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

I wouldn't say that the isometric perspective is necessary to have a traditional CRPG world like Fallout.

Mount and Blade does the same thing with it's overworld map and that game is third/first person.

Actually, a Mount and Blade style engine would've been perfect for New Vegas, considering how much that game focused on the factions. It would fit like a glove. The overworld can deal with all the landmasses, potentially simulating massive swaths of land with random generation, while developers can make the total area of premade area equal to that of New Vegas, giving us an equal amount of actual content along with tons of randomly generated content that can be easily strung up into something entertaining. You can have both the well thought out and handcrafted quests of a CRPG with the factional wars (which come with their own systems of intrigue and strategy as well as battles) and bandit slaying of Mount and Blade. This also allows things that wouldn't fit on the Fallout 3 engine to be in New Vegas. (Imagine calling in Vertibirds or artillery, or buying a motorcycle/bicycle/horse to move around the map faster. Or, being elected as the sheriff of Primm to lead a ragtag militia to eventual glory.)


I REALLY wish that a remake of New Vegas was made on the Mount and Blade engine, preferably with decent gunplay added. Honestly, that would excite me more than any Fallout 5 that Bethesda would cook up in their skinner box factory.
 
Because vaults are social experiments? You talk as if they were built just to protect people. If that were the case, it would not really make sense.
 
Cobra Commander said:
Because vaults are social experiments? You talk as if they were built just to protect people. If that were the case, it would not really make sense.
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IMO most of them aren't even good enough to be considered social experiements.

What data is gained from making everyone crazy with white noise?

What data is gained by keeping people underground until they inevitably get inbreeding issues and die from mutation?
 
Game: # of vaults
Fo Tactics: 1
Fo Brotherhood: 2
Van Buren: 2-3?
Fo and Fo2: 3 (4 if you count the unfinished vault and LA Vault)
Fo4: 4 (DLC)
Fo3 and NV: 6

Setting the above aside...LA was blasted to shit and San Fran too, DC is a hellhole, and Boston a crap factory. Vegas is the only metropolis that was (mostly) shielded from the bombs. As a result more of its bunkers are intact, and thus discoverable (it's a word...shut up <_<). It's possible that the density represents what any city of comparable size would have built, but due to bombardment far fewer are found elsewhere. I would have preferred more variety, and Vault 3 felt entirely superfluous (Vault 19 was pretty boring too, so I probably would have cut both of them), but the number of shelters does make sense between the lines. Though it is quite unnecessary, since surface shelters would do fine without significant bombardment. Vault 34 could have been a military installation without really skipping a beat. Vault 22 wouldn't be too hard to rework. Some kind of remote lab trying to survive off of greenhouses, greatly overcompensating and as a result produce a parasite that kills them. 21 honestly just sounds like what casino bosses would do in their private shelters built into the major casinos of the Strip or something. I guess it wouldn't really need any vaults. That would be kind of weird, but honestly it does get tiring to see the same exact structure with different window dressing.
 
While Bethesda gets no love around here, I actually like how there's a simple explanation in their games as to why the Vaults are such ridiculous death traps with no value to science.

Because Van Braun is basically a Mengele-like sadist and monster.
 
CT Phipps said:
Because Van Braun is basically a Mengele-like sadist and monster.
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Which makes no sense. Mengele experimented on "inferior" races in concentration camps - getting material for his experiments, so to speak, was cheap and although he was favored in certain circles, his work wasn't crucial for the war effort, population preservation or anything of real importance. Von Braun is an opposite of all of that.

Von Braun was a scientist who invented GECK who over the course of his 200-year-imprisonment went mad. However, as brilliant and important as he was, I doubt Vault-Tec and US government would just let him turn Vaults into social experiments just because he can. He may have been given full authority over a single Vault as a reward for his work, so to speak, but I doubt US government would just turn a multi-billion dollar investment into an experiement just for Von Braun's sake, whatever his reasons may be.

When you look at the two original games, Vaults as experiments weren't that wacky or unscientific at all, although they were certainly cruel. The wackiness started with Fallout Bible and went on in FO3. So Beth may have tried to turn the Vault experiment into a product of a madman, but the more likely reasoning is that it was an experiment spearheaded by US government - which was shown multiple times to be very eager to unleash various horrors upon people, regardless of their nationality.


I personally don't consider Von Braun to be canon - much like most things in FO3 - but I kinda like the idea of a GECK inventor being given a "pleasure Vault" for himself. However, Von Braun, canon or no, is hardly the only person responsible for Vaults being what they are.
 
At least none of the ingame Vaults are as stupid as Vault 43.

As part of the vault experiment, only 20 men, 10 women and one panther entered this vault. Any other vault defects are unknown. Its location is unknown.
 
The whole social experiment thing started with 2, right, and then 3, NV, and 4 went overboard with it.

Vaults by themselves alone are huge experiments, holding people from a multifaceted nation underground for years, decades, or centuries; ostensibly to provide the Amerigov remnant with info about an isolated community for their plans to jump ship to another planet (which was scrapped because, I guess, the earth wasn't *that* fucked by the war and because the tech was outside the capabilities of the enclave so they went back to 'kill the mutants, clean the wastes, rebuild America with our pure supermen!')

The spaceship plot is endearing to me and I hate that it was scrapped.
 
I never liked the space colony plot or whatever. Exploring it would give us a setting that is radically different than Fallout. It could have been a solid spin-off, I suppose, if Fallout had been taken in Van Buren direction and/or ended up with Troika.
 
Atomkilla said:
Which makes no sense. Mengele experimented on "inferior" races in concentration camps - getting material for his experiments, so to speak, was cheap and although he was favored in certain circles, his work wasn't crucial for the war effort, population preservation or anything of real importance. Von Braun is an opposite of all of that.

Von Braun was a scientist who invented GECK who over the course of his 200-year-imprisonment went mad. However, as brilliant and important as he was, I doubt Vault-Tec and US government would just let him turn Vaults into social experiments just because he can. He may have been given full authority over a single Vault as a reward for his work, so to speak, but I doubt US government would just turn a multi-billion dollar investment into an experiement just for Von Braun's sake, whatever his reasons may be.

When you look at the two original games, Vaults as experiments weren't that wacky or unscientific at all, although they were certainly cruel. The wackiness started with Fallout Bible and went on in FO3. So Beth may have tried to turn the Vault experiment into a product of a madman, but the more likely reasoning is that it was an experiment spearheaded by US government - which was shown multiple times to be very eager to unleash various horrors upon people, regardless of their nationality.

I personally don't consider Von Braun to be canon - much like most things in FO3 - but I kinda like the idea of a GECK inventor being given a "pleasure Vault" for himself. However, Von Braun, canon or no, is hardly the only person responsible for Vaults being what they are.
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The assumption of competence in fascist totalitarian dictatorships is quite possibly the most egrevious mistake you could make. The entire point of the Enclave is they are a bunch of people who are very casually selling their own people to their deaths by the BILLIONS because they think they can escape Earth. I should point out that government spending on "miracle science" that turns out to be anything but during the war effort or not is hardly new either.

For vital industry war spending on quackery, I point to this guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

I remind you in the canon Fallout 2 the Enclave's flight to Poseidon's Oil Rig instead of Space also highlights their incompetence. If you want MORE incompetence, you can also look to the fact the network which was going to communicate with the Vaults failed as well. Or the fact the Enclave intends to eradicate 99% of humanity which will guarantee its extinction.

All of this is perfectly in character for them even if you don't care for Fallout 3.
 
CT Phipps said:
...Or the fact the Enclave intends to eradicate 99% of humanity which will guarantee its extinction....
.
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Let's say that there are even 10 vaults still 'closed' by 2241, that's around 10-20k people. That's more than enough genetic variety to keep humanity going; we came out of such a bottleneck already with Toba. You need 50-500 people for genetic stability (check for the vaults) and the Enclave seems to have about a Vault's worth of people, maybe less - 100 to 1000. Fallout 2 says that the 'Enclave' 'hid around the globe' and that the rig had 60-80 people; with Navarro and some imagination there probably were other 'camps' or bunkers for them. They'll be fine. They won't go to space ANYTIME SOON, because an estimate for a spaceborne society needs around 100mil (v2 launching Germany had around 70mil, Apollo era America 200 mil, so something in between due to modern tech might work).
 
CT Phipps said:
The assumption of competence in fascist totalitarian dictatorships is quite possibly the most egrevious mistake you could make. The entire point of the Enclave is they are a bunch of people who are very casually selling their own people to their deaths by the BILLIONS because they think they can escape Earth. I should point out that government spending on "miracle science" that turns out to be anything but during the war effort or not is hardly new either.

For vital industry war spending on quackery, I point to this guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko
Click to expand...

I have trouble connecting your post with the highlighted part of mine.

I have at no point expressed that Enclave/US government are particularly competent (that being said I see no reason why a totalitarian regime cannot be competent, since last time I've checked there are quite a few totalitarian regimes in power, which takes some competence I assume). I have expressed disbelief that they would let such a huge investment depend upon a single individual's whims - individual who himself has no actual rank, no military or political power, nothing. Von Braun is a scientist who works for government, and that is all. For all we know, he might not be aware of Enclave even existing.

And what is "espace the Earth" part supposed to mean? Last time I've checked, Enclave was bent on purifying wasteland from post-War subhumans, and then repopulating it with pure pre-War people that they imagine themselves to be. The whole colonization of some other planet idea was scrapped...or intended for VB, can't recall. Anyway, I don't remember it being shown ingame.

As far as Lysenkoism goes, that is hardly an argument. Just because there was a government in the history that funded a huge pseudo-scientific idea that failed doesn't mean anything except that it has happened. The doubt that I have expressed about US not funding whims of Von Braun, a mere government employee and not a big figure behind the scenes, still stands.

Vault experiment is simply never shown to be the nefarious scheme devised by Von Braun, and that's pretty much it.

CT Phipps said:
I remind you in the canon Fallout 2 the Enclave's flight to Poseidon's Oil Rig instead of Space also highlights their incompetence. If you want MORE incompetence, you can also look to the fact the network which was going to communicate with the Vaults failed as well. Or the fact the Enclave intends to eradicate 99% of humanity which will guarantee its extinction.
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What is with you and the space? That idea was scrapped.
As for eradication part, Danuis' post holds some merit. Besides, world population at the time of FO2 wasn't particularly high, even if we lack actual numbers. Enclave's re-population plans could work in theory.

Not going to argue that they weren't particularly competent at time of FO2, that's apparent and the second example you listed is a valid one.
 
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CT Phipps said:
Isn't the Fallout Bible canon for Fallout 1 and 2 fans?

In which case space is very much canon?
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No, it's not canon. Even Avellone, who wrote the thing, said it isn't and shouldn't be considered canon.
Space was never canon. It was proposed for Van Buren, but since that thing was never made...
 
Atomkilla said:
No, it's not canon. Even Avellone, who wrote the thing, said it isn't and shouldn't be considered canon.
Space was never canon. It was proposed for Van Buren, but since that thing was never made...
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Well it was made, it was never released. That's a distinction that matters.

Also, in what universe do we get to disregard Fallout 3 and 4 but not keep Van Buren in?
 
Atomkilla said:
Never released, never made, whatever. Child dead in womb is still dead.

In the one where Bethesda is a shitty developer which has completely missed the point of Fallout aka this one.
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Ah yes, the magical idea where released versus author intent doesn't matter.

:p
 
CT Phipps said:
Ah yes, the magical idea where released versus author intent doesn't matter.

:p
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Explain to me why it should matter.

This isn't a case of a writer working on a novel dying unexpectedly or something, so his unfinished, unpublished work holds merit. This is a case of a company canceling the project, then selling its rights. It would be analogous to a writer taking his notes for a sequel of a book series and throwing it into fire, and then selling rights for the sequel to another writer...who happens to be a shitty one.

And if there were copies of notes for the original sequel still existing, examining them would only be for curiosity's sake. For all intents and purposes, they are still ash.
 
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