Poll: Should any of the endings of Fallout: New Vegas be considered canon? (Spoilers obviously)

[tilmoph]

Of the options available, I selected the Mr.House ending. His plan, if memory serves, was a. Rebuild Vega, get all the money b. Use the money attract any clever folks he can then c. SPAAACE!!!. This removes the pseudo-immortal super genius from the picture, leaving a small but powerful faction in the wastes with a power vacuum, which will keep it from becoming overly dominant.

Overall, though, I think fallout needs to set itself in an earlier time period on another continent if it wants to keep the post-nuclear wasteland feel. Given the tech available to be scavenged, and the preservation of language and tech manuals (hell, even basic high school and college textbooks) in the vaults and some other places to explain the pre-war tech, after so long it just becomes harder to swallow `any kind of lack of progress on the rebuilding the world front. I guess a sequel could have player character acting as a scout from a civilization trying to expand it's borders and resources into the pockets of unsettled wasteland left, with a frontiersman kind of feel, but even that can only go so far, maybe a game or two.

Eventually, assuming half-century to century time jumps between games, the only way to retain the feel of the earlier games will be with an open-world spy game where you try and decide amongst different newly formed nation states, doing assassinations and gathering intel to sell to you're favored group/ the highest bidder. This could be fun, don't get me wrong, but by then it would only be fallout in the sense of being in the same universe, not in feel or themes. But if it doesn't, it'll start making one wonder why, after 500 years, people have completely failed to take advantage of the available pre-war tech to try and make a new start. It isn't like the fall of Rome, where a good chunk of people couldn't read, and most tech was a trade secret.

So yeah, House ending if FO4 is set somewhere where that's relevant, but different continent and closer to the immediate aftermath of the war would be preferable.

 

[Psych the Psycho]

Maybe we can import our New Vegas saves into the next Fallout game?

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Of the options available, I selected the Mr.House ending. His plan, if memory serves, was a. Rebuild Vega, get all the money b. Use the money attract any clever folks he can then c. SPAAACE!!!. This removes the pseudo-immortal super genius from the picture, leaving a small but powerful faction in the wastes with a power vacuum, which will keep it from becoming overly dominant.

Overall, though, I think fallout needs to set itself in an earlier time period on another continent if it wants to keep the post-nuclear wasteland feel. Given the tech available to be scavenged, and the preservation of language and tech manuals (hell, even basic high school and college textbooks) in the vaults and some other places to explain the pre-war tech, after so long it just becomes harder to swallow `any kind of lack of progress on the rebuilding the world front. I guess a sequel could have player character acting as a scout from a civilization trying to expand it's borders and resources into the pockets of unsettled wasteland left, with a frontiersman kind of feel, but even that can only go so far, maybe a game or two.

Eventually, assuming half-century to century time jumps between games, the only way to retain the feel of the earlier games will be with an open-world spy game where you try and decide amongst different newly formed nation states, doing assassinations and gathering intel to sell to you're favored group/ the highest bidder. This could be fun, don't get me wrong, but by then it would only be fallout in the sense of being in the same universe, not in feel or themes. But if it doesn't, it'll start making one wonder why, after 500 years, people have completely failed to take advantage of the available pre-war tech to try and make a new start. It isn't like the fall of Rome, where a good chunk of people couldn't read, and most tech was a trade secret.

So yeah, House ending if FO4 is set somewhere where that's relevant, but different continent and closer to the immediate aftermath of the war would be preferable.

Sometimes I agree with this, and sometimes... I think there's a big enough difference between post-apocolyptic Earth and Earth as it was when civilizations were springing up to account for the lack of traction.

I mean, think about it: The tech that survived seems to be, in the main, military tech and weapons. Water services were all but wiped out. Electricity is reproduced and considered a critical resource already, but things to run on it are sparse. Sure - you can't walk down a hallway without tripping over a toaster whatever, but what the hell good are toasters without sliced bread?! Agriculture - gathering together as a community for the purpose of shared food production - has always been a huge factor in how and why civilizations come into being. The Earth is not productive enough to support large scale agricultural production or even animal husbandry on a large scale. The NCR programs mentioned in New Vegas and the Irrigation & Clean Water program (Purity) in FO3 show that people are trying to get some progress - either through applied old tech or rediscovered low-tech options - on that food matter, but the soil is poisoned (or at least not fertile) and not productive enough for man's needs.

It's not a matter of just "pick up where they left off with their toys" to make progress on civilization factors. Smaller communities exist throughout the Fallout series. Small seems to be all the quality of the Earth can support right now. That's an ecological issue, not a social progress issue.

 

[BrotherRool]

Unless we switch back to the East Coast, in which case the BoS could be central once again. I wouldn't mind seeing the Enclave as the starting faction, either - it's not likely at all, but it'd be an interesting twist on the franchise.

As for the Legion - I have a sneaking suspicion that Joshua Graham may actually swoop in and take control - though what he would make of it if he did is anybody's guess at this point.

I'm pretty sure that they've gone on record to state that if Obsidian were to do another Fallout then they'd be sticking to the East Coast/West Coast Bethesda/Obsidian divide so that they're chronologies don't interfere with each other much.

And if Bethesda do the next one then I'm sure they'll have the Brotherhood of Steel taking a large part again. But considering what they wrote for Skyrim I wouldn't be surprised if the BoS is a lot less perfect this time round. Of the two I think Obsidian are more likely to invent new factions or put a big twist on them from the last time round.

Speaking of which, I love your Graham idea there are a lot of interesting ways that could go. Maybe they let the Legion win but Graham gets control and it begins to splinter as he fights with the two sides of himself (and because of his more limited creativity) and infighting happens. It would be a good way of returning to less civilised times if that's the direction Avellone wants to take

I mean, think about it: The tech that survived seems to be, in the main, military tech and weapons. Water services were all but wiped out. Electricity is reproduced and considered a critical resource already, but things to run on it are sparse. Sure - you can't walk down a hallway without tripping over a toaster whatever, but what the hell good are toasters without sliced bread?! Agriculture - gathering together as a community for the purpose of shared food production - has always been a huge factor in how and why civilizations come into being. The Earth is not productive enough to support large scale agricultural production or even animal husbandry on a large scale.

I'm with this view. Before the agricultural revolution it took nine people farming every day of their lives to support one person doing something different. And this is without all your soil becoming irradiated dust.

New Vegas was better at showing it than Fo3 (even though it was Fo3's main plot =D) but in a way the sheer difficulty of getting food needs to be emphasised more.

Saying that, I do think stories about societies beginning to put themselves back together are interesting stories. I'm hoping the new Walking Dead game will move more in that direction. I can understand the desire for a reset but I liked the way the NCR and the Legion were beginning to form countries and nations and the early clashes of ideology and power were happening

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I'd think the NCR ending would be the likely choice for the cannon ending if the series does return to the west coast in future games. All through New Vegas characters point out how spread out the NCR has become and point the evidence of massive corruption overtaking the government that could mean whatever the initial benefits of taking the dam may be short lived as the these factors erode the stability of the NCR and lead to new break away factions fighting for independence. Which is a scenario I'd like to see in a Fallot game.

 

[tilmoph]

Sometimes I agree with this, and sometimes... I think there's a big enough difference between post-apocolyptic Earth and Earth as it was when civilizations were springing up to account for the lack of traction.

I mean, think about it: The tech that survived seems to be, in the main, military tech and weapons. Water services were all but wiped out. Electricity is reproduced and considered a critical resource already, but things to run on it are sparse. Sure - you can't walk down a hallway without tripping over a toaster whatever, but what the hell good are toasters without sliced bread?! Agriculture - gathering together as a community for the purpose of shared food production - has always been a huge factor in how and why civilizations come into being. The Earth is not productive enough to support large scale agricultural production or even animal husbandry on a large scale. The NCR programs mentioned in New Vegas and the Irrigation & Clean Water program (Purity) in FO3 show that people are trying to get some progress - either through applied old tech or rediscovered low-tech options - on that food matter, but the soil is poisoned (or at least not fertile) and not productive enough for man's needs.

It's not a matter of just "pick up where they left off with their toys" to make progress on civilization factors. Smaller communities exist throughout the Fallout series. Small seems to be all the quality of the Earth can support right now. That's an ecological issue, not a social progress issue.

I see your point, and can one of my own; the radiation has mutated a lot of things in weird ways, so some of the old world's sciences need some degree of adaptation to cope with the new reality.

However, it's not just picking up the toys and starting over; the scientific basis itself, the how and why of inventing and producing those toys is readily at hand. We see more military tech because, at first, it's the most valuable and pressing; there's enough food left to scavenge, and enough giant bugs and lizards to hunt, that they really only need to know where to find more ammo or how to make more of their own.

However, as time goes on, and people start rebuilding communities to pool resources and begin domestication so they have some leisure time, they also have time to go over the old sciences, and to start trying to bring old-world tech improvements, like water processing and electricity, and things to use electricity, they'll have an easier time of it, since they don't need to discover the principals behind, oh say, and electrical generator; they have schematics and books explaining the schematics. Their most pressing issue isn't entirely research (though there is that, to adapt old tech to a new world, mainly in botany and agriculture), it's resources and labor power to harvest those resources and build things out of them, which overtime will become easier as populations grow.

So while they will most likely take a long, long time to fully rebuild to the level of the 2070's, getting to a largely industrial society from wasteland simply isn't only possible, it'll be done more rapidly than it was the first time, since most of the brain work and trial-and-error of technological improvements has already been done. At least that's my take on it; I suppose resource limitations (they did have resource wars before the Great War) might put a cap on their rebuilding efforts, but even then, they understand wind power and coal burning, right? Coals pretty damn abundant, more-so if the pre-war world wen from peak oil to full nuclear before the world went boom.

 

[nuba km]

I say that no matter what ending is cannon that the legion will be divided by the next time we meet them, their leader was already dying and I agree with ulysses that once the legion runs out of things to fight they will fight themselves. I say that the independent ending is the most likely to become canonical as it leaves options most wide open and it leaves all factions as a stalemate. Though I am more interested in which end to lonesome road become canonical. I would be interested what russia or japan are in, in the fallout universe.

 

[The_Lost_King]

So what do you guys think? Do you believe any of the endings in New Vegas should be considered canon for future games? If so, which one and why? Or should they be left ambiguous?

They should pull a Daggerfall and make all of the endings canon.

If anyone asks how that happened, all they need to do is point at the Big Empty to explain it.

They can even call it the warp in the west as well.

I think the Legion ending would be a very intersting ending. I would love the chance to see the Legion and NCR duking it out again. Frankly I want to see the Legion territory. Though I don't want any of this to be addressed in fallout 4 because Bethesda will ruin everything. just like Bioware did in TOR to KotOR2.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

You guys do know that Yes Man was conning you the whole time right? "I'm going to go away for awhile and reprogram myself to be more assertive." Yes Man used the Courier like a Pawn to remove house from his way, and carry out the important missions that Yes Man's army couldn't.

The House ending flies in the face of previous themes in the series, by being an ending where all the bad shit from before the war turns out to be the good stuff whereas both Fallout and Fallout 2 put emphasis on the need for mankind to move on.

"Mr. House continued to run New Vegas his way, a despotic vision of pre-War glory. The streets were orderly, efficient, cold."

Yeah that totally sounds great. A despot is obviously "good stuff."

 

[Lord Kloo]

Personally I think the independence ending is the easiest to role with, NCR stays at the Mojave boundary, House is gone, Ceaser's legion falls apart and only exists as ragtag groups and war-bands in future games.

However I don't know how the independence ending pans out, something Yes Man said in his last bit of dialogue about rewriting his own programming made me think the courier is just going to get side-lined by Yes Man who will break free of his programming restrictions and then rule Vegas as only a robot sees fit. Could be fun having to deal with the Empire of Yes Man...

 

[scorptatious]

I'll admit, Yes Man possibly being a con man never really crossed my mind until someone pointed it out. There really is no clear cut "good ending" in this game.

 

[BrotherRool]

I'll admit, Yes Man possibly being a con man never really crossed my mind until someone pointed it out. There really is no clear cut "good ending" in this game.

Even with Yes Man being straight I never really thought of independence as being a clear cut good option. It only seems that way because people 100% trust themselves to be right and to be able to be right. But if you look at it from any other person's perspective but yourself, independance seems terrible. One man, with no authority, representing no groups of people, with no experience of large-scale leadership, no people group, no organisational structures, probably not a brilliant scientist, probably not a brilliant economist declares himself leader of New Vegas with a gang of killer-robots, of which to obtain he had to murder a helpless old man and probably many other people who got in his way.

I mean at least House is in a position where he genuinely can't care about personal luxury, and he's a great manufacturer with experience of ruling. At least Caesar has the support of the Legion and shown that he can bind nations together and make them strong. At least the NCR is partways democratic. The Courier is just some guy who showed up with his army of soulless machines (that he stole from someone else).

Even if the Courier wanted to be a nice guy, I'm not sure he has that opportunity. Think about it, if someone turns up with grenade-throwing security bots defeats every major power in the region and declares he wants democratic elections. Who are people going to vote for? The guy who doesn't have a rocket-launching army that could kill you at whim? That's not really a fair election is it.

And if he didn't want to be a dictator, he should have tried to work his way through the flawed but existing democratic process instead of seizing power in order that he could reshape Vegas as he sees best.

 

[Roxas1359]

I'll admit, Yes Man possibly being a con man never really crossed my mind until someone pointed it out. There really is no clear cut "good ending" in this game.

Especially with Yes Man actually, because remember what he says to you after he was rooting through the Lucky 38's systems? He said he found something that would make him more assertive, and that he'll have to go offline until it is fully installed. What if Mr. House had a backup of his mind in the system and slowly he started to erase Yes Man until House had control again. Would be awesome no?

 

[Genocidicles]

You guys do know that Yes Man was conning you the whole time right? "I'm going to go away for awhile and reprogram myself to be more assertive." Yes Man used the Courier like a Pawn to remove house from his way, and carry out the important missions that Yes Man's army couldn't.

Nah. Chris Avellone or J.E Sawyer (can't remember which) said he's not planning to seize control. The assertiveness upgrade thing is to stop someone else waltzing in and bossing Yes Man around, like the Courier originally did. He's still loyal to the courier.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

Think the 'good stuff' they were referring to was the scientific advancement that House rekindles - getting back into space exploration and the like. I.E. a potential future that wasn't apocalyptic wasteland.

Which, yeah, kinda flies in the face of Fallout.

The theme of the entire game is reshaping the apocalyptic wasteland to build a future that isn't an apocalyptic wasteland. That isn't something unique to house. The only question is the 'how' of it.

And it really doesn't fly in the face of fallout. All the others games had groups of people trying to reshape the future for better or worse. The NCR didn't just appear out of nowhere in the 3rd game and go hey lets re-form the United States and rebuild the country!

Nah. Chris Avellone or J.E Sawyer (can't remember which) said he's not planning to seize control. The assertiveness upgrade thing is to stop someone else waltzing in and bossing Yes Man around, like the Courier originally did. He's still loyal to the courier.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

of which to obtain he had to murder a helpless old man and probably many other people who got in his way.

I don't know who you're talking about. I feel that its house, but that does not make any sense. house has a whole army of robots that shot Gatling lasers at me when I tried to kill him... So I'm not sure if you just have a very different definition of helpless... or if you're talking about someone else.

 

[wintercoat]

of which to obtain he had to murder a helpless old man and probably many other people who got in his way.

I don't know who you're talking about. I feel that its house, but that does not make any sense. house has a whole army of robots that shot Gatling lasers at me when I tried to kill him... So I'm not sure if you just have a very different definition of helpless... or if you're talking about someone else.

Hey hey! Those were Gatling lasers of love, man! Those murderous innocent robots just wanted to talk things out, and you had to go and destroy them all!

OT: I'm hoping for either the House ending, the Independent ending, or the Lonesome Road "nuke all the things!!!!!" ending. THough, knowing my luck, they'll go with the NCR ending, because that's what most people chose. I'll never get why so many people see the NCR as the "Good Guys".

Captcha: Wisdom of Inglip. Oh Great and Mighty Inglip, I am ready to receive your wisdom!