Why did Vault-Tec put so many Vaults right outside Vegas.

Jogre

Jogre

So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Like seriously, from a lore perspective it makes very little sense.

Vault-Tec built a total of 122 Vaults, why would they build so many Vaults right outside the exact same city.

Yeah, I know that Vault 13 and Vault 15 were relatively close to one another, but it was at least a couple days walk between them and both were hidden high up in a mountain range.

New Vegas vaults however, seem to be completely nonsensically placed. Like seriously, you've got 2 in the middle of the exact same city(3 and 21), 2 located around Red Rock Canyon(19 and 22), one literally just outside of Vegas(11) and one just outside the next town over(34)

If we were judging by IRL distances, you could probably walk from any Vault to the next nearest Vault, and treat it like a day trip.

What would be the practical advantage, if any, of placing so many Vaults in such close proximity to one another? Especially if there's only 122 being commissioned.

EDIT: Accidentally put 19 twice.
 
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Yeah, NV kinda overdid the whole vault thingy...

Fallout 1-2 had like...What?...2-3 vaults, in a WAY larger area, right?
 
Both Fo3 and FoNV (and probably Fo4) are set in continuous gameworld with several vaults to explore. Sure, it makes no sense, much like many other things that come with continuous gamewolrd. I wish the continuous gamewolrd trend will cease to exist at some point...
 
naossano said:
Both Fo3 and FoNV (and probably Fo4) are set in continuous gameworld with several vaults to explore. Sure, it makes no sense, much like many other things that come with continuous gamewolrd. I wish the continuous gamewolrd trend will cease to exist at some point...
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IMO, its entirely possible to do a continuous gameworld, AND have a fuckgiant map.

Make the map, and set everything where it needs to be, no matter how large the distances are.

Simply allow the player the option to do what Fallout 1-2 does, go to map and move super fast, or exit map to explore areas for hidden loot.

Imagine how much hidden shit you could potentially hide in an area the size of western USA, people would be finding unique hidden stashes a decade down the line.
 
Or alternatively they could do a continuous gameworld, but every time they want to put in a vault put in an original dungeon instead.
 
Jogre said:
Or alternatively they could do a continuous gameworld, but every time they want to put in a vault put in an original dungeon instead.
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Well...We could have SOME vaults.

"Dungeons" don't make much sense for Fallout, barring what we already have seen, like the occasional cave.

I don't like how in 3-4, EVERY god damned building and cave was a 'monstahs are here go do a linear path of blood and gore'... ;(
 
Jogre said:
New Vegas vaults however, seem to be completely nonsensically placed. Like seriously, you've got 2 in the middle of the exact same city(3 and 21), 2 located around Red Rock Canyon(19 and 22), one literally just outside of Vegas(19) and one just outside the next town over(34)
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Don't forget Vault 11, which must have been for Boulder City residents. Not sure if it had a population though to justify that (but I can't go by gamescale, since Vaults are meant to hold 1000 people yet Vaults ingame clearly can't hold that many).

21's placement makes sense, I'm not sure why they'd have 3 so close by. Vault 34 might have been reserved for military families maybe?

I dunno, it's a Bethesda effect. Have Vaults everywhere, sod logic.
 
ThatZenoGuy said:
Well...We could have SOME vaults.

"Dungeons" don't make much sense for Fallout, barring what we already have seen, like the occasional cave.

I don't like how in 3-4, EVERY god damned building and cave was a 'monstahs are here go do a linear path of blood and gore'... ;(
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Some Vaults from time to time, but there doesn't really need to be several new vaults per game, as there are plenty of possible substitutes. Like honestly, Fallout 2 only added one original Vault, which was honestly enough due to the focus on other towns and areas.

As for the Dungeons thing, I meant "Dungeons" as a throwaway term for locations you discover with certain adventures/hazards.

Like maybe if you had buildings on the verge of collapsing, or radioactive former power plants, or some stuff to explore, rather than just generic monster-filled dungeons.
 
Jogre said:
Some Vaults from time to time, but there doesn't really need to be several new vaults per game, as there are plenty of possible substitutes. Like honestly, Fallout 2 only added one original Vault, which was honestly enough due to the focus on other towns and areas.

As for the Dungeons thing, I meant "Dungeons" as a throwaway term for locations you discover with certain adventures/hazards.

Like maybe if you had buildings on the verge of collapsing, or radioactive former power plants, or some stuff to explore, rather than just generic monster-filled dungeons.
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Yeah, I get what you mean.

Vaults are now the series' "Fancy loot place". ;(

I think Fallout 2 had great diversity in areas, nuclear power plant, oil rig, fight club, slaver places, tribes, casinos and gangs.

NV had great diversity too, but...Way too many vaults.
 
At that point, if we keep getting Fallout branded games, i wish that telltale get their hands on it. Get rid all those overrated fillers and just focus on the plot, and some C & C here and there.
 
How about no? Fuck Telltale.

Yeah New Vegas overdid Vaults. It would've been better to just Keep Vaults 3, 21, 22 and 34 as they are the ones with any relevance to the world, altho this would mean missing out on Vault 11.

I even forgot Vault 19 existed, that one could've easily beeng combined into Vault 3 or something. Vault. They fell into the fanfic trap.
 
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Continuous game worlds aren't a trend unlike open world. Continuous world is largely a suspension of disbelief - at least the way Fallout made did it. It's 15 locations or so with nothing in between them. Sure, you can stop anywhere on the game map, but you get a template landscape with no real exploration. Random encounters exist to enforce the suspension for the most part.
Making something like in original Fallout wouldn't go well with mainstream audience. And it could only work with isometric, whereas first/third person is basically a standard nowadays.

Open world is different but it also works on the premise of suspension of disbelief. It also tries to make the world bigger than it is by adding lots of random stuff over what is essentially a space far smaller than it would be in reality. That's how you get TES/Fallout and even TW3 which, while having a big world to explore, are essentially cramped. TW3 for example made this suspension of disbelief better by separating the game world into several distinct areas which are in game hundreds of kilometers apart, but each of those game areas is still relatively cramped (some more than others).

Open worlds generally work against IRL logic while trying to look like they don't. Fallout didn't work against IRL logic but tried to pretend to be bigger than it actually is (15 locations - not to mention that of all of those locations you can just explore some small segments - think of Hub ). Thing is that in isometric perspective this illusion works better than in first person.

That being said, why don't we have actual huge worlds to explore?
Simple answer is consoles. PC can easily support huge open world with lots of shit in it, whereas consoles cannot. There are many examples for this in the aforementioned games. If you wanna a new example, look up TitanIM simulator.
 
naossano said:
At that point, if we keep getting Fallout branded games, i wish that telltale get their hands on it. Get rid all those overrated fillers and just focus on the plot, and some C & C here and there.
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Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh no, I actually like gameplay.

Because games are made to be played.

If I wanted a Fallout movie with quicktime events, I'd...Watch a Fallout lets play and set up random trivia.
 
Maybe the casino bosses financed Vault Tec to build many vaults there, or maybe it was because there were talks that Mr House was building a defense system so Vault Tec decided it would be a safer place? Maybe it was projected that the Mojave would be less targeted in case of nuclear strike, so better for repopulating after the apocalypse?

Ok I was just stretching my imagination. I really have nothing useful to say about the vaults.
I do have the feeling that Obsidian wanted to make the game in a larger map than what we got (well, we know they wanted to have some Legion territory too including more than one Legion settlement. I don't think it is much of a stretch that they would have wanted to have a bigger map besides that). Maybe they would have had the Vaults more spread out in their planning stage.

PS: Screw Telltale "games". I don't understand why they are so popular. All the "player" does is press the "right button" at the "right time"... That is an interactive movie in my book.
 
Wasn't it discovered that they actually modeled a much bigger map and it's still in the game?
 
My own theory; Obsidian recognized that New Vegas could be their last chance to create an official fallout game, so they just went all in and added plenty of vaults.
 
From a story perspective it doesn't make sense unless Vault Tec higher ups thought House would do something to protect Vegas from the war. Vaults 21 and 34 make sense, but 3, 11, 19, and 22 don't make all that much sense from a story perspective. I always wished that there were some other bunkers that were used for other things. Like if Vault 111 was a cryo facility being called a Vault, but not being a part of the normal Vaults.
 
ThatZenoGuy said:
Well...We could have SOME vaults.

"Dungeons" don't make much sense for Fallout, barring what we already have seen, like the occasional cave.

I don't like how in 3-4, EVERY god damned building and cave was a 'monstahs are here go do a linear path of blood and gore'... ;(
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I disagree. If a lot of basements have ad-hoc fallout shelters, if America was a militarized mess, and most of the infrastructure was designed to counter the relatively inefficient bombs the universe had, something like a big hospital, military bunker, or even suburbia could be 'dungeons'. Huge storm drains, sewage systems to cope with overpopulation, mass-transit tubes also come to mind.

They just need to be more natural. Maybe hire a architect to consult or design a few of them.
 
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Danuis said:
I disagree. If a lot of basements have ad-hoc fallout shelters, if America was a militarized mess, and most of the infrastructure was designed to counter the relatively inefficient bombs the universe had, something like a big hospital, military bunker, or even suburbia could be 'dungeons'. Huge storm drains, sewage systems to cope with overpopulation, mass-transit tubes also come to mind.

They just need to be more natural. Maybe hire a architect to consult or design a few of them.
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Pretty much this.
I've grown up in a town with population of 70,000 - relatively small - but there was a fair number of bomb shelters under various buildings (some of them connecting a whole block of buildings), factories, hospital and (I assume) a small military base. I've seen one of those - although it would hardly be a proper for a dungeon - it wasn't all that small (one of the shelter was later turned into a paintball area).

Anyway, my point is that if such a small town can have that many underground facilities, cities with millions of people would by some logic have a greater number of those, and they would probably be far larger. Given that every Fallout game to date was set in or around a huge city of some sort, there would be dungeons a plenty.

Fallout 3 actually made a good step when they wanted to make a metro system a huge dungeon complex, parts of which are necessary to go through because of the rubble on the surface. Granted, the execution was quite lacking, but the overall idea for a dungeon like that is pretty great and natural.
 
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