I like how the Fallout games rely so much on the player's attention and input to move the story along.

Vault 11 captures this process. Upon first reaching the vault, the messages on the computer terminals don't seem to make sense. It is only until after exploring deeper that one realizes how undesirable it is to be elected overseer. I enjoy this process of piecing together what happened to the places I'm exploring long after the events went down.

There remains the issue, however, of what these pieced-together stories mean. I encourage people to post on this thread their interpretations of their favorite plots and subplots from the Fallout games.

For example, I was struck by the irony of "A Valuable Lesson" in Fallout New Vegas. Allen Marks breaks into the Sunset Sarsaparilla Headquarters apparently believing in the tales of Festus's treasure only to be disappointed by the plastic-deputy-badge reward. He fails to notice the real, unintended prize - the 1,500 or so bottle caps that can be found in the room. But we can call it a prize only because of the events outside that made bottle caps so valuable.

It's funny to think how the value of the contents of a sealed room can change in such a major way from what its owner had intended. Marks fails to notice this, but I hope other players out there didn't.

What are some of your favorite stories from the Fallout games? How do you interpret them?

Lol I can make 1,500 caps off a few raider equipment. I would have felt screwed too.

The player in these games is kind of like Superman. 1,500 caps to ordinary folks in the Fallout universe is a substantial amount. You can go hunt Fiends for their gear but I doubt the ordinary NPC would be so inclined.

It's a lot of caps to be had in one place. I can't think of another room where there are so many. Whether its a good haul by the player's standard isn't really the point: it was an unintended reward, and I interpret Marks's message to mean that he only really noticed the plastic badges.

True. But how else is somebody going to get 50 star bottle caps without being a crazy gun toting killing machine? There are people in the wastes that are killing each other for the star caps. Also the areas where the caps are located in aren't exactly in the middle of friendly surroundings. Also the amount of SS that you would have to drink in order to get the 50 star bottle caps. That SS doesn't come cheap.

How are you expected to get the 50 star bottle caps without being somewhat of a superman? Anyone who is good enough to get the 50 star caps would have had the capability of acquiring 1,500 bottle caps (or stuff with equal value) on his own. Yeah, the prize is a letdown.

That's a good argument. My problem with the previous objection was that it didn't seem to recognize the special powers of the player, but I was making a similar mistake by minimizing the costs of the mission. If the average wastelander knew the amount of bottlecaps in that room beforehand, he or she wouldn't undertake the costly and dangerous task of collecting 50 star caps.