» Fri Nov 27, 2015 3:37 am The following information may end up containing possible plot spoilers. As such, please DO NOT READ if you wish to preserve the surprise of the main storyline.
Some of you may have read a number of my other threads regarding plot elements. For the last few days, I have been working very hard cross referencing literally all of the information that has so far been made available to us. As a result, I have managed to uncover a surprising amount of potential plot elements. In fact, all of these plot elements fit together so cohesively, I am convinced that I have actually worked out a large portion of the main quest, quite possibly including the ending. And don't worry, based on new evidence I have found, I do not believe that the protagonist's son is a ghoul pirate! One thing I will say though is that if I am right with regards to this new evidence, then Fallout 4's storyline will be better than anything we have seen in a very long time. Some of the potential twists I have managed to uncover are pure genius.
Which brings me to something of a moral dilemma. If I post all of the information I have been working on, and it turns out to be correct, then I could have potentially ruined the main quest for many people. So instead, I will merely offer a sample, and the rest I will keep under my hat.
And so I will focus on a question many of you have been asking. What really happens in vault 111?
At the start of the tutorial, our spouse refers to us going to a Veteran's Hall, and it seems that we are due to be giving some kind of speech. Evidence suggests that our protagonist was a serving officer in either the army or the navy, and will likely be addressing former collegues. This fact will prove to be important as will be revealed during gameplay. Note the scene where we interact with our baby just before reports come in of nuclear detonations. At this point, we hear air-raid sirens, and then we see our family running out of their home and towards vault 111, with our spouse holding our infant son Shaun. In the case of a female protagonist, it will be the baby's father who carries him to the vault. Upon arrival, we pass a vertibird that has just landed with a soldier standing next to it, we see an individual running in front of us wearing vault security armor, and then we see 5 civilians standing above the vault on top of the lift. From the trailer, we can also assume that there is a vault scientist as well as another soldier, this time in power armor, inside the vertibird. Our family joins the 5 civilians, and then the bomb detonates. Here is what I think happens next.
Inside the Vault
Spoiler
At the exact time of detonation, the scientist and the vault security guard are carrying a large red metal wheel, seen in the trailer, towards the lift area. This has been offloaded from the vertibird along with a number of crates and boxes, and is required to unlock the metal access lever that will activate the lift, thus allowing entry into the vault. When the blast wave hits, the scientist, the security guard and the two soldiers are all thrown to the ground, but due to their position behind the hill they are partially shielded from the blast. The two soldiers pick themselves up and make their way back to the vertibird, and the security guard who has been injured eventually joins them. The vertibird then takes off, but subsequently crashes a short distance away due to extreme winds following the initial blast wave. At the same time, 3 of the civilians above the vault who were unfortunate enough to be still standing up are thrown backwards towards the small blue observation pod we saw in the gameplay footage, and are most likely killed instantly or at best mortally wounded. These are the man wearing the white shirt, the woman in the green dress, and the man in the light-brown waistcoat. The last two mentioned here appear to be a couple, as evidenced by their relative positions at the time of the blast. This ties in with the 3 skeletons we see in post-war gameplay footage when our protagonist is standing on top of the vault (credit to Helljumper for spotting this). We are now left with our 3 family members, 2 civilians, and the scientist. Note that our family, along with the other 2 civilians would have ensured their survival at this time by moving as quickly as possible into a lowered or prone position just before the blast wave hit. The scientist would most likely have suffered injuries after being thrown to the ground, and would now be subject to hurricane force winds.
Spoiler
With the other 5 survivors trapped on top of the lift area by the high winds, the injured scientist manages to drag the red access wheel the short remaining distance up the hill and locks it into place. His position means that the winds do not affect him quite as much until he has reached the lift controls on top of the vault. He pushes the lever, and the lift springs to life and begins to slowly descend. Eventually the lift stops and our survivors, now standing, hurriedly make their way along the walkway leading up to the vault door, and our protagonist hits the button to open the vault. Once everyone is inside, one of the two civilians, in a state of panic, PUSHES THE BUTTON TO SEAL THE DOOR FROM THE INSIDE. In the meantime, the scientist has managed to pull himself towards the lift shaft and has climbed down, probably via a ladder concealed from our view. He makes his way onto the walkway, but due to his injuries is unable to move very fast. As the vault door seals, the access lift is then returned to surface level, and the scientist is trapped underground between the vault door and the now sealed lift shaft. The vault safety protocols will prevent anyone from unsealing the door until long after the scientist has died, either from his injuries or from starvation.
Spoiler
Once inside the vault, it quickly becomes apparent to our survivors that there are not enough food supplies to sustain all of them for very long. This is due to the requirement for all inhabitants of vault 111 to remain in STASIS for the duration, and so after some time debating, they decide that if they are to survive at all, they have no choice but to use the cryogenic chambers they find within the vault living quarters. And so the 2 civilians each take one chamber, the spouse and child take another, and then our protagonist finally enters a fourth. The experiment parameters of vault 111 require the inclusion of a baby or young child (which is why our family were selected) in order to confirm that the cryo-tech being tested is actually capable of halting the ageing process. The younger the subject, the easier this would be to verify. This would then allow further development towards achieving longer-term stasis. However, the protocols for the required 10 year duration were never put in place as the scientist did not make it into the vault, and so the experiment was never given an actual end date. The intended setup would have been that, after a period of time carrying out various observations, the scientist would have entered a separate chamber in the overseers office where he would have stayed in stasis for the remainder of the 10 years. But this never happened. The 10 year deadline is passed, and then after an unknown number of years, the pods containing the two civilians eventually fail, leaving us with our protagonist, his spouse, and their baby.
Spoiler
All I will say from here is that at some point before our protagonist awakens from cryostasis, the vault is opened, something is taken out, and the vault is then resealed. The date of this incident bares some significance within the fallout universe, but it is the nature of the incident that proves most interesting and also most sinister. And it all goes back to the day the bombs fell...
Here is the next part.
