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Bethesda’s Todd Howard clarifies the fate of Shady Sands in the Fallout TV show timelineObsidian’s New Vegas very much still part of Fallout history
Obsidian’s New Vegas very much still part of Fallout history
Bethesda’s very own Mr Handy (director and executive producer) Todd Howard has addressedthe controversy surrounding the Fallout TV show’s treatment of Fallout backstory, reaffirming the canonicity of Obsidian’sFallout: New Vegasand promising that Bethesda and Amazon are being “careful” to maintain consistency between the games and the TV series. Are you new to this latest lore scandal? Watch out forFallout Season 1 spoilersahead, then.
To catch you up, there’s a blackboard sketch in the TV show on which some helpful, possibly now-fugitive soul has written “The fall of Shady Sands” and “2277” with a big arrow pointing to a mushroom cloud. This gives the fairly unambiguous impression that Shady Sands, capital of a wasteland faction called the New California Republic, was nuked in 2277 - several years before the events of Fallout: New Vegas, in which the NCR and Shady Sands are said to be doing fairly well. As such, it suggests that the events of Fallout: New Vegas never happened, or didn’t happen as depicted in the game.
Speaking tothe Ian Games Network, Howard insisted that there’s no clash between the show and the events of theFalloutgame series. According to Howard, Shady Sands gets nuked straightafterthe events of Fallout: New Vegas, not in 2277.
Howard told IGN that the idea of nuking Shady Sands came from Fallout TV showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. “And we talked through it and it was, ‘This would be a pretty impactful story moment that a lot of things anchor on,"’ he said. The proposed destruction of the city - which isn’t just an important location in Fallout: New Vegas but one of the first surface-ground cities you’ll visit in the very first Black Isle-developed Fallout game - was apparently a catalyst for Bethesda and the TV production team working together more closely, to ensure the show remained consistent with Fallout lore.
“We’re careful about the timeline,” Howard said. “There might be a little bit of confusion in some places. But everything that happened in the previous games, including New Vegas, happened. We’re very careful about that.” He added that “all I can say is we’re threading it tighter there, but the bombs fall just after the events of New Vegas.”
Convinced? Unconvinced? Too busywatching the showorrevisiting the gamesor getting on with your life to care? You might be more interested to know that there’s apotential Fallout announcement coming in November. Perhaps it’ll be the first trailer forFallout TV Season 2.
