Fallout 4/Characters/Sole Survivor

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The Sole Survivor is your player character in Fallout 4, and like the other Fallout games can be male or female. However, unlike the other games, both exist at the start of the game as husband and wife, and whichever one you choose to play as determines which one will die in the prologue.

They also have an infant son named Shaun, who is kidnapped, and regardless who you play as, that will determine a large part of your motivation for traversing the Commonwealth, as well as visiting retribution on the murderer of your spouse.

While you can choose the name of the character you can play as, they will be referred to by the default names of Nate and Nora respectively through this article.

Tropes exhibited by this character include:
  • Acrofatic: You can toggle their body proportions straight to "fatass" if you so prefer, but it will not affect their gameplay at all. They can even be given a super high Agility score at the same time.
  • Ascended Fanboy: Nate is a Grognak fan. You can find a Grognak outfit and axe for him.
  • Badass: Both of them quickly become this over the course of the game.
    • Action Girl: Nora. She even gets the matching perk as an option.
    • Action Girlfriend: If Nora romances a male character, they can be this to them.
    • Action Hero: Both Nora and Nate can even dress and act the part if they don the 'Silver Shroud" Costume. The Grognak outfit serves the same purpose.
    • Action Mom: Nora specific.
    • Action Survivor: Nora, who has to find her way out of Vault 111 soon after the prologue ends on her own.
    • Badass Automaton: They can gain the ability to build and improve them.
    • Badass Back: A perk allows either to reflect damage back on enemies, even from behind.
    • Badass Bandolier: A few can be found and equipped as armor.
    • Badass Baritone; Nate's voice can drop into this where he's really pissed off.
    • Badass Beard: Nate can have one.
    • Badass Boast/Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: Both Nate and Nora can deliver a few of these prior to a fight during a speech check.
    • Badass Bookworm: Nora is a graduate of a law school while Nate is a former US Army veteran, but she's just as badass as he can be. And both can gain perks from reading certain books.
    • Badass Bureaucrat: Nora used to be a lawyer, but can swap lead as well as she used to shuffle paper. It's also possible to achieve certain results during tense speech checks by manipulating the bureaucracy of various factions in your favor, oftentimes to the point of deterring otherwise inevitable bloodshed.
    • Badass Bystander: What they were until the Great War happened.
    • Badass Damsel: Kellogg, if he later encounters Nora after the prologue in which he murdered Nate and kidnapped their son, will admit she's a lot less helpless than he initially gave her credit for.
    • Badass Grandpa/Never Mess with Granny: Technically speaking, thanks to being cryogenically frozen for 200 years, they are older than even most Ghouls. They are even older than Shaun, who is an old man when either finally finds him.
    • Badass in a Nice Suit/Hot Chick in a Badass Suit: Both Nate and Nora can don some stylish suits to be badass in.
    • Badass in Charge: They can become the leader of the Minutemen and the Institute, explicitly because of their ability to kick ass and get things done.
    • Badass Longcoat: A few can be found and worn by either. Special mention goes to the Minuteman General coat, which is this combined with being a badge of office of their role as the General of the Minutemen.
    • Badass Long Hair: Both can wear really long hairstyles if they so choose.
    • Badass Mustache: Nate can sport one of these.
    • Badass Normal: Of the various Fallout protagonists, their Pre-War background makes them the most normal of all of them, given their lack of mutation. They also do not ever become Cyborgs like is possible in the other games, specifically 3 and New Vegas.
      • Badass Abnormal A few perks bestow nigh supernatural abilities, like no need to worry about drowning, Ghoul-like radiation resistance, and health regeneration.
    • Badass Pacifist; A charismatic Nate/Nora can defuse some amazingly deadly situations with little more than mere words.
    • Badass Unintentional: Applies generally to Nora. Nate was already a Retired Badass by virtue of being a veteran.
    • Bald of Awesome: Both can go bald if they like. Can be Bald of Evil if they become a raider boss in Nuka-World.
    • Break the Badass: They can gain this status in the Silver Shroud quest, where they can eventually render bloodthirsty raiders terrified of them.
    • Colonel Badass: The highest rank they can technically achieve in the Brotherhood of Steel would equal out to this.
    • Cool Shades: Both can find a few to don.
    • Cultured Badass: Given they know what Pre-War culture was like, they qualify for this by default to a large portion of the Commonwealth.
    • Dark Action Girl: Nora, should she become a raider boss or simply take the darker path options for certain factions.
    • Determinator/Plucky Girl: Both are pretty driven to avenge their spouse and find their son.
    • Dying Moment of Awesome: Whichever one dies in the prologue will do so defending Shaun from his kidnappers.
    • Fedora of Asskicking: A few can be found to be worn for invoking this trope.
    • Four-Star Badass: What they become to the Minutemen officially and can become to the Institute as its Director.
    • Heartbroken Badass: Both of them. Depending on which one survives, avenging the other is half the reason they travel the wasteland.
    • Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Nora can find some very nice dresses to wear. She can also wear them while getting blood all over herself from killing waves of enemies.
    • Like a Badass Out of Hell: Both of them can decide to walk around the Glowing Sea and back out again, which is effectively this given its sheer lethality.
    • Mama Bear/Papa Wolf: One half of their reasons for traveling the Commonwealth.
    • One-Man Army: Each faction can consider you one of these. Special mention goes to being the Overboss of the Nuka-World raiders, because it's basically a job requirement.
      • And if you decide to kill off the Nuka-World raiders, you are this trope without question.
    • Pop-Cultured Badass: Nate was a Grognak fan back when that was part of the active cultural zeitgeist
    • Retired Badass: Nate specific. He was a US Army veteran, specifically a veteran of the Anchorage campaign.
    • Scarf of Asskicking; A few can be found and worn.
    • Sealed Badass in a Can: What they were in the prologue, due to being locked in cryo vault container.
    • Sealed Evil in a Can: If they become the Overboss of Nuka-World and decide to invade the Commonwealth after leaving Vault 111.
    • Sealed Good in a Can: What they can potentiall be for any of the main game factions.
    • Sociopathic Hero: It's possible for either to be this if they always go for the bloodiest, meanest way to solve problems.
    • Specs of Awesome: Both can wear nerd glasses and still mow down hordes of Deathclaws and Super Mutants.
    • Took a Level in Badass: It's noted throughout the game that this has occurred to your character by several characters.
    • Worthy Opponent: Kellogg will admit your character is this, if you manage to track him down.
  • Bi the Way: You start out married in a heterosexual relationship, but nothing stops you from getting into a gay romance later if you want.
  • A Boy and His Dog: Or a Girl and Her Dog, if you play as Nora.
  • Canon Name: By default, the husband's name is Nate, and the wife is Nora.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: You can become an honored member of all the factions in the game, and then play them against each other. You can even backstab the Minutemen with the Nuka-World DLC.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Pick sarcastic options all the time in dialogue regardless of character to hear either Nate or Nora spew a lot of this trope.
  • Dull Surprise: A lot of Nate and Nora's dialogue post-Great War can have this tone to it, implying they are still working through some PTSD.
  • Evil Overlord: You can become the leader of the Institute in this fashion, should you so choose.
    • The Mechanist from the Automatron DLC will mistakenly believe you to be an up and coming version of this they need to stop.
    • And you can be a totally played straight version if you become the Overboss of the Nuka-World Raiders and decide to help them take over the Commonwealth, basically the only way you can ever actually become a direct enemy of the Minutemen.
  • Foil: They are an inverted version of the Lone Wanderer, who was born in the wasteland, raised in relative safety, and only left safety to find their father. By contrast, the Sole Survivor was born in (at the time) relative safety, escaped to a Vault to survive the Great War, but were immediately taken away from safety by doing so and must leave the Vault to find their son.
  • Freudian Excuse: A theoretical example. If they decide to be the Institute's Director/Nuka-World Overboss, it's hard not to feel a bit sorry for them despite their villainy, as they've essentially been driven mad by the trauma forced upon them throughout the game.
  • Future Imperfect: There are a few times when they can comment on people who have this view of the past, and they can either play along or correct them.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: With the expansions, it's possible for the main character to build all sorts of gizmos and robots.
  • Human Popsicle: How they survived the Great War via Vault 111.
  • Jerkass: Until the Nuka-World expansion, it was very hard to be one of these unless you just went out of your way to screw up quests and be a dick to everyone, and even then, it was hard to be completely, unrepentant evil. With that expansion, you can be a brutal raider lord who basically is the worst thing to ever happen to the Commonwealth.
  • Large Ham: When they're the Silver Shroud or on drugs.
  • Nerd: Nate is a Grognak comic fan.
  • Nice Guy/Nice Girl: It's refreshingly easy to play Nate/Nora as this type of character.
  • Only Sane Man: Most of their dialogue implies that Nate/Nora see themselves as the only truly rational people left in the world after the Great War.
  • Tragic Keepsake: Their spouse's wedding ring.
  • Trauma Conga Line: They firsthand witness the nuclear apocalypse, the death of their beloved spouse, the kidnapping of their only son, and countless other tragedies over the course of the game. No wonder Nate/Nora comes across as subtly traumatized for the entire game.
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