Today’s finally the day, Fallout season 2 episode one is upon us, and it by no means eases us into the action. Following Lucy and The Ghouls’ journey to find her father and his family, the duo stumbles across tons of iconic Wasteland locations like New Vegas, a fan favourite Fallout 4 spot, Dinky the T. Rex, and one of the most mysterious cut locations from Fallout: New Vegas. I’m of course talking about Vault 24.
Over the course of Fallout’s life, there have been many iconic Vaults mentioned and featured in games. Many were the childhood homes of our protagonists and player characters—like Lucy’s own Vault 33, or Vault 13 from the OG Fallout. But the vaults run the gamut from capsules of Americana to harrowing psychological experiments. Here are just some of the more interesting examples:
- Vault 4 (TV Show): In season 1, we saw Lucy and Maximus explore Vault 4, the previous home of a group of scientists who experimented with mutants and Wastelanders.
- Vault 11 (New Vegas): A social experiment took place to see how willing people would be to sacrifice others for the safety of the majority.
- Vault 15 (Fallout/ Fallout 2): People from diverse ethnic backgrounds were forced to live together. A Schism would later form raider gangs, Khans, Jackals, and Vipers, with the remaining population creating Shady Sands.
- Vault 21 (New Vegas): A social experiment to study the effects of gambling, Robert House would later win ownership of the vault in 2274 in a game of blackjack.
- Vault 63 (Fallout 76): A personal project of Vault-Tec board member Hugo Stolz, a facility to develop technologies that would be useful in establishing a post-bomb society.
- Vault 77 (Fallout 3): A single man was locked inside with only puppets.
- Vault 87 (Fallout 3): Researching the effects of Forced Evolutionary Virus on humans, which would later transform inhabitants into super mutants.
But Vault 24 always interested me, primarily because we never got to see it in the flesh in any of the games. The only reason we know of its existence and that it was meant to be in New Vegas was because you could find a Vault 24 jumpsuit in the game files, which could only be accessed via console commands. Needless to say that it was a mystery that I had come to terms with never being solved.
But good things do come to those who wait, because the first episode of Fallout season 2 not only addresses Vault 24 but tells us exactly what was going on inside it.
As Lucy follows her father’s bloody trail, she and The Ghoul stumble upon the seemingly abandoned Vault 24. It’s the first vault Lucy’s seen derelict and abandoned like this, so she’s more than a little shaken up when she wanders in and sees the walls covered in rust and ivy, but there’s more to find deeper in the vault.
While exploring further, the Ghoul picks up a communist commander hat, shedding some light on what was going on in Vault 24. But you’d be mistaken if the big twist was that it was just a vault inhabited by communists; in fact, the real doozy comes later when Lucy and the Ghoul find two skeletons dressed in pseudo-Soviet gear strapped to a seat forced to watch a communist brainwashing propaganda video.
On further inspection, there are multiple skeletons strapped down, and Lucy realises that “these are Americans, and the Vault turned them into communists.” But who would do this and why? Well, that too is answered, but this time in a pretty gruesome way.
There’s a reason why Hank MacClean ventured into Vault 24, and it was to collect its primary research: the mind control chip that we first saw Robert House use at the start of the episode. I guess he had a hand in the experiments of Vault 24—or intended to use its findings for his own ends.
We see the tech in action as some poor Wastelander who’s strapped to a chair with the chip embedded in the back of his head utters: “Well, hello there Sugar Bomb. I fix everything, go home, Sugar Bomb” repeating Hank’s words of warning to his daughter before the victim’s head explodes—presumably in response to the chip not working properly.
It may seem small, but I have a feeling that these chips and the foundation of Robert House’s work will play a massive role in this season. This first episode and the previous season made a massive point of highlighting how important each faction views control. Different groups have different ways of achieving it, but in the end, all anybody wants is to control the chaos of the Wasteland.
