NPCs come in endless varieties in RPGs like Fallout 4. Some of them appear early, some appear late, and some appear throughout. The most surprising are the ones who seem like a one-off character but who have more to do. Even if their recurrence is small, it can serve to tie a narrative and a setting together. The Vault-Tec Rep is at best an annoyance for most players, perhaps with too many dialogue options to click through as they rush to complete the prologue. What does he represent? Why even talk about him? And how exactly does he even reappear? Let’s talk about this poor soul and his place in Fallout 4.
Vault-Tec Calling!
The Vault-Tec Rep is one of the first NPCs the player character will encounter. After meeting their spouse and talking to Codsworth, a doorbell heralds his arrival. At the front door, the representative is here to tell you about your family’s place in Vault 111, a safe bunker in case of a nuclear event. Repetitive dialogue about making sure your family is safe is actually leading to the final major step in character creation. The rep will let you pick your name and set your stats before you shut the door in his face. He seems relieved enough to have you sign his paperwork, and so goes about his day.
Doomed By the Narrative
Of course, Fallout 4’s rushed introduction sees the nuclear apocalypse coming a lot sooner than you might imagine. Thankfully, with their paperwork signed, the player and their family make it past the line to get into Vault 111. Unfortunately, blocked on his way in is the Vault-Tec Rep. Screaming about how he is a member of Vault-Tec himself, the army will not let him through. This is the first sign the players should have that the Vault-Tec corporation isn’t the friendliest around. They’re happy to leave their employees out to die in a nuclear event. What the company does next may or may not be surprising to players, but it is in line with a company that leaves this poor man to die.
A Surprising Reappearance
Once the player awakens in the future Commonwealth, their past seems entirely gone. However, players can get a surprise if they venture into Hotel Rexford in Goodneighbor. Spending his days there is the Vault-Tec Rep, transformed into a ghoul. The radiation of the nuclear event has turned him into a monstrous version of who he once was. The ghoulification has allowed him to live centuries, and he still remembers the player after all this time. Kindly folks can recruit him to head to one of their settlements, with Sanctuary being an obvious choice that nets you some special dialogue. He is a useful settler if you set him to man the Trading Emporium, being a rare level 4 merchant who sells unique goods.
Final Thoughts
The Vault-Tec Rep is an example of Fallout’s darkly comedic nature. It seems random which characters survive the nuclear apocalypse and which turn into ghouls, but the Vault-Tec Rep was chosen to make a point of the cruelty of the game’s universe. Left to die by the company he worked for, he has spent multiple human lifetimes watching the world slowly rebuild. It is quite silly that he wears his old getup hundreds of years later, and he has seemed to develop no new skills during his time in the wasteland. We aren’t even given the poor man’s real name at any point! This character could’ve easily disappeared, but Bethesda likes to keep us guessing and has made him a curiosity nonetheless.
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