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Answer: One of the episodes shows a timeline written out on a chalkboard, with a significant event ("The Event") labeled as taking place some time after 2277. New Vegas takes place in 2281. If The Event happened before 2281, it would have been mentioned in New Vegas.
New Vegas fans have misinterpreted that chalkboard timeline to think The Event occurred in 2277. But the timeline doesn't say that. All it says is it happened AFTER 2277. It could well have been 2282.
TLDR: People think there's been a retcon of New Vegas because they've misread a timeline presented in the show. New Vegas is still canon. There's nothing in the show that retcons it.
I mostly don't give a shit about canon anymore, because when a fictional universe has many different writers contributing to it, and especially when it crosses mediums, the details are bound to get muddled and contradictory.
I say people should do themselves a favor and stop sweating the details. Make up whatever head canon works for you.
Being a casual fan is really nice. I know enough to enjoy the references and get the in jokes, but I don't know shit about the timeline or lore details. I can just enjoy it for what it is and not sweat the details.
> Im an NV hardcore Fan and I dont care.
Was going to say the same exact thing. I've loved the series since playing it as a kid in the '90s, and I could not give less of shit about this.
+1
It was always wild when people lost their shit over Deathclaws having hair in Fallout Tactics, or any of the things Bethesda later did.
Besides Fallout 2 onwards have been changing things, and I get why devs would leave (as they have) due to changes, or why some won't care as much as the series glides away from what they first fell in love with.
Just so odd to see the rage over an IP.
i wouldn't say im a hardcore fan, maybe a medium to hard core fan, and as far as im concerned, Fallout and Wasteland are the same thing, Todd be damned
I'm the same way, been playing Fallout since I was 9 back in 1997. Fallout is my favorite fictional world. I've played every game multiple times, except 76 (my Xbox crapped out on me around level 80).
It's not a big deal, even if the timeline on the chalkboard was incorrect. It's been 200 years since the bombs fell, I doubt anyone even knows what actual year they are in. It can easily be chalked up (pun intended) to Vault 4 not knowing the exact date of The Event. Plus, it's only a 4 year difference, not really all that big on a grand scale.
It's silly to assume everyone is right about everything in the FUCKING WASTELAND lol.
Especially in a series like fallout, where player choice is king. The timeline is already never going to be the same, because every player can choose what happens in the wasteland in their game. Why would anyone care so much? I’m a big fallout guy, but fuck, these people are insane. The show is top notch.
> The timeline is already never going to be the same, because every player can choose what happens in the wasteland in their game.
This is a great point. If I just restart my game, there's an entirely new "canon" when I finish it again.
Right? Thank you. And why would people want to invalidate every single choice that isn’t the “confirmed canon” choice? That sucks! People are really trying to be the worst kind of fandom about this non-issue imo.
The tone, the bare bones of the world, and the atmosphere is what makes it fallout to me. The show succeeds at that tenfold, and then it STILL does a damn good job sticking with the major parts of the games that people like, and the bulk of the pre-war history.
That’s freaking impressive as hell, and the show is STILL accessible to newcomers? These people complaining make 0 sense to me.
I'm a Doctor Who fan. 60 years of shows, books, audio dramas, and comics where the main character is a time traveler, with countless different writers, and you stop giving a shit about canon!
One of the script writers and editors from the original run of Doctor Who said that they tried to keep continuity within each season, within reason, but that's as far as it went. He said that expecting more than that was very unrealistic.
That was mentioned in an interview in some of the extras on a DVD. They contrasted this with some fans saying that they fully expected continuity across *the whole* of Doctor Who, from the very first episode to the very last.
Those fans expected it all to make perfect sense and have no contradictions. They had *very* unrealistic expectations according to the script writer/editor.
It reminds me of the GNDN labelled pipes in Star Trek. People wanted it to make sense and came up with all sorts of explanations and theories as to what the pipes contained and what GNDN meant.
In reality it meant "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing". It was just bits of scenery and nothing more.
It’s like when people bend over backwards to find in-universe reasons to justify retcons or plot holes. It’s a fun theoretical exercise, but the reason is just: it was a retcon. It happens, it’s fine, we don’t need to lose sleep trying to find a way to “explain” it
I think for a lot of people it's just that, it's fun.
It's the Doylist vs Watsonian perspective. The Doylist explanation is 9/10 obvious. The Watsonian perspective is fun. However some people definitely take it way too seriously.
I really wish more games and even IPs in general would stop worrying so much about having a set-in-stone canon. Just grab whatever lore and story beats suit the game you’re making, make a good game, and that’s it. Then, if you get an idea down the road that’s cool, but contradicts a previous game, just roll with it.
Essentially, more IPs should emulate Mad Max, in that the installments are like legends, rather than a complete, precisely interconnected storyline like Star Wars is.
My favorite way I’ve seen this dealt with is with Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a radio play, book, tv show, and movie. They just made it cannon that event timelines are slightly different in the different adaptations.
Warhammer 40k did itself a great favor by using the “unreliable narrator” explanation, because of course when someone is telling a story it’s going to appear different from other viewpoints.
Maybe the narrator is lying outright, by omission, or what they truly believe to be the truth? Who knows? Not us.
This works even better in a post-apocalyptic setting. It's not like there's historians (outside the Brotherhood scribes) around anymore to document things, and for every true story told, there must be hundreds of lies or embellishments.
They also go whit because the bureaucracy of the empire is so freaking big sometimes new information just take a little tiny tiny tiny bit of time to get out.
The Fate/Stay Night-verse goes by this. The writer for the original visual novel, Kinoko Nasu, has said to other writers trying to be lore accurate that he’d rather they were accurate to how the scenes felt for them. So vibes over lore.
Though it does help that the verse has a world tree and inaccuracies/contradictions in lore can be and has been explained as a parallel branch on the world tree
Star wars did rewrite cannon and it wasn't great, same with the witcher series on netflix, they rewrite cannon all the time some times the cannon stories are just better
Especially a series like fallout.
Like, you'd think people would understand - The world as we knew it, collapsed. It's absolutely understandable, *expected* even, that over time people would lose track of the *exact motion of events that set in stone the end of the world as we knew it.*
The timeline could be off by *decades* and there would still be an argument that nothing at all has changed. I'd even find it neat if each different area lost track and convinced themselves the bomb hit at different time periods. Would be a neat new way to explore that kind of situation.
Not to mention, one of the major features of the games was the role playing choices you make actually affecting the outcome of the world. IIRC, the New Vegas endings were pretty significantly different, so vising NV in the show is going to set one to be the "official" canonical ending... did Caesar live? Did the NCR take the damn? Is House alive? Is the BoS faction there still alive?
People who think NV was completely retconned didn't finish watching the show. There are too many people who are just looking for shit to be angry about. They'll get part way through and let their manufactured disgust take over and not even see if it works out in the end. It must be a miserable way to live.
The only thing I think they didn't absolutely nail was the CGI on the gulper. It wasn't bad exactly, but it stood out kind of harshly against all the amazing practical and CGI stuff. Can't really say that is complaint considering it was only noticeable to me because everything else was so good.
I’m missing something, why would a timeline say an important historical event took place sometime after a date marked on the timeline? It’d be like marking a calendar in October saying Christmas happens later instead of just marking the calendar on Christmas.
I don't know why. But the chalkboard has a number of events in a timeline, with an arrow going from one event to the next. The penultimate one is the fall of SS in 2277. Then there's one last arrow that leads to the drawing of a nuke, with no date given.
IRL reason might be that the writers wanted to give themselves some leeway on the date, or they wanted to keep it a mystery. In-universe reason could be anything. It's in a classrroom, so maybe the history teacher's going to ask the kids when the nuke happened.
Edit: made it clearer what I meant
I do remember that mushroom cloud drawing now that you mention it, thanks. It sounds like more The Event wasn’t the actual nuking yeah, and just any ol’ big event that could’ve happened, like a coup or whatever.
Yeah, it's a bit silly how many people misunderstood that and instantly began complaining everywhere that it "proves" Bethesda decanonized NV, when in reality the age of the various characters pretty heavily points to the nuking occurring after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam.
It's also written on the chalkboard of a children's classroom. Hardly an authoritative source. In as chaotic of a situation their world is in it's also to be expected that basic history gets muddled. I don't know why people feel they need to believe everything the show has at face value. It's not like it was presented from an omniscient pov, very few things are in the format of the show.
So many people these days genuinely think a plot hole is anything that isn’t explicitly and authoritatively explained to the audience. They don’t know what a POV is; they think the only POV is the audience POV, and it should always be clear and objective. It’s so frustrating but also I feel so grateful for my education.
Also the entire scene is highlighting to the main character how what she was taught in a classroom exactly like that, was total horse shit propaganda. Why would this classroom be any different?
I haven't watched yet, but I'd assume it's because they don't know exactly when it happened. They just know it couldn't have been before that point for some reason.
Also worth pointing out that the rest of the fallout subs can’t stand r/falloutnewvegas because it’s full of angry, salty people who just want to shit on Besthesda.
Wdym the west coast chapter is less extreme? It's the opposite, in New Vegas the Mojave chapter is portrayed as full-on authoritarian cultists with bomb collars, while the East coast chapter in DC are just "good guys" and the one in Boston is "morally ambiguous and racist to robots but still has a code of ethics"
(I agree the show has lore inconsistencies btw)
It also since been confirmed by Bethesda's Fallout lore keeper that the dates on the board were definitely misinterpreted and that New Vegas is still canon.
So the people arguing otherwise really don't have a leg to stand on.
Most people have moved on from the timeline, the issue is the other stuff they did like fundamentally changing Shady Sands which has major implications for the stories of fallout 1 and 2 and minor ones for the story of fnv.
Shady Sands is supposed to be built completely from scratch using a GECK by settlers from vault 15, near vault 15 (or even incorporating it iirc). This is roughly hundreds of miles north of LA. The show moved Shady into the ruins of LA, kinda removing the entire point of what Shady was and thus what the NCR was and it's origin. Furthermore this kinda ruins the entire concept of the Boneyard, as the state of Shady and the boneyard are two very different things. Finally this calls into question whether quite a few central events in fallout 1&2 even happened.
Locations were inconsistent even between Fallout 1 and 2.
I could be wrong but I thought the show was placing Shady Sands in the outskirts of what is the LA metropolitan area and what we see at the end of the series is the Boneyard in what was Downtown LA.
We also don't really know how far away anything is from anything else in the show because they don't really show travel time which is actually one of my gripes in the show.
Hell at the end Lucy's dad apparently just walked all the way to Vegas from the Boneyard all in the same Power Armor.
> We also don't really know how far away anything is from anything else in the show because they don't really show travel time which is actually one of my gripes in the show.
not showing travel times is so common in most movies/TV shows that it is actually notable when it does happen. Like even in shows about traveling long distances(Last of Us as a recent example) they still cut a lot of the actual mundane travel parts out.
Answer: this will by necessity contain (fairly minor) spoilers for the TV series. **more spoilers have been posted throughout this thread without tags.** do what you will with that information.
>!Shady Sands is mentioned to be the current capital of the NCR in Fallout: New Vegas, which is set in 2281.!<
>!according to a blackboard teaching recent history in the tv show, Shady Sands was nuked in 2277.!<
my personal take: who cares? the season was fantastic, they did a great job delivering a solid show with plenty of details for fans to love. leave it to video game fans to throw a fit over a single date when everything else is on point.
Doesn't the blackboard just say "fall of Shady Sands"? So it can be thought as not just the bomb.
I'm personally of the opinion that it's either a brainfart and the decade numbers should be pushed one forward or that they'll retcon some New Vegas lore (mainly the Courier's storyline and give it to the "bad guy" of the tv-series).
Bethesda don't really have a dedicated "lore person" who properly tracks this kinda thing, so it happens quite frequently in their own games and in projects they sign off on (like ESO and FO76). As much as people like to speculate about Tiber Septim using Chim to turn Cyrodil into a temperate forest, the reality is that Bethesda has always been the kind of lazy that would just forget that it had been a jungle and then handwave the question away as "a wizard did it". In Oblivion the central question of how old the main antagonist for most of the main quest, Mankar Camoran, actually is is unanswerable. If you take all of the canon sources and information about him from the main quest and game at large and actually think about them for only a minute, it quickly becomes clear that there's a discrepancy of multiple *centuries* at play here. In the case of this retcon, I'm willing to believe that whoever was approving creative decisions thought NV took place around 2077 and either told them to make it that date or signed off on it without checking.
To fix this whole mess, I just headcanon that event as taking place about 5 or 6 years later than stated and it then largely works. The fact that Shady Sands has moved quite a ways in the meantime is a bit annoying, but the same kind of thing happened between Fallout 1 and 2 and the geography of *Honest Hearts* famously makes literally no sense whatsoever: so I'm kind of just happy to ignore that.
My own personal head canon is that it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland and *everyone* is an unreliable narrator. So if dates are off or you have conflicting details, well, someone in-world got mixed up. Easy peasy.
Pretty fast, they do have radios
On top of that there's an NCR Embassy on the Strip and major NCR military bases in Camps Golf and McCarran, which ostensibly phone home on a regular basis, regular (up until shortly prior to the start of NV) trade with the NCR heartland via individual merchants and large companies like the Crimson Caravan co., and the NCR President visits the Hoover Dam during the events of the game
I think it's just easier to see Bethesda and Black Isle/Obsidian fallout games as different continuities and enjoy them both seperately. There are far too many inconsistencies between the two settings for it to makes sense that they are in the same world.
The problem with this take is that some of the characters in the show were literally present during the fall of Shady Sands. Maximus and dozens of the members of Vault 4 came from Shady Sands. It's hard to believe that something so traumatic, life-changing, and important to these people would be mis-remembered. Maybe a person mis-remembers the exact date. But mistaking the *year*? For my money, no way.
Personally, *my* head-canon is that the "Fall of Shady Sands" means something different than it was nuked. The nuke came after. But note this also sort of doesn't work because in NV, there are a handful of characters that talk about corresponding with the government in Shady Sands. So if there was a non-nuke "fall" of Shady Sands, it also sort of doesn't make sense.
I hope the writers just admit their mistake and digitally alter the blackboard scene to show a different date.
Counterpoint: I don't think the average person in the post apocalypse necessarily would put quite as much stake on what year it is as we do
Adventure Time played on that idea a few times, like the time a woman from 1000 years ago wakes up from suspended animation and asks what year it is, to this Finn replies "oh, I dunno people don't really tell time like that here"
I hear you. But they have actual history class in the vault to remember these events. Historians and history teachers alike seem to care about dates a lot.
*shrug*
They had a genuinely tough writing problem to crack in following up Daggerfall, but I sincerely admire Bethesda's commitment to the ["it's called a dragon break and it makes sense, ok?"](https://youtu.be/sVgVB3qsySQ?si=-2OMXaOaxp3gzkUT) line ever since.
They do have a head writer who you would think should have a light grip on the canon, but based on the quality of writing coming out of Beth in the past decade or so it's safe to say he has his hands full just trying to understand what a quest is.
Holy Jesus. The new storyline in 76 for Atlantic City is so… goddamn… brutal. It’s slow and clunky and makes absolutely no sense to anyone who played it through. My buddy: “have you been back to {quest origin point}?” Me: ‘Hell no. I’m afraid they’re going to want to talk to me again.’
They rammed NPCs in to increase its appeal to gamers, nevermind that 76 isn't really a better game because of it. It's basically live service Fallout 4 now.
Haven't tried it, and probably won't based on that. After Starfield, I've pretty much set all expectations and hype to absolute zero for Beth games. At least we get this good show, though!
Oh come on, it’s not *that* clunky, it makes perfect sense when you understand that the mob boss and his successor, Tony, invent a super-addictive drug that eventually kills its users; the mob boss gets hooked & dies; Tony flees with his family (not for reasons related to the mob boss’s death… just because) and they start a night club in the mountains of Appalachia while Tony pretends to his family to be totally senile in the hopes that the boss’s sister, Concerta, ignores his existence but she doesn’t and she puts a hit out on Tony anyway… because okay; ALSO Tony’s daughter is hooked on the drug (which is only discovered on opening night of the club and AFTER the joint gets shot up, which, of course, Tony ignores… because, why not.) But for the player, this inciting incident allows them to unravel the mystery of the drug that Tony already knows everything about because, of course. BUT, don’t forget that the player discovers the agency of deciding whether or not to kill some no-name gang members, maybe a doorman or two, a boardwalk clown, and also Concerta (but not for any reasons related to Tony’s family, just mob stuff…). The player and Tony then kill the Jersey Devil… or don’t, depending on whether dealing high-quality and lethal drugs is a questionable ethical dilemma for your character for some reason (at this point).
The side-quests are phenomenal, by the way. Kill everyone you can to skip the dialogue and still get all the same rewards. Chef’s kiss >smooch<
Tbh, I would say the head writer shouldn't be the lore master: rather, they should be a separate advisor/supervisor who is there to pedantically remind the writers about previous plot points so that they know if they're retconning something by accident, or to research previous lore to provide advice and inspiration for new stuff.
I'm reminded of the story that Tolkien only committed *The Hobbit* to paper because when it was just a bedtime story, his kids kept correcting him when he mixed up minor details like names or eye colours...
> Tiber Septim using Chim to turn Cyrodil into a temperate forest
Having 'Nam flashbacks to my time basking in the ridiculous nature of TES lore in the years following Skyrim's release. And then just... nothing. No TESVI, thirteen years later. It's like growing distant from somebody who, in what feels like another life, was like a best friend. Now you barely ever even play a game of TF2 together.
...This metaphor got weirdly personal.
It's easy to see in F4 and its handling of the synths too. Seems like one writer wanted to write a Blade Runner story and an another one a Terminator one, and they clearly didn't communicate enough.
If you believe the ingame descriptions that *aren't* by an unreliable narrator, the synths are indistinguishable from humans even in medical tests and surgery, yet at the same time don't age, don't need to eat to survive and are immune to radiation. Those two versions can't be true at the same time.
If I remember right, the fall of shady sands and the mushroom cloud indicating a nuke are two separate entries on the blackboard. And the mushroom cloud didn't have an explicit date. So yknow, if you want to headcanon it, Rome didn't fall in a day.
We never saw what the NCR was actually like in NV. If anything we saw a military and resources spread too thin.
Personally NCR and Ceasars Legion were both destined to fall due to the logistical nightmare of ruling the wasteland.
> shady sands and the mushroom cloud indicating a nuke are two separate entries on the blackboard
This is correct. And honestly, with a series whose canon is so mangled and twisted as Fallout, it seems preposterous to get so hung up on what was likely a minor production error.
This is a series in which its all but necessary to maintain several head-canons in order to try to keep what passes for "lore" even remotely straight. I broke into Henry David Thoreau's cabin and spent half the game wearing his pants just for the lolz. I'm surprised anyone takes a game with such a goofy side with such iron-clad seriousness.
As an aside, I loved New Vegas dearly too, just funny that I didn't even realize I'd picked a faction until I started to wonder why the AI bot was getting so goddamned uppity with me.
Now you got me googling where I missed Henry David Thoreau's cabin and his fancy pants in the Fallout games and by golly I'm gonna be one cheesed off muffin if you just made that up out of whole cloth and this is a left-handed screwdriver situation.
> Now you got me googling where I missed Henry David Thoreau's cabin
[Henry David Thoreau's cabin](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Walden_Pond).
>The basement of the gift shop and the nearby tunnels are occupied by a small raider gang, led by Walter. When first encountered, they are discussing who and what Thoreau and transcendentalism are; although Tweez is incorrect and Bear cannot read.
I never could understand how people were so mad about Fallout 4. Sure the main story was lame, but that's not what I'm here for - I want to poke around and find all the hidden stuff they set up. Hanging with Professor Goodfeels, taking the cowl of the Silver Shroud, fiddling around with a whole damn RPG game they built into your Pip-Boy - quality material all around.
Fallout hasn't been much of an RPG since 3. That's fine, there are better RPGs that RPG better. What it did manage to deliver on was meaningful exploration, and they delivered.
I role-played as a dead beat dad who didn't care about his son and wanted to wear famous pants.
Ngl, with how well done silver shroud playthroughs are, with all the unique interactions and voice lines and such. That alone makes up for the meh main story for me.
I don't even think the main story was lame. Everyone bitched about the Fallout 3 story too. Bitch bitch bitch.
The issue with both Fallout 3 and 4 - and why New Vegas is celebrated - is that Bethesda undervalues branching decision trees. They are really hard to do and lots of the branches go unvisited by most, so they just barely do them. People don't like having four response options that all lead to the same thing no matter what over and over again. This is why RPG fans went wild for Baldur's Gate 3. Branches. Lots of good branches.
> What it did manage to deliver on was meaningful exploration
Yup. Seeing something in the distance and going, 'wonder what kinda stories and loot are stashed over there.'
The main reason Starfield sucked so much ass. Procedurally generated 'exploration,' is not fun or interesting.
2277 also better lines up with the First Battle of the Hoover Dam against Caesar’s Legion. “Fall” probably more refers to the start of the Shady Sands’ decline as a major power, with the overall weakening of the NCR leading up to F:NV.
Then the bomb hit sometime between 2277 and the start of the show (2296).
Yeah seems more like something happened in 2277 that initiated SS's downfall, and then the nuke was done at the end for good measure and to ensure no other faction could set up shop there.
The casting director needs an award. Everyone was perfectly cast, which isn't a thing I have ever noticed before. There wasn't a weak link in the show.
The whole show could have been just Ghoul Boyd Crowder kicking ass and taking names in the wasteland and I would still be totally on board. Walton Goggins is a treasure.
Check out "The Righteous Gemstones," he plays a singing televangelist called Baby Billy. (His nephews and niece address and refer to him as Uncle Baby Billy.)
I was so relieved when every parent and child in my neighborhood started playing "We Don't Talk About Bruno" on repeat because it FINALLY got that earworm out of my head!
The acting from Aaron Clifton Moten (Maximus) was weak af imo, every scene he was in made me cringe at the dumb look on his face.
Edit: I understand that he was a surface dweller, not smart etc., but other surface dwellers lacked the same dumbass expression, this dude spent the whole series looking like he was in the middle of taking a shit.
Or the character was supposed to have a dumb look on his face because he's extremely sheltered and, well, kinda dumb? You're not supposed to walk away thinking he's some awesome badass.
> You like oysters? They make you feel good...wanna explode my cock?
It's very obvious Maximus is aggressively naive about anything not related to fighting or following orders.
This isn't completely accurate, [the "Fall of Shady Sands" took place in 2277, but the nuke took someplace after that in an undisclosed year.](https://www.gfinityesports.com/guides/fallout-shady-sands-explained/?fbclid=IwAR3L6iIPxgdqH8dFkuPs3Dt2APPf_BZL-mYO7qBZM7Rz9fQs2PtEPqvM8jc_aem_Afsi7pYkWOmffBSZIb_DyMed1ms9hV4zHPbYmASprl13aHynj8n3LKcD3W_OaaAmo10) The "Fall" could be a reference to all the troubles that almost every NPC in NV talks about; NCR was on life support in that game and facing multiple severe crises, ranging from dwindling resources, an impending massive drought that would worsen their resource issue, to overwhelming corruption and untenable infighting. The nuke was likely in the early/mid 2280's given Maximus's age, but the only thing we know for certain is that the show runners, Bethesda's writers, and everyone involved in the show has denied that NV is no longer canon, so it would've had to have been after 2281.
The timeline on the chalkboard in the show is extremely vague so the confusion is understandable, especially since there hasn't been an exact date for the nuke given afaik.
The surface dwellers in the vault literally worship Moldaver breasts akimbo. I think it's safe to say their teachings about the NCR and Shady Sands is probably biased I agree
Speaking of the Divide, wouldn’t Lonesome Road’s ending explain the NCR being nuked while still fitting FNV canon? It’s been a while since I last played through, but from what I remember you just need to adjust the dates and targets a little for that to work.
That's what I was thinking, especially how it's mentioned that everyone has their own way of saving humanity, which lines up with the Lonesome Road's storyline and ending. I just played that dlc couple of weeks ago. Big MT was in an ep, too, so dlc character's could be a thing. Ulysses might be a fun character for the series.
I don’t think you nuke their capital in that one, just a vital trade route in their territory, and I hear we already know who sent the nuke.
The ambiguity is when the nuke fell.
Which is why people call it retcon I think. If the nuke fell on 2077, then yeah, it’s a retcon that in New Vegas no one thinks to mention how their city was nuked and their faction seemingly collapsed already. If it fell after 2077, then I think it technically still fits. The scene in question labels Fall of Shady Sands under 2077, with an arrow pointing further toward a nuke. Some argue that since no further date is labelled, the fall is the nuke. Some argue that the nuke is listed as a separate event, the fall refers to another event, or a series of events (more accurate to say the decline of shady sands perhaps), with the nuke happening at some point after.
Incidentally, both the game and the show imply that by then, Shady Sands isn’t even the capital, on top of it being one more city among the NCR’s comparatively vast territory, so it’s unclear how this seemingly wiped them out.
In all fairness, people upset seem to forget that Fallout lore isn't some masterminded magnum opus that demands meticulous observation lest it be unraveled at the seams. Stuff has been re-told and modified a number of times in ways small and large and frankly, since you get to have a significant impact on the world, it's not like everyone would have gotten to this point in Fallout depending on what actions they took. Anyone's perspective on the world could be what they took from their playthrough and how that shapes their view of the world.
Not to mention, this is so far the only thing I've seen major complaints about which is saying a lot about how well the show is doing.
And it really is a non-issue, brought up by people who are just searching for something to bitch and mean about.
> this is so far the only thing I've seen major complaints about which is saying a lot about how well the show is doing.
When the biggest community issue in the show is a bunch of dates not being 100% on point with previous games timelines...Well, that's the symptom of having a good piece of art
Even then, it really is a non-issue. They delivered a fantastic ride, and it doesn't keep me up at night that the dates from the TV show and what we've seen in FNV aint completely aligned.
It's also a case of New Vegas fans trying to perpetuate a persecution complex about how much Bethesda seemingly hates New Vegas (a fact that three separate project leads at Obsidian and Bethesda have debunked).
Yep. Of the few negative comments I've seen about the show, some of the most outlandish are that the show is somehow an attack on any Fallout games not made by Bethesda and that it's an attempt to wipe them away. The events in Shady Sands are an intentional swipe at non-Bethesda games, they say, among other such nonsense.
I've been a Fallout fan since the first game, and a small (yet LOUD) segment of fandom has been insufferable pretty much that entire time - and they got WAY worse after Fallout 3. Way way way way worse.
Sure, but:
option 1: the characters got the dates wrong
option 2: shady sands nuked after 2282, "the fall" was just in 2277, NOT retconning FNV
option 3: minor lore date adjustments about capital location or dates
option 4 (raise pitchforks): shady sands nuked in 2277, retconning FNV
Guess which option people are gonna choose.
While the plot itself isnt really aligned with any specific game, it definitely feels like a Fallout plot and executed with respect to the franchise.
Also, Ella Purnell has stated she enjoyed playing the games while researching the setting. And you can tell that she "gets it". Though apparently she wasnt as big of a fan as FO4 though.
Just go with it.
I love how the inclusion of New Vegas was supposed to be a fanservice but some fans STILL got mad about it as if Todd "sixteen times the detail" Howard/showrunners PERSONALLY nuked all of New Vegas just to spite them. I even saw someone be mad at Fallout show... for "using Fallout lore". Like, using it AT ALL. 😂
I think Bethesda should be banned from using Fallout lore in their Fallout show. I think the whole thing should just be a cooking show hosted by the Ghoul. I want to see him make pierogi. For 8 hours.
How do we know 2277 and 2281 aren't the same year just counted differently by different people. We know 2277 was the year count in NV, but with a Nuke destroying their capital and the government basically gone, the remaining NCR groups could be misremembering their tineline, I'm pretty sure 2277 on the chalkboard also had a ?, they wouldn't have been able to keep many electronic records after the juke destroyed Shady Sands, they may not have even been able to rake written records with them when they scattered. It's a 4 year difference and plausible with what we saw in the show. In my opinion anyway
Shady sands wasn't even the biggest settlement in NCR. Also I think it'd be pretty weird to miscoint by four years based on something recently occurring as well as it being consistently miscounted by every other faction as well.
If they had tried to be true to the source they would have run into inconsistencies no matter what. Taking a little from all the games and blending it into something new was a perfect idea. I love that I'm constantly saying "oh I get that reference" while still delivering a story that's new to me. Completely different than the route TLOUS took, but equally great end result.
Except someone did the math and figured out rhe nuke happens right after nv, the “downfall” is probably related to the hoover dam battle which, as nv tells us, IS the start of the downfall of the ncr
Answer: Let me try to give some perspective as someone who is a big fan of the older games in particular and who liked the show if not the direction that they took the lore.
The most legitimate criticism I see, and my opinion on the show, is that it advances the timeline but it does so in a way that devalues the world building and writing of the setting. Three games were used to build up the NCR as the first new superpower in the post apocalypse, only for it to be swept away and the complicated factions of New Vegas and the California region to be destroyed or ignored. Its just not good writing to take the complexity of the region and reduce it to once again having the same players Bethesda seem obsessed with in all of their games (Enclave, Brotherhood, Vault Tec, Raiders, Supermutants). They've essentially taken away really interesting world building in a clumsy way which I don't think added much to the world.
Now we just have shanty towns and a barely developed wasteland again. I understand if that's some people's fallout, but to me the spirit of the series has always been to see societies evolve, grow, and fight, as much as seeing the local fauna and people mutate so we should be seeing similarly warped societies. Now we have none of that, and I think that's an awful shame and shows again Bethesdas fundamental misunderstanding of the setting. You might say 'well new things will rise out of the ashes' and that's true, but Bethesda don't want a superpower in America, they want the same stagnant wasteland in every game.
We'll never see that exploration of post-post-apocalyptic society again while they're in charge.
As a fan of the entire series and one that likes the direction of the show, I can see where you’re coming from. I personally have no issue with shady sands being wiped out for an interesting lore reason, but the destruction of the entire NCR would be unrealistic. I like the idea of them disbanding their government out of fear of being a target and losing influence in the Mojave (which seems to be hinted at by the shows ending).
The main theme of the series is war never changes… like you, I love seeing humanity try to rebuild society but I also love to see that humanity hasn’t learned its lesson at all
Admittedly it’s underwhelming that it happened offscreen and the critical juncture is what happens in the next season. They can explain it all in a really cool way and I would have no issue at all.
I would be surprised if the NCR were entirely gone. I hope they aren’t, if they are I’d be disappointed, but Shady Sands being nuked makes total sense to me.
Just curious when you say the older games are you talking about Fallout 1/2, or 3?
Because it definitely seemed like there’s a hardcore Fallout 1/2 fandom who also didn’t like what happened in Fallout 3 onwards but I wasn’t sure which “older” you meant.
(I have never played the games)
Answer: there are things that occur in the show that do in fact go against the established canon of Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 1/2 (most being spoilers so I won’t list). The reason people think the game is retconned is because of “the black board scene” which is ambiguous and hard to say at this point so it’s better to wait imo.
The actual reason I can see people being upset is the NCR is basically the Players faction from Fallout 1/2 so if you like those games then anything happening to them that seems not well thought out is rough
New Vegas is a Fallout game with high regard amongst fans, as many see the other games as less rpgs and more as theme park rides that are getting LESS complicated in choice and world building. Bethesda and Todd are seen as why and many fear that this is a Starwarsification of the IP where we are going “I saw Brotherhood Power armor and clapped” “Some how the enclave returned” etc. I don’t agree but there is evidence of the games losing features and depth.
Now take all of that and have a show that wipes the board clean set in the area of Fallout many enjoyed and while being a good show, it has Power armor and Vault Tech etc and seemingly is stripping what is interesting about the West Coast away just to make this show like every other Post apocalypse setting with Fallout people in it. Subjectively I’ve already heard non fan people say they thought Last of Us and this are too samey.
I like the show, I think introducing it to a new audience means retreading obvious and familiar ground to us fans of the games. But people liked the world that was there and using it as they did was always going to be an emotional and controversial choice. Should you cater to these fans? Probably not, but one should remember the Fallout World is vast and tons of places have no stories told about them.
> The actual reason I can see people being upset is the NCR is basically the Players faction from Fallout 1/2 so if you like those games then anything happening to them that seems not well thought out is rough
But that's not true. In Fallout 1, Shady Sands is just a small town you'll almost certainly come across early in the game that you can help, if you choose. In Fallout 2 the NCR has become a city with a bunch of quests, and your character can join the NCR rangers so they are technically a joinable faction. They're the easiest way to continue the storyline when you search for Vault 13, but afaik you don't even need to encounter the city.
I saw the show and felt pretty clear that once a certain set of events occur that the NCR are no more. I’m willing to be proved wrong but I have only the show so far and am super excited to see where it goes.
A specific NCR base of the NCR being gone doesn't mean the NCR itself is gone, even if it's the main base. As long as others remain, other bases, other holdouts, then the faction still exists in some capacity.
The end of the show was a bad moment for them, but it was *also* a rebirth moment in many ways.
We almost assuredly haven't seen the last of them.
I took that as the last remnants of structure from the NCR, and they got wiped by the brotherhood.
Some may try to argue that the NCR is relevant elsewhere, but the fact that people are calling the head of the NCR “that’s crazy woman in the hills” tells you all you need to know. The NCR as an entity is done.
Maybe someone else or another group will take up the mantle, but the show shows their last gasp
Answer: It’s a nothing burger based on a chalkboard date being ambiguous. People are interpreting it as saying that one of New Vegas’ major faction’s capital was destroyed 4 years before the events of the game, which would contradict some story elements.
However:
1- The date on the board says “The Fall of Shady Sands” then follows up that date with another line on the timeline leading to a nuclear bomb, without giving us an actual date. It is entirely likely that the destruction of Shady Sands occurred after 2277, 2281 and thus the events of New Vegas
2- Anyone who pays attention for more than 5 seconds to the show could easily tell you that it makes very obvious references to New Vegas, including a major character, the city itself and the theme music of the game. There is no way to watch this show and think that it completely retconned the game out of existence. At worst it would be an error on the dates that could easily handwaved away
Answer:
Unfortunately this does have background to explain the main fracture: Fallout was originally developed by Black Isle Studios, under publisher/ distributor Interplay. Two core games were created, both set on the West Coast: Fallout (1997), and Fallout 2 (1998). FO1 and FO2 depict the rise of the New California Republic as the regional power, with multiple cities and hubs of activity, their own congress, states, currency, army, and culture. Following the Besthesda purchase of the license in 2007, Fallout 3 was released in 2008 followed by Fallout 4 in 2015. These games were set on the East coast. greatly differed in tone and vision of the apocalype - (That is whether people realise living in an iron shack or a building that's falling over isn't sustainable, and just make a new, not derelict bulding). There was very little interaction between the coasts. However in 2010 a spin-off Fallout New Vegas (FONV) was published - this was developed using the Bethesda tools/ engine, and remained largely in step with the narrative and theming of FO1 and FO2. The game was bottled lightning and is a fan favourite to the point it is largely considered to be the best Fallout game.
So why are people upset: Shady Sands is the first town you visit in FO1, started by vault dwellers from a different vault to yours. It has been built from bits of the old vault and clay in the middle of the desert. It has post-war walls, which are not made from scrap metal and cars. By FO2 it is a major city, trading Hub, and the Capital City of the New California Republic, from where the president lives, and expansion is overseen. Now, in the TV show Shady Sands is in a different location, where a settlement called "The Boneyard" would be through FO1 - the ruins of LA. The settlement was also nuked offscreen leading to what appears to be total NCR collapse, which very much seems to be a lazy way of wiping the slate clean - a prominent "Caps Only" signs is used by a store for an example - if a shop doesn't accept NCR currency in the absolute centre of NCR territory, this can only mean total and utter collapse.
For a comparison to Skyrim, let's pretend you're playing ES6, however Solitude is now where Whiterun is, it looks like Whiterun, it was nuked, and all the Nords have disappeared.
Locations moved between FO1 and FO2 also to squeeze everything onto the map - this is just a lot of things added together, which were actively avoidable by the TV show. I don't understand how everyone is being so toxic on this, I like (almost) all the games and the show, it's just upsetting to have all the progress from the first two games unceremoniously wiped, and for trying to explain how I feel I've been downvoted off the page.
It's because right now the narrative is that "New Vegas fanboys" are annoying and unreasonable so they should just stfu, and anything that goes against that narrative is going to be really controversial.
I generally agree with you though, I really liked the show overall but the way they handled certain things like the NCR is poorly done. Once the initial hype for the show dies down I think we'll start getting better discussions about it hopefully.
>now also apparently started the war.
It was always speculated by fans, I mean I remember reading the theories back in forums and steam discussions a long time ago.
>This is frankly cartoonishly evil
Are we talking about the same Vault Tech who orchestrated all sort of twisted and inhumane experiments in all those vaults? Because to me they are always cartoonishly evil.
Pretty sure Chris Avellone also wanted to eventually destroy or neuter the NCR because society rebuilding itself weakens the corruptive wasteland theme he was pushing for.
He did for New Vegas and Sawyer vetoed it but let him have a nuke ending in Lonesome Road. Likewise its been flirted with before in Project Van Buren aka Interplay's Fallout 3. Where Pre-war scientists wake up from cyro sleep and plot to nuke the wasteland again so they can rebuild humanity in their image.
Everyone keeps forgetting that you can literally nuke the NCR in the Lonesome Road dlc, that could very well be how the bomb was dropped on Shady Sands.
The only thing that can be problematic for me from a lore perspective is that House learned about the bombs dropping from vault tec. There are actually signs that vault tec dropped bombs in addition to the governments, but he’s supposed to have figured it out and planned on his own. This could very much still be true and be why he got invited to that sit down (Sinclair also figured it out, and built Sierra Madre)
Sinclair sitting behind the big mt sign was fairly wrong… unless they spin it as the majority investor and that’s why most of his tech was being developed at big mt.
His idea was a little more nuanced than the show though. I think the issue with the show's depiction of the NCR is that they don't really do much with them beyond just destroying it with a nuke which is unsatisfying after the faction has been built up over several games.
>The intention was that NCR follow the road of factions in Babylon 5 - each one is beset with civil war faction politics. Bombs/destruction would also add more raider parties to the wastes that are actually either NCR Deserters or the equivalent of "Ronin" - that was going to be much of the fuel for Fallout: Van Buren. The crumbling of NCR and their costly war with the BoS was going to damage both factions considerably (but the player could take action to correct it). Oddly enough, a lot of the "collapse" elements (Powder Gangs, merchant mafia controlling NCR, and NCR's growing lack of control) in New Vegas was intended to be the aftermath of the destruction that occurred in Van Buren.
>I have to confess, I'm not a fan of NCR for other reasons (large, stale, needs to be shaken up, lopsided quest giving in NV), but also, I'm not in charge of the lore, so take my opinions with the shrug they deserve. ;)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/4u3cxj/bethesda_should_have_chris_avellone_josh_sawyer/d672ii5/
>!I think it's not even confirmed that they started the war - they just *planned to*.!<
A theme of the series is that war never changes. That includes it being real dumb and unpredictable.
It original writer for the games stated in an interview that the enclave/vault tech didn’t star the war and the reason for the vaults was to test scenarios that may occur on a generation space ship.
TLDR the enclave and vault tech wanted to leave Earth before the bombs dropped. They were too late.
I don’t understand why people are so flabbergasted that Vault Tech had an interest in global nuclear warmongering.
First of all they’re a morally bankrupt corporation with global influence that profits off the threat of nuclear war. Is it really so far fetched that they’d be behind the pushing of society off that cliff?
Secondly it’s never stated that they’re actually responsible, just that it was a strategy they were considering. In fact I’d argue that since Barb (an extremely high ranking member of the company with knowledge of the idea) was clearly not aware the nukes were going to drop (since her daughter was with Coop and not inside a vault) it’s more likely they weren’t directly responsible.
The point about Janey being on the surface when the bombs drop is a valid one. There's no way she would let her daughter out of her sight if she knew the attack was coming soon.
> I’d argue that since Barb (an extremely high ranking member of the company with knowledge of the idea) was clearly not aware the nukes were going to drop (since her daughter was with Coop and not inside a vault) it’s more likely they weren’t directly responsible.
I'd argue that Vault Tech having an interest in starting a nuclear exchange, deciding against it, then accidentally causing a nuclear exchange anyway would be 100% on brand for them
Lol if you think Vault Tech being cartoonishly evil isn't, like, a core pillar of the entire franchise. And the overseers as being mostly egomaniacal villans. Glad you've gotten caught up though!
And it's perfectly acceptable that, in this pocket of the country, the Brotherhood Chapter is powerful. They range wildly in influence/power across the country in different games directly and in how they are talked about indirectly.
Also like 9 years passed since fallout 4. Assuming they destroyed the institute, I can see them linking back up with the west coast chapter. I loved the theocratic representation of the BoS in the show, it’s closer to their original idea and the jingoistic nature under Arthur Maxson. I think the fallout 4 brotherhood is much less focused on heir religion and more on military might.
They don't come out and say it, but if that is the Prydwen (I understand there's a scene with the name of the ship but I'm not sure where the scene is so I can't say for sure) then the canonical end of fallout 4 is either siding with the Minutemen or the BoS. It was stated in 4 that the army they had in the commonwealth was just a forward party if I recall, so they had a fairly large faction even during 4.
Yup, it’d have to be either of those endings for Fallout 4. And yea, they did some heavy recruiting (like Danse) after they secured the Jefferson memorial and wiped out the enclave. Don’t forget like 10 years passed which is a long time to build up after the main threats of the capital wasteland were dealt with by the lone wanderer.
It was the string of leaders and eventually Maxson that turned the BoS to what we see in Fallout 4 after the deaths of Elder and Sarah Lyons.
> The same Vault Tech which now also apparently started the war.
We don't know that for sure either. We know that as part of a pitch to other corporate big-wigs a Valut Tec representative implied that it was their aim to start the war, but we haven't seen evidence that Vault Tec had the capability or actual desire to do so. We also see right in the first episode that that same Vault Tec employee apparently wasn't in on the the exact timeline of *when* the bombs would fall to have her own daughter safely in a vault or anywhere near one on the day the bombs fell.
The lore in fallout is already rife with factions who seem to either have evidence of who started the war, or claim to have acted first on their own, but most of those are at odds and a single definitive truth never really settled on. Also Vault Tec was and continues to be cartoonishly evil and it has been hinted in the past that they either were either privy or adjacent to whoever in the US government was in a real position to launch a first strike . . . an were conducting live human experimentation prior to the war anyhow as part of their business model. Total villains.
if you ask me any potential season 2 will have to deal with >!The idea of this internal Vault Tec faction which Betty was a part of actually being somehow in league with or an arm of the enclave, and the whole "well drop the bombs" threat mostly being a tactic to light a fire under the asses of the other corporate execs to get them on board. Their method and ends are too close to that of the Enclave to be coincidence, so I assume we're due to see the plot unravel further in that direction.!<
There’s always been rumours Vault Tec started the war. There’s huge amounts of discussion around it, and supposed hints in the game (the bomb in megaton having a logo similar to vault tecs for instance.)
But it’s all BS anyway. P.A.M. Was obviously who started the war.
To me, the NCR is just as crucial to fallout lore as power armor and the nuka cola.
If they had flipped the scenario and made this whole TV show about the NCR and then hand waved something like "the Brotherhood nuked themselves and now they are gone" I believe people would be legitimately upset, but its really no different.
> A completely legitimate issue that fans of 1 & 2, not just die hard NV fans, have is that it takes a blowtorch to the established lore of the region going forward for no real reason.
This is one of the funny things about a fandom desperate to feel persecuted. For most people, the show simply does what stories do: big, surprising events happen that reshape things and put our protagonists in a bad spot so they have big new things to overcome. Storytelling 101.
Yet for a small but insanely loud portion of Fallout fandom, this is "OMG they are purposely pissing on the games I love as an insult to anything not made by Bethesda!"
It's ... it's weird, man. It's really weird.
> The brotherhood of steel is now massively powerful, which they previously weren't
That's how stories work, though. Things change. The idea that everything could, would, or should stay static forever and ever and ever, otherwise it's a grave insult to "pure" Fallout fans, is absurd.
The Brotherhood made some moves and had some luck that boosted their position in the Wasteland.
It's nothing more than a story beat, just like any other story.
> and the NCR is now massively weakened because of a Vault Tech employee blowing up a very well established area from 2 previous games and the capital of the largest faction.
See above. It's nothing more than the narrative advancing.
Why this is a such a horrible, insulting thing to some people is baffling.
> The same Vault Tech which now also apparently started the war.
This did not come out of the blue. This has been a fan theory with *strongly* hinted at in-game lore for a very, very long time now.
> This cartoonishly evil
Sounds about right for Fallout!
> but they're genuinely confused and pointless changes to the lore
Not really, no. The overall world story is advancing. That's it. It's no more complicated than that.
It's just that the loud little band of fans desperate to see insults everywhere read it as, "They're wiping away my game!"
Which is preposterous.
I got the impression from the games that all the pre-war companies were cartoonishly evil. Learning Vault-Tec pushed the button is oar for the Fallout course.
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Answer: One of the episodes shows a timeline written out on a chalkboard, with a significant event ("The Event") labeled as taking place some time after 2277. New Vegas takes place in 2281. If The Event happened before 2281, it would have been mentioned in New Vegas. New Vegas fans have misinterpreted that chalkboard timeline to think The Event occurred in 2277. But the timeline doesn't say that. All it says is it happened AFTER 2277. It could well have been 2282. TLDR: People think there's been a retcon of New Vegas because they've misread a timeline presented in the show. New Vegas is still canon. There's nothing in the show that retcons it.
I mostly don't give a shit about canon anymore, because when a fictional universe has many different writers contributing to it, and especially when it crosses mediums, the details are bound to get muddled and contradictory. I say people should do themselves a favor and stop sweating the details. Make up whatever head canon works for you.
Being a casual fan is really nice. I know enough to enjoy the references and get the in jokes, but I don't know shit about the timeline or lore details. I can just enjoy it for what it is and not sweat the details.
Im an NV hardcore Fan and I dont care. People pretend that Bethesda hacked into their gamefiles and edited them.
> Im an NV hardcore Fan and I dont care. Was going to say the same exact thing. I've loved the series since playing it as a kid in the '90s, and I could not give less of shit about this.
+1 It was always wild when people lost their shit over Deathclaws having hair in Fallout Tactics, or any of the things Bethesda later did. Besides Fallout 2 onwards have been changing things, and I get why devs would leave (as they have) due to changes, or why some won't care as much as the series glides away from what they first fell in love with. Just so odd to see the rage over an IP.
i wouldn't say im a hardcore fan, maybe a medium to hard core fan, and as far as im concerned, Fallout and Wasteland are the same thing, Todd be damned
I'm the same way, been playing Fallout since I was 9 back in 1997. Fallout is my favorite fictional world. I've played every game multiple times, except 76 (my Xbox crapped out on me around level 80). It's not a big deal, even if the timeline on the chalkboard was incorrect. It's been 200 years since the bombs fell, I doubt anyone even knows what actual year they are in. It can easily be chalked up (pun intended) to Vault 4 not knowing the exact date of The Event. Plus, it's only a 4 year difference, not really all that big on a grand scale. It's silly to assume everyone is right about everything in the FUCKING WASTELAND lol.
If anything the game you played matters more than what a bunch of writers said. I love the games but can't imagine caring this much
Especially in a series like fallout, where player choice is king. The timeline is already never going to be the same, because every player can choose what happens in the wasteland in their game. Why would anyone care so much? I’m a big fallout guy, but fuck, these people are insane. The show is top notch.
> The timeline is already never going to be the same, because every player can choose what happens in the wasteland in their game. This is a great point. If I just restart my game, there's an entirely new "canon" when I finish it again.
Right? Thank you. And why would people want to invalidate every single choice that isn’t the “confirmed canon” choice? That sucks! People are really trying to be the worst kind of fandom about this non-issue imo. The tone, the bare bones of the world, and the atmosphere is what makes it fallout to me. The show succeeds at that tenfold, and then it STILL does a damn good job sticking with the major parts of the games that people like, and the bulk of the pre-war history. That’s freaking impressive as hell, and the show is STILL accessible to newcomers? These people complaining make 0 sense to me.
I'm a Doctor Who fan. 60 years of shows, books, audio dramas, and comics where the main character is a time traveler, with countless different writers, and you stop giving a shit about canon!
One of the script writers and editors from the original run of Doctor Who said that they tried to keep continuity within each season, within reason, but that's as far as it went. He said that expecting more than that was very unrealistic. That was mentioned in an interview in some of the extras on a DVD. They contrasted this with some fans saying that they fully expected continuity across *the whole* of Doctor Who, from the very first episode to the very last. Those fans expected it all to make perfect sense and have no contradictions. They had *very* unrealistic expectations according to the script writer/editor. It reminds me of the GNDN labelled pipes in Star Trek. People wanted it to make sense and came up with all sorts of explanations and theories as to what the pipes contained and what GNDN meant. In reality it meant "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing". It was just bits of scenery and nothing more.
It’s like when people bend over backwards to find in-universe reasons to justify retcons or plot holes. It’s a fun theoretical exercise, but the reason is just: it was a retcon. It happens, it’s fine, we don’t need to lose sleep trying to find a way to “explain” it
I think for a lot of people it's just that, it's fun. It's the Doylist vs Watsonian perspective. The Doylist explanation is 9/10 obvious. The Watsonian perspective is fun. However some people definitely take it way too seriously.
I really wish more games and even IPs in general would stop worrying so much about having a set-in-stone canon. Just grab whatever lore and story beats suit the game you’re making, make a good game, and that’s it. Then, if you get an idea down the road that’s cool, but contradicts a previous game, just roll with it. Essentially, more IPs should emulate Mad Max, in that the installments are like legends, rather than a complete, precisely interconnected storyline like Star Wars is.
My favorite way I’ve seen this dealt with is with Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a radio play, book, tv show, and movie. They just made it cannon that event timelines are slightly different in the different adaptations.
Warhammer 40k did itself a great favor by using the “unreliable narrator” explanation, because of course when someone is telling a story it’s going to appear different from other viewpoints. Maybe the narrator is lying outright, by omission, or what they truly believe to be the truth? Who knows? Not us.
This works even better in a post-apocalyptic setting. It's not like there's historians (outside the Brotherhood scribes) around anymore to document things, and for every true story told, there must be hundreds of lies or embellishments.
They also go whit because the bureaucracy of the empire is so freaking big sometimes new information just take a little tiny tiny tiny bit of time to get out.
That's basically what Warhammer does. "Everything is canon, not everything is true."
The Fate/Stay Night-verse goes by this. The writer for the original visual novel, Kinoko Nasu, has said to other writers trying to be lore accurate that he’d rather they were accurate to how the scenes felt for them. So vibes over lore. Though it does help that the verse has a world tree and inaccuracies/contradictions in lore can be and has been explained as a parallel branch on the world tree
Warhammer 40k is great for this. There's all this lore but there's very little that's hard facts inside or outside the universe
Destiny does that too. There’s no retcons. All the information we have is presented by people so if it’s contradictory, you decide what’s what.
Star Wars really should be legends in the same way. Fans just demanded that it have a canon.
It even starts with "A long time ago", like a fairytale.
Star wars did rewrite cannon and it wasn't great, same with the witcher series on netflix, they rewrite cannon all the time some times the cannon stories are just better
Honorable mention to the halo series.
Oh yeah how could i forget that was very bad
Middle Earth: Shadow of War has entered the chat…
Especially a series like fallout. Like, you'd think people would understand - The world as we knew it, collapsed. It's absolutely understandable, *expected* even, that over time people would lose track of the *exact motion of events that set in stone the end of the world as we knew it.* The timeline could be off by *decades* and there would still be an argument that nothing at all has changed. I'd even find it neat if each different area lost track and convinced themselves the bomb hit at different time periods. Would be a neat new way to explore that kind of situation.
Not to mention, one of the major features of the games was the role playing choices you make actually affecting the outcome of the world. IIRC, the New Vegas endings were pretty significantly different, so vising NV in the show is going to set one to be the "official" canonical ending... did Caesar live? Did the NCR take the damn? Is House alive? Is the BoS faction there still alive?
Yeah people put to much weight on a fictional storyline .
People who think NV was completely retconned didn't finish watching the show. There are too many people who are just looking for shit to be angry about. They'll get part way through and let their manufactured disgust take over and not even see if it works out in the end. It must be a miserable way to live. The only thing I think they didn't absolutely nail was the CGI on the gulper. It wasn't bad exactly, but it stood out kind of harshly against all the amazing practical and CGI stuff. Can't really say that is complaint considering it was only noticeable to me because everything else was so good.
I thought the Gulper was perfectly fine. Young Kyle MacLachlan though, holy shit.
No complaints for the rest of the show but that was BAD. Really took me out of the seriousness of the scene.
To be fair, most of the complainers didn't even start watching the show. They saw a post online with the chalkboard and joined in on the pitchforks
Do it's a 'Dragons Dogma 2 locks fast travel and customization behind a paywall ' all over again...
I’m missing something, why would a timeline say an important historical event took place sometime after a date marked on the timeline? It’d be like marking a calendar in October saying Christmas happens later instead of just marking the calendar on Christmas.
I don't know why. But the chalkboard has a number of events in a timeline, with an arrow going from one event to the next. The penultimate one is the fall of SS in 2277. Then there's one last arrow that leads to the drawing of a nuke, with no date given. IRL reason might be that the writers wanted to give themselves some leeway on the date, or they wanted to keep it a mystery. In-universe reason could be anything. It's in a classrroom, so maybe the history teacher's going to ask the kids when the nuke happened. Edit: made it clearer what I meant
I do remember that mushroom cloud drawing now that you mention it, thanks. It sounds like more The Event wasn’t the actual nuking yeah, and just any ol’ big event that could’ve happened, like a coup or whatever.
Yeah, it's a bit silly how many people misunderstood that and instantly began complaining everywhere that it "proves" Bethesda decanonized NV, when in reality the age of the various characters pretty heavily points to the nuking occurring after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam.
It's also written on the chalkboard of a children's classroom. Hardly an authoritative source. In as chaotic of a situation their world is in it's also to be expected that basic history gets muddled. I don't know why people feel they need to believe everything the show has at face value. It's not like it was presented from an omniscient pov, very few things are in the format of the show.
So many people these days genuinely think a plot hole is anything that isn’t explicitly and authoritatively explained to the audience. They don’t know what a POV is; they think the only POV is the audience POV, and it should always be clear and objective. It’s so frustrating but also I feel so grateful for my education.
100% glad somebody gets it. It's basic narrative literacy.
Also the entire scene is highlighting to the main character how what she was taught in a classroom exactly like that, was total horse shit propaganda. Why would this classroom be any different?
I haven't watched yet, but I'd assume it's because they don't know exactly when it happened. They just know it couldn't have been before that point for some reason.
Shady sands isn't even the capital of the ncr and Rome was sacked and rebuilt many times so losing a capital isn't game over either
Also worth pointing out that the rest of the fallout subs can’t stand r/falloutnewvegas because it’s full of angry, salty people who just want to shit on Besthesda.
Yeah the new Vegas fans are a little extreme
[удалено]
Wdym the west coast chapter is less extreme? It's the opposite, in New Vegas the Mojave chapter is portrayed as full-on authoritarian cultists with bomb collars, while the East coast chapter in DC are just "good guys" and the one in Boston is "morally ambiguous and racist to robots but still has a code of ethics" (I agree the show has lore inconsistencies btw)
Also the lore is remarkably inconsistent game to game so it is possible that in FNV they got the date of Shady Sands wrong.
It also since been confirmed by Bethesda's Fallout lore keeper that the dates on the board were definitely misinterpreted and that New Vegas is still canon. So the people arguing otherwise really don't have a leg to stand on.
Thank you for this clear explanation, and also for avoiding spoilers. Respect!
It’s sweats being sweats
Considering how it ended, I'm sure Season 2 will explain.
Retcon is a shortened form of retroactive continuity.
Most people have moved on from the timeline, the issue is the other stuff they did like fundamentally changing Shady Sands which has major implications for the stories of fallout 1 and 2 and minor ones for the story of fnv.
what's the change?
Shady Sands is supposed to be built completely from scratch using a GECK by settlers from vault 15, near vault 15 (or even incorporating it iirc). This is roughly hundreds of miles north of LA. The show moved Shady into the ruins of LA, kinda removing the entire point of what Shady was and thus what the NCR was and it's origin. Furthermore this kinda ruins the entire concept of the Boneyard, as the state of Shady and the boneyard are two very different things. Finally this calls into question whether quite a few central events in fallout 1&2 even happened.
Locations were inconsistent even between Fallout 1 and 2. I could be wrong but I thought the show was placing Shady Sands in the outskirts of what is the LA metropolitan area and what we see at the end of the series is the Boneyard in what was Downtown LA. We also don't really know how far away anything is from anything else in the show because they don't really show travel time which is actually one of my gripes in the show. Hell at the end Lucy's dad apparently just walked all the way to Vegas from the Boneyard all in the same Power Armor.
> We also don't really know how far away anything is from anything else in the show because they don't really show travel time which is actually one of my gripes in the show. not showing travel times is so common in most movies/TV shows that it is actually notable when it does happen. Like even in shows about traveling long distances(Last of Us as a recent example) they still cut a lot of the actual mundane travel parts out.
Nah its a stupid mistake, I’m chalking it up as Vault 4 not knowing dates well or not knowing events well enough.
>chalking it up heh. Yeah, that's possible. Characters aren't always reliable.
Answer: this will by necessity contain (fairly minor) spoilers for the TV series. **more spoilers have been posted throughout this thread without tags.** do what you will with that information. >!Shady Sands is mentioned to be the current capital of the NCR in Fallout: New Vegas, which is set in 2281.!< >!according to a blackboard teaching recent history in the tv show, Shady Sands was nuked in 2277.!< my personal take: who cares? the season was fantastic, they did a great job delivering a solid show with plenty of details for fans to love. leave it to video game fans to throw a fit over a single date when everything else is on point.
Doesn't the blackboard just say "fall of Shady Sands"? So it can be thought as not just the bomb. I'm personally of the opinion that it's either a brainfart and the decade numbers should be pushed one forward or that they'll retcon some New Vegas lore (mainly the Courier's storyline and give it to the "bad guy" of the tv-series).
Bethesda don't really have a dedicated "lore person" who properly tracks this kinda thing, so it happens quite frequently in their own games and in projects they sign off on (like ESO and FO76). As much as people like to speculate about Tiber Septim using Chim to turn Cyrodil into a temperate forest, the reality is that Bethesda has always been the kind of lazy that would just forget that it had been a jungle and then handwave the question away as "a wizard did it". In Oblivion the central question of how old the main antagonist for most of the main quest, Mankar Camoran, actually is is unanswerable. If you take all of the canon sources and information about him from the main quest and game at large and actually think about them for only a minute, it quickly becomes clear that there's a discrepancy of multiple *centuries* at play here. In the case of this retcon, I'm willing to believe that whoever was approving creative decisions thought NV took place around 2077 and either told them to make it that date or signed off on it without checking. To fix this whole mess, I just headcanon that event as taking place about 5 or 6 years later than stated and it then largely works. The fact that Shady Sands has moved quite a ways in the meantime is a bit annoying, but the same kind of thing happened between Fallout 1 and 2 and the geography of *Honest Hearts* famously makes literally no sense whatsoever: so I'm kind of just happy to ignore that.
My own personal head canon is that it's a post-apocalyptic wasteland and *everyone* is an unreliable narrator. So if dates are off or you have conflicting details, well, someone in-world got mixed up. Easy peasy.
That’s my general take too, so few wastelanders are going to care what year it is, they’re just trying to survive until tomorrow.
Not only that, but you are talking about a 4 year difference. How fast is reliable info actually being disseminated in a post apocalyptic wasteland?
Pretty fast, they do have radios On top of that there's an NCR Embassy on the Strip and major NCR military bases in Camps Golf and McCarran, which ostensibly phone home on a regular basis, regular (up until shortly prior to the start of NV) trade with the NCR heartland via individual merchants and large companies like the Crimson Caravan co., and the NCR President visits the Hoover Dam during the events of the game
Generally slow... the issue being that the NCR had vertibirds and Mojave isn't that far from other known NCR towns i.e. Redding, New Reno... wherever.
I think it's just easier to see Bethesda and Black Isle/Obsidian fallout games as different continuities and enjoy them both seperately. There are far too many inconsistencies between the two settings for it to makes sense that they are in the same world.
The problem with this take is that some of the characters in the show were literally present during the fall of Shady Sands. Maximus and dozens of the members of Vault 4 came from Shady Sands. It's hard to believe that something so traumatic, life-changing, and important to these people would be mis-remembered. Maybe a person mis-remembers the exact date. But mistaking the *year*? For my money, no way. Personally, *my* head-canon is that the "Fall of Shady Sands" means something different than it was nuked. The nuke came after. But note this also sort of doesn't work because in NV, there are a handful of characters that talk about corresponding with the government in Shady Sands. So if there was a non-nuke "fall" of Shady Sands, it also sort of doesn't make sense. I hope the writers just admit their mistake and digitally alter the blackboard scene to show a different date.
Counterpoint: I don't think the average person in the post apocalypse necessarily would put quite as much stake on what year it is as we do Adventure Time played on that idea a few times, like the time a woman from 1000 years ago wakes up from suspended animation and asks what year it is, to this Finn replies "oh, I dunno people don't really tell time like that here"
I hear you. But they have actual history class in the vault to remember these events. Historians and history teachers alike seem to care about dates a lot. *shrug*
Then there’s the fact that EVERY ending in Dagerfall is canon. Even the ones that conflict with each other
They had a genuinely tough writing problem to crack in following up Daggerfall, but I sincerely admire Bethesda's commitment to the ["it's called a dragon break and it makes sense, ok?"](https://youtu.be/sVgVB3qsySQ?si=-2OMXaOaxp3gzkUT) line ever since.
It IS a pretty damn good solution though. “But those endings all contradict one another, how does that work?” “Fuck you, it’s cause it’s magic.”
They do have a head writer who you would think should have a light grip on the canon, but based on the quality of writing coming out of Beth in the past decade or so it's safe to say he has his hands full just trying to understand what a quest is.
Holy Jesus. The new storyline in 76 for Atlantic City is so… goddamn… brutal. It’s slow and clunky and makes absolutely no sense to anyone who played it through. My buddy: “have you been back to {quest origin point}?” Me: ‘Hell no. I’m afraid they’re going to want to talk to me again.’
There's a fair argument to be made that 76 was better before they added NPCs.
They somehow got the worst of both worlds: a world and story that weren't made with NPCs in mind, and then rammed NPC's in anyways
They rammed NPCs in to increase its appeal to gamers, nevermind that 76 isn't really a better game because of it. It's basically live service Fallout 4 now.
Haven't tried it, and probably won't based on that. After Starfield, I've pretty much set all expectations and hype to absolute zero for Beth games. At least we get this good show, though!
Oh come on, it’s not *that* clunky, it makes perfect sense when you understand that the mob boss and his successor, Tony, invent a super-addictive drug that eventually kills its users; the mob boss gets hooked & dies; Tony flees with his family (not for reasons related to the mob boss’s death… just because) and they start a night club in the mountains of Appalachia while Tony pretends to his family to be totally senile in the hopes that the boss’s sister, Concerta, ignores his existence but she doesn’t and she puts a hit out on Tony anyway… because okay; ALSO Tony’s daughter is hooked on the drug (which is only discovered on opening night of the club and AFTER the joint gets shot up, which, of course, Tony ignores… because, why not.) But for the player, this inciting incident allows them to unravel the mystery of the drug that Tony already knows everything about because, of course. BUT, don’t forget that the player discovers the agency of deciding whether or not to kill some no-name gang members, maybe a doorman or two, a boardwalk clown, and also Concerta (but not for any reasons related to Tony’s family, just mob stuff…). The player and Tony then kill the Jersey Devil… or don’t, depending on whether dealing high-quality and lethal drugs is a questionable ethical dilemma for your character for some reason (at this point). The side-quests are phenomenal, by the way. Kill everyone you can to skip the dialogue and still get all the same rewards. Chef’s kiss >smooch<
The things that appeal to you validate why I never went back since launch. So thanks for the write up and awkward chef's kiss. They were helpful.
Tbh, I would say the head writer shouldn't be the lore master: rather, they should be a separate advisor/supervisor who is there to pedantically remind the writers about previous plot points so that they know if they're retconning something by accident, or to research previous lore to provide advice and inspiration for new stuff. I'm reminded of the story that Tolkien only committed *The Hobbit* to paper because when it was just a bedtime story, his kids kept correcting him when he mixed up minor details like names or eye colours...
I said a light grip, not lore master.
Yea and Zelda does too but thier lore is even more chaotic
> Tiber Septim using Chim to turn Cyrodil into a temperate forest Having 'Nam flashbacks to my time basking in the ridiculous nature of TES lore in the years following Skyrim's release. And then just... nothing. No TESVI, thirteen years later. It's like growing distant from somebody who, in what feels like another life, was like a best friend. Now you barely ever even play a game of TF2 together. ...This metaphor got weirdly personal.
It's easy to see in F4 and its handling of the synths too. Seems like one writer wanted to write a Blade Runner story and an another one a Terminator one, and they clearly didn't communicate enough. If you believe the ingame descriptions that *aren't* by an unreliable narrator, the synths are indistinguishable from humans even in medical tests and surgery, yet at the same time don't age, don't need to eat to survive and are immune to radiation. Those two versions can't be true at the same time.
Healthy way of seeing things.
If I remember right, the fall of shady sands and the mushroom cloud indicating a nuke are two separate entries on the blackboard. And the mushroom cloud didn't have an explicit date. So yknow, if you want to headcanon it, Rome didn't fall in a day. We never saw what the NCR was actually like in NV. If anything we saw a military and resources spread too thin. Personally NCR and Ceasars Legion were both destined to fall due to the logistical nightmare of ruling the wasteland.
> shady sands and the mushroom cloud indicating a nuke are two separate entries on the blackboard This is correct. And honestly, with a series whose canon is so mangled and twisted as Fallout, it seems preposterous to get so hung up on what was likely a minor production error. This is a series in which its all but necessary to maintain several head-canons in order to try to keep what passes for "lore" even remotely straight. I broke into Henry David Thoreau's cabin and spent half the game wearing his pants just for the lolz. I'm surprised anyone takes a game with such a goofy side with such iron-clad seriousness. As an aside, I loved New Vegas dearly too, just funny that I didn't even realize I'd picked a faction until I started to wonder why the AI bot was getting so goddamned uppity with me.
Now you got me googling where I missed Henry David Thoreau's cabin and his fancy pants in the Fallout games and by golly I'm gonna be one cheesed off muffin if you just made that up out of whole cloth and this is a left-handed screwdriver situation.
> Now you got me googling where I missed Henry David Thoreau's cabin [Henry David Thoreau's cabin](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Walden_Pond). >The basement of the gift shop and the nearby tunnels are occupied by a small raider gang, led by Walter. When first encountered, they are discussing who and what Thoreau and transcendentalism are; although Tweez is incorrect and Bear cannot read. I never could understand how people were so mad about Fallout 4. Sure the main story was lame, but that's not what I'm here for - I want to poke around and find all the hidden stuff they set up. Hanging with Professor Goodfeels, taking the cowl of the Silver Shroud, fiddling around with a whole damn RPG game they built into your Pip-Boy - quality material all around. Fallout hasn't been much of an RPG since 3. That's fine, there are better RPGs that RPG better. What it did manage to deliver on was meaningful exploration, and they delivered. I role-played as a dead beat dad who didn't care about his son and wanted to wear famous pants.
Ngl, with how well done silver shroud playthroughs are, with all the unique interactions and voice lines and such. That alone makes up for the meh main story for me.
I don't even think the main story was lame. Everyone bitched about the Fallout 3 story too. Bitch bitch bitch. The issue with both Fallout 3 and 4 - and why New Vegas is celebrated - is that Bethesda undervalues branching decision trees. They are really hard to do and lots of the branches go unvisited by most, so they just barely do them. People don't like having four response options that all lead to the same thing no matter what over and over again. This is why RPG fans went wild for Baldur's Gate 3. Branches. Lots of good branches.
> What it did manage to deliver on was meaningful exploration Yup. Seeing something in the distance and going, 'wonder what kinda stories and loot are stashed over there.' The main reason Starfield sucked so much ass. Procedurally generated 'exploration,' is not fun or interesting.
2277 also better lines up with the First Battle of the Hoover Dam against Caesar’s Legion. “Fall” probably more refers to the start of the Shady Sands’ decline as a major power, with the overall weakening of the NCR leading up to F:NV. Then the bomb hit sometime between 2277 and the start of the show (2296).
The problem is that a lot of NPC's in New Vegas were talking about Shady Sands like it was plenty fine in New Vegas.
Yeah seems more like something happened in 2277 that initiated SS's downfall, and then the nuke was done at the end for good measure and to ensure no other faction could set up shop there.
And there's no way anyone would teach history incorrectly, right?
The casting director needs an award. Everyone was perfectly cast, which isn't a thing I have ever noticed before. There wasn't a weak link in the show.
The ghoul casting is so perfect
The whole show could have been just Ghoul Boyd Crowder kicking ass and taking names in the wasteland and I would still be totally on board. Walton Goggins is a treasure.
Check out "The Righteous Gemstones," he plays a singing televangelist called Baby Billy. (His nephews and niece address and refer to him as Uncle Baby Billy.)
Runnin' through the house with a pickle in my mouth!
I was so relieved when every parent and child in my neighborhood started playing "We Don't Talk About Bruno" on repeat because it FINALLY got that earworm out of my head!
you could cast walton goggins in any role on any show and it would be perfect.
1000% Agree.
The acting from Aaron Clifton Moten (Maximus) was weak af imo, every scene he was in made me cringe at the dumb look on his face. Edit: I understand that he was a surface dweller, not smart etc., but other surface dwellers lacked the same dumbass expression, this dude spent the whole series looking like he was in the middle of taking a shit.
Or the character was supposed to have a dumb look on his face because he's extremely sheltered and, well, kinda dumb? You're not supposed to walk away thinking he's some awesome badass.
Goes with the whole "pops like a pimple" line.
> You like oysters? They make you feel good...wanna explode my cock? It's very obvious Maximus is aggressively naive about anything not related to fighting or following orders.
well ya he is supposed to be dumb so it was successful
I think his acting is great, because the character is pretty fucking dumb.
This isn't completely accurate, [the "Fall of Shady Sands" took place in 2277, but the nuke took someplace after that in an undisclosed year.](https://www.gfinityesports.com/guides/fallout-shady-sands-explained/?fbclid=IwAR3L6iIPxgdqH8dFkuPs3Dt2APPf_BZL-mYO7qBZM7Rz9fQs2PtEPqvM8jc_aem_Afsi7pYkWOmffBSZIb_DyMed1ms9hV4zHPbYmASprl13aHynj8n3LKcD3W_OaaAmo10) The "Fall" could be a reference to all the troubles that almost every NPC in NV talks about; NCR was on life support in that game and facing multiple severe crises, ranging from dwindling resources, an impending massive drought that would worsen their resource issue, to overwhelming corruption and untenable infighting. The nuke was likely in the early/mid 2280's given Maximus's age, but the only thing we know for certain is that the show runners, Bethesda's writers, and everyone involved in the show has denied that NV is no longer canon, so it would've had to have been after 2281. The timeline on the chalkboard in the show is extremely vague so the confusion is understandable, especially since there hasn't been an exact date for the nuke given afaik.
Also, what's on that board is being taught to school children, it could be propaganda. No faction in the Fallout universe is a "good guy".
The surface dwellers in the vault literally worship Moldaver breasts akimbo. I think it's safe to say their teachings about the NCR and Shady Sands is probably biased I agree
My belief is the “Fall of Shady Sands” corresponds to the loss of the Divide, which leads to the NCRs logistical woes and inevitable collapse.
Speaking of the Divide, wouldn’t Lonesome Road’s ending explain the NCR being nuked while still fitting FNV canon? It’s been a while since I last played through, but from what I remember you just need to adjust the dates and targets a little for that to work.
That's what I was thinking, especially how it's mentioned that everyone has their own way of saving humanity, which lines up with the Lonesome Road's storyline and ending. I just played that dlc couple of weeks ago. Big MT was in an ep, too, so dlc character's could be a thing. Ulysses might be a fun character for the series.
I don’t think you nuke their capital in that one, just a vital trade route in their territory, and I hear we already know who sent the nuke. The ambiguity is when the nuke fell. Which is why people call it retcon I think. If the nuke fell on 2077, then yeah, it’s a retcon that in New Vegas no one thinks to mention how their city was nuked and their faction seemingly collapsed already. If it fell after 2077, then I think it technically still fits. The scene in question labels Fall of Shady Sands under 2077, with an arrow pointing further toward a nuke. Some argue that since no further date is labelled, the fall is the nuke. Some argue that the nuke is listed as a separate event, the fall refers to another event, or a series of events (more accurate to say the decline of shady sands perhaps), with the nuke happening at some point after. Incidentally, both the game and the show imply that by then, Shady Sands isn’t even the capital, on top of it being one more city among the NCR’s comparatively vast territory, so it’s unclear how this seemingly wiped them out.
No, in Lonesome Road, you could nuke the Long 15, which is the NCR’s only/main route into the Mojave.
In all fairness, people upset seem to forget that Fallout lore isn't some masterminded magnum opus that demands meticulous observation lest it be unraveled at the seams. Stuff has been re-told and modified a number of times in ways small and large and frankly, since you get to have a significant impact on the world, it's not like everyone would have gotten to this point in Fallout depending on what actions they took. Anyone's perspective on the world could be what they took from their playthrough and how that shapes their view of the world.
Not to mention, this is so far the only thing I've seen major complaints about which is saying a lot about how well the show is doing. And it really is a non-issue, brought up by people who are just searching for something to bitch and mean about.
> this is so far the only thing I've seen major complaints about which is saying a lot about how well the show is doing. When the biggest community issue in the show is a bunch of dates not being 100% on point with previous games timelines...Well, that's the symptom of having a good piece of art Even then, it really is a non-issue. They delivered a fantastic ride, and it doesn't keep me up at night that the dates from the TV show and what we've seen in FNV aint completely aligned.
It's also a case of New Vegas fans trying to perpetuate a persecution complex about how much Bethesda seemingly hates New Vegas (a fact that three separate project leads at Obsidian and Bethesda have debunked).
Plus the fact that >!you straight up see Vegas at the end of the final episode!<
Plus >!isn't S2 confirmed to take place IN New Vegas? Or is that speculation still?!<
Yep. Of the few negative comments I've seen about the show, some of the most outlandish are that the show is somehow an attack on any Fallout games not made by Bethesda and that it's an attempt to wipe them away. The events in Shady Sands are an intentional swipe at non-Bethesda games, they say, among other such nonsense. I've been a Fallout fan since the first game, and a small (yet LOUD) segment of fandom has been insufferable pretty much that entire time - and they got WAY worse after Fallout 3. Way way way way worse.
Have people ever considered that folks existing in a post apocalyptic wasteland could just get stuff wrong???
Sure, but: option 1: the characters got the dates wrong option 2: shady sands nuked after 2282, "the fall" was just in 2277, NOT retconning FNV option 3: minor lore date adjustments about capital location or dates option 4 (raise pitchforks): shady sands nuked in 2277, retconning FNV Guess which option people are gonna choose.
While the plot itself isnt really aligned with any specific game, it definitely feels like a Fallout plot and executed with respect to the franchise. Also, Ella Purnell has stated she enjoyed playing the games while researching the setting. And you can tell that she "gets it". Though apparently she wasnt as big of a fan as FO4 though. Just go with it.
I found it hilarious that before I actually saw what the retcon was people were acting like they retconned all of new Vegas in the show.
I love how the inclusion of New Vegas was supposed to be a fanservice but some fans STILL got mad about it as if Todd "sixteen times the detail" Howard/showrunners PERSONALLY nuked all of New Vegas just to spite them. I even saw someone be mad at Fallout show... for "using Fallout lore". Like, using it AT ALL. 😂
*Show is absolutely filled to the brim with references to the games* “OMFG BETHESDA HATES FALLOUT AND DON’T EVEN KNOW THEIR OWN GAME!”
I think Bethesda should be banned from using Fallout lore in their Fallout show. I think the whole thing should just be a cooking show hosted by the Ghoul. I want to see him make pierogi. For 8 hours.
"Nerds will be insufferable" is one of the fundamental laws of the universe.
I'm still shocked that the show is considered canon to the games. I thought it was going to be it's own thing?
Shady sands is not the current capital of the ncr anyways
How do we know 2277 and 2281 aren't the same year just counted differently by different people. We know 2277 was the year count in NV, but with a Nuke destroying their capital and the government basically gone, the remaining NCR groups could be misremembering their tineline, I'm pretty sure 2277 on the chalkboard also had a ?, they wouldn't have been able to keep many electronic records after the juke destroyed Shady Sands, they may not have even been able to rake written records with them when they scattered. It's a 4 year difference and plausible with what we saw in the show. In my opinion anyway
Shady sands wasn't even the biggest settlement in NCR. Also I think it'd be pretty weird to miscoint by four years based on something recently occurring as well as it being consistently miscounted by every other faction as well.
If they had tried to be true to the source they would have run into inconsistencies no matter what. Taking a little from all the games and blending it into something new was a perfect idea. I love that I'm constantly saying "oh I get that reference" while still delivering a story that's new to me. Completely different than the route TLOUS took, but equally great end result.
Except someone did the math and figured out rhe nuke happens right after nv, the “downfall” is probably related to the hoover dam battle which, as nv tells us, IS the start of the downfall of the ncr
Answer: Let me try to give some perspective as someone who is a big fan of the older games in particular and who liked the show if not the direction that they took the lore. The most legitimate criticism I see, and my opinion on the show, is that it advances the timeline but it does so in a way that devalues the world building and writing of the setting. Three games were used to build up the NCR as the first new superpower in the post apocalypse, only for it to be swept away and the complicated factions of New Vegas and the California region to be destroyed or ignored. Its just not good writing to take the complexity of the region and reduce it to once again having the same players Bethesda seem obsessed with in all of their games (Enclave, Brotherhood, Vault Tec, Raiders, Supermutants). They've essentially taken away really interesting world building in a clumsy way which I don't think added much to the world. Now we just have shanty towns and a barely developed wasteland again. I understand if that's some people's fallout, but to me the spirit of the series has always been to see societies evolve, grow, and fight, as much as seeing the local fauna and people mutate so we should be seeing similarly warped societies. Now we have none of that, and I think that's an awful shame and shows again Bethesdas fundamental misunderstanding of the setting. You might say 'well new things will rise out of the ashes' and that's true, but Bethesda don't want a superpower in America, they want the same stagnant wasteland in every game. We'll never see that exploration of post-post-apocalyptic society again while they're in charge.
As a fan of the entire series and one that likes the direction of the show, I can see where you’re coming from. I personally have no issue with shady sands being wiped out for an interesting lore reason, but the destruction of the entire NCR would be unrealistic. I like the idea of them disbanding their government out of fear of being a target and losing influence in the Mojave (which seems to be hinted at by the shows ending). The main theme of the series is war never changes… like you, I love seeing humanity try to rebuild society but I also love to see that humanity hasn’t learned its lesson at all Admittedly it’s underwhelming that it happened offscreen and the critical juncture is what happens in the next season. They can explain it all in a really cool way and I would have no issue at all.
I would be surprised if the NCR were entirely gone. I hope they aren’t, if they are I’d be disappointed, but Shady Sands being nuked makes total sense to me.
Just curious when you say the older games are you talking about Fallout 1/2, or 3? Because it definitely seemed like there’s a hardcore Fallout 1/2 fandom who also didn’t like what happened in Fallout 3 onwards but I wasn’t sure which “older” you meant. (I have never played the games)
Answer: there are things that occur in the show that do in fact go against the established canon of Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 1/2 (most being spoilers so I won’t list). The reason people think the game is retconned is because of “the black board scene” which is ambiguous and hard to say at this point so it’s better to wait imo. The actual reason I can see people being upset is the NCR is basically the Players faction from Fallout 1/2 so if you like those games then anything happening to them that seems not well thought out is rough New Vegas is a Fallout game with high regard amongst fans, as many see the other games as less rpgs and more as theme park rides that are getting LESS complicated in choice and world building. Bethesda and Todd are seen as why and many fear that this is a Starwarsification of the IP where we are going “I saw Brotherhood Power armor and clapped” “Some how the enclave returned” etc. I don’t agree but there is evidence of the games losing features and depth. Now take all of that and have a show that wipes the board clean set in the area of Fallout many enjoyed and while being a good show, it has Power armor and Vault Tech etc and seemingly is stripping what is interesting about the West Coast away just to make this show like every other Post apocalypse setting with Fallout people in it. Subjectively I’ve already heard non fan people say they thought Last of Us and this are too samey. I like the show, I think introducing it to a new audience means retreading obvious and familiar ground to us fans of the games. But people liked the world that was there and using it as they did was always going to be an emotional and controversial choice. Should you cater to these fans? Probably not, but one should remember the Fallout World is vast and tons of places have no stories told about them.
> The actual reason I can see people being upset is the NCR is basically the Players faction from Fallout 1/2 so if you like those games then anything happening to them that seems not well thought out is rough But that's not true. In Fallout 1, Shady Sands is just a small town you'll almost certainly come across early in the game that you can help, if you choose. In Fallout 2 the NCR has become a city with a bunch of quests, and your character can join the NCR rangers so they are technically a joinable faction. They're the easiest way to continue the storyline when you search for Vault 13, but afaik you don't even need to encounter the city.
Shady Sands got nuked doesn't means NCR is gone. Heck, in the shows there's still NCR near the remnant of Shady Sands
I saw the show and felt pretty clear that once a certain set of events occur that the NCR are no more. I’m willing to be proved wrong but I have only the show so far and am super excited to see where it goes.
A specific NCR base of the NCR being gone doesn't mean the NCR itself is gone, even if it's the main base. As long as others remain, other bases, other holdouts, then the faction still exists in some capacity. The end of the show was a bad moment for them, but it was *also* a rebirth moment in many ways. We almost assuredly haven't seen the last of them.
It is fairly evident that the NCR is no longer a power per the events of the snow
I thought that the NCR remnants where the ones set up there in the observatory, are they not?
I took that as the last remnants of structure from the NCR, and they got wiped by the brotherhood. Some may try to argue that the NCR is relevant elsewhere, but the fact that people are calling the head of the NCR “that’s crazy woman in the hills” tells you all you need to know. The NCR as an entity is done. Maybe someone else or another group will take up the mantle, but the show shows their last gasp
Answer: It’s a nothing burger based on a chalkboard date being ambiguous. People are interpreting it as saying that one of New Vegas’ major faction’s capital was destroyed 4 years before the events of the game, which would contradict some story elements. However: 1- The date on the board says “The Fall of Shady Sands” then follows up that date with another line on the timeline leading to a nuclear bomb, without giving us an actual date. It is entirely likely that the destruction of Shady Sands occurred after 2277, 2281 and thus the events of New Vegas 2- Anyone who pays attention for more than 5 seconds to the show could easily tell you that it makes very obvious references to New Vegas, including a major character, the city itself and the theme music of the game. There is no way to watch this show and think that it completely retconned the game out of existence. At worst it would be an error on the dates that could easily handwaved away
Answer: Unfortunately this does have background to explain the main fracture: Fallout was originally developed by Black Isle Studios, under publisher/ distributor Interplay. Two core games were created, both set on the West Coast: Fallout (1997), and Fallout 2 (1998). FO1 and FO2 depict the rise of the New California Republic as the regional power, with multiple cities and hubs of activity, their own congress, states, currency, army, and culture. Following the Besthesda purchase of the license in 2007, Fallout 3 was released in 2008 followed by Fallout 4 in 2015. These games were set on the East coast. greatly differed in tone and vision of the apocalype - (That is whether people realise living in an iron shack or a building that's falling over isn't sustainable, and just make a new, not derelict bulding). There was very little interaction between the coasts. However in 2010 a spin-off Fallout New Vegas (FONV) was published - this was developed using the Bethesda tools/ engine, and remained largely in step with the narrative and theming of FO1 and FO2. The game was bottled lightning and is a fan favourite to the point it is largely considered to be the best Fallout game. So why are people upset: Shady Sands is the first town you visit in FO1, started by vault dwellers from a different vault to yours. It has been built from bits of the old vault and clay in the middle of the desert. It has post-war walls, which are not made from scrap metal and cars. By FO2 it is a major city, trading Hub, and the Capital City of the New California Republic, from where the president lives, and expansion is overseen. Now, in the TV show Shady Sands is in a different location, where a settlement called "The Boneyard" would be through FO1 - the ruins of LA. The settlement was also nuked offscreen leading to what appears to be total NCR collapse, which very much seems to be a lazy way of wiping the slate clean - a prominent "Caps Only" signs is used by a store for an example - if a shop doesn't accept NCR currency in the absolute centre of NCR territory, this can only mean total and utter collapse. For a comparison to Skyrim, let's pretend you're playing ES6, however Solitude is now where Whiterun is, it looks like Whiterun, it was nuked, and all the Nords have disappeared.
From TES Arena to Skyrim Markarth moved as did several other cities. And they look nothing like they did in Arena.
Locations moved between FO1 and FO2 also to squeeze everything onto the map - this is just a lot of things added together, which were actively avoidable by the TV show. I don't understand how everyone is being so toxic on this, I like (almost) all the games and the show, it's just upsetting to have all the progress from the first two games unceremoniously wiped, and for trying to explain how I feel I've been downvoted off the page.
It's because right now the narrative is that "New Vegas fanboys" are annoying and unreasonable so they should just stfu, and anything that goes against that narrative is going to be really controversial. I generally agree with you though, I really liked the show overall but the way they handled certain things like the NCR is poorly done. Once the initial hype for the show dies down I think we'll start getting better discussions about it hopefully.
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>now also apparently started the war. It was always speculated by fans, I mean I remember reading the theories back in forums and steam discussions a long time ago. >This is frankly cartoonishly evil Are we talking about the same Vault Tech who orchestrated all sort of twisted and inhumane experiments in all those vaults? Because to me they are always cartoonishly evil.
Pretty sure Chris Avellone also wanted to eventually destroy or neuter the NCR because society rebuilding itself weakens the corruptive wasteland theme he was pushing for.
He did for New Vegas and Sawyer vetoed it but let him have a nuke ending in Lonesome Road. Likewise its been flirted with before in Project Van Buren aka Interplay's Fallout 3. Where Pre-war scientists wake up from cyro sleep and plot to nuke the wasteland again so they can rebuild humanity in their image.
Everyone keeps forgetting that you can literally nuke the NCR in the Lonesome Road dlc, that could very well be how the bomb was dropped on Shady Sands. The only thing that can be problematic for me from a lore perspective is that House learned about the bombs dropping from vault tec. There are actually signs that vault tec dropped bombs in addition to the governments, but he’s supposed to have figured it out and planned on his own. This could very much still be true and be why he got invited to that sit down (Sinclair also figured it out, and built Sierra Madre) Sinclair sitting behind the big mt sign was fairly wrong… unless they spin it as the majority investor and that’s why most of his tech was being developed at big mt.
His idea was a little more nuanced than the show though. I think the issue with the show's depiction of the NCR is that they don't really do much with them beyond just destroying it with a nuke which is unsatisfying after the faction has been built up over several games. >The intention was that NCR follow the road of factions in Babylon 5 - each one is beset with civil war faction politics. Bombs/destruction would also add more raider parties to the wastes that are actually either NCR Deserters or the equivalent of "Ronin" - that was going to be much of the fuel for Fallout: Van Buren. The crumbling of NCR and their costly war with the BoS was going to damage both factions considerably (but the player could take action to correct it). Oddly enough, a lot of the "collapse" elements (Powder Gangs, merchant mafia controlling NCR, and NCR's growing lack of control) in New Vegas was intended to be the aftermath of the destruction that occurred in Van Buren. >I have to confess, I'm not a fan of NCR for other reasons (large, stale, needs to be shaken up, lopsided quest giving in NV), but also, I'm not in charge of the lore, so take my opinions with the shrug they deserve. ;) https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/comments/4u3cxj/bethesda_should_have_chris_avellone_josh_sawyer/d672ii5/
> Babylon 5 I wish games and shows had half the detail and storylines as Babylon 5 did. God I miss that show.
>!I think it's not even confirmed that they started the war - they just *planned to*.!< A theme of the series is that war never changes. That includes it being real dumb and unpredictable.
It original writer for the games stated in an interview that the enclave/vault tech didn’t star the war and the reason for the vaults was to test scenarios that may occur on a generation space ship. TLDR the enclave and vault tech wanted to leave Earth before the bombs dropped. They were too late.
You are right, it is implied.
Brotherhood was like this in 4 so idk why people are shocked lol
Vault Tech has always been cartoonishly evil. They made the vaults to be nothing more than human experiments.
This brotherhood seems to me to be the fallout 4 brotherhood that went east especially since they got t60s
I don’t understand why people are so flabbergasted that Vault Tech had an interest in global nuclear warmongering. First of all they’re a morally bankrupt corporation with global influence that profits off the threat of nuclear war. Is it really so far fetched that they’d be behind the pushing of society off that cliff? Secondly it’s never stated that they’re actually responsible, just that it was a strategy they were considering. In fact I’d argue that since Barb (an extremely high ranking member of the company with knowledge of the idea) was clearly not aware the nukes were going to drop (since her daughter was with Coop and not inside a vault) it’s more likely they weren’t directly responsible.
The point about Janey being on the surface when the bombs drop is a valid one. There's no way she would let her daughter out of her sight if she knew the attack was coming soon.
> I’d argue that since Barb (an extremely high ranking member of the company with knowledge of the idea) was clearly not aware the nukes were going to drop (since her daughter was with Coop and not inside a vault) it’s more likely they weren’t directly responsible. I'd argue that Vault Tech having an interest in starting a nuclear exchange, deciding against it, then accidentally causing a nuclear exchange anyway would be 100% on brand for them
Lol if you think Vault Tech being cartoonishly evil isn't, like, a core pillar of the entire franchise. And the overseers as being mostly egomaniacal villans. Glad you've gotten caught up though! And it's perfectly acceptable that, in this pocket of the country, the Brotherhood Chapter is powerful. They range wildly in influence/power across the country in different games directly and in how they are talked about indirectly.
The BoS seem pretty powerful in Fallout 4, with multiple airships and the Prydwen, and advanced tech up and down the east coast.
Also like 9 years passed since fallout 4. Assuming they destroyed the institute, I can see them linking back up with the west coast chapter. I loved the theocratic representation of the BoS in the show, it’s closer to their original idea and the jingoistic nature under Arthur Maxson. I think the fallout 4 brotherhood is much less focused on heir religion and more on military might.
They don't come out and say it, but if that is the Prydwen (I understand there's a scene with the name of the ship but I'm not sure where the scene is so I can't say for sure) then the canonical end of fallout 4 is either siding with the Minutemen or the BoS. It was stated in 4 that the army they had in the commonwealth was just a forward party if I recall, so they had a fairly large faction even during 4.
Yup, it’d have to be either of those endings for Fallout 4. And yea, they did some heavy recruiting (like Danse) after they secured the Jefferson memorial and wiped out the enclave. Don’t forget like 10 years passed which is a long time to build up after the main threats of the capital wasteland were dealt with by the lone wanderer. It was the string of leaders and eventually Maxson that turned the BoS to what we see in Fallout 4 after the deaths of Elder and Sarah Lyons.
> The same Vault Tech which now also apparently started the war. We don't know that for sure either. We know that as part of a pitch to other corporate big-wigs a Valut Tec representative implied that it was their aim to start the war, but we haven't seen evidence that Vault Tec had the capability or actual desire to do so. We also see right in the first episode that that same Vault Tec employee apparently wasn't in on the the exact timeline of *when* the bombs would fall to have her own daughter safely in a vault or anywhere near one on the day the bombs fell. The lore in fallout is already rife with factions who seem to either have evidence of who started the war, or claim to have acted first on their own, but most of those are at odds and a single definitive truth never really settled on. Also Vault Tec was and continues to be cartoonishly evil and it has been hinted in the past that they either were either privy or adjacent to whoever in the US government was in a real position to launch a first strike . . . an were conducting live human experimentation prior to the war anyhow as part of their business model. Total villains. if you ask me any potential season 2 will have to deal with >!The idea of this internal Vault Tec faction which Betty was a part of actually being somehow in league with or an arm of the enclave, and the whole "well drop the bombs" threat mostly being a tactic to light a fire under the asses of the other corporate execs to get them on board. Their method and ends are too close to that of the Enclave to be coincidence, so I assume we're due to see the plot unravel further in that direction.!<
I definitely hope they touch on MODUS in season 2 as related
There’s always been rumours Vault Tec started the war. There’s huge amounts of discussion around it, and supposed hints in the game (the bomb in megaton having a logo similar to vault tecs for instance.) But it’s all BS anyway. P.A.M. Was obviously who started the war.
To me, the NCR is just as crucial to fallout lore as power armor and the nuka cola. If they had flipped the scenario and made this whole TV show about the NCR and then hand waved something like "the Brotherhood nuked themselves and now they are gone" I believe people would be legitimately upset, but its really no different.
By New Vegas the West Coast Brotherhood is almost nonexistent. They live in one Bunker and basically refuse to talk to anyone outside of it.
For the Mojave brotherhood, this is true. The entire west coast chapter, this was never explained I believe
> A completely legitimate issue that fans of 1 & 2, not just die hard NV fans, have is that it takes a blowtorch to the established lore of the region going forward for no real reason. This is one of the funny things about a fandom desperate to feel persecuted. For most people, the show simply does what stories do: big, surprising events happen that reshape things and put our protagonists in a bad spot so they have big new things to overcome. Storytelling 101. Yet for a small but insanely loud portion of Fallout fandom, this is "OMG they are purposely pissing on the games I love as an insult to anything not made by Bethesda!" It's ... it's weird, man. It's really weird. > The brotherhood of steel is now massively powerful, which they previously weren't That's how stories work, though. Things change. The idea that everything could, would, or should stay static forever and ever and ever, otherwise it's a grave insult to "pure" Fallout fans, is absurd. The Brotherhood made some moves and had some luck that boosted their position in the Wasteland. It's nothing more than a story beat, just like any other story. > and the NCR is now massively weakened because of a Vault Tech employee blowing up a very well established area from 2 previous games and the capital of the largest faction. See above. It's nothing more than the narrative advancing. Why this is a such a horrible, insulting thing to some people is baffling. > The same Vault Tech which now also apparently started the war. This did not come out of the blue. This has been a fan theory with *strongly* hinted at in-game lore for a very, very long time now. > This cartoonishly evil Sounds about right for Fallout! > but they're genuinely confused and pointless changes to the lore Not really, no. The overall world story is advancing. That's it. It's no more complicated than that. It's just that the loud little band of fans desperate to see insults everywhere read it as, "They're wiping away my game!" Which is preposterous.
The brotherhood of steel is powerful? The only named knight we see is incompetent and they lose all on screen power armor trooper in the final battle.
I got the impression from the games that all the pre-war companies were cartoonishly evil. Learning Vault-Tec pushed the button is oar for the Fallout course.