It take it that pretty much all will have seen the new E3 trailer for New Vegas by now.
There is basically just one thing that really bugs me about it.

At 1:40 into the trailer, there is a vault entrance to be seen and guess what, it looks strongly like the "east coast vault door" from Fallout 3. :brokencomputer:

I doubt that such big placeholders are used in map design so it seems that the Fallout veterans at Obsidian seem to willingly go for a canon dilemma with that one.
By all , it was them THEM of who i expected to take the time to re-design the vaults and their doors to the classic Fallout 1 & 2 designs that all vaults on the west coast seem to have. :banghead:

The one that has the vault number stamped in , that opens outwards , has that mechanism grabbing and rolling it to the side and that has a airlock behind it. :fallout:

Canonwise it will once again require a lot of complicated explaining (and propably once again very unconvincing explaining) into why this vault (Vault 21 ?) does look like those in Washington while all others on the west coast are of a different design.

I understand that there are time constraints, and restrictions to the level of modifications they are allowed to do on Bethesda's intellectual property.
But if i was a designer working on a Fallout game, it would hurt me a lot having to deliver work to the players that contains such a canon conflicting "jumps at you" piece of design.

What do you think ?

Look closer. To the left of the Courier is the gear door. Classic Vault design.

I think this is just a concrete column. Its also on the right side.

Also, the vault door is not to be seen so it must be inside

:cold:


Please Obsidian, please redesign that. Its worth the work and time

I'll just draw a circle with Paint: http://i50.tinypic.com/3128hnn.jpg. Honestly, in motion it's really hard to miss this gear form. ^_^

Yeah ive seen that and it seems like something at first sight but if you look closely you recognize that these are just brown leafs among the green ones.

The mechanism would also be on the right side of the door , in a special compartment and of course the door itself would be clearly visible standing there.

The door frame would also be, well kind of conical so that the door can in no way be moved inwards or smashed in by a nuclear blast.

You can see it open near the end of the intro to Fallout 2 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRohwBBmE5g

I encourage you to watch the trailer, again, in the most clear HD version http://fallout.gamesas.com/eng/downloads/videos.html. You can clearly see that the gear shaped object is at the wall, not part of the greenery.
I'm fine if another Vault has its doors opening to the left, really. As long as its not a massively inconvenient one-armed metal-grinding thingie like in F3.
That said... I think it might not even be a real Vault-Tec thing, all the elements, green in the middle of the desert, a non-standard Vault, point to this being the New Vegas rendition of the planned Nursery or Twin Mothers (Vault 29) from Van Buren.

Even as an "old-timer," I can't say I honestly care about this.

The design of the Vault door itself isn't something I can say I ever paid enough attention to that I would have even known there was a difference were it not for coming to these forums and having it pointed out for me. And even then, I can't say it bothers me that there's some minor differences.

The "Vault" itself, is what I find iconic to the series, as a concept - not so much it's exact and specific design.

Maybe im too much of a perfectionist :laugh:

But such little, or in that case rather important "in the eye" details they do not get right although they clearly know better, annoy me.

On one hand they love to get lost in their developer diaries about how much detail they put into this and that and how much they care for details and how they respect the established canon and bla bla bla.

But when you take a realistic hard look at their work you find much sloppiness that does not fit to the picture they paint of themselves and that would never get past my desk without proper revision

I dont care if they change the Nuka Cola logo on the tiny bottles or something.

But respecting the canon in regard to something important as a vault door... someone who claims to have worked on F1 or F2 should feel responsible for getting that right. :fallout:

I still hope they surprise me with that in the trailer being something else than a vault and Vault 21 having the classic Vault door and everything. That would be great :hehe:

I think you need to stop revering the past so much, they aren't holy texts.

I remind you about the big canon contradiction in FO2 - Vault 15.

To be honest, an inwards opening door makes more sense to me. All that machinery on the outside, where it couldn't be serviced in the event of a fault is a disaster waiting to happen.

Vault 15 in F2 also hurts, yes


Yeah the inwards opening door really makes sense for a vault inside a mountain like Vault 13 , 15 or 101.

If the cave leading to the entrace should collapse as result of a nuke blast , earthquake or other reasons, they could nontheless still open the door and dig their way out while they would be buried alive with the classic vault door with no chance of ever getting out again by themselves.

But the classic vault doors made more sense in regard to withstanding a nuclear blast.

Looking at real world examples in banks or military bunkers , missile silos etc , such doors all open outwards with their doorframes being smaller on the "inside" than the doors to ensure they cannot be blasted inwards by a outside force like a nuke. Even if the locks break the door still cannot give in unless the power is so monstrous that the door itself breaks into pieces.