Then gee I guess we should be thankful that isn't the case.

Actually it was likely a reference to the B.O.M.B. system that was to be used in Van Buren...and thus was remote activated.

I dunno. You make some good points, its not as damning as it seemed to me at first. But it's still not very befitting a story that has until the release of MZ revolved around man's greed and thirst for war.

I don't know if you came in with F3 or F1...but i came in at F1 and I've grown up with the Universe as it was prior to Bethesda's reimagining. Bethesda is good at making sandbox games but has a tendency (IMO) to toss in set pieces that have no real relevance there and do not fit. Kind of like New Reno only at least New Reno had a lot of choices to be made. MZ was as linear as it gets.

Hey Van Burro, you mind if i snag your previous Avatar? I rather like Ghouls and Presper would have been pretty awesome.

I played in the order of FO2 -> FO1 -> FO3. And what is this "reimagining" you speak of? Because for all the witty dialogue the first two games had they had a lot of silly, awful things that ruin the game feel and lore more than aliens starting the great war ever could.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Anna_Winslow

As much as I would prefer neither, I would take aliens starting the great war over actual ghosts any day. In my opinion Bethesda brought the game back in the best way reasonably possible, on all accounts. The only disappointing things about FO3 lore wise to me is that the main quest story was a little lacking and the BoS faction under Lyons are too much of easy uninspired "good guy knights".

And in return for those two some what minor things they reintroduced the suspension of disbelief with the lore's internal realism, fun combat, a open world, and here we are today with obsidian and their good writers making another fallout game but in the realm of all these positive changes.

I'm just going to put out what I would like to see in New Vegas...

"Walking through the wastes, tired and hungry, you hope to reach a settlement before nightfall. But while you think about the near future, you trip over a relatively large crack on the desert rock. Maybe if you had been paying attention, you would have noticed it. You get up to examine it and notice a slight glow coming from within its depths...
You open up the crack wide enough to get squeeze through, and jump in. The glow comes from a red emergency light above a slightly open blast door with a rusted "51" on it. You pry the door open and step inside.
Your Pipboy provides enough light for you to locate a large electrical switch. You turn it to the "On" position. After a few seconds, and a short spark, the room is fully lit. To your surprise, the room is much longer then you had first thought, with large tubes running down both sides. Walking down the narrow hallway, you take a look at some of the tubes. Most are crusted over with God-knows-what, but a few are just clear enough to see into?
You jump back suddenly as something in the tube looks back at you! You raise your 10mm submachine gun and fire a burst of lead into the glass.
Stepping backward to avoid getting the tank fluid on your boots, the creature slumps out of it's tube. You have not seen anything like it anywhere else in the wastes, and upon further examination, determine it had been dead for some time when you shot it. Not wanting to stick around, you begin to leave, when, the glint of something shiny attracts your eye.
On the desk at the far end of the room, a human skeleton wearing the remains of a lab coat slouches over what appears to be a weapon of some kind.
You pick it up, not wanting this trip to be wasted, and take it with you.
Who knows, maybe it will come in handy?"

That was basically a short story I wrote about what I want to see in New Vegas.
No MZ DLC. No plot altering story. Just a simple room that can be discovered by accident.
Players who know about area 51 will find it fun and amusing, and maybe it will have a couple holotapes explaining the basic idea to players that don't know about it.
Plus it doesn't hurt to have a fun alien blaster thing as well. :flamethrower:

Well yeah, the reimagining i speak of is the new Orc Like Supermutants. The Insta-Ghouls. The Brotherhood of Knights in Steel Armor. The incredibly bad writing.

Seriously? You think the presence of a ghost ruins the lore more than "Aliens caused The Great War" ?

Seriously?

The lore's internal realism made more sense before aliens were brought in, water was magically made pure despite 200 years of radiation poisioning plus it was one water purification for a huge body of water, and the BOS and Enclave conveniently make the trip across the continent relieving Bethesda from having to come up with antagonistic/protagonist groups. I'd rather have just gotten Van Buren.

Yes, I would seriously stop taking the series serious enough to never buy a game with it's name if ghosts started existing again. Aliens starting the great war on the other hand wouldn't ever really be relevant to the setting of living in a post apocalyptic, sci fi world. It wouldn't change the dynamic of the wasteland between the people living in it 200 years after. If ghosts exist then it isn't much of a stretch to have demons and angels fighting it out and then fallout can just become act 2 of Diablo 2.



Maybe, aliens don't have a big investment on the story though in almost any way. I like the idea of plasma weapons and such being based on found alien tech though.



Do you know how radiation works? It's not like it is a stretch to "cleanse" it out of water, not in this game universe. I also don't see why the "200 years" part is relevant.



"the main quest story was a little lacking"

"Yes, I would seriously stop taking the series serious enough to never buy a game with it's name if ghosts started existing again. Aliens starting the great war on the other hand wouldn't ever really be relevant to the setting of living in a post apocalyptic, sci fi world. It wouldn't change the dynamic of the wasteland between the people living in it 200 years after. If ghosts exist then it isn't much of a stretch to have demons and angels fighting it out and then fallout can just become act 2 of Diablo 2."

To me ghosts kind of fit in. California has always been rife with ghost legends and she just kind of pops up, asks for her necklace and disappears. Her existence has no impact on the rest of canon. Aliens starting The Great War changes the entire reason of why the world ended. Instead of mans greed bringing it to it's knees its now just the fault of the darn aliens. It might not be relevant to a generic post apocalyptic sci fi world, but its quite relevant to Fallout.



"Maybe, aliens don't have a big investment on the story though in almost any way. I like the idea of plasma weapons and such being based on found alien tech though."

Aliens caused the end of the world. I'd say thats a big investment on the story. Plasma weapons werent created via alien tech, the divergence simply lead to more money invested into such technologies. This is another problem. With the presence of aliens people start explaining other things with the aliens and they become more and more involved. This wouldn't happen with ghosts. Noone is going to think ghosts brought FEV to the world or that Fallout weapons were created by studying ghost artifacts and reverse engineering.



"Do you know how radiation works? It's not like it is a stretch to "cleanse" it out of water, not in this game universe. I also don't see why the "200 years" part is relevant."

That's actually a fairly good point. But this isn't radiation in the sense that we are used to thinking about it. This is so much radiation that it destroyed the entire world. Every nation destroyed every other nation. Heres some verbatim Fallout canon for ya. I bolded the particularly relevant part

War War never changes
The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth.
Spain built an empire from its wealth for gold and territory
Hitler shaped a battered germany into an economic superpower
but war never changes

in the 21st century war was still waged over the resources that could be aquired
only this time the spoils of war were also its weapons
petroleum and uranium

for these resources china would envade alaska
the united states would annex canada
and the european commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling bickering nation states bent on controlling the last remaining resources on earth

n 2077 the storm of World War had come again
In 2 brief hours most of the planet was reduced to cinders
and from the ashes of nuclear devastation
a new civilization would struggle to arise

a few were able to reach the relative safety of large underground vaults
your family was part of that group and entered Vault 13
imprisoned safely behind the large Vault door
under a mountain of stone
a generation has lived without knowledge of the outside world

Life in the vault is about to change




"the main quest story was a little lacking"

It was more than a little lacking. And it thrust you into the role of daddy's little boy, and daddy loved you regardless of how much of a [censored] you were.

"Geez son, did you really have to kill the entire town of Megaton? And wipe out Tenpenny Tower? And then wipe it out again after the ghouls set up in it?"

"Well anyway, follow me let's go save da world yeah? Hokay!"
[/quote]

I think I've said this before a page or two ago - for the term "canon" to have any meaning at all in a conversation dealing with an open-world RPG where the player's experience is largely self-defined to as great an extent as possible, then we have to limit it's definition to one that is as narrow as possible. The word "canon," as it is commonly used in reference to pop culture can only refer to those things which must happen within the narrative. Your father escaping from Vault 101, Project Purity, President Eden, are all canon elements. They have to be, because they are fundamentally unavoidable in any traditional playthrough of the game; and their exclusion would cause the narrative of the main story arc to fall apart.

You literally cannot play through a standard game of Fallout 3 without running into those three elements. Therefore, they are canon, according to the generally accepted definition. Other canonical elements can be retroactive. I've done a playthrough of Fallout 1 where I refused to save Tandi from the Raiders, and got a very bad ending in regards to Arroyo. In Fallout 2, however, Tandi is the leader of the NCR, which is centered around Arroyo. Erego, the "canon" ending for Fallout 1 has you at least managing to keep Tandi alive in some form, and in some way not destroying Arroyo.

There's nothing canon about a crashed alien spaceship in Fallout 3, however. I'm not denying that it's there in the game. It has a physical presence - it's an actual spot on the map that I can recieve a radio message which will lead me to it. But that's different than canon. When I finished my first playthrough of Fallout 3, I ended with only about 80% of the map fully explored - there were lots of areas that I never discovered, and only knew about after the fact from coming across references to them in these forums.

Simply being on the map doesn't make something canon. Because I can complete the game without running into it. This has nothing do with a value judgement, and it's not because I dislike the thought of aliens - that's irrelevant. The Republic of Dave is no more canon than the Dunwich Building, or the Crashed Alien spaceship. Because those are optional encounters that only occur if you happen across them.

For the term "canon" to have any value in a discussion of a game of this type, it can - by virtue of it's definition - only apply to those elements which must occur in the game. Something that simply can be found during a playthrough categorically isn't. I've already said this before, but it seems that it bears repeating:

Canon (and we're all free to have our own definitions of this - but this is my own, and the only one in which I feel gives any meaning at all to the term,) can only apply to those elements which are intrinsic and fundamental to the game. Canonical elements can only be those elements which must occur within the game. If it doesn't absolutely have to be experienced, then it absolutely cannot be considered canon. That doesn't mean it doesn't "exist" in the game - only that it's not "canonical."

So... as I've said: all DLC is "semi-canon," at best. By the sheer virtue of the fact that it's completely optional. It's not necessary = it's not canon. So yes - MZ is not canon. Neither is the spaceship (and like I've said - the vast majority of the content within Fallout 3 itself - and Fallout 1 and 2, as well.) And Bethesda is free to expand upon this, as well. If I buy Fallout 4 sometime in the future, and wants to give me a companion that is absolutely unavoidable as part of a standard playthrough, and he talks to me about that time my character from Fallout 3 was abducted by aliens, then that retroactively makes MZ "canon." (In the same way that Fallout 2 retroactively decided what was to be the "canon playthrough" of Fallout 1.)

re: Spiders! and the whole ghost thing: That's your perogative. If you wouldn't buy a Fallout game that featured ghosts, but are more accepting of an expanded alien presence - then that's your opinion. Still doesn't change the fact that aliens aren't canonical (thus far) within Fallout. (And neither are ghosts, either - by the same rationale: you don't have to ever meet that ghost in your playthrough, it's not an intrinsically important element...)

They never stopped existing in the Fallout setting if you consider the Dunwich Building and Dark Heart at Blackhall canon. Those support the existence of not only spirits, but black magic.

As for aliens I don't have an inherent issue with them as long as they don't become a priority in the setting. However I don't think that the "aliens started the great war" idea should be taken into consideration in any future games.

Are aliens canon? Unfortunately, even though DLC is optional it's still canon. Morrowind's expansions were optional, but they were still referenced in Oblivion.

Here's the question, though - before Oblivion came out, in order to reference Morrowind's expansions (I've never played enough Oblivion, or any Morrowind DLC so I'll take you word on this,) were any of those said expansions in Morrowind canon? (Sure, that's getting a bit esoteric with this, but then we're posting in a thread that's not much better anyway...) ie, were any Morrowind DLC considered canon (and remember, we're talking about - quite literally - "the infallible word of God," here,) before Oblivion came out. Or did Oblivion making reference to events in optional content in a previous game set a precedent that now elevates all optional content in all games to "canon" status?

Oblivion offers a Horse Armor DLC. I can buy that content, and give my horse some nifty armor. So, is it now canon that all of the PC's horses in Oblivion were armored, regardless of whether or not the player ever purchased that content? If I was to talk to Todd Howard about the horse I had in my playthrough of Oblivion, would he tell me that my horse must be considered to have been wearing armor the entire time, even if I didn't plop down money on that DLC?

Sure, when the next Elder Scrolls game comes out, if there's a flashback of your character from Oblivion riding a horse with shining armor, that retroactively extends the canon backwards. Or if I'm talking to a villager in the next game and he remembers meeting my previous character and talks about how cool his horse's armor is - same effect. But until that point, as there has as yet been no subsequent game to reference any of that content - is horse armor... "pro-actively retroactive official canon" because there's been a precedent set and it can just be assumed that it will be confirmed in the next story arc?

Or can we just adopt a wait and see attitude, and let it be decided when the next game comes out, if we need to elevate any particular DLC to such an exalted status that it must be seen as the very hand of the creator firmly fixing a specific element irrevocably into a set reality?

Here's the thing that I have trouble grasping: here and now, as I see it - if I don't particularly want a bunch of aliens all over the place in Fallout (I rather like a mysterious appearance on occasion, but any more than that I see as jumping the shark,) then I don't see any reason why I can't just decide not to buy Mothership Zeta. To my current way of thinking, I can go see the Crashed Spaceship, ogle for a moment, and then move on with the rest of the game. Those who want more can buy what they want, and fully enjoy running into this one little spot on a very big map.

But when we say something is "canon," then by it's very definition it means that I must accept it's elevated importance. It stops becoming something that I can basically just ignore and not worry about, and elevates it's status into something else entirely. Saying that something is canon is really akin to saying that it's as important an element of Fallout's universe as Power Armor, Supermutants, and The Ink Spots. Right now, by my rationale, I at least get a choice - but if we have to accept aliens as canon, then I'm being force-fed something that I'm not particularly interested in.

First of all Morrowind's "DLC" was free (Siege at Firemoth etc). The expansions were just that - traditional expansions. Large retail products that expanded the game world a great deal, and added more than a single quest line. The events in the expansions were not small though; two of Morrowind's "mortal gods" (a bit of a paradox there) were killed in Tribunal, and a Daedric Prince was the center of Bloodmoon. Nevertheless these events were referenced in Oblivion, and even some of the side quests were mentioned in Oblivion. I find it unlikely that Bethesda will develop Fallout 4 ignoring all of Fallout 3's DLC.

And to answer your first question why wouldn't Tribunal and Bloodmoon have been considered canon before Oblivion? They were pretty large, and they were official. I find it hard to believe that they'd kill off Sotha Sil and Almalexia and suddenly say "oops that never happened" in Oblivion. The "word of God" in this case is Bethesda's word, and I find it highly unlikely that they'd develop products as large as the Morrowind expansions, some of the Oblivion DLC and Shivering Isles expansion, and the Fallout 3 DLC and not consider them canon. If they actually come out and say that Mothership Zeta isn't canon (or that whether or not it is canon is up to the player) then there you go; however they probably won't do that, and thus MZ is generally recognized as canon.



Why wouldn't it be? It's official content, and whether or not it is any good it is still canon. Keep in mind that the game itself is optional; if you wanted to you could say that the entirety of Fallout 3 isn't canon. Many Fallout fans do just that, but their word isn't official.



Have you actually played the Fallout 3 DLC? I find comparing Mothership Zeta to Horse Armor rather silly. The Horse Armor is undoubtedly canon as it is official content, and there's no real reason for it not to be. However it is also small, and doesn't impact the world at all so it's not likely going to be mentioned in TES V; thus you wouldn't lose out on anything by ignoring it. Fallout 3's DLC was quite large though and Bethesda does have a tendency to find a way to reference all previous major events in their sequels, and the Fallout 3 DLC was quite major.

What you're thinking of is more on the line of selective canon, and that's fine as long as the sequel doesn't trample all over your selective canon. Officially however I'm pretty sure all of the DLC is recognized as canon whether we like it or not. Personally I don't recognize any of the DLC as canon; if Fallout 4 does reference it I guess I'll have to change my mind. This thread isn't about what I personally think though; it's about what is official, and officially aliens are recognized as canon.

Well, maybe what I'm thinking of is "selective canon."

I just think there's a difference between elements that are "in the game," so to speak, and those that we have to say are "canon," is all. Absolutely, the Crashed Spaceship is "in" Fallout 3. Mothership Zeta is also expanding upon that idea. A number of people spent a significant amount of time on both, all so that us players could see it in the game.

When I hear the word "canon," though, in regards to things like this, I tend to think of it as it's used in comics. Trying to untangle the "official story" of the X-Men, after all of these years - numerous cross-overs, one-offs, contradictions, etc, is a highly complicated matter; and something that no two nerds are ever going to completely agree upon. Regardless, you're still reading a Marvel Comic Book, but some issues take precedence over others in terms of the "offical story," - those are what are considered "canon."

Just because Marvel puts out a comic where the X-Men make an appearance doesn't make it canon, however. I can read an issue of What If?, for example, and still be reading an X-Men comic - but those aren't canon. And just because they're not "canon," doesn't mean that they're not "officially recognized." It's only that as far as the lore is concerned, it's not written on a stone tablet, so to speak.

So that's what I think of when people bring up the word "canon" in regards to an ostensibly open-world game where I'm supposed to be free to decide what my experience is going to be. Just because it's "officially" in the game (it's right there in the game's code - that's kind of a hard thing to deny, and we're not talking about something put out by a third-party, but something that was created by Bethesda itself,) isn't the same thing as saying it's canonized. And conversely, saying that something isn't canon is not the same as denying that it's there, at all.

Like I've said, there's no debating that aliens "exist" within Bethesda's Fallout - there's a fracking crashed alien spaceship sitting there in the middle of the wasteland waiting to give you Alien Blaster goodness like some macabre Santa Clause. But for "canon" to have any relevance in a game like this, I can only see it as referring to those elements which are integral to the story, or the game itself. And DLC and random encounters I don't see as justifiably canon-worthy, in that sense.

Calling something "canon" is akin to saying that it's an essential element that I must take part in - even retroactively. (At least as far as I'm concerned.)

Great post with good examples, and I feel pretty much the same way about "canon". (And I read that What-if where Wolverine chops off Conan's hand in a fight ).

Personally I don't consider them (aliens) as part of the series myself. There was the random encounter in the wastes of FO1 and the crashed shuttlecraft in FO2, but they were both one-shot gags for comedic effect.

*The Wanimingos (?), were said not to be aliens IIRC.

Video game canon is a bit more flexible than canon in other mediums, but we haven't been given any reason not to believe that the DLC is not official canon. I can't think of a good reason for it not to be. Expansions are also optional, but they're almost always regarded as canon.

This is my favorite debate. I always vote "Aliens have been around in the Fallout Universe before."
In other words I agree that MZ is canon simply because Aliens are mentioned in FO1, Tactics and are actually in the game of FO2 in the form of failed Mentats experiments and the reverse engineered alien technology of Skynet. I also agree with the cardboard prophecy that FO:NV will most likely have an Area 51.

I think that before MZ we were looking at the DLCs as expansions. Now they are called DLCs out of respect for the ongoing debate. When Operation Anchorage and Broken Steel were all the rage everyone was hot to add them to their FO story and DLC was short for expansion. Then MZ came along and DLC's definition quickly changed to mean something more like "if i didn't download it it never happened."

To be perfectly honest, that's kind of always how I've felt about DLC (whatever we want to call it - if I download an expansion, I have downloaded content - erego, "DLC.") How can something have happened in a game that I've played, that actually never happened in my game?

I still think there's a difference of opinion as to just what "canon" means, and that's where the problem really lies. There's a difference (as I see it) between "official" and "canon." No one's doubting that Mothership Zeta is "officially something you can add to your Fallout 3 experience," that it was made by the "official" design team, and that it - by virtue of it's existence - bears Bethesda's own seal of approval. As well, it has nothing to do with making a value judgement - if I say Mothership Zeta isn't a part of "Fallout Canon," that is not to say that it's "lesser." It only means that it's (and this is the important point, here) optional.

Frankly, I think that what a lot of people are really saying when they attempt to explain to me that (any particular DLC, actually) is canon, what they really mean to say is that's it is "official." More than anything, we're fighting over the definition of a word - and not so much the relative validity of any particular piece of optional content.

interesting hypothesis. To add to this i would like to point out that from mmy own observation nothing about FO was ever really debated this much (before MZ). Canon simply meant it was explained in the FO Bible.

Well, there's been a number of topics that have had their moment in the sun (I remember for awhile there was quite an active discussion concerning how fast a ghoul is supposed to be able to move, and another one about whether or not a ghoul was/ should be capable of wearing armor,) but yeah - the alien one (as evidenced of course by no less than five separate threads in this subforum,) has been getting a lot of heat ever since the reveal of Mothership Zeta. (IIRC, it got big as soon as it was even announced that this would be coming out, much less once we were told what sort of content it contained.)

It makes sense, though. This matter would represent a rather major paradigm shift. Even if we were all to agree that aliens have unequivocally "existed" in Fallout's universe - Mothership Zeta inarguably represents the first time they've ever actually done anything (or even been living, for that matter.) And that's a very significant difference - one that's naturally going to have strong feelings on either side.

See, there's a difference between having an "alien" in a game, and having an "Alien." It's one thing to hint at a mysterious otherworldly presence that may or may not have been interested in our little planet for reasons so alien and advanced as to be beyond our comprehension. To see a couple relics, and possibly have a sighting or two. What Mothership Zeta did was something else, however - by the very fact that you can interact with them (and even shooting them is still a type of interaction,) that they "do" things, all provide clues to elements like a culture, motives, etc. These are really two very different approaches to the matter, if you compare what has gone before MZ, and what it's release represents.

I don't think one is inherently "better" than another, but there's certainly more than enough room for opinion. For example, one of the elements that got a lot of praise in Fallout 3 were the little vignettes and set pieces that you come across (two skeletons embracing on a bed in a decrepit house, a hidden room full of plungers arrayed in impossible positions, etc.) These things are literally all over this game. Personally, I thought this often obsessive attention to detail was really one of the higher points of playing through this game. You are coming across the aftermath of a very specific event, and it can be quite poignant and effective.

But they're all after the fact. The game would not feel the same if you went into that house and, say, had a "vision" of a couple holding each other as the bomb drops, or watched a man commit suicide in his bath-tub. There's no inherent "terribleness" to that approach - but it would undoubtedly lend the game a different focus. But Mothership Zeta happens to be taking that approach - in Fallout 3 you can come across a mysterious radio transmission and track it to it's source to come across a crashed spacecraft and a dead alien body. That's no different than any of the other little set-pieces in the game, really. But MZ is taking that vignette, and "animating" it. It's as if you followed that transmission and came across an alien that told you about how it crash-landed here and then wanted to take you on a space adventure in return for saving his life.

Anyway, this goes little towards whether or not anything is canon - but it's where I see the core disagreement as stemming from. Some people essentially think that (by hyperbole) it would have been better to see someone die of radiation poisoning than discover his remains - and some feel that it's better to uncover a mystery themselves and leave things open to interpretation.

I played MZ and I loved it. I am of the supporting MZ side myself.
BUT then again I sympathize with those who want it to just go away or have the maturity to just ignore it.
in the end I am having more fun debating the existence of MZ than I did playing it.

there is no one official story of the xmen. there have been several diverse retellings. and all are official marvel material as I understand it, and can be considered cannon in that respect, but only onto itself. Uncanny xmen in no way invalidates stories in Classic. Unless, I suppose stan lee says so, If any would take precedent, i think it would be either the original first story lines, or the latest "up to date" retelling of a particular event/story/character. and that would probably just be a personal opinion.

What about New Vegas? will that be considered cannon? It is not in the main series, ie F4. but I would asume it would be at least semi cannon. And unless F3/F4 completely contridict anything in it, I would think it rolls in nicely, into the evolving and expanding world of fallout. Constant paradigm shifting. get used to it, I bet we haven't seen the last of those aliens either .

I personally believe all the dlc are official expansions, and thus cannon. (Much like KOTN was for oblivion, which is considered cannon) they certainly cannot be considered easter eggs. My game shipped with all the dlc included. and together with the base game, is imo the real complete saga of F3 as it is now intended to be played. even though they aren't part of the main quest. there is no official statement that says that the additions F3+its addons made to fallouts lore/history/story ends with the main quest. So being optional to play is fairly irrelevant. and just because one didin't experience that event in their game is as well. ie the different endings to the main quest in previous games never actually happening. so ones personal experience of their play through is pretty much null and void as it pertains to what actually is lore.. So far no new stuff in the fallout story has come out since, so it hasn't been officially contradicted yet, only bethesda and F4(new vegas?) will decide that. I see no reason not to consider the dlc official content. If they screw up your perception of the world as you believed it in F1/2 too f'ing bad. The story doesn't end with those either. and will continue to change. :shrug:

My opinion. is presently cannon. but could be contradicted in the future.

I kind of think that's what I was saying, actually. I bring up Marvel comics in relation to this word "canon," because that's where I first started coming across the word as it relates to the "fandom" community. Every single thing that comes out under Marvel is "official." There's a whole review process any story has to go through before it can get published - be it a "What If?" issue, or something that comes out under "The Uncanny X-Men" title. Of course they're all "official." But at the same time, the storylines have all got quite muddied over the years, and some people have since tried to put together a coherent timeline. That's where "canon" comes into play.

I mean, (shifting to DC Comics,) look at Superman. His very first appearance in a story was "Rise of the Superman" (title might be a bit incorrect, but it's close to that.) It dealt with an alien from a planet with a much higher gravity than ours - the sci-fi concept that such a man would be superhuman on our world, and capable of extra-ordinary feats. (He can "leap over tall buildings in a single bound" not because he can fly, but because he's used to a much higher gravity.) He was a villain, however - he came to our planet not as a protector or a hero, but as a conqueror. That is an "official" DC comic. But it absolutely contradicts our view of what Superman is now. Superman "canon" says that he is a good guy (one who does not kill, either - something he's done in the past, as well,) despite "official" releases quite to the contrary.

(Batman, by the same token, was originally just a guy in a green costume with a gun - that whole utility belt thing didn't come until much later, ditto with him being a millionaire bachelor by day, his revenge story, etc.)

And like I said - I think we're debating terminology more than content, here. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Mothership Zeta is "official content." It's put out by Bethesda, for crying out loud. There's nothing in there to make it "unofficial."

But "canon" is a different word. They don't mean the same thing. And there's no reason for them to. There's already a word for "official content." It's called "official content."

Canon, to me, is when (and I've said this hundreds of times by now if I've said it once,) Fallout 2 places Tandi as the head of NCR, which was an outgrowth of Shady Sands. This is regardless of whether or not you saved her in Fallout 1, which ending Shady Sands received when you beat that game, or even if you slaughtered the entire town. Those events became canon when Fallout 2 came out and over-ruled any previous actions. (Or when the sequel to Legacy of Kain came out and decided that "canon" was that you chose the "evil" ending in the first game.)

In a videogame, I fail to see how the term has any meaning beyond when it becomes necessary to over-ride a player's action in order to maintain continuity over a series of games. There's very little in Fallout 2 that needs to be "Canon" because there's little in Fallout 3 to reference those events. There's nothing so far in Fallout 3 that needs to be canon because nothing has come out yet which has any need of setting particular events "in stone" in order to maintain internal integrity. (I know I've said this before a lot of times, as well) that for "canon" as a definition, to have any relevance to an ostensibly "open world" videogame, that it can only refer to those element which must occur, even (and especially) in retrospect. If it absolutely does not need to be canon, then it absolutely cannot be considered as such.

If you want to get right down to it, "canon" can only ever be defined, except after the fact. Because it's only ever necessary in order to maintain consistency, it only ever becomes defined after the fact. (At least as far as videogames are concerned.)

None of that has anything to do with what is "official." That's another thing entirely. (And I don't think anyone here is saying there's anything "less official" about Mothership Zeta than anything else to be found in Fallout 3.)

Frankly, this whole thing reminds of the age-old question "if a tree falls in the woods and there's no one to hear it, does it still make a sound?" If something happens in a videogame that I don't experience as a player, does that still mean it somehow magically happened?

well if you want to bring shady sands incident into light of canon definition for our aliens consider that FO3 has less to do with the "main story".
Rescue Tandy=Tandy starts NCR=NCR involved in FONV somehow.
FO3=Enclave show up out of the blue.
What is canon about aliens could be directly related in such a way. If F O4 features aliens somehow.
"During Main Quest Part 5 'Final Component' Go to the Mothership Remains, Deal with the aliens inside and retrieve the Last Epoxy item. Before you take it back to Scribe Johnson go and talk to Fredrick in Atomic Railway and let him look at the Last Epoxy. Later after you repair Liberty Prime go back and Fredrick will trade Alien Epoxy once a week."
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It could happen

Exactly.

However, until Fallout 4 comes out, I find it sort of hard to confirm anything that occurs within Fallout 3 in such a way (which only happens, as a side effect, to include Mothership Zeta as well.)

By that same token, a lack of "canon" status doesn't imply proof of non-existence. Canon, if we go by the definition I've sort forth, at least, only proves a positive - it doesn't confirm an absence. (ie, lack of evidence doesn't prove evidence of a lack.) If there are no aliens in Fallout 4 that by necessity confirm the inherent existence of the events occurring in Mothership Zeta, that doesn't mean there'd be no room for Fallout 5 to do so. And saying something isn't canon isn't the same as saying something didn't happen - only that it doesn't contain any inherent reason for why it's necessary.

ie, lack of canon status means nothing more than that it exists in a sort of "probability field" from which it cannot necessarily be confirmed nor denied as being integral to the continuity of the series.

I have my own feelings on the matter, myself (though admittedly this would hardly be something that would keep me up nights, or even necessarily stop me from buying any forthcoming Fallout games, regardless of my feelings.) Whether or not aliens being canonically proven would be a good thing or not is sort of beside the point I've been trying to make. Which is essentially that, from an objective standpoint (or at least as close to it as possible) I don't see any particular reason to elevate aliens into the vaulted glory of "canon" at this juncture. (Especially considering I don't particularly feel the need to do so with virtually any other event from Fallout 3; at least until Fallout 4 - or even New Vegas - come out.)

well as to yur 'probability field' i must add the 'wishful thinking' field and 'fan factor' to it.

whether it will happen or not is totally up in the air until Beth does something (like holds a press conference disavowing aliens altogether and says they didn't know MZ had alien content when they released it and that there will be no such further recurrences.) Or they just make FO4 based entirely on aliens and even have a segment of the game take place on some alien planet. Or the most 'probable' scenario: something in between those two impossible extremes.