Amazon’s Fallout Adaptation Seemingly Retcons Climactic Events of Fan-Favourite Game

Amazon’s excellent adaptation of the Fallout series for TV is available in its entirety now, and we loved it. However, not every Fallout fan is happy with how it seemingly rewrites what was thought to be established series lore, apparently retconning the ending of beloved black sheep, Fallout: New Vegas. Obviously, major spoilers for both New Vegas and Amazon’s show to follow!

Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 were developed by Bethesda Softworks, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2020. Fallout: New Vegas, meanwhile, was developed by Obsidian Entertainment (also owned by Microsoft), a serious RPG developer in its own right. Many Fallout players believe Obsidian’s game’s depiction of the bleak, darkly comedic setting to be the most authentic.

Bethesda design director Emil Pagliarulo helpfully provided a timeline of the Fallout universe (thanks, IGN), which is where issues begin to crop up. You see, Amazon’s adaptation is the most recent in terms of that timeline, taking place in 2296, 15 years after the events of New Vegas. One commenter replied: “Okay, cool. It’s just that according to the show, an, ahem…major event occurs in 2277 that would definitely have had an impact in Fallout: New Vegas. The only way I can rectify this would be to move the date of the event until *after* New Vegas and call it a typo.”

The biggest conflict can be found in the show’s sixth episode, which mentions that Shady Sands, the capital of the New California Republic (NCR), was destroyed in 2277. That’s an issue because it means the faction was largely wiped out four years before the climactic events of New Vegas, in the same year the faction supposedly fought in the First Battle of the Hoover Dam against Caeser’s Legion.

In Amazon’s telling, the NCR has been scattered by the destruction of Shady Sands, a rag-tag outfit doing what they can to rebuild society. It doesn’t sound like they would then be capable of establishing a “significant military presence” in time to face the Legion again at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, the final encounter players face in New Vegas.