HomeNewsFallout: New Vegas
No, the Fallout TV show hasn’t written Fallout: New Vegas out of history, says Bethesda design directorSenior developer responds to fan outcry over blackboard scene
Senior developer responds to fan outcry over blackboard scene
Image credit:Bethesda Softworks
Image credit:Bethesda Softworks
Friends, there is trouble a-brewing down the radioactive watering hole. While Amazon’sFalloutTV adaptation haslaunched to pretty positive verdicts, a contingent of Fallout players are up in arms over its portrayal of the Fallout timeline. In particular, it’s being claimed that the show has written the events of Obsidian’sFallout: New Vegasout of the canon, despite reassurances from Bethesda Game Studios design director Emil Pagliarulo. Dare you read on? Let me just load up my Junk Jet with piping, hotFallout Season 1 spoilers…
Spoilers away! I’ll try not to reveal more than I have to. Briefly, in Episode 6, “The Trap”, there’s a shot of a blackboard with the words “Fall of Shady Sands” and “2277” and a big arrow pointing to a mushroom cloud. First-class environmental storytelling, no notes. In the Fallout game series, Shady Sands is the capital of the New California Republic, a relatively cuddly wasteland outfit that becomes a major faction in 1998’sFallout 2, and is central to the plot of 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas.
The trouble is, Fallout: New Vegas is set in 2281, but the game references Shady Sands as a still-existing location, though the city can’t be visited. Hence, Obsidian diehards and wiki-enforcers getting their power armour in a twist over the scene from the TV show - which Bethesda’s Todd Howardhas said is canon(thanksEurogamer).
Seen it come up a couple of times, so here’s a helpful little Fallout timeline!* Bombs drop - 2077* Fallout 76 - 2102* Fallout 1 - 2161* Fallout Tactics - 2197* Fallout 2 - 2241* Fallout 3 - 2277* Fallout: New Vegas - 2281* Fallout 4 - 2287* Fallout TV show - 2296— Emil Pagliarulo (@Dezinuh)April 11, 2024
Seen it come up a couple of times, so here’s a helpful little Fallout timeline!* Bombs drop - 2077* Fallout 76 - 2102* Fallout 1 - 2161* Fallout Tactics - 2197* Fallout 2 - 2241* Fallout 3 - 2277* Fallout: New Vegas - 2281* Fallout 4 - 2287* Fallout TV show - 2296
There are some alternate explanations for the Shady Sands scene. One is that whoever wrote “2277” on the blackboard could be lying, or simply misinformed. This is a post-nuclear wasteland, after all. Dating is probably a matter of guesswork for a lot of people. Look upon my Works, ye Mighty, and despair - because there is no longer an official fan wiki you can reference when attempting to validate said Works and make sure that Ozymandias wasn’t screwing around with the continuity.
Blow-ups like this are why Bethesda decided to setThe Elder Scrolls Onlineseveral hundred years before the events of the numbered Elder Scrolls RPGs, giving the MMO’s designers a reasonably free hand to rewrite the setting providing they remembered to mention aSkyrimNPC’s great-great-great-etc-granddad, now and then. As a narrative property, Fallout doesn’t quite have that luxury - everything needs to happen close enough to the apocalypse that things feel post-apocalyptic, after all. Anyway, if you’ve found all this intriguing I have a related story to tell you aboutVault Boy’s thumb.
