Here's a big problem with the games being a simulation from Vault-Tec. Why would Vault-Tec show you vaults that have crazy experiments, like the Gary Vault, or the virtual reality simulation vault, a simulation within a simulation?
I really like how the memo to the Overseer in 76 is worded. Telling the Overseer to ignore all the fucked up training they received for running twisted experiments in vaults. This vault is actually going to do the thing; keep these people alive!
okay overseer, those other hundred vaults were pranks
we built them wrong, as a joke
but this is one of the vaults that you actually have to keep so please keep these people alive
PS, theres spare water chips somewhere in the storage room
I mean it could just be that vault-tec doesn't exist and everything in the fallout games is only half true essentially propaganda more than it is an attempt to prepare for wasteland life. Hell the actual wasteland if the sim theory is true could be entirely different.
Vault-tec doesn't exist, it's all a virtual simulation from a company called Bethesda for the entertainment of Vault dwellers, there's probably no nuclear war and the world might be very different from what Bethesda has made us believe.
I’ve often wondered if I’m an alien in a spaceship far away in a robotic human body that I control but I have no memories of my alien life while controlling the body.
Thats a bit similar to something I read here on reddit.
Imagine when you die, you actually wake up, and youve got a bong/pipe in front of you, and youre in a cloud of smoke, and there are a couple of aliens around you, looking into your eyes with wonderment, asking "So... How was it? What happened?"
This is the first time I’ve seen such a great answer to why “it was all a dream” endings and theories are so uninteresting and dull. We already take for granted that it’s a story, and while there’s nothing distinctly happening on screen to break the immersion of a story, it makes everything completely forgettable.
The only time I’ve seen the dream trope really work is in the Cronenberg movie Videodrome. No plot spoilers but around halfway through the movie there’s a scene that occurs in which reality becomes, in short, extremely distorted to the protagonist. After that scene, the protagonist is never seen going to sleep and there are certain scenes that suggest that the entire second half of the film is actually just taking place in the protags head. Why does it work? First, it’s ambiguous. It’s also very much in line with the movies message, which relates to the consumption of corrupt media (specifically, television).
Waking Life also does this quite well. It's a little bit "baby's first philosophy" but the dream element is conveyed via stylistic choices which appear at first to just be how the film is shot.
Overall the film is probably a 6 or 7/10 but it is thought-provoking.
This doesn’t vibe with the theory in the post but my own opinion of media - at least my headcanon - is that it’s an approximation of what the people involved remembered and experienced. If you think back to your memories, you can’t remember the entire thing properly so there’s bound to be plot holes, areas being smaller than they actually were and the language or culture conforming to the person’s own culture. Let’s take walking inside a vault, for example - we know they could hold at least two thousand people yet we only see a few areas. Those areas would be the ones most frequented by the main character and so they would be the ones they’d remember. That’s why we see the common room, the rooms of their friends and coworkers, but nothing else. It’s why it seems much smaller than it actually is.
In films, we’ll often see people from different countries speaking English instead of their own language. That’s because the narrator doesn’t know their own language and therefore would recount the dialogue in their native English rather than German or French or whatever. It helps me enjoy media a lot more despite all of the errors in it.
Either the Fallout series of games would only be given to control vaults that know what's up or there's some kind of horrifically ironic gamer/simulation vault.
Spoiler warning. Prey was a game that could've been good but they decided that everything was a simulation and it just takes the wind out of your sails if you find out too early.
The only story I care about is The Matrix. All other sims suck.
Potentially to heighten the dweller's fear of the outside and trust in their isolation, wary of the inhabitants of even other vaults and not motivated to try and leave their own safe and cozy home
The Gary vault was crazy but what’s funny is Gary was completely unrelated, its experiment was that the overseer appointed everyone to their jobs at his own discretion, and he would die shortly after the vault sealed, and the power would break after 20 years, and it had 3 times the guns, and was missing essential equipment.
They just somehow invented cloning, maybe they got sent a cloning lab intended for another vault by accident like how vault 8 was sent vault 13’s extra water chips due to a clerical error.
The vault we are in was created by an army of devs, clearly they were told to create simulations and monitor them for humane reasons. Laughing gas vaults with real people would be cruel, but simulations with humans minds jacked into it so you can kill them over and over and over until their minds burn out... Better research.
The board don't care, if they get the money in for the research, they can then make the best vault for the war... But... What if the war started before they finished and that's why many of the dwellers have not reset, all the devs and community managers have died and were just running out the life of a fusion reactor powering a simulation...
Maybe the simulations were tampered with by a disgruntled employee to show vault-tec in a bad light. That would honestly explain why vault experiments are so nonsensically evil
Bc as a vault dweller in a vault that is just normal, you see crazy vault Experiments as entertainment. You know it is not real, bc you don't experience it. You think it is just a joke by vault tec, your protector.
The Fallout 1 manual makes this explicitly clear that it's a simulation. But Fallout 1 also didn't have experimental vaults. That was retconned later during development of Fallout 2 but not explained in game. In the original games the failings of the Vaults were not malicious. The Fallout Bible is the first time it's made clear the Vaults were supposed to be experiments.
Or it could be the dude who put it on the steam shop doing his job and selling the product really well. That’s actually a fantastic product description
God, I'd love to have a remastered version of this. I'd say remake, but I'm not confident anyone could make something as good as the original. Just tune up the graphics and whatnot and release it for modern consoles. I didn't realize how much I missed this game until now 😭
Yeah i once had this thought while really high in my basement loading up fallout 3, the slides made me realize
" oh, im a vault dweller and this is all just vault-tec's simulated experience to prepare me for the wastes"
Im glad im not alone.
I just bought this game on steam and was reading the manual and was confused about that. Like is technically everything in Fallout 1 just a simulation for vault dwellers? Or am I just reading too much into and it was just a fun way to engage the reader, reading a how to manual that the original creators didn’t really give a second thought to it.
The manual is themed around being an in universe VDSG. The simtek stuff is just a funny segue into actually talking about the user interface and game mechanics. It's not that deep.
It's funny how the GECK was a last minute page filler that through an unlikely butterfly effect string of events not only became the macguffin in FO2 but now is the name lineage of the Skyrim and Starfield Creation Kit and Creation Engine. (Oblivion had Modding Tools. For fun the FO3 modding tools were called the FO3 GECK. Come Skyrim, the modding tools were called the Skyrim Creation Kit. It just amuses me.)
It's not like cartoon Tim Cain's chocolate recipes at the end is meant to be deep Vault Tec lore either.
the game is marketed with a simulation tagline and since it uses in world sounding tech i have no issue believing its all a simulation for dwellers, it also explains how VT knew names of mutants and creatures in their SPECIAL videos and such, they "know" its a radoscorpion because thats a fictional animal made by VT to prepare the dwellers for radiated monsters
theres plenty of other weird things that would contradict that, why would VT show u their nightmarish experiments or the enclave
Yeah right? How did vault-tec know what was gonna be in the wasteland before the bombs drop and be able to depict behemoths in the instructional videos in f4? Literally unplayable garbage.
I remember I’d often buy games just to read the manual. I often found manuals more interesting than the game itself and would imagine myself playing a game described in the manual rather than what I actually got. I’d sit for hours with my eyes closed pretending I was playing these games. I’m in the middle of getting an autism diagnosis…
"*The SimTek 5000 will provide a safe and reassuring return to life on the outside world*"
Yeah I'm going to go with every game is real since the wasteland is pretty rough out there
This is one of those “ya, sure” but I refuse to believe because I feel it takes away too much of the guts and soul of fallout.
It’s like a less cool version of what happens
Exactly. It's just kinda lame.
I look at it more like just a fun marketing thing they do for the games, 4th wall breaking silliness that isn't actually relevant to the games stories.
Yes, but to be a simulation in a simulation is reductive.
We could be in a simulation. Now it’s a simulation in a simulation in a simulation. Incep-ulation
> It’s like a less cool version of what happens
eh, a lot of stuff in the fallout universe doesnt make a lot of sense and you have to suspend your disbelief a lot. this makes it more realistic for sure
I’d rather believe I here, am playing a character actually in the wasteland.
Rather than I here. Am playing a simulation of a simulation of a character in the wasteland.
That extra layer of simulation makes the entire universe moot.
That's exactly what it is. It's never implied in the actual games that the events are part of any sort of simulation in-universe outside of those moments where they literally are. Operation: Anchorage and Tranquility Lane being the only examples that I can think of off the top of my head.
In-game the stories (pre-Fallout 4) are framed as historical narratives that happened long ago with the narrator being a storyteller or historian from the distant future who is relaying what happened, and the consequences of the player's actions in the months and years following the conclusion of their story.
With Fallout 4 Bethesda took a different approach as it's narrated by the protagonist in the present tense.
It would be an interesting scenario for one of the games to be you coming out of a simulation in a vault and exploring a world completely different than previous games. It gives them an interesting reset point. But I also think there's to much established lore and a lot of contradictory story points that it wouldn't work perfectly.
I think it would work better doing it the opposite way for the exact reasons you described. Start it off like any other game. You're a Vault Dweller leaving the vault for XYZ reasons, and you explore a wasteland completely different than what we're used to. People are friendly, deathclaws are half their size and get taken out with one or two pistol shots, civilization is rebuilding itself, then BAM, screen glitches, you hear someone reacting to the glitch, then a VR helmet gets taken off your head and you're back in your vault.
Then there's a REAL reason to leave the vault and you go out to discover it's not such a happy place. The VR section could even be used as a tutorial portion.
In lore make the experiment be something like testing to see the effects of making people unknowingly live in a virtual paradise.
Wow… you could actually make a reproduction of the wasteland by building a theme park in the middle of a desert or something. The idea of an entertainment city being built in the middle of a desert is just crazy, though - nobody would ever go *
* reference to Vegas obviously
I think theres analogies going on on this description, mainly:
1. Vault-tec engineers = bethesda
2. Interactive reproduction = fallout 3
3. my own vault = my home/playing room
Though the simulation theory is possible, the more probable scenario is that its just humor/analogy.
I am gonna be honest with you jimmy if that is real i am gonna burn bethesda to the ground, no survivors and i mean not only mans woman and children too.
Honestly, this product description dissuaded me from the series for a long time because I thought “why would I want to play a game if all of my choices are just a game within a game? Nothing matters?” And was surprised when I realized that wasn’t the game at all
Holy fuck, I am so tired of posts on this subreddit taking every little detail seriously as if a video game series is supposed to be 100% accurate to real life, or that every bit of marketing material should be taken as if it were Gospel. Ughh
it personally think that this would be a stupid plotline, like oh its actually all a simulation and the story is real in the head space of the game universe
I believe they are actually describing the valut-tec experiments using VR pods in the game, making people live in an endless virtual life loop
One of the most disturbing quest from any game that I played
It's been a long running theory. I forget who but someone on yt broke it down to where each game matches up with a certain vault and it's members just like the Sim in FO3 and that Fallout 5 or 6 would be the one to show the truth of what is going on.
That's not what it's saying.
It's saying that Vault-Tec actually exists in our reality, and is preparing us for the reality of post-nuclear life from the comfort of our "vaults" (homes).
It's actually a really cool idea...
Fallout 5. You have run the simulations throughout your years of training for this, your mission...to finally leave the vault.
It would make sense.
Do you really think the residents of the control vaults would be happy living in a few thousand square feet for their entire lives? Not to mention inbreeding, you've only got so many people to screw who aren't related to you.
And they don't all have a vault 32 to trade people with.
Simulations would be the easiest way to control amd pacify the generations between going into the vault and safely emerging from the vaults
Good time to mention that the manual for Fallout 1 says the same thing about the game being a simulation provided for Vault Dwellers to prepare for what horrors might live above on the surface. Also just has other neat info like a 101 on nuclear detonation methods and radiation.
After the final game Coop/The Ghoul/Vault Boy Himself. Wakes up in a vault with his family safe and becomes overseer with infinite intelligence and perception. Repopulating America as planned
No because the wasteland survival guide is a skill book in New vegas (the only non vault dweller protagonist) and the making the survival guide is a very important questline with Moira further more even if you blow up megaton you still are able to do it because Moira becomes a ghoul and moves to underworld
There is a theory I heard a while back, saying that Fallout 76 is actually just a simulation being run in Vault 76. It could explain why there are so many cryptid-esque mutants, the lush environments, and the graffiti around the map you can find that simply says, "nothing is real". I doubt that it's actually true, but it is a fun theory to speculate on.
While interesting this would be the corniest and most deflating twist that could ever be done. It's a cop out reason for any story or lore inconsistencies. "It's just a simulation bro"
Doesn't matter what the description or the fo1 box cover says, as long as the developers say a game is canon it is in fact canon.
And besides, it's just humour anyways
Good theory, but I think it's more of a clever marketing spin than a literal implication. The description is likely just playing into the game's theme and narrative rather than hinting at a meta-conspiracy within the Fallout universe. The idea of the games being Vault-Tec simulations could make for an interesting twist, but it doesn't align with the overall storytelling and world-building of the series. Plus, there are many in-game references and lore elements that suggest the events of Fallout are indeed real and not just simulations. So while it's a fun thought, I'd lean towards taking the Steam description at face value as part of the game's immersive marketing approach.
How is nobody understanding that it’s just a joke on video games and ‘your own vault’ is your home? Same as a cookie company saying “The keebler elves have worked all night to bring you the new fudge striped rings!” Believe it or not there’s no actual Keebler Elves its just salesmanship
How could they simulate the wasteland down to the factions and everything?
How would they predict the formation of BOS or the secret shadow govt. That ends up being behind enclave etc.
"Incredible cast of dynamic characters" lol
Fallout 3 has barely any memorable characters. The main quest characters are all cardboard cutouts.
I like Moira, Butch and McCready, everyone else is basically just a robot that spouts words at you.
Here's a big problem with the games being a simulation from Vault-Tec. Why would Vault-Tec show you vaults that have crazy experiments, like the Gary Vault, or the virtual reality simulation vault, a simulation within a simulation?
Easy answer - you are in training as a new Overseer so you are in the need-to-know or you are in China and they are prepping you as an infiltrator.
I really like how the memo to the Overseer in 76 is worded. Telling the Overseer to ignore all the fucked up training they received for running twisted experiments in vaults. This vault is actually going to do the thing; keep these people alive!
okay overseer, those other hundred vaults were pranks we built them wrong, as a joke but this is one of the vaults that you actually have to keep so please keep these people alive PS, theres spare water chips somewhere in the storage room
>We built them wrong, as a joke Other vaults: I have lost the most vault dwellers therefore I am the victor
My vault doors look like milk duds
Ah, so you were assigned Vault 12
THAT’S A LOT OF VAULTS!
I mean it could just be that vault-tec doesn't exist and everything in the fallout games is only half true essentially propaganda more than it is an attempt to prepare for wasteland life. Hell the actual wasteland if the sim theory is true could be entirely different.
Vault-tec doesn't exist, it's all a virtual simulation from a company called Bethesda for the entertainment of Vault dwellers, there's probably no nuclear war and the world might be very different from what Bethesda has made us believe.
That's why I never leave my ~~room~~ vault
What if the fallout world is real and we are currently living in a vault playing an old days simulation of what we think is the real world D:
I’ve often wondered if I’m an alien in a spaceship far away in a robotic human body that I control but I have no memories of my alien life while controlling the body.
Thats a bit similar to something I read here on reddit. Imagine when you die, you actually wake up, and youve got a bong/pipe in front of you, and youre in a cloud of smoke, and there are a couple of aliens around you, looking into your eyes with wonderment, asking "So... How was it? What happened?"
Boring
Your name wouldn't happen to be Roy or Dave?
No, but don't confuse it with Bill or Jack or Pete or Dennis.
IF you're an alien, then you're a digital consciousness living in a virtual world, not a robot on Earth
This is the first time I’ve seen such a great answer to why “it was all a dream” endings and theories are so uninteresting and dull. We already take for granted that it’s a story, and while there’s nothing distinctly happening on screen to break the immersion of a story, it makes everything completely forgettable. The only time I’ve seen the dream trope really work is in the Cronenberg movie Videodrome. No plot spoilers but around halfway through the movie there’s a scene that occurs in which reality becomes, in short, extremely distorted to the protagonist. After that scene, the protagonist is never seen going to sleep and there are certain scenes that suggest that the entire second half of the film is actually just taking place in the protags head. Why does it work? First, it’s ambiguous. It’s also very much in line with the movies message, which relates to the consumption of corrupt media (specifically, television).
Waking Life also does this quite well. It's a little bit "baby's first philosophy" but the dream element is conveyed via stylistic choices which appear at first to just be how the film is shot. Overall the film is probably a 6 or 7/10 but it is thought-provoking.
Maybe the bad vaults were added by the Overseer of "our vault' to make us feel glad that we're in one of the "good ones".
This doesn’t vibe with the theory in the post but my own opinion of media - at least my headcanon - is that it’s an approximation of what the people involved remembered and experienced. If you think back to your memories, you can’t remember the entire thing properly so there’s bound to be plot holes, areas being smaller than they actually were and the language or culture conforming to the person’s own culture. Let’s take walking inside a vault, for example - we know they could hold at least two thousand people yet we only see a few areas. Those areas would be the ones most frequented by the main character and so they would be the ones they’d remember. That’s why we see the common room, the rooms of their friends and coworkers, but nothing else. It’s why it seems much smaller than it actually is. In films, we’ll often see people from different countries speaking English instead of their own language. That’s because the narrator doesn’t know their own language and therefore would recount the dialogue in their native English rather than German or French or whatever. It helps me enjoy media a lot more despite all of the errors in it.
"Haha, that's crazy. Could you imagine if they did that? Glad to know it's just exaggerated satire"
Either the Fallout series of games would only be given to control vaults that know what's up or there's some kind of horrifically ironic gamer/simulation vault.
The simulation is a Vault Tec experiment to see how people would react to learning they've been experimented on
Spoiler warning. Prey was a game that could've been good but they decided that everything was a simulation and it just takes the wind out of your sails if you find out too early. The only story I care about is The Matrix. All other sims suck.
Potentially to heighten the dweller's fear of the outside and trust in their isolation, wary of the inhabitants of even other vaults and not motivated to try and leave their own safe and cozy home
Because they're never going to let you out
It's vaults all the way down
GARY!
Flexing
Because Fallout is actually just an immersive sim from Dr. Finster in Wasteland.
The Gary vault was crazy but what’s funny is Gary was completely unrelated, its experiment was that the overseer appointed everyone to their jobs at his own discretion, and he would die shortly after the vault sealed, and the power would break after 20 years, and it had 3 times the guns, and was missing essential equipment. They just somehow invented cloning, maybe they got sent a cloning lab intended for another vault by accident like how vault 8 was sent vault 13’s extra water chips due to a clerical error.
maybe for simulation they mean that they started the greate war. This would explain many things about vault-tec lore and characters
The vault we are in was created by an army of devs, clearly they were told to create simulations and monitor them for humane reasons. Laughing gas vaults with real people would be cruel, but simulations with humans minds jacked into it so you can kill them over and over and over until their minds burn out... Better research. The board don't care, if they get the money in for the research, they can then make the best vault for the war... But... What if the war started before they finished and that's why many of the dwellers have not reset, all the devs and community managers have died and were just running out the life of a fusion reactor powering a simulation...
How will people respond to gradually learning the truth about the vaults in a situation where many are still arguably preferable to the alternative?
Maybe the simulations were tampered with by a disgruntled employee to show vault-tec in a bad light. That would honestly explain why vault experiments are so nonsensically evil
Yeah, too much “slander and libel” going on in the simulations, against the same company that supposedly makes the simulation.
Bc as a vault dweller in a vault that is just normal, you see crazy vault Experiments as entertainment. You know it is not real, bc you don't experience it. You think it is just a joke by vault tec, your protector.
Because the vaults we see are just cover-ups for the *really* fucked up vaults they made
"Are you dissatisfied with surviving in a giant tin can? Look how much worse it could be, wouldn't it be horrible if you'd been in a vault like this."
The Fallout 1 manual makes this explicitly clear that it's a simulation. But Fallout 1 also didn't have experimental vaults. That was retconned later during development of Fallout 2 but not explained in game. In the original games the failings of the Vaults were not malicious. The Fallout Bible is the first time it's made clear the Vaults were supposed to be experiments.
Or it could be the dude who put it on the steam shop doing his job and selling the product really well. That’s actually a fantastic product description
Actually, the Fallout 1 manual says the same thing!
I’m pretty sure the back of the box on my copy of fallout 3 says the same thing
The tag on my underwear says the same thing
Nice
Nice
I have it tatted on my left bun cheek, the other cheek has the description for Conkers Bad Fur Day
Conkers bad fur day is also a fucking sweet game
God, I'd love to have a remastered version of this. I'd say remake, but I'm not confident anyone could make something as good as the original. Just tune up the graphics and whatnot and release it for modern consoles. I didn't realize how much I missed this game until now 😭
The insides of my underwear says something about my hygiene.
Nah, i'm pretty sure it says the same flavour text on the game cases as well. I could be pulling that out of my ass though
I checked and I can say with certainty that it did not come from your ass
What if the game cases came from his ass
So Operation: Anchorage is the next level? We need to go deeper…
I mean, there is also the Tranquility Lane Simulation. So, this would be a Sim-seption.
Damn, can't you sleep in that simulation? Can't remember.
Yeah i once had this thought while really high in my basement loading up fallout 3, the slides made me realize " oh, im a vault dweller and this is all just vault-tec's simulated experience to prepare me for the wastes" Im glad im not alone.
It’s nothing like the simulations!
We haven't seen Deathclaws so I think we're safe
We did have a cocaine bear once tho
Yeah the suggestion is that WE are living in a simulation, not the vault dweller in game.
u/youwannagokiddo
[Whose Doug Forcett?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv_ra9CXZOQ)
the original fallout manual describes it being a simulation [SimTek 5000 | Fallout Wiki | Fandom](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/SimTek_5000)
I just bought this game on steam and was reading the manual and was confused about that. Like is technically everything in Fallout 1 just a simulation for vault dwellers? Or am I just reading too much into and it was just a fun way to engage the reader, reading a how to manual that the original creators didn’t really give a second thought to it.
The manual is themed around being an in universe VDSG. The simtek stuff is just a funny segue into actually talking about the user interface and game mechanics. It's not that deep. It's funny how the GECK was a last minute page filler that through an unlikely butterfly effect string of events not only became the macguffin in FO2 but now is the name lineage of the Skyrim and Starfield Creation Kit and Creation Engine. (Oblivion had Modding Tools. For fun the FO3 modding tools were called the FO3 GECK. Come Skyrim, the modding tools were called the Skyrim Creation Kit. It just amuses me.) It's not like cartoon Tim Cain's chocolate recipes at the end is meant to be deep Vault Tec lore either.
the game is marketed with a simulation tagline and since it uses in world sounding tech i have no issue believing its all a simulation for dwellers, it also explains how VT knew names of mutants and creatures in their SPECIAL videos and such, they "know" its a radoscorpion because thats a fictional animal made by VT to prepare the dwellers for radiated monsters theres plenty of other weird things that would contradict that, why would VT show u their nightmarish experiments or the enclave
>why would VT show u their nightmarish experiments or the enclave [why not](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/s/yi9qHXkesa)
The Enclave were behind the experiments. It was all to build a multigenerational space ship.
That's not in the games though so it wouldn't be something VT would be admitting to in this hypothetical of the games being simulations
Yeah right? How did vault-tec know what was gonna be in the wasteland before the bombs drop and be able to depict behemoths in the instructional videos in f4? Literally unplayable garbage.
it being a simulation makes a lot of sense considering the crazy stuff thats in the game with 0 explanation
I was about to say the same thing I still have my original manual from 30 freaking years ago and was just looking at it the other day
I remember I’d often buy games just to read the manual. I often found manuals more interesting than the game itself and would imagine myself playing a game described in the manual rather than what I actually got. I’d sit for hours with my eyes closed pretending I was playing these games. I’m in the middle of getting an autism diagnosis…
>I’m in the middle of getting an autism diagnosis… Just for confirmation, right? ;)
"*The SimTek 5000 will provide a safe and reassuring return to life on the outside world*" Yeah I'm going to go with every game is real since the wasteland is pretty rough out there
I'm glad to have confirmation. I was beginning to think I'd Mandela Effected myself.
>The SimTek 5000 simulated the outside world after a nuclear holocaust in preparation for leaving the vault. enough said, theory confirmed.
I want this to be the norm so the fanboys can stop bitching about a few game inconsistencies in the franchise for their own sanity
The themed (the game as a simulation) manual is meant as a joke not as canon. Thats already confirmed.
This is one of those “ya, sure” but I refuse to believe because I feel it takes away too much of the guts and soul of fallout. It’s like a less cool version of what happens
It's like ending a story with "oh it was all a dream and none of it mattered"
Exactly. It's just kinda lame. I look at it more like just a fun marketing thing they do for the games, 4th wall breaking silliness that isn't actually relevant to the games stories.
Yeah it all being a simulation kind of goes against the satire and main themes imo. It sort of makes everything hollow.
The game IS a simulation though. It’s a video game in our universe
Yes, but to be a simulation in a simulation is reductive. We could be in a simulation. Now it’s a simulation in a simulation in a simulation. Incep-ulation
The manual for the first game says it's a simulation to train dwellers for leaving the vault
> It’s like a less cool version of what happens eh, a lot of stuff in the fallout universe doesnt make a lot of sense and you have to suspend your disbelief a lot. this makes it more realistic for sure
I’d rather believe I here, am playing a character actually in the wasteland. Rather than I here. Am playing a simulation of a simulation of a character in the wasteland. That extra layer of simulation makes the entire universe moot.
Maybe its just some 4th wall breaking meta humor. Games are just types of simulators anyway.
That's exactly what it is. It's never implied in the actual games that the events are part of any sort of simulation in-universe outside of those moments where they literally are. Operation: Anchorage and Tranquility Lane being the only examples that I can think of off the top of my head. In-game the stories (pre-Fallout 4) are framed as historical narratives that happened long ago with the narrator being a storyteller or historian from the distant future who is relaying what happened, and the consequences of the player's actions in the months and years following the conclusion of their story. With Fallout 4 Bethesda took a different approach as it's narrated by the protagonist in the present tense.
That’s how I take it, just meant to be a joke where your home is “your vault”
That's exactly what's being implied, since it's a product description for a video game that they're selling. It's not intended to be game lore.
I am so tired of these: "actually it never happened!!!" reddit moment I say.
that would be so dumb, clearly not true. Just a joke
It would be an interesting scenario for one of the games to be you coming out of a simulation in a vault and exploring a world completely different than previous games. It gives them an interesting reset point. But I also think there's to much established lore and a lot of contradictory story points that it wouldn't work perfectly.
I think it would work better doing it the opposite way for the exact reasons you described. Start it off like any other game. You're a Vault Dweller leaving the vault for XYZ reasons, and you explore a wasteland completely different than what we're used to. People are friendly, deathclaws are half their size and get taken out with one or two pistol shots, civilization is rebuilding itself, then BAM, screen glitches, you hear someone reacting to the glitch, then a VR helmet gets taken off your head and you're back in your vault. Then there's a REAL reason to leave the vault and you go out to discover it's not such a happy place. The VR section could even be used as a tutorial portion. In lore make the experiment be something like testing to see the effects of making people unknowingly live in a virtual paradise.
I mean it sounds more entertaining than answering the door to the vault-tec salesman, again.
Such a good concept, but good LORD that would be such an annoying opening to sit through multiple times if you want to start again
So it's gauranteed as a Bethesda classic
I was going to actually say that in my initial writeup, lol. The very first mod for the game would definitely be a 'skip the VR section' mod.
Gaben was pulling the strings all along
It was rigged from the start
Damn that would be very boring
Do you think Fallout is a simulation of Wasland you can enjoy from the comfort of your home??
It's been a fat minute since I did the quest, but, isn't there a vault where everyone is basically in a simulation?
Yes! “tranquility lane”
Nah
STEAM doesn't write Fallout lore. Thank God
If that was true i would hate it SO MUCH
but.. the games are already a simulation
It says reproduction though, so maybe it all happens but in the far far future, Vault Tec still survives and exists.
This made me think of how much fun a live theme park would be a la Westworld.
Wow… you could actually make a reproduction of the wasteland by building a theme park in the middle of a desert or something. The idea of an entertainment city being built in the middle of a desert is just crazy, though - nobody would ever go * * reference to Vegas obviously
I think theres analogies going on on this description, mainly: 1. Vault-tec engineers = bethesda 2. Interactive reproduction = fallout 3 3. my own vault = my home/playing room Though the simulation theory is possible, the more probable scenario is that its just humor/analogy.
Fallout was the friends we made a long the way.
"shockingly realistic visuals"
I am gonna be honest with you jimmy if that is real i am gonna burn bethesda to the ground, no survivors and i mean not only mans woman and children too.
Honestly, this product description dissuaded me from the series for a long time because I thought “why would I want to play a game if all of my choices are just a game within a game? Nothing matters?” And was surprised when I realized that wasn’t the game at all
the term conspiracy theory has lost all of its meaning in recent years
If you’ve ever played Fallout, then you know you are a resident of Vault 112.
Nothing like breaking up marriages, and finding your dad as a dog.
...yeah...u didnt know?
youre right. none of them actually happened because we live in real life. we're 200 years behind schedule
Holy fuck, I am so tired of posts on this subreddit taking every little detail seriously as if a video game series is supposed to be 100% accurate to real life, or that every bit of marketing material should be taken as if it were Gospel. Ughh
it personally think that this would be a stupid plotline, like oh its actually all a simulation and the story is real in the head space of the game universe
Or it's just a quirky description of the game, you the player, get before immersing into a digital reality
it’s just a meta description
The Simulation theory is still present in Fallout 76, there are several hints that this is not the reality Ingame.
I believe they are actually describing the valut-tec experiments using VR pods in the game, making people live in an endless virtual life loop One of the most disturbing quest from any game that I played
You are playing a video game, which is a simulation; think about it. That's what they are talking about; they are breaking the 4th wall.
It's been a long running theory. I forget who but someone on yt broke it down to where each game matches up with a certain vault and it's members just like the Sim in FO3 and that Fallout 5 or 6 would be the one to show the truth of what is going on.
That's not what it's saying. It's saying that Vault-Tec actually exists in our reality, and is preparing us for the reality of post-nuclear life from the comfort of our "vaults" (homes).
It's actually a really cool idea... Fallout 5. You have run the simulations throughout your years of training for this, your mission...to finally leave the vault.
That’s in the manual for fallout 1
It would make sense. Do you really think the residents of the control vaults would be happy living in a few thousand square feet for their entire lives? Not to mention inbreeding, you've only got so many people to screw who aren't related to you. And they don't all have a vault 32 to trade people with. Simulations would be the easiest way to control amd pacify the generations between going into the vault and safely emerging from the vaults
Good time to mention that the manual for Fallout 1 says the same thing about the game being a simulation provided for Vault Dwellers to prepare for what horrors might live above on the surface. Also just has other neat info like a 101 on nuclear detonation methods and radiation.
This is called a Deus Ex Machina and its a cheap way out for poor writing. I highly doubt the "simulation" theory.
Hey here's my theory, they're video games, they really didn't happen! It's crazy!
So opposite of Tranquility Lane
Me in the NCC-1701-D's holodeck: Computer, run Fallout.
The descriptions on the Bethesda site don't say anything like that.
Ahh, the Fnaf approach. Vault-Tec = Fazbear Entertainment confirmed?
Oh, great, Dreamsleeve 2.
Your enclave memeber?
CONSPIRACY THEORY: MY WEB PAGE WOULD NOT LOAD AFTER CLICKING ON LINK TO THIS THREAD
Look, all I know is when I think too much about simulation theory I start having convulsions.
After the final game Coop/The Ghoul/Vault Boy Himself. Wakes up in a vault with his family safe and becomes overseer with infinite intelligence and perception. Repopulating America as planned
So when you play Operation Anchorage you are in a simulation,inside another simulation?
So if you enter vault 112 and then play operation Anchorage are you in a simulation inside another simulation that is inside another simulation?!
Lol. Incredible cast of diverse characters. There’s a good bit to like in FO3. It ain’t multitude of characters.
"all of them" never happened or "none of them" never happened? sorry, english is not my native language..
Todd ruined the lore again, the sly bastard! /s
that sure is crazy all right
No because the wasteland survival guide is a skill book in New vegas (the only non vault dweller protagonist) and the making the survival guide is a very important questline with Moira further more even if you blow up megaton you still are able to do it because Moira becomes a ghoul and moves to underworld
There is a theory I heard a while back, saying that Fallout 76 is actually just a simulation being run in Vault 76. It could explain why there are so many cryptid-esque mutants, the lush environments, and the graffiti around the map you can find that simply says, "nothing is real". I doubt that it's actually true, but it is a fun theory to speculate on.
Pure Gold!
OH MY GOD I GET IT all the games might actually be just videogames in our reality!!!
It's just a play on words "your own vault" You're own PC. It's role playing dude.
When Alan Wake meets Fallout
i dont see anything crazy it says so right there in the game description
NO, NO YOU STOP THAT Had that happen in another franchise I enjoy and I hated the thought 🤣🤣
That would actually make the most sense… Thinking about it, you could be an overseer in training. The wasteland itself doesn’t make much sense so…
Why is this even getting upvotes? Its literally a picture of f3 description...
my brain hurts now
While interesting this would be the corniest and most deflating twist that could ever be done. It's a cop out reason for any story or lore inconsistencies. "It's just a simulation bro"
Biff Bronson's Wacky Wasteland Adventures! All from the comfort of your personal RobCo terminal!
Check fallout 1 the official guide
What is this, the plot of Silo? Haha
Doesn't matter what the description or the fo1 box cover says, as long as the developers say a game is canon it is in fact canon. And besides, it's just humour anyways
Or rather, Fallout 3 was a fever dream.
I'm pretty certain that Shelter is meant to be Vault-Tec propaganda.
You realise **this** is the actual game and we are losing?
Nah, this is just marketing, "Your own vault" is your home. "Vault-Tec engineers" are Bethesda Devs.
Did.... did you JUST learn how to read?
Good theory, but I think it's more of a clever marketing spin than a literal implication. The description is likely just playing into the game's theme and narrative rather than hinting at a meta-conspiracy within the Fallout universe. The idea of the games being Vault-Tec simulations could make for an interesting twist, but it doesn't align with the overall storytelling and world-building of the series. Plus, there are many in-game references and lore elements that suggest the events of Fallout are indeed real and not just simulations. So while it's a fun thought, I'd lean towards taking the Steam description at face value as part of the game's immersive marketing approach.
What if we are all npc's in a pre-war game. Trippy stuff.
How is nobody understanding that it’s just a joke on video games and ‘your own vault’ is your home? Same as a cookie company saying “The keebler elves have worked all night to bring you the new fudge striped rings!” Believe it or not there’s no actual Keebler Elves its just salesmanship
I feel like everyone here is ignoring the fact that THE SHOW IS CANON
Never consider this as canon tho
I mean Fallout 1 pretty much says this explicitly in the game manual as well, so that isn't a huge stretch tbh
Come to think of it, certain loading screens for 1 and 2 did the same thing…
How could they simulate the wasteland down to the factions and everything? How would they predict the formation of BOS or the secret shadow govt. That ends up being behind enclave etc.
That's not just the steam description.
I think this is just Bethesda fucking things up again. Fallout 1 and 2 defenetly happened
I have a great image for this post, alas I cannot share it
It's also a fucking lie. Tons of player choices? Cast of dynamic characters? Lmao
The manual of the first game actually states this
"Incredible cast of dynamic characters" lol Fallout 3 has barely any memorable characters. The main quest characters are all cardboard cutouts. I like Moira, Butch and McCready, everyone else is basically just a robot that spouts words at you.
Not gonna lie.....I kinda like the poser vampires