I'm actually really depressed that I know this but Officer Kendall is never at your birthday party, Officer Gomez is the one who is at your birthday party and is also the one guard who is friendly to you during the escape. Another thing is that with the Hacking & Lockpick tutorials saying that they "tell the player these methods are useless" is one hell of a stretch in logic.
Now, this scenario has probably never happened but what if the player ran out of bobby pins or locked the computer down and there were no other ways to get in? Well, that's game over. Again, it's probably never happened because even your average console gamer has half a brain to not fuck up that badly, but it theoretically could happen and therefore you need those side options in close proximity to make sure that the player doesn't quit the game in the intro.
The opening is flawed, I agree, but playing Devil's Advocate I can see why it was built in such a way. For one, tutorial prompts are always needed in every video game because there's always the chance this might be someone's first video game, 7+ billion people it is a possibility, besides, they aren't obtrusive at all so I don't get what he's on about. Secondly, you have to develop the character, Dad, in such a way to make sure the player gives somewhat of a shit to understand why they need to look for him. And yeah, I know, but Dad was such a terrible character and I didn't give a shit anyways. That's fine, but you still need to at least attempt to develop a major central character to add some context to the main goal of the game unlike the other fallout games where their goal was not a character but more a resource or saving grace. Finally, the opening attempts something that is actually pretty smart, but kinda fails in execution. The designers have made the Vault feel safe and constrained in order to make emerging into the open and dangerous wasteland feel more hostile and threatening for the player as well as instill a sense of implied loneliness that comes from being separated from your father/friends.
The execution of this failed upon emerging from the vault in that Megaton is only 2-3 minutes away and there's nothing really hostile or unfriendly leading up to Megaton except for an optional dungeon (which is pretty good but a lot of players probably didn't venture inside) I think they should've held Megaton further back and instead let the player see some of the horrors of the wasteland in an up-close and personal manner to really create tension.
