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ACTUAL GODDESS
I'm not super well-versed with the original games, but classic Fallout only focuses on vault citizens when it's relevant to explaining the emerging societies of the wasteland. The Vault Dweller comes from a vault, but that's only 80 years (or as the game explains it, a "generation") since the War - and even then, there are already communities in the outside world. And Vault City from FO2 is a great example of what vault culture looks like 120 years after the War.
Then Bethesda comes along with Fallout 3, which nonsensically has the player character living in a vault that's been operating for 200 years. I won't get into more details since this has been beaten to death a thousand times by now, but the point remains that Bethesda decided to skip two games and 200 years worth of outside history in favour of the cool factor.
And now they've come up with a new way to continue the vault dweller narrative in FO4 even as the timeline makes this increasingly irrational. But it's worse than FO3 - our player character isn't just a sheltered vault kid. They're a character who actually lived before the bombs fell, meaning they have absolutely zero relevance to the post-war society that F1/2/NV went to great lengths to develop. It's the new iteration of what seems to be Bethesda's entire interest in the Fallout world: vaults, pre-war society, and post-apoc wasteland scavenging/survival. (You can even add their vault mobile game to the list of evidence.)
Why does Bethesda think Vault-Tec is the richest, most iconic part of this franchise's lore potential?? Why do they prefer making a game on a premise already done twice over rather than focusing on the infinitely more interesting societal clashes of the wasteland that classic Fallout has always been about?? Maybe character backstory isn't a big deal to every player, but this obsession is indicative of pretty much everything Bethesda fails to understand about Fallout as a whole. Their vault fixation is the same reason DC citizens are still scavenging pre-war supermarkets and eating 200 year old deviled eggs, or why trade-based communities with no agriculture, politics, or economy make perfect sense to them, or why Eastern society has never advanced further than shanty towns and bands of unorganized raiders - because Bethesda doesn't find regrowth an important aspect of games they've decided to market as grungy and survival-focused.
We don't know how closely FO4 will repeat FO3's mistakes, but I can only wonder how the new game's roleplaying elements have been catered to fit a character that is both a vault emergent and pre-war survivor. It certainly doesn't get me excited about character creation, or the potential for mature worldbuilding akin to New Vegas. We've already played the Vault Dweller story twice now, and it's not what the best parts of the series are about.
Then Bethesda comes along with Fallout 3, which nonsensically has the player character living in a vault that's been operating for 200 years. I won't get into more details since this has been beaten to death a thousand times by now, but the point remains that Bethesda decided to skip two games and 200 years worth of outside history in favour of the cool factor.
And now they've come up with a new way to continue the vault dweller narrative in FO4 even as the timeline makes this increasingly irrational. But it's worse than FO3 - our player character isn't just a sheltered vault kid. They're a character who actually lived before the bombs fell, meaning they have absolutely zero relevance to the post-war society that F1/2/NV went to great lengths to develop. It's the new iteration of what seems to be Bethesda's entire interest in the Fallout world: vaults, pre-war society, and post-apoc wasteland scavenging/survival. (You can even add their vault mobile game to the list of evidence.)
Why does Bethesda think Vault-Tec is the richest, most iconic part of this franchise's lore potential?? Why do they prefer making a game on a premise already done twice over rather than focusing on the infinitely more interesting societal clashes of the wasteland that classic Fallout has always been about?? Maybe character backstory isn't a big deal to every player, but this obsession is indicative of pretty much everything Bethesda fails to understand about Fallout as a whole. Their vault fixation is the same reason DC citizens are still scavenging pre-war supermarkets and eating 200 year old deviled eggs, or why trade-based communities with no agriculture, politics, or economy make perfect sense to them, or why Eastern society has never advanced further than shanty towns and bands of unorganized raiders - because Bethesda doesn't find regrowth an important aspect of games they've decided to market as grungy and survival-focused.
We don't know how closely FO4 will repeat FO3's mistakes, but I can only wonder how the new game's roleplaying elements have been catered to fit a character that is both a vault emergent and pre-war survivor. It certainly doesn't get me excited about character creation, or the potential for mature worldbuilding akin to New Vegas. We've already played the Vault Dweller story twice now, and it's not what the best parts of the series are about.
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