

Donnoh... If I were the wife of Howard, I'd wake him up as soon as I and the kid were awake. Noway i'm changing the diapers on my own.

Besides, if raiders came to take slaves, why would the sole survivor be omited?

If you jack up the tutorial quest I really hope they die dramatically when they try to enter the vault. And since they die it changes the main story..... Can anyone say evil playthrough?

I wonder if cryo pods can read 2 seperate lifesigns in a single pod.... *looks at baby* Food for thought.

Imagine what kind of dilemma that would bring if there were one too many dwellers and too few pods...

Bethesda did hint there were tough choices to make and they were working on a new karma system....

So female protagonists won't have to wonder wether they can get pregnant or not, or wether they need to buy contraceptives before six with companions. Replenishment stage.

Besides... way too Macabre? *looks at Bloody Mess* .. *looks back at you* Really?

How I think it's going to play out: That blast that hits in the E3 preview shows the shockwave hitting. My theory is this knocks us out. This might explain why we wake up and the previewed dialogue option "200 years...I haven't been gone that long" hinting that we do not know what happened when we were pulled into the vault. Knocked out, elevator lowers, staff carts us off to do the thing. We wake up to [insert what actually happens when we wake up here], we go on our way.

Do you have a link to this? I don't remember any mention of it.

If there isn't some way for the spouse to survive I'm going to be disappointed.

I have a good feeling they do. From a creative storytelling point of view, I can see the spouse getting involved with a local faction in some way...not going to toss my hat into a definite ring here...Which may or may not conflict with your own personal path.

Protagonist AKA: The "sole survivor"

Sole

I think that refers more to you being the only one when you wake up. Who knows what went on while you were still out cold.

I'm thinking (hoping) that it'll be even simpler than having anything to do with your family. You were part of a vault experiment, everyone died but you, you seek vengeance on vault tech.

The Vault Dweller, The Chosen One, The Lone Wanderer, The Courier, The Sole Survivor.

Each name is very specific to one's beginning in the Fallout series. The fact that "The Sole Survivor" is a *very* specific title, I do not see it diverging, because the other 3 titles did not diverge. Even the lone wanderer wandered alone in the end, cuz in the end all of the companions went their seperate ways.

Besides, one chooses either a woman or a man protagonist. If one only designed for a male protagonist but left the wife as vanilla Nora, imagine how annoyed one would be if one can have them as a companion later in the game. One would smack one's head wishing one had customized wife earlier....

Then there is the issue of the baby. Will baby grow? Do hearthfire kids ever grow? Is this conducive to one's immersion?

A man boards a train with his family. The train halts at stop one and the wife and child get off the train. The train leaves the station and crashes shortly before it reaches stop two. The man is the only survivor of the train crash. He is the sole survivor.

That could be interesting, especially if the faction is chosen at random or based on certain choices or actions that you make.

True, but they aren't going to just come out and say that the family survives either.

"In an August edition of GameInformer, it was stated that the experimental purpose of Vault 111 involved cryosleep pods.^{http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_111#cite_note-0} This information, while likely accurate, remains unconfirmed by official sources." - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_111

[1] GameInformer: August 2015 edition, page 48

"Vault 112 was one of the last to be constructed. The construction started in November http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline#2068, and finished in June http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline#2074. It was intended for only 85 occupants, suspended in a virtual reality world for the indefinite duration of the vault's experiment. The vault was built to house and tend to the needs of its http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Overseer, http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Stanislaus_Braun, creator of the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Garden_of_Eden_Creation_Kit. Within it, Braun installed a http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Virtual_reality simulator and http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Tranquility_lounger, initially containing several simulated utopias, the last of which being the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Tranquility_Lane_simulation. The system should have permitted a select few to live a 'perfect life' virtually, if not practically, forever." - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_112

You could be on to something.

In context, that makes perfect sense. But why would wife and child leave husband behind in cryo chamber, after a nuclear holocaust?

If wife and child got abducted, why was husband left unscathed? Perhaps because a husband is not worth the trouble? But this gives wife and child too much to hope for as slaves. Sole Survivor has nothing to offer for ransom. Too much a stranger for abductees to blackmail.

Wife and husband looked happy together pre-war. Nora: "It's nice to see my 2 most favorite guys in the same room." (or something along those lines..para-phrasing here). No family intrigue sensed. Idyllic american dream family.

You're the toaster from Old World Blues.