I admit, I like the secret of Vault 79

CT Phipps

CT Phipps

Carbon Dated and Proud
There's a certain level of humor to be found with the fact that you can go through all these elaborate quests seemingly to find something like the replicators at Dead Money or secret technology like Big Mountain or even just a GECK.

And then you find out the secret: gold!

Worthless gold!

Which is exactly the sort of thing the 1950s USA would prioritize saving.
 
It’s one of my favorite Vaults in Bethesdas lore. Protecting gold to kickstart a post-war economy with the Treasury Note as currency is awesome. They finally made a currency that isn’t bottle caps backed by nothing.
 
PaxVenire said:
It’s one of my favorite Vaults in Bethesdas lore. Protecting gold to kickstart a post-war economy with the Treasury Note as currency is awesome. They finally made a currency that isn’t bottle caps backed by nothing.
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Funnily, I was like, "It's a bunch of worthless yellow rocks. Why would anyone care?"
 
CT Phipps said:
And then you find out the secret: gold!

Worthless gold!

Which is exactly the sort of thing the 1950s USA would prioritize saving.
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It's a repeat from Fallout 2; in Broken Hills there is a treasure buried long ago, by Typhon the ghoul—it's bottle caps; it's worthless by that time. The region having shifted to Dollars.
 
It's a premise that shows up in a lot of places.

In Xenozoic Tales (Cadillacs and Dinosaurs), the villains break into a vault said to hold a great treasure and are very confused when it turns out to be large stacks of green paper.
 
Except that it was known about in Fallout 2, and should probably not have been copied into a later series title—or kept once the former event was learned about.

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Gizmojunk said:
Except that it was known about in Fallout 2, and should probably not have been copied into a later series title—or kept once the former event was learned about.

(It's similar to copying the special encounters from the first two games into the later ones.)
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I mean, it's set 70 years before the events of Fallout 2 and isn't actually that similar other than the joke because the game treats gold as actually having value. You can just think it's stupid that it does.

Mind you, Chris Avellone says he absolutely hated the fact they got rid of bottle caps in Fallout 2 and may have been the guy who insisted NCR go back to them.
 
Yeah, it's a retrofuture as envisioned by 1950s science fiction authors gone horribly wrong.

Hence 1950s-esque government.

I'm worried that they didn't notice this theme.
 
They don't care about the theme. They care about ease of conveyance; the easy elevator pitch.
IE. It's easier to have it be the future obsessed with the past, than to have it be the future as anticipated by the past, whose very physical laws are bent to the populace' fear and misunderstandings about the atom bomb.

______________

Aside: Did FO4 or FO76 introduce flying powerarmor?
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R.Graves said:
I disagree. there was nothing 50s about pre war fallout outside of some retrofuturistc designs
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Uh huh.

Except the music, fashions, Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation, anti-communism, apparent social conformity, and the Howard Hughes run world of Vegas.
 
R.Graves said:
I disagree. there was nothing 50s about pre war fallout outside of some retrofuturistc designs
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It was definitely more of a subtle hodgepodge of 1940s architecture, 1950s fashion and products, 1980s technology, and 1990s grunginess, but the 1950s style most definitely took precedent.
 
Iprovidelittlepianos said:
Well, gold has been valued across most cultures throughout most of human history. And it actually does have value in electronics.
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Yeah it is a shiny rock and our brains like having shit other people don't have, even if it's practically useless. But in electronics gold is valuable due to being a good conductor and having a very low oxidization level compared to better conductors like copper or silver. I think aluminum is similar but not as good in either aspect as gold is.

Also, if gold was actually worthless, it'd never have been the way to back money. Even if we only ever used it for jewelry, that is attributing it worth. A stick can be seen as worthless until you need a stick. Things are as worthwhile and worthless as we make them.
 
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