Now that Fallout Season 1 is out, IGN sits down with Jonathan Nolan and Bethesda's Todd Howard to talk all about Season 1's biggest revelations, the interconnected universe with the games, and their hopes for the future.
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I was actually specifically going to ask you about that Shady Sands timeline conversation. And you say that nothing in New Vegas is retconned. I think the rub, to kind of TLDR it, is that "The Fall of Shady Sands" happens in 2277, which is four years before New Vegas. So are people just misunderstanding what "The Fall of Shady Sands" means or something like that?
Howard: 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.
So basically, "The Fall of Shady Sands," it doesn't mean a nuke, necessarily?
Howard: Correct.
I'm curious how you guys see the NCR as it stands now. Is it demolished or is it kind of more like the Minutemen where it's just fractured?
Howard: One of the takes that we always have is to approach things very locally when we're doing Fallout. We're careful about saying what's going on in other parts of the world. And we always take this view of, communication is difficult. And look, if you look at the background, the NCR is a wide-ranging sort of organization and group across not just California, but other places. So the show focuses on this period of time and this group here, and that's what we can say right now. But I don't think you've heard the last of the NCR.
I call bollocks on Todd. It's a safe bet.
They previously said it was an error.
Todd Howard, who let us all be clear - is a notorious confabulator* of the Baron Munchausen-esque kind - is probably just making this up on the spot as a bit of totally unnecessary CYA, because the man is profoundly disconnected from reality. Realistically, it was an error and nobody sane cared. They could either choose to address that head-on like normal developers, or they can try and convince the writers on Fallout that they need to write the next seasons so "The Fall of Shady Sands" definitely doesn't mean "Shady Sands got nuked", even though it clearly did, and the plot doesn't really make sense if Shady Sands already "fell" in any meaningful sense (and not just of NV, but also of the Fallout TV show). The problem they have is this "fall", completely unmentioned in NV, has to be so extreme that it would be a historical event known about by everyone from Shady Sands. So it can't be anything subtle. Which is a mismatch with NV, where there's no indication of trouble in Shady Sands, even though it's set in 2281, four years after the "fall". Doing all this CYA nonsense instead of saying "It was a typo" is just Streisand shenanigans, but it's very Bethesda.
Also "the NCR is a wide-ranging sort of organization and group across not just California, but other places" that's another use for that GIF! Not really though, Todd!
What we know is that the NCR occupied part of California, apparently got as far south as LA, and got as far East as the Nevada/Arizona border, which is where the Hoover dam is - but definitely as of NV, they wouldn't have got any further East than that. And if they got nuked months after NV, then even the "NCR wins" scenario is the right one (which seems unlikely for previously discussed reasons). I guess we might think they went as far North as Oregon, but where else? I wondering if Todd even understands the geography of America at this point!
* = Anyone who follows Bethesda games should know this very well.