PaxVenire
Vault Dweller
This forum is rarely used and this game, for obvious reasons, isn't talked about much here. I've recently been playing Fallout 76 however in order to catch up on what I've missed out on from this game's many years of updates and expansions. I played from start to finish, which as of writing this, means the main launch questline to the Gone Fission update. A lot of the content in this game is pretty bad in my opinion. The addition of NPCs to Fallout 76 only worsened the writing, and just like the TV show, a majority of this game is rendered down to one-note joke characters and zaniness that makes the game feel more stupid than properly immersive. But that aside, I do want to shoutout one piece of content in this game that I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish (despite it's flaws): Skyline Valley.
I'm about a year late to even looking into this update. I do remember seeing the trailer on a livestream, I think it was one of those E3 streams or the Game Awards or something like that. But at the time I just shrugged it off as more Fallout 76 stuff I didn't really care for. Now that I've played it, I feel the need to talk about what I liked from it.
Hugo Stolz is a really cool antagonist and probably the most eccentric antagonist in the series since Frank Horrigan. I mean this in terms of both mutated design and supernatural abilities, not in a philosophical writing sense.
Hugo Stolz is a former Vault‑Tec board member and the Overseer of Vault 63, as well as the founder and CEO of Stolz Enterprises. He was born blind in a German‑speaking country, but used his family’s business acumen to become influential, eventually joining Vault‑Tec’s board. He immigrated to the US, met and partnered with his wife Cassidy, and together they secured the Vault‑Tec Overseer role for themselves. Hugo used the land under Dark Hollow Falls in Shenandoah National Park for Vault 63 and tricked the local community with false promises of security if the Great War came to be, but ousted them when the time came. During the Great War in 2077, Hugo, his family, and the rest of the Vault became ghouls due to the Vault's imcomplete construction (unlike most Vaults that are contained to a single facility, Vault 63 was a massive network of multiple facilities stretching throughout regions of Appalachia connected via an underground railroad). The Vault houses an experimental weather machine that can control the climate and was the focus of the construction effort before the bombs over actually completing the Vault's infrastructure to saftey standards. The Vault’s residents began “feralizing,” including Hugo’s brother August and his wife Cassidy. Desperate to save Cassidy, Hugo discovered that exposure to the Vault’s weather machine temporarily halted "feralization", which as we know according to Bethesda is just something that happens to ghouls eventually rather than the mental state of the individual as feral ghouls are treated as zombies. So in 2095 he activated the weather machine at full power for Cassidy. It put her in a coma, but also created violent ghoul‑mutants called the Lost and transformed Hugo into one of them, though he remained lucid while the others were driven insane. He tried again to activate the weather machine in 2105, triggering massive earthquakes and storms that exposed parts of the Vault and allowed the Lost to escape into the world above.
The story for Skyline Valley begins after the second activation, with a large circular hellstorm now blackening the skies over Shenandoah National Park and the Lost running amok on the world map. This "DLC" or expansion or whatever you wanna call it isn't perfect, obviously. There are moments where, like a majority of Fallout 76, everything is treated like a massive joke (particularly one quest involving the Mothman cultists which really pissed me off as it took me out of an otherwise intriguing questline). But for the most part, everything involving Hugo and his story are treated with a seriousness that befits the situation. Overall, I'd give Skyline Valley's atmosphere a thumbs up. It's one of the more striking regions of Fallout and the climate of the region reminds me of Dead Money a bit. The worldbuilding is sadly lacking, we don't really know how the weather machine works or why it makes these electrified ghouls known as the Lost. But there is a really cool connection to Hugo Stolz personally that I won't spoil in case anyone reading this wants to play or watch a proper lore video on it.
That's all I want to say, really. Cool expansion, cool antagonist. Wish it was fleshed out more and that everything was treated seriously, but this gets an overall thumbs up from me in a game where I mostly give it an apathetic thumbs down.
I'm about a year late to even looking into this update. I do remember seeing the trailer on a livestream, I think it was one of those E3 streams or the Game Awards or something like that. But at the time I just shrugged it off as more Fallout 76 stuff I didn't really care for. Now that I've played it, I feel the need to talk about what I liked from it.
Hugo Stolz is a really cool antagonist and probably the most eccentric antagonist in the series since Frank Horrigan. I mean this in terms of both mutated design and supernatural abilities, not in a philosophical writing sense.
Hugo Stolz is a former Vault‑Tec board member and the Overseer of Vault 63, as well as the founder and CEO of Stolz Enterprises. He was born blind in a German‑speaking country, but used his family’s business acumen to become influential, eventually joining Vault‑Tec’s board. He immigrated to the US, met and partnered with his wife Cassidy, and together they secured the Vault‑Tec Overseer role for themselves. Hugo used the land under Dark Hollow Falls in Shenandoah National Park for Vault 63 and tricked the local community with false promises of security if the Great War came to be, but ousted them when the time came. During the Great War in 2077, Hugo, his family, and the rest of the Vault became ghouls due to the Vault's imcomplete construction (unlike most Vaults that are contained to a single facility, Vault 63 was a massive network of multiple facilities stretching throughout regions of Appalachia connected via an underground railroad). The Vault houses an experimental weather machine that can control the climate and was the focus of the construction effort before the bombs over actually completing the Vault's infrastructure to saftey standards. The Vault’s residents began “feralizing,” including Hugo’s brother August and his wife Cassidy. Desperate to save Cassidy, Hugo discovered that exposure to the Vault’s weather machine temporarily halted "feralization", which as we know according to Bethesda is just something that happens to ghouls eventually rather than the mental state of the individual as feral ghouls are treated as zombies. So in 2095 he activated the weather machine at full power for Cassidy. It put her in a coma, but also created violent ghoul‑mutants called the Lost and transformed Hugo into one of them, though he remained lucid while the others were driven insane. He tried again to activate the weather machine in 2105, triggering massive earthquakes and storms that exposed parts of the Vault and allowed the Lost to escape into the world above.
The story for Skyline Valley begins after the second activation, with a large circular hellstorm now blackening the skies over Shenandoah National Park and the Lost running amok on the world map. This "DLC" or expansion or whatever you wanna call it isn't perfect, obviously. There are moments where, like a majority of Fallout 76, everything is treated like a massive joke (particularly one quest involving the Mothman cultists which really pissed me off as it took me out of an otherwise intriguing questline). But for the most part, everything involving Hugo and his story are treated with a seriousness that befits the situation. Overall, I'd give Skyline Valley's atmosphere a thumbs up. It's one of the more striking regions of Fallout and the climate of the region reminds me of Dead Money a bit. The worldbuilding is sadly lacking, we don't really know how the weather machine works or why it makes these electrified ghouls known as the Lost. But there is a really cool connection to Hugo Stolz personally that I won't spoil in case anyone reading this wants to play or watch a proper lore video on it.
That's all I want to say, really. Cool expansion, cool antagonist. Wish it was fleshed out more and that everything was treated seriously, but this gets an overall thumbs up from me in a game where I mostly give it an apathetic thumbs down.
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