intentional experiment ?

The PC picks up has pipboy from a skeleton before he leaves the vault. I'm pretty sure it was in a lab coat or something like that as well.

He also somehow made it into the vault when the bombs started to go, probably with everyone else standing next to him on the platform.

It was done, with puppets, in Vault 77. Results were less than optimal.

He was frozen for a few hundred years, so luckily(?) he doesn't have (or get) to entertain himself with puppets.

Way I see it, he got what he paid for. He paid to be in the Vault to survive the explosion, now the explosion is over, and he has crawled out 200 years later.

The name "Sole Survivor" means, by definition, that there were more residents in the Vault than just the player. My personal theory is that the Institute has been nabbing Vault residents from cryostasis over the decades for test subjects, using it as a giant refrigerator. The player is just the last one. The scientist body he grabs the Pip-boy off of looks awfully fresh. If I had to guess, an Institute scientist came for the player, started the thaw process, then got killed some how.

Maybe they were set to be released one by one over a certain time period.

Did it look fresh? I remember the pipboy being covered in dust and the body being mostly a skeleton under that coat.

Idk how long the decomposition process is, but vaults seem to be pretty clean places so I think that would take quite a bit of time.

Edit; yea that thing is straight up tales from the crypt levels of skeleton. The hand falls out when he picks it up.

It takes years to rot down to bone (unless things are eating in but then you have bones broken and missing) if I was to guess I'd say over 25 years by the decommissioned and dust but the coat would have decade to (if it was cotton).
I think the vault was over run maybe the MIT experiments or could be raiders but the skeleton looked like he was running and got killed

link anyone?

Sorry. By "fresh", I meant "Not 200 years old". I meant to imply that the skeleton and clothing especially looked too good to have been in the Vault 200 years, and that it looked to me like an Institute research had broken into the Vault at some point.

Not to mention that the Pip-boy model is more advanced than the ones available when the Vaults were first sealed, and the Institute would be the natural people to create a newer model.

more advanced ? I don't think there is going to be much tech advancement in the vault since it seems like it was still sealed.

That's what I'm implying. The Pip-boy in FO4 is the most technologically advanced seen so far, so Vault 111 HAD to be opened sometime in the last 200 years, and some scientist wandered in wearing a Pip-boy. The Pip-boy we see in FO4 would NOT have been available when the Vault was sealed.

They're probably going to find some loophole around it like "Vault 111 was the only vault to have the Pipboy 4000 mk6" or something relating to its proximity to MIT I'm willing to stake my alcohol supply on it.

I don't know. It would strain credibility, obviously.

I'm wandering at this point if Bethesda isn't just pretending the Pip-boy in each newest game is supposed to be the same Pip-boy model used in every game before. Just a moving ret-con.

I don't think that's the case. What indication is there that the Pip-boy is more advanced than the 3000 series? I think it's, at most, the latest pre-war model. Vault 111 seems to be the absolute last vault sealed, so they probably have the newest stuff. The difference is probably closer to that between an iPhone 5 and 5S.

I don't think that's the case. What indication is there that the Pip-boy is more advanced than the 3000 series? I think it's, at most, the latest pre-war model. Vault 111 seems to be the absolute last vault sealed, so they probably have the newest stuff. The difference is probably closer to that between an iPhone 5 and 5S.

Ehh I don't blame them because honestly they want to progress the pipboy more and more but its hard to explain how these pipboy models exist without either breaking/altering the cannon (which is acceptable in some cases to a certain degree), creating loopholes, etc. I think after a certain amount of time they're going to have to think of a new explanation for the pipboy's or they're going to have to find a more lore friendly loophole because for example if they says its the same model as the one from Fallout 3 its going against cannon in a few ways so their kinda stuck in the event horizon here either way they're [censored] but they're going to have to choose the lesser of the two evils break/alter the cannon and history or find a loophole.

well the software was copywrite 2075 Robco®

https://youtu.be/2KApp699WdE?t=4870

the screen says

************************* PIP-05( R ) V7.1.0.8 ***********************

COPYRIGHT 2075 ROBCO( R )

Loader V1.1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

64k BYTES RAM SYSTEM

38911 BYTES FREE

NO HOLOTAPE FOUND

LOAD RIM(1) DEITRINX 303

So its not the last possible version pre-war and it had some wear and corosion on the back

What indication is there that it's more advanced than the 3000 series? Let me count the ways:

1) It is no longer making me reach across the screen to turn dials and press buttons. You know, it is a right-handed model of Pip-boy. Though I supposed we could have just had a left-handed version of the 3000 in FO3. (Pretty messed up giving a right-handed kid a left-handed model though....)

2) It plays game holotapes.

3) It has moving graphics and animation, including 3D turnarounds.

Just to name a few.

My phone from 2007 came preloaded with Galaga. That doesn't mean it was significantly more advanced than phones without game features. And I just remembered a good reason why it's probably pre-war tech: the games that the PC played are pre-war themed. Atomic Command and Red Menace are almost definitely pre-war games, making it likely that the tech is too.

http://cdn1-www.playstationlifestyle.net/assets/uploads/2015/06/fallout4_ps4_frontcover-EE-01_1434323698.jpg

the one in F3 was the 3000A model. Its also refereed to as an "older" model so its possible that either it was in storage (101 was a older model of vault from 13 if I remember correctly so its possible that they had the 3000A in storage ), one brought in somehow by one of the first occupants, or one salvaged by the recon team.

Skelton with the lab coat looked like it had a vault tek emblem on it

That PipBoy in the trailer/seen in e3 footage is a PipBoy 3000, Mark IV