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Vault 76
General
A Vault meant to open on the tricentennial of America.
- Burning the Ships: The Overseer didn't want any of its Residents clinging to it as a shelter despite how useful it would be as a shelter. So she shut it down.
- Close-Knit Community: Everyone knew everyone else in the Vault for obvious reasons.
- Doomed by Canon: Their efforts to rebuild America will not extend beyond Appalachia, if that.
- Doomed Hometown: A light example of such as Vault 76 shuts down in order to force its residents to colonize the West Virginia Wasteland. This includes shutting down its air and rendering it uninhabitable.
- Elaborate Underground Base: As per usual in Fallout, it is Averted as Vault 76 is rendered useless by the Overseer sealing it.
- Serious Business: Competition in Vault 76 got so heated that things like someone losing a tooth over "Best Dental Hygiene" happened.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Averted, Vault 76 was one of the seventeen control vaults and thus functioned more or less as an actual shelter.
- Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Despite being a control Vault, weird cultural quirks emerged in the 25 years of living underground like the fact that everyone was constantly given awards to keep them focused on task. These included for ridiculous subjects like, "Best Dental Hygiene."
- You Can't Go Home Again: All of the Residents are prevented from ever returning by the Overseer shutting down the air and sealing it forever.
The Resident
Man, there are a lot of yous aren't there. The protagonist of Fallout 76. While originally all of them were "canon", a unique story was crafted around one particular player character.
- Action Girl: If female.
- Action Survivor: Like many Fallout protagonists, you're from a relatively cushy environment before being dumped into the middle of a hostile irradiated war zone. You adapt to your environment very quickly.
- Authority in Name Only: Is recruited to and then promoted to a Generalship in the Enclave by MODUS but this means almost nothing since they're the only Enclave member on the East Coast left alive. It does, however, give them the ability to launch nuclear missiles.
- Corporate Samurai: Some of the Resident's dialogue with the Overseer can be about how much they wish to serve Vault-Tec's aims.
- Deadpan Snarker: After the Wastelanders patch, you can snark with the best of them.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: A significantly evil Resident can be this from both a gameplay and story perspective. Statistically, the Resident has the lowest starting SPECIAL score out of any Fallout protagonist due to how the system was reworked, yet can easily be a slayer of countless giant radioactive bat dragons and launcher of countless nukes by the endgame. Pretty extreme considering the Resident was just another smart cookie who slept through the opening of the vault at the beginning of the game.
- Four-Star Badass: Is technically a General in the United States military after they're promoted to the role by Modus.
- Gadgeteer Genius: The Resident is a very good craftsman no matter what their other skills.
- Idiot Savant: The Resident can have an incredibly low Intelligence stat but make all manner of wondrous things.
- Improvised Weapon: The Resident is a master of these. These include hatchets, pitchforks, sickles, baseball bats, sledgehammers with rockets attached, and baseball grenades.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: You're encouraged to scavenge any nook and cranny in West Virginia. Mind you, most of its original inhabitants are dead, so...
- Knight Errant: Basically serves this role to the various peoples of Appalachia. The Brotherhood of Steel even recognizes this by granting them this exact title at the end of Steel Reign.
- Late to the Tragedy: Much of the main quest line involves them stumbling across the remains of these factions and reading their Apocalyptic Logs to hopefully pick up where they left off and save the greater Appalachia region from the Scorched outbreak.
- MacGyvering: The Resident seems to do this even more than the Sole Survivor. Justified as they're dumped into the Wasteland with nothing more than a few basic supplies plus the clothes on their back.
- Naïve Newcomer: Avoided all of the infighting, distrust, and horrors of Appalachia by not being there.
- The Needless: Zig-zagged as of Steel Dawn. While the Resident still have their hunger and thirst meters, there's not a real need to eat and drink per se, since all doing these will benefit you is temporarily bumping up your max health and AP regeneration along with some minor buffs to disease resistance and one whole point to END and STR at fullness, on top of the various buffs that certain kinds of consumables will give you. It's perfectly fine to have your character be literally starving and severely dehydrated, they will not die from these conditions no matter what.
- Nuke 'em: The Resident can utilize their mastery of nuclear weapons to destroy not just the Scorched Queen but other opponents.
- One-Man Army: Played straight and averted. Yes, you can tear through West Virginia like any other protagonist but can fight alongside many other Residents. The played straight part is, unlike previous Fallout protagonists, you have no companions (though as of Wastelanders, you can recruit allies to stay at and defend your C.A.M.P).
- Playing Both Sides: This is very much an option in the Vault 79 arc added in Wastelanders. You need either the Settlers or the Raiders' help to break into the Vault, and you can only side with one for the raid...but both sides have a pair of quests you have to perform for them before you're given the option to lock in your side, which each of those quests increasing your reputation by 500 points, meaning that if you're willing to put in the extra work, you can get up to a thousand points with even the faction you don't side with. And if you choose to split the gold between your chosen side and the other side, you'll earn 900 reputation points with the faction you didn't side with, which will more than make up for the reputation penalty you got from the lock in.
- The Quiet One: The Resident doesn't speak, unlike previous Fallout protagonists. Not even in text.
- Averted as of Wastelanders where the Resident gets text-only lines.
- Skewed Priorities: The Resident can do things like join the Pioneer Scouts, an organization for children that no longer exists, when they should probably be dealing with the Scorched Plague and rebuilding America.
- Sole Survivor: May become this for the Responders, Brotherhood of Steel, Enclave, and other groups when they sign up posthumously. Averted in canon with the residents of Vault 76 that are stated to be numerous and working with each other to rebuild West Virginia. Averted further when a couple of other survivors join the Responders in Wastelanders, the Brotherhood rolls back into town in the Steel Dawn update, and the Responders re-establish themselves in earnest in Expeditions: The Pitt.
- Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer: The Resident seems to be either bored or lonely, as they do a lot of quests which otherwise have no point, like repairing tourist attractions in West Virginia or solving decades-old mysteries.
- Supporting Protagonist: The Resident picks up the slack of the Responders, Brotherhood of Steel, Enclave, and the Vault 76 Overseer.
- Undying Loyalty: The Resident can express fanatical loyalty to Vault-Tec that actually creeps out the Overseer.
- Vague Age: As with many other Fallout protagonists, it's not very easy to nail down the Resident's approximate age, especially given that one can design them to be as youthful or as old as they want them to be. While numerous pieces of dialogue can imply their age range, all of these can be available given the right circumstances, regardless of a Resident's presumed age, which further adds to the confusion.
- On the one hand, it can be speculated that they're all in their late thirties, if not forties, since speaking to the enthusiastic collector in one of the daily Whitespring Refuge favors quests provides an option for them to claim to have attended high school prior to the war. Assuming they were still of high school age in 2077, this puts their age to be between 15 and 17 just before the bombs fell. Now add twenty five years on top of that.
- On the other, assuming that one was born inside of Vault 76 during the period between the Great War and 2102 instead of being one of its original entrants, that would put them in their mid-twenties at the earliest. This seems to be the "canonical" age range of the player characters, given how the dialogue of many NPCs refer to them as if they're a youth.
- What the Hell, Hero?: At the end of Johnny Weston's quest in the Crater storyline, you have the option to call him out for Not telling you the real reason he wanted to "rescue" Hal.The Resident: What the hell, Johnny?! We go through all that, and you just shot him?!
- In Steel Reign, when Shin inadvertnantly endangers the two Initiates he brought along to help in a mission, if the Resident had previously sided with Ramahni at the end of Steel Dawn, they can chew him out for endangering the Initiates' lives. In a surprise twist, Shin fully agrees that he screwed up.
The Resident: This is why I can't support you. Paladin Ramahni would have done everything in her power to keep the Initiates safe.
Knight Shin: You...You're right. She would have.
The 76s
Voiced by: Kaiji Tang (male) and Linsay Rousseau (female)
The geniuses, overachievers, and family members thereof who were selected for entry to the highly-publicized Vault 76. Two decades after the bombs dropped, they emerged into the ruins of Appalachia — some later than others — only to find it overrun by mutated monstrosities, and loosely organized to restore some semblance of order to the region.
- Academic Alpha Bitch: This is apparently a very common problem in the Vault and a source of their many problems.
- The Chosen Many: While the most important hero in the setting, it's implied many of the Vault 76 Residents are off doing their own adventures.
- A Degree in Useless: Averted. While the older Vault Residents are highly educated in topics useless in the Wasteland, the Resident has been prepared to resettle America.
- Hero of Another Story: While the Resident has their own story in-canon, the rest of Vault 76's residents are implied to be off doing their own thing. The Overseer mentions hearing about the Appalachian treasure from them for example.
- Late to the Tragedy: They emerged from Vault 76 almost a decade after the dust has settled in Appalachia and most of the previous occupying factions have been wiped out to the last man.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The fact the player character never runs into any of their presumed friends or family from Vault 76 (except other players) is noteworthy.
The Overseer
Pre-war photo of the Overseer
The Overseer as she appears in-person in Wastelanders
Voiced by: Adrienne Barbeau
The unnamed Overseer of Vault 76, who set out into the wasteland ahead of her vault's residents on a secret assignment from Vault-Tec — one which she more or less abandoned after realizing the dire state of the surface. She was injured in a fight with the local mutants and went into hiding for some time, but eventually reemerged and settled at her old family home in Sutton.
- Action Girl: Action middle-aged woman more precisely.
- Broken Pedestal: At some point before the events of "Wastelanders", she lost her trust in Vault-Tec and decided to stop following their orders. The exact moment is unknown to the Resident. She even becomes annoyed when the Resident displays Undying Loyalty.
- Corporate Samurai: The Overseer of Vault 76 puts her loyalty to Vault-Tec over her loyalty to the United States government or its representatives.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": We never learn her actual name in the game despite a dozen recordings and conversations.
- For the Greater Good: Her justification for just about every action she takes.
- Hero of Another Story: Based on the numerous holotapes she left around for you throughout Appalachia, the Overseer has seemingly explored most of the region before you ever got out of the Vault to begin with, and following in the footsteps of the previous occupying factions before leaving you with plenty of breadcrumbs to carry on the task when it ultimately came down to you. Even more impressive was how she seemingly did all of this while wearing just her Vault 76 jumpsuit and using a 10mm pistol, while even a reasonably well-equipped and perked up player character will be having some trouble doing the same tasks in actual gameplay.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Believes Vault-Tec is the best hope for mankind.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Seems to be the most sane, level-headed, and compassionate of the Vault Overseers. Not that such is a very hard accomplishment.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Her abandoning her fiancé is this given most of her assumptions about what would be needed (like a civil engineer) is less important than someone who could shoot mutant animals.
- Shoot the Dog: Is willing to do this in order to make the world a better place. The problem is she's working for a defunct corporation of sadists.
- Token Good Teammate: So far is one of only two Overseers in the entire series to not be clinically insane or a sociopath.
- Undying Loyalty: Has this to Vault-Tec and believes in them whole-heartedly. Subverted by "Wastelanders" when you meet her in person as she's far less enthusiastic about following their orders.
- The Voice: Despite being potentially the only other person left alive in West Virginia, the Overseer avoids interacting with the Resident save leaving behind audio tapes for them to find. She's only seen once in the game itself, twice if you count achievement icons, and you wouldn't even know it's her unless you look at the latter. Averted with the release of Wastelanders, where she now resides in her home.
- What the Hell, Hero?: In a holotape located at one of the launch sites after a nuke is launched anywhere but a fissure site, the Overseer is quite miffed to learn that the people she looked after and tasked with saving the region were engaged in an "Appalachian arms race".
- Wrong Genre Savvy: There's a lot of Dramatic Irony to her story if you're familiar with what a complete bunch of scumbags Vault-Tec is, who they were really working for (The Enclave), and how pointlessly sadistic the vast majority of their experiments were. Needless to say, the Overseer would probably have a complete breakdown if she knew the full extent of how evil her employers were.
