Fallout 4 has been released in November 2015. Since then, we have gradually been fed with new content. Their DLC program has been a bumpy ride, with the main focus on Workshop items. With Vault-Tec, we have finally arrived at the last Workshop DLC, which also seems to be the most exciting one. After all, vaults in Fallout always have been something rather unique, and now we get to build our own!
But, first things first, it’s time to listen to the radio. Unlike previous workshop DLC’s, this one requires a bit more digging around before you get access to the underlying sweetness. After receiving the usual radio message, you have to travel to the construction site, kill some lovely locals and use your Pip-Boy to enter Vault 88. Upon entering, you come in contact with the Vault’s overseer Barstow. She has been trapped inside the vault for centuries and needs your help to clear the rubble.
This is a point where I found that Bethesda should have made a lot more effort. Barstow has been trapped inside the Vault, unable to free her despite all the machinery being there in the same room. Yet, you manage to clear ever single pile of rubble with your bare hands. I found it such a missed opportunity to make the building/clearing part of Fallout 4 a lot more interesting. Especially since after the talk with Barstow, you have to clear the initial vault of all kind of rubble. Read: run around, press the same old combination of buttons until everything is gone.
Vault 88
But while you are running around like a lunatic, you get a glimpse in the building process of the vaults. There are trains abandoned on their tracks, heavy machinery rusting away and partly build vaults. There is even a train station in full decay.
You’ll see water towers, construction material and other stuff lying around, as if someone left it there in a hurry. All this really feels like a vault in full progress of being build, when the bombs fell and stopped everything.
Anyway, enough of that, because now that you have cleared the vault, it’s time to build! And ooh boy, the space that you get, is amazing! You get the feeling that this is where a vault should be. The first room is a gigantic open cave, with 3 additional wings waiting to be filled with more rooms. I strongly suggest to use a mod to remove that idiotic build limit to fully enable the space in Vault 88! You’ll have to be creative thou, because there are some corners and obstacles that will hinder in your building progress.
Let’s Build with LEGO
After all, this is a workshop DLC. That means that it’s finally time to start building, again. I’ve always had a love-hate relation with the building aspect of Fallout 4. It’s like using a cat and a laser pointer to turn off the lights. It’s doable, but you need a lot of patience, try-and-error and a lot of do-over’s. And in the end, you wonder if there isn’t a better way of solving that problem. In Fallout 4, there are way too many restrictions and limitations, making the building unnecessary frustrating. The first person view, the small range, the endless switching between different categories, it all adds to a nagging frustration that seemed avoidable.
The new vault items are a bit like Lego, but without the easy way to build. They should snap together much more easy, but I’ve often torn everything down again because a door didn’t want to snap on the adjacent walls, or a walkway doesn’t want to connect at all. And I couldn’t figure out why, so I had to redo everything. It’s probably because I didn’t fully understood how vaults are build, but this is a game for crying out loud. You should be able to creating something in your mind and actually build it as imagined, without the need of an engineer’s degree.
And yes, this is avoidable with mods, but these new vault items are built to be modular. They are if you want some basic structures. But when your imaging runs wild, you smack head first against the limitations. And for a game that is supposed to be relaxing, it does the opposite.
The Vault-Tec building props
The variety of the new vault structures is quite amazing. You can make all kinds of authentic vault rooms, going for the big, open entrances to a small dining room with adjacent kitchen and tiny rooms. You can make an overseers desk, storage rooms and rooms designed for the experiments. However, I would have like a bit more colour variants. The Vault-Tec DLC also includes a full collection of clean furniture. Your new settlement won’t be filled with broken chairs, dirty beds and stained sofas. Everything looks new, making it feel authentic to your vault. Your new kitchen will have clean furniture instead of that kind that makes the health inspection going haywire, with some motivational posters on the walls and a Vault-Boy at the entrance!
Another new feature is that the vault walls don’t need power conduits everywhere. Connect a wall to the new high-end reactor, and you can provide power to everything within its reach. That means 2 things: no more fiddling around with cables and power conduits, and a compacter Vault since you won’t need the extra space outside for the wires.
The Vault Population Management Terminal is by a far a much-needed addition. This terminal allows you to manage your population for a terminal. No more running around, talking to settlers to find out what they are doing. This, you all can do from the terminal. You can even find your companions through this. Yes, I know this comes from a mod, but it nice that Bethesda has included it.
Questing? Adventure?
But what if you don’t like the building in Fallout 4? Should you buy the Vault-Tec DLC for the quests? Sadly, no. They are centred around conduction experiments on your unknowing vault members in the same way that Vault-Tec always has done. Which itself is kind of weird, because you are a survivor of such a twisted vault experiment. Surely you don’t want to force such harsh experience on someone you have just met and promised shelter? But you kinda have to, because refusing to do so, stops the DLC instantly. It feels like another missed opportunity.
Even the experiments feel a bit lacking. There are 3 of them: something with a bike, something with coffee and something with a slot machine. They aren’t memorable as you can notice. There are just too few of them, with nothing special about them. I mean, we are talking about a company that tried to freeze people as an experiment. And we are stuck with a bike that generates power? The overall quality of the quests in Vault-Tec is low. You get to hold screenings and interviews for new Vault Dwellers, but that is limited to the first 3. Everyone after just pops up like the settlements above ground. You have to perform 3 experiments, but just when you think the exciting stuff is about to happen, the DLC comes to an end. It’s clear that this is a workshop DLC, and that’s sad, because the potential is there.
Conclusion
If you are a fan of Fallout 4’s building part, you will love this DLC. Give it some time for modders to work out the annoyance and add a bit more colour variety and you will get several days of joy out of it. But ignore this DLC if you are looking for quests or adventures, because they are just lacking here.
6/10
