The Vault-Tec Workshop add-on is available as a free download for players who purchased Fallout 4‘s Season Pass, and can be purchased separately for $5.
Vault-Tec Workshop builds upon established Fallout series lore, putting players in the role of a shady Vault Overseer. Ostensibly designed to protect survivors in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, Vault-Tec vaults offer underground living quarters and enough supplies to last a makeshift society for decades.
As players explore vacant Vaults in previous Fallout series games, however, they discover that Vault-Tec was secretly performing experiments on Vault inhabitants, often with unexpected and deadly results. Assuming the role of an Overseer in the Vault-Tec Workshop DLC, players must carefully manage the needs of their underground society while covertly engineering social experiments.
Players who purchase the Vault-Tec Workshop DLC can build a vault from scratch, fitting together prebuilt rooms and passageways to form a complete underground network. Constructed vaults can then be filled with equipment, furniture, and vanity items, essentially transforming the Fallout 4 experience into a post-apocalyptic version of The Sims.
The Vault-Tec Workshop DLC also introduces new interactive items like slot machines, soda stations, and exercise bikes, which will alter the moods of vault dwellers when used. Certain items will also temporarily boost the stats of the player’s character, giving them an advantage when they leave their vault behind and head out into the post-apocalyptic wastes.
Publisher Bethesda previously experimented with management-styled gameplay in Fallout Shelter, a free-to-play game for iOS and Android devices. While Fallout Shelter and the new Vault-Tec Workshop DLC share a premise, Fallout 4‘s Overseer options are much more limited in comparison, and new vault management options repurpose many of the game’s pre-existing settlement mechanics.
Fallout 4‘s Vault-Tec Workshop DLC is available now for Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network, and PC platforms via Steam.
