One of the biggest gripes that Fallout fans had with the new (and wonderful) television series was that it seems to ‘retcon’ Fallout: New Vegas. In terms of the overall timeline, a major event that happens in the Fallout show seems to scrub a huge portion of New Vegas’ story out of place, but Todd Howard spoke up in a recent interview with IGN to stress that isn’t the case.
Fallout Spoilers Ahead – You’ve Been Warned
In the Fallout TV series, we learn that Shady Sands, the ‘capital’ of the New California Republic, was turned into a stinking hole in the ground by a nuclear device detonated by one of the show’s supporting characters. That’s as far as I’ll go into that topic to not spoil too much for fans yet to catch the full series.
However, ‘The Fall of Shady Sands’ clashes against the timeline established in 2010 by Fallout: New Vegas, with the city being destroyed before New Vegas even takes place, which doesn’t make sense. Todd Howard cleverly set the story straight, suggesting that ‘The Fall of Shady Sands’ doesn’t necessarily mean it was nuked, and that the bombs fell to destroy the city after the events of New Vegas.
So, something else happened before that to bring Shady Sands to its knees, but the city still existed during New Vegas’ timeline. He did say that the timeline was pretty much on a razor’s edge, though:
All I can say is we’re threading it tighter there, but the bomb falls just after the events of New Vegas. That’s when Shady Sands blows.
Toward the end of the Fallout TV series, we get a glimpse of New Vegas on the horizon as a particular character makes their way toward the city. Strangely, it seems to be sitting in darkness compared to how it looks in the 2010 game, where it sits on the landscape as a gleaming, shining gem of the wasteland.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out our latest posts:
