Fallout: New Vegas Is Still Canon After The TV Show

Summary

The Fallout show's decision to destroy Shady Sands isn't a jab at Fallout: New Vegas
The show aligns more closely with New Vegas' themes, as we see in the fall of the NCR.
This makes New Vegas more canon than it's ever been, at least in the ways that matter.

When I finished Fallout ahead of its premiere, I felt an immense sense of dread. Not for the direction of the series - season one had given me more than enough reason to trust the showrunners’ vision - but because I knew that my fellow 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout: New Vegas fans would either see this as the best thing to happen to the series𓆉 in years, or hate everything about it.

Right now, it seems like the latter camp is winning. Everywhere online, I’m seeing fans of the classic Fallouts and New Vegas (read: non-Bethesda games) accuse the show of making Obsidian’s game no🌞n-canon. The reason? One date written on a whiteboard. If it wasn’t for that single shot, the end-reveal that 168澳洲幸运🥃5开奖网:season two is taking us back to Nevada would excite fans who haven’t connected with the series i♓n years. Now, we’re at each other’s throats.

I’ll admit that, at the time, I had a similar knee🌟-jerk reaction to the reveal. Blowing up Shady Sands - possibly before the events of New Vegas - is a bold move, crippling the NCR in a way that it’s hard to imagine them recovering from. It removes an iconic location from the first two games, destroys an entire faction, and - if the city really was nuked on the date we saw on the whiteboard - could even contradict New Vegas’ story.

New Vegas’ story kicks off in 2281. Some fans have theorised that the date on the whiteboard, 2277, is referring to the start of Shady Sand’s decline, not its destruction, leaving New Vegas’ timeline intact. There’s a big arrow pointing to the nuke that indicates some time passed between th🧜e two events.

Luckily for me, I didn’t have any Twitter discourse to cloud my mind. I kept watching and found that this reveal was in service of a plotline that elevates the show’s storytelling, adding extra depth that justifies the decision to destroy this🐭 fan favourite locale.

As we discover in the finale, the reജsidents of Shady Sands were getting too close to a happy ending. Lee Moldaver was working towards getting her hands on a limitless energy source, removing the need for f๊actions to fight for resources. Rose MacLean, the mother of our hero Lucy, had settled down in the area, finding that the world had moved on without Vault-Tec’s help.

So naturally, Vault-Tec bombed the entire city, wiping out a community that was getting dangerously close to self-relia♊nce, threatening its bottom line. It’s tragic, petty, and needless, showing that capitalists would rather set the world on fire than lose their market dominance - it’s pure, liquified Fallout in a bottle.

How The Fallout Show Captures New Vegas' Heart

The Shady Sand's storyline instantly reminded me of the tales told in New Vegas itself. Take Veronica’s companion quests, for example. This tasks you with proving to her Brotherhood chapter that wastelanders have a lot to offer, and that they should start accepting outsiders into their numbers. Whatever you do, they refuse to listen, leaving Veronica to either accept that and watch the Brotherhood die a slow death, or escape, leaving everything she knows behind. In fact, like Vault-Tec in the show, the Brotherhood would rather stomp on any technological progress that it can’t control, killing anyone who gets in their way.

However, not many New Vegas fans are making this comparison. In fact, they argue that the show destroying Shady Sands is some kind of ‘screw you’ from Bethesda. Ignoring the fact that the show wasn’t written by Bethesda, I would say that the opposite is true. The highest compliment you could pay to anything in Fallout is explorin🍨g it, engaging with it, and then blowing it up.

Shady Sands’ sign also mentions that it’s the “first capital” of the NCR, meaning that it was likely superseded by another city after its fall. We also know that, during New Vegas, the NCR was stretched thin, so it’s no surprise they'd practically collapsed by the time of the show in 2296.

The games have shown this time and time again. In the first entry, the Brotherhood are terrifying, with their hulking power armour and unparalleled collection of pre-war technology. Then, by the time Fallout 2 rolls around, they’re obsolete, with only a few members desperately clinging to relevance. In the first game, they can save the day, putting an end to the Master’s plans. Now, 🦄the world has moved on, and no one’s scared of them anymore.

This was one of the main criticisms of the Brotherhood undꦯer Bethesda. They’re inexplicably back in Fallout 3, and stronger than ever, so Obsidian had to rush in and make them an irrelevant bunch of losers again in New Vegas. Then, we get to Fallout 4, and they’re in their prime once more. It’s a tug-of-war that Bethesda has won, but it confused the series so much that few fans can agree on what it’s meant to be about.

This is why the Fallout show makes New Vegas’ version of events more canon than ever. With the NCR, we get a similar story to the Brotherhood of o𓆏ld, as the faction has gone from seeing itself as the de facto inheritors of the United States, to nothing. Better yet, its downfall was somewhat self-inflicted, as it adopted all of the worst elements of the old US government - stomping over anyone that got in the way of its military aims and plans to expand🅷 its idea of ‘civilisation’. It wasn’t sustainable, and it left them open to missing a new threat like the remnants of Vault-Tec, even at the heart of their capital.

The NCR Over The Years

In Bethesda’s Fallout games, time might as well not exist, as we rarely see factions change as the years go by. I know many New Vegas fans agree with me because I’m seeing them accuse the show of having the same flaw, arguing that Shady Sands was only destroyed so it could become a pile of🦂 rubble, matching the settings of Fallout 3 and 4.

But Shady Sands isn’t a pile of ash just for the aesthetic, it’s because that was the conclusion of its story. It did grow into a thriving, developed civilisation, that’s the point. It exists to counter Vault-Tec’s worldview that they were the only ones who could rebuild America. For Lucy, this discovery is pivotal for her cult deprogramming. It’s a notion she was taught by her father - who blew up Shady Sands. It was never about Vault-Tec having the best vision of a new world, it was about it being their world.

This story is more important to me than a date on a whiteboard - and it should be to you too. Wha💧tever happens with the timeline, the final shot we see of Shady Sands tells me that it will ꧑all be worth it. After years of fighting, the wasteland nearly had an end to its suffering thanks to Shady Sands and Moldaver’s technology. But now, all of the people it would have benefitted are dead, and the technology is in the hands of the Brotherhood.

Amidst all of these warring factions, all clinging on to images of the past, the one person fighting for the future is dead, as is her vision of an equal, peaceful society. It’s stories like this that make Fallout great, not a list of dates. And I value the ෴showrunners’ abi🍒lity to understand the heart and soul of the series far more than their ability to memorise the wiki.

Even if the date that the bombs fell on Shady ಌSands contradicted the events of Fallout: New Vegas, it wouldn’t matter. The Fallout show understands 🐈New Vegas’ message better than any series instalment that came after it, and in that sense, Obsidian’s work has never been more canon than it is now.