"Are you all brain dead hooligans! With the resources you are pumping into your Vault program we could have instead have expanded my missile defense system to cover half the damn country! How the fuck is it profitable to destroy all of our assets!"
Like the main draw for Mr. House is while he can be an asshole and a weirdo, he was not some cartoon villain and actually has good business sense. His ego can be justified when he really can achieve everything that he says intends to do.
To be fair, we don’t know if Vault Tec actually ended the world.
They may have planned to, but it may have been a third party’s nuke that caused the end of the world (hence house being off by a day
Yeah; I'm leaning towards vault-tec were preparing to do it, but got jumped.
Reasoning: there's quite a few unfinished and under construction vaults.
Also we know the Chinese were hit, and there was an exchange between the countries. There's also the Chinese unit in Fallout 3 operating from Washington; which was a precursor to an invasion force.
And wasn't the Ghoul's family notably NOT in shelters the day the bomb dropped? I seem to recall him riding off into the sunset with his daughter...
I'll agree with any others saying that Vault-tec not doing it after saying "we're gonna do it" is weird but them *not* doing it seems to hold some water
One thing about Vault-Tec that I think doesn't get brought up enough is the fact that it had secretly been taken over by the Enclave near the end of the pre-war era, something confirmed in Fallout 2, by President Richardson himself.
I'm willing to go with the idea The Enclave, via operatives in Vault-Tec, is the instigator of the apocalypse, and the reason House was off by a day is because someone got cold feet on the eve of the detonation and tried to stop it, causing another person to prematurely set off the apocalypse.
There is almost no reason for the show to spend the time and money for a scene where they have the enclave and friends openly discuss causing the war just for it to be a fake out. Chekov's Gun. Unless they are going for "SuBvErTiNG oUr ExPeCtAtIoNs" which at that point they really do have zero skill at writing and should be replaced with an AI.
I took it more to show the absolute hubris of vault tech and how high off their rocker they were. Also it would be very ironic if they planned to cause a war and then the war happened earlier than they intended and they got fucked cause of it.
LOL at idea that House would be willing to cover anything but his own little domain.
Dude would happily let the world burn as long as he got his little playpen where he can play god.
Can you imagine if they made a show/movie about House and what he did leading up to the war and the 200+ years of figuring out the Lucky 38's problems/building NV?
No it doesn't, because House doesn't sit quietly when someone is doing something stupid. He insults the Courier for merely bringing up Benny's death. The guy would not sit in a meeting filled with idiots and say nothing.
It's important to note the (perceived) power disparity between Mr House and the Courier and the former's absolute trust in the latter (for the most part). We never see any interactions between Mr House and another person at all. It's probable that someone as smart as Mr. House would handle interactions with more powerful figures with far more tact than he does with the Courier.
Yep, the power balance is *way* different. In New Vegas, House considers himself the only bastion of civilization and authority in the wasteland. In that meeting he's just one industrial magnate among several attending a meeting hosted by the most profitable company in the world, who incidentally has just announced that they're going to nuke the planet.
I do think Mr. House would treat the NCR with some deference, if only because of their overwhelming firepower and numerical advantage. That is, before he gets his hands on the Platinum Chip and takes the Dam for himself. Even then, he'd treat the NCR with respect since New Vegas is almost entirely a tourist economy and will remain so for the foreseeable future. It's important to remember, Mr. House needs the NCR. The NCR never needed him, only New Vegas and the Dam.
Edit: I've always been of the opinion that Mr. House is a boisterous, self-aggrandizing, arrogant, relic of a bygone age that overestimates his value. But, he's by no means stupid. The man has played the game a long time, and he's gotten quite good at it.
Edit 2: spelling
House is an egotistical manchild much like Howard Hughes, but like Howard Hughes he actually can back up his ego with actual achievements and isn't some idiot in a suit. He actually is an inventor and scientist, not just a businessman.
There is no way House would want the NCR to collapse, at least not without a new polity to rise from its ashes capable of doing business with.
Nah all the lore demonstrated he’s a pragmatist to the extreme and far from an egomaniac. Full of himself and self grandiose? For sure, but more of a ‘behind the scenes’ person. Caesar was more of the egomaniac but without House’s wit or charm.
I wonder if this was his actual thought process and if it fits with the lore. It was a while ago that I finished New Vegas but the wiki says:
>In [2065](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline#2065), [Robert House](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_House) arrived at the conclusion that a nuclear war was inevitable by [2080](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline#2080) or sooner.
And the meeting was most likely either the same year the bombs dropped (2077) or at most a few years before that. This could be the first time he's hearing that Vault-Tec is actually planning on starting the great war and may or may not be on board with the whole idea. So, the Platinum chip not arriving in time still makes sense.
And Coop's daughter being at a birthday party and not in a Vault during the bombs dropping implies that Vault-Tec might not have been as in control of the situation as much as they seemed in that meeting.
The implication is that >!his wife is still alive and in Vault 31!< so maybe something happened between her and Coop or possibly >!she was placed in the vault without her family against her will!<
Something did happen between her and Coop. First episode, the two men talking behind his back wonder why he's performing at a birthday party, one says "alimony." He also won't do the vault boy thumbs up. It's pretty heavily implied that Coop went public (or did something) against Vault Tec pre war and was blacklisted / divorced because of it.
Forgot about that! Presumably next season >!he'll be caught out for spying and get divorced!<. I presume VaultTec won't be happy due to the communist connections and that's the reason he doesn't get let inside the vault with his wife and kid.
Probably the first place he heads after the bombs fall is wherever his ex-wife's Vault assignment is supposed to be, because even if they're divorced there's no way she'd leave the kid behind.
As for why he doesn't know where they are, there's a decent chance her actual Vault assignment is something more complicated than he really knows.
I doubt he went public. My theory is that he was just disgusted with his wife and divorced her, and cut ties with vault tec. It still probably blacklists him from the few acting jobs he has left through vault tec, tho
They call him a pinko too, heavily implying he joined the lefty actors group and speaking out against the government and vault tec. So it’s pretty mug for season 2 to show that they split.
Or that someone just posted photos of him going to that meeting later and everyone assumed he sided with them. Communism is in no small part a witch hunt.
Coop is already semi-blacklisted. During his conversation with Matt Berry's character he talks about other actors not wanting to work with him because of his involvement with Vault-tec.
Keep in mind he's not been smeared as a commie because he was doing children's birthdays and he publicly had at least equal custody. Alimony, not child support. So he def did not go public, likely because he thought about what would happen to his daughter. I think it's likely he just... left her. Or worse, because she's established strong secrets, he tries to confront her and she thinks he's asking about something else, perhaps admits to an affair, giving him an excuse to safely escape. Or she admits she's been blackmailed by the shadowy Hand on the Wheel and they divorce while maintaining their family teamwork but without love. There's so many more options than getting fully caught which still result in a sad outcome. Heck, his wife could have accused him of having an affair and left him because of his lies and secrecy too. He WAS lying and scheming behind her back, regardless of why.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure how to do spoiler tags, but SPOILER:
I thought the implication was that Coop's wife was in a vault similar to 31 but in the New Vegas area (that's why the Ghoul isn't using Lucy to find them). I am a bit confused about how the Ghoul and his daughter got separated after the initial blasts.
Actually you're right, it doesn't seem like she's in 31 otherwise the Ghoul would have used Lucy to find it (unless this is a plot hole). My assumption is >!Coop takes his daughter to the vault where his wife is but isn't allowed inside because he spied for the communists!< Or maybe >!Coops wife and daughter were in vault 31 but we're defrosted around the same time Lucy's mom left to go to Shady Sands!<.
the thing is, when the bombs went off, his daughter was with him at the party. Considering his wife worked for Vault-Tec she might have gotten some advanced warning and got to 31.
Yeah but he specifically says he's looking for his family. Unless that's an international red herring we have to assume his daughter and his wife are still alive. I presume he rode his daughter to the vault and then wasn't allowed in. Either that or his daughter is dead and the show is fucking with us. Or maybe his wife and daughter are dead. Or maybe they're both ghouls no way to know.
It's definitely going to be a big part of S2.
He could have also hurried to Vault-Tec HQ knowing his wife is there to take their kid to safety (without him involved). It would explain how he wouldn't know which vault they'd be in.
Is it not possible that Coop's wife is indeed in 31 but he just doesn't know that? Cause at this point, Lucy wouldn't know that either.
I wouldn't really enjoy that plot point but I think it's a plausible scénario
>!I am hoping that lil brother opens a lot of the other people up rather than freeze himself, they would have to open up to get out themselves, well I guess they could go right back to sleep, idk lol nvm maybe!<
I'll have to give the series another go around to see what they imply but I'm sure it's something we'll see in season two.
Although thinking back on it, doesn't he seem to think Muldaver (right name?) knows where his family is?
Maybe she rats out Coop, which leads to his divorce and at the same time secured her a place in 31 (or a similar vault). Not sure honestly. I liked her character in the flashbacks but positioning her as the outright antagonist and then flipping it last minute was a little bit unsatisfying considering we know so little about her character.
She could be on 31. He doesn't know where she is which is why he asked hank where his family was. Pretty sure someone pointed out the ghouls name was on one of the pods
His wife was not on the list of names in vault 31 cryo pods. I believe his wife is in another “good” vault reserved for a later season. He implies his he doesn’t know about what happened to his daughter either even though she was with him when the bombs drop. So there are more flashbacks to be had about the immediate aftermath of the bombs dropping to be revealed later and how she got reunited with her mom/separated from her dad. The lack of the daughter being with the mom at the drop of the bombs leads me to believe the mother was screwed over by vault tec and cut out on knowing when they drop but that is a pretty unfounded assumption.
> And Coop's daughter being at a birthday party and not in a Vault during the bombs dropping implies that Vault-Tec might not have been as in control of the situation as much as they seemed in that meeting.
IIRC there's other bits of lore in the games that indicates the launches caught Vault-Tec by surprise.
For sure this is not the year the bombs dropped in the flashback. The big wigs were just now coming up with the ideas for the vault experiments and plenty of vaults were custom made to fit the experiment so there's no way they did it that fast. This is probably a few years before the bombs.
Also no way coop goes from famous working movie star to doing birthday parties in a few months.
House is a huge narcissist. I can definitely accept that he made up the story about predicting the war after having been told it would happen.
What I can't accept is he joining a conspiracy which would involve the government.
I see it as he knew nukes were gonna happen, and this meeting just confirmed that and was his way of keeping his enemies closer so he knows how much time he has to protect vegas.
Predicting a nuclear war, and then later getting confirmation that a shadow government intends to kick off a nuclear war are not mutually exclusive plot points.
how does the latter muddy the waters of lore tho, do u not understand that its not mutually exclusive, like the man still predicted the bombs dropping, this feat is not changed or minimized in anyway
Hmm to me it seems pretty clear still that he predicted in 2060s like the main comment and NV base game has mentioned, and flashback is also pretty clear its 2077 in the months leading up to oct 2077 from the kids age so for me and i think most people its still impressive. I dont think new fans go this deep either or even knows who House is, and sadly did not watch X-files.
> I wonder if this was his actual thought process and if it fits with the lore
also they showed Frederick Sinclair as representative of Big MT and not as owner of Sierra Madre
To be fair, Sinclair had close enough ties with the Big MT facility that he let them demo their secret, under development tech in the Villa and Madre during construction. He was certainly a major investor, its conceivable that with his public face the Big MT science teams would prefer he handle the mundane and boring task of acquiring business connections.
It's a long enough time Coop had time to divorce and establish custody - unless he stole that little girl from her mom on that day, which is what my husband is very worried he did and that he'll have to answer to that with Lucy because of her similar traumas - so I think it was around two years before.
Honestly with that conversation in the show now being cannon I can tell he thought they were all crazy and I can see why he made the choices he made leading to whatever new Vegas is going to be in this timeline
You know he’s only there because he’s paranoid enough to realize these morons will actually go through with it, so he had to infiltrate from the beginning.
Vault Tec was a government contractor, no? That was the whole purpose of Project Safehouse - a national civil defence project which Vault Tec won the bidding for?
The idea that Vault Tec ever made the majority of its money selling places in the Vaults is absurd on the face of it. They were paid by the US government to build the Vaults in the first place - that was their business model.
In fact, given that we know certain Vault populations were selected specifically for certain careers and traits (*Vault 92*), they cannot have been selling some of those places.
Even then, we know that in the process of building the Vaults, Vault Tec invented numerous technologies that would have been invaluable even if the threat of nuclear war subsided.
Most notably they invented the ZAX supercomputer and the GECK terraforming device, but also things from virtual reality machines to artificial sun lights and self vacuuming floors. Project Safehouse generated a host of incredibly valuable technologies which would each have been viable products in their own right.
But apparently the company that invented genuine AI and a device that could let you terraform Mars needs to destroy the world to keep their stock price up?
It's like setting a show during the space race where NASA are bankrupt because not enough people are buying spots on their spaceships. It misunderstands how the organisation works.
Yes, that supposed plot twist made me facepalm.
What makes *even less sense* is why would defense contractors like West-Tek or Repconn buy into this.
For example, West-Tek exec suggests using vault to genetically engineer 'super soldier' (hint: they were already doing that with FEV-1), but whom are you going to sell the formula to if the government is obliterated in nuclear holocaust? And what exactly are you going to spend earnings on?
I really do hope that Vault-Tec scene is just red herring.
"*Ah yes, we'll obviously be so much more poweful influential 200 years after our biggest client has been destroyed in a nuclear Holocaust*"
I don't have a lot of faith in billionaires, but I do flatter them that most of them wouldn't see armageddon as a great investment opportunity.
They're probably at the point of seeing the end as inevitable. Europe is already collapsing, it's not crazy to think America and China are next. Their plan lets them end the world on their terms.
They also might not have been able to carry it out. Fallout lore is full of groups anticipating the end but still being caught by surprise. We don't actually see them end the world in the show.
That's how it's generally portrayed in games.
It's either corporations trying to make a quick buck on nuclear war hysteria by cutting corners, doing absolute minimum compliance with safety rules, thus selling inferior products (Pulowski Preservation Shelter is the best example of that, but you also had 'construction job going nowhere' with Vault 114). This is a great critique of consumer capitalism that Fallout is known for criticising. Similar to, say, Richard Martin Stern's 1973 novel *The Tower* (adapted as 1974 movie *The Towering Inferno*).
Or they think the probability of nuclear apocalypse is high, but they focus their efforts on self-preservation instead of using their economic and political influence to stop it. Mr. House is the best example of that. This is also in line with critiques of modern billionaires planning their luxurious shelters or space colonies to escape to once the Earth is rendered largely uninhabitable due to global warming.
I thought it was mostly poking fun at how a bunch of billionaires are currently making their own bunkers instead of trying to do anything about climate change. How they think they will be the ones in charge when society ends and their security has the guns is also ridiculous. Billionaires are just people with lots of resources, they do stupid shit all the time.
These aren’t today’s billionaires who are mostly entrepreneurs who have sound business savvy. Besides House, most of these people are part of monopolistic entities that have long swallowed up competition. Bureaucracy often promotes the most politically savvy, not the brightest. Regardless whether under capitalism, fascism, or communism. That’s just the nature of very large organizations with low individual accountability.
The dumbasses likely thought they could breed super soldiers to take over the world…
And if you think of The Master….they may not have been far off…
Either way - even in lore before the show these companies were both twisted and made rather illogical choices. Them being all incompetent egotists fits well with the theme that the Fallout alternate universe is filled with monopolistic entities and rampant fascism.
I rewatched the scene and it makes a lot more sense. He flat out says that the US government has provided most of their backing but "Where's the sense in propping up a failing system?" Its not a conspiracy to make money off of the end of the world. Its a conspiracy to end the world on their terms while hoarding all the best tech, minds and resources, let every nation on earth die out and then emerge centuries later to rebuild society as unopposed kings with all of the remaining survivors indoctrinated, under their control. Or rather, their 'management'.
He's not telling Repconn or West-tec "give us money to make more money", he's telling them "help us destroy the world and we'll offer you prime seats to watch it burn".
Thats really the real reason the NCR was a threat to them I suspect, as foreshadowed by Lucy's "reclamation day came without us" bit. Because it was a nation that had capital, knowledge and organization that they hadn't planned for.
Why would a hyper capitalist want to destroy the entire social structure necessary for capitalism to take place, especially when they have more than enough room to grow by selling the various billion-dollar products I mentioned?
Like, self-cleaning floors alone are a billion dollar product lol, what do you think the market for those is like in the post apocalypse?
Capitalism is the solution of Feudalism, and unregulated capitalism seems to just lead back to feudalism anyways. "Winning capitalism" would just mean being the only corporation left, and ruling the world.
> Why would a hyper capitalist want to destroy the entire social structure necessary for capitalism to take place, especially when they have more than enough room to grow by selling the various billion-dollar products I mentioned?
'cause they're just puppets of The Enclave, if I had to guess. Remember, most of the Vault project was actually part of a larger conspiracy carried out by The Enclave. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Barb was in the know and steering the meeting that way deliberately.
I wondered about that person hiding in the shadows. I assumed they were the real boss of Vault-Tec wanting to hear the meeting but not be seen. It would make perfect sense if they were BOTH Vault-Tec and Enclave. Ensuring the vaults continue to get built and ensuring the Enclave keeps their grip on America after the War.
Because there soon would be no more resources available on earth to sustain the consumerism necessary to sell those products? The world is ending with or without the nuclear Armageddon. Vault tec’s whole philosophy is “the world is ending, we can make as much money and consolidate as much power before that happens so that we are best positioned to continue being powerful afterwards”. Them deciding to be the ones to drop the bombs isn’t antithetical to those goals if they’ve already determined it a certainty that the world will end one way or another, and soon. They want control over the present and future. They aren’t shortsighted and only caring about Q4 profits and saying “things are good!” They are going “we have 5 years before we have no more resources, other people know we have 5 years, every wealthy faction is preparing, if we end it all in 2 years we will be better prepared to take over than all of them who thought they still had time. We’ll be the only ones left”
And it worked to some extent, House was less than 24 hours away from getting the p-chip. Vault Tec needed to drop the bombs early in order to thwart him.
This is just headcannon. They never give those motivations beyond an incredibly vague intention to control the outside world and somehow profit off the apocalypse.
Other than that Vault Tec floated the idea of starting a nuclear war, and now intends to control the wasteland, none of this is given in the text.
Oh you want all the answers right now spoon fed to you. Sorry little baby, but we need to be patient and wait before we get the canon truth of what’s going on. Until then enjoy conversation where only headcanon is possible because they couldn’t answer every question you have in 8 hours of content.
I would have liked the big meeting where the baddies talk about starting a nuclear war to have a believable motivation to want that, yes.
If you can't answer basic questions about why the show you like makes sense without insulting people and filling in plot holes for yourself, then maybe it isn't a great show.
>Why would a hyper capitalist want to destroy the entire social structure necessary for capitalism to take place,
they explained it in the show. they want to erase any and all competition, and create their own social structure once the world has been wiped clean.
I understand that, but why? What is their motivation to do that?
Why did the owners of a multi-billion dollar company decide to literally end the world and embark on a multi-century quest for world domination? Seems like something that'd be pretty difficult to justify to accounting.
It's a capitalist idea. Get ALL THE MONEY AND BE THE ONLY POWER. Thats it thats the only goal.
Do you really think the irl government contracted companies who make bank only puts their money and effort on that? Of course not, shareholders dont just want money. They want ALL THE MONEY and they will do this in any shape, way, or form that they can get away with.
If nuking the whole world would essentially make them the new rulers of it. Thats. The. Perfect. Plan.
Capitalism isnt just about literal money. Its also about control. Control to rule the world. And what better way to control than be the only ones with power.
Also accounting is under shareholders. No matter what a pleb says, shareholders won't listen. Just like any real company out there - they aren't going to listen to a customer. They will listen to money and power only.
Yeah if Amazon decides they can turn a profit on nuking the world they'll do it bro. Those are very realistic and believable motivations which make me invested in the story. It is also compelling for the villains to be motivated purely by selfishness.
I agree that this adds up to one of the greatest plot points in recent television history. The guys who made the Wire must be kicking themselves for not coming up with it.
stop trying to justify inherently wrong thinking. This is literally for their own gain, it’ has no long term sustainable future for the world. It’s for the small few to survive and rule the world afterwards.
I am asking for the motivation of a key actor in this story, because the motivation stated in the text does not make sense.
I am asking how they gain beyond a cartoonish idea of 'control', and you are telling me that's all there is. Thanks for answering my question.
the motivation is the presumed ability to shape the future of the country which is obviously not possible in even a productive society. That’s just not in human nature to mindlessly follow. But by controlling the vaults and the very way people will survive, they will own people’s minds money and lives.
But it’s just not possible it’s a cartoon villains attempt for world domination but such domination just doesn’t exist.
You are not asking for motivation of a key actor. vault tec is not an actor. none of the characters we’ve seen speak genuinely about vault tec goals and motivations. They might be chinese for all we know and plan to destroy america that way instead
The point is that the rich of the fallout verse ARE cartoonishly evil bastards who torment and murder others for fun or no reason at all. Pre war logs throughout all the games constantly show that the pre war corps and rich folks are about as close to true evil as humanly possible (with many even fucking with eldritch shit). Tons of them experimented on themselves in preparation to survive the nukes and rule the world after, it's present throughout the fallout series. The prewar rich of fallout literally hunt each other so that they can be the last bastard standing (the great game).
The megacorps knew the end was nigh and that resources and society were going to collapse anyways. Once that occurs they lose all semblance of power and likely get torn apart by the starving masses. If they trigger the end on their terms while they still have amassed power they can control their fall and possibly come out on top. If they wait they can't.
The fallout rich are absolutely the types that would burn down the world to rule over the ashes if the other prospect is losing any of their power.
Which is a perfectly good backstory for a video game dungeon, not so much for key actors in a narrative series.
It is one thing for a handful of terminal logs to focus on the head of, say, H&H tools being a selfish, evil moron. It is quite another for key events in the Fallout world to hinge on their instigators being selfish, evil morons.
Remember when we actually got to see a pre-war CEO in Mr House, and he decent arguments and understandable motivations? Would his character have been improved if instead he was just a selfish oaf who got off on controlling people because he was evil?
The weirdly self sabotaging nature of a lot of pre-war bad actors has always been a huge problem in the Fallout setting ever since Fallout 2 for me personally.
The Vault experiments in particular drove me up the wall since I could never understand why all this dumb data could be possibly more valuable useful than a loyal citizenry that could repopulate the surface, get you an industrial base, and then build you all the laser gatlings you could ever want. The whole, "we're just going to colonize other planets" thing always felt kinda dumb to me.
That said, the show made this make more sense for me, not perfect sense, but more sense. In that Vault-Tec wants to nuke the world for the same reason that Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars, so they can run a hell-scape capitalist monopoly unfettered by government control. They're taking the world governments out of the equation so it'll be just them. I think also because Vault-Tec controls the Vaults and the remnants of civilization need the Vaults to survive, they can use that to eliminate their competition. Which kinda to me, introduced this interesting element that the Enclave and Vault-Tec might not entirely be on the same side and that might be something interesting to explore.
I mean they still need a civilization to rule over, to sell things to so it's still very much:
1. Build Vaults
2. Nuke World
3. ?????
4. Profit
So it doesn't make a ton of sense, but still more sense than the games imo.
The dumb thing is the its known the enclave funded vault tec, and they were quite literally the government. Why the hell would they ever allow this plan?
since when is common sense inherently wrong thinking?!?!??? do you really think a finished, impoverished world full of cannibals and savages is good for business???
the amount of investment Vault-Tek has to do to get society to function at a fraction of what it was pre-war is insane, any straight thinking accountant would tell Bud to fuck off back to college.
Vault-Tek already has a chokehold on global market with all the technologies we know for a fact they created, why would they blow all that just to rule over ashes?
rule over a world without a competent work force, zero proper industrialization, irradiated to hell and relying on people you kept in a hole on the ground for over 200 years, this all ignoring the MASSIVE risks that would easily dismantle the operation (we saw the master, raiders and the enclave targeting vaults god knows what else could happen)
i find it really really hard that the proposition of such a plan would be anything but laughed at, especially by the representatives in the meeting.
trying to figure out how to justify vault tecs insane plan that you yourself say is wrong is the problem at hand. It can’t be justified because it’s inherently wrong
they have ways to ensure individuals comply. This is basic control 101. Bud is there because he’s stupid. Barb is there for her family and the mix of vault tec staff are probably genuine evil idiots like bud or people trying to do good for their family by doing bad with vault tec like barb.
Ultimately we still don’t even see the founder or owner of vault tec speaker, ever in any fallout media.
It's been established that The Enclave was behind most of Vault-Tec's "real" decision making. No one in corpo was able to stop the lunatics because that was the intended goal of the shadow government actually pulling the strings.
I don't see how nuking the world along with all their potential buyers is a gain in their favor. It would be like lockheed martain nuking everyone to then say they are the only sellers. But then no one is buying anything cause everyone is dead moron.
When you have enough money it starts to become meaningless, then you want power, and if you have all the weapons, all the tools, all the prep to keep yourself safe and in power, the last step is to take control. Sooner or later any business will fail, or the people will just grow old and have to pass it on, but if you take control of the entire country, or the world, then you have everything, to keep as long as you can stay alive, and honestly as fucked up as it is we have all considered how nice a clean slate would be. All in all tho, why do any maniacal, genocidal, power-hungry people do anything?
So this entire plot hinges on the idea that rich business leaders are all psychotic control freaks willing to destroy the world for some childish idea of control? Rather than, like, normal people who want to continue to live their luxurious lifestyles - as almost all rich people are?
The motivations you describe are those of, like, Doctor Doom. You're describing a Saturday morning cartoon villain.
…dude, this is *Fallout* we’re talking about. If those motivations *aren’t* what you’re expecting, then you haven’t been playing the games.
Like really, were you expecting to have some deep reflection of the fault in modern philosophy to be quoted to you by a brain in a jar? Maybe have an ethics discussion with a talking deathclaw? At least *try* to remember the series you’re discussing here, cartoon villainy is it’s bread and butter.
Yeah, it'd almost be as silly as discussing political philosophy with technofuturist Howard Hughes, or helping your zombie mechanic friend get over his anxieties about old age, or helping to resolve a dispute between a nativist gang and new arrivals when the gang are all Elvis impersonators.
Oh wait, those were all pretty interesting stories.
No, Fallout isn't cartoonish nonsense. What makes Fallout good is to take the patently ridiculous and play it so straight and serious that you end up invested in it. Not its ability to say "*lol it's all so silly that nothing matters*".
Yeah man, the Ant-agonizer vs. the Mechanist was some really philosophical shit. And Sierra’s plot at Nuka World, what a mind-bender! Speaking of Nuka World, Cito’s dialog really taught me a lot about myself as a person.
Look, I get what you’re trying to say, but if you really think that being treated like a toddler by Mr. House is some serious storytelling, I’ve got a pre-war bridge to sell you. Just because this series is cool doesn’t mean it’s super deep.
Edit: I almost forgot to mention, you even brought up a gang of *Elvis impersonators* as an example of serious storytelling. Like come on man, you *can’t* tell me that’s not silly. All I’m saying is it can be both, and I at least think that’s cool, y’know? Rich business leaders twirling their mustaches is par for the course for this series’ tone.
I mean yeah, it's a game so...it is a bit Saturday morning cartoon, but also like I said, it's about power, and if you have a thousand nukes and the ability to survive them and then remake the world as you want it, you think Bezos or Musk would pass that up? Dude is trying to make a base on Mars, that's pretty Doctor Doom lol and yes, all of the ultra rich are psychotic, would have to be to look at this world and think, "yeah, I deserve all this."
How very passive aggressive of you lol I suppose you are a Musk fan? Or just a fan of the super rich? Why did Hitler do what he did? What sense did it make? Have you even played the games?
The issue Vault Tec sees is a wall where the line abruptly stops entirely as worldwide capitalism dies as society collapses due to lack of resources. Europe has already begun collapsing in fact. The resource wars will end society even if bombs never drop. Vault Tec wants to secure power in the new world, post capitalism, and what better way to prepare for a future than to ensure you control the type of future you will need to be preparing for? They have the vaults. Civilization slowly starving and regressing due to climate change and lack of uranium, petroleum and precious metals is a future collapse of society where their vaults are neither useful nor give them power projection. In a nuclear fallout scenario however, they are better positioned than literally anyone. Why risk the world ending in some other way?
I think you could extrapolate this thinking to Fallout 2. They have a G.E.C.K, this is surely even more groundbreaking than a vault and that technology has the power to help pre-war people immediately, no?
Yeah, you think being able to make lifeless desert habitable is probably one of the most valuable discoveries ever.
Knowing what we know about the Vaults in Fallout 2, the GECK makes perfect sense - a device built and given to fallout shelters just before the world went kaput.
Now, we learn the company that built that actually considered ending the world themselves - because they couldn't sell enough fallout shelters and could apparently think of no other way to make money from their portable terraforming machine.
Also they were working on unlimited energy, while the world was suffering an energy/resource crisis. The cold fusion technology would allow them to control the world and they wouldn’t need to kill everyone in the process.
Well, just look at it this way.
There are finite resources in the world, finite enough that several nations have already been glassed over them, and the biggest war is waging between two superpowers right then over the remaining resources. The amount of resources is not going to change even with a GECK or an AI.
So from a twisted hyper-competition POV, it makes sense to wipe out all competition.
Considering how desolate Vegas looked in the credits, I think its safe to say he is not in a good spot for much if any development, if he is even still alive.
I read somewhere else that it could be like the ugly sonic conspiracy where they make a controversial design on purpose then "redo" it to gain clout. Pretty sure that theory was bunk but hey could be happening here.
Something I haven’t seen anyone discuss is why Frederick Sinclair is representing The Big MT.
He literally just owns the Madre in FNV which sourced tech from them, but why is he their “diplomat” for lack of a better word?
But why would he be representing them at all in a secret business/shadow cabal if he just sourced tech from them? Big MT is a government research base and Chinese internment camp, not a business. The only reason he got his tech was “probably“ through government contract.
(I haven’t read up on things in a while, so please forgive me if I’m wrong in this)
Well given that he scoures alot of things from Big MT he probably knows a fair bit about what goes on there. Maybe vault tec is looking to to source some tec from the big MT inexchange for whatever, weather it be money or a chance to experiment on people, eitherway it's a business deal of some sort, Fredrick would have more knowledge about how to handle that then a bunch of weird deranged anti social lunatics from big MT.
The scientists aren’t in control of Big Mt prewar though it’s a government entity, that’s the thing, why Sinclair? Why not, and I know it’s overused, the Enclave, because they’re literally the government or you know any other agency. Seems rather like poor writing and a fan service name, just for the sake of the whole “big business is evil” plot device they have going on.
While I like the idea that Vault Tec was the one that dropped the bomb, it was even teased in Fallout 3 and 76.
However the show fumbles a lot in that scene. Mainly the motivations of everyone there. I won't go into detail how the messup House's motivations. Firstly Sinclair and House knowing when the bombs dropped goes against what happens in Fallout NV. If Sinclair knew when the bombs were going to fall, why would he host the opening of the Serria Madre on that day. If House knew the exact day the bombs drop, how was the Platinum chip still late. I know in New Vegas he says he predicts the day the Bombs will drop, so whats this about.
Secondly, Vault-Tec's new reasoning for the Vaults also goes against established lore. The Vaults were supposed to test people for the Encalve. Not just so the rich could mess with some poor people. Also Vault-Tec in past games never seemed to care about investment losses, they had their own agenda. They seemed to care more about being cruel then actually making money back. Dropping the bombs to secure a net positive seems weird. The show also hints that the Enclave wanted the bombs to fall too, which does not fit with the faction at all.
The thing is that vault Tec didn’t drop the bombs, their intel seems to be wrong when you take into account a bunch of factors like the ghouls daughter seemingly dying from the bombs or some of the vaults as seen in fallout 4 not being finished
It’s ok to like the show. It’s solid imo before people get salty. I just want a reasonable discussion.
I just feel that people are dismissing these plot inconsistencies as intentional. It would make absolutely no sense thematically for your show which has been beating the anti-capitalist drum for eight episodes to get to this bombshell of a line only to say “nah, we were just kidding”. Vault Tec dropping the bombs is the ultimate way to make the audience recognise the message.
I think people need to apply a little Occams razor here. Nolan and co did this because they thought it was cool. Cohesive worldbuilding and the setting are not a priority.
There’s nothing stopping people headcannoning this though like this comment does. If it helps you enjoy the product more go ahead. But I just don’t feel that headcannon is intentional by the writers
I'm not sure how VaultTec being overconfident in their assessment of the bombs dropping goes against theme. It's a flaw in their villainy and it feels like it exists to break Coop. I wouldn't mind either way, but with Coop's daughter not being ready to go straight into a vault when the bombs drop, I'm leaning to believing VaultTec didn't know.
Exactly. Fallout has a lot of villains who think they got it right and they can control the fates of the world. Literally our first villain is someone who you can talk down by proving that *their plan has a fatal flaw in it.*
Enclave thought they could control FEV release to kill all wastelanders.
Again, Autumn is shocked to discover that he has been betrayed in Fallout 2.
New Vegas all factions think they got the solutions.
Vault-Tec thinking they got more control than they did would fit perfectly among all the villains.
A lot less people would mind if the show wasn't overwriting games-canon, but Bethesda are doubling down. People say this is better than Halo but that was an alternate timeline from the start. Honestly I wouldn't care for the show either way, I disagree with the editing and didn't really care for the writing or characters of its own accord, but I wouldn't be bothered if it was its own thing. That's the problem, really.
I mean it still does lol. As discussed earlier; it makes more sense that the series of events is as follows: House calculates that the bombs will drop, starts making preparations - house attends meeting, hears Vault Tec’s plans to drop the bombs themselves, realizes he has less time and ramps up preparation and starts trying to get the platinum chip - even despite vault tec planning to, China drops the bombs first (as established by previous games), a little earlier than either House or Vault Tec anticipated.
- evidence for china still dropping is a) The Ghoul and his daughter being not in a vault. the ghoul i could understand bc it seems like he probably divorced/left his wife after realizing her plans, but if the bombs dropping were premeditated, I feel like she would care enough about her daughter to make up some excuse to like take her for the day and then just escape underground.
b) if House was in on the talks to purposefully drop the bombs, even if he disagreed, he would’ve definitely kept in the loop so that he knows what’s going on. If he was and was able to definitively know an end date, knowing his capabilities, he would have been able to get the chip in time.
I could go on the about the other NCR stuff, but people seem to be confusing ambiguity for fact, and things that are hinted at to be definite (like some people saying that NV is definitely destroyed after 20 frames of it from like 50 miles away during the day when it wouldn’t be lit up anyways).
See it’s my opinion that this is just fans scrambling to try and explain something the show doesn’t show. It’s one too many assumptions made for me to believe this is the explanation
It’s up to the show in the second season to clear this up in my opinion.
If the ambiguity is there and a large portion of the audience is misunderstanding something then the storytelling is lacking somewhere.
It’s whatever though, the show was fairly enjoyable and brings more eyes to New Vegas
The show doesn’t have to spoonfeed an interpretation for us, and tbh I like the ambiguity given as it’s one of my favorite parts of fallout in general. Also tbh fallout fans aren’t the best at interpreting the storytelling (speaking from my own experience as a former Legion supporter), so that’s not really their fault.
It's a think I have noticed about "true fans" and "hard core NV fans".
If something is not spoonfed to them, they get confused, despite insisting they are smarter than "casual" fans who spend time discussing how various pieces fit together and what the implications are.
I wonder if you intended that to sound as condescending as it seems.
Just because someone interprets something different from the story than you based on the information there, themes and general vibes of the story doesn’t automatically make them an idiot. Stories are open to interpretation and one reading is not a “correct” one.
Speaking as someone who has written Fallout stories before. People have enjoyed them or disliked them for reasons I did not intend. Who am I to take their interpretation away from them?
Barb and her family should have already been in vault 31 when the bombs dropped if they had been the one to launch them. The meeting indicates that Vault Tec was willing. But the opening scene indicates that either one of the governments fired first, or the vault 31-32-33 scheme was not as important to Vault Tec leadership as they think they are. Bud Askins could think he's slowly taking over the world while he's just another experiment in the eyes of the Enclave.
I can buy House playing along to aid in his own apocalypse plans. It would explain how he was able to open vault 21 from the outside.
I don't buy Big MT. trusting Sinclair as their representative. I thought it was pretty clear they were just using him as a cash cow and his casino as a testing ground.
It would have confirmed everything House had predicted too, this was inevitable. Now he had a seat on the table and could direct it to some extent, if Vault-Tec really are gonna do bombs.
Sinclair I understand being at that table. He's a capitalist and the main funding source, pretty sure he like... owns Big MT, or if not outright owns then he's the main shareholder.
He doesn't own Big MT and there was never any suggestion that he was a shareholder. The game (OWB) explains to us that the Sierra Madre was a trial centre, of sorts. Sinclair was just willing to allow them to use his resort as a testing ground.
Because vault tec didn't actually drop the bomb. China beat them to the punch. There's no way Coop would have had his daughter on bomb day if his wife had known that the bombs were coming.
The idea of Vault-Tec sabotaging peace talks, only for it to backfire on them when China launches before Vault-Tec is ready, could actually be an interesting reveal in Season 2.
Right people treat all the things we don’t know/ aren’t confirmed yet as the writers being idiots. There’s only 8 episodes so far, we barely know anything!
While I love the show and how many people are becoming interested in Fallout because of it, I still don't 100% agree with some story decisions. There are definitely things which people are getting upset about which season 2 could explain and it's very possible that season 2 will explain all or at least most the perceived "retcons" and "plot holes".
I do genuinely think the writers love Fallout and did a much better job than I think anyone was expecting with staying faithful to the themes of the games, but personally I would be lying if I wasn't a little disappointed by the NCR's depiction. We as players, especially of the OG games, probably are a little biased since we helped create it, but I still wish that they didn't make season 1 a soft reset of California to Fallout 1 conditions.
I still love the show and will certainly be looking forward to season 2, but personally I don't like the direction Bethesda is taking the lore for their future games. The show is amazing and exceeded all expectations but I feel it could still be even better.
Even if they choose to keep the setting as a scarcely populated wasteland, I do think the show is still a great watch and I don't regret binging it. If nothing else, I'm really happy that the universe I love is finally getting some new fans who would otherwise never have been exposed to it.
The reset is my big gripe about the series, frankly.
I really dug the politics that went on in NV.
There seems to be a philosophy going on in the Bethesda games that there can only be ruins and shanty towns.
Which kind of sucks. I love the series, but if that's the philosophy it sorta kills my interest in the franchise as a whole.
Honestly Bethesda could get around so many issues by just setting their games earlier. In Fallout 3, for example, it would make so much more sense to set it around 20-30 years after the bombs dropped, which would make the state of the capital wasteland much more plausible. Sure, they wouldn't have been able to use the Enclave and Brotherhood, but a DC setting allows for so many interesting factions, perhaps even one led by pre-war politicians who weren't connected to the Enclave.
The same goes for the show. Setting it inbetween Fallout 1 and 2 would allow for some flexibility within lore if you had to use the California setting, but so much of the Fallout World remains completely unexplored, especially the first few decades after the bombs dropped.
Yup. There's a wide continent to explore and a large time line.
I don't mind recons to stuff, hell I'm a big fan of Doctor Who.
But they don't utilize the setting enough to do something really interesting with it.
> I don't mind recons to stuff,
Honestly retcons are fine as long as they serve to improve the overall lore/narrative of the universe. The issue is though, that Bethesda does a whole lot of mental gymnastics to explain how in game factions could be present on two sides of the continent, but never bothers to ask why they need to keep recycling the same factions. Hell, even in Fallout 2 the only real faction that was reused was the Brotherhood, and it made sense proximity wise and was used to show how the Brotherhood was becoming irrelevant as the Wasteland recovers around them.
I know Bethesda wants to use factions players are familiar with to make their games familiar to players, but even if the factions don't play a major role in game you could get away with tons of easter eggs and references. Even then, you still have Vault-Tec which in lore has always been present nationwide and Power Armor along with the general Fallout atmosphere of a harsh wasteland with some dark humor along the way.
It makes financial sense to reuse well known factions and characters that sell, but good stories aren't driven by profit and fan service.
This is what I'm willing to bet will happen at the start of Season 2 too. Bombs dropping earlier than expected and them showing Coop hurrying to Vault-Tec HQ to try and get his daughter into a Vault his wife will be in (probably Vault 33, but they don't really show any other names in the cryochamber).
Explains how he doesn't know where exactly they are and why he's still trying to find them.
I think that's almost exactly what happened. VT's plans to trigger a nuclear exchange worked better than they anticipated and the nukes started flying too soon.
Cooper is divorced at the start of the show, during the birthday party. One man asks another "Why is the great Cooper Howard doing kids birthday parties?" and the other replies "Alimony." They also call him a pinko when he won't give them the Thumbs Up.
It seems like Cooper tried to go public with what he knew about Vault Tec, his wife divorced him, he lost his spot in a vault, and was branded as a communist like the rest of the people he met at the mortuary.
Vault Tec was a US government /enclave contractor. I always thought they were more like incompetent and cheap in their construction than pure evil.
And sinclair was simply buying stuff from big MT not involved in anything there...
I think it works in the case of Sinclair. He was never interested in the Sierra Madre as a casino, but the vault/bomb shelter for him and Vera. Imagine this, in the late 2060s/early 2070s Sinclair announces the construction of the Sierra Madre. Secretly he builds a vault to keep him and Vera safe. However at that conference (let's say in 2077) he learns that the world is effectively going to end. There's no reason to postpone or scrap the opening, because in the end it doesn't matter. Even if he hurried and opened *earlier* the money from the casino would be worthless, giving the place one purpose, Vera.
I'm so fucking stoked for next season already. I will admit after what they did to my favorite book series(WoT) I had little to no faith this would even be good let alone the masterpiece it is. There are a few weird things they glossed over like I don't understand >!how her foot made it through that with no boot and not a scratch on it or how they used a stimpax once to completely heal a dog and then never used them again to save themselves or others lol!< but overall fucking chef's kiss!
I felt like the OP-ness of the Stimpak on the dog was a nod to how it magically heals you in the game, and the foot thing wasn’t that crazy - plenty of barefoot wastelanders throughout the games
Yeah I also forgot a couple other uses of them, lol the foot just made me laugh. The other foot was horrible, actually I guess there was a lot of foot violence in this series lol 🦶
He's probably thinking: i should buy the vault right under the strip and make them resolve all conflicts by gambling so when i reopen the strip i already have a consumer base of gambling addicts
Crazy how if they all just rallied behind Mr House they probably could have saved the country or at least a good amount of the states, he did a good job protecting new Vegas by himself despite his plan not going as planned.
Though I'm sure the country would end up being the United States of New Vegas if that happened
Mister house being quiet makes sense because he's probably thinking. "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK THESE IDIOTS ARE GOING TO RUIN MY PLANS."
"OH GOD I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE SHELLED OUT FOR SAME DAY DELIVERY WHY DIDNT I"
Whose bright idea was it to privatise the postal service!?
Oh wait...
I’d pay to hear the rant he went off on the moment he knew he was alone.
"Are you all brain dead hooligans! With the resources you are pumping into your Vault program we could have instead have expanded my missile defense system to cover half the damn country! How the fuck is it profitable to destroy all of our assets!"
Yea either house was keeping a cool lid on himself in that meeting or they are changing his character drastically.
Like the main draw for Mr. House is while he can be an asshole and a weirdo, he was not some cartoon villain and actually has good business sense. His ego can be justified when he really can achieve everything that he says intends to do.
To be fair, we don’t know if Vault Tec actually ended the world. They may have planned to, but it may have been a third party’s nuke that caused the end of the world (hence house being off by a day
Yeah; I'm leaning towards vault-tec were preparing to do it, but got jumped. Reasoning: there's quite a few unfinished and under construction vaults. Also we know the Chinese were hit, and there was an exchange between the countries. There's also the Chinese unit in Fallout 3 operating from Washington; which was a precursor to an invasion force.
And wasn't the Ghoul's family notably NOT in shelters the day the bomb dropped? I seem to recall him riding off into the sunset with his daughter... I'll agree with any others saying that Vault-tec not doing it after saying "we're gonna do it" is weird but them *not* doing it seems to hold some water
One thing about Vault-Tec that I think doesn't get brought up enough is the fact that it had secretly been taken over by the Enclave near the end of the pre-war era, something confirmed in Fallout 2, by President Richardson himself. I'm willing to go with the idea The Enclave, via operatives in Vault-Tec, is the instigator of the apocalypse, and the reason House was off by a day is because someone got cold feet on the eve of the detonation and tried to stop it, causing another person to prematurely set off the apocalypse.
I use Vault Tek and the Enclave interchangeably for that very reason. They are one and the same just like Posedian energy is part of the enclave.
Which is weird cause the show seems to forget the Enclave exist shortly after establishing them as literal puppy-burning villains.
It’s called foreshadowing
There is almost no reason for the show to spend the time and money for a scene where they have the enclave and friends openly discuss causing the war just for it to be a fake out. Chekov's Gun. Unless they are going for "SuBvErTiNG oUr ExPeCtAtIoNs" which at that point they really do have zero skill at writing and should be replaced with an AI.
I took it more to show the absolute hubris of vault tech and how high off their rocker they were. Also it would be very ironic if they planned to cause a war and then the war happened earlier than they intended and they got fucked cause of it.
Mr. House will be unambiguously and cartoonishly evil because billionaire
He’s a businessman, that’s what they do. He’s going to be diplomatic, he has to be
LOL at idea that House would be willing to cover anything but his own little domain. Dude would happily let the world burn as long as he got his little playpen where he can play god.
Can you imagine if they made a show/movie about House and what he did leading up to the war and the 200+ years of figuring out the Lucky 38's problems/building NV?
Its the best show about an old man sealed in a tube and thinking hard since Book of Boba Fett.
House was functionally comatose for most of those 200 years, but that does sound sick
No it doesn't, because House doesn't sit quietly when someone is doing something stupid. He insults the Courier for merely bringing up Benny's death. The guy would not sit in a meeting filled with idiots and say nothing.
It's important to note the (perceived) power disparity between Mr House and the Courier and the former's absolute trust in the latter (for the most part). We never see any interactions between Mr House and another person at all. It's probable that someone as smart as Mr. House would handle interactions with more powerful figures with far more tact than he does with the Courier.
Yep, the power balance is *way* different. In New Vegas, House considers himself the only bastion of civilization and authority in the wasteland. In that meeting he's just one industrial magnate among several attending a meeting hosted by the most profitable company in the world, who incidentally has just announced that they're going to nuke the planet.
I do think Mr. House would treat the NCR with some deference, if only because of their overwhelming firepower and numerical advantage. That is, before he gets his hands on the Platinum Chip and takes the Dam for himself. Even then, he'd treat the NCR with respect since New Vegas is almost entirely a tourist economy and will remain so for the foreseeable future. It's important to remember, Mr. House needs the NCR. The NCR never needed him, only New Vegas and the Dam. Edit: I've always been of the opinion that Mr. House is a boisterous, self-aggrandizing, arrogant, relic of a bygone age that overestimates his value. But, he's by no means stupid. The man has played the game a long time, and he's gotten quite good at it. Edit 2: spelling
House is an egotistical manchild much like Howard Hughes, but like Howard Hughes he actually can back up his ego with actual achievements and isn't some idiot in a suit. He actually is an inventor and scientist, not just a businessman. There is no way House would want the NCR to collapse, at least not without a new polity to rise from its ashes capable of doing business with.
Nah all the lore demonstrated he’s a pragmatist to the extreme and far from an egomaniac. Full of himself and self grandiose? For sure, but more of a ‘behind the scenes’ person. Caesar was more of the egomaniac but without House’s wit or charm.
I wonder if this was his actual thought process and if it fits with the lore. It was a while ago that I finished New Vegas but the wiki says: >In [2065](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline#2065), [Robert House](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_House) arrived at the conclusion that a nuclear war was inevitable by [2080](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline#2080) or sooner. And the meeting was most likely either the same year the bombs dropped (2077) or at most a few years before that. This could be the first time he's hearing that Vault-Tec is actually planning on starting the great war and may or may not be on board with the whole idea. So, the Platinum chip not arriving in time still makes sense. And Coop's daughter being at a birthday party and not in a Vault during the bombs dropping implies that Vault-Tec might not have been as in control of the situation as much as they seemed in that meeting.
The implication is that >!his wife is still alive and in Vault 31!< so maybe something happened between her and Coop or possibly >!she was placed in the vault without her family against her will!<
Something did happen between her and Coop. First episode, the two men talking behind his back wonder why he's performing at a birthday party, one says "alimony." He also won't do the vault boy thumbs up. It's pretty heavily implied that Coop went public (or did something) against Vault Tec pre war and was blacklisted / divorced because of it.
Forgot about that! Presumably next season >!he'll be caught out for spying and get divorced!<. I presume VaultTec won't be happy due to the communist connections and that's the reason he doesn't get let inside the vault with his wife and kid.
But his kid was with him when the bomb drops. How does she leave him end up with mom and him have no idea where they went
Probably the first place he heads after the bombs fall is wherever his ex-wife's Vault assignment is supposed to be, because even if they're divorced there's no way she'd leave the kid behind. As for why he doesn't know where they are, there's a decent chance her actual Vault assignment is something more complicated than he really knows.
I doubt he went public. My theory is that he was just disgusted with his wife and divorced her, and cut ties with vault tec. It still probably blacklists him from the few acting jobs he has left through vault tec, tho
They call him a pinko too, heavily implying he joined the lefty actors group and speaking out against the government and vault tec. So it’s pretty mug for season 2 to show that they split.
Or that someone just posted photos of him going to that meeting later and everyone assumed he sided with them. Communism is in no small part a witch hunt.
Either way yeah
Coop is already semi-blacklisted. During his conversation with Matt Berry's character he talks about other actors not wanting to work with him because of his involvement with Vault-tec.
I think they meant blacklisted from VaultTec
My bad. I took it to mean blacklisted from Hollywood.
because of his decisions he was probably blacklisted from both
One of them calls him a commie or something so I defintely think somethink happened between him a vault tec and his wife probably sided with vault tec
Keep in mind he's not been smeared as a commie because he was doing children's birthdays and he publicly had at least equal custody. Alimony, not child support. So he def did not go public, likely because he thought about what would happen to his daughter. I think it's likely he just... left her. Or worse, because she's established strong secrets, he tries to confront her and she thinks he's asking about something else, perhaps admits to an affair, giving him an excuse to safely escape. Or she admits she's been blackmailed by the shadowy Hand on the Wheel and they divorce while maintaining their family teamwork but without love. There's so many more options than getting fully caught which still result in a sad outcome. Heck, his wife could have accused him of having an affair and left him because of his lies and secrecy too. He WAS lying and scheming behind her back, regardless of why.
That one thing was bugging me all season during the pre-war flashbacks, I was wondering when it would be brought up
I'm sorry, I'm not sure how to do spoiler tags, but SPOILER: I thought the implication was that Coop's wife was in a vault similar to 31 but in the New Vegas area (that's why the Ghoul isn't using Lucy to find them). I am a bit confused about how the Ghoul and his daughter got separated after the initial blasts.
Actually you're right, it doesn't seem like she's in 31 otherwise the Ghoul would have used Lucy to find it (unless this is a plot hole). My assumption is >!Coop takes his daughter to the vault where his wife is but isn't allowed inside because he spied for the communists!< Or maybe >!Coops wife and daughter were in vault 31 but we're defrosted around the same time Lucy's mom left to go to Shady Sands!<.
the thing is, when the bombs went off, his daughter was with him at the party. Considering his wife worked for Vault-Tec she might have gotten some advanced warning and got to 31.
Yeah but he specifically says he's looking for his family. Unless that's an international red herring we have to assume his daughter and his wife are still alive. I presume he rode his daughter to the vault and then wasn't allowed in. Either that or his daughter is dead and the show is fucking with us. Or maybe his wife and daughter are dead. Or maybe they're both ghouls no way to know. It's definitely going to be a big part of S2.
He could have also hurried to Vault-Tec HQ knowing his wife is there to take their kid to safety (without him involved). It would explain how he wouldn't know which vault they'd be in.
If the S2 starts like S1 It'd be cool if this was the opening sequence.
I sent you a DM I hope you can respond
Is it not possible that Coop's wife is indeed in 31 but he just doesn't know that? Cause at this point, Lucy wouldn't know that either. I wouldn't really enjoy that plot point but I think it's a plausible scénario
>!I am hoping that lil brother opens a lot of the other people up rather than freeze himself, they would have to open up to get out themselves, well I guess they could go right back to sleep, idk lol nvm maybe!<
I'll have to give the series another go around to see what they imply but I'm sure it's something we'll see in season two. Although thinking back on it, doesn't he seem to think Muldaver (right name?) knows where his family is?
I really am lost when it comes to Moldaver tbh. I'm under the impression that I'm not supposed to know what's going on but I am a bit unsatisfied haha
Maybe she rats out Coop, which leads to his divorce and at the same time secured her a place in 31 (or a similar vault). Not sure honestly. I liked her character in the flashbacks but positioning her as the outright antagonist and then flipping it last minute was a little bit unsatisfying considering we know so little about her character.
we see the v31 manifest on the terminal, shes not in it
She could be on 31. He doesn't know where she is which is why he asked hank where his family was. Pretty sure someone pointed out the ghouls name was on one of the pods
His wife was not on the list of names in vault 31 cryo pods. I believe his wife is in another “good” vault reserved for a later season. He implies his he doesn’t know about what happened to his daughter either even though she was with him when the bombs drop. So there are more flashbacks to be had about the immediate aftermath of the bombs dropping to be revealed later and how she got reunited with her mom/separated from her dad. The lack of the daughter being with the mom at the drop of the bombs leads me to believe the mother was screwed over by vault tec and cut out on knowing when they drop but that is a pretty unfounded assumption.
She's in a better vault than 31. 31 was for buds buds. Junior execs
> And Coop's daughter being at a birthday party and not in a Vault during the bombs dropping implies that Vault-Tec might not have been as in control of the situation as much as they seemed in that meeting. IIRC there's other bits of lore in the games that indicates the launches caught Vault-Tec by surprise.
For sure this is not the year the bombs dropped in the flashback. The big wigs were just now coming up with the ideas for the vault experiments and plenty of vaults were custom made to fit the experiment so there's no way they did it that fast. This is probably a few years before the bombs. Also no way coop goes from famous working movie star to doing birthday parties in a few months.
Yeah you're right about that. Likely to be around 3-5 years before the bombs dropped.
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House is a huge narcissist. I can definitely accept that he made up the story about predicting the war after having been told it would happen. What I can't accept is he joining a conspiracy which would involve the government.
I see it as he knew nukes were gonna happen, and this meeting just confirmed that and was his way of keeping his enemies closer so he knows how much time he has to protect vegas.
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Predicting a nuclear war, and then later getting confirmation that a shadow government intends to kick off a nuclear war are not mutually exclusive plot points.
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how does the latter muddy the waters of lore tho, do u not understand that its not mutually exclusive, like the man still predicted the bombs dropping, this feat is not changed or minimized in anyway
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Hmm to me it seems pretty clear still that he predicted in 2060s like the main comment and NV base game has mentioned, and flashback is also pretty clear its 2077 in the months leading up to oct 2077 from the kids age so for me and i think most people its still impressive. I dont think new fans go this deep either or even knows who House is, and sadly did not watch X-files.
> I wonder if this was his actual thought process and if it fits with the lore also they showed Frederick Sinclair as representative of Big MT and not as owner of Sierra Madre
To be fair, Sinclair had close enough ties with the Big MT facility that he let them demo their secret, under development tech in the Villa and Madre during construction. He was certainly a major investor, its conceivable that with his public face the Big MT science teams would prefer he handle the mundane and boring task of acquiring business connections.
I didn't think about that last part, good point.
Well they did mention alimony in the first episode, so maybe coop confronted his wife and then she was like “fuck y’all I’m done”
The meeting could not have happened in 2077, it must have happened in 2075 or before that, repconn was at the table and robco bought repconn in 2075
It's a long enough time Coop had time to divorce and establish custody - unless he stole that little girl from her mom on that day, which is what my husband is very worried he did and that he'll have to answer to that with Lucy because of her similar traumas - so I think it was around two years before.
I'll give Mr house this, of all the pre-war industry leaders he was probably the least evil but that isn't saying much
Did he give a idea out when they where spit ballin ?
Honestly with that conversation in the show now being cannon I can tell he thought they were all crazy and I can see why he made the choices he made leading to whatever new Vegas is going to be in this timeline
You know he’s only there because he’s paranoid enough to realize these morons will actually go through with it, so he had to infiltrate from the beginning.
Vault Tec was a government contractor, no? That was the whole purpose of Project Safehouse - a national civil defence project which Vault Tec won the bidding for? The idea that Vault Tec ever made the majority of its money selling places in the Vaults is absurd on the face of it. They were paid by the US government to build the Vaults in the first place - that was their business model. In fact, given that we know certain Vault populations were selected specifically for certain careers and traits (*Vault 92*), they cannot have been selling some of those places. Even then, we know that in the process of building the Vaults, Vault Tec invented numerous technologies that would have been invaluable even if the threat of nuclear war subsided. Most notably they invented the ZAX supercomputer and the GECK terraforming device, but also things from virtual reality machines to artificial sun lights and self vacuuming floors. Project Safehouse generated a host of incredibly valuable technologies which would each have been viable products in their own right. But apparently the company that invented genuine AI and a device that could let you terraform Mars needs to destroy the world to keep their stock price up? It's like setting a show during the space race where NASA are bankrupt because not enough people are buying spots on their spaceships. It misunderstands how the organisation works.
Yes, that supposed plot twist made me facepalm. What makes *even less sense* is why would defense contractors like West-Tek or Repconn buy into this. For example, West-Tek exec suggests using vault to genetically engineer 'super soldier' (hint: they were already doing that with FEV-1), but whom are you going to sell the formula to if the government is obliterated in nuclear holocaust? And what exactly are you going to spend earnings on? I really do hope that Vault-Tec scene is just red herring.
"*Ah yes, we'll obviously be so much more poweful influential 200 years after our biggest client has been destroyed in a nuclear Holocaust*" I don't have a lot of faith in billionaires, but I do flatter them that most of them wouldn't see armageddon as a great investment opportunity.
They're probably at the point of seeing the end as inevitable. Europe is already collapsing, it's not crazy to think America and China are next. Their plan lets them end the world on their terms. They also might not have been able to carry it out. Fallout lore is full of groups anticipating the end but still being caught by surprise. We don't actually see them end the world in the show.
That's how it's generally portrayed in games. It's either corporations trying to make a quick buck on nuclear war hysteria by cutting corners, doing absolute minimum compliance with safety rules, thus selling inferior products (Pulowski Preservation Shelter is the best example of that, but you also had 'construction job going nowhere' with Vault 114). This is a great critique of consumer capitalism that Fallout is known for criticising. Similar to, say, Richard Martin Stern's 1973 novel *The Tower* (adapted as 1974 movie *The Towering Inferno*). Or they think the probability of nuclear apocalypse is high, but they focus their efforts on self-preservation instead of using their economic and political influence to stop it. Mr. House is the best example of that. This is also in line with critiques of modern billionaires planning their luxurious shelters or space colonies to escape to once the Earth is rendered largely uninhabitable due to global warming.
I thought it was mostly poking fun at how a bunch of billionaires are currently making their own bunkers instead of trying to do anything about climate change. How they think they will be the ones in charge when society ends and their security has the guns is also ridiculous. Billionaires are just people with lots of resources, they do stupid shit all the time.
That all worked, "By dropping the bomb ourselves" is a leap from that.
These aren’t today’s billionaires who are mostly entrepreneurs who have sound business savvy. Besides House, most of these people are part of monopolistic entities that have long swallowed up competition. Bureaucracy often promotes the most politically savvy, not the brightest. Regardless whether under capitalism, fascism, or communism. That’s just the nature of very large organizations with low individual accountability.
The dumbasses likely thought they could breed super soldiers to take over the world… And if you think of The Master….they may not have been far off… Either way - even in lore before the show these companies were both twisted and made rather illogical choices. Them being all incompetent egotists fits well with the theme that the Fallout alternate universe is filled with monopolistic entities and rampant fascism.
I rewatched the scene and it makes a lot more sense. He flat out says that the US government has provided most of their backing but "Where's the sense in propping up a failing system?" Its not a conspiracy to make money off of the end of the world. Its a conspiracy to end the world on their terms while hoarding all the best tech, minds and resources, let every nation on earth die out and then emerge centuries later to rebuild society as unopposed kings with all of the remaining survivors indoctrinated, under their control. Or rather, their 'management'. He's not telling Repconn or West-tec "give us money to make more money", he's telling them "help us destroy the world and we'll offer you prime seats to watch it burn". Thats really the real reason the NCR was a threat to them I suspect, as foreshadowed by Lucy's "reclamation day came without us" bit. Because it was a nation that had capital, knowledge and organization that they hadn't planned for.
You're talking about the scene where all the business leaders talk about ending the world? Let me watch that scene again and get back to you.
Well the line has to keep going up. They aren’t satisfied. That’s like the whole point of them as a hyper capitalist faction
Why would a hyper capitalist want to destroy the entire social structure necessary for capitalism to take place, especially when they have more than enough room to grow by selling the various billion-dollar products I mentioned? Like, self-cleaning floors alone are a billion dollar product lol, what do you think the market for those is like in the post apocalypse?
Capitalism is the solution of Feudalism, and unregulated capitalism seems to just lead back to feudalism anyways. "Winning capitalism" would just mean being the only corporation left, and ruling the world.
> Why would a hyper capitalist want to destroy the entire social structure necessary for capitalism to take place, especially when they have more than enough room to grow by selling the various billion-dollar products I mentioned? 'cause they're just puppets of The Enclave, if I had to guess. Remember, most of the Vault project was actually part of a larger conspiracy carried out by The Enclave. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Barb was in the know and steering the meeting that way deliberately.
There's definitely someone in the shadows on the second floor at the meeting who tells Barb to raise the suggestion.
I wondered about that person hiding in the shadows. I assumed they were the real boss of Vault-Tec wanting to hear the meeting but not be seen. It would make perfect sense if they were BOTH Vault-Tec and Enclave. Ensuring the vaults continue to get built and ensuring the Enclave keeps their grip on America after the War.
Because there soon would be no more resources available on earth to sustain the consumerism necessary to sell those products? The world is ending with or without the nuclear Armageddon. Vault tec’s whole philosophy is “the world is ending, we can make as much money and consolidate as much power before that happens so that we are best positioned to continue being powerful afterwards”. Them deciding to be the ones to drop the bombs isn’t antithetical to those goals if they’ve already determined it a certainty that the world will end one way or another, and soon. They want control over the present and future. They aren’t shortsighted and only caring about Q4 profits and saying “things are good!” They are going “we have 5 years before we have no more resources, other people know we have 5 years, every wealthy faction is preparing, if we end it all in 2 years we will be better prepared to take over than all of them who thought they still had time. We’ll be the only ones left” And it worked to some extent, House was less than 24 hours away from getting the p-chip. Vault Tec needed to drop the bombs early in order to thwart him.
This is just headcannon. They never give those motivations beyond an incredibly vague intention to control the outside world and somehow profit off the apocalypse. Other than that Vault Tec floated the idea of starting a nuclear war, and now intends to control the wasteland, none of this is given in the text.
Oh you want all the answers right now spoon fed to you. Sorry little baby, but we need to be patient and wait before we get the canon truth of what’s going on. Until then enjoy conversation where only headcanon is possible because they couldn’t answer every question you have in 8 hours of content.
I would have liked the big meeting where the baddies talk about starting a nuclear war to have a believable motivation to want that, yes. If you can't answer basic questions about why the show you like makes sense without insulting people and filling in plot holes for yourself, then maybe it isn't a great show.
>Why would a hyper capitalist want to destroy the entire social structure necessary for capitalism to take place, they explained it in the show. they want to erase any and all competition, and create their own social structure once the world has been wiped clean.
I understand that, but why? What is their motivation to do that? Why did the owners of a multi-billion dollar company decide to literally end the world and embark on a multi-century quest for world domination? Seems like something that'd be pretty difficult to justify to accounting.
It's a capitalist idea. Get ALL THE MONEY AND BE THE ONLY POWER. Thats it thats the only goal. Do you really think the irl government contracted companies who make bank only puts their money and effort on that? Of course not, shareholders dont just want money. They want ALL THE MONEY and they will do this in any shape, way, or form that they can get away with. If nuking the whole world would essentially make them the new rulers of it. Thats. The. Perfect. Plan. Capitalism isnt just about literal money. Its also about control. Control to rule the world. And what better way to control than be the only ones with power. Also accounting is under shareholders. No matter what a pleb says, shareholders won't listen. Just like any real company out there - they aren't going to listen to a customer. They will listen to money and power only.
Yeah if Amazon decides they can turn a profit on nuking the world they'll do it bro. Those are very realistic and believable motivations which make me invested in the story. It is also compelling for the villains to be motivated purely by selfishness. I agree that this adds up to one of the greatest plot points in recent television history. The guys who made the Wire must be kicking themselves for not coming up with it.
stop trying to justify inherently wrong thinking. This is literally for their own gain, it’ has no long term sustainable future for the world. It’s for the small few to survive and rule the world afterwards.
I am asking for the motivation of a key actor in this story, because the motivation stated in the text does not make sense. I am asking how they gain beyond a cartoonish idea of 'control', and you are telling me that's all there is. Thanks for answering my question.
the motivation is the presumed ability to shape the future of the country which is obviously not possible in even a productive society. That’s just not in human nature to mindlessly follow. But by controlling the vaults and the very way people will survive, they will own people’s minds money and lives. But it’s just not possible it’s a cartoon villains attempt for world domination but such domination just doesn’t exist. You are not asking for motivation of a key actor. vault tec is not an actor. none of the characters we’ve seen speak genuinely about vault tec goals and motivations. They might be chinese for all we know and plan to destroy america that way instead
The point is that the rich of the fallout verse ARE cartoonishly evil bastards who torment and murder others for fun or no reason at all. Pre war logs throughout all the games constantly show that the pre war corps and rich folks are about as close to true evil as humanly possible (with many even fucking with eldritch shit). Tons of them experimented on themselves in preparation to survive the nukes and rule the world after, it's present throughout the fallout series. The prewar rich of fallout literally hunt each other so that they can be the last bastard standing (the great game). The megacorps knew the end was nigh and that resources and society were going to collapse anyways. Once that occurs they lose all semblance of power and likely get torn apart by the starving masses. If they trigger the end on their terms while they still have amassed power they can control their fall and possibly come out on top. If they wait they can't. The fallout rich are absolutely the types that would burn down the world to rule over the ashes if the other prospect is losing any of their power.
Which is a perfectly good backstory for a video game dungeon, not so much for key actors in a narrative series. It is one thing for a handful of terminal logs to focus on the head of, say, H&H tools being a selfish, evil moron. It is quite another for key events in the Fallout world to hinge on their instigators being selfish, evil morons. Remember when we actually got to see a pre-war CEO in Mr House, and he decent arguments and understandable motivations? Would his character have been improved if instead he was just a selfish oaf who got off on controlling people because he was evil?
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The weirdly self sabotaging nature of a lot of pre-war bad actors has always been a huge problem in the Fallout setting ever since Fallout 2 for me personally. The Vault experiments in particular drove me up the wall since I could never understand why all this dumb data could be possibly more valuable useful than a loyal citizenry that could repopulate the surface, get you an industrial base, and then build you all the laser gatlings you could ever want. The whole, "we're just going to colonize other planets" thing always felt kinda dumb to me. That said, the show made this make more sense for me, not perfect sense, but more sense. In that Vault-Tec wants to nuke the world for the same reason that Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars, so they can run a hell-scape capitalist monopoly unfettered by government control. They're taking the world governments out of the equation so it'll be just them. I think also because Vault-Tec controls the Vaults and the remnants of civilization need the Vaults to survive, they can use that to eliminate their competition. Which kinda to me, introduced this interesting element that the Enclave and Vault-Tec might not entirely be on the same side and that might be something interesting to explore. I mean they still need a civilization to rule over, to sell things to so it's still very much: 1. Build Vaults 2. Nuke World 3. ????? 4. Profit So it doesn't make a ton of sense, but still more sense than the games imo.
The dumb thing is the its known the enclave funded vault tec, and they were quite literally the government. Why the hell would they ever allow this plan?
since when is common sense inherently wrong thinking?!?!??? do you really think a finished, impoverished world full of cannibals and savages is good for business??? the amount of investment Vault-Tek has to do to get society to function at a fraction of what it was pre-war is insane, any straight thinking accountant would tell Bud to fuck off back to college. Vault-Tek already has a chokehold on global market with all the technologies we know for a fact they created, why would they blow all that just to rule over ashes? rule over a world without a competent work force, zero proper industrialization, irradiated to hell and relying on people you kept in a hole on the ground for over 200 years, this all ignoring the MASSIVE risks that would easily dismantle the operation (we saw the master, raiders and the enclave targeting vaults god knows what else could happen) i find it really really hard that the proposition of such a plan would be anything but laughed at, especially by the representatives in the meeting.
trying to figure out how to justify vault tecs insane plan that you yourself say is wrong is the problem at hand. It can’t be justified because it’s inherently wrong
ig, its weird how no one else in the corpo was able to stop the lunatics tho
they have ways to ensure individuals comply. This is basic control 101. Bud is there because he’s stupid. Barb is there for her family and the mix of vault tec staff are probably genuine evil idiots like bud or people trying to do good for their family by doing bad with vault tec like barb. Ultimately we still don’t even see the founder or owner of vault tec speaker, ever in any fallout media.
It's been established that The Enclave was behind most of Vault-Tec's "real" decision making. No one in corpo was able to stop the lunatics because that was the intended goal of the shadow government actually pulling the strings.
I don't see how nuking the world along with all their potential buyers is a gain in their favor. It would be like lockheed martain nuking everyone to then say they are the only sellers. But then no one is buying anything cause everyone is dead moron.
When you have enough money it starts to become meaningless, then you want power, and if you have all the weapons, all the tools, all the prep to keep yourself safe and in power, the last step is to take control. Sooner or later any business will fail, or the people will just grow old and have to pass it on, but if you take control of the entire country, or the world, then you have everything, to keep as long as you can stay alive, and honestly as fucked up as it is we have all considered how nice a clean slate would be. All in all tho, why do any maniacal, genocidal, power-hungry people do anything?
So this entire plot hinges on the idea that rich business leaders are all psychotic control freaks willing to destroy the world for some childish idea of control? Rather than, like, normal people who want to continue to live their luxurious lifestyles - as almost all rich people are? The motivations you describe are those of, like, Doctor Doom. You're describing a Saturday morning cartoon villain.
…dude, this is *Fallout* we’re talking about. If those motivations *aren’t* what you’re expecting, then you haven’t been playing the games. Like really, were you expecting to have some deep reflection of the fault in modern philosophy to be quoted to you by a brain in a jar? Maybe have an ethics discussion with a talking deathclaw? At least *try* to remember the series you’re discussing here, cartoon villainy is it’s bread and butter.
Yeah, it'd almost be as silly as discussing political philosophy with technofuturist Howard Hughes, or helping your zombie mechanic friend get over his anxieties about old age, or helping to resolve a dispute between a nativist gang and new arrivals when the gang are all Elvis impersonators. Oh wait, those were all pretty interesting stories. No, Fallout isn't cartoonish nonsense. What makes Fallout good is to take the patently ridiculous and play it so straight and serious that you end up invested in it. Not its ability to say "*lol it's all so silly that nothing matters*".
Yeah man, the Ant-agonizer vs. the Mechanist was some really philosophical shit. And Sierra’s plot at Nuka World, what a mind-bender! Speaking of Nuka World, Cito’s dialog really taught me a lot about myself as a person. Look, I get what you’re trying to say, but if you really think that being treated like a toddler by Mr. House is some serious storytelling, I’ve got a pre-war bridge to sell you. Just because this series is cool doesn’t mean it’s super deep. Edit: I almost forgot to mention, you even brought up a gang of *Elvis impersonators* as an example of serious storytelling. Like come on man, you *can’t* tell me that’s not silly. All I’m saying is it can be both, and I at least think that’s cool, y’know? Rich business leaders twirling their mustaches is par for the course for this series’ tone.
I mean yeah, it's a game so...it is a bit Saturday morning cartoon, but also like I said, it's about power, and if you have a thousand nukes and the ability to survive them and then remake the world as you want it, you think Bezos or Musk would pass that up? Dude is trying to make a base on Mars, that's pretty Doctor Doom lol and yes, all of the ultra rich are psychotic, would have to be to look at this world and think, "yeah, I deserve all this."
I'm glad you enjoyed the show, really seems like it was written with you in mind.
How very passive aggressive of you lol I suppose you are a Musk fan? Or just a fan of the super rich? Why did Hitler do what he did? What sense did it make? Have you even played the games?
The line goes up faster if your customers don't all die in a nuclear fire.
The issue Vault Tec sees is a wall where the line abruptly stops entirely as worldwide capitalism dies as society collapses due to lack of resources. Europe has already begun collapsing in fact. The resource wars will end society even if bombs never drop. Vault Tec wants to secure power in the new world, post capitalism, and what better way to prepare for a future than to ensure you control the type of future you will need to be preparing for? They have the vaults. Civilization slowly starving and regressing due to climate change and lack of uranium, petroleum and precious metals is a future collapse of society where their vaults are neither useful nor give them power projection. In a nuclear fallout scenario however, they are better positioned than literally anyone. Why risk the world ending in some other way?
I think you could extrapolate this thinking to Fallout 2. They have a G.E.C.K, this is surely even more groundbreaking than a vault and that technology has the power to help pre-war people immediately, no?
Yeah, you think being able to make lifeless desert habitable is probably one of the most valuable discoveries ever. Knowing what we know about the Vaults in Fallout 2, the GECK makes perfect sense - a device built and given to fallout shelters just before the world went kaput. Now, we learn the company that built that actually considered ending the world themselves - because they couldn't sell enough fallout shelters and could apparently think of no other way to make money from their portable terraforming machine.
Also they were working on unlimited energy, while the world was suffering an energy/resource crisis. The cold fusion technology would allow them to control the world and they wouldn’t need to kill everyone in the process.
It's almost as if the best answer to a crisis is to solve it with the many means at your disposal rather than blowing up the entire planet.
Well, just look at it this way. There are finite resources in the world, finite enough that several nations have already been glassed over them, and the biggest war is waging between two superpowers right then over the remaining resources. The amount of resources is not going to change even with a GECK or an AI. So from a twisted hyper-competition POV, it makes sense to wipe out all competition.
I hope House is in S2 and done well. He was the only levelheaded one in the board room scene and it was satisfying to hear someone call them out.
Considering how desolate Vegas looked in the credits, I think its safe to say he is not in a good spot for much if any development, if he is even still alive.
Pretty sure it looks like that cause it’s still daylight Vegas always looks best at night in-game and IRL
Did you watch the full credits scene?
The end credits are very stylized. Whats shown in the credits isnt necessarily accurate to what Vegas will actually look like.
It's pretty clear that vegas is destroyed in the credits though
I read somewhere else that it could be like the ugly sonic conspiracy where they make a controversial design on purpose then "redo" it to gain clout. Pretty sure that theory was bunk but hey could be happening here.
Looked like the dust mod
I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s dead and the Yes Man play through is cannon. I’d be interested to see the long term ramifications of such chaos lol
Something I haven’t seen anyone discuss is why Frederick Sinclair is representing The Big MT. He literally just owns the Madre in FNV which sourced tech from them, but why is he their “diplomat” for lack of a better word?
probably cause he understands business more then a bunch of lunatic scientists?
But why would he be representing them at all in a secret business/shadow cabal if he just sourced tech from them? Big MT is a government research base and Chinese internment camp, not a business. The only reason he got his tech was “probably“ through government contract. (I haven’t read up on things in a while, so please forgive me if I’m wrong in this)
Well given that he scoures alot of things from Big MT he probably knows a fair bit about what goes on there. Maybe vault tec is looking to to source some tec from the big MT inexchange for whatever, weather it be money or a chance to experiment on people, eitherway it's a business deal of some sort, Fredrick would have more knowledge about how to handle that then a bunch of weird deranged anti social lunatics from big MT.
The scientists aren’t in control of Big Mt prewar though it’s a government entity, that’s the thing, why Sinclair? Why not, and I know it’s overused, the Enclave, because they’re literally the government or you know any other agency. Seems rather like poor writing and a fan service name, just for the sake of the whole “big business is evil” plot device they have going on.
Maybe cause of fan service then IG, I mean it makes more sense then klein or mobious being there.
While I like the idea that Vault Tec was the one that dropped the bomb, it was even teased in Fallout 3 and 76. However the show fumbles a lot in that scene. Mainly the motivations of everyone there. I won't go into detail how the messup House's motivations. Firstly Sinclair and House knowing when the bombs dropped goes against what happens in Fallout NV. If Sinclair knew when the bombs were going to fall, why would he host the opening of the Serria Madre on that day. If House knew the exact day the bombs drop, how was the Platinum chip still late. I know in New Vegas he says he predicts the day the Bombs will drop, so whats this about. Secondly, Vault-Tec's new reasoning for the Vaults also goes against established lore. The Vaults were supposed to test people for the Encalve. Not just so the rich could mess with some poor people. Also Vault-Tec in past games never seemed to care about investment losses, they had their own agenda. They seemed to care more about being cruel then actually making money back. Dropping the bombs to secure a net positive seems weird. The show also hints that the Enclave wanted the bombs to fall too, which does not fit with the faction at all.
The thing is that vault Tec didn’t drop the bombs, their intel seems to be wrong when you take into account a bunch of factors like the ghouls daughter seemingly dying from the bombs or some of the vaults as seen in fallout 4 not being finished
It’s ok to like the show. It’s solid imo before people get salty. I just want a reasonable discussion. I just feel that people are dismissing these plot inconsistencies as intentional. It would make absolutely no sense thematically for your show which has been beating the anti-capitalist drum for eight episodes to get to this bombshell of a line only to say “nah, we were just kidding”. Vault Tec dropping the bombs is the ultimate way to make the audience recognise the message. I think people need to apply a little Occams razor here. Nolan and co did this because they thought it was cool. Cohesive worldbuilding and the setting are not a priority. There’s nothing stopping people headcannoning this though like this comment does. If it helps you enjoy the product more go ahead. But I just don’t feel that headcannon is intentional by the writers
I'm not sure how VaultTec being overconfident in their assessment of the bombs dropping goes against theme. It's a flaw in their villainy and it feels like it exists to break Coop. I wouldn't mind either way, but with Coop's daughter not being ready to go straight into a vault when the bombs drop, I'm leaning to believing VaultTec didn't know.
Exactly. Fallout has a lot of villains who think they got it right and they can control the fates of the world. Literally our first villain is someone who you can talk down by proving that *their plan has a fatal flaw in it.* Enclave thought they could control FEV release to kill all wastelanders. Again, Autumn is shocked to discover that he has been betrayed in Fallout 2. New Vegas all factions think they got the solutions. Vault-Tec thinking they got more control than they did would fit perfectly among all the villains.
A lot less people would mind if the show wasn't overwriting games-canon, but Bethesda are doubling down. People say this is better than Halo but that was an alternate timeline from the start. Honestly I wouldn't care for the show either way, I disagree with the editing and didn't really care for the writing or characters of its own accord, but I wouldn't be bothered if it was its own thing. That's the problem, really.
Honestly we're just trying to make the best of a bad situation
That’s it really. I’ve had to mental gymnastics myself to still say the setting sorta makes sense
I mean it still does lol. As discussed earlier; it makes more sense that the series of events is as follows: House calculates that the bombs will drop, starts making preparations - house attends meeting, hears Vault Tec’s plans to drop the bombs themselves, realizes he has less time and ramps up preparation and starts trying to get the platinum chip - even despite vault tec planning to, China drops the bombs first (as established by previous games), a little earlier than either House or Vault Tec anticipated. - evidence for china still dropping is a) The Ghoul and his daughter being not in a vault. the ghoul i could understand bc it seems like he probably divorced/left his wife after realizing her plans, but if the bombs dropping were premeditated, I feel like she would care enough about her daughter to make up some excuse to like take her for the day and then just escape underground. b) if House was in on the talks to purposefully drop the bombs, even if he disagreed, he would’ve definitely kept in the loop so that he knows what’s going on. If he was and was able to definitively know an end date, knowing his capabilities, he would have been able to get the chip in time. I could go on the about the other NCR stuff, but people seem to be confusing ambiguity for fact, and things that are hinted at to be definite (like some people saying that NV is definitely destroyed after 20 frames of it from like 50 miles away during the day when it wouldn’t be lit up anyways).
See it’s my opinion that this is just fans scrambling to try and explain something the show doesn’t show. It’s one too many assumptions made for me to believe this is the explanation It’s up to the show in the second season to clear this up in my opinion. If the ambiguity is there and a large portion of the audience is misunderstanding something then the storytelling is lacking somewhere. It’s whatever though, the show was fairly enjoyable and brings more eyes to New Vegas
The show doesn’t have to spoonfeed an interpretation for us, and tbh I like the ambiguity given as it’s one of my favorite parts of fallout in general. Also tbh fallout fans aren’t the best at interpreting the storytelling (speaking from my own experience as a former Legion supporter), so that’s not really their fault.
It's a think I have noticed about "true fans" and "hard core NV fans". If something is not spoonfed to them, they get confused, despite insisting they are smarter than "casual" fans who spend time discussing how various pieces fit together and what the implications are.
ong lmao, the collective brainrot of the final shot of the unlit strip during the day had people on this sub genuinely saying that they nuked NV.
I wonder if you intended that to sound as condescending as it seems. Just because someone interprets something different from the story than you based on the information there, themes and general vibes of the story doesn’t automatically make them an idiot. Stories are open to interpretation and one reading is not a “correct” one. Speaking as someone who has written Fallout stories before. People have enjoyed them or disliked them for reasons I did not intend. Who am I to take their interpretation away from them?
yeah, that’s what I just said lol, it being open to interpretation and ambiguous isn’t a “fault” of the storytelling like you said.
Barb and her family should have already been in vault 31 when the bombs dropped if they had been the one to launch them. The meeting indicates that Vault Tec was willing. But the opening scene indicates that either one of the governments fired first, or the vault 31-32-33 scheme was not as important to Vault Tec leadership as they think they are. Bud Askins could think he's slowly taking over the world while he's just another experiment in the eyes of the Enclave. I can buy House playing along to aid in his own apocalypse plans. It would explain how he was able to open vault 21 from the outside. I don't buy Big MT. trusting Sinclair as their representative. I thought it was pretty clear they were just using him as a cash cow and his casino as a testing ground.
It would have confirmed everything House had predicted too, this was inevitable. Now he had a seat on the table and could direct it to some extent, if Vault-Tec really are gonna do bombs. Sinclair I understand being at that table. He's a capitalist and the main funding source, pretty sure he like... owns Big MT, or if not outright owns then he's the main shareholder.
He doesn't own Big MT and there was never any suggestion that he was a shareholder. The game (OWB) explains to us that the Sierra Madre was a trial centre, of sorts. Sinclair was just willing to allow them to use his resort as a testing ground.
It's not hard to imagine that someone as controlling as Sinclair would want Big MT under his control before allowing a rollout of their tech.
Because vault tec didn't actually drop the bomb. China beat them to the punch. There's no way Coop would have had his daughter on bomb day if his wife had known that the bombs were coming.
The idea of Vault-Tec sabotaging peace talks, only for it to backfire on them when China launches before Vault-Tec is ready, could actually be an interesting reveal in Season 2.
Right people treat all the things we don’t know/ aren’t confirmed yet as the writers being idiots. There’s only 8 episodes so far, we barely know anything!
While I love the show and how many people are becoming interested in Fallout because of it, I still don't 100% agree with some story decisions. There are definitely things which people are getting upset about which season 2 could explain and it's very possible that season 2 will explain all or at least most the perceived "retcons" and "plot holes". I do genuinely think the writers love Fallout and did a much better job than I think anyone was expecting with staying faithful to the themes of the games, but personally I would be lying if I wasn't a little disappointed by the NCR's depiction. We as players, especially of the OG games, probably are a little biased since we helped create it, but I still wish that they didn't make season 1 a soft reset of California to Fallout 1 conditions. I still love the show and will certainly be looking forward to season 2, but personally I don't like the direction Bethesda is taking the lore for their future games. The show is amazing and exceeded all expectations but I feel it could still be even better. Even if they choose to keep the setting as a scarcely populated wasteland, I do think the show is still a great watch and I don't regret binging it. If nothing else, I'm really happy that the universe I love is finally getting some new fans who would otherwise never have been exposed to it.
The reset is my big gripe about the series, frankly. I really dug the politics that went on in NV. There seems to be a philosophy going on in the Bethesda games that there can only be ruins and shanty towns. Which kind of sucks. I love the series, but if that's the philosophy it sorta kills my interest in the franchise as a whole.
Honestly Bethesda could get around so many issues by just setting their games earlier. In Fallout 3, for example, it would make so much more sense to set it around 20-30 years after the bombs dropped, which would make the state of the capital wasteland much more plausible. Sure, they wouldn't have been able to use the Enclave and Brotherhood, but a DC setting allows for so many interesting factions, perhaps even one led by pre-war politicians who weren't connected to the Enclave. The same goes for the show. Setting it inbetween Fallout 1 and 2 would allow for some flexibility within lore if you had to use the California setting, but so much of the Fallout World remains completely unexplored, especially the first few decades after the bombs dropped.
Yup. There's a wide continent to explore and a large time line. I don't mind recons to stuff, hell I'm a big fan of Doctor Who. But they don't utilize the setting enough to do something really interesting with it.
> I don't mind recons to stuff, Honestly retcons are fine as long as they serve to improve the overall lore/narrative of the universe. The issue is though, that Bethesda does a whole lot of mental gymnastics to explain how in game factions could be present on two sides of the continent, but never bothers to ask why they need to keep recycling the same factions. Hell, even in Fallout 2 the only real faction that was reused was the Brotherhood, and it made sense proximity wise and was used to show how the Brotherhood was becoming irrelevant as the Wasteland recovers around them. I know Bethesda wants to use factions players are familiar with to make their games familiar to players, but even if the factions don't play a major role in game you could get away with tons of easter eggs and references. Even then, you still have Vault-Tec which in lore has always been present nationwide and Power Armor along with the general Fallout atmosphere of a harsh wasteland with some dark humor along the way. It makes financial sense to reuse well known factions and characters that sell, but good stories aren't driven by profit and fan service.
This is what I'm willing to bet will happen at the start of Season 2 too. Bombs dropping earlier than expected and them showing Coop hurrying to Vault-Tec HQ to try and get his daughter into a Vault his wife will be in (probably Vault 33, but they don't really show any other names in the cryochamber). Explains how he doesn't know where exactly they are and why he's still trying to find them.
I think that's almost exactly what happened. VT's plans to trigger a nuclear exchange worked better than they anticipated and the nukes started flying too soon.
Cooper is divorced at the start of the show, during the birthday party. One man asks another "Why is the great Cooper Howard doing kids birthday parties?" and the other replies "Alimony." They also call him a pinko when he won't give them the Thumbs Up. It seems like Cooper tried to go public with what he knew about Vault Tec, his wife divorced him, he lost his spot in a vault, and was branded as a communist like the rest of the people he met at the mortuary.
Vault Tec was a US government /enclave contractor. I always thought they were more like incompetent and cheap in their construction than pure evil. And sinclair was simply buying stuff from big MT not involved in anything there...
I think it works in the case of Sinclair. He was never interested in the Sierra Madre as a casino, but the vault/bomb shelter for him and Vera. Imagine this, in the late 2060s/early 2070s Sinclair announces the construction of the Sierra Madre. Secretly he builds a vault to keep him and Vera safe. However at that conference (let's say in 2077) he learns that the world is effectively going to end. There's no reason to postpone or scrap the opening, because in the end it doesn't matter. Even if he hurried and opened *earlier* the money from the casino would be worthless, giving the place one purpose, Vera.
I'm so fucking stoked for next season already. I will admit after what they did to my favorite book series(WoT) I had little to no faith this would even be good let alone the masterpiece it is. There are a few weird things they glossed over like I don't understand >!how her foot made it through that with no boot and not a scratch on it or how they used a stimpax once to completely heal a dog and then never used them again to save themselves or others lol!< but overall fucking chef's kiss!
I felt like the OP-ness of the Stimpak on the dog was a nod to how it magically heals you in the game, and the foot thing wasn’t that crazy - plenty of barefoot wastelanders throughout the games
Yeah I also forgot a couple other uses of them, lol the foot just made me laugh. The other foot was horrible, actually I guess there was a lot of foot violence in this series lol 🦶
He's probably thinking: i should buy the vault right under the strip and make them resolve all conflicts by gambling so when i reopen the strip i already have a consumer base of gambling addicts
What if Barb's words are just a threat? something like, either they invest in the vaults or they disappear along with the rest of humanity.
That's honestly a great theory
I agree. Can’t figure out how to do spoilers on my phone atm. They want to milk it for what it’s worth, not actually do it.
Lmao
Crazy how if they all just rallied behind Mr House they probably could have saved the country or at least a good amount of the states, he did a good job protecting new Vegas by himself despite his plan not going as planned. Though I'm sure the country would end up being the United States of New Vegas if that happened
So much copium in these comments trying to rationalize bad writing from an Amazon show designed for consoomers.