I just started playing Fallout 4 on the Xbox, so please, no spoilers!
I’m familiar with playing computer RPGs like Mass Effect where you only have limited choice over your character’s name. And I’m familiar with playing Fallout 3 and New Vegas, where you can choose whatever name you want for your character, but you’re usually referred to in dialogue as Vault Dweller or Lone Wanderer. So I often choose pretty silly names in games like those because it’s never going to come up in dialogue anyways.
I just started Fallout 4, and I decided to go with a relatively straight name this time – Steve Austin (wink, wink). So I played for a little while and I met a robot who greeted me with “Hello, Mister Austin!” I thought, “neat, they figured out that my last name is Austin” and I kept playing. It was hours later that I realised “wait, not only did it figure out my last name is Austin, but the audio pronounced Austin so flawlessly that I didn’t even notice it!” That blew my mind a little bit.
I assume that there have been sufficient advances in computer speech that this is par for the course, but I was still impressed. The other alternative would be that the voice actor is spending hours in the studio reading names – “Aaron”…“Abigail”…“Abraham”…[etc.]…“Zachariah”…“Zelda” – which seems unlikely.
Now I’m tempted to name my next character Joe Btfsplk and see what happens.
(Possibly this was discussed in the omnibus Fallout 4 thread, but I didn’t want to look through it dodging spoilers.)