In a brand new vlog on his YouTube channel, veteran programmer and RPG designer Tim Cain revealed some extra of the background he and his workforce initially deliberate for Fallout’s vaults. The crew at Interaction conceived of there being 1,000 Vault Tec vaults in the USA, a determine with some in-game and real-life logistical points that Cain then explores, all with the caveat that that is him having some enjoyable: “That is simply me speaking about it—it isn’t canon!”
At the start, the 1,000 quantity was simply an aesthetic selection: “The one purpose this pin was even positioned within the unique sport was when Leonard [Boyarsky, Fallout 1’s lead artist] was doing the vault swimsuit, he requested me what number of digits he’d must carry on the again.” Cain mentioned. “I assumed, effectively, let’s simply say there is a spherical quantity, there is a thousand.
“I am a programmer, I begin counting at zero, three digits.”
The concept of there being a “Vault Zero” then figured right into a Fallout lore tidbit Cain beforehand shared on his YouTube channel: the vault experiment was in preparation for lengthy haul interstellar journey. I first considered the LA take a look at vault from Fallout 1 as a Vault Zero candidate, however apparently there’s an specific “Vault Zero” in Fallout Ways.
Cain additionally casually dropped that one other Fallout lore keystone was borne of stylistic issues: the 13 “commonwealths” of Fallout’s crueler, extra brutal America solely got here after Fallout’s artists designed a thirteen-star American flag for the sport. “In keeping with Leonard, [the Fallout art team] simply did it as a result of it seemed cool.”
However even with 1,000 vaults within the US, Vault Tec would not have saved that many individuals, perhaps “a 3rd of 1%” of the US inhabitants by Cain’s reckoning. “If every of those vaults held one thing like a thousand folks, that is solely 1,000,000 folks which are going to be saved in Vault Tec vaults, which is approach lower than the inhabitants we imagined.”
Additionally, whereas creative license and fudged scale is certainly at play in these video games, a thousand folks per vault? I feel Vault 101 in Fallout 3 had like, a dozen folks in it. All of them got here to my celebration.
Regardless, Cain does not even suppose that finest case state of affairs of 1,000 vaults is even doubtless, trying on the density of vaults within the video games. With Fallout 1 and a couple of exhibiting us the whole lot of California, there ought to theoretically be at the very least 20 vaults between the 2 video games. “Fallout 1 and a couple of mixed solely had about 4 to 6 vaults in them that had been clearly outlined,” Cain mentioned. “And that is should you depend the un-numbered ones, like no matter Harold’s vault was.”
Whereas the TV present provides 4 extra to Cali, that is nonetheless solely half of the 20 minimal you’d count on for a high-population state, and the opposite video games do not fare a lot better by way of vault density. Cain thinks there is a believable in-universe rationalization, although: “The conclusion right here is Vault Tec: They did not construct all 1,000 Vaults, they did not even come shut.”
“Vault Tec constructed fewer than half, in all probability far fewer than the vaults they had been speculated to.” Cain mentioned, likening the corporate to the myriad actual life authorities contractors who bid the bottom after which underperform in our vaunted public-private partnerships, a state of affairs that might solely be worse in Fallout’s pessimistic alternate universe. “I feel there are far, far fewer than a thousand,” Cain concluded.
Going off the Fallout Wiki, I depend 41 vaults proven throughout the video games and TV present—we just lately ranked 26 of them from worst to finest—subtracting the 2 on the wiki’s record from Fallout: Brotherhood of Metal (I imply, come on), in addition to Fallout 3’s Museum of Know-how show and Mr. Home’s Securitron Bunker from New Vegas.
A Vault Tec map seen within the present and analyzed by Werthead on Reddit, in the meantime, exhibits about 120 vaults within the US and Canada, far fewer than Cain’s unique estimate. So if any of that is binding—and it categorically isn’t, as a result of it is all fiction—we have nonetheless solely seen a few third of the vaults in Fallout’s setting after 27 years and eight video games. I am nonetheless not counting you, Fallout: Brotherhood of Metal.
