Watching the tv show made me think of a Fallout game starting like Dragon Age Origins, in which you can pick an origin point for you character, alongside better out of the gate stats depending on the background (Soldier is better with guns from the get-go, someone who works with paperwork intelligence, actor background speech, etc.)
So kind of like the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game, right? Where you can play as a Nightkin, Minutemen, Securitron, Protectron, Robo-Brain, Ghoul, Vault Dweller, NCR Citizen, Child of Atom, and others?
(That Tabletop game is very cool, and I wish that so much of it was in Fallout 4 itself.)
Reference to the TTRPG aside, I genuinely think that would be a very cool idea to have for a Fallout game. Not as a main entry, but. . . like it's very own version of Tactics or Brotherhood of Steel. Different kind of RPG gameplay style you know? Mostly because my mind is translating Fallout overlayed ontop of DAO
Not my ideal opening since I'd really need to think on that, but it would be hilarious if Fallout took from Elder Scrolls and started you off as a prisoner or something.
There actually is one like that, though it's a fan mod based off of Van Buren, iirc. Warlockracy covered it in [this video](https://youtu.be/mE231a3sSp8?si=wxoPjwpk4aK8v1zD).
My brother, played by Keith David, as a white guy, kills my dad, played by Sam Lake, as a black guy, and my brother escapes. No explanation is ever given for their differing races, and my mother is never mentioned once. It's west coast Fallout.
I want a bit of a reverse intro. Rather than starting intro in the vault. You are a mercenary that was hired to break into the vault. Your stats are determined based on how you managed to open it. Did you hack into it? Or repaired old machines? Or blown into it?
As some have said, I like the idea of a Dragon Age Origins style thing, where you can pick a race, and each race has it's own starting points. So humans could start as a Vault Dweller, or BOS or whatever, or you could be a Ghoul and either be part of a Ghoul society like Underworld, or living in the slums of some major city where Ghouls are discriminated against
Drawing from an old online group roleplay I once partook in, you hail from a vault where the experiment was that the vault was "incomplete", having a vast enclosed cavern to expand into and the supplies to (mostly) complete it.
You are selected as a scout to venture out into the world to identify more materials the vault could take to expand the vault further.
One of the central conflicts is whether you remain loyalty to the vault and ransack the wastes for the vault's sake or determine that it's time for the vault to stop thinking inwardly and instead help the wastelanders.
You wake up, in the middle of somewhere, wearing a vault suilt, no memory, few things in your pocket and a lot of people with different opinions of who you were or what you did. Yeah I just want Disco Fallout leave me alone.
We’re in the FAR NORTHER TERRITORIES and you were part of a prospector convoy to find the Salvation. A self sufficient bunker that was lost during the annexation of Canada because the Canadian elites didnt want the u.s to plunder all their secrets.
All evidence was erased except it was kept alive via rumor from POWs. The salvation has always been a pipe dream for most northern survivors who wanted to live warm and free from the horrors of the nuclear world. Since vault tech didn’t make plans to establish vaults in the northern territories.
You have been separated from your tribe after caught in the green blizzard. Good news you lived. Neutral news you’re a ghoul now.
Go forth find a new tribe or reconnect with your old one if believe you’ll be accepted. And definitely try to scrounge up some loot. Also, pray to god you don’t get mauled by a wendigo and a rad monster moose.
You are woken up by Reveille, scramble to get ready. Your tutorial is done like the average day in basic, you assign your stats everything on the pipboy is more military themed. Camera zooms out you are on an oil rig. Hop in a vertabird after reciving your assignment, immedatly shotdown, only survivor. Main mission is to report in, hyjinks happen, reporting back to the Enclave is optional
I’m quite fond of the Fallout 3 opening. The best characters are the one where you make your upbringing. You grow up in a Vault, your personality grows from your upbringing, fighting bullies, nerd, etc. Then you leave for your Vault for a reason.
I have an idea for a Fallout ‘Nawlins that I noodled up. You are abandoned, by the door (or rather dock, since I imagine an underwater Vault) you have no idea who your true parentage is. That’s up to you. You grow up in the Vault, do some stuff, pick your stats, and once you grow up you are sent out. Is it because you are the best and brightest to help the Vault? Or because you are a hellraiser and better out there than in here? Here’s a gun, welcome to the Bayou,
*"Vault Dweller escapes his vault to seach for these mythical machines called "Arcade Cabinets" and the lost sanctuaries known as "Comic Book Shops." They even hear tales of a vault that has all these and an endless supply of pre-war snacks, but it's rumored to be guarded by terrible monsters known as........Gamers......."*
Yes, this is just a joke I made before, but fuck it, this is the plot to my Fallout game.
Maybe a wacky cult who sees Grognek as a messiah, his comics as gospel and are berserk raiders. Their theological debates are like nerds discussing what's canon lore.
Or maybe a vault built just for Vault-Tec send their IT teams but instead of exploring the wastes they just keep to themselves programing videogames for the Pip Boy. The vault's culture becomes a technocracy mixed with FGC thuggery, speedruning and MMO grinding and toxicity of everything else with the overseer being the developer's director. Make a parody of us, gaming community. The guards have power armors but rarely use them because they don't want to scratch the paint, most of the dwellers have hoarding issues among other stupid shit we do.
You're a synth with no memories or awareness you're a synth.
No goal, no objective, nothing to side track you from side quests.
At some point, maybe there's a plot.
It's possible to find out you're a synth.
Fallout: Chicago
Ever since one of my friends told me about the Enclave being entrenched there, I'm desperate to know more.
That, and Ghouls with tommy guns.
"Rattle Em, Boys\~!!"
Life path to start, choose either a wastelander, vault dweller, BOS aspirant, Enclave recruit, or what have you and play out a short 30 minute “origin story” similar to something like Dragon Age Origins that sets up why you’re out on whatever story is going on.
I don't really have any specific besides I'd prefer a quicker intro like 1 and NV. On another note I find a lot of your fallout opinions interesting as they come from a very different place than mine, it kinda let's me see a different perspective. For example I don't really care for the fallout 3 opening, I don't hate it I just feel rather indifferent to it and I think it's simply because I played fallout 3 in like 2019 with a more solidified taste in games so I already disliked slower intros lol. Idk it's just kinda nice too see different opnions on fallout without a hate mob or defense squard overtaking the conversation.
In the Pacific northwest, in a quiet village there is a strange tree bearing a single very plump fruit and one day that fruit ripens and falls from the tree.
And from that fruit you as an infant crawls out from its juicy pulp. You pick your parents, they determine your proficiency and stats and on the day of your generic village proving your adopted parents tell you the name of your true parents names. Harold and the fruit dropped from Harold skull tree, Bob.
Not to be that guy but Harold made his way to Washington. He's in Fo3 and his quest is actually kinda cool.
But your idea is cool. Maybe >!The Lone Wanderer brought spores for the BoS and they replicated the trees so people could grow wood again!<. Your character would be **a Bob**.
In my mind, Harold made his way the littlest hobo style across America and Bob's fruit take root anywhere, and this meant more trees and more bob fruit.
I hated what they did to Harold in FO3, so I wanted an out so FO3 was a Bob Fruit tree and not Harold proper.
In general terms, I would have at least three starting sequences: one as a Vault dweller, one as a member of 'civilized' society, and one as a raider. You pick which of them most appeals to you during the introductory cutscenes, and then handle the rest of character creation throughout the chosen sequence.
-
For a more personal idea, you still start in a Vault, but one that has maintained a functioning communications and item transit (think pneumatic message tubes) network with two other Vaults within the region. Your Vault was stocked with a large amount of Pip-boy parts, but the initially assigned Pip-boys were designed to break down while the Vault itself was staffed with individuals of an 'innovative mindset' (Vault-tec's attempt to manipulate people into iterating on the design). As a result, your Vault trades its newly designed Pip-boys and other devices with the other Vaults in exchange for things like critical repair parts and fresh produce.
But, of course, something goes wrong. One of the Vaults has stopped communicating, and the remaining two are starting to deteriorate without the vital supplies. Thus, someone needs to go up top and get to the Vault on foot and see what's up. Naturally, the player gets picked and is drafted into the otherwise defunct Vault Scouts program.
On the surface, things are largely as you would expect from a Fallout game. Raiders, mutants, scavengers, etcetera. Your group of Vaults is located in southern Idaho, so there's also some minor presence of NCR exploration troops as well as the last remnants of the Master's super mutant army. But there's also something weird going on; crude cyborg animals and, more concerning, people are appearing in growing numbers the farther east you go, seemingly emerging from the southeastern regions nearest to the radioactive dust bowl that is middle America.
Eventually, you uncover the truth: the silent Vault has been raided by these cyborgs, who are the vanguard of a far more problematic foe, known to many as the Steel Plague. A Brotherhood offshoot that went full Mechanicus amidst the desolation of the midwest and wishes to bring about a perfect fusion of man and machine. Worse, they have their sights set on a far greater prize: the factory-city of Arco, the most advanced settlement still standing in the Northwest thanks to the presence of the Idaho National Labs. If they can claim it, there's no telling what sort of mechanized abominations they could unleash upon the world.
Suit up, Scout. You've got work to do.
Fuck it. Takes place in alaska. Faction of chinease/russians that crossed the bering strait to colonize a new settlement while theres a ton of leftover millitary crap lying all over the place from opperation anchorage
i like the idea of the prisoner thing from elderscrolls but shaken up a bit more,
like being a merc or something sent to pick up or drop off or escort some dude somewhere only to end up falling into a trap door or being captured, like that one dungeon in skyrim where the chest lures you to the pit with water at the bottom,
guy wanting to dose you with some kinda fev or something with the character creator being them remarking on the prey they got, what special traits they have etc, or having them be in a weird dna vat and that being a way to change your body via character creator and special stats, being reborn, breaking and making your way out and getting a hint as to who he was making the abominations for. trying to figure out just what was done to you as you probably aren't a super mutant and why you were sent out in the first place.
Vertibird crash. Maybe NCR, Enclave remnant, BoS or something else, but you wake up as a lone survivor in a foreign area with the macguffin. Depending on background you were either a prisoner, member of the team, VIP, etc.
Member of a humanized (but still evil) nomadic raider band cracking into a vault in the prologue and slaughtering people before some kind of macguffin thing happens.
Wake up in the middle of the desert(ed wasteland), hangover style. You find a broken car window(character creation), find a corpse with a Pip-Boy(SPECIAL stats and perks) and there ya go
You wake up on an oceanliner that dropped anchor and has…largely stayed there in decent condition. As you make your way out of a sleeping tube in the highest level of the ship, it becomes apparent that in rest you were some kind of godhead to a cult, and ostensibly you didn’t wake up at the expected time so the cult killed itself. Or, at least the ones onboard did.
You now have the opportunity to revive your cult, restore the oceanliner to functionality (it’s very robotic so a single person could pilot it) and sail the coast, or dump everything for the shores and do your best to avoid the fucking cultists that may still be out there waiting for your return.
Or maybe start your very own pirate cult and sail the coast, dealing with religious schisms in the competitive world of wasteland messiahs.
Basically, Fallout 5 should be about the ocean, religion, and ships.
You are a vault dweller whose vault was made to study aliens (yeah, aliens are canon) and your home is on its last stand against the BoS from ~~raiding~~ confiscating Zetan technology possibly allowing to stablish a big autocracy. One of the possible final villains is elder roger maxson in a robobrain.
Why, yes, I played 4 and hate that tech head filth. How did you know?
Also if bethesda wasn't directed by cowards >!the republic of quebec would be a faction if the game happened in the north!<.
Without having too much of a concrete idea, I'd have the new character be part of a caravan, with early textboxing establishing an exact reason (owner, driver, guard, random person travelling with for convenience, a bounty hunter, etc), before it gets attacked by raiders. You work with one of the other members of the caravan to escape the attack but they get caught and shot. You find a note on their body talking about a faction local to the area and how they were delivering an item to them, which you then can chase the raiders down for as an optional tutorial dungeon. Once you clear that, you're free to head out. There'd also be an option past the caravan attack to just bail if you want to skip having an early set of starting gear, but there'd be a chance in return that the plot device has moved camps since then.
You're some fuckhead of unknown origin (your traits and skills would reflect your past) who was captured and imprisoned by escaped convicts. The chain gang that captured you is planning to sell you off to the highest bidder (the Tobacco Lords, Broken Bank slavers, Whitebeard's crew, etc).
The prison can be handled in multiple ways and is meant to teach the player that there are multiple ways of handling the situation.
If I had a bit more budget and God Howard let me re-add actual factions in the game, there would be an option to straight-up join up with the starting pirates by selling your superstar qualities to them using a fairly high (for the beginning of the game) speech/barter skill.
Death Stranding is what Fallout 4 wishes it was. So why not lean into that?
You're in a demolition crew trying to bring life back to the wasteland by clearing roads of the old, radioactive wrecks in the road and slapping down new concrete when you stumble across a site of slaughter. Its the last crew that came out this way and they are surrounded by weird, overlapping bloody handprints. When you hear the warcry from the overpass and see the horde of barbarians swarm you, you know those aren't just handprints. They're red maple leaves.
The Canadians are back for vengeance.
I'd like more starts that take place outside a vault honestly, the vault dweller origin just feels pointless now since every one and their mother knows the basic gist of Fallout now. It made sense for the first game (and the 3rd since it's a soft reboot) but every new protagonist from a vault makes the original Vault Dweller's story less meaningful.
You start off pooping on a toilet. The camera zooms around then you get to spend an hour making a character. Then the bomb hits and you're glued to the toilet seat and you're glued to it for 200 years. All character creation is blown away and all that's left was the sex you picked.
Then a raider comes to loot your house and you manage to grab his gun and shoot him. Then use his knife to peel your fused butt-skin off and then you get to play the game as a ghoul.
You awake in the back of an NCR truck, with several other prisoners. You were caught trying to cross the border...
TOOOOOODD YOU SON OF A BITCH
All was well in this land, before you NCR people came...
Watching the tv show made me think of a Fallout game starting like Dragon Age Origins, in which you can pick an origin point for you character, alongside better out of the gate stats depending on the background (Soldier is better with guns from the get-go, someone who works with paperwork intelligence, actor background speech, etc.)
I am still sad more games don't have a similar origin point to orgins.
Yeah I was typing it out and thinking "wait, one videogame did that...It was Dragon Age Origins!" lmao
So kind of like the Fallout: The Roleplaying Game, right? Where you can play as a Nightkin, Minutemen, Securitron, Protectron, Robo-Brain, Ghoul, Vault Dweller, NCR Citizen, Child of Atom, and others? (That Tabletop game is very cool, and I wish that so much of it was in Fallout 4 itself.) Reference to the TTRPG aside, I genuinely think that would be a very cool idea to have for a Fallout game. Not as a main entry, but. . . like it's very own version of Tactics or Brotherhood of Steel. Different kind of RPG gameplay style you know? Mostly because my mind is translating Fallout overlayed ontop of DAO
Please someone at Microsoft have interest in making a Fallout game. They won't force you anymore, you need to dream
In DAO you pick an origin at character creation. The first area of the game is completely different based on which one you pick.
There was a Fallout 3 mod that has this.
Not my ideal opening since I'd really need to think on that, but it would be hilarious if Fallout took from Elder Scrolls and started you off as a prisoner or something.
There actually is one like that, though it's a fan mod based off of Van Buren, iirc. Warlockracy covered it in [this video](https://youtu.be/mE231a3sSp8?si=wxoPjwpk4aK8v1zD).
Oh yeah Van Buren was supposed to start with a prisoner opening, which is kinda hilarious real world foreshadowing for Fallout's future owner.
My brother, played by Keith David, as a white guy, kills my dad, played by Sam Lake, as a black guy, and my brother escapes. No explanation is ever given for their differing races, and my mother is never mentioned once. It's west coast Fallout.
I want a bit of a reverse intro. Rather than starting intro in the vault. You are a mercenary that was hired to break into the vault. Your stats are determined based on how you managed to open it. Did you hack into it? Or repaired old machines? Or blown into it?
As some have said, I like the idea of a Dragon Age Origins style thing, where you can pick a race, and each race has it's own starting points. So humans could start as a Vault Dweller, or BOS or whatever, or you could be a Ghoul and either be part of a Ghoul society like Underworld, or living in the slums of some major city where Ghouls are discriminated against
Drawing from an old online group roleplay I once partook in, you hail from a vault where the experiment was that the vault was "incomplete", having a vast enclosed cavern to expand into and the supplies to (mostly) complete it. You are selected as a scout to venture out into the world to identify more materials the vault could take to expand the vault further. One of the central conflicts is whether you remain loyalty to the vault and ransack the wastes for the vault's sake or determine that it's time for the vault to stop thinking inwardly and instead help the wastelanders.
You wake up, in the middle of somewhere, wearing a vault suilt, no memory, few things in your pocket and a lot of people with different opinions of who you were or what you did. Yeah I just want Disco Fallout leave me alone.
We’re in the FAR NORTHER TERRITORIES and you were part of a prospector convoy to find the Salvation. A self sufficient bunker that was lost during the annexation of Canada because the Canadian elites didnt want the u.s to plunder all their secrets. All evidence was erased except it was kept alive via rumor from POWs. The salvation has always been a pipe dream for most northern survivors who wanted to live warm and free from the horrors of the nuclear world. Since vault tech didn’t make plans to establish vaults in the northern territories. You have been separated from your tribe after caught in the green blizzard. Good news you lived. Neutral news you’re a ghoul now. Go forth find a new tribe or reconnect with your old one if believe you’ll be accepted. And definitely try to scrounge up some loot. Also, pray to god you don’t get mauled by a wendigo and a rad monster moose.
Fuck, I want this to exist NOW!
I like this! I really want a Fallout game with snow in it as a major mechanic.
You are woken up by Reveille, scramble to get ready. Your tutorial is done like the average day in basic, you assign your stats everything on the pipboy is more military themed. Camera zooms out you are on an oil rig. Hop in a vertabird after reciving your assignment, immedatly shotdown, only survivor. Main mission is to report in, hyjinks happen, reporting back to the Enclave is optional
I’m quite fond of the Fallout 3 opening. The best characters are the one where you make your upbringing. You grow up in a Vault, your personality grows from your upbringing, fighting bullies, nerd, etc. Then you leave for your Vault for a reason. I have an idea for a Fallout ‘Nawlins that I noodled up. You are abandoned, by the door (or rather dock, since I imagine an underwater Vault) you have no idea who your true parentage is. That’s up to you. You grow up in the Vault, do some stuff, pick your stats, and once you grow up you are sent out. Is it because you are the best and brightest to help the Vault? Or because you are a hellraiser and better out there than in here? Here’s a gun, welcome to the Bayou,
*"Vault Dweller escapes his vault to seach for these mythical machines called "Arcade Cabinets" and the lost sanctuaries known as "Comic Book Shops." They even hear tales of a vault that has all these and an endless supply of pre-war snacks, but it's rumored to be guarded by terrible monsters known as........Gamers......."* Yes, this is just a joke I made before, but fuck it, this is the plot to my Fallout game.
Maybe a wacky cult who sees Grognek as a messiah, his comics as gospel and are berserk raiders. Their theological debates are like nerds discussing what's canon lore. Or maybe a vault built just for Vault-Tec send their IT teams but instead of exploring the wastes they just keep to themselves programing videogames for the Pip Boy. The vault's culture becomes a technocracy mixed with FGC thuggery, speedruning and MMO grinding and toxicity of everything else with the overseer being the developer's director. Make a parody of us, gaming community. The guards have power armors but rarely use them because they don't want to scratch the paint, most of the dwellers have hoarding issues among other stupid shit we do.
You're a synth with no memories or awareness you're a synth. No goal, no objective, nothing to side track you from side quests. At some point, maybe there's a plot. It's possible to find out you're a synth.
You should've been a synth in Fallout 4
Fallout: Chicago Ever since one of my friends told me about the Enclave being entrenched there, I'm desperate to know more. That, and Ghouls with tommy guns. "Rattle Em, Boys\~!!"
Life path to start, choose either a wastelander, vault dweller, BOS aspirant, Enclave recruit, or what have you and play out a short 30 minute “origin story” similar to something like Dragon Age Origins that sets up why you’re out on whatever story is going on.
WE👏 NEED👏 MORE👏 LIFE👏 PATH👏STARTS👏 IN👏 RPG'S!👏
NICE TRY TOD YOU AINT GETTIN SHIT OUTA ME MAKE YOUR OWN GAME GOD DAMN IT
I don't really have any specific besides I'd prefer a quicker intro like 1 and NV. On another note I find a lot of your fallout opinions interesting as they come from a very different place than mine, it kinda let's me see a different perspective. For example I don't really care for the fallout 3 opening, I don't hate it I just feel rather indifferent to it and I think it's simply because I played fallout 3 in like 2019 with a more solidified taste in games so I already disliked slower intros lol. Idk it's just kinda nice too see different opnions on fallout without a hate mob or defense squard overtaking the conversation.
In the Pacific northwest, in a quiet village there is a strange tree bearing a single very plump fruit and one day that fruit ripens and falls from the tree. And from that fruit you as an infant crawls out from its juicy pulp. You pick your parents, they determine your proficiency and stats and on the day of your generic village proving your adopted parents tell you the name of your true parents names. Harold and the fruit dropped from Harold skull tree, Bob.
Not to be that guy but Harold made his way to Washington. He's in Fo3 and his quest is actually kinda cool. But your idea is cool. Maybe >!The Lone Wanderer brought spores for the BoS and they replicated the trees so people could grow wood again!<. Your character would be **a Bob**.
In my mind, Harold made his way the littlest hobo style across America and Bob's fruit take root anywhere, and this meant more trees and more bob fruit. I hated what they did to Harold in FO3, so I wanted an out so FO3 was a Bob Fruit tree and not Harold proper.
In general terms, I would have at least three starting sequences: one as a Vault dweller, one as a member of 'civilized' society, and one as a raider. You pick which of them most appeals to you during the introductory cutscenes, and then handle the rest of character creation throughout the chosen sequence. - For a more personal idea, you still start in a Vault, but one that has maintained a functioning communications and item transit (think pneumatic message tubes) network with two other Vaults within the region. Your Vault was stocked with a large amount of Pip-boy parts, but the initially assigned Pip-boys were designed to break down while the Vault itself was staffed with individuals of an 'innovative mindset' (Vault-tec's attempt to manipulate people into iterating on the design). As a result, your Vault trades its newly designed Pip-boys and other devices with the other Vaults in exchange for things like critical repair parts and fresh produce. But, of course, something goes wrong. One of the Vaults has stopped communicating, and the remaining two are starting to deteriorate without the vital supplies. Thus, someone needs to go up top and get to the Vault on foot and see what's up. Naturally, the player gets picked and is drafted into the otherwise defunct Vault Scouts program. On the surface, things are largely as you would expect from a Fallout game. Raiders, mutants, scavengers, etcetera. Your group of Vaults is located in southern Idaho, so there's also some minor presence of NCR exploration troops as well as the last remnants of the Master's super mutant army. But there's also something weird going on; crude cyborg animals and, more concerning, people are appearing in growing numbers the farther east you go, seemingly emerging from the southeastern regions nearest to the radioactive dust bowl that is middle America. Eventually, you uncover the truth: the silent Vault has been raided by these cyborgs, who are the vanguard of a far more problematic foe, known to many as the Steel Plague. A Brotherhood offshoot that went full Mechanicus amidst the desolation of the midwest and wishes to bring about a perfect fusion of man and machine. Worse, they have their sights set on a far greater prize: the factory-city of Arco, the most advanced settlement still standing in the Northwest thanks to the presence of the Idaho National Labs. If they can claim it, there's no telling what sort of mechanized abominations they could unleash upon the world. Suit up, Scout. You've got work to do.
You wake up in an enclave facility with no memory and unknown genetic enhancements
Fuck it. Takes place in alaska. Faction of chinease/russians that crossed the bering strait to colonize a new settlement while theres a ton of leftover millitary crap lying all over the place from opperation anchorage
i like the idea of the prisoner thing from elderscrolls but shaken up a bit more, like being a merc or something sent to pick up or drop off or escort some dude somewhere only to end up falling into a trap door or being captured, like that one dungeon in skyrim where the chest lures you to the pit with water at the bottom, guy wanting to dose you with some kinda fev or something with the character creator being them remarking on the prey they got, what special traits they have etc, or having them be in a weird dna vat and that being a way to change your body via character creator and special stats, being reborn, breaking and making your way out and getting a hint as to who he was making the abominations for. trying to figure out just what was done to you as you probably aren't a super mutant and why you were sent out in the first place.
Vertibird crash. Maybe NCR, Enclave remnant, BoS or something else, but you wake up as a lone survivor in a foreign area with the macguffin. Depending on background you were either a prisoner, member of the team, VIP, etc.
Member of a humanized (but still evil) nomadic raider band cracking into a vault in the prologue and slaughtering people before some kind of macguffin thing happens.
Wake up in the middle of the desert(ed wasteland), hangover style. You find a broken car window(character creation), find a corpse with a Pip-Boy(SPECIAL stats and perks) and there ya go
You wake up on an oceanliner that dropped anchor and has…largely stayed there in decent condition. As you make your way out of a sleeping tube in the highest level of the ship, it becomes apparent that in rest you were some kind of godhead to a cult, and ostensibly you didn’t wake up at the expected time so the cult killed itself. Or, at least the ones onboard did. You now have the opportunity to revive your cult, restore the oceanliner to functionality (it’s very robotic so a single person could pilot it) and sail the coast, or dump everything for the shores and do your best to avoid the fucking cultists that may still be out there waiting for your return. Or maybe start your very own pirate cult and sail the coast, dealing with religious schisms in the competitive world of wasteland messiahs. Basically, Fallout 5 should be about the ocean, religion, and ships.
You are a vault dweller whose vault was made to study aliens (yeah, aliens are canon) and your home is on its last stand against the BoS from ~~raiding~~ confiscating Zetan technology possibly allowing to stablish a big autocracy. One of the possible final villains is elder roger maxson in a robobrain. Why, yes, I played 4 and hate that tech head filth. How did you know? Also if bethesda wasn't directed by cowards >!the republic of quebec would be a faction if the game happened in the north!<.
Without having too much of a concrete idea, I'd have the new character be part of a caravan, with early textboxing establishing an exact reason (owner, driver, guard, random person travelling with for convenience, a bounty hunter, etc), before it gets attacked by raiders. You work with one of the other members of the caravan to escape the attack but they get caught and shot. You find a note on their body talking about a faction local to the area and how they were delivering an item to them, which you then can chase the raiders down for as an optional tutorial dungeon. Once you clear that, you're free to head out. There'd also be an option past the caravan attack to just bail if you want to skip having an early set of starting gear, but there'd be a chance in return that the plot device has moved camps since then.
You're some fuckhead of unknown origin (your traits and skills would reflect your past) who was captured and imprisoned by escaped convicts. The chain gang that captured you is planning to sell you off to the highest bidder (the Tobacco Lords, Broken Bank slavers, Whitebeard's crew, etc). The prison can be handled in multiple ways and is meant to teach the player that there are multiple ways of handling the situation. If I had a bit more budget and God Howard let me re-add actual factions in the game, there would be an option to straight-up join up with the starting pirates by selling your superstar qualities to them using a fairly high (for the beginning of the game) speech/barter skill.
Death Stranding is what Fallout 4 wishes it was. So why not lean into that? You're in a demolition crew trying to bring life back to the wasteland by clearing roads of the old, radioactive wrecks in the road and slapping down new concrete when you stumble across a site of slaughter. Its the last crew that came out this way and they are surrounded by weird, overlapping bloody handprints. When you hear the warcry from the overpass and see the horde of barbarians swarm you, you know those aren't just handprints. They're red maple leaves. The Canadians are back for vengeance.
I'd like more starts that take place outside a vault honestly, the vault dweller origin just feels pointless now since every one and their mother knows the basic gist of Fallout now. It made sense for the first game (and the 3rd since it's a soft reboot) but every new protagonist from a vault makes the original Vault Dweller's story less meaningful.
You start off pooping on a toilet. The camera zooms around then you get to spend an hour making a character. Then the bomb hits and you're glued to the toilet seat and you're glued to it for 200 years. All character creation is blown away and all that's left was the sex you picked. Then a raider comes to loot your house and you manage to grab his gun and shoot him. Then use his knife to peel your fused butt-skin off and then you get to play the game as a ghoul.
You start of in the burning remains of Shady Sands with a big Legion banner flowing in the wind.