Vaults: Are they really crazy?

Vaults 11 and 19 were both pretty fucked up and ended very badly for everyone involved. Vault 34's experiment wasn't really as fucked up but still ended badly for almost everyone but the Boomers.

22's concept was kind of innocent but equipping a vault with dangerous experimental fungus created by Big MT's mad scientists was kind of a dumb idea and, again, ended badly for everyone.

Vault 21's kind of the opposite in that its gimmick sounds pretty insane but it ended up being one of the more successful vaults, apart from being taken over by House and subsequently filled with concrete.
 
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How is the vaults "ending badly for everyone" a bad thing? That was the WHOLE POINT of the vaults (from a storytelling perspective). Even the Chosen One, when confronting Richardson about the vaults, expresses HIS understanding that they were catastrophic failures, to which Richardson had to correct him that they worked "almost exactly as intended". Entire populations dying out was valuable data for the experiment's purposes. Entire populations living without a problem when the opposite was expected was equally valuable data. They didn't care about people surviving, they cared about the data.

What makes a vault stupid or not is the idea behind it. Making a vault all about self-sufficiency is a fine idea. The fact that Big MT took advantage of the situation to use it as their own nefarious experiments was unrelated to Vault Tec's plans, just as what happened to Hopeville and the Sierra Madre Villa. Making a vault all about testing social/psychological struggles is also a fine idea. Vault 15 was just exactly that, and everybody turned out fine... at least as far as the experiment was concerned, since the unexpected cave-in led to the vault's evacuation, but like with 22, that wasn't part of the experiment. Vaults 11 and 19 were just more variations on testing social and psychological stress, and we DON'T know what happened to 19, save that the people there were all really crazy. But they were already paranoiacs by selection, so that's just keeping the status quo.

The "worst" vaults were the control vaults that had terrible outcomes. Vault 3 had a prosperous society and was led by democratic elections and lived after the Great War for roughly 2 centuries, before a new overseer made the mistake of opening the vault to outsiders... who happened to be the fiends. Vault 8 emerged a little too early (10 years instead of 20) and the background radiation sterilized the entire population, leaving only age-old genetic material left behind to repopulate with that led to an incredibly homogeneous and aging population. The Demonstration Vault could be characterized as an impromptu "control vault" because it wasn't intended as a part of the experiment but ended up serving the same purpose, and it resulted in one of the most horrific tyrannies of the wastes, the Regulators.

Vault 13 survived for over 164 years before its entire population was taken hostage at gunpoint, but does that make its extended isolation experiment more "good" than Vault 15? The radically diverse cultural groups got along well, unexpectedly, but when the vault collapsed and the people fled into the wastes, besides creating Shady Sands and eventually the NCR, Vault 15 ALSO led to the creation of 3 of the waste's nastiest raider groups, The Khans, the Jackals, and the Vipers. Was the prolonged isolation a bad idea because the water chip broke? Was it a good idea because it ended up saving the wasteland (and the entire world) TWICE because of its vault dweller lineage stopping the Unity and the Enclave? Was the cultural mix experiment a bad idea because of a cave in?

The ideas are good or bad based on whether they make any SENSE, and they all make a lot of sense, barring several (but surprisingly NOT all) of FO3's vaults... and FOBOS's, though that's a given. What happened to the inhabitants is all a matter of the story being told in compelling, interesting ways. Finding a recording of 5 survivors referring to an event the player has no knowledge of, then slowly unraveling the rest of the story as they descend through the vault is good storytelling. Finding a vault unexpectedly beneath the sewers of a "city of the dead" and knowing only that it is your single hope of saving your vault and nothing else is intriguing storytelling because of how little it reveals... it keeps you guessing. By contrast, telling you throughout the entire game "super mutants come from this area", then entering the vault and reading more logs about "experiments" and eventually "discovering" that this is where FEV experiments were conducted (no shit, Sherlock) is just poor storytelling... it revealed too much, too soon, too repeatedly. And that's BESIDES the fact that it didn't make any sense as a social experiment.
 
I meant they were awful from an in-universe perspective, I agree that the vaults in New Vegas were more clever and subtle than those in Fallout 3.

Doesn't change the fact that in-universe they had some serious humanitarian issues. The OP was talking about the vaults being "evil and cruel" and said the only ones like that we saw were in Fallout 3, Vaults 11 and 19 both kinda fit that description too though.
 
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Why have Vault 34? We have America! But the vaults in New Vegas were arguably much more 'smarter'. They didn't have any for the lulz vaults like Fallout 3, though I still lament the change to a bit more extreme vault view.
 
The OP was talking about the vaults being "evil and cruel" and said the only ones like that we saw were in Fallout 3, Vaults 11 and 19 both kinda fit that description too though.
I think that falls under a matter of understanding what he meant, and his lack of eloquence in explaining that. While 11 and 19 were actively designed to intentionally stress its occupants (as were 70, 53, and... well, most of them), these weren't "evil and cruel" in the sense of comparing them to most of FO3's designs. Those were "evil and cruel" in a slapstick mad scientist fashion, not necessarily a humanitarian manner. Obviously, deliberately unpleasant by design is a form of cruelty, but like I said, that can be chalked up to the use of wrong words. But in the sense that they were "bad" because of how the tests led to so many deaths, I will agree. But from the perspective of reading the words of a person/player about the vaults as game material and seeing the word "bad" come to use, I would hope you'd understand how the instinctual reaction is to think it relates to storytelling quality, which were anything BUT "bad".

I personally thought it was an okay IDEA to have a vault where the population was selected based on genetic backgrounds that were predisposed to fatal diseases that would kill off the occupants prematurely and thus resort to cloning technology to keep their society afloat. But the idea and the portrayal of said idea were two separate beasts. Just like the idea of 106 was conceived in the Fallout Bible and wasn't a bad idea at its core, but its execution as portrayed in FO3 was... silly. Their vaults were all designed to be "mad scientist" experiments, as though that ever had anything to do with the Enclave's goals of repopulating the Earth... or other planets. They completely missed the point of the vaults, but they didn't think that they had. Makes me worry about FO4's vaults, and what nonsense they're going to cook up for that game... Or rather, what they've ALREADY cooked up that we have simply yet to learn about. ~_~
 
Thanks for a vote of confidence. Then again let me explain (as I should have), let's look at all the vaults in one and two. They're tame, not too dangerous and life threatening. Now let's look at Vault 13 and Vault City, two entirely normal control vaults that had a shipment failure. Now let's look at the Necropolis Vault meant to allow radiation... or did it? The experiment theory was provided later by comics and the bible, hence that in the games it could have been a mistake. President Richardson does state they are experiments but doesn't really elaborate, hence he doesn't say anything about being inhumane, such as the ones in Fallout 3 and in a smaller role New Vegas (after some thought I realized that New Vegas was influenced by Fallout 3, hence the idea of some over-the-top experiments in it so I decree [IMO] that New Vegas doesn't count).

So where does the idea of insane (do I need to elaborate?) vaults come from? Well technically it's from the Bible but it's not read that much and I don't consider it canon (which is crazy I know, but keep in mind that vaults were in the beginning normal control vaults) because it has mistakes, with changes and edits. Now back to the question, they came in from Fallout 3 (which is in-game evidence) with mind manipulation with white sound, drugs pumped into the air, Human sacrifice, etc. The idea of crazy and vaults that would be under a multitude of lawsuits for Human rights violation were put in by Bethesda in Fallout 3. This was sadly taken for canon as we seen in New Vegas which continued that.

So keep in mind, after digging deeper you may realize that the vaults you thought were canon were not as wild and far fetched but more just like simple social experiments and control vaults.
 
You don't seem to understand what a "control" is. Also, you're mistaken in assuming 13 was a control vault. It was a test of prolonged isolation, thus why the water chip had to be replaced and why the Vault Dweller was subsequently exiled after completing his task. These were thought up by Tim Cain, not retcons by Chris Avellone and the Fallout Bible. FONV wasn't "influenced" by FO3, it was forced to use FO3's software resources. So vaults in the Mojave consequently have the same aesthetic design as D.C. vaults, even though they're not supposed to look that way. It's solely because of the engine and art assets and an appallingly short development cycle that made the FONV vaults' appearances identical to Bethesda's works. But their concepts are the same as the original vault concepts. 22 was all about self-sustainability. 3 was a control (meaning, no test, JUST a vault, randomly assigned population, left to their own devices). 11 was a test of morality under pressure, a purely psychological test. Nothing nefarious, nothing evil. The "evil" came from the people (that's a running theme of the series), not the test. Vault 19 was a study of paranoia, again simply purely psychological. Vault 34 was a similar to 11 in that it tested social morals, this time by using the presence of freely available weaponry stored in the vault without any restraints. Once more, the downfall of the vault was the people, not the experiment.

Vault 22 seemed SIMILAR to FO3 vaults, purely because people took the layout of the vault, drew comparisons with 83 and the presence of mutated biology and simply assumed it was a test vault for FEV. Again, its similarity in appearance was due to the GAME ASSETS that Obsidian was forced to work with. The vault had nothing to do with FEV, and the mutated plant life was provided by Big MT. The reason the tests took on the shape of a sinister mad scientist experiment were because of Big MT's immoral research, using 22 as another one of their "test cities", happily spreading havoc for the sake of their own curiosity. Likewise, the Villa was subjected to bizarre horrors, specifically to satiate the Think Tank's endless morbid curiosity. However, it's crucial to note that the Villa had NOTHING to do with Project Safehouse, or Vault Tec, or the Enclave, or ANY groups associated with the Vault Behavioral Experiment. So really, 22 had nothing to do with FO3's bizarre ideas, nor was it inspired by Bethesda's interpretation of vaults.

Now let's compare all the above mentioned vaults to D.C. vaults.

101 was an indefinite isolation experiment. Well, that's just a repeat of 13, except replace 200 years with infinite, but they still provide the exact same purpose. 101 is a redundant vault. 106 was conceived in the Fallout Bible, so it gets an okay. But it looks like some kind of bizarre mad scientist experiment, doesn't it? Well, note that the Bible ONLY described that "psychoactive drugs were released into the air filtration system 10 days after the Door was sealed", it doesn't say what they did, or what happened to the vault. So, technically, it's an experiment of psychological stress, just as with all the other vaults were by their original design. But the depiction in the game came off much more sinister and "wacky mad scientist experiment" by association of the other vaults.

112 was some kinda of test on a form of suspended animation to preserve these top scientists from Vault Tec. That just doesn't make any sense, because 1) Vault 0 was already "preserving" (through removal of the brain) the "best and brightest" and trying to use them to renew the post-apocalyptic world along with the resources of the Calculator- so already 112 is redundant, like 101; 2) it's subjecting a test on its own board members when the whole purpose/design of the vaults was to test RANDOM POPULATIONS, not their own scientists- so it contradicts the point of the vaults. So 112 doesn't fit with the rest of the vaults. Seems it was just included so there would be a convenient excuse for James to be "captured", suspended, and somehow be able to contact a pre-war scientist about the G.E.C.K. for his plot arc. Vault 12 wasn't shoehorned into the game to serve the plot. Exposure to radiation had nothing to do with an intact water chip.

92 was a deranged "super soldier" experiment. Need I say more? It would've been fine if the point of the vault was STRICTLY to gather artists and only artists, and leave them to their own devices, rather than populate the vault with capable laborers, and it would probably take a similar shape as Rapture from Bioshock, a city populated by intellectual elites, but collapsed because no one wanted to do their own laundry. 92 could've been destroyed because there were major revolts as a consequence of groups of people considering themselves MORE elite than their contemporaries, leading to a social hierarchy that spread oppression, leading to extreme unrest, and eventual revolution that destroyed the vault. It could've been similar to 11, in that the test was innocent enough, but that the people would make it evil. But what we got was, instead, just another "mad scientist" test of subjecting the populace deliberately and sinisterly to something intended to turn them into violent killers. What purpose would this even serve for the Enclave? Zero! They aren't hoping to repopulate the planet by making soldiers, they're hoping to come out of the other side of extended isolation, under a variety of circumstances, no worse for wear, and repopulate. Mad scientist ideas just don't fit the mold of the vault experiment. So 92 doesn't work, either.

108 was decent, as it was a test of perpetuating a social order in the face of inevitable death, brought on by hereditary genetics. Could the use of cloning technology save these people when they all have genetic conditions that shorten their life spans? Well, if you took out the cloning technology, it would be the exact same times. Would a society that ONLY has a gene pool afflicted with various debilitating and fatal conditions be able to survive? They would likely impose a social structure of having shortened generations, unlike the world they came from, but not unlike many centuries ago, when it was normal to begin a family in your teens. They would be repopulating their vault and hoping for the randomness of gene swapping to create future generations that could live longer, or just keep up their model of frequent fucking. Perhaps, in the end, we'd end up with "Gary"'s who were like inbred bastards, capable of living long lives, but mentally defunct. Or perhaps the vault would manage to survive. Or perhaps the vault WOULD have died off, regardless. Unfortunately, rather than take this thought-provoking route, Bethesda once again went the childish route with a "mad scientist" edge and just made it all about science gone wrong. 108 was a decent idea, at least on the surface. It could've been a really cool vault. Sadly, it was not to be, because they can't write their way out of a paper bag.

83, of course, was just another excuse to include Super Mutants without further stretching the already-stretched-thin premise of "the Master's Army just continued further East". It was hard enough to believe in FOT. Harder still (if you exclude the HORRIFIC writing and... everything else) to believe it in FOBOS. But as a catch-all, ALL you needed to explain Super Mutants is that they traveled further East. It's simplistic, but hey, they used the EXACT SAME premise for their shining knights of the wasteland BOS, didn't they? Why not Super Mutants? Well, 83's brand of FEV took significant "inspiration" from FOBOS. Mutants that continue to grow as they age, for some reason. But the real problem with 83 wasn't that its FEV was different, but that it HAD access to FEV, or even bothered to use it in a BEHAVIORAL EXPERIMENT in the first place! Again, just as with 92, this has no place in a social experiment. But understanding that requires understanding what a social experiment even is, which thus far Bethesda have had a track record of 0 for 5, so going on to #6, they continue this trend of misunderstanding what testing PSYCHOLOGY is supposed to entail, and assume it involves mad genetics experiments. So, once more, 83 doesn't work, either.

None of the Mojave vaults even remotely resemble this kind of model of background concept. Self-sustainability is similar to prolonged isolation, except you're not forcing the population to remain isolated, you're provided them the means to survive in isolation, and see what happens. A control is a control, it's meant to watch the basic concept of your testing environment without adding any variables (the tests). Social or psychological pressures as a result of your population selection or circumstances are testing morality and psychology, which fit the model of social experiments. THE most "out there" vault in all of FONV was 34, and this was only because it took FO3's idea of radiation resulting in feral ghouls, and that the process could take place within a couple of years, and it also had to fit in a timeline that made sense for 204 years. But the core concept was still sound. It was exposing a populace to social pressures, not some bizarre genetics experiment against their will.

These aren't "crazy". NO ONE (who's a fan of the core series) thinks the vaults are "crazy". Most have the same feeling, that FO3 just got them all wrong, that FOBOS was a piece of shit, and many also feel that FOT didn't do the story right, either.
 
I don't know if veteran players will agree with this (I'm new, relatively speaking), but one of the first things I noticed about 1 + 2 was a marked decrease in both presence and discussion of the vaults. Blatant ethical worries aside, the locations of the vaults and thus the actual experiments done were largely forgotten (even in places like Vault City, if I recall correctly), and there were active treasure hunts to locate some of them. Not very difficult hunts granted, but if the location was known, the deeper story usually wasn't. In 1 and 2, there are at most three vaults per game. Can't speak for Tactics and BOS yet. But in 3 and NV? They're like flies to the wasteland, and everyone knows about them and they're this big thing and, well, it kind of loses the impact that a clean and ancient supposed-preservation-of-life vault would have when placed in contrast with a wasteland. A bit of refinement and better consideration for the vaults:map ratio could have done both games a favour.
 
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I don't know if veteran players will agree with this (I'm new, relatively speaking), but one of the first things I noticed about 1 + 2 was a marked decrease in both presence and discussion of the vaults. Ethical worries aside, the locations of the vaults and thus the actual experiments done were largely forgotten, and there were active treasure hunts to locate some of them. Granted not very difficult hunts, but if the location was known, the story usually isn't. In 1 and 2, there are at most three vaults per game. Can't speak for Tactics and BOS yet. But in 3 and NV? They're like flies to the wasteland, and everyone knows about them and they're this big thing and, well, it kind of loses the impact that a clean and ancient supposed-preservation-of-life vault would have when placed in contrast with a wasteland. A bit of refinement and better consideration for the vaults:map ratio could have done both games a favour.

While I didn't realize that, come to think of it you're right! I always found the Vaults as rare and something of a legend. Which made Vault City seem like a paradise to those who had never been there due to the fact it had the GECK and lots of other support.
 
I don't know if veteran players will agree with this (I'm new, relatively speaking), but one of the first things I noticed about 1 + 2 was a marked decrease in both presence and discussion of the vaults. Blatant ethical worries aside, the locations of the vaults and thus the actual experiments done were largely forgotten (even in places like Vault City, if I recall correctly), and there were active treasure hunts to locate some of them. Not very difficult hunts granted, but if the location was known, the deeper story usually wasn't. In 1 and 2, there are at most three vaults per game. Can't speak for Tactics and BOS yet. But in 3 and NV? They're like flies to the wasteland, and everyone knows about them and they're this big thing and, well, it kind of loses the impact that a clean and ancient supposed-preservation-of-life vault would have when placed in contrast with a wasteland. A bit of refinement and better consideration for the vaults:map ratio could have done both games a favour.
Your numbers are off, seeing as FO1 has 4 vaults (granted, the last WAS an unnumbered vault, and wasn't ever intended for the actual experiment). But most importantly, I wouldn't say that 3 and NV make light of vaults as being "common knowledge". It took some amount of research for James to discover the location of 112, nobody knew there was a vault at the heart of the super mutant territory, and pretty much out of the remaining 4 in the game, only 101 was known about, and only to its neighbors. 22 was known to those who were tasked to plunder it, and they were sent there by the same person, Hildern, every time, meanwhile Randal Clark (the Survivalist) had NO IDEA what the significance of the numbered jumpsuits meant when he discovered the refugees from 22, and of the remaining 4, 3 was known by the nearby McCarran stationed NCR because they tried to get rid of the fiends many times but were unable to break through their fortified position, and 19 was simply discovered by the powder gangers because they wanted to make use of the sulfur mine that Cooke was aware of to be in the area. Without the fiends and the sulfur mine, it's arguable both vaults would've been mysteries to the rest of the world.

I also realized that I consistently overlooked 21, possibly because it was the one vault to not involve any level of "dungeon crawl", or possibly because you can never travel very deep into it, or also possibly because it's a HOTEL by the time you can even visit it. But it goes without saying that being smack dab in the center of the strip and redesigned as a tourist attraction that people would know about it. But ALL they know is that it's a tourist attraction. They're none the wiser if you give other vault suits to Sarah and she restitches the numbers, because the people visiting the strip don't know much at all about vaults, just like your average wastelander.

Like I said before, it's all a consequence of the sandbox seamless world design, flawed by its very design, because it shrinks the worlds you travel. If you timed your character walking from one edge of the map to the other, used ingame items to measure the distances, and had all the necessary calculations at your disposal, you could figure that the map (which SHOULD take up several hundred miles in any direction) is just a couple miles, maximum. If, on the other hand, you should try to compare the distance a human at a measured walking speed could travel and determine how many miles an actual human could walk in an hour, then use the in-game clock to calculate how many miles the map is, you'd come to the startling revelation that each dimension of the map is THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of miles long and wide!!! Why are the dimensions so different, depending on which measurements you take? Simply because the in-game representation of the world is not remotely accurate. While the original games looked convincing but upon closer inspection you'd realize they were unrepresentative of actual living spaces, the modern games are clearly unrepresentative from the get-go. From clock speed to actual distance to the rate of exhaustion the player experiences relative to time elapsed, you can find no consistency in the depiction of the world. Likewise, this translates to the "closeness" of the vaults. If the world is inconsistent, naturally the spacial relationship of the vaults won't be consistent, either.

As for FOT and FOBOS... both housed one vault. There were bomb shelters in FOT, but the same is true of every game. There were military complexes, but the same is true of every game. FOBOS was... much smaller. I don't mean FO3 or FONV types of "small", I mean.... 2 cities "small". The environment traversed across FOBOS by the player was little more than 3 levels, separated into about a dozen dungeon crawls, culminating in a journey into a vault. In FOT, NO ONE knew about Vault 0, although people were able to notice that "the menace from the West" seemed to stem from a particular region, but trying to venture into that territory was absolutely suicide. Indeed, the ONLY reasons you're able to breech Vault 0 in the game is because the entire Midwestern Brotherhood chapter gets wiped out while attempting a diversion just to get your squad and one other for backup into the vault's doors. In FOBOS, the vault is referred to as "the secret vault", so it's safe to say that it wasn't common knowledge. It's a contradiction, of course, because somehow Attis knows about it, AND that they have FEV. But primarily, its existence is an enigma to most of the world.

Yes, I'd agree that THEMATICALLY vaults were much rarer and more obscure locations in the original games, but a large part of why this was so was that all-important quote from Tim Cain, "My idea is to explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun." Swap out "a better plasma gun" with ANYTHING that seemed to be a focus for FO3, like "dungeon to explore" or "cliffs to hike/climb" or "caves to check out" and it would be the same idea. The original games were about their WORLDS, and the vaults were just a small parcel of said world. FO3 changed the entire dynamic of the player's relationship to the world, because it was all just a big collector's quest. It wasn't about a desperate struggle to survive, or a mystery to unravel that takes you further and further into the unknown, or a trek through many disparate societies that made you question your basic humanity. No, it was about loot and more loot. It was about "Find a thing, explore a thing, get rewarded for it!" very formulaic and predictably. The worlds were shrunk not only because they were physically small, but also because EVERY 100 FEET there was some kind of landmark for the player to explore. So, even though 6 vaults make up a TINY fraction of the 50+ locations (or the hundreds+, if unmarked are counted) you can find, the world is still just an exploration playground, shrunk for the player's convenience, so they still seem big and much more obvious in proportion to the games they're part of. Of course, it didn't help any that, like FOBOS, FO3's STORY involved a mandatory trek into a foreboding vault where the mutants come from...
 
Very true. I am admittedly speaking in retrospect (and thus working off an atrocious memory), and the size of maps definitely has something to do with how you see it, but I can still think of at least three vaults in New Vegas which were in the least populated and 'known' by the raiders and researchers who accessed them. But I guess F2 had two populated and known vaults, too... What with there being 150+ marked locations in there a better thing to say, as you touched on, is that the significance of the vaults and their impact upon the game and informing of the core plotline is considerably less pressing than it is in 1 + 2, where life and death, the GECK, etc makes the vaults a last resort and thus a highly important location in the plot; in your thoughts even when you're being sidetracked across the map. In New Vegas I do feel considerably less compelled to walk myself to Vegas when the smaller towns are so much more exciting, nor do I constantly think of returning to Vegas when sidetracked considering the circumstances you're in when the game starts (I found the Khans and the NCR far more interesting to infiltrate and root around).

It's a shame, because the criticisms (very rightly) leveled at F3 for being a sightseeing tour COULD be turned into something better if the larger engines of today's consoles were effectively used to create a larger, more representative game where walking and exploring had significance, where a landmark in the distance can be travelled to at the possible expense of scarce ammunition and a lack of nourishment along the way. A decent survival mechanic could work wonders, especially in the first 5 hours of gameplay where you could be as weak as you would be after getting shot in the head/[insert plot device for weak or unaccustomed character here].

But I'm going slightly off-topic there and am rambling so...
 
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Is this a real question. Even without considering the Bible/Van Buren the Vault's were of entirely dubious scientific value and the nature of their experiments bizarre and unnecessary (hell even the stated reason for them that was going to be in Van Buren is still has the Vaults of dubious value).
 
Is this a real question. Even without considering the Bible/Van Buren the Vault's were of entirely dubious scientific value and the nature of their experiments bizarre and unnecessary (hell even the stated reason for them that was going to be in Van Buren is still has the Vaults of dubious value).

Give me a bizarre and inhumane experiment in Fallout 1 or to a lesser degree 2. Do it, I dare you. I do agree that they're social experiments but not ones like we see in Fallout 3 and later on NV (Compared to 1 and 2 they're still quite strange, but not like Fallout 3).
 
Very true. I am admittedly speaking in retrospect (and thus working off an atrocious memory), and the size of maps definitely has something to do with how you see it, but I can still think of at least three vaults in New Vegas which were in the least populated and 'known' by the raiders and researchers who accessed them. But I guess F2 had two populated and known vaults, too... What with there being 150+ marked locations in there a better thing to say, as you touched on, is that the significance of the vaults and their impact upon the game and informing of the core plotline is considerably less pressing than it is in 1 + 2, where life and death, the GECK, etc makes the vaults a last resort and thus a highly important location in the plot; in your thoughts even when you're being sidetracked across the map. In New Vegas I do feel considerably less compelled to walk myself to Vegas when the smaller towns are so much more exciting, nor do I constantly think of returning to Vegas when sidetracked considering the circumstances you're in when the game starts (I found the Khans and the NCR far more interesting to infiltrate and root around).

It's a shame, because the criticisms (very rightly) leveled at F3 for being a sightseeing tour COULD be turned into something better if the larger engines of today's consoles were effectively used to create a larger, more representative game where walking and exploring had significance, where a landmark in the distance can be travelled to at the possible expense of scarce ammunition and a lack of nourishment along the way. A decent survival mechanic could work wonders, especially in the first 5 hours of gameplay where you could be as weak as you would be after getting shot in the head/[insert plot device for weak or unaccustomed character here].

But I'm going slightly off-topic there and am rambling so...
One of the designs of both games (again, concocted by FO3, and forcefully followed in FONV) which made exploration a problem was the manner the game named the locations you visited. In the original games, you'd travel aimlessly in a direction, or maybe you'd head towards A destination you knew about, then at some point you find an unexpected settlement and decide to pay it a visit. You don't know what it is, what it's called, what you're about to encounter. You just see a green circle entitled "Unknown". Whether it be Shady Sands, The Cathedral, Modoc, Broken Hills, The Military Base, or even Redding, you COULD find every location by having them put on your map, or you could run across them unexpectedly... but in the latter case you would have no idea what they are. In the modern games, you see a point of interest on your magical compass, regardless of whether you actually SEE something worth investigating in the physical world, and when you reach it, the name flashes before you. Was it too difficult to implement a similar system where the "names" of each location are obscured until further investigation?

For instance, you reach Agatha's Shack because you see the radio tower, the name "An old shack and radio tower" pops up, and when you venture inside to scavenge, you meet this kindly old lady, you listen to her story, maybe accept her quest to journey into this silly military experiment vault to recover a priceless violin, and when you next check your map, it's named "Agatha's Shack". You head towards Black Mountain because it's one of the few major visible geographical landmarks on the horizon, and you find yourself in a rocky valley maze, and the name "A steep valley" comes up, then as you progress deeper, you find more and more radscorpions, whereupon you realize you've stumbled upon a nest, and now the name on the map changes to "Radscorpion Gulch". Rather than just running up to a shack and having the name "Cap Counterfeiting Shack" immediately show up on your HUD and on your map so you already know what the location is before you even CHECK INSIDE, leave a little bit of mystery for the player to discover!

Of course, this sourly impacted the vaults, as well. When you try to track the source of the radiation contamination for the Sharecropper Farms, you don't need compass markers to show you the way; just follow the pipes! When you reach this cave swarming with Golden Geckos, you don't need to be told it's Vault 34. You know it's some cave that seems to be a nuclear waste dump, based on its outward appearance, and if you wish to figure out where the contamination is coming from, you EXPLORE IT. You will find out that a vault lies in the depths of the cavern, and it might come as a surprise to you. But having the name crop up when you get in the vicinity of its cave entrance- before you can even SEE there's a cave to enter -totally spoils the fun and mystery. The same goes with any vault. I was curious about a bomb shelter that was housed in the middle of an old abandoned, fenced-off parking lot. It spoiled the fun to be told that I'd "discovered Vault 19" before I even checked the manhole. =/

It goes without saying, if the PLAYER doesn't know what he/she is exploring before he/she EXPLORES it, the game would be slightly more representative of how the world treats these places. e.g. "Who knows what's out there? You gonna find out? Well, best of luck to you! Don't come crying when you run into a pack of deathclaws!"
 
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