Well, that didn’t take long at all. Fans are already drumming up theories about what’s going on in Fallout 4. One fan theory even addresses what might actually be happening inside Vault 111.
If you haven’t seen the Fallout 4 trailer yet, you should probably go do that. If you’re still here, head past the break and we’ll take a look at that theory and see if it’s solid.
What Is Happening in Vault 111?
In regards to Vault 111 and the player character that we see in the trailer, there are a few questions that crop up. Why does the dog appear to be exploring the same home we see in the flashbacks? Why is his vault uniform relatively clean compared to the rest of the world?
Those two things are nothing compared to this next question, however. Why does the guy we see at the end of the trailer look a lot like the guy we see with the family in the flashbacks?
Perhaps, even more interesting is the fact that this guy looks a lot like the one from the leaked casting documents for the game, which released alongside a teaser site that was later proven to be a hoax (although the casting documents are real).
While the casting similarity seems to be a coincidence, the trailer comparison likely is not. It might actually be the same guy.
How could a man from way before the war, still be alive to explore the post-apocalyptic world? Assuming that the player character we see at the end of the trailer isn’t just random and was chosen for a specific reason, there does seem to be one solid explanation.
The answer, cryo-sleep or some form of it. Some fans believe that the specialty of Vault 111 is cryo-sleep, which would explain why the same man is still alive and maybe even why his vault suit is so clean. It would also explain why he visits the home later on with the dog, to search for traces of his past, maybe even his family.
Taking a look at the original lore, we know that technically the vaults weren’t created to keep people safe from nuclear fallout. Most of them were created as part of a government experiment to test how people would react to various conditions, and identify how they would conduct themselves after a major disaster.
You may remember a certain vault that contained only a single inhabitant, another that had psychoactive drugs pumped through the air filtration system or one where a person was cloned a lot — well over 50 times. My favorite was Vault 112, which involved virtual reality and coincidentally, cryogenics.
Obviously, cryogenics existed at the time the vaults were created so the theory is not a stretch, by any means.
The theory posits that Vault 111 somehow specializes in cryogenics and the main character wakes up later — which is when we’ll take control. The real question is then, why would the character suddenly wake up?
What Would Stop the System?
Like many of the other vaults in the Fallout universe, it’s entirely possible that Vault 111 would have gone undisturbed for a long time if not indefinitely. Why does the player character wake up? Did the cryogenics system fail or is there another reason?
Embedded in the HTML of the official site before the trailer went live, there was information about a malfunction or system failure. It’s possible that’s why Vault 111 opens and the PC wakes up. This is an area that could definitely use some more explanation though. I’d love to hear your theories on the matter.
Hopefully, we’ll find out a bit more about what’s going at E3.
