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Introduction:
Fallout Official Timeline Confirmed: As a fan, one of the pleasures of Fallout is to settle in and delve deeply into its alternate reality interpretation of American history. Everything from the rescue of Alaska by the Chinese government to the recall of Teddy Bears in 2072 and beyond has been meticulously documented by the lore specialists at Bethesda.
Until recently, the several Fallout video games created by companies like Interplay Entertainment, Black Isle, Bethesda, and Obsidian were the main source of this other history. There is a fresh addition to the canon, though, as the new Prime Video series is currently accessible for streaming. We know this since IGN spoke with senior producer Jonathan Nolan of Fallout: Jonathan Nolan, executive producer of The Series, will discuss how the new program fits into the expansive Fallout timeline.
Fallout Official Timeline Confirmed: What is the place of the Fallout Show within the broader timeline?
The Fallout television series is officially set in the year 2296, which is later than any Fallout game that has been released to date. Fallout: New Vegas is set in the year 2281, a full 15 years before the events of the show, while Fallout 4 is set in the year 2287.
Events in the show have significant lore ramifications for the series since the showrunners and Howard already stated the show existed within the canon of the games. The biggest is most likely what happened to Shady Sands, which served as the New California Republic’s initial capital and was an important setting in the Fallout video games. The first season’s last episode reveals that Hank MacLean, a covert Vault-Tec employee and supervisor of Vault 33, destroyed Shady Sands.
Shady Sands made an appearance in Fallout 2161, the first Fallout video game, and reappears in Fallout: New Vegas, which takes place in 2281. However, a lot can happen in the fifteen years that pass between the events of New Vegas and 2296, when the Fallout television series is set.
“There could be some slight misunderstanding in certain areas. However, everything that transpired in the earlier games—including New Vegas—did so.
Howard claims that he was first astonished when showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner presented him with the plan to blow up Shady Sands. However, the showrunners collaborated with Howard and the Bethesda team to make sure the event was true to the games and would act as a catalyst for the primary characters of the Fallout series.
We discussed it and concluded that “this would be a pretty impactful story moment that a lot of things anchor on,” according to Howard.
However, Howard clarifies that every piece of the timeline should match up for anyone perplexed about how the city may blow up by the time the program takes place. He states, “We’re careful about the timeline.” There could be some uncertainty in certain areas. However, all of the events from the earlier games—including New Vegas—took place. We take great care in that regard.
“We’re threading it tighter there, but the bombs fall right after the New Vegas events,” is all I can offer.
What makes Shady Sands significant? Has there been a revision in its portrayal?
A nuclear weapon destroys Shady Sands at some point in the 2280s, as was disclosed in Fallout 6’s episode. It is revealed that Hank, the father of Lucy MacLean, bombed Shady Sands because it posed a challenge to Vault-Tec’s dominance. Vault-Tec personnel are still alive, despite being cryogenically frozen, and they are eager to retake the Wasteland for themselves and their business.
Since Shady Sands was still standing throughout the events of Fallout: New Vegas, the news of its devastation created a stir. Some fans speculated that the program might be reenacting the events of New Vegas. The documented history of Shady Sands is depicted on a chalkboard in Vault 4 in Episode 6, and an unclear date for the event’s destruction led to considerable misunderstanding. However, as Howard stated, while the window of opportunity is “tight,” both the game’s and the show’s events occur.
How did Todd Howard and Jonathan Nolan come to a consensus regarding the Fallout timeline?
Howard stated that he wanted something that “Would stand up as another entry in the series as opposed to retelling one of the games we did and sort of treat it like we do a game and move the timeline forward and do some great things” when Bethesda and Jonathan Nolan first started discussing a possible Fallout TV adaptation. And [Nolan] was also thinking along those lines.
According to Nolan, developing a program that was unrelated to the games was nearly impossible since “everyone who worked on Fallout, all the games, were so respectful and so careful to keep this consistent universe.” The show also aimed to honor the rigorous and accurate timeline established by Bethesda. The show would be the only thing that doesn’t belong in that universe if we had taken a different turn. We didn’t want to be in a parallel universe or our own little area of another globe. Knowing that the series was totally detached from the games’ reality makes it less significant to me, Nolan acknowledges.
What does the entire Fallout timeline encompass up to this point?
Here are the major occasions that define the Fallout series from the first game to the show, since that we know the Fallout television series is canonical and follows the timeline established by the games.
Bombs Drop – Year: 2077
The Great War began on October 23, 2077, and although the entirety of Fallout takes place in an alternate past where the Cold War takes drastically different twists than it does in our own reality, this is the pivotal event that ignites the genre. As a result of the Sino-American War, all participating countries were drawn into a nuclear war, which turned the world and the US into the familiar wasteland from Fallout (?).
This incident can be seen in the opening scenes of Fallout 4, where the Sole Survivor and their family enter Vault 111 moments before the bomb lands in New England, and in the Fallout television series, where Walton Goggins’ Howard Cooper and his daughter are seen trying to escape the nuclear explosions in Los Angeles.
Fallout 76 – Year: 2102
October 23, 2102, also known as Reclamation Day, is when Fallout 76 launches. Fallout 76 is the first game in the series, released 25 years after the bombs dropped during World War I. Howard even refers to it as a “prequel” to the other games in the series.
The game, which takes place in what was formerly West Virginia but is now just referred to as Appalachia, centers on a Vault Dweller from Vault 76 who goes in search of the Overseer, who goes missing. Given how soon after the bombs were dropped and the fact that several of the series’ defining elements, such as the Brotherhood of Steel and mutations, are explored here, Fallout 76’s rendition of the wasteland is particularly brutal.
Fallout 1 – Year: 2161
In the timeline, the first Fallout game is the second one. Fallout takes place in Vault 13 in Southern California, close to Shady Sands and Vault 33 from the Fallout television series. It is set 84 years after the Great War.
In the first Fallout, the simple mission assigned to the Vault Dweller is to locate a fresh Water Chip for their vault before the clean water supply runs out. Nevertheless, The Master and his army of mutants, who are determined to mutate the humans under his control, confront them head-on during this quest.
Fallout Tactics – Year: 2197
Fallout Tactics narrates the beginnings of The Brotherhood of Steel, one of the longest-surviving factions in the Wasteland. Together with a group of scientists, a group of military soldiers were bunkered in a Vault-Tec vault when the Great War broke out. However, after learning about the scientists’ immoral experiments, the military unit deserts the army, murders the scientists, and forms the Brotherhood of Steel.
Tactics follow the Brotherhood as they try to seize land outside of the former Chicago, but in the end, it sends them on a quest west to locate the fabled Vault 0, which is said to hold the most significant military, government, and scientific figures in the United States.
Fallout 2 – Year: 2241
Fallout 2 is a direct continuation of what happened in Fallout 1, with the focus being on a direct ancestor of the Vault Dweller from Vault 13, who was banished and founded in the Wasteland village of Arroyo. Fallout 2 follows the emergence of both the Enclave, a group that asserts itself as the real heir to the United States, and the New California Republic. In the Fallout television series, The Enclave makes a fleeting appearance as the group that scientist Siggi Wilzig uses the Cold Fusion Reactor to escape from.
Fallout 3 – Year: 2277
Fallout 3 is a video game that takes place on the East Coast, close to the former Washington, D.C. It opens in Vault 101 and centers on the Vault-Dweller’s search for their father, who goes missing. As they go across the D.C. region, conflicts with the Fallout 2 Enclave and a more extensive story around an enigmatic endeavor to purify the Potomac River’s drinking water are discovered.
Fallout: New Vegas – Year: 2281
The main character of Fallout: New Vegas is a courier assigned to deliver a package to New Vegas, which is, you guessed it, Las Vegas, Nevada’s post-nuclear war replacement. The Courier, however, finds himself entangled in a localized factional conflict that threatens to topple the entire region, between the New California Republic and Ceasar’s Legions.
Additionally, Howard informs IGN that Shady Sands is destroyed at some point following Fallout: New Vegas’s events.
Fallout 4 – Year: 2287
Fallout 4 is set in an area known as the Commonwealth, which is essentially pre-war New England. It centers on the Sole Survivor of Vault 111 and her quest to find their missing infant. Players will come across both well-known Wasteland characters like The Brotherhood of Steel and brand-new factions like The Institute and Minutemen.
Fallout 4 primarily centers on a novel technology known as Synths, which are humanoid machines that have acquired sentience after being constructed, so the story goes, across multiple generations, during the Great War.
Fallout TV Show – Year: 2296
The events in Fallout: The Series are the last ones. The Fallout series on Prime Video features Lucy MacLean as she ventures out of Vault 33 into the Wasteland in search of her father, the overseer Hank MacLean, who has been abducted, much like the story of Fallout 3. But as the show goes on, we learn the real story of what occurred to Shady Sands and the original Vault-Tec, as well as what transpired before “The Great War in 2077”.
Summary
Todd Howard has confirmed that this is the whole Fallout timeline from the video games and television series. Who knows where the Fallout series will go, given that Howard and Bethesda have already stated that they intend to develop Fallout 5 eventually. particularly if Fallout: The Series gets a second season approved by Prime Video as well.
