The Full Story of Vault 81 - What Really Went On Here? - Fallout 4 Lore

vault 81 lies west of Diamond City unlike all other vaults in the game this one still has an active population as if it had been used how people thought vaults were supposed to be used for the past 200 years after a rough reception from security chief scott edwards the overseer of the vault gwen mcnamara allows you into vault 81 in exchange for three fusion cores once inside you find Gwen talking with Kelvin who is in charge of repairs to vault 81 we learned that vault 81 has some shaky bones it's 200 years old and there are bits and pieces falling apart everyone in the vault is working hard to make sure that vault 81 doesn't crumble around them as you explore vault 81 you discover a cheery cast of characters Austin is the first person you meet when you enter the atrium he offers to take you on a tour of the vault if you give him a little bit of cash his adoptive mother Priscilla is a botanist in the vaults hydroponic garden she's working on making a radiation free food and she's happy to use you as a guinea pig she also buys fertilizer from you for 25 caps each Maria and marks Somerset run the local restaurant Maria is a grandmotherly figure and mark her husband is a laid-back old fellow we learn from terminals that Mark has suffered from pneumonia in the past so he might not be long for this world Alexa's and Holt combs run the general store and they have a little girl named Erin holt is not a very good husband or father he doesn't help his wife run the general store and he leaves for some unexplained reason for the majority of the day because Holt is such a bad husband if you have high charisma you can actually convince his wife Alexis to leave him but if you don't have high charisma then she keeps her marital problems to herself she has a pretty decent inventory she consultants of rarer items including ballistic weave fiber optics and nuclear material and she also sells the unique legendary combat rifle overseers Guardian which shoots an additional projectile like a two-shot legendary item is an amazing gun to have if you equip an automatic receiver and if you spec into commando Horatio is the barber he was not born in vault 81 he actually moved into the vault around ten years ago don't forget to pick up the tattoos magazine in Horatio's barbershop which opens up some additional face tattoos there's the overseer Gwen she's a capable overseer but the stress of the job is getting to her in addition to trying to keep the vault from falling apart around her she's having a hard time kicking many of her vault dwellers from xenophobia the previous overseer only opened the vault door to the Commonwealth ten years ago many of the vault dwellers don't like it when Outsiders arrive as you walk around people comment about how you really shouldn't be there especially if you wear power armor Gwen is trying to do things about that which is why she allowed you into the vault to begin with she's hoping that you can set a good example and convince people that it's worth working with people from the Commonwealth this is important to her because trading with members of the Commonwealth is a necessity for the survival of vault 81 it's only through trading with Commonwealth traders who come through that vault 81 games access to rarer forms of food like actual meat she has an entire entry about steak that's fun to read the resident doctor is Jacob Forsythe and his assistant Rachel upon meeting you and discovering that you had been a vault dweller yourself he requests a sample of your blood for testing purposes the residents of vault 81 have been breeding with each other for 200 years and he's concerned with the lack of genetic diversity within the residence there's Miranda a scientist who greets you at the entrance she's extremely hostile towards you if you have high enough charisma you can learn her story apparently she formed a relationship with a female traveler who promised to take her all over the Commonwealth Miranda gave the woman all of her money said that the two of them could set up a home together but after the traveler left with all of her cash she never came back it wasn't until months later that Miranda learned from a passing traveler that her companion was seemed together with a man in Diamond City since then she has treated all wasteland visitors to vault 81 with animosity there's Neal a nice young fellow who dreams of visiting the Commonwealth and twin brother and sister Bobbie and Deluca along with their robot old rusty Bobby De Luca is in charge of maintaining the reactor the problem is that he's a chem addict he's addicted to jet tena De Luca his sister feels a lot of guilt because she was the one who introduced him to the drug and got him addicted everyone in the vault despises Bobby because Bobby just gets high on jet and when he doesn't have jet he gets drunk he programmed their robot old rusty to do all of his chores for him so he pretty much just lounges around all day additionally there's a rumor going around that Tina De Luca is having an affair with cult homes this may explain why he leaves his wife's shop for great portions of the day indeed after 10 o'clock p.m. you can find Holt and Tina together alone in one of the back rooms of the vault there's Katy the schoolteacher when you talk with her she tells you that she would love it if you would give a presentation to her classroom and tell them a little bit about what it's like to live in the Commonwealth if you do you're rewarded with grognak the barbarian issue number five it's important that you do this quest as early as possible because it is possible that you could lock yourself out of ever getting this magazine based on your choices in vault 81 so the first thing that we notice is that this vault is really weird because it's so normal we have old folks young families merchants adultery addiction children and animals it's a normal functioning little community that is very weird for vault-tec every single vault in the game has some horrible tragic story cryo pods freezing people testing children until they turn 18 and then executing them experimenting on people with exercise machines mind-altering eye exams and drugged beverages until they die what's going on with vault 81 why is this place so normal well if you go to the reactor room where Tina and Bobby are working you find a little guard post tucked away underneath the stairs inside the guard station you find the old overseers terminal it is rich with log entries from before the bomb dropped we learned that the first overseer of vault 81 was dr. Olivet she was actually vault techs second choice for overseer their first choice got sick she's a little apprehensive about working with vault Tec due to their reputation but she goes along with it to see how it turns out until at last she finally finds out the purpose of the vault she learns that vault 81 exists to experiment on humans normally she would expose them but she also learns that vault Tec has some serious backers from the government so she doesn't feel comfortable blowing the whistle on this indeed if you go back and check out the prime directive terminal entry we learned that there are three stages to the experiment taking place at vault 81 Stage one is to culture viruses in petri dishes Stage two is to expose lab animals to those viruses and stage three is to expose the vault residents to those viruses the goal of this experiment is to allow the scientists who are working undercover to develop a panacea a cure for every virus and disease that has ever existed and will ever exist to do so they have to experiment on the vault residents we learn that vault tech has installed nozzles in each room of the vault when it's time for Stage three the scientists working in seclusion will expose the residents of this vault to all of the horrible viruses that they've been culturing within the lab animals they are perfectly prepared for some of the residents to die but the terminal entries make clear that the overseer should limit the exposure so that vault 81 always has breeding stock so that a new generation of vault dwellers can be reared up to be experimented on what's really disturbing is how they plan to deal with the residents of vault 81 if there's ever an emergency and the vault needs to be evacuated each of those nozzles that sprays down a citizen within viruses and infects them also works as an incendiary device the official evacuation protocol is to seal each person in their room and incinerate them to avoid them contaminating the outside populace this is the horror that dr. Olivet discovered she says I feel trapped I don't know what to do but she finally comes up at the plan the day of the bombs drop she's summoned default 81 and she's instructed by vault-tec incorporated to contact all of the vault dwellers who will live in vault 81 as well as all of the scientists who will be experimenting on them all Yvette's plan is to simply not contact any of the scientists if no scientists show up then the vault dwellers can't be experimented on the plan works really well except that three scientists show up even though she didn't summon them Jim Flint and Kenneth Collins showed up because they lived near to the vault and they had time to get there along with the general population the third scientist burrow was young and ambitious and as an overachiever he just showed up to see if there was going to be a drill the good news for all of that is that as the overseer she is the one responsible for deciding when the scientists move from stage to stage remember that stages one is only developing the viruses in Petri dishes in stage 2 is only experimenting on lab animals it's only stage 3 where they begin to expose the residents of vault 81 to the viruses and diseases that they are developing all of that makes a tough decision she sabotaged all of the delivery nozzles in each and every room of the vault making them inoperable and then she locks the three scientists away in the scientific portion of the vault where they will live for the remainder of their lives until they die it's a tough choice for the first oversee or a vault 81 to make but it's the only solution she could come up with that keeps the residents alive we find what appear to be instant messages between all Evette the overseer and the three scientists in the sealed off lab portion of the vault apparently this I am system was the scientists only way to communicate with the overseer we learned that the scientists start to get a little suspicious of Olivette almost immediately when only three of the scientists show up we learned that the lab animals that they inject with these diseases during stage 2 are actually an already highly modified version of mole rat one of the scientists dr. Collins says that he thinks vault-tec must have been running some experiments on them unusually large they demonstrate bioluminescence and some appear to be more intelligent than normal burrow one of the scientists was one of the first to discover that all event had tampered with the delivery mechanisms he was going to expose the residents to some sort of placebo and that's how he figured out that they had been tampered with and at the very end we see where all of it completely cuts them off dr. Collins tries to get in touch with the overseer doctor please get in touch he says that he honestly doesn't blame her he recognizes that performing experiments on non-consenting humans is a breach of ethics but he also recognizes that this is not the same world that they used to live in he ends by saying I never thought that you'd actually leave men for dead please Olivette reconsider this so whatever happened to the three scientists dr. Flint dr. Collins and dr. burrow and where is this hidden laboratory you don't stumble upon it anywhere in the vault well to access this part of the vault first you need to go to dr. Forsythe and agree to have him take your blood that's a hidden requirement to proceed any further with this quest next give a presentation to the schoolchildren in Katie's classroom just so that you can make sure to get the grognak the barbarian magazine get that out of the way for now and then talk to young Aaron combs she lost her cat and she needs you to find it her cat is easy to find leave the vault walk around the lake and you'll find the cat sitting on the dock tell the cat to go home because apparently in this world cats actually follow directions and then follow the cat back to vault 81 when you get back we learn that young Austin the adopted son of dr. Penske was bitten by a mole rat apparently this mole rat was infected with some strange disease that dr. Forsyth had never seen before in comes Bobby DeLuca and he explains that he found a hidden door in the reactor room where he had been storing all of his Ken's young Austin saw him stashing his Kim's in that door and that is where he must have gone to get bitten by the mole rat when you follow Bobby down to the reactor he opens up a secret passage in the side of the wall this allows you access to the hidden taury of vault 81 the hidden laboratory is an absolute ruin there is dirt and broken equipment everywhere X 688 remarks that it looks like vault-tec had intended this to be an expansion of the vault which they never got around to finishing as you wander around the ruin you will come across pre-war robots and turrets that you have to defeat as well as exceptionally strong mole-rats called vault 81 mole rats now be careful around these mole rats because if you allow them to bite you you have a chance of getting a unique disease called the vault 81 mole rat disease this reduces your HP by 10 and none of your kim's or medication can cure you later on you are presented with a moral choice that forces you to choose between curing somebody else or getting stuck with this disease forever so your best bet is just to not get the disease at all kill the mole rats before they can sink their teeth into you and save often along the way you find observation windows where the scientists would observe the residents of the vault from here you can overhear conversations currently going on inside the vault don't you think about anyone other than yourself your daughter could get sick like Austin and your whining about spending time with your family I have things to do we don't have to hide away in here you're so busy halt you have so much to do please explain I really want to get kill at length you'll find yourself in an atrium at the top of the atrium at the end of the balcony you find a terminal with a hollow tape that contains a key next to the key we find a communications terminal this is the terminal that the scientists used to instant message the overseer now that you have the key go back around to the locked door where we find a mrs. nanny robot on the other side of a window she claims to have a cure that can cure young Austin but before she'll give it to you she wants you to give her permission to leave the vault she assumes that your evolved tech employee what's really funny about this is even if you explicitly say that you are not from vaulteq and you do not give her permission she says and she lets you in anyway however the problem is that she only has one sample of the Cure remaining she explains that the rest have all expired don't forget to pick up the medicine bobblehead in Curie's laboratory inside the terminal we learn a little bit more about the motivations behind the experiments that went on here at vault 81 the entire purpose was to develop some sort of vaccine used to wipe out every single disease that the human race has ever experienced vault-tec provided the scientists here at vault 81 with a robot called the contagions vulnerability robotic infirmary engineer also known as curie they've provided the scientists with centuries worth of biological and chemical supplies they included the genetically adapted mole rats and most important they have vault full of test subjects they hope that over many generations the scientists here will develop a disease resistant group of humans maybe this is a worthy goal but their methods are truly barbaric we learn more into the mindset behind vault-tec with this line in paragraph 3 as with all great progress the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few that phrase is actually a direct quote from Spock in the 1982 movie the Wrath of Khan it's funny that vault-tec here would be directly quoting [ __ ] but the ideology is certainly not unique to Star Trek the basic concept originated with a philosophy known as utilitarianism most notably perpetuated by Jeremy Bentham who said that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong I personally disagree with that world philosophy because there are a whole lot of horrible things that make a whole lot of people very happy in the back of the room we find another terminal named Curie's terminal on that terminal we learn a little bit more about curie and where she came from curie is the result of one of the scientists who was trapped in that wing of the vault named Kenneth Collins when it became clear to Collins that he was gonna spend the rest of his life in that vault he started to tinker with Curie to pass the time he hopes that Curie will be able to speed up their lab work over time he begins to tweak her personality a little bit he molds her personality partially after a woman named Lisa whom we assume is his wife he mentions that he hopes that she got into a vault in DC and a little bit after a grad school fling of his whom he met back when he was in Versailles in 2046 he also programmed her to have a full understanding of a variety of philosophers and scientists including Mary Carey who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win it twice she's notable for doing pioneering research into radioactivity Kenneth's name's the robot Curie after Marie Curie which can coincidentally or perhaps intentionally be used to abbreviate contagions vulnerability robotic infirmary engineer which is her official name over time he starts to develop a human attachment to Curie and insists that the other scientists treat her like a human even though she's a robot her feminine presence in the lab in his words makes the scientists feel a bit more grounded ultimately Collins gets to the point where he no longer feels right tweaking Curie's personality because in his words he says that her personality fuels as genuine as his own he says that it's moving to see her struggle with very human concepts like mortality his greatest wish is that one day Curie would be able to explore the world outside of the vault to see the blue sky that she only knows about his songs I think it's really touching that Colin's saying to Curie to pass the time but eventually as time wore on the scientists began to die out the first one to die was Flint the second one to die was burro and finally Collins himself succumbed to old age and died according to his wishes Curie cremated him and placed him in a jar in fact outside of the office we find three lockers lying on the ground decorated with candles and flowers two of them are filled with complete skeletons and one is filled only with a jar now that you have the cure you have to make a tough choice when you exit the secret lab and return to vault 81 go back to dr. Forsythe and you find Austin lying on a bed not moving you have two choices you can give the cure to Austin or you can keep it for yourself this is why earlier I recommended that you not get bitten by the mole rats because if you do you have to make this very tough moral decision but if you don't then it's not that big of a deal you can just give it to Austin if you do give it to Austin you're stuck with the mole rat disease forever there is no cure for it but if you don't Austin dies you're going to sell it aren't you bastard are you really willing to let Austin die just to earn a few caps he can die for all I care in this world no wonder we don't let me Commonwealth people into the vault you are a cold selfish bastard get out of my sight this is one of the few moments in fallout 4 where we actually witness the death of a child you find his corpse lying in exactly the same position where he was on his sickbed as you walk around the vaults all of the vault members have new dialogue options and they're all pretty upset with you I've seen a lot of selfish acts in my day but yours will be one to remember Austin was a child he had a full life ahead of him while yours would have been just as long infected or not I trust you can see yourself out here should be ashamed of yourself letting a kid die like that I can't remember ever losing a child in 81 it's gonna take a long while for folks to move on after this one lots of buzz going around on your involvement Austin's death but I I ain't want to judge first you murder my boy then you want to talk I don't think so why couldn't you have saved him damn that papi DeLuca between you and him I don't know who to blame more I heard you let that boy die I don't see how any of you sleep at night your decision cost the boy his life I hope you can live with that so think I actually wanted you to speak to my class you didn't just let Austin die you killed that poor boy what kind of person chooses to let a child die please leave me alone I don't even want to see you right now this is why I recommended giving the talk before Kate's classroom earlier in the game rather than later because if you waited until now and if you let Austin die Kate refuses to talk with you which locks you out of the grognak comic forever the residents also set up a memorial shrine for young Austin in his classroom comprised of flowers and would appear to be his favorite toys there's no benefit to choosing this option the only reason to do so would be mainly for role-playing reasons the alternative to give the cure to Austin gets you a lot of really cool rewards not only is Austin saved but Gwen gives you a unique player home in vault 81 this is one of only four player homes in the entire game one of course is home plate which you have to buy for over 2,000 caps in diamond city the other you only get for siding with the Brotherhood of Steel and the other you only get for siding with the Institute this player home does not have a workshop so you can't add workstations or decorate it in any way but it does have a bed and a bobblehead stand incidentally Eleonora has made a wonderful mod that transforms this player home into a fully functioning player home with all the amenities that you actually need to play the game I link to it in the description of this video and it is available on the Xbox one and PC and you're also gifted as syringe a rifle from dr. Forsythe you can find these elsewhere in the game but pretty rare honestly they're not really useful in my opinion I find them to be cumbersome and tedious to use with no real appreciable benefit in combat but it is a rare item additionally many of the items in vault 81 that were previously set to owned have that tag removed meaning that you can loot the items without the entire vault turning against you this is only true on some floors of the vault you still get in trouble if you take things from private bedrooms Kure now becomes available as a companion if you allow her to travel with you you fulfill the dying wish of doctor Collins that kiri would someday be able to explore the Commonwealth and see the blue of the sky if you decide that now is not the time she'll be waiting for you here at vault 81 there's a whole lot more to deal with Curie but that's a longer video for another day so I'll leave her story at that before you leave make sure you go back to the reactor there you find Tina DeLuca who talks too a little bit about her brother I need someone to get him off the jet ever since all that drama he's doesn't leave us room high all the time Rachel said if he doesn't get hurt good not here like what Austin you have two choices if you go to Bobby you can either instigate him to fight with you in which case you kill him or you can actually give him jet to feed his addiction if you do give him jet when you leave the vault and come back you find him lying dead on the floor this causes you to fail the quest and at least in my game tena De Luca refused to speak with me anymore or if you have high charisma or if you have enough Kim's with you to get your charisma high enough you can pass a few speech checks that encouraged him to go seek help for his addictions if you succeed and you send him to Rachel to cure his addiction you can then go back to Tina De Luca and recruit her as a settler at one of your settlements it's a red speak check it is not easy but it is possible note that this entire exchange is highly bugged I managed to get it to work well in my gameplay but there are many people who complain that even though they did everything right they can't recruit Tina she never shows up at their settlement there are a variety of PC console commands you can use to force Tina to join your settlement as a settler if she glitches out but sadly these don't work on consoles there is no major benefit to recruiting Tina as a settler she does have unique inventory if you make her a merchant in one of your settlements there are also some good lore reasons for recruiting Tina Deluca number one it removes her from vault 81 so that she no longer has an affair with Holt combs this could potentially lead to holt going back to his wife and their relationship healing and number two Tina is constantly complaining about spending time in the vault and this way she does at least get to explore the world and that my friends is the full story - vault 81 there are a lot of moving parts at this vault but it was fun to go through the entire thing again and organize it into this short story what are your thoughts on this location in this series of side quests what decision did you make did you give the cure to young Austin or did you keep it for yourself do you like the fact that Bethesda is making you choose between being stuck permanently with the disease or saving some NPC is the unique player home at vault 88 worth it to you what about Tina DeLuca and her brother Bobby is that a compelling storyline what decision did you make and is having Tina as a settler at one of your settlements worth it let me know in the comments below I read all of the comments you guys leave on my videos and I use your comments as inspiration for future videos I release a new video every single day of the week so please subscribe to see what I come out with tomorrow and if you liked this video and you'd like to support me in a more personal way consider becoming one of my patrons on patreon patreon subscribers gain access to my private discord server as well as a bunch of other cool oxhorn perks but as always more than anything ladies and gentlemen I'm just so glad that you're here watching this video today thank you so much for watching and I'll see you tomorrow morning bright and early with a brand new video

Channel: Oxhorn

Views: 1,016,969

Rating: 4.9163027 out of 5

Keywords: oxhorn, fallout 4, vault 81, alexis combes, ashes, austin engill, bobby de luca, tina de luca, curie, forsythe, horatio, penske, erin, scott edwards, gwen mcnamara, holt combes, katy, hole in the wall, dependency, short stories, here kitty kitty

Id: QSSpAIq9w64

Length: 27min 50sec (1670 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 09 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Wasn't this uploaded like, last year?