Fallout 5 & Fallout TV Show Have One Interesting Problem To Contend With

Summary The Fallout TV show timeline could disrupt upcoming games, requiring careful planning and consideration of established canon.

Setting Fallout 5 before or concurrently with the TV show could offer unique challenges, but also storytelling opportunities.

An East Coast setting may allow Fallout 5 to ignore much of the West Coast lore, but could alienate fans only familiar with the TV series.

Since the release of the TV show, the next Fallout game has some explaining to do. The Fallout TV series is the latest-set entry in the franchise, and incorporates people, places, and things from across the decades of lore - even if it does leave out one major recurring Fallout character. But as hard as the TV show tries to stay canon-neutral, it makes its own impact on the Fallout universe, too. Sticking closest to one of Fallout: New Vegas' endings as the true outcome for the Mojave Wasteland, the TV series clearly has its own take on canon.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for the ending of the Fallout TV show.]

That creates a major problem for the next game in the Fallout series, whenever that might come to fruition. Although Bethesda's own Todd Howard has hinted that there might be Fallout projects in development, what they are and when they might be released are totally relegated to rumor. But even at this early stage, any upcoming Fallout game has some serious issues to contend with. These issues could even expand beyond the video game space and into the second season of the TV show, which is already stepping on toes when it comes to conflicting with canon.

Related Amazon Celebrates Fallout TV Series With 3 Free Games The Fallout TV series is launching in style with some great games becoming available for free, although not everyone may be able to play them.

A Direct Sequel Fallout 5 Could Conflict With The TV Show's Canon

Pros & Cons Of A Direct Fallout TV Show Sequel

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The Fallout TV show's setting creates serious problems for Fallout 5, whatever it may be. As the latest-set entry in the series canon, there's a lot that has to be established by previous games in order to make the TV show work. And anything that comes after it has to build on everything before it. The lore is verging on too complicated for a writer to follow without a lot of prior knowledge. Whenever Fallout 5 is set, it's going to have to take a lot of complicated lore into account, and it may end up conflicting with major events in the established canon.

That's already become a problem in the Fallout TV series with its Shady Sands controversy. Although the New California Republic's headquarters are confirmed to be up and running in 2281 - the year Fallout: New Vegas is set - a timeline shown in the TV show suggests that an event called the "Fall of Shady Sands" occurred in 2277, alongside a doodle of a mushroom cloud. Todd Howard himself eventually stepped in to debunk the idea that Shady Sands was destroyed before the events of New Vegas.

Shady Sands doesn't appear directly in Fallout: New Vegas - it takes place away from the NCR's main base of operations. However, several NPCs mention that Shady Sands still exists, so it can't have been destroyed completely prior to 2281.

It's easy to miss, and it's easy to understand how a writer could overlook this tiny detail when creating the Fallout TV series' timeline. But mistakes such as these are already possible, and make Fallout's already complicated lore even more confusing. That could only get worse with the Fallout canon even further expanded. As a result, the writers of Fallout 5 will have to choose its setting carefully, and research its background extensively, in order to make sure it aligns with both past and future.

Fallout lore is getting to a point where it's complicated and varied enough to rival Star Wars. But with an entire galaxy to explore, that's not as much of a problem for a space opera franchise. For a series like Fallout, which recently confirmed its permanent setting would be the United States, that means running out of room sooner or later. Thankfully, there are many different ways the franchise could address this - but each has its own issues.

Fallout 5 Could Be A Prequel To The TV Show

Pros & Cons Of A Fallout Prequel

Of course, another option is to set Fallout 5 before the TV series. Roll it back anywhere from 50 to 100 years before the TV show takes place, and the events of the series become a distant future. Fallout 5 would still have to tread lightly around anything and anyone that's still around by the time of the TV show, but would be able to ignore most of the implications of the events depicted in the TV show.

This may seem like the easy way out, and to some extent, it is. But returning to an earlier setting could also be problematic, mostly because it stands to resurrect Bethesda’s biggest open-world flaw: endless base building. This much-maligned mechanic reduces the majority of loot to useless junk, slows progress to a crawl, and makes a poor excuse for an endgame. It's one of the biggest things holding Fallout 4, 76, and Starfield back, and the next Fallout game needs to give it a rest.

An earlier-set game also runs the simple risk of being boring. A mostly uninhabited Wasteland just isn't as much fun - look at Fallout 76's barebones story. Part of the joy of Fallout is the resilience of the NPCs who inhabit it, the way they're able to turn half-melted, centuries-old infrastructure into semi-livable settlements. It's one thing to participate in it on a micro level, as in Fallout 76. It's another entirely to witness it firsthand on a macro level, as in New Vegas and 4. There's more character in the latter way: resourcefulness becomes both practical and thematic.

Fallout 5 Could Be Set Concurrently With The TV Show

Pros & Cons Of A Fallout Midquel

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A Fallout 5 set concurrently with, or at least around the same time as, the TV show would also have its benefits. For one thing, there's a pretty significant contingent of fans who would welcome a return to Fallout's original western setting. A direct sequel to Fallout: New Vegas would fill the perfect time slot, and make for a highly anticipated release.

But it'd be difficult to make an RPG set concurrently with the TV show - perhaps even more difficult than making one set after it. To avoid conflicting with established canon, player choice and nonlinearity would go out the window. Still, a project like that could go in some interesting directions. Frame it as an alternate history, or use it to explore some of the arcane lore and unanswered questions introduced by the TV show, and it immediately becomes more interesting in conversation. For example, a direct sequel to New Vegas could cover everything that happens leading up to Hank McLean's arrival in the city at the end of Fallout season one.

Fallout 5 Could Be Set On The East Coast

Pros & Cons Of An Isolated Fallout

But it's also possible that Fallout 5 could be set on the East Coast, giving it leave to ignore most of the lore established by the TV show (and other, more westerly games). Ever since Bethesda took over the Fallout series, each of its games have been set on or around the east coast: Washington, Boston, West Virginia, et cetera. There's something to be said for these settings. As the former site of colonial America, there's a lot of history built into their maps, and built upon by their stories and themes.

However, with a dearth of working planes, trains, and cars in the Fallout universe, intercontinental travel is rare. While news of big developments, like the existence of the NCR, the takeover of New Vegas, and indeed, the destruction of Shady Sands may eventually reach the East Coast eventually, a lot of the finer details are lost somewhere around the Midwest. This way, Fallout 5 could establish its own, mostly separate body of lore, and would have an easy excuse if any of its NPCs got their facts wrong.

There are plenty of East Coast locations Fallout has yet to explore: New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, even a Fallout: Florida would be interesting.

But the East Coast version of the Fallout setting is significantly different from what's portrayed in the TV series. The factions, their ideologies, and standings in the world aren't quite the same. That could make it unrecognizable to anyone whose first exposure to the franchise was the TV series, and could cause similar problems to a direct sequel. There's so much Fallout lore at this point that it can prove a barrier to entry. It only gets more confusing for series newcomers when the East Coast settings get involved.

Ultimately, it comes down to what kind of fans Fallout 5 chooses to cater to. Will it be a lore-heavy exploration of familiar territory, or an introductory romp into the uncharted Wasteland? Either way, the introduction of the TV series' lore causes trouble. Finding the balance between agreeing with canon and telling an original story will inevitably be difficult. Players will only know whether the next Fallout game is up to the challenge when it's officially announced.