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@kittykittyredcat I think @/tinytorchlight did a better job explaining than I can, but I will try:

I’m not saying he’s perfect, but I do not believe James is a bad father by any means.

Honestly a fair amount of James’ issues are game-level issues. James is kind of smothered by a bunch of content being crammed into a short period of time. You have to look deeper than “well he doesn’t react to x or y,” because most of the time you can’t actually properly tell him about it. This exists with so many situations throughout the game, it’s not exclusive to James by any means.

Should he have told the Lone Wanderer he was leaving? He was likely concerned the Lone Wanderer would try to follow him outside, and he’s very clearly trying to give his kid a better life than they get outside. In the vault you have comfort, clean food, modern medicine, a normal career, and most importantly, safety. It’s unreasonable to blame him for any of the events of Escape!. Vault 101 had opened many times before, of course he’d expect that he could just slip out and the Overseer would get over it, in, like, a day. There was no indication that he’d start killing people.

I’ve seen the claim he’s neglectful of the Lone Wanderer, but I don’t see a case for that? Every snapshot we see of him (primarily the growing up scenes/timeskips), he’s being an attentive parent and trying to raise his kid with strong morals & values. Yes, he works, like everyone else in the vault? He’s a single parent and he has to work, I don’t know what’s expected here. Once you get back to Rivet City he does get tunnel vision, yes, but that’s because he’s alive for all of a few minutes after that. Like, he dies before we even see what he’d do next. (and everything’s a bit rushed and weird here for game pacing/mechanics anyway).

@kittykittyredcat ok i could honestly write a whole essay about this but i'll try to keep it succinct: in every scene in the opening, james seems to genuinely love and care for the lone wanderer. trying to instill good values in them, making sure their mother is still a part of their life, spending months planning their birthday party and fixing up their gift, and encouraging them to be their best self. and if you have a good ear, the transition dialogue paints an even clearer picture of an attentive parent. the insistence that all of this is performative or obligatory is, to me, pure cynicism, and i guess i'm just not that cynical.

leaving the vault: i truly do not think james should have expected the overseer to go berserk. overbearing bully is one thing, jumping straight to murdering your residents is another. lest we forget: james was not the first person to escape. moriarty and moira both talk about their encounters with escapees, moira specifying that at least one of them was in the lone wanderer's lifetime, and presumably, no one died. should he have told the lone wanderer his plans? maybe, but he really thought not doing so would keep them safe, and as he said, that's all he's ever wanted for them.

project purity: people often act like he left to go build a golden statue of himself. bringing clean water to the wasteland is genuinely important, and clearly no one else is going to do it. does he get tunnel vision? absolutely. but i don't think this alone is enough to deem him a "terrible father." and as for his lack of reaction to jonas' death and everything else that happened in the vault: you can't even tell him. he can't react to information he doesn't have. not sure why people pin this on him as a character?