Fallout 3 is an iconic game, and if you thought you'd seen everything it has to offer, you might want to think again.
One of the best parts of Fallout 3 is, in my opinion, being able to explore the various vaults - abandoned or otherwise - to discover what happened to them. And as it turns out, there's one vault tucked away in the Bethesda RPG we never noticed before.
Over on Reddit, BoyDynamo showed off a few screenshots that showed Bethesda was playing the long game with us while developing Fallout 3.
This is something we all missed for years, but it appears that while scavenging and picking through computer logs, you can find mention of a mysterious Vault 76.
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This is, of course, the titular vault players emerge from to begin their adventure in the MMORPG Fallout 76.
Whether this is genuine foreshadowing or not is hard to say, but it's much more fun to assume Bethesda knew they were teasing something way back when.
BigJuicy17 brings this up in their comment “I'm not sure they were planning the games for that long. It could have just been adding more lore, then later on deciding to use it.”
Fellow Redditor belyy_Volk6 points out, “I wouldn't be surprised if they have a document with a paragraph or so about each vault in a lore bible somewhere. Vague enough to be fleshed out later but a list of ideas for future games.”
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Intentional or not, it's a neat little secret tucked away in a game I thought could no longer surprise me.
“Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, and 76 are all hinted at in this game. Lyons tells the character of troubles back west, Zimmer has a synth retention quest, and Vault 76 is mentioned in a terminal and by an alien abductee,” says Chueskes in the thread.
Maybe in 20 or 30 years time we'll be able to go back to Fallout 3 and point to the secret Fallout 5 hint that was in front of us the whole time.