The Fallout TV series broke my heart

As much as I loved the Fallout TV series, it taught me that “War, war never changes” is more than just an ominous tagline for the franchise.

One of the best things about the Fallout games is how much each entry respects player choices. This creates a canonicity problem for the series in that every subsequent game needs to work hard so as not to reference the events of the last too much. Otherwise, it will confirm which decisions were canon and which were not.

Lots of games have multiple endings, and it’s standard practice for one (or elements of several) to eventually be classed as canon. For example, it was Liu Kang who won the first four Mortal Kombat tournaments — regardless if you always chose to play as Scorpion. Chris, Jill, Barry, and Rebecca all escaped the Spencer Mansion in Resident Evil 1, even though no ending shows all four characters fleeing together.

Fallout tries to avoid this by setting each game in a different region of the Wasteland, often against a new enemy, while chasing a different MacGuffin. Sure, factions who played a large role in the last few games will show up, but these are often different chapters of those factions, allowing the next game to tell a new story, free of the shackles of the last.

Canon endings do exist in Fallout

Over time, the various choices players make become less important. For example, does anybody still think the Master, king of all Super Mutants, won in Fallout 1? And we’re confident that the Lone Wanderer sided with the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 3, restored fresh water to the Capital Wasteland, and delivered a defeat to the Enclave that they likely never truly recovered from.

We know this because the faction is a broken shell of its former glory in Fallout: New Vegas, and the Forced Evolution Virus (FEV) hasn’t consumed the whole Wasteland. However, Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4 changed this significantly, and multiple endings were possible, with various factions all able to win the day.

But as the Fallout TV show takes place in Los Angeles and later the Mojave Wasteland, the same region as Fallout: New Vegas, this is the game I’m more concerned with. It also reveals what’s happened in this region since that game, which is why the TV show broke my heart.

You see, in Fallout: New Vegas, there were three main factions: the well-meaning but far from perfect New California Republic (NCR), a group aiming to bring democracy back to the Wasteland; Caesar’s Legion, an authoritarian group of slavers who are terrorizing the Mojave with their brutality while cosplaying as Roman soldiers, then there’s Mr. House.

Mr. House is the tyrannical ruler of New Vegas who seeks to consolidate his power using an army of robots. The Brotherhood of Steel and The Enclave Remnants also operate in the region, but both are far from the powerhouses they were in previous games.

Building a united Wasteland

In my first playthrough, I sided with the NCR as the other two main factions were clearly evil, and I was aiming for the “Good”, and most diplomatic, ending. With this goal in mind, I completed all the NCR and Brotherhood of Steel’s quests, then brokered a peace agreement between the two old rivals. I then arranged for Brotherhood Knights to reinforce NCR forces at Hoover Dam when Caesar’s Legion inevitably attacked.

I then betrayed and usurped Mr. House, mercy-killing the pitiful creature he had become (at his request), and handed New Vegas to the NCR. Long live democracy. I opted against using the Platinum Chip (the game’s MacGuffin) to activate Mr House’s robot army, as their AI, “Yes Man,” was clearly psychotic and was encouraging me to become the next brutal dictator of the Wasteland.

Finally, I hunted down the Enclave Remnants, and while these former villains were tempted to shoot me several times, I eventually convinced them that Caesar’s Legion was the sort of threat they always swore to fight and that they should join us in defending the Dam. This is exactly what they did, giving the former Enclave troopers a new purpose: defending the Wasteland from slavers.

At the battle for Hoover Dam, the NCR, Brotherhood of Steel, Enclave, and others all fought side-by-side against their shared enemy. Caesar had been assassinated (by me) earlier in the playthrough, so I negotiated with his general, Legate Lanius, who, after refusing to surrender, was mowed down by an Enclave mini-gun.

I then got an ending scene that told me everyone lived happily ever after, with factions like the Brotherhood and the NCR even sharing power and patroling the Wasteland together. This was an ending that took many hours to earn and gave me a real sense of pride and accomplishment. So much so, it stuck with me for years to come – but all this was undone by the Fallout TV series.

Happily irradiated after

Set in LA, and later the Mojave Wasteland, several years after Fallout: New Vegas, the Fallout TV series by Amazon effectively ruined my triumphant and happy ending for the setting. The peace deal I brokered between the Brotherhood and NCR? Shattered. The new purpose I gave the formally evil Enclave? They’re now throwing puppies into furnaces. Shady Sands, the former HQ of the NCR, is now a smoldering crater, and the Brotherhood of Steel is more zealous and unreasonable than ever before.

The good news is that there’s been no mention of Caesar’s Legion, but the fact that the Brotherhood is now giving its aspirants Roman-themed names is rather worrying. While nobody ever said the diplomatic ending of Fallout: New Vegas was the canon one, elements of it were included in the TV show, such as the rise of the NCR before they were nuked. Still, it’s a shame that the hopeful future I set in motion didn’t come to fruition.

My own head-canon had all the factions working together towards a brighter future, and even Fallout 4 didn’t get in the way of this fantasy. While I loved the Fallout TV show and eagerly await the second season, I can’t pretend that it didn’t break my heart. I knew the road would be difficult for the survivors of New Vegas, and they weren’t all going to start singing Kumbaya, but the triumph of our victory at Hoover Dam – and all the work it took to bring it about, was ultimately for nothing.

I think this is why Fallout games try to respect player choice, leaving the canon ending a mystery. They want us to go away thinking that our ending came true. However, this can’t be sustained forever. Eventually, the narrative needs to move on, and the Fallout TV show brought the harsh reality of the Wasteland back into focus. Caesar’s Legion may have been defeated, but the battle for survival and supremacy between everyone else continues. 

While I feel like my own ending has been undermined, I accept the necessity of this, even if it is with a heavy heart. As other players rush to try Fallout: New Vegas, as they should, I find myself unable to return to it. In all honestly, I should have known that any return to a setting like Fallout’s was always going to be bleak. It’s a franchise based on the horrors of nuclear war, after all, and as we’ve learned, “War, war never changes.”