So recently I have been involved in a few negative topics so I thought I would remedy this by giving you my experience on things you can do to improve your roleplaying experience. (trying not to over use the word immersion here people)

Now not everyone has time to do this they just wanna play the game and move on and thats fine. but there are some people who want to get the most out of their character.

Learning to ignore the obvious

I recently read an article on why people found it hard to roleplay such games as Fallout 4. It boiled down to the fact that the game had said you had a military background and their wife was a lawyer. They simply couldn't move past this point. The game had stated it so it was law. Ignore it. "you cant ignore what the game tells you" I hear you cry. Yes you can you just ignore it. if you want to play as a doctor then you were a doctor. Imagine you had once saved the life of a secret service agent and the president thanked you by adding your name to the vault list. Its that simple. This will then free up your character to pursue quests outside of combat .However, its only little details you can ignore. So you couldn't ignore the fact that you are still on earth or that the apocalypse as occurred.

Doing things as a character you wouldn't normally do in a video game/RPG

So this speaks to doing little things that enhance your experience as a player. You might have heard of the old expression "The little things make all the difference" They do. So for example in Fallout 3 i always put food in the fridge, clothes in the locker and weapons in a trunk. I never changed my clothes in public. Walking and not running everywhere I changed my outfits for different occasions. I ate food at regular times during the day. This all helps to get you into the mindset of the guy or gal you are playing as. Yes this is all time consuming but its worth it and this doesn't have to be done religiously its just a guide.

Know your limits

Too many times I have seen a "roleplay" of fallout or TES only for the character to be able to swing a sword and pick a lock and hack all the computers and sneak through a super mutant infested building unnoticed AND hit a target with a sniper rifle 600 yards away while blindfolded. Its unrealistic. Nobody has that many skills. So aim to limit each character to one or two skills. Have a solo that wont use the net because they think the net is for nerds. Are you playing a thief? Then take your time and try to avoid killing anyone, also don't pick up heavy items because you're a thief and it would weigh you down incase you needed to make a quick getaway. Have a netrunner who only uses blades and wont use guns. pick a character than cant drive or doesn't know how and has to walk everywhere. ( that last one might be a bit excessive but you get my point)

Too many times as players we are afraid of "missing out on items" its ok. Your experience will be better for it if you restrict your character. you will also end up with a more memorable experience than just that one guy who did the thing and saved the day.

Anyways that's enough rambling from me hope this helped and if it didn't ill expect the usual level of internet ridicule in the replies.

Nice topic. Thank you for talking game instead of focusing on something negative.

And I agree with most of what you're writing. Quite strangely, I'm actually playing FO4 right now, since it appears that Bethesda are slowing down with the F4SE breaking.

It is easy to turn FO4 into a cool action game with RPG elements where you're very fast making any Steven Seagal character look like a crybaby wimp.That's not really the way to go for a good roleplaying experience, but it can be fun regardless.

But if you want to identify more with the character then do some pen and paper preparation before you start playing. Who are you? What do you like? What do you dislike? Are you into guns? Into big booms? Into long guns? Good with technology? Like reading books? How smart, athletic, and charismatic are you? A bit of an introvert or extremely extroverted? Don't think of these things in game terms, just map out your character in your own words, trying to get a feel for who the character is.

And once you've got a piece of paper with notes, you can now try to fit it together with the backstory forced by the game. Nate is a military hero. Or is he? Maybe he was a giant jackass who screwed up and got lucky? Maybe he took credit for someone else's good thinking? Maybe he was turned by the Sino and the whole grand military exploits were set up to let him infiltrate? Maybe it was just coincidence that he just happened to be a big dumb brute at the right time, at the right place.

Same with Nora, about whom we really only know three things. She married a soldier, she got a child, and she has a law degree. We don't know the order these things happened in, so a lot of things are possible.

Spend a little while to find the right way to work the details and everything will be so much easier. And then simply ignore the tiny little details that aren't quite helping. Like how Nate's voice is just a bit too civilian and not entirely what I would expect from a decorated war hero who was turned into a popcicle for 200 years against his will, who saw his child abducted, and who saw his wife gunned down right in front of him.

To be perfectly honest, I actually prefer playing with Nora. She's a lawyer, so no psych test to weed out nutters. An army-wife might also develop an interest in guns and a gun nut might conceivably develop romantic feelings with a soldier after a meeting at the range. She's got a law degree so low intelligence and charisma might feel weird, but a lot of lawyers are technocratic rather than charismatic and law schoom is arguably less about raw smarts and more about hard work. Maybe she bribed someone. Maybe she cheated. The background is actually quite open to just about anything.

But the point of me writing all this is really just to stress how, if you want to roleplay, then map out your character in advance. Get a good feel for your character. What would their priorities be in this or that situation? That makes it so much easier to keep the roleplay going rather than slipping into powergaming mode.