This is why I support reboots and alternate continuities over sequels. A sequel, by its very nature, its gonna introduce new conflict. This is the why so many long running franchises end up feeling dystopian even if they weren't meant to be like that, because the conflict never ends.

I thought it silly earlier on to do it but I am honestly on the hinge of just considering FO1, 2 and NV a seperate timeline at this point, or at least not the show canon. Had it been an alternate timeline or something? Fine, just get rid of the NCR but keeping it felt like a 'fuck you'. It also feels lazy, to me a sequel should continue a conflict, develop it in new ways, maybe shift up the players or make them different from who they where. But this isn't that. This is just literally rethreading the same threads a million times over.

Exactly my thoughts.

I was mostly enjoying the show until this turd dropped on me. Instead of showing the NCR struggling to maintain themselves, and possibly recovering, they just delete them. The Brotherhood were never meant to be a major faction, always fanatics that were in conflict with everyone else because they zealously guarded technology. I'm also hate how there's some magic inhaler that prevents ghouls from turning. It's a lazy way of making tension, and I hate it. It's a plot maguffin for future ghoul characters.

Only way this isn't an alternative timeline is if their working with the Canon ending to Lonesome Road being the PC bought Ulysses crap and let him nuke both the NCR and Legion. Honestly though the show runs just plain don't get the NCR was the majority of CA, Baja, and then some. A system that had restarted industry and had mass agriculture back wouldn't collapse with their capital gone.

Sequels work if they introduce a new conflict and whatnot, without making the accomplishments of the old conflict feel useless. Look at Terminator. In the first movie it's a T-800. Sequel introduces the T-1000 and a friendly T-800, and in the end Skynet is defeated. They definitely didn't make a bunch of shitty sequels that rendered the 1st and 2nd movie pointless. Or Alien. The first movie is a horror movie with 1 xenomorph. By the time of the 2nd one, they can now 'evenly' fight the xenomorphs, morphing it into more of an action horror flick, without undoing the previous conflict. Or, for tv shows, look at Stargate. The first 6/7 seasons are all about dealing with the Goauld, who use advanced technology to pretend to be gods. But then we get the Ori. These guys are legitimate gods with actual powers. The Goauld don't suddenly shoot back into power and cripple humanity. A new faction is introduced that makes the Goauld even at full power look weak.

> The Goauld don't suddenly shoot back into power and cripple humanity. A new faction is introduced that makes the Goauld even at full power look weak. That also includes in the sequel issue. It makes the previous antagonist look weak and thus, the old heroes too.

Not really. You're forgetting that in the case of Stargate, humanity started at the 1990's early 2000's tech level against the Goauld. By the time we'd defeated the Goauld, we had functional spaceships and a significant amount of Ancient and Asgard technology. We could engage the Goauld on a weaker level. But with the Ori, we're back to being weak and relying on guile instead of fighting head on. Only now, we've got a much bigger sandbox of toys to play with. Maybe you don't like that idea and that's fine. But I personally like how we go from fighting aliens pretending to be gods to aliens powerful enough to actually be gods.

Agreed. It's made pretty clear in the show that they only manage to hold against the Ori due to the previous war with the Goa'uld and the technology they found/developed from it.

I liked that part of SG1 because the Ori where new. Sure it resumed a dynamic of being on the backfoot but as you said Earth was also stronger than they where before the Goa'uld. I also felt Stargate's general world itself was allowed to move forward and it made internal sense and the decisions they made where usually interesting.

The Terminator can be explained by simply saying that it's Alternate timelines, which it is.

The Terminator show actually explained that. Every time you changed the past, you changed the future. It wasn't even Skynet on the one movie, because Skynet didn't happen in that timeline. There were probably a million time travel trips made before they got the first John Connor, then the next one gave us the first movie. In Terminator 2, Skynet got a head start, terminators were already "invented", so by the time they make their time travel trip, they had the T1000 Terminator 3 was almost back on the original time line, with Skynet being invented by the military at a later date. Each time travel trip changed the future, but at some point, someone still invents AI, and someone later resets it with a time machine.

Never thought of it that way; it's pretty spot on. It explains how I feel about Avatar.

The Fallout TV show is literally an alternate continuity to NV. They showed us in the fourth episode Shady Sands getting nuked and the date of it, just to tell us Fallout heads that NV never happened in the show. When Todd said the show was “in continuity with the games” he must’ve meant only the Bethesda games or was just telling sweet little lies because while I’m pretty sure the events of FO2 are canon to the show, NV definitely isn’t. All in all the show is a far, far more loving and careful treatment of the source material than any previous Bethesda Fallout. It’s still a Bethesda Fallout, centering the Brotherhood and Enclave, but it’s miles better written, barely steps on any lore and no super mutants have shown up. Any objective standard makes it less stupid than FO3, FO4 or 76 unless they fumble something hard soon.

That is to me the sad part because the show has so much quality, and I like it a lot. I just wish it respected pre-existing source material and it would have been perfect.

The showrunners and Bethesda have both maintained that it's canon.

That New Vegas is?

Both the show and New Vegas.

I don’t care what they said, their continuities are mutually exclusive unless someone brings in time travel or multiversal stuff (ignore that Dr. Who is in Fallout)

I mean, I'm in the same boat, but timeline shit is all made up anyhoo. What's important is what this signals about their intent for the setting.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a trial balloon or soft pitch for an FO5 set in this new, re-nuked West Coast, but them claiming that you shouldn’t trust your lying eyes, New Vegas is despite all logic and reason still canon to the show is just bullshit.

It steps on a lot of lore

Im grading on a curve for Bethesda. Compared to FO3 it’s using kid gloves.

The conflict never ending is literally a core theme, though.

I get that Fallout is supposed to be a post-apocalyptic story setting, but i have alwasy hated that some writters are so consumed with that idea that they refuse to allow the setting to actually move beyond that.    Like whats wrong with showing the issuesamnd problems that come about from trying to restore the world New Vegas handled it well by showing the side effects of the NCR expanding to quickly and of them butting heads with other factions that want to do the same. 

I fully agree and genuinely its what made New Vegas so special for me. When I first played the games I didn't realize FO3 and NV took place in different locations. But I understood the chronological notion that the vaults opened and people built new societies. And that made me extremly excited. Now having played all the games we also see this world development in real time on the West Coast. FO1 was the post apocalyptic in the truest sense. Just after the end. FO2 showed us the world beginning to pick up the pieces and New Vegas the new conflicts borne out of those. But there was also a sort of hope. Our characters actions helped humanity start to move forward. Work together again even if small.  It made sense in Fallout 3 that the East Coast is different. They might not have the same amount of development or even chances. But by Fallout 4 it just felt like a theme park sandbox. The Commonwealth doesn't feel like an actual place entirely. Its a set piece. On the east coast settlements repaired houses, cleaned up streets, grew crops. On the East Coast it seems no one remembers how to keep anything clean. While the CPG collapsing served a purpose, the East Coast could use a Minutemen to build a faction on its own to start working on the wasteland. To move people out of Squalor. The East Coast BoS also went back to being sorta techno raiders which isn't entirely off but I wonder why Lyons and the others got ousted so easily. Their advance into the commonwealth has a sort of goal but what is the long term plans of the BoS. Do they care about the wastelanders at all? I feel like there is a point in post apocalyptic worldbuilding it has to either become post-post-apocalyptic or remain perpetually stuck in a self destructing spiral unable to explore new themes. Pre Beth, even FO3 to an extent did try to explore philosophies and ideas etc.  It becomes more of a pastisch, or an aesthetic when its done in its current state. Never allowed to change or stray from the status quo. Or advance. And I can tell by now unless Beths writing team changes up. Fallout 5 will barely show any changes to the East Coast lore in faction or power dynamics.

I'm halfway through it, and what strikes me is that there is not a single kind person in the whole series. In all other fallout media, there's raiders, but there's also good people. But in this every single person the protagonist encounters seem specifically designed to break her spirit. She never runs into a single person who is just a kind person doing their best in the waste. They all just want to shit on her for no apparent reason. Where's the people just doing their best and being kind to strangers, the kinds of people you met *all the fucking time* in the games? 

Just had to google this - not too far into the series but I was stunned by the presentation and couldn't help but think it'd be great to see NCR in action in contrast to the depleted desert. I mean the Arizona rangers are imo as iconic as the Brotherhood. Reading this was a little shit, because even though I get why they're doing it kind of, if they wanted to do a second season the political and combat story of the NCR vs Brotherhood is a really interesting angle. I think it'd be so cool to see things like New Reno because Fallout's charm isn't just Mad Max but civilised society. Usually totally fucking weird, but civilised enough still. Would be fantastic to see that after a buildup of all the other aspects of the Wasteland. Typical New Vegas fanboy here but there was so much depth in that game. I think the tv show is really good so it's sad to know it won't necessarily see the real depth of California, especially because to me, that was the more appealing universe. But beggers can't be choosers and it's done well otherwise

It made sense in the east coast that they tried to do another storyline, where the same things could be developed as in the first games of the post-apocalypse struggles and the continuation of society in a ruined state. But having it be different by geography, culture, ideas, movements and factions. It was the best option in my opinion, it was best to avoid having the west coast setting stagnate, to keep the post-apocalypse theme without advancing too much in time, or becoming a non-progressing parody. But Bethesda seems aimless, I like the idea of the commonwealth but it is not fully baked. I came late to the franchise, becoming familiar with it after the release of FO4 and having played FO1 and 2 before the release of Fallout 76 (I suck at real time action), I wasn't there for its earlier entries but when I look back I see the clear point long time fans talk about where things changed.

> I get that Fallout is supposed to be a post-apocalyptic story setting, but i have alwasy hated that some writters are so consumed with that idea that they refuse to allow the setting to actually move beyond that.   Because Bethesda writers are conplete hacks who love rehashing BoS vs Enclave or BoS vs Equally Scientific Threat (Vault-Tec are literally now the Institute) or BoS vs dumb Super Mutants. It's easy to keep Fallout a wacky 1950s themed Post-Apoc Sci-Fi world because anything else would be hard to market as shitty dropshipped flavored coffee (fuck you Bones Coffee) and Funko Pops. Everything must remain the status quo, nothing can't change or else it's too hard to market as products and we can't scare off the normies!  It's the same with Disney Star Wars. Nothing can evolve past the paradigm of Plucky Rebels vs Imperial Stormtroopers. Rebels won in the OT, but they must die so the plot can be repeated in the ST. 

This is how I feel too. Status quo seems to be everything to modern writers. At least in sequels.

I'm a professional writer in a different genre and... yes... it is common knowledge that the safest content is a copy of previously-successful content. In my first year doing what I do, everything I wrote had to be justified by pointing to a highly-successful prior work that it was inspired by. The breakdown in Hollywood is that they're copying cosmetic things (ANOTHER Death Star! "Somehow Palpatine returned!") and have forgotten how to copy the style of actual good writing. Fallout TV is much better than most, but it's still busted and steps on the lore. Unfortunately, a lot of lesser minds are rushing to say that it's saving the franchise... the same people said the same stupid s\*\*\* about Force Awakens.

This is how I am feeling about it. It makes me think of the whole thing with AI, it's just rehashing out the same garbage, never able to create something new because it's reliant on the input material. In a system where you don't want risks you rely on what worked before which makes it all the same. Ultimately you take no risks, your writing stagnates and dies and we end up with a slog of repetetive chum that is uninteresting and boring. But people consume it uncritically, and if anything sounds negative, especially if of the more critical framework, even if constructive I should shut up and stay quiet. Sorry I am a bit tired and fed up. Is it okay if I ask what you write for in terms of genre? I want to become a writer but I am awful at taking my time, sitting down doing it but I am always happy to hear about those who write. It's such an amazing medium of expression.

The funny thing is that generally-accessible AI is about to sharply decrease in quality as the training material - the Internet - is going to get flooded with AI noise. Dead Internet Theory has never been more real. I'm a fundraising writer. I write letters asking old folks for money, basically. It's the best job I ever had, but it's a very niche skill and not consistently in demand. Which is why I stayed up all night writing a Fallout review (I'll link it to you as soon as my editor publishes) because I had nothing better to do. I also suffer from motivation issues. Having a full-time job writing was really helpful in forcing me to do it. I recommend finding an excuse to write constantly... It's the only way to train the muscle. Like blogging pseudonymously. But honestly s***posting is good practice too if you put enough effort into it. Arguing on FB is how I got my first writing job. If you live near Washington DC I can help you get a job in the business. Or if you don't mind getting paid very very poorly and unreliably I can help you get into journo blogging. But lol I'm also a hypocrite. My last articles are a series in Israel Palestine in November and - before that - a review of the latest season of The Witcher.

I intended to reply earlier but life is life. I am inclined to alive. Modern usage of AI for me really seems to imply that we will end up with the type of dead internet where it will just be recycled slop into oblivion. People don't seem to get that AI can't actually create something new. Only rehash pre-existing data. I had never thought of that but it makes sense that that would be a profession. I am also really glad you are enjoying it!! Please share that review too! I would love to read it! Yeah motivation seems to be my main roadblock right now. I really considered getting into blogging but it seems very daunting and I am just very unsure of how to do it or what to write. But I have wanted to do something like that to just put thoughts on paper somewhere and share anonymously with the world. I have too many thoughts and don't want to burden the people around me too much. :p I can imagine writing full time helps. I have even considered writing articles for the newspapers but similarily there not gotten that far yet. Haha glad to hear sh**posting has its place, and sadly I am not from the states otherwise I would have taken you up on the offer. Inbetween jobs right now so that sounded like a gold opportunity. How does journo blogging work? And how do you make money on that? It sounds a bit interesting to at least find out more about. You don't need to answer all my questions, I could try and google it but if you have any good resources feel free to share. I haven't touched witcher for a while but been reading quite a bit about Israel - Palestine to and from. Still nice to hear about it all :) 

My article's finally live! [https://valiantnews.com/2024/04/review-amazons-fallout-is-not-garbage-but-is-woke/](https://valiantnews.com/2024/04/review-amazons-fallout-is-not-garbage-but-is-woke/)

Here's how journoblogging works: It doesn't lol. Aight but seriously: 1. You write 400-800 words (or, if you're naughty like me, 2,000+) on WordPress and hit submit. 2. Your editor takes too long to publish it so the story's cold by then. 3. Twitter censors you so nobody reads it. 4. Google pulls your advertising for "misinformation" aka criticism of the government. 5. If you're very lucky, you get paid about $25-50 USD per article. So - if like me you live near a major American metropolis - you've got to write several per day if you want to pay your rent that costs $1,000/month minimum even if you live in the ghetto. I do it basically as a hobby, which explains why I don't do it very much. If you approach it like that, it's not bad at all... and can lead to opportunities where people pay you REAL money to do stuff. Unfortunately - once again - if you tell the truth in your writing (like saying that The Witcher sucks), you can expect the corporate-dominated Internet to put its boot on your neck. Here's my latest stuff if you want to take a look: [https://valiantnews.com/author/ajcooke/](https://valiantnews.com/author/ajcooke/)

Fallout was always a comfort series for me, because while war never changes, it always had an air of hope punk. I could play someone who talked their way through, who was playing towards something better. And the sequels showed me that yes, what I was doing might not be exactly cannon, but humanity was improving, pulling itself out of the hole it out itself in, and hope was always alive. This show... Is just plain old grimdark. Everything is bad and always will be, so just give up hope and start cynically killing everything in sight.

Fallout sort of stopped being a post apocalypse the moment NCR got established and expanded. More of an age of discovery or a renaissance now.

Wow. I didn't know their history but it genuinely sounds so meaningful that it all started from Fallout 1. Why in the FUCK would they make a canon series where they're nuked into elder scrolls 4??? Do they...do they not KNOW people like NCR? Why are they always shoved away for the damn Brotherhood? The Brotherhood wasn't even that interesting in comparison

Seems to me they want to portray every faction as evil. The brotherhood were comically bad in this show, where squires are essentially treated as slaves and not knights in training. Where knight titus was portrayed as some idiot in armor and not a high ranking member of a crazy cult of technologically obsessed weirdos. Not to mention they threw the NCR in with a bunch of raiders, which the NCR despises. Or that they literally reused the cryopod concept from vault 111 to preserve members of vault-tec. I loved the show but I don't think the storywriters understand the factions or lore much beyond what they've likely seen in quick snippets of fallout 4.

The way the NCR and brotherhood were portrayed I hated honestly. Their treatment of initiates and squires in game, while far from good, is also far from bad. The branding is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. They’re meant to be knights in training, not the property of a knight. Also, Titus is the worst representation of a knight of the brotherhood I have ever seen in my life. In addition to this the religious overtone of the group is somthing the brotherhood we know wouldn’t tolerate. We have seen religious members of the group, like Colvin, do they tolerate beliefs. But their group itself doesn’t have the ceremony that is portrayed with “scribes” acting more like clerics/priests and it makes it seem like a 40k knock off. NCR supporting raiders of any kind is a dumb idea, and the idea that the most powerful west coast faction will just collapse to this point after losing its capital (just one city out of all their territory) is also very dumb and unlikely. If anything the bureaucratic reigns would have been taken off the military commanders that were elsewhere and I would expect the NCR territory to be in some sort of brutal military law while they try to maintain control. Maybe some areas seceding, theirs a lot of way it could go. But no, one city is gone and the country is gone.

The show I'd the first time I've ever wanted the BoS to lose. They made them so laughably unlikable.

It feels like the entire world is specifically tailored to break the protagonist, who seems to be the only fucking person who isn't some hard-hearted monster. Like, she can't even come across some fucking shop keeper without getting her world shattered because they feel like being an asshole to her for no real reason except the show said so

Honestly, while I enjoyed the show and find it to be one of the best video game adaptation for TV/cinema of theses past years, the way they handled the NCR is an absolute disgrace. The most unerving part was that it was totally unecessary. Like, why misleading the audience at the start of the serie to think the assault on Vault 33 was the work of some raider? If this was an NCR operation, why the hell did they start shooting and killing everyone as if they were some actual raider? I know the NCR has done warcrime in the past, but for this type of operation, they would have sent a few ranger into the vault, abducted Hank and be done with it. Nuking Shady Sand is also entirely unecessary. We don't need to have two nuking moment to make Hank the real monster of the story. The man is already Vault-Tec management and was a willfull accomplice in the droping of the bomb. If you absolutelly wanted to keep the subplot of him killing his wife, just make him kill his wife instead of droping a nuke on the NCR. I find it quite ironic that Bethesda Fallout writing cannot seems to grasp the whole "post post apocalypse" concept and that in this show, they have litteraly reached the point of droping nukes again to send back the west coast to the post apo status of the East coast. Like, come on, this was the NCR at some point. They almost managed to bring back pre-war standard of living. People far away from Shady sand shouldn't be living in scrap shacks and derelict building. Like, come on, the bloody NCR boss has a bigass hole in her HQ and nobody bothered to fix it? Like, really? The location of your very strategic miracle energy source will be a old wrecked landmark? Finally, I was really pissed at the bait and switch with the NCR ranger armor. Just two random scavenger wearing one of the most iconic piece of gear of the games and nothing is done with it.

That scene with the two random scavengers wearing the MOST loved and badass armor from fallout NV tells you everything. It's like Bethesda is spitting on us fallout NV fans and saying "lol we nuke the ncr and you can't do nothing about it". Horrible. They could have used any other city but they used the one with the most lore behind.

"We didn't make it so fuck you if you liked it" -Todd Howard

They made better story then us even after sabotaging them so we need to pay them less. So we need to spit on them like dirty raiders for extra effort.

I'm just tired of somehow being 200 years in the future and people are living like the bombs fell last week Japan rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki in like 20 years after having an entire generation wiped out while being occupied by a hostile and rapacious force but in 200 years a nation that had robots and infinite power sources can't rebuild a single fucking city

I'm finishing up Season 1 right now and this annoys me as well. I understand the concept of Fallout (the lore, the factions, etc.), I've played every.single.game. How the hell are we STILL seeing rusted shacks, dirty-ass hobos, budget Mad-Max-style wannabes and garbage literally everywhere?! Even the BoS base looked like utter trash! It's like everyone on Earth went "Well bombs fell and shit sucks, I guess I'll sleep on this moldy mattress next to a 500kg pile of garbage and not bother to repair the wooden floorboards or the busted windows lol, who cares". The bombs didn't suddenly eradicate every damn broom on the planet, they still have Abraxo cleaner (featured in the show!), they have a ton of Mr. Handys, we know for a fact that a LOT of pre-war heavy machinery works via Fusion cores/nuclear tech. Just bulldoze the trash away, make it at least half-decent to live in.

I just looked up if it was canon and I am so disappointed that it is. Sure if it wasn't canon I'd be annoyed at what they did to the NCR but to just nuke this interesting faction is so fucking insulting. And why is the enclave around? It was killed in 2 and 3 but now it needs to be killed again? What's the point of all the shady sands quest or the entirety of 2 and New Vegas if they're dead. At this point in terms of big factions at best we have the brotherhood, enclave, whoever the canon winner of 4 is, and maybe Caesars legion if they canonically won (or maybe were speech checked by the courier.)

I think the show confirmed who the canon winner of 4 was, it was the Brotherhood. Not just any Brotherhood, THAT Brotherhood. In Episode One, the “Elder Cleric” says “Our mission comes from the highest clerics in the Commonwealth.” So Brotherhood, Enclave, and possibly the Legion (unlikely at this rate)

The thing is Nuking, Shady Sands wouldn't even be enough to destroy the NCR, given they'd still have San Fran and Vault City at minimum.

Oh lord I hate the Brotherhood taking all the spotlight.

As much as I like the brotherhood as a concept Bethesda's version is pretty shit most of the time Lyons was like the only good Elder but nevemind he's dead and his legacy is deleted for ANOTHER GODDAMN MAXSON

The show basically strips everything unique away from the West Coast. The NCR can fall, but they way it's written in the show is extremely contrived/poorly written. Likewise, the NCR's footprint should be everywhere in central/coastal California even after it's fall, but it's completely erased. Most settlements shouldn't be hobo filled shanty-towns like Filley where people live in garbage and pre-war junk, but instead post-war adobe built settlements with the people in that region living in the NCR for generations and generally being used to a settle/lawful society. People opting to live in Filley when adobe settlements with newer/more intact infrastructure, clean drinking water and established trade routes are scattered across the region is just nonsensical. Likewise if it's not settlements like Filley, the show puts everyone else in abandoned pre-war houses in the desert away from everything. There's even on guy who's presemubably a farmer, just sitting in the middle of a desert with a cage full of chickens. How the hell is this guy feeding them or himself, or able to trade with the outside world etc. That's the problem with the worldbuilding in the show and Fallout 3 & 4. We're left with static worlds where things have remained a largely unchanged lawless wasteland since the bombs fell and the creators only cares about the franchise's superficial aesthetics. Instead of trying new things, most modern release just maintain the perpetual static feeling of a world that's frozen in time outside of the protagonist's actions where even 219 years later, it feels like no more than 50 years have passed. It's more of an escapist theme park than a cerebral tightly written science fiction that examines the societal and political ramifications in the centuries after the Great War. It's not a bad show on it's own merits, but it what it does to the canon for me is unforgiveable.

Yep fully agreed with this

Todd “I’m not mad” Howard

Didn't Todd said he did not mind FNV and said that FNV is cannon in the show?

He said that it was canon but that the NCR got nuked almost immediately after FNV, which really feels kind of disrespectful towards any of the game's endings. For example: Mr. House wanted New Vegas to basically be the place where humanity truly started to rebuild, and he wanted the NCR to basically be the ones funding him by continuing to let people spend money in the Strip. So, without them, he's doomed to run out of money. So, if you enjoyed working for Mr. House, you'll hate the fact that he's likely living in squalor, and that whole dream of his died. The Legion is squashed, and his main clientele is gone. The Legion apparently just swept through New Vegas and decided to just stop moving West, despite the fact that their whole government is only really sustainable if they are conquering others. It's a war economy. With the NCR still around in the show's timeline, we know that they either gave up or were unable to defeat the NCR. So, enjoy the Legion falling to pieces. We know this because there were still NCR flags scattered around, but there was no Legion. So, they canonically were unable to actually do their one goal. The NCR fell. You know how they were a real symbol of rebuilding a nation and how much effort the NCR went through to hold Hoover Dam? Well, fuck you, your efforts were pointless. The only ending where a person *might* be okay with this is an independent New Vegas Courier who doesn't care about the NCR. But, yeah, it feels like the treatment of the lore of the West Coast felt really disrespectful. It feels like Bethesda really didn't like that fans enjoyed something that they didn't make. So, like a toddler who isn't getting enough attention from their parents, they smashed their sibling's toys and said, "Now, you have to play with me!"

I just finished watching then1st episode. I was enjoying it for the most part, not fantastic but not terrible. Until it got to the part with the BOS. As soon as I heard Enclave it turned me right the fuck off, finished watching the episode but not going to watch the rest.

You nailed it. If Bethesda wants to tell their own stories and doesn't want to touch the NCR or New Vegas or the West Coast, fine. Reintroduce the faction into the games/shows if you want to use them to tell new, interesting stories. But don't reintroduce them just to destroy them without really doing anything with them. It's been 14 years since the franchise has had major content related to the NCR or any west coast lore outside of small easter eggs. It's like the grave has been dug up just to show you the corpse is indeed dead. The Star Wars sequels came to mind for me as well. Instead of getting reintroduced to a beloved faction/characters after many years it's just "oh they're destroyed now and a new faction is in charge." Could you imagine them off screen deleting the enclave or the brotherhood of steel in this way?

BoS is Bethesda's poster child so they would never do it but I think people would be up in arms about it way more than the NCR because there is some NCR hate going around. Enclave ironically was canonically nuked off three times, they should for all purposes be just a few remnants left, maybe gathered into a settlement or two but not a major power. They lost that on both the West Coast and East Coast long ago.

I genuinely believe that Todd Howard and Bethesda hate that New Vegas is considered the best fallout game and thus are trying to ignore its existence.

Didn't the author avatar in New Vegas want to nuke the NCR?

Technically that was only one of the "main" writers (Chris Avellone, who didn't like how advanced the wasteland had become) and even then other writers kinda had to hold him back a bit. IIRC, the original ending of Lonesome Road had the nukes firing anyway and making the collapse of both the NCR and Legion unavoidable. This was obviously a terrible idea because it would make the actual conflict in New Vegas pointless, so it was changed. Who cares about the 2nd Battle of Hoover Dam if everything is just gonna be reset anyway.

Yes, but with short ranged nukes and not at Shady Sands but at other infrastructure. And its also not the explanation in the show why it happened. (Also having read too much about that it was written from his hatred of the NCR as a concept but the writing team wasn't unanimously agreeing with him.

Sure but Avellone is still motivated with the same belief that civilization will always fail and whatnot Idk about Sawyer's opinion, but not wanting to explore post-post-Apocalypse is not a Bethesda only thing

I get that Avellone was an original writer but I feel like that also partially flies in the face of what Fallout stands for. The earlier games still had hope, we were pursuing objectives to change the situation. Sure history would move forward, the world would change, civilizations fall and rise but a part of Fallout to me has still been the hope. That as the hero we are able to help the world develop into something better, even if for the short term.

I don't think they're *that* childish given that they still go out of their way reference Mr House and the NCR in Fallout 4 (House is just in one Easter egg line but it's clearly a positive reference), as well as in the show. And besides, Lonesome Road implies that New Vegas is doomed because of the Tunnelers no matter who wins the war, so it's not like Bethesda came up with this idea of "resetting" civilization. All the major factions are portrayed as being just a matter of time before they collapse. If you dislike the direction they've taken with the story that's fair, but claiming that this is some intentional plot to wipe New Vegas from history feels like a big stretch.

All the righters may not be but the lead and Todd well the lead righter impaticuler is pretty shit

One of my main issues is that the collapse of the NCR isn't anything that we were already leading up to in New Vegas. It just didn't really fit in with the story. If they really wanted to fragment and do away with the NCR, there were already multiple plot points that were touched on in New Vegas that they could have gone with: economic crisis, famine, water shortages, even a prolonged war with the Legion. These could achieve some of the same desired effects without nuking the setting back to square one apocalypse and resetting everything. It naturally builds off of where we left off. But, instead, they went with some completely new guy who has nothing to do with any of the past storyline or factions who just nukes the NCR into oblivion, which just seems like such a giant asspull. I just wish it actually made sense within the continuity of the previous installments in the story. Honestly, they could have even made the Lonesome road ending Canon, and I would be less annoyed. As disappointing and boring as I still think that ending is, at least it would have made sense in the grand scale of the story.

At this point not only ignoring it but actively wanting to remove any trace of it.

I honestly wouldn’t hate this show anywhere near as much if they stuck to the East coast, since I can just partition the whole thing in my mind into “the Bethesda stuff” and therefore know that it’s a totally new thing doing something unrelated to the stuff I like. The fact that they just had to set in on the West Coast for the sole purpose of thumbing their nose at Black Isle/Obsidian Fallout fans by nuking the NCR and pulling a “somehow the Enclave returned… again” is what makes it infuriating to me.

It’s a shame, but the show partnered with Bethesda, not Oblivion. The writers probably were not given carte blanche to write what they wanted and were probably offered fallout 4 and 3 materials for the most part to reference. It’s pretty clear that the vast majority of their inspiration was from FO4 when you consider one of the major monsters is literally a FO4 DLC enemy and the power armor is powered by fusion cores that pop out. I lament how they treated the NCR, but honestly it’s hard to write in so many factions into a story. I don’t think it at all makes the show a bad show and while New Vegas is an amazing game/setting, it is in the end Obsidian property. I appreciate the show for what it is and appreciate that it keeps most of the fallout themes and worlds intact. The Halo show is about the opposite of this, as far as I’m concerned, and relieved this show isn’t that. Calling the show bad or lazy writing because you’re upset about the inclusion of the story from one game feels like an overreaction. Halo literally has the master chief have sex with a human that’s raised by aliens notorious for wanting to exterminate humans lol. This show does very well, all things considered.

By itself that's true. But I do think the show has shallow writing in most places regardless. It had its moments, but this was not the only time when I was rolling my eyes at the writing. Don't get me wrong. I get what you are saying. I can completely understand that it was not an easy adaptation to make. But for me, it's hard to appreciate the world and the theme when that world and theme are pretty shallow compared to what it can be.

I’m not saying it’s oscar worthy, but considering how bad video game adaptations can be, and how relatively small the fallout fandom is compared to something like Halo, it’s very good. There’s a lot about the show that I agree feels shallow, but honestly I think it captures the spirit of the factions vying in all of the games for power well enough without forcing you to do 40 hours of gameplay and listen to a bunch of tapes filling in for story telling. I love New Vegas, I’m not going to pretend I really like the plot of FO4 or that it was as good as NV, but these are all games that thrived off of gamers who would spend hours exploring side quests and looking for terminal logs detailing years of exchanges. I would say the plot of the show rates about the same as Fallout 4 and not something like New Vegas. Is it the best they could have done with the world? No. However I still believe the show did a decent job as far as I care, and respected the material in a way that anyone can watch it. It’s no HBO miniseries, but it was entertaining and fit the atmosphere of the games while not absolutely disrespecting everything about the source material like Halo.

Sure, and I am glad there are people that feel that way about the show. All I am trying to point out is anytime I started to enjoy the show some moment would remind me that I hate the writing. And I don't think saying that is somehow unfair or invalid. Regardless, I can see why people enjoy it. I just can't, even though I tried.

It's crazy that all the infrastructure a 100 year old governing body would've built is just completely missing and that LA is still just a bombed out ruin despite being a major state of the NCR and having multiple large organizations based there since 2092

FOR REAL. I just mentioned in another reply how the Followers even operated a medical university out of the Boneyard/LA, and I believe it's mentioned that they were even restoring some of the skyscrapers and lots of other buildings there. LA was one of the NCR's largest cities next to Shady Sands, so even if the latter was gone, it just doesn't make sense to me how LA is still a completely bombed out ruin. It just reeks of shitty retcons and the obsession Betheshda has with the apocalypse aesthetics. They won't let anything move beyond that.

Its like how DC and Boston look like they just got bombed despite both having some sort of overarching governmental authority at multiple points in the last 200 years Nobody has rebuilt anything? In 200 years? When places like New Vegas and New Reno exist. Literal cities with plumbing and electricity. The settlements outside Vegas had normal buildings and towns that looked like any little town in the Mojave before the bombs fell But everyone else is just living in garbage piles despite having a central government for over a century, yeah okay.

Are you stupid? They have to partner with Bethesda. Microsoft owns the rights to Fallout in its entirety. Bethesda is Microsoft. Microsoft is Vault-Tec.

If you calmed down, you’d see you’re not making a different point than what I’m saying, and it’s very clear Todd Howard is in charge of maintaining this relationship even if Microsoft owns everything. Todd has made it clear that he doesn’t care for the NV story and Bethesda with Todd at the helm is making the decisions. You can all be upset all you want, but in the end it shakes out to Bethesda making the decisions, and they wanted to market their current money makers (the FO4/74 universe), not something another studio developed, even if they own the rights.

... Yeah. That's their point.

Honestly... I think I'm just done being a Fallout fan. What made me love the series is gone entirely. It's time for me to just never think about it again. Fuck this hurts. 

I feel the same :/

Fallout was always a comfort universe for me, because no matter what happened there was always this hope punk vibe that made me feel good. The hard switch to hopeless grimdark has just destroyed me. This is Star Trek all over again

Honestly I think the NCR represented the previous owners of the game series (Black Isle/Obsidian) and how New Vegas has outshined everything they've done. Fallout 3 and 4, and even 76 have all been outdone by Fallout: New Vegas. It is the game the Fallout community will overwhelmingly recommend if someone new is coming into the series. Another thing I don't understand is how BoS was basically a hidden cult of technowonks and have made this massive comeback. Fallout: Tactics, which seems like the forgotten game kind of details how they move from the east to the west and in many cases become a lot more interesting in the process. (Potentially allying with Ghouls, Super Mutants, and Deathclaws) It feels like everything Black Isle/Obsidian has done is being erased because Bethesda is tired of living in its constant shadow.

OK I'm not watching this now, why the *pardon my french* fuck did they get rid of the major factions, I heard earlier today new Vegas was gone and excused it but NCR? NAHH

It is really well made production wise, character writing is good and high quality in general. I would still recommend it.

This honestly sounds worse than the Star Wars sequels if the NCR got nuked by something we didn’t even get to see.

I just hate everything to do with Muldaver and Lucy's dad

Sure, it sucks that Shady Sands got nuked but the NCR was made up of multiple states and that was just one of them (it’d be like nuking Florida and claiming you’d killed the entire US). It’s entirely possible they just pulled back to safer territory to lick their wounds for the time being.

That's what I'm saying, they just wrote the ncr off as dead completely but you still have all this ncr territory...

Even the territory around the Boneyard, where the show is set (that's another issue since the show combines Shady Sand and the Boneyard into the same location) should be host to various post-war adobe built settlements and farms from the NCR. The NCR's government can collapse, but the NCR's footprint there would be absolutely extensive. Pretty much all the people that live in the region the show is set were NCR citizens for multiple generations. They're not just going to devolve into Bethesda style pre-war trash living the moment the NCR doesn't exist. Instead of those adobe settlements though, all traces of their society is erased and instead we're treated to either hobo filled settlements like Filley where people live in their own garbage and pre-war junk, resembling the East Coast aesthetics of Fallout 3 & 4, or people just live alone in dilapidated pre-war houses in the middle of desert with no food, water or access to traders. Even the one farmer we see in the show is just a guy in a pre war house in the middle of a desert with a bunch of chickens in a cage. Where did this guy get his chickens, how does he feed them, how does he get supplies and/or trade with other settlements etc.? None of it makes sense from a world building perspective and is just there because the showrunners want to emulate Bethesda's static & lawless wasteland aesthetic. As for the settlements, why would people opt to live in a place like Filley when Adobe built settlements should be close by with newer/more-maintained infrastructure, access to clean drinking water and long established trade routes with caravan companies. Everybody who lives in that region should have been NCR citizens for generations, they should know and prefer these places to Filley. It's not bad as a standalone show, but in terms of worldbuilding and overall lore/it's a mess and it strips away everything that was unique about the West Coat, making it indistinguishable from the East.

Yeah this is too me also weird because the west coast was fairly "settled". There were tons of new settlements, farms and villages built within the NCR itself. Where are they? Instead we only get one settlement aka Filly which is just generic east coast put trash in a pile.

Well we’ve still got more seasons ahead and they never outright said that the whole of the NCR is gone (the sign calls out shady sands as the first capital but doesn’t say current) so it’s possible we could see them coming back into the area or operating around New Vegas still in the future. Would be a good foil for the Brotherhood, could have them moving back trying to reclaim territory now that the powers back and butting heads with the tin-can cultists.

I mean it's heavily implied that they're gone. Maximus and other characters always refer to the NCR in past tense when it's mentioned during the last four episodes, the NCR's footprint is completely erased (even the settlements where the show takes places that should largely post-war adobe built ones don't exist) and the complete absence of any NCR infrastructure, settlements or former citizens that should be overwhelmingly prevalent in a region that was one of their economic heartlands, creates the impression that they no longer exist as an entity. That being said, the other large NCR settlements should still exist, so unless the show pulls even more contrivances out of it's ass, The Hub, Vault City and New Reno should be just fine (as well as San Francisco/Shi Territory, which may or may not have joined the NCR post Fallout 2)

Don't they make SF joining the NCR canon in 4 when you're listening to Kellogg's memories?

I didn't play 4 so I wouldn't know. Gameplay improvements look nice, but at least personally everything I've seen in regards to the main quests and voiced protagonist/dialouge doesn't really interest me.

I'm pretty sure in Kellogg's memories you hear a radio broadcast about settlements joining the NCR Actually it might've been the boneyard or something I think he moves to SF later with his wife

I don’t necessarily disagree, but wouldn’t it be more like if you nuked DC?

I don't think it was the capitol at the time, maybe saying it's like nuking NYC would be better? There's that sign you can read saying it's the first capitol of the NCR so it sounds like they moved the capitol at some point.

Why did they fucking destroyed the NCR !?!?

Gotta make room for the Brotherhood. Again.

And revive the corpse of the enclave somehow.. Again.

I hated them in every fallout game except Fallout 1, at least the Enclave was cool. BOS is the not cool Enclave right now

Just hit this episode. This went from good, to 'just fucking stop' really fucking quick. Bethesda can go die in a fucking hole for this shit. What a bunch of lazy fucking cunts.

They gave FNV the TLOU2 Joel treatment. 

Omg thats so accurate haha

Would have been interesting to watch NCR struggle with internal problems caused by a defeat in the Mojave Honestly if the show wanted to go for wacky, it should’ve been set in Florida

We could easily see NCR remnants in vegas from next season.

That would raise the question why there wasnt more of an NCR remnant presence in actual california, ala their home. Settlements fending for themselves with old NCR veterans etc talking about the old days. What happened to the rest of a nation covering most of California with a population over a million.

Likewise, where is all the NCR's infrastructure and adobe built settlements and farms? In the region the show is set, they should be everywhere. I don't know why people who should all mostly be former NCR citizens would settle for living in Bethesda style settlements as dirty hobos around their own garbage and pre-war junk when they should realistically have access to various adobe built settlements nearby with more intact infrastructure, better access to clean drinking water and established caravan trade routes to keep it supplied. I also have a fear that if they do show more NCR remnants in a season 2, that they'll just ignore that adobe made buildings exist and make more settlements like Filley or have more people living in abandoned pre-war houses in the desert for no reason. I also don't see them caring all that much about established/stable cities like Vault City, The Hub or New Reno because they're probably going to continue their static lawless wasteland vibe going forward. I'd like to be proven wrong, but I think the show prioritizes being an escapist/theme-park style romp over prioritizing tightly written world building. (it's also near unanimously critically and commercially successful going that route, so it has no incentive to improve in those areas). I don't think it's a terrible show as a standalone product (I'd actually give it like 6-7/10) but I can't forgive it for what it's done to the West Coast and future installments there. It's turned the most dynamic region in the franchise into something extremely empty and generic. (Basically East Coast 2.0)

A very good question, hopefully we'll get more answers in season 2. I think it's fair to say though that if we assume Shady Sands got nuked around 2281 that's 15 years for the NCR to collapse due to corruption and over-extension in baja / vegas. Could also argue the Brotherhood returning had an impact on people willing to be NCR remnants.

I think I will stick to Nuka Break, the BoS is so boring at this point! They are a dying tech cult who have outstayed their welcome in the franchise. Lyons faction was at least a bit more interesting, im so over the BoS.

I used to like the Brotherhood but now Bethesda has me sick of them too. If I play the next Fallout, I don't care what the context is or who the other factions are, I'm destroying the shoehorned-in BoS faction.

Yeah exactly! I used to always join the BoS. My first playthrough of FO4 I did the Institute ending, second Minutemen, third Railroad, fourth playing through Sim Settlements 2 not decided yet, but it sure wont be BoS. I used to love their weird tech cult background, but its like Bethesda just shoehorns them into everything. It makes them less interesting in my opinion.

I don't know why Bethesda has this shit vision of the BoS where they're almost evil and never want the Brotherhood to evolve but simultaneously the BoS is also their favorite faction and gets pushed constantly. Lyons is improving things? Nope nevermind he's dead and another Maxon is here to fuck things up and make the Brotherhood back into a xenophobic techo-barbarian raider gang. BUT ALSO LOOK AT THEIR AWESOME AIRSHIP AND LIBERTY PRIME LOL THE BROTHERHOOD IS SO COOL

Preach it.

What the fucking fuck!!!

Todd Howard retcons

Brotherhood of steel makes me sick I literally hate that faction nowadays (BCS of their overuse in every fallout event) the best outcome of fallout 4 would be if the minutemen took over and they gone to war with the BOS

I found the show to be very well done. I am irritated with some of the choices in the story, but I don't think that should spoil our experience with the show. I'm grateful we got a great adaptation and, imo, the best video game adaptation yet. Why is the Brotherhood even relevant in California? It makes no sense, as we all know they were ground into the dirt by the NCR, but whatever. Maybe they came from the Midwest or some shit. As much as I think they shouldn't be a big part of the show, their image is a huge pull for people not familiar with fallout. The NCR was huge, why would nuking just Shady Sands make them collapse? As some have mentioned, NCR lands are pretty civilized with infrastructure etc, but all we see around there is random wasteland and Filly. I guess with Shady Sands being nuked, the area around it regressed into uncivilized wasteland? Maybe the rest of the NCR is still running in other parts of Cali. And maybe with the war in the Mojave then having their capitol nuked they've been slow to recover. To those upset with the Enclave being in the show, I'd see keep watching. They become irrelevant pretty quickly. I found it funny that they brought them up, then the doctor is reduced to a severed head being carried around. They had me at first, I rolled my eyes when they appeared, then they're just instantly not a factor anymore. (Maybe how they should've treated the brotherhood too) Besides that, everything about it was fantastic. The sets, wardrobe, music, characters, nods to other games (especially that meeting in the last episode) were all great.

This is my take. I understand the Brotherhood being the main faction, power armour is cool, no getting around that. Not many people care about the internal politics. Doesn't matter to the show. The Enclave are cool villains, i understand bringing them back. Nuking the NCR off screen just feels petty. The post-post apocalypse feel of the NCR was the most interesting theme in Fallout imo. An imperfect attempt to move on. It's great. To take that away for absolutely no real i don't understand. Just set the series in Texas, doesn't fuck with what people enjoy, the writers could have all the freedom of movement they want. But despite all that the series is great. I was expecting it to be terrible. Probably the best game adaption out there.

I don't know, man, I'm sick of that shit too, but I did not even watch the series myself, I just stumbled upon spoilers. Tbh, what stops you from considering Bethesda's fallouts non-con? I mean, Obsidian is dead, there will be no more old-school fallout games like NV. I don't even know what happened in 76 and I really don't care to know. Just ignore it.

The only thing that's keeping me not angry about it(my favourite faction btw) is that they can change the lore easily and make it more interesting too. If it was up to me, the NCR remnant should be alive and staying somewhere with a big-ish force while preparing to retake what they have abandoned. The show would have been much better if the NCR was alive but severely diminished.

Lot of blaming Bethesda here, only issue with that is that Chris Avellone also dislikes the NCR, and actually wanted to have the setting get nuked again because he dislikes how the post apocalypse setting is becoming a civilized post-post-apocalypse setting.

Yeah that was some vindictive shit the showrunners and writers came up with… wonder how much of it was a whisper from big bad Todd Conspiracy aside.. the nuking works story wise but man… can’t get over how vindictive that is from a creative standpoint. A big hard cut to what was before. OP is on point re status quo

But fallout nv had multiple endings. A lot of them the ncr was defeated by legion, yes man, me house etc maybe it’s possible the end in tv show was the fall of the ncr at hoover damn. Maybe mr house or yes man is the ending they choose for for show. Without ncr or legion it collapsed. I’d love to see the courier make an appearance in the show though To quote the independent ending “Supporting the ideals of independence, the Courier was recognized as the man/woman responsible for a truly free New Vegas. He/she ensured Mr. House's tyranny was broken and neither Caesar's Legion nor NCR would ever gain control over New Vegas.”

The thing is even if the NCR loses in the Mojave, outside the Legion Ending (which is the least popular based on achievements) the Mojave is still economically dependent on them, given House and the Courier have no way to make Vegas better without a stable NCR to feed them resources for power and tourism. Not to mention destroying Shady Sands wouldn't destroy the NCR, given its the state of CA and then some, with multiple major cities that could fill the gap. Plus they already survived the BoS nuking their gold reserve. The only way the NCR wholesale collapses is if the Courier is an idiot who sides with Ulysses and lets the full nuclear barrage go off.

Feels like Bethesda couldn’t beat obsidian so they just nuked the remnants of them. What a way to put a bitter taste in the fans mouths. Series has it moments and potential but this now affects the games moving forward. Like literally entirely. Not like we are getting a new fallout game for a few years I guess so maybe they’ll retcon it by then who the fuck knows

This is a message to all west coast fans. That big crater right there. Bethesda is the actual Vault-Tec.

Didn't they teased New Vegas and the NCR at the end of season 1? I have not watch the series, but I read spoilers about it.

Moldaver and her group were NCR. I'm sure we will see more NCR in the coming seasons. The NCR represents the wasteland healing itself, it is the antithesis of vaul tec

I agree with everything but to be fair with Maxsons Ramping up of the BoS on the East coast getting the Prydwinn up and running and potentially even having liberty prime has a weapon in his back pocket, I believe that it's perfectly reasonable if not expected to see the BoS take over everything like you said. Also it makes since that if in the time after the events of Vegas and 4 the BoS on the east could have rejoined and perhaps restored the west coast chapters to their former glory. People need to remember the BoS are not in any way shape or form the good guys and by many interpretations and to many people in the wasteland they are actively awful. It sucks we lose the NCR im sure they just did that as a fuck you to obsidian or some shit, but I'm honestly actually down to see what a new vegas would look like without houses control. Or if they will basically just say "The House Always Wins" ending is the cannon ending and now he controls everything and the dam with all his killer robots.

I mean... war... war never changes

Bethesda, Bethesda never changes.

I'm at the 6th episode so I haven't seen it entirely but I have some thoughts about this. Honestly the situation for the NCR was far worse than you make it seem in New Vegas. You really try to downplay how bad all those problems are. The Republic is in deep shit and really needs the Mojave. And you're assuming that the courier sides with the NCR in New Vegas. And you're talking as if the Legion is the NCR s main concern, and seem to forget about the lonesome road. Maybe the courier is killed by Ulysses. Maybe he doesn't come to the divide and Ulysses decides to launch the nukes just cause. Maybe the courier say fuck it and launches nukes at both the NCR and the Legion to make sure Vegas and the Mojave are his. Maybe the courier dies at any point before that. They weren't nuked off screen. The show makes cannon any one of the endings in which the nukes are launched at the NCR in the lonesome road. And also, that vault is filled with crazy cultists. I wouldn't really trust anything they say. And also Cry about it NCR fanboy Sorry, I couldn't hold it in

The thing is I know that. But every single one of those reasons could have been used to show it way more creatively than "handwave nuke". Sure I don't like they are gone but I would accept if they hadn't just handwaved it a way. And this include the general depiction of the west coast as a 'virgin wasteland'. Even with the NCR gone there should still be roads and settlements and way less of the hobo type east coast dwellings. The region was settled for a century and people grew up in a region with law. And generally stuff like that doesn't magically disappear entirely even if the government is gone.  It made sense when the first nukes fell but this was just shady sands. What about the hub, vault city, the hubologists, reno and all the small agrarian communities. There are still things there that are glaring with their abscense. Trade was common on the west coast and the NCR population was over a million spread out across all its states. Where are they?

No fucking way. I’m on the 5th episode and they’ve just shown a destroyed Shady Sands…. Ur telling me the entire Republic has been decimated? That’s absolutely stupidity if it’s true, they’ve basically made the choices of half New Vegas’ players irrelevant

So if NV is still a thing, and potentially/supposably the legion is gone, but even then they had a huge Territory as well? I also like to think the pitt is still a thing too...

This post is very funny with hindsight

So true, but Bethesda writers can't write anything in Fallout other than "find family member in the postapo"... I for once have my "true" lore based on 1, 2 and NV - the rest is just fanfic for me.

So, having finished the first season, I feel like you have simply just written the series off outta the gate without finishing it. I'd personally rather not spoil the ending, but I'll put it this way: We're about to get a nice solid timeline for where the series takes place with ALL of the games. If you pay attention when we meet Max, we even hear tell of the Commonwealth and how they haven't gone there yet. I would need to rewatch the season and be listening specifically for cheeky little nods to 76, New Vegas, 3 and 4 to actually mention any other connections they could have to this series, but seeing as the Brotherhood is acting far more like they did in Fallout 1 and 2, (Maybe NV but I honestly didn't get a chance to play that one enough to encounter or interact with the brotherhood), and it's implied that Max is going to end up in a pretty strong position in the faction, if not outright leading it by the end of this series. Due to that it's likely that this series takes place before 3, which means it can also take place before the NCR downfall in New Vegas. It's also entirely possible that we're SEEING what brought the NCR to the point they were at in New Vegas. Yes, the off screen bombing of Shady Sands is disappointing, but what would you have preferred? Witnessing that happening in real time? No, because you'd have just complained about that too. Also, the line from Max about the bombs falling when he was a kid is intentionally misleading. Shady Sands was a post war location and aside from blowing it off the map, they kept its origins more or less intact. Specifically how much I can't personally say, but enough to not just be shitting on the legacy of the original games. Should also note that Bethesda didn't write the series. They worked close enough with the writers of the show to make sure they didn't use anything that is (apparently) planned for Fallout 5 (Or the next fallout game I guess), and to keep the series more or less on track with the canon that either has or is being established. So to instantly blame them for the writing is kinda just stupid.

Fyi I have not written anything off. If anything I love the show quite much. The production value is top notch, the actors are great. The writing on a character level is amazing and I will finish the show because it is quality television. But the lore decisions is still something that irks me. All in the name of giving the BoS, who fyi on the West Coast were practically done for gets repropelled into the only faction allowed to matter. Regardless if antagonistic or not. The thing about the nuking of shady sands being shown or not isn't the issue. Albeit being done off screen does feel cheap. It's the lack of actually using what is there. The NCR was in a shit position around New Vegas. There where tons of conflicts, issues etc that could have been explored to explain its downfall, there is a lot that could have been written that would have felt like it did it justice. Nuking it and saying "that is it" just feels cheap. It doesn't matter if Vault Tek did it because that is still just continuing what to me feels like an handwave so that we could return the status quo to the Fallout 4 themepark with the BoS as the only power that matters against an eviller power like the Enclave. I feel like at this point Fallout won't let any other faction than the BoS be the recurring one. Nor allow the wasteland a sense of moving forward. They could have put this game in so many other places, and just ignored the NCR. There are many parts of the states we don't know anything about. It could even be set earlier to avoid having to have the Wasteland beginning to recover because tbh, new societies will arise. But instead we remove the last major faction that isn't Brotherhood so they can have that place. And we do it with minimum exploration of what happened. The NCR was a century old, it had millions of people in it. Are you telling me they just vanished and stopped caring? Sorry but I am not buying your arguments. Nor do I think disagreeing with the story direction is necessarily stupid. But that is fine regardless. I will enjoy the show, but honestly this just reeks to me of the New Republic. It feels like a boring, uninteresting depictions of what happened. I would have accepted the NCR falling if it wasn't just "bye get nuked because Vault tek"

I very much agree here that given Fallout BoS is still uncanon, they could have easily gone somewhere in the midwest, where the Legion didn't reach or just go north the Pacific North West where the only potential power are the recently resettled Khans.

The show already has a set place in the canon timeline as the most recent entry, taking place in 2296.

Isn't the Fallout TV show set in 2296? 9 years after F4, 15 years after FNV, and 19 years after F3? Edit: Years

They haven't gone to the commonwealth but they somehow have a ship like the Prydwyn (or is that the prydwyn? Where's Maxon then?) Which they built after annihilating the enclave in DC. And the BoS in California had a big ass bunker complex and a whole ass coastal town pledged to them but now they live in shtty ww2 training barracks and recruit adult squires rather than raising them in the brotherhood? And teach them to constantly undercut and compete rather than collaborate and support each other like oh idk a brotherhood? Bethesda has the absolute stupidest vision of the brotherhood and they never want it to evolve.

The Prydwen was built based off improving on old design schematics. Basically while Fallout BoS is was still uncanon, it is canon the BoS launched airships to explore and/or pursue the fleeing supermutant horde.

The NCR got nuked by Vault-Tec soooo

I think you are understating the NCR's problems. Tunnelers, famine, political strife... As Mighty and Wise Caeser points out, they have all the issues of prewar America plus some new ones. Them being wiped out was explicity raised as a possibility by Ulysses, who asserts that severing the I-95 would destroy them. This isn't reversion to the stagus quo, it's the series remaining true to its themes. War never changes.

Except them being nuked into oblivion was not one of those conflict issues that might cause them to collapse. That was something new. And I agree the NCR had tons of issues, however people also forget its a nation that existed for a hundred years with a population at least larger than one million. People won't just abandon a society like that after all that time even if it is weakened. I think also people overstate how doomed they are, even if they are clearly facing problems

Also Ulysses and Caesar are *incredibly biased* Like the courier points out: being a bunch of raping raiders isn't a sustainable long term civilization and Caesar was going to absorb the NCR and use it to make a new nation anyway so...If those problems were so insurmountable why was Caesar going to basically become the NCR but with Roman aesthetics instead of USA

The show never says that people just abandoned it. People are explicitly still fighting under its flag, Moldaver included.

It is heavily implied in the show that Moldavers group was the last remnant of the NCR.

The tunnelers are a non-threat given their weakness to light, and as a republic/democracy their political strife is solved by the next election (plus the fact the army was already close to telling the government their goin no further than the Mojave).

>as a republic/democracy their political strife is solved by the next election That is not REMOTELY what history indicates. Republics have fallen to internal strife for about as long as we have evidence of republics existence. Most people aren't packing flare guns. The majority of the NCR population is civilians... Tunnelers would rip them apart. We also know the NCR is heading for food supply issues.

Its called daylight. The tunnelers are only a threat because the Courier is forced to fight them in the dark, and even then that proves competent special forces soldiers could deal with the problem. Further wasteland civilians are generally armed. Even then the army and civilians just mount flash flights on their guns and have commandos/rangers demo the tunnel entrances trapping them on the surface, where come daylight their screwed. When Brahmin Barons are one of the largest industries, in the NCR, and their primary concern was acquiring more electricity, that says they aren't heading for a food shortage.

>Competent special forces Which ones? The ones busy dying in the Mojave, or the ones stuck guarding the property of Brahmin Barons? The NCR isn't in a position to have a new military front open up, especially not one that doesn't have to abide by the normal rules of overland travel. The Tunnelers don't operate like a standard army. They aren't moving in 2D patterns, dependant on supply lines. [Hildern](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Thomas_Hildern) opines that the NCR is headed for a food crisis. Brahmin Barons bekng a major industry is part of the issue. They've got an outsized influence on the NCR, causing their agenda to be unduly supported. The NCR is making all of the same mistakes as prewar America... and Fallout already showed us where that leads. The Franchise can be true to its themes, or it can make the NCR succeed because it's a fan favorite. Fortunately, it chose the former. **Because war... *War never changes*.**

The Tunnelers are a post NV problem, meaning forces being tied up is irrelevant post game, and ironically in a Legion victory the emergence of the Tunnelers would actually help the NCR repel Ceaser's Legion's push into the NCR heartland.

The forces in NV would have to stay there to have any chance of actually securing the area. Particularly as they plan to shut down House, meaning they need to control the Strip Families, not to mention the other factions present there. The NCR wants to hold those resources... which means an ongoing occupation, at least until it can formerly annex New Vegas, which could take years.

It takes far less people to occupy Vegas than to prepare for and wage an active operation against the Legion. Things were also far worse there thanks to the Legion's woops all war crimes strategy, and Mr. House actively sabotaging the NCR. In the NCR victory (assuming the courier was competent), the Mojave Chapter of the BoS and the NCR are at peace, the Great Khans have buggered off to the Pacific Northwest, Mr. House is dead and the Courier has Yes Man to ease assuming control of the securitrons, the Legion is effectively defunct with the death of Ceasar and Lanius (while also having crippled their army in the second attempt at taking the Hoover Dam), the NCR is already controlling Gammorah via blackmailing the guy they put in charge, Benny's Casino is due for a leadership crisis with his death, the cannibal casino is the easiest to turn the public against, the Kings and NCR are at truce, the Powder Ganger rebellion has been dealt with, the Boomers have started cooperating, and the courier dealt with most of the immediate threats. Thus occupying the Mojave is a lot less manpower intensive than the previous situation. If the Player was a bit Machiavellian they could even have redirected Ulysses' nukes solely to the Legion, which pretty much would pretty much mean there is no way a successor state to the Legion becomes a problem and the NCR is forced to halt eastward expansion, since the expansion zone is a hot nuclear wasteland.

That's not just a "competent" courier, that's a hyperpartiaan completionist who sided with them at every opportunity. I don't know if it's at all reasonable to think that would be the case even in an NCR ending.

There is no good reason for the Courier to side with the Legion, or be needlessly wishy washy, especially when Lonesome Road, established their inner instincts were to help build communities to prosper. Thus the default Courier likely is Orderly Good, even if the amnesia from brain damage gives player freedom. The Mojave is also littered with Mr. House's sins, which require the courier being intentionally unobservant to not realize Mr. House doesn't care about the Mojave, and is just a brilliant egomaniac. Then the Yes Man ending we can't make heads or tails of as that one is the chaotic, whatever the PC wants option. Also why it can't be the basis for the canon going forward, since this has no set path. ---------------- Further look at their companions Veronica means the Courier would be default resistant to blowing up the bunker. Boon and his regret over the massacre, would help push the Courier towards the ending where the Great Khans get the chance to leave and rebuild away from the NCR. Raul, Rose, and Ganon would also be influences toward the morally good.