Next we moved onto a tutorial of how to move and run, all this done while we were still a child. At this point, one is just learning the basic controls of the game, quite fitting that it would be at an early age in the game. As time went, we were able to explore more of the vault and interact with objects.

When we went up to a female scientist, dialog options appeared on screen as to what we could say. We were told as you progress through the game and gain more skills to put towards charisma and speech, more dialog options will open; there are in fact up to 500,000 lines of dialog in the game. An example of speech skills mixing with other skill sets is the ability to talk with scientists. If you have more skill points in science and speech, one is able to speak to the scientist more, as more dialog options appear because one knows more about science. When speaking to characters, the game does show the difference in the effects of the dialog options. This will all go towards how the character is seen later on in life.

Something we noticed early on was the simplicity of the HUD. The on-screen interface is really pretty minimalistic and simplistic. The only things you will see on your screen are health points, action points, your compass, and some info on the weapon equipped. This is something Bethesda learned from Oblivion: they wanted everything else that comes up on the screen to be designed to come in and out. When you get experience points, it will show up on the screen and then go away. When you get quest objectives such as "Follow Dad," it shows up on the screen and then it goes away. They don’t want to overload the player and make the player press buttons that will interfere with playing the game.

Carrying on with the game, your father’s assistant will call for you after you have done some meddling with other characters. We must point out at this stage how incredibly well the AI is build. The NPCs respond to your actions and interact with each other while you walk around the Vault. When the assistant called us, we went down in the basement where they gave us our first BB gun. We then learned how to shoot a gun and how to target people with the VAT system.