Fallout: Bethesda's lore retcons

The Fallout franchise has always been known for its attention to detail when it comes to in-universe lore in its open world. Starting with the isometric, turn-based combat of the originals, with direct inspiration from media like Mad Max, with gameplay elements from isometric games like Wasteland and XCOM in its combat design. The original Fallout was designed by series creator Tim Cain and the now defunct Interplay Productions.

The original gave birth to the iconic design of weapons, power armour, enemies, and factions we all know today; The Brotherhood of Steel, The New California Republic (NCR), Caesar’s Legion, Followers of the Apocalypse, The Master’s super mutant army and the clandestine deep state that is The Enclave became staples of the franchise. Many of these were brought back in later instalments.

New Vegas at Gamescom 2010. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

After Interplay went bankrupt, their assets were bought up by Bethesda game studios, thus the Fallout IP was inherited by them. Bethesda, under the direction of Todd Howard, put their own spin of Tim Cain’s open-world universe with the release of Fallout 3 back in 2008. This was the first time we saw Fallout in 3D, in the style of Bethesda’s open-world RPGs, like the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

For its time, Fallout 3 managed to adapt the original designs and concepts present from the franchise’s days on MS-DOS. Set in former Washington, D.C. (now known as the Capital Wasteland), the series’ official third instalment brought us back to the chaos of the wasteland with a plot like the originals.

You play as a vault dweller that leaves their vault to find your father and later find the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (GECK), a pre-war tool used to revitalise the ecosystem and provide the wastes with purified water, which you must find for your fathers plan, ‘Project Purity’.

Meanwhile, the Enclave returns to use project purity to poison the wasteland so only they can walk the earth. But with Bethesda’s appeal to inspiration in continuing Fallout on the east coast of America, we began to see a recurring problem that plagued the franchise from then on Bethesda’s Creation Engine, the same in-house engine used to develop the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. One major retcon that would leave fans puzzled would come from the game's final DLC, Nuka-World.

Set in a rundown Nuka-Cola theme park run by a cartel of three bloodthirsty raider gangs which the player can become the leader of. Within the park, there is a Nuka-Cola Quantum-themed suit of Enclave power armour kept in a well-preserved glass case, which can be found within the Galactic Zone, a sci-fi-themed area of the park full of aggressive, rogue robots.

The inconsistency that many would instantly point out would be: “How could a suit of top-secret, experimental armour created by remnants of the US Government, a century after the bombs dropped, be found in a theme park attraction?” There are a few conflicting theories people have about this.

Either Bethesda completely forgot about consistency in their narrative, or this was done as a PR ploy by the US army before the bombs were detonated. However, displaying cutting-edge, deep-state technologies in Disneyland-like attractions would be ridiculous during a major war. This, combined with the continual recycling of the Enclave as antagonists, when they ought to have been gone by the second game, would turn off many old-school fans of the franchise.

Another retcon that dampened Bethesda’s run of Fallout would be the inclusion of the psychoactive drug ‘Jet’ in Fallout 76, a game that was supposed to be set 100 years before the first game. Again, people pointed out a major retcon. Jet was created by a kid named Myron in Fallout 2, so this was a retcon across several centuries.

But what made Bethesda’s luck run dry was all down to timing, this was discovered shortly after launch, which was notorious for game-breaking bugs which rendered 76 unplayable. However, Bethesda managed to heavily patch the game up after a few years and earned back their player base with consistent updates and new DLC expansions.

Obsidian Entertainment, the makers of New Vegas and well-known for creating the cult classic Star Wars RPG: Knights of the Old Republic are well-known for their faithful interpretations of the original games. Obsidian's founding by former Interplay/Black Isle studios employees, most notably Fallout creator Tim Cain, provided another rationale for Obsidian taking on more of the Fallout mantle in the interest of the franchise going back to its roots.

Tim Cain directed the design of their most recent release The Outer Worlds in 2019, which was intended as a fix for those dying for a sequel to Fallout New Vegas at the time. This led many to the sentiment that old-school Fallout set on the west coast may return, but until then, we could only hope for what we see next.

The latest news from Bethesda suggests we might have to wait a while before Fallout 5 is revealed, as their attention seems to be fully set on developing the up-and-coming Starfield, wishing not to repeat the same mistake of the undercooked release of Fallout 76.

Bethesda director Todd Howard in 2018. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Todd Howard promises the RPG will allow much deeper dialogue than their earlier projects, promising to return the old-school dialogue screens from the likes of the Elder Scrolls classic Morrowind. Bethesda plan to polish and refine it after pushing its first release date in November 2022, pushed to sometime in 2023, with no exact release date in sight.