Why is Bethesda so focused on vault dwellers?

WarAlwaysChanges said:
First off how can you play fallout 1 and not be more interested in seeing what in Theory would be considered a completely functional vault. A fulfilled vault experiment. (Was 101 supposted to be the control? According to fallout 3 lore?)
Second I think it's more an infatuation by the "new" fans of fallout. At the end of the day Bethesda wants to do what's profitable just like any other company. People like vaults, and so ya give em more vaults. People want a more call of duty polished FPS experience, and so they focus on the shooting and cinematics and Bs like that instead of making the game uniquely interactive and original like the first one ( still haven't played the second one but I'm getting there).

I hadn't head about the supposed zombie change. That's disconcerting. Again aimed as hitting mass appeal. For all the awful people that think walking dead is a good show. If you watched that show at any point your the reason bethesda is ducking up ghouls. Hope your happy. Why don't you watch a George Ramero movie and shoot yourself....
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You wot m8?
Cut it with vile. We're passionate to the point of zealotry. Not toxic. Except The Order.
 
WarAlwaysChanges said:
First off how can you play fallout 1 and not be more interested in seeing what in Theory would be considered a completely functional vault. A fulfilled vault experiment. (Was 101 supposted to be the control? According to fallout 3 lore?)
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Vault 101 was another experimental vault. Control vaults were meant to open after 10 years and recolonize using a provided G.E.C.K. Vault 101 was meant to stay closed indefinitely to test the effects of inbreeding due to not having a large genetic pool. The experiment failed no matter what you choose to do in Fallout 3. If you have them open up to the rest of the wasteland, it's implied they start letting in new people on the regular, instead of just a father and their child. If they close again, they've killed too much of the population and the experiment has gone off the rails anyway. Fallout 3 didn't have any control vaults, I don't think.

Vault 3 in New Vegas was intended to be a control vault, but it was overrun by the Fiends.
 
Eumesmopo said:
I wish there was a better Fallout game that also put you on a different perspective for a change. Perhaps even letting you play as a mutant.
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I've been wanting this for awhile, myself. Ghouls and Super Mutants as race options. Would love to be a Nightkin.
 
Despite all of the criticisms of Bethesda's lack of originality with Fallout ideas, if they were to make a Fallout 5, I predict they would not choose the player starting out as a Vault dweller.

But I think they've already fucked up the narrative in Fallout 4 with there existing BoS and super mutants in the Commonwealth. Sure, it's possible these two groups could have migrated there, but again, like with Fallout 3, they only chose to have them there for the sake of having them, so Fallout 4 at least superficially seems like Fallout. Bethesda's new main faction is the Institute, it seems, but it's not brand new since we knew about it in Fallout 3. Again, this is a shame because some of the environments and game assets look genuinely well done and fitting in Fallout, but they are overshadowed by what I think are poor narrative decisions and the character system.
 
Eumesmopo said:
Unfortunately it's not just Beth, the series as a whole have been too keen on putting the player on the role of the 'vault dweller' by aways making you start with that stupid vault jumpsuit even when that's totally unnecessary because the char didn't even came out of a vault. I think the best thing about Fallout Tactics might have been that it let's you start with something more in line with the average Joe out of the wasteland for once, I wish there was a better Fallout game that also put you on a different perspective for a change. Perhaps even letting you play as a mutant.
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Ehh, I dunno. Fallout 1 and 2 had perfectly solid narrative reasons for having the vault suit and if anything, FNV felt like a callback. And finding a vault suit + pipboy is a LOT less suspicious than warping the game's storyline to have the player character actually LIVING in a vault pre-game.
 
88e said:
Eumesmopo said:
Unfortunately it's not just Beth, the series as a whole have been too keen on putting the player on the role of the 'vault dweller' by aways making you start with that stupid vault jumpsuit even when that's totally unnecessary because the char didn't even came out of a vault. I think the best thing about Fallout Tactics might have been that it let's you start with something more in line with the average Joe out of the wasteland for once, I wish there was a better Fallout game that also put you on a different perspective for a change. Perhaps even letting you play as a mutant.
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Ehh, I dunno. Fallout 1 and 2 had perfectly solid narrative reasons for having the vault suit and if anything, FNV felt like a callback. And finding a vault suit + pipboy is a LOT less suspicious than warping the game's storyline to have the player character actually LIVING in a vault pre-game.
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The whole point is for the pipboy. However Bethesda seems to love Vaults more then just giving the character a pip boy...
 
Yeah the Pipboy is key, and I thought NV did an awesome job of getting that out of the way while giving the player free reigns with roleplaying.

PossibleCabbage said:
If Bethesda insists on making a lot of Fallout games (which they can, it's their IP now) I really hope they don't always insist that the player emerges from a vault. It made sense for Fallout 3, because a significant portion of audience will have no sense of the Fallout world so starting them in a sealed environment that's the echo of more-familiar pre-war society made a lot of sense, and was an appropriate way to start the game.
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I agree that it was an understandable choice for FO3 to try and impart the magic of the first Fallout's beginning, even if it was laughably stupid given the timeframe. But I dont understand how anyone can accept this cryo-freezing bullshit whatsoever. Bethesda is obsessed with pre-war vault society so badly that they inserted totally unprecedented tech into the universe to justify a 200 year old 1950's zombie emerging from a structure that lost its lore relevancy 120 years ago. And playing before the bombs hit feels totally unnatural and against the spirit of Fallout... It's just another transparent attempt to make FO4 feel like the cliche post-apoc survival game they market the franchise as. Seriously, can you imagine if FO2 or NV started like this? It's ridiculous.

Now instead of playing a smart wastelander, every player character by DEFAULT is a naive, pre-war idiot who will ask a bunch of dumb questions about why all the houses are destroyed and where all the people are and then they'll go off scavenging for water bottles in the local pharmacy as if the world went to ash two weeks ago instead of two centuries.
 
It's also because thousands of people love the vaults and want to see them prominently displayed. Look as the money they are making selling all those shirts and hoodies on their site.

Their is so much vault tech stuff on the merch site it's crazy, almost overshadowing everything else fallout related.

Why do you think that is? BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE VAULTS!!

If people weren't buying them they wouldn't be making them and thus not selling them right?

So it's obvious that's what the people want even if it's not what you grumpy old men want.

As fallout fans go, you guys are no longer the majority, your the minority. Deal with it.

Fallout 3 was my first fallout and Yes that first moment leaving 101 was incredible as well as unforgettable. I unfortunetly never had that moment with fallout. Yes fallout was big, but it didn't satisfy my love of exploration like F3. Same thing with scavenging, loved being able to physically knock everything from this table on the floor and hear it all go bouncing around in 5.1 ( new games are mixed so well ). Or the fun I had pulling down wood crates from above to find hidden stuff.

I'll admit id like stronger RPG elements and such. Better dialog. Things could always be better but I'm happy with what I have.
 
Battlecross said:
Why? Because they're some of the only ones that survived without mutation I suppose.
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Whole lot of ordinary looking people walking around on the wastes though. Even the Raiders seem relatively healthy, despite their diet and lack of hygiene.

(Plus the protagonist of Fallout 3 was a mutant, as she or he was born on the wastes and later brought to a vault.)
 
WarAlwaysChanges said:
It's also because thousands of people love the vaults and want to see them prominently displayed. Look as the money they are making selling all those shirts and hoodies on their site.

Their is so much vault tech stuff on the merch site it's crazy, almost overshadowing everything else fallout related.

Why do you think that is? BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE VAULTS!!

If people weren't buying them they wouldn't be making them and thus not selling them right?

So it's obvious that's what the people want even if it's not what you grumpy old men want.

As fallout fans go, you guys are no longer the majority, your the minority. Deal with it.

Fallout 3 was my first fallout and Yes that first moment leaving 101 was incredible as well as unforgettable. I unfortunetly never had that moment with fallout. Yes fallout was big, but it didn't satisfy my love of exploration like F3. Same thing with scavenging, loved being able to physically knock everything from this table on the floor and hear it all go bouncing around in 5.1 ( new games are mixed so well ). Or the fun I had pulling down wood crates from above to find hidden stuff.

I'll admit id like stronger RPG elements and such. Better dialog. Things could always be better but I'm happy with what I have.
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Oh are you talkin about that vault based looting and hiking simulater! Love it meself!
 
generalissimofurioso said:
We never did get a concrete number of vaults did we?

I imagine that based on the number of inhabitants each vault could hold (thousands), there'd be at least ten to fifteen vaults per state assuming that state had several cities in it.

So somewhere between 150 to 200 vault, including the possibility of privately constructed vaults, would be the highest I'd go.
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The population for V13 was supposedly around 1000, and it seems to have been picked up before that the number of inhabitants in a vault is not what you'd consider real attempts at "saving the population", instead saving a select fraction of it.
Also remember, not being granted a vault does not necesarily spell your doom - just don't get nuked, go to the countryside.

This now makes it impossible to educatedly guess the number of vaults, because it no longer has that much to do with saving proportionate bulks of population, but more to do with filling up a predetermined number of control and test facilities for what we know were a private company, Vault Tec, and their "associated acts"
 
Weren't there also a bunch of vaults that never reached capacity? I could have sworn I read somewhere that a lot of the vaults had that happen because a lot of people didn't believe the air raid sirens because of how many drills happened at the time. So even if they had a place in a Vault, they didn't go, and because of that died?
 
Most likely the case.

But I'd like to think that with priority targets being what they are, some vaults most likely never even got touched, some might not have even been finished when the bombs dropped.

There's some interesting ways you can take that in terms of storytelling and exploration.
 
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