I had one of my more bizarre moments in gaming with a child this morning. My son is four and still haven't quite made the move to really wanting to play games. And I don't think Fallout 4 is going to be the game that hooks him, both for reasons of mechanical complexity and thematic inappropriateness. But this morning, my wife was up early to let the puppy out, and was playing before our son got up. And when he got up, we weren't doing anything combat-intensive, so we just decided to press on for a bit until the usual time where he questions why Nick Jr. (or something similar) isn't on the TV and we have to quit what we're doing so that Dora the Explorer or Paw Patrol or what have you can blare across our screen.
But something weird happened. He was just captivated by exploration of the wasteland. All of a sudden what we were doing had to take a backseat to "go look at that car!" and "oooh! A train! Daddy, we need to fix that train!" "Daddy, what happened to that house! Why is it all broken? Daddy, go in there!" "Daddy, go look at that yellow car!"
It was a very surreal moment. "We can't fix the train kiddo! I'm going the other way." "No! I want to look at the train again!" Shortly thereafter, my wife was clearing out junk for scrap within Sanctuary, and this upset him. "No! I want it to stay dirty!" He proceeded to cry over this.
I'm not yet quite sure what this says about him that he seems attracted to the post-apocalyptic wasteland setting. Suffice to say though that this has been one of the more odd gaming experiences I've had with him. Quite a change from the typical experience of playing Nintendo software (or more appropriately trying to get him to play Nintendo software with me as he's still not quite made the jump from touch screen to traditional controls).