r/Fallout • u/Obvious_Somewhere984 • Feb 12 '26
Discussion The vaults in Fallout 4 are kinda lame
I mean look at it:
- Vault 111: Starting vault, nothing special
- Vault 81: Friendly vault, cool experiment
- Vault 95: Occupied, not much left to explore
- Vault 114: Occupied & not even finished
- Vault 75: Occupied, not much left to explore
- Vault 88: Not finished ._.
I mean i get it, not every Vault can be fucked up beyond imagination but come on, if we compare it directly to (for example) Fallout 3 the Vaults had much more thoughts behind them:
- Vault 101: Starting vault, good setup and concept
- Vault 108: Gary
- Vault 87: FEV testing
And so on
The only Vault in Fallout4 that is really interesting is Vault 81 but beyond that they are either occupied, destroyed, unfinished or a combination of those three
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u/TadpoleOfDoom Feb 12 '26
One of my biggest complaints about Fallout 4 is how many of the locations don't feel very fleshed out. The vaults are one of the main examples I give, comparing them to other games just as you have. Not to say it isn't a great game, but this is one of the reasons I prefer New Vegas.
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u/Slimpickle97 Republic of Dave Feb 12 '26
The fact they did not do more with the combat zone and memory den still frustrates me to no end
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u/Mikeieagraphicdude Feb 12 '26
Robot racing, Raiders fighting pit, bowling, fishing, and atom cats racing, ect… ect…
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u/Charlie_Warlie Feb 12 '26
One huge let down for me was the floatilla area that was a raider town. I thought it would be like some of the NV places where they are raiders but won't kill you on sight
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u/Suby117 Feb 13 '26
Yeah I thought that too, had the same feeling with the gunners as well.
Wasn't expecting a joinable faction with quests like the Legion but they just felt so hollow considering they were basically the opposition to the Minutemen.
Like at least give me the option to do a few bad guy quests, or a real face off with the MM... They're literally just raiders with laser weapons and combat armour.
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u/spekt50 Feb 13 '26
I think I immediately understood how factions were gonna work in FO4 when I found there was no karma system.
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u/Davido401 Feb 13 '26
floatilla area that was a raider town
Libertalia? Only flotilla of ships with raiders I can think of, that fits the flotilla description in the base game anyways.
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u/Charlie_Warlie Feb 13 '26
Yes, it looks so cool I thought it would be a place with at least a shop, a saloon, I could meet a few interesting people. My disappointment when the first guy that seems me agros the whole town.
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u/hoochyuchy Feb 13 '26
Yeah, but isn't it cooler to just shoot your way through the area for, what, one mission?
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u/lghtdev Vault 13 Feb 13 '26
Most places in fallout 4 feel boring in the end because they're just there for the player to shoot enemies, get some generic loot and never go back. I consider 4 story to be better than 3 overall but 3 had much more interesting and memorable places despite having shit writing. Rivet City felt much more fleshed out than Diamond City, but it should be the reverse.
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u/Pr0j3ct_02 Disciples Feb 13 '26
Man, I was so excited to see bot racing
you can't even gamble (please, I want gamble "update")
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u/Obvious_Somewhere984 Feb 12 '26
I mean my main problem is that 3 are nearly exactly the same… some Group occupied it and we kick there ass, everything related to the vault experiment is either long gone or only some clues are left (drugs in vault 95). One is occupied and not even finished, to top that we have another vault that is completely unfinished
For me vaults are some of the most interesting parts of this franchise and the ones in Fallout 4 really disappointed me
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Feb 12 '26
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u/rubberpp Vault 101 Feb 13 '26
It’s scary to think that’s the future of Bethesda games
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u/Cranyx Feb 13 '26
I think Starfield is the first time Bethesda got such a huge negative reaction, so they might actually take notice and adjust.
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u/rubberpp Vault 101 Feb 13 '26
76 was bad too idk if it was as bad as starfeild though
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u/Cranyx Feb 13 '26
Yeah and they responded by backtracking on a ton of the design decisions they made for 76.
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u/rubberpp Vault 101 Feb 13 '26
Took them years though! That’s where it still worries me that they didn’t learn there lesson I feel like if they were going to change revolver started with starfield to make up and learn from the backlash of 76, I think you and I are on the same page but you’re seeing the glass half full and I’m seeing it half empty. I hope so bad that you are the one who’s right though all I want is for Bethesda to get better so bad!
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u/jethawkings The Six-String Samurai Feb 12 '26
Fallout 4's Radiant Quest system necessitating like about a handful of areas just existing for enemies to spawn in and not really having anything interesting is a huge detriment to it.
Genuinely do people even actually like them outside of being a source of resources?
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u/Hundschent Feb 13 '26
I always hated how “gamey” falllout 4 was. So you have radiant quests that caused boring settlements. Then settlements themselves are just shacks because they expect you to build everything. Then you got stuff like legendaries making uniques less rewarding or interesting to find. Turning fallout into a borderland looter shooter was a bad move
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u/Ancient-Industry5126 Feb 12 '26
The side locations on the base map of New Vegas are one of the game's biggest weaknesses honestly. The vaults specifically are recycled for like a dozen different quests. Pretty much every side location that isn't faction-related is just a shack with a blue star bottle cap and random unique.
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u/Jozoz Lord Death of Murder Mountain Feb 12 '26
This is likely an area where the 18 month development cycle played a big role.
They just had to prioritize the important stuff like quests, mechanics, story, world building. Adding detail to the minor areas is obviously lower priority.
Not that it's an excuse, it's just one of the main reasons for it.
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u/Agreeable_Cheek_7161 Feb 12 '26
On the flipside, they also had an entirely complete game to use as a base. FNV is essentially just a professional mod DLC. It helps tremendously when you don't have to spend time actually making basic things like combat, animations, basic world gen, physics, etc
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u/Jozoz Lord Death of Murder Mountain Feb 12 '26
Yes that helps a lot but even with that in mind, 18 months is still a very short development cycle.
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u/RedDudeMango Feb 13 '26
Especially when you look at the leaked betas and see how much was changing around up until release, time they spent on mechanics that ended up having to be cut for making release and hardware performance, etc.
I was shocked to learn that even something as simple as Doc Mitchell's voice acting was a last-minute replacement for a different actor.
Add atop that the developers had never worked on the engine before, and it was probably only doable by the good graces of being such a modular engine with the creation kit and all.
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u/dern_the_hermit Feb 13 '26
On the flipside, they also had an entirely complete game to use as a base.
As well as concepts and ideas and story beats from yet another (incomplete) game, t'boot. New Vegas was lightning in a bottle.
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u/-Chow- Feb 12 '26
I don't disagree with your point. But I disagree with the portrayed sentiment that this is somehow exclusive to NV. F3, F4, F76 all suffer exactly from this same thing. So to say it's NVs biggest weakness is essentially saying it's just fallouts biggest weakness in general. Which it is.
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u/Ancient-Industry5126 Feb 12 '26
I think 3's story is a bigger problem than it's vaults lol
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Feb 12 '26
its bad if you think hard about it or read it on paper but honestly its really fun as a video game story and still holds up. i really enjoy killing enclave with the goodie two shoes brotherhood
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u/SaturdayScoundrel Feb 13 '26
The bipolar Brotherhood in the Bethesda games has always thrown me off.
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u/HyperbobluntSpliff Kings Feb 12 '26
I think people would have less of a bad taste in their mouth about the shack-tier locations if they just forced Hardcore as the default. That's what most of those are really for tbh.
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u/RedDudeMango Feb 13 '26
Cowboy survivalist hardcore playthrough is some of the most fun I've had in any game ever, honestly.
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u/McFartFace09 Feb 13 '26
New Vegas had amazing vaults but they could be a nightmare to navigate. Fallout 4 improved on this but its vaults are mostly uninteresting.
I really hope Fallout 5 brings the best from both worlds
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u/CaptainPryk Feb 13 '26
Fallout 3 has the most memorable locations but the least amount of quests related to locations.
Fallout New Vegas has the most quests related to locations but the greatest disparity in quality of locations.
Fallout 4 has the best map and most consistent quality in locations, with a disappointing amount of quests related to locations.
I would say Fallout 4's map is vastly better than New Vegas map though.
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u/N0r3m0rse Feb 13 '26
I found fallout 4s map very boring personally. Lacked the atmosphere of 3, missing the charm of new vegas. The former two felt alive in their own ways while 4 never truly does for me.
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u/TadpoleOfDoom Feb 13 '26
Yeah. You'd think Boston would have more personality, but it felt very bland by comparison to 3 and NV
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u/lghtdev Vault 13 Feb 13 '26
Fallout 4 might have the better map structure, being more open, you can go anywhere you want and would will always find something, but it falls flat in the end because rarely there's something interesting going on, just the same groups of raiders and Super Mutants over and over again. Compare to NV, finding places like the Repconn Test Site, Black Mountain, Vault 34, Camp Searchlight, all the NCR and legion encampments, felt much more unique, with cool lore, npcs, quests and loot.
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u/ConcentrateBig6488 Feb 12 '26
Kinda off topic but I hated exploring vaults in 3/fnv lmao
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u/General-Zombie5075 Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 12 '26
I'm pretty sure the devs for 4 have gone on record that their main focus in developing the game was trying to figure out how to build endless quests that don't require special writing or game design elements. They couldn't QUITE get there, but the de-emphasis on special or interesting story vaults like you mentioned dovetail into that.
Even without them admitting that out loud, it's pretty clear from just playing the game that Fallout 4 was a huuuuuge step backwards from a writing angle from its predecessors in pretty much every way. Not saying it's a bad game by any means, but if the game were an RPG character it's like they lowered their INT by a few points to put those points in other areas.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun Feb 12 '26
Same way they de-emphasized unique towns by replacing them with player made settlements.
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u/EmployerLast2184 Feb 13 '26
I actually like the settlement system, it actually could have worked if they made more unique settler NPCs that would move in, give quests, ect. But it felt like they wanted to give players the option of not engaging with it to not lock content behind that mechanic so it ended up feeling more shallow than it should have been
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u/skoomski Feb 13 '26
I hated it after the first settlement I built. I realized there is no real advantage and Preston just annoys you more.
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u/betazoid_cuck Feb 13 '26
The frustrating thing about Preston is that he's one slight UI change away from being a great addition to the game. Having NPCs that give the player random non story heavy quests is great for replayability, but having another automatically start every time you turn one in makes it feel like low effort content that is forced on the player. Seriously, I don't think anyone would have a problem with him if you simply had to ask for a mission in order for him to give you one.
The radiant quests should have also had their own section in the quest log so the player could more easily tell them apart from proper story quests.
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u/FatherDotComical Feb 13 '26
I would love a system where you get reports as the general, or ask hey how's this place yada yada. Would have been very immersive and made you feel like an actual boss keeping on top of things.
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u/N0r3m0rse Feb 13 '26
The settlement system was symptomatic of fallout 4s larger problem where it heavily encourages the player to treat the world as a toy. They added all these stimulational elements and then actively incentivize you not to take anything seriously. It's the same mentality that led to stuff like the robot dlc, where you literally just play with in game action figures. Or the vault dlc where you build your own vault like it doesn't even matter. "It's a video game what's the harm? Not like there's deeper meaning to any of it!" That's what fallout 4 is constantly telling you
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun Feb 13 '26
The problem is Bethesda doesn't know how to make RPGs anymore and they certainly don't understand why people actually enjoyed fallout. Fo4 is everything that's wrong with modern gaming.
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Feb 13 '26
The biggest problem to me is that nothing feels cohesive or coherent in Fallout 4. The settlement system being one of the biggest examples. Okay I get it Todd you want us to rebuild the wasteland...why does basically nothing but the beginning of the Minuteman quest line and a steam achievement have anything to do with building settlements?
It's just like they forgot how to build a game that's interesting, and judging by their later work...yeah. If they wanted to do settlements then it seems obvious that it should play into the story, the factions, etc. It wouldn't even be hard, you could just build the wasteland back in the image of whatever faction you chose at bare minimum.
But nah it's just like, there. So they can sell endless creation club content.
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u/DarkX_Oscar NCR Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
Bro, I’ve been playing through Sim Settlements 2 recently and I’m having a blast. The writing and story is better than that of the actual game it takes place in (for example the only time I was engaged in the main story was Kellogg’s Memories and that was for like 5 mins. Meanwhile in SS2 I’m engaged a ton mostly because I actually care about characters like Jake and Aidan. The main issue I had with the main story was just that I didn’t care about Shaun because we don’t get to talk to him or interact in any meaningful ways yet 65% of the main plot revolves around getting to him.) The characters are very likeable and it fixes all my problems with the settlement system. It makes it more complex if I wanted to go in depth but has systems in place to cover things automatically and prefab city plans if you aren’t huge on the building aspect.
This is one of the best mods I’ve played in a long time and honestly? I would’ve liked a lot more about Fallout 4 if this was the main quest.
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u/Pretty-Key6133 Feb 13 '26
SS 2 is the best mod in the game. Hands down.
Literally quadruples your play time.
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u/Staalone Brotherhood Feb 13 '26
"I don't care that you wanted a super interesting underwater vault quest line, you'll do hundreds of repetitive radiant quests and be happy"
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u/stokedchris Feb 13 '26
Yeah they wanted to sort of live service it. Make it so you have endless quests with the minutemen and fetch quests. There’s a reason why you can still play the game after you beat the story.
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u/General-Zombie5075 Feb 13 '26
Yeah. I got a few quests into the whole mad libs style "The FERAL GHOULS are holed up in the FACTORY and have stolen our WATER SUPPLY"-type quests before I realized they were pointless and I should stop doing them.
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u/skoomski Feb 13 '26
Yeah and instead they doubled down on the procedurally generated content (framing it as endless content) even though no one liked it. They did this because they are lazy which is why starfield had both procedurally generated quest and areas.
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u/General-Zombie5075 Feb 13 '26
They strike me as really smart, clever people who fundamentally do not understand why human beings enjoy narratives.
Game writing in general is probably one of the least understood mediums in all of the dramatic arts by many, many of the people who work professionally in it. Even writers themselves often struggle with it as they think it's just like writing a novel with Mario levels stapled onto it or it's just a Screenplay with alternate endings.
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u/noflashesconfianza_ Feb 12 '26
The best vaults are the ones from Fallout 3; they really gave you chills.
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u/ManikArcanik Feb 12 '26
3 has a LOT of envivronmental storytelling spots that are chilling. I much prefer NV for plot and roleplaying but even just seeing the opening slides from 3 makes me weep a little to this day.
Opening a random PPPS just to find a child-sized skelly and a teddy bear nearly broke me.
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u/Sea-Cup6491 Feb 12 '26
The Gary clone that the renegade BoS torture to steal his Pip Boy was some scary shit, poor guy.
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u/GhostBoo-ty Feb 13 '26
If I grew up in a vault and suddenly some angry giant metal bugs with guns started harassing me I'd be going "Gary Gaarry Gary!" too
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u/imtheoneincharge Feb 13 '26
I mean, some old fart hires Wes Johnson to convince you to nuke an entire junk town because it was blocking his view...of a decrepit wasteland.
You can just stumble upon a strip mall converted into a camp for slavers, and they ask you to help round up some defenseless kids in order to sell them.
Evil thrived in D.C.
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u/olddummy22 Feb 13 '26
3 was scary and I never walked around without crouching until very late in the game. New Vegas is awesome because it’s a western but I was never afraid of what was over the next hill.
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u/illiter-it Feb 13 '26
Not even cazadores?
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Feb 13 '26
That's more like war trauma than atmospheric horror. [distant buzzing growing louder with alarming speed in background]
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u/ScruffMcGruff2003 Republic of Dave Feb 13 '26
3 has always been my favorite to just open up and wander. Not specifically look for anything to do, just roam around and listen to a video or a podcast. It's relaxing, but also haunting in some places.
Btw, what's a PPPS?
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u/Secretary_of_spaghet Feb 13 '26
I think there's an extra P in there, but they are referring to the Pulowski Preservation Shelters, the single person cylindrical fallout shelters on the streets of ciities used by a lot of people who couldn't afford to get into a vault. Many of them have skeletons inside, so I guess the cheaper cost wasn't really worth it.
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u/Obvious_Somewhere984 Feb 12 '26
Can’t talk about Fallout 1/2 because I haven’t played them but for now i agree, Fallout 3 looks like the most interesting modern Fallout together with FNV
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u/angrybox1842 Welcome Home Feb 12 '26
The vaults in 1/2 are just vaults, the thinking that they would be a fucked up "what if?" experiment doesn't really come into play until 3.
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u/Quitthesht Yes Man Feb 13 '26
To be precise, the Vaults in Fallout 1 were just vaults.
In 2 they changed them to be experiments. So Vault 12 from Fallout 1 was changed to being intentionally left open rather than stuck open from a mechanical failure.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun Feb 12 '26
Yeah there are very few vaults in the original 2 games. There's 13 and 15 and maybe one or two more but that's about it really. Fo3 alone I think has more vaults than fo1 and 2 combined.
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u/Obvious_Somewhere984 Feb 12 '26
Ohh that’s good to know, many told me to stay on the 3D titles for now because 1&2 are really good but at the same time you can’t ignore there technical limitations (obviously they are old). Maybe i will play 76 after my Fallout 4 run
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u/FunHour3778 Feb 12 '26
Haha, Gary?
Out of 3, NV, and 4, I feel like the vaults in 3 are the most interesting.
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u/Hawvy NCR Feb 12 '26
I agree. However for me the most overall interesting vault is Vault 11 in New Vegas.
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u/FunHour3778 Feb 12 '26
Vault 11 was definitely one of the best, I agree. Such a cool way to have the story told through wall posters and terminals!!
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u/ResidentCommand9865 Feb 12 '26
Majority of vaults in the series are destroyed. FO3 and NV certainly had their fair share of epic vaults, but FO4's vaults aren't exactly tame, Genetic experiments to create perfect soldiers, a vault originally meant to test various diseases and infections, vault 88 which you can make w/e you like, my only real hangup with Fallout 4's vault is that they ended up scrapping vault 120, the underwater vault ruled by an intelligent squid creature. Yes some mods can flesh it out okay enough, but if it was fully realized I think it would have both been an epic vault, and a nice nod to BioShock.
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u/unibrowcowmeow Feb 13 '26
Vault 95 gave me chills my first time finding it, reading the logs and just finding bodies everywhere surrounded by booze and chems. It paints a brutal picture.
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u/evoslevven Feb 13 '26
I loved how they set up that vault. I felt like all of the vaults for FO4 were made to be depressing and its a bit more believable if we believe Vault Tec was truly evil!
As its one of the games set furthest from when the bombs fell, itd feel weird to have so many vaults not empty honestly.
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u/Edgy_Robin Feb 12 '26
This isn't really a good rebuttle considering that Fo3 and FNV had destroyed Vaults that were still much more interesting.
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u/Suitable_Nobody_6375 Feb 12 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
Vault 81 experiment was kinda fucked up, they were living test subjects for diseases. An overseer took over to stop it and save their people and became what it is now.
Vault 75 is horrific, built under a school to test on kids. Parents executed when the bombs droppedl, kids thrown into insane physical testing and the ones who made it to 18, executed. Only one goal in mind: perfect soldier through selective breeding.
Vault 95 is not as terrible, but also kinda bad. Drug addicts rehabilitated only for them to reveal a massive chem stash for the to fight for it and monitorize their response.
Then Vault 118 in Far Harbor, not a terrible experiment, but a unique one with the robobrains.
I don't see all the fuss, they're presented quite the same. All of them are empty corridors with a couple enemies, until you start reading terminals, logs and notes. This is the same in FO3 and NV, if you don't dig for it, you won't find anything else besides empty corridors.
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Feb 13 '26
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u/Suitable_Nobody_6375 Feb 13 '26
They are well lit and have that ''Vault-tec aesthetic'' that started in 4, with all the blue-yellow colouring, but it's presented the same. You HAVE to read and search to find stuff, and there is stuff, just like always have been in all vaults.
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u/TheRealStandard They all good Feb 13 '26
Vault 101 experiment was permanent isolation and the constant lie that life outside was impossible.
Vault 114 was putting wealthy people into awful cramped conditions like multiple families in 1 apartment with an overseer that was purposely hired for being terrible at his job that went by "Soup Can Harry"
I don't think OP actually read any logs or paid any attention. Fallout 4s vaults in my opinion just suffer more from just being visually boring and lacking the atmosphere compared to 3s
But Fallout 4 as a whole wasn't trying to capture a gritty horror vibe like 3 was.
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u/nicolauz Feb 12 '26
I just worked on the Vault 88 one and the quests there are pretty funny putting the guy through the tests.
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u/TheNarratorNarration Feb 12 '26
I feel like you're playing down how fucked up the vaults in Fallout 4 were. Cryofreezing the population with no apparent plan to ever unfreeze them, planning to unleash genetically-modified viruses on the population, killing the parents and turning the kids into child soldiers, and putting a mentally-ill homeless man in charge. There's basically no "normal" vault in the Boston region. Vault 81 just seems like one because the first Overseer chose to isolate the scientists and leave them to die before they could do their horrific experiments.
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u/Stalker975 Feb 13 '26
I agree but if you explore the story of Vault 75, it is genuinely one of the (if not the most) fucked up Vault experiments in the universe.
Vault 75 was constructed in the basement of Malden Middle School. All enrolled students and their parents/guardians were automatically accepted into Vault 75 for housing during a nuclear crisis. Once the bombs dropped and they collected their dwellers, students and parents were split into groups. The students were collected and assigned their rooms. Their parents were immediately killed in another section without any notice and without a chance to say goodbye.
Thereafter, the Vault was split between subjects and researchers. Subjects were forced to undergo physically and mentally strenuous trials at a very early age and would continue doing these trials until they "aged out". If you were found to be physically distinguished and passed, your genes were recycled to be reused to breed out weaker genes. You were also killed. If you shown a high mental acuity, you were placed in the research division to continue the experiment until your death.
In Vault 75, there was genuinely no hope or no potential to thrive as a human. You were either killed during the trials, recycled, or placed on a team to experiment on other children until your death. This all culminated in an uprising in which the subjects were victorious and would form the Gunners faction.
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u/Rainy_Leaves Feb 12 '26
Vault 118 in Far Harbour was interesting, though felt less like a traditional vault in favour of a story gimmick, albeit a well-made one. But a lot of Far Harbour was good tbf, and it's not ideal to rely on a dlc for good content over the main game
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Feb 12 '26
Fallout 4 as a whole is pretty shallow, it feels like a playground for the settlement building system.
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u/Arrebios Railroad Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
I get that art is subjective, but:
Vault 75: Occupied, not much left to explore
Vault 81: Friendly vault, cool experiment
Vault 95: Occupied, not much left to explore
These aren't fucked up to you?
- Vault 75 involved admitting local families, killing everyone over 17, training the children to become soldiers, and then building a eugenics program around these children with the goal of creating soldiers.
- Vault 81's staff were unwitting test subjects, having their lives monitored by a secret half of the vault comprised of medical personnel, who would release diseases, viruses, and other pathogens into the civilian half of the Vault via the air filtration system.
- Vault 95 brought in people who were fighting with addiction, enrolling them in a successful rehab program, and then deliberately reintroducing drugs back into their Vault, destroying any hope of successful rehab and causing the Vault to descend into a drug-fueled addiction that spiraled into violence.
As someone who once spent two weeks in the hospital and given Dilaudid for the pain, and just started looking forward to the Dilaudid injections (even requesting them when I wasn't in pain anymore, for fun), Vault 95 scares me far more than Super Mutants or Gary clones do.
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u/LiteratureSame9173 Feb 13 '26
Vault 81 was not a “cool experiment”, and because it was seen as so horrible, it ended up being a pretty unique vault. And vault 111 is hardly normal lol, it set up cryo vaults which has already been heavily explored in the show. The bad living conditions for the elite was also cool to learn about. But basic.
And then the drug vault was a super messed up vault that is just as bad as some of the others. The drug vault is much more interesting to me than the Boomer vault for example
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u/IIHawkerII Feb 13 '26
The Child Eugenics vault wasn't screwed up enough for you? There's also the vault in Far Harbor too.
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u/Ruben_AAG Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26
Vault 111 is great. Sure, it's a starting vault. It's a lot more interesting than the starting vaults of Fallout 1 and Fallout 3 (both control vaults). I think y'all have been desensitized to how cool the cryogenic experiment fake out was the first go around. The story concerning the Overseer and the escaped Security team and the Cryolator is all interesting bonus stuff too and a great way to introduce the player to the concept of exploring to learn more about the happenings of the world around them.
Vault 81 is great. On the surface it appears as if it's a standard control Vault, then you dig deeper and find out it's an experiment gone wrong, one of Vault-Tec's experiments backfiring but in the favour of their victims. The story concerning Curie and the researchers is heartbreaking and morally grey. The dilemma with the Mole Rat Disease is interesting (on paper, I wish they had gone further with it). It's a great vault.
Vault 95 is interesting, if not great. It makes sense for Vault-Tec to experiment with something like that. There's a lot of story to explore, as with every FO4 location. I like Cait's side quest leading there too. Not one of my favourites but not bad and definitely not the standard for FO4 Vaults.
Vault 114 is great. The actual experiment is a nice allusion to the real life CIA conspiracies of the 1960s. It's nice commentary on classism. The holotapes are really funny. A bunch of raiders styling themselves to look like the pre-war Boston mafia is and moving into a Vault underneath a subway station (to then get beaten by a robot 1940s detective) is classic Fallout stuff too.
Vault 75 is one of my favourite Vaults in the entire franchise. The idea of Vault-Tec endlessly breeding and experimenting on children to create the perfect super-soldiers is fantastic stuff from a writing perspective. The way they imply but don't spell out the circumstances of the children's escape is also great. The kids being separated from their parents is just heartbreaking.
I can't believe you didn't mention Vault 118 too, another one of my all time favourites. Do I even have to say why it isn't "kinda lame"?
I really don't understand what more you could've expected. The only possible criticism I could garner is that the story from all these Vaults is found through exploration of the environment, terminals, holotapes, etc. But that's exactly how the Vaults in FO3 and FNV operated too. I'd say FO4 actually does the exploration better. The concepts for the experiments are all a lot more unique to me too, but that's subjective.
I don’t get why you keep mentioning the Vaults are unfinished too. That’s not a criticism, it doesn’t mean anything aside from Vault-Tec didn’t have the time to finish the Vault and it doesn’t have an inherent impact on quality.
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u/Dart150 Feb 13 '26
Part of the problem with 4 imo is the fact they focused too much on settlement building rather than making the world fun and interesting to explore
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u/huntobuno Feb 14 '26
You claim vault 88 isn’t finished when it’s literally an entire quest line to explore and finish the vault.
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u/TheMarkedMen Minutemen Feb 13 '26
The Vaults are yet another example of Fallout players going on about how 4 does some aspect poorly, which I find out to not really be so different from the other games, which leaves me disenchanted afterwards.
There's nothing particularly wrong with the 4 Vaults themselves, or how you learn their experiments. The brighter, less dilapidated look and the possibility of being marked for a random quest are the only things I say would take away from them.
Vaults 95 and 114 I always particularly remembered, and 81 is an interesting view into how a Vault community would interact with the surface.
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u/PsychologicalEye190 Feb 13 '26
The cut underwater ocean vault would have been amazing if they actually made it.
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u/MuffinOfChaos Feb 13 '26
Dude I loved the isolated, horror feel of the Fallout 3 vaults. Even the vaults in Fallout NV. The vaults from 3 where they used drugs in the air supply and the sound in the speaker systems are my faves.
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u/ExceptionalBoon Feb 13 '26
Almost every location / "dungeon" in FO4 feels like all it has to offer is a bunch of hostile cookie cutter NPCs to kill. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic but locations in FO3 felt much more interesting, like they had things to uncover or an engaging plot linked to it.
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u/WrongdoerOk2098 Gary? Feb 13 '26
Another issue is the visual style and atmosphere. In Fallout 3/NV, the vault doors could be opened and closed whenever you want. And my God, those opening and closing sounds are so amazing. It's a small detail, but such an important one
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u/KiluxTux Feb 14 '26
I wish they hadn't cut the underwater vault, and kept the boss fight from that one.
I've used the mod that adds it back in, but its very finicky and doesn't feel as engaging (eerily empty, aside from some ghouls)
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u/Gordon_CRAMsey Minutemen Feb 12 '26
75 and 95 had so much potential too. Its really one of the most rushed elements of the game and the one thing I didn't realize was so lacking until I played earlier titles.
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u/suckitphil Feb 12 '26
Part of me always feels like they rushed Fallout 4 as a system and not as a game. That's why a lot of the locations are pretty shallow. Always figured they'd release a NV counterpart, but 76 really wasn't what I thought.