do any of the vaults have sane people in them : Fallout: New Vegas

» Wed Sep 01, 2010 6:48 pm

I've never been a fan of the "vaults are experiments" thing that was revealed in Fallout 2, but it's not really fair to blame Chris Avellone for that. From what I can tell it was a concept and idea promoted by Tim Cain and other key creators of the setting. Though you can argue that Fallout 1 seems to contradict the idea. According to the Fallout bible Vault 13's experiment was that it wasn't given a spare waterchip, but somehow the first one lasted 90 years? Sure, whatever. So to some degree I think the "experiments" thing was retconned into Fallout 2, but was an idea that Cain and the others came up with. In their minds it contributed to the absurdist humor they wanted to pursue.

You might want to go reread the bibles. The lack of waterchip spares was not a part of the v13 experiment - due to a shipping error they recieved 3 GECKs instead of the 100 Chip shipment which accidently ended up in Vault 8.

» Wed Sep 01, 2010 9:21 pm

The Multiculrual bit isn't retconned.. Go talk to Aradesh and Tandi in FO1. Theres very clear non american influences there.

The part about their multicultural heritage being a deliberate set up for a Vault experiment was retconned in. In Fallout 1 it was just a random happening of location and the people that made it into Vault 15.

» Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:07 am

I have come to the conclusion that all vaults, every single one, were designed for a specific experiment and that their are no control groups. Whether the vault has constant music playing or something more subtle, like 101... where every single family is a one parent family. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but in 101 I couldn't find a single kid that had two parents. Your mom dies at birth... everyone else is either missing a mom or missing a dad. Now that's not as experimental as madness driven by music, but it still an experiment nonetheless.

Also as another person noted, the vaults were inhabited BEFORE the bombs dropped. I don't think vault tec actually expected an all out destruction of the human race. A group of people that were in charge of the experiments were supposed to monitor the tests. I'm guessing that group is the enclave. That's just my opinion of it all, even before fallout 3 was released. It feels like enclave always knows exactly where the vaults are and what their experiments are. The enclave is a vault themselves but more of the master, control vault.

» Thu Sep 02, 2010 1:04 am

So to some degree I think the "experiments" thing was retconned into Fallout 2, but was an idea that Cain and the others came up with. In their minds it contributed to the absurdist humor they wanted to pursue.

I'm all for absurdist humor, but if Tim & company came up with the social experiment idea "for the lulz", it's a joke that fell horribly, horribly flat.

» Thu Sep 02, 2010 1:10 am

Crazy?
I was crazy once. They put me in a rubber room with rubber dollies. I hate rubber dollies, they drove me crazy. Crazy, I was crazy once.....

» Wed Sep 01, 2010 3:06 pm

Crazy?
I was crazy once. They put me in a rubber room with rubber dollies. I hate rubber dollies, they drove me crazy. Crazy, I was crazy once.....

Cabin Fever? ;-)

» Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:28 pm

You might want to go reread the bibles. The lack of waterchip spares was not a part of the v13 experiment - due to a shipping error they recieved 3 GECKs instead of the 100 Chip shipment which accidently ended up in Vault 8.

My mistake.

I'm all for absurdist humor, but if Tim & company came up with the social experiment idea "for the lulz", it's a joke that fell horribly, horribly flat.

Here's what Avellone wrote about the vaults as experiment idea in the Fallout bibles:

Answer: The vault experiments were an idea created by Tim Cain, and I don't really know the reason behind them, but I can offer some speculation.

First off, thematically, it's pretty creepy, and we all know that developers will pull all sorts of crazy [censored] to try and mess with players' heads. It's possible that Tim had just finished watching an X-Files episode and had conspiracy theories swimming around in his subconscious. As to your comment about the experiments being a bit over the top, well, yeah. We're guilty as charged.

Secondly, as proven time and again in Fallout 2, the Enclave isn't a particularly rational bunch of fellows. Thematically, they embrace a paranoid view of the world and a heightened sense of superiority over everyone else in Fallout.

Third, the federal government (or whatever branch of federal government was responsible - it was not necessarily the Enclave) may not have ever considered the Vaults as society's best chance for survival - the government may have considered themselves the best candidates for rebuilding the world and already had their asses covered in the event of a nuclear or biological war by relocating to other remote installations across the nation (and elsewhere) that weren't necessarily vaults. The Enclave certainly didn't seem to be devoting much effort to digging up any other vaults and trying to use the human stock there to rebuild civilization.

Fourth, a lot of people did die because the vaults didn't work. Some suffered worse fates.

Nonetheless, even members of the Enclave probably could not answer the question of who created the Vault experiments and their reasons, as many of the people responsible for the creation of the Vaults died long ago, and many records were lost in the great static of 2077. President Richardson was familiar with the purpose of the Vaults, but he never saw them as more than little test tubes of preserved humans he could mess with.

» Wed Sep 01, 2010 8:37 pm

What I dont get why are the people who amde the vaults experimenting with people in them?

its been a nuclear war, I dont think it really amtters what they were doing anyway

» Wed Sep 01, 2010 6:31 pm

What I dont get why are the people who amde the vaults experimenting with people in them?

its been a nuclear war, I dont think it really amtters what they were doing anyway

Note the following uses information from the Cancelled "Van Buren" game.

The original plan by the precursors to the Enclave assumed that the Earth would be completely inhabitable - a write off. So a plan was set in motion by the true movers and shakers to ensure that they, and those that were truly important and worthy would survive (as would their decendants). Since the Earth is expected to be uninhabitable, a spaceshp to another planet seemed the only viable option.

Warp drive has not been invented in the Fallout Universe, neither have Hyperdrives or any other faster than light technology. This leaves a "generational ship" as the only option. But this is something that has never before been attempted in the history of mankind - how is humanity going to surivive with no prospect of ever going "outside" (at least not for a few hundred years) - What are the potential problems that these astronaughts are going to face? Some can be guessed, some can't.

The Vault Experiments are there to look at the possible issues that might come up - Is a Female heavy ship or Male-heavy ship better? (Vault 68/69) will weapons need to be restricted? Would it be easier to keep order with hypnotic white noise or psychotropic drugs? Should the people just use VR? What if the ship is unreliable and needs constant maintenence?

For reasons that haven't been stated (maybe the Enclave decided the world wasn't as bad as they planned) when the Enclave "Woke Up", they decided to stick around.

» Wed Sep 01, 2010 8:49 pm

Possibly that Vault where they gave the people a ton of weapons. Pretty sure it's Vault 34, one of the confirmed Vaults. I suggested way back before it was ever confirmed that they could have become some kind of giant weapons market, and evidence is starting to point towards that idea now. I'm almost positive that they conformed somewhere that people live there. Maybe that's what this http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/1/18/LRCW.jpg is of. That would be nice. Laser RCW FTW!!!