New Vegas Is Still Canon After The TV Show

Key Takeaways

• The Fallout display’s choice to spoil Shady Sands is not a jab at Fallout: New Vegas
• The display aligns extra intently with New Vegas’ topics, as we see within the fall of the NCR.
• This makes New Vegas extra canon than it is ever been, a minimum of within the ways in which subject.

Once I completed Fallout forward of its premiere, I felt an immense sense of dread. Now not for the route of the sequence – season one had given me greater than sufficient explanation why to agree with the showrunners’ imaginative and prescient – however as a result of I knew that my fellow Fallout: New Vegas enthusiasts would both see this as the most efficient factor to occur to the sequence in years, or hate the whole thing about it.

Presently, it kind of feels just like the latter camp is profitable. All over on-line, I’m seeing enthusiasts of the vintage Fallouts and New Vegas (learn: non-Bethesda video games) accuse the display of constructing Obsidian’s sport non-canon. The explanation? One date written on a whiteboard. If it wasn’t for that unmarried shot, the end-reveal that season two is taking us again to Nevada would excite enthusiasts who haven’t hooked up with the sequence in years. Now, we’re at every different’s throats.

I’ll admit that, on the time, I had a an identical knee-jerk response to the show. Blowing up Shady Sands – in all probability earlier than the occasions of New Vegas – is a daring transfer, crippling the NCR in some way that it’s laborious to believe them recuperating from. It eliminates an iconic location from the primary two video games, destroys a whole faction, and – if the town truly was once nuked at the date we noticed at the whiteboard – may just even contradict New Vegas’ tale.

New Vegas’ tale kicks off in 2281. Some enthusiasts have theorised that the date at the whiteboard, 2277, is regarding the beginning of Shady Sand’s decline, now not its destruction, leaving New Vegas’ timeline intact. There’s a large arrow pointing to the nuke that signifies a while handed between the 2 occasions.

Fortuitously for me, I didn’t have any Twitter discourse to cloud my thoughts. I saved observing and located that this show was once in provider of a plotline that elevates the display’s storytelling, including additional intensity that justifies the verdict to spoil this fan favorite locale.

As we find within the finale, the citizens of Shady Sands have been getting too as regards to a contented finishing. Lee Moldaver was once running against getting her arms on a endless power supply, casting off the will for factions to struggle for sources. Rose MacLean, the mummy of our hero Lucy, had settled down within the house, discovering that the sector had moved on with out Vault-Tec’s lend a hand.

So naturally, Vault-Tec bombed all the town, wiping out a neighborhood that was once getting dangerously as regards to self-reliance, threatening its final analysis. It’s tragic, petty, and useless, appearing that capitalists would slightly set the sector on hearth than lose their marketplace dominance – it’s natural, liquified Fallout in a bottle.

How The Fallout Display Captures New Vegas’ Middle

The Shady Sand’s storyline right away jogged my memory of the stories advised in New Vegas itself. Take Veronica’s better half quests, for instance. This duties you with proving to her Brotherhood bankruptcy that wastelanders have so much to supply, and that they must get started accepting outsiders into their numbers. No matter you do, they do not want to concentrate, leaving Veronica to both settle for that and watch the Brotherhood die a gradual loss of life, or break out, leaving the whole thing she is aware of at the back of. In truth, like Vault-Tec within the display, the Brotherhood would slightly stomp on any technological growth that it could possibly’t regulate, killing somebody who will get of their approach.

Then again, now not many New Vegas enthusiasts are making this comparability. In truth, they argue that the display destroying Shady Sands is a few more or less ‘screw you’ from Bethesda. Ignoring the truth that the display wasn’t written by way of Bethesda, I’d say that the other is correct. The easiest praise it’s worthwhile to pay to the rest in Fallout is exploring it, attractive with it, after which blowing it up.

Shady Sands’ signal additionally mentions that it’s the “first capital” of the NCR, which means that it was once most probably outmoded by way of any other town after its fall. We additionally know that, all through New Vegas, the NCR was once stretched skinny, so it’s no wonder they would nearly collapsed by the point of the display in 2296.

The video games have proven this time and time once more. Within the first access, the Brotherhood are terrifying, with their hulking energy armour and unprecedented choice of pre-war generation. Then, by the point Fallout 2 rolls round, they’re out of date, with only some individuals desperately clinging to relevance. Within the first sport, they are able to save the day, striking an finish to the Grasp’s plans. Now, the sector has moved on, and nobody’s terrified of them anymore.

This was once probably the most major criticisms of the Brotherhood underneath Bethesda. They’re inexplicably again in Fallout 3, and more potent than ever, so Obsidian needed to rush in and cause them to an inappropriate bunch of losers once more in New Vegas. Then, we get to Fallout 4, and so they’re of their top over again. It’s a tug-of-war that Bethesda has gained, nevertheless it puzzled the sequence such a lot that few enthusiasts can agree on what it’s intended to be about.

That is why the Fallout display makes New Vegas’ model of occasions extra canon than ever. With the NCR, we get a an identical tale to the Brotherhood of outdated, because the faction has long gone from seeing itself because the de facto inheritors of america, to not anything. Higher but, its downfall was once relatively self-inflicted, because it followed all the worst components of the outdated US govt – stomping over somebody that were given in the best way of its army targets and plans to amplify its concept of ‘civilisation’. It wasn’t sustainable, and it left them open to lacking a brand new danger just like the remnants of Vault-Tec, even on the center in their capital.

The NCR Over The Years

In Bethesda’s Fallout video games, time would possibly as neatly now not exist, as we infrequently see factions alternate because the years pass by way of. I do know many New Vegas enthusiasts trust me as a result of I’m seeing them accuse the display of getting the similar flaw, arguing that Shady Sands was once most effective destroyed so it might turn out to be a pile of rubble, matching the settings of Fallout 3 and four.

However Shady Sands isn’t a pile of ash only for the cultured, it’s as a result of that was once the belief of its tale. It did develop right into a thriving, advanced civilisation, that’s the purpose. It exists to counter Vault-Tec’s worldview that they have been the one ones who may just rebuild The united states. For Lucy, this discovery is pivotal for her cult deprogramming. It’s a perception she was once taught by way of her father – who blew up Shady Sands. It was once by no means about Vault-Tec having the most efficient imaginative and prescient of a brand new international, it was once about it being their international.

This tale is extra vital to me than a date on a whiteboard – and it must be to you too. No matter occurs with the timeline, the overall shot we see of Shady Sands tells me that it’s going to all be value it. After years of preventing, the desolate tract just about had an finish to its struggling due to Shady Sands and Moldaver’s generation. However now, all the other folks it might have benefitted are useless, and the generation is within the arms of the Brotherhood.

Amidst all of those warring factions, all clinging on to photographs of the previous, the only individual preventing for the longer term is useless, as is her imaginative and prescient of an equivalent, non violent society. It’s tales like this that make Fallout nice, now not an inventory of dates. And I worth the showrunners’ talent to know the guts and soul of the sequence excess of their talent to memorise the wiki.

Even supposing the date that the bombs fell on Shady Sands contradicted the occasions of Fallout: New Vegas, it wouldn’t subject. The Fallout display understands New Vegas’ message higher than any sequence instalment that got here after it, and in that sense, Obsidian’s paintings hasn’t ever been extra canon than it’s now.