Vault Tec Good Or Evil

[danconnors]

The impression has been made that Vault Tec was mainly an evil institution. But was it really? In Fallout 1 the vault was stuck with one water chip, while in Fallout 2 a vault was discovered with hundreds. Was this an evil act or simply bureaucratic bungling? In Fallout 3 a vault was locked shut forever. Was this act decided by Vault Tec or was it simply a power grab by the overseer of that vault to keep his family in power forever. In Fallout 4 vault 111 apparently is an evil act, and the gruesome experiments planned for the vault near Diamond City was also clearly an evil act.

However in Fallout 2 there is also a city formed around the remains of a vault that was successful in its operation of carrying forward a semblance of civilization. In addition the population of what was once the United States has grown to at least a few millions. Those millions must have been the descendants of successful vaults, since no one not protected from blast, heat, and radiation could have survived--other than as a ghoul. The number of vaults built was numbered in the triple digits, meaning at least hundreds must have been built.

So, it appears to me that on the whole Vault Tec was not evil, but was consumed with a desire to save as many people as possible from the coming nuclear annihilation. In every human endeavor there are always some evil people who creep into the ranks and work their own evil in secret. Knowing that the coming war would eliminate all chances of the discovery of their evil--and the punishment of it--these people were free to work in secret toward their baleful goals.

[danconnors]

Just went back and played some Fallout 3, and I realized in the Fallout universe there is NO difference between good and evil. I had turned into an "evil" character for mistakenly protecting my life from a BOS paladin who got ticked at me and started shooting me. After I killed him I went from being neutral to evil. Before I could get to the water plant in Megaton and give the water treatment guy some free scrap metal--to become neutral again--I was attacked by a band of the bad guy hunters. They are EXACTLY the same as the good guy hunters, except they wear different uniforms. Their talk is even identical except swap good for evil--depending.

The game, after all, is made for children, no matter what the label may say. And a lot of the posts I've read in this thread are obviously typed by children. If you kill a church goer, then dump 1,000 bucks in the collection plate you are obviously still evil. But if one person does the killing and another dumps the money then one is evil, the other good. The point I've been trying, unsuccessfully, to make is that most of the people who worked for Vault Tec were good, but enough were evil to give Vault Tec its bad name. Since I've been trying to make the point to children of course I've failed. The child's view "If it's an evil thing everybody in it is evil." is something no amount of arguing is going to change.

[Alucard †]

Vault Tec is the main reason "Fallout" happened.
So yea i say pretty evil.

[danconnors]

Bethesda might disagree with you.

[Panic Fire]

Publicado originalmente por danconnors:

Bethesda might disagree with you.

Uh no they wouldn't. How you could possibly think Vault Tec was good is beyond me. They were evil people working for an evil company. Corporate Overreach is kind of the whole point of the Fallout Universe. Evil Corporations left unchecked. That's the overarching narrative behind fallout. You are like a child who can't read between the lines. Its rather sad.

[CthuluIsSpy]

Publicado originalmente por Panic Fire:

Publicado originalmente por danconnors:

Bethesda might disagree with you.

Uh no they wouldn't. How you could possibly think Vault Tec was good is beyond me. They were evil people working for an evil company. Corporate Overreach is kind of the whole point of the Fallout Universe. Evil Corporations left unchecked. That's the overarching narrative behind fallout. You are like a child who can't read between the lines. Its rather sad.

Ted is evil? Or that guy working at the Vault-Tec Boston branch who was really confused why Vault 95 needed a bunch of drugs?
Now the company heads and management were bastards; the project lead at vault 88 wanted to do pointless and cruel experiments without a true objective (which ironically isn't even science) and the guy's boss at the Boston branch was a short tempered psychopath.
But at the lower levels you just had normal people, and at the higher levels you had a few decent folk they just weren't in the right position to do anything meaningful.

[~ Fabulous ~]

they are responsible for most of the horrible creatures in fallout and most of their experiment are silly torture, not really for the interest of gaining more information, it is just cruel experiment without any practical purpose, they are like Josef Mengele but as an organization. The worst thing about them is that you pay them money to be experimented on.

[Panic Fire]

Publicado originalmente por CthuluIsSpy:

Publicado originalmente por Panic Fire:

Uh no they wouldn't. How you could possibly think Vault Tec was good is beyond me. They were evil people working for an evil company. Corporate Overreach is kind of the whole point of the Fallout Universe. Evil Corporations left unchecked. That's the overarching narrative behind fallout. You are like a child who can't read between the lines. Its rather sad.

Ted is evil? Or that guy working at the Vault-Tec Boston branch who was really confused why Vault 95 needed a bunch of drugs?
Now the company heads and management were bastards; the project lead at vault 88 wanted to do pointless and cruel experiments without a true objective (which ironically isn't even science) and the guy's boss at the Boston branch was a short tempered psychopath.
But at the lower levels you just had normal people, and at the higher levels you had a few decent folk they just weren't in the right position to do anything meaningful.

Seriously all most all the corporations in the Fallout Universe were evil. The few that weren't were either quickly bought out by evil corporations or sabataged. The entire story of fallout is about evil corporate overreach.

Also no offense, but regardless if the janitor of a company that clubs baby seals is a nice guy, the company is still clubbing baby seals at the end of the day. And he's still collecting his dead baby seals paycheck.

[CthuluIsSpy]

Publicado originalmente por Panic Fire:

Publicado originalmente por CthuluIsSpy:

Ted is evil? Or that guy working at the Vault-Tec Boston branch who was really confused why Vault 95 needed a bunch of drugs?
Now the company heads and management were bastards; the project lead at vault 88 wanted to do pointless and cruel experiments without a true objective (which ironically isn't even science) and the guy's boss at the Boston branch was a short tempered psychopath.
But at the lower levels you just had normal people, and at the higher levels you had a few decent folk they just weren't in the right position to do anything meaningful.

Seriously all most all the corporations in the Fallout Universe were evil. The few that weren't were either quickly bought out by evil corporations or sabataged. The entire story of fallout is about evil corporate overreach.

Also no offense, but regardless if the janitor of a company that clubs baby seals is a nice guy, the company is still clubbing baby seals at the end of the day. And he's still collecting his dead baby seals paycheck.

I'm not disputing that the corporations were evil, I'm disputing that the people working there, from the upper echelons to the lowest, were all evil. That's overly simplistic and childlike. For all you know, that could have been the only job in town and they had mouths to feed, and considering how stupid huge these companies were that's entirely likely.

[Panic Fire]

Publicado originalmente por CthuluIsSpy:

Publicado originalmente por Panic Fire:

Seriously all most all the corporations in the Fallout Universe were evil. The few that weren't were either quickly bought out by evil corporations or sabataged. The entire story of fallout is about evil corporate overreach.

Also no offense, but regardless if the janitor of a company that clubs baby seals is a nice guy, the company is still clubbing baby seals at the end of the day. And he's still collecting his dead baby seals paycheck.

I'm not disputing that the corporations were evil, I'm disputing that the people working there, from the upper echelons to the lowest, were all evil. That's overly simplistic and childlike. For all you know, that could have been the only job in town and they had mouths to feed, and considering how stupid huge these companies were that's entirely likely.

Its not childlike. Its just facts. If you work for an evil company, your doing evil. Period.

Just a warning you are starting to get dangerously close to the clean Wehrmacht fallacy.

[CthuluIsSpy]

Publicado originalmente por Panic Fire:

Publicado originalmente por CthuluIsSpy:

I'm not disputing that the corporations were evil, I'm disputing that the people working there, from the upper echelons to the lowest, were all evil. That's overly simplistic and childlike. For all you know, that could have been the only job in town and they had mouths to feed, and considering how stupid huge these companies were that's entirely likely.

Its not childlike. Its just facts. If you work for an evil company, your doing evil. Period.

Even if your job is to clean toilets all day and have no say on policy? Explain to me the evils of toilet cleaning.

[DouglasGrave]

Publicado originalmente por Panic Fire:

Its not childlike. Its just facts. If you work for an evil company, your doing evil. Period.

Morally-relevant behaviour (good or evil) requires intent. If you don't know the company you're working for is doing evil, working with them doesn't make you evil.

The Vault-Tec Rep we meet at the start of Fallout 4, for example, may well genuinely believe that Vault-Tec is a wonderful company doing its best to help the nation. Working with them thus doesn't make him evil.

[Panic Fire]

Publicado originalmente por CthuluIsSpy:

Publicado originalmente por Panic Fire:

Its not childlike. Its just facts. If you work for an evil company, your doing evil. Period.

Even if your job is to clean toilets all day and have no say on policy? Explain to me the evils of toilet cleaning.

If you can't grasp how performing actions such as maintenance, cleaning, and other ways of facilitating others while they do there jobs. Or how you working for a company and taking money from a company who is doing evil things means you are also benefiting and facilitating those evil things, then I don't know what to tell you.

A janitor has no say so on how a company is run, unless its nintendo. However there work for an evil company still makes them complicit in that company's actions, especially when they benefited from that relation.

Publicado originalmente por DouglasGrave:

Publicado originalmente por Panic Fire:

Its not childlike. Its just facts. If you work for an evil company, your doing evil. Period.

Morally-relevant behaviour (good or evil) requires intent. If you don't know the company you're working for is doing evil, working with them doesn't make you evil.

The Vault-Tec Rep we meet at the start of Fallout 4, for example, may well genuinely believe that Vault-Tec is a wonderful company doing its best to help the nation. Working with them thus doesn't make him evil.

If your job is pushing a button, but you don't know that every time you push the button you are killing people. You are still doing something evil. Even if you don't know you are doing it. Morales fall into place when we try and define what is good and evil, however intent isn't required for ones actions to be good or evil.

A hero who while trying to save his kingdom unleashes a demon which destroys it still did evil.

Hero: "It wasn't my intent to unleash the demon that killed everyone, I just wanted to bring peace to my kingdom."

[DouglasGrave]

Publicado originalmente por Panic Fire:

If your job is pushing a button, but you don't know that every time you push the button you are killing people. You are still doing something evil. Even if you don't know you are doing it. Morales fall into place when we try and define what is good and evil, however intent isn't required for ones actions to be good or evil.

No, intent is required for moral actions. Only the knowing decision to do something that causes help or harm can be considered good or evil.

Morality assigns responsibility for helpful or harmful actions. That requires that the person acting have control of their own efforts to achieve help or harm, which in turn requires knowledge of the possible results of their actions.

Publicado originalmente por Panic Fire:

A hero who while trying to save his kingdom unleashes a demon which destroys it still did evil.

Hero: "It wasn't my intent to unleash the demon that killed everyone, I just wanted to bring peace to my kingdom."

By that reasoning, the sun is evil for giving people skin cancer.

But it is not, since it has no intent to cause harm. It is a mindless object, not a person capable of rational choice.

[danconnors]

Not so loud. Next thing you know the kids will be trying to put out the sun.

[Alucard †]

The thing is Vault tec as a company IS evil even if some of the workers arent. The elite that run this company are and their agenda is pure evil.

Heck they even treat their own personel like ♥♥♥♥ if they don't follow orders like blind sheep and they can't really do anything about it or they will get fired, prosecuted or worse.