I'm guessing with two studios making Fallout games there are going to be major canon issues? I'd be rad if Beth and Interplay could work together to at least insure the canon remains similar, if not the same.

EDIT: Perhaps I shouldn't assume just because Bethesda dropped their appeal their legal battle is done. Perhaps they're taking another route...

Beth Owns the rights to all fallout. Interplay is no longer making anymore fallout games. They were making an online fallout game saying they never sold the rights to that one game to Beth.

Fallout New Vegas is being made by Obsidian and most of the Devs are from Black Isle that used to work with Interplay. So in away Beth and "Interplay" are working together.

As for Canon Issues there has not been much besides the adding of Aliens to Mothership Zeta and the debate over it. The ghouls are alittle different but to date there has not been any really big canon issues if any, other then MZ.

Got it.

I think Interplay is moving forward with their MMO. Beth dropped their appeal to stop Interplay from doing so. Nothing, legally that is, is stopping Interplay from releasing it.

We're not really supposed to talk about the court case here, as it appears to be ongoing (and involves Bethesda, and this is this is their forum):

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6259827.html

Tiny Power Armor.

Returning to bottlecaps.

Turning into a ghoul instantly (Moira)

Harold.

Molerats that are hairless.

Centaurs that have changed shape completely.

Exploding cars.

Super fast ghouls.

Super dumb mutants.

Hmm.... Something tells me I'm missing a few.

Returning to bottlecaps.

No Canon issue here. The Capital wasteland never moved away from bottlecaps, so it never reterned to then. In Cali, Bottlecaps got their currency status by the backing of the Hub water merchants, whilst the generic "money" in FO2 is presumed to have been backed by NCR. Neither of these groups exist as powers in the Capital Wasteland

Turning into a ghoul instantly (Moira)

Wouldn't use the word "Major" to describe this one, but it does seem to contradict established canon, although she was probably svcking up Rads for years.

Harold.

I don't see a canon issue here. Bob outgrowing harold seems to make sense - Trees grow, its what they do.

Molerats that are hairless.

No canon issues here, We have hairless cats after all, could just be a different breed of the same critter, or could be down to the higher level of radiation in the Capital wasteland region when compared to Cali.

Centaurs that have changed shape completely.

Can be explained away by one of three things a: Different are of the world using the same name on a different creature b: Different breed of the same critter c: Game logic (What we see is just a representation of what is)

Exploding cars.

I don't think there's anything in canon that says cars cannot explode.

Super fast ghouls.

Different Breed of a similar creature

Super dumb mutants.

The Capital wasteland's strain of FEV is fully established in canon to have slightly different effects than the Mariposa strain. There is no logical reason why the stupifying effects of FEV couldn't be emphasised in a different strain, just as the Influenza virus differs strain by strain.

Well mole-rat's are hairless naturally so yeah...

Yeah, honestly, I don't think there've been any terribly major issues with canon so far.

I always thought the "fast ghoul" thing was kind of a humorous thing to get all that attached to, personally, for example. Even in the old games, they had slow little "shuffling" animations, but you'll notice that during combat they did seem to have some extra movement allowance or something - they could get around the map pretty quickly when they wanted to. It also comes down to game balancing, as well - Ghouls in Fallout 3, considering we're using a different combat paradigm, need to have some chance to get at your face before you blow their head off, which isn't going to happen if they just slowly move towards you. They're Ghouls, not zombies, after all. You'll also notice that for the most part they do just kind of slowly shuffle around - they just have a kind of "sprint" they'll do in order to close the distance.

There do seem to be a lot of Ghouls in Fallout 3 that just came about from nothing more than radiation, but it's not something I really worry about too much.

Exploding cars is just an action trope - at least it's more fitting to the setting than red exploding barrels. Like has been said, this is a "canon addition," since it's not like it was ever established that some cars can't blow up. Whether or not you like the idea is one thing, but it's not a canonical issue.

Centaurs aren't supposed to have a set shape. They're failed FEV experiments. If anything, if you want to get technical, there should be a wider variety of models for them in the game.

http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/Mole%20rat.jpg. Molerat with http://www.hlasek.com/foto/spalax_leucodon_e2326.jpg. (Thanks, Google Image Search!)

Anyway, there's going to be stuff that Bethesda introduces in their new Fallout games, that doesn't follow a set precedent. It's their game now, for better or worse. They are going to be adding new elements and different takes on existing elements. I have my own reservations on some of the choices they've made. And you might not like all their decisions (I know I don't.) But that's better argued on an opinion level, than something to do with canon. Because frankly, I don't think they went all that far from what was established.

Bethesda actually did a better job with sticking to established canon in Fallout 3 than they usually do in their TES sequels where they essentially retcon everything with every new game. There were some changes in Fallout 3 I didn't like as I've made quite clear and some of them do in a way conflict with Fallout 1/2 at least aesthetically (appearances of Leather Armor, Metal Armor, Combat Armor etc), but overall they did a pretty good job at keeping true to the existing series canon.

I chalk that up to regional differences.

what is a canon

Canon (in this context) is the established "Lore" or "History" of the (fictional in this case) universe. The term comes from religion (where the bible is the official canon of the Catholic Church).

Not to be confused with Cannon, a big shooty gun and a former supermarket of the Canberra Australia area.

I agree with you on all these points. Everytime I bring them up I get so many people that say "Deal with It!!!" So I just desided to keep thoughts to myself. Aliens bug me the most. Tha caps could be because they are so far from the west that they still use caps. And we don't know about all the vaults so 87 was possible.

As Styles said, there really have not been any major canon issues. MZ is easily the biggest contradiction in already pre-established canon, but, since Bethesda owns the series, its canon now.

When it comes to canon, Fallout should be broken down between:

Classic Fallout: 1 & 2
Fallout Tactics: The Original and the Role Playing Game(plus any additional canceled materials etc.)
Bethesda Titles: Fallout 3 etc.

Can somebody please explain to me how aliens aren't canon to the series? I never collected all the holotapes, so did it deal with one (or some) of those? Or did it have to do with the main cannon having a blast that created a mushroom cloud, like that of a nuclear explosion?

Or was it established in Fallout 1/2 that aliens cannot exist?

I am just confused as to how it contradicts the storyline. And yes, I am one of those players that never played the Black Isle/Interplay games (1, 2, Tactics, etc.), so I only know so much of the canon of the story (from the wikia page).

I don't want this to become an alien canon debate but. Fallout one and two, aliens are just Easter Eggs. The Holotapes in MZ brings up the questions "did the aliens start the great war?" and "what was their role?." Canon issue there is they should have no role and no question about their involvement. It should be 0%. The Great war was caused by man and man alone. The other fallouts make that clear.

Just having a mothership full of aliens then another one, is to much. There is no room for aliens in fallout other then easter eggs. Mothership Zeta to me is just a big easter egg mini game. Not canon at all. The only "canon poo storm" issue I have with beths fallout. I am not to happy with Roamers and Reavers but aliens bug me the most.

Having aliens as the cause or potential cause of the great war is BS.

My Two Cents. I have played fallout one,two and tactics since they were new and I still play them and not once have I thought "what this series needs is aliens!" I got one minute into mothership Zeta and thought to myself this is the death of fallout. ( I am glad I am was wrong about that, Fallout New Vegas looks awesome! and so far no sign of aliens. Thank you Obsidian )

"Alien Blaster" in the other games used power cells not alien power cells. To me the old alien blaster is alien in name only. To me it's something so high tech that it's "Alien" to people (Strange, Unknown) not space people alien.

We all know that the Daleks started the "Great War", hence why the Doctor showed up in Fallout 1(mind you he was too late to save the world).

There's a good three or four threads dedicated to that controversy on the front page of this sub-forum. So rather than getting back into it all over again, here, it's probably best to just point you to:

• http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1021631-is-mothership-zeta-canon/
  
• http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1050002-why-aleins-are-relevant-in-the-fallout-universe/
  
• http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1078258-aliens-are-canon/

:)

Most of you are comparing my 'broken lore' examples with real-world lore.... Hairless molerats break lore/canon because they are hairy in the previous games.... The fact that there are real-world hairless mole-rats is irrelevant....
Bottlecaps are anti-canon since the concept has been advanced in previous games, and because (while this opens a whole other debate) it's unreasonable to expect coasts- disconnected from each other, to both pick the same random item as currency... Bottle caps don't make a ton of sense already when mankind has been using metal coins for thousands of years....
Things like game-balancing allowing for fast ghouls or different centaurs are also not good reasons for lore breaking.... The debate shouldn't be whether they COULD have done it otherwise... The fact is: They changed it without valid game-world reasons....
This stands for exploding cars, Harold, etc...
While the dumb supermutants might not fit my rules, I stand by the rest of my examples as breaking the existing lore established prior to Bethesda taking over...

I disagree on some of things you said, i know that bethesda changed alot of things, but the reasons that you have posted are not all anti-canon. I agree that it was a little weird that Moira turned into a ghoul instantly, and about the tiny power armor (that was really really.. lame.) but there can be a variety of creatures, like molerats and other things. I do agree completely with Agent_c, Nu_Clear_day, and GrayeWolf, they have good, logical points. Peace!

Different part of the continent. Random radiation mutations and natural selection will not occur the same everywhere.



Humanity is a strange creature. He values one item over another and the things he values changes over time. Besides, the east coast may have never moved beyond bottle caps as a value exchange.



See my answer to mole rats.



Explain how Harold as he is now "breaks" lore.



The lore isn't "broken" it is altered to fit a different part of the country. Do you really think something like, leather armor for instance, will be exactly the same on both coasts? Remember, this isn't a world of mass production and identical mutations. Level of radiation, existing pollutants, different "breed" of FEV can easily exist. In a post nuclear society there will not be any homogeneity from coast to coast.

Natural Selection implies evolution, which doesn't occur in situations that make the species weaker.... FO3 molerats are as small as a dog where the previous ones were man sized (regional varient, sure) but for them to be hairless, they should never come above ground... The real world molerats are subbterranean.


The real problem comes in the fact that the East Coast is using bottlecaps without being influenced by the West Coast, where the bottle caps where silly enough to have been replaced.... Mankind has never valued bottlecaps as currency... Mankind has never used value-less junk as currency (until modern virtual money), favoring barter of usable assets when printed money is unavailable... Scrap metal or ammunition make far more sense in terms of currency in an extinction event scenario....



The fact that Harold's on the East Coast. The lore of Vault City and Broken Hills imply the 'good' ending of Fallout 2.... This leaves Harold with a perfectly safe and resource strong homestead... There he is a respected figure amongst the ghoul community.... Without an ingame explanation as to why, his leaving the West Coast should be reason enough. The idea of a lone shambling ghoul, with the heavy disability of a massive tree hanging from his skull, crossing the dangerous wastes of middle america is beyond ludicrous, and clearly an attempt to offer lipservice to the old school fans.... I know you'll just explain it away with 'SCIENCE!', but the tree growing dozens of feet in a couple of decades is pretty silly as well...



This last statement backs up my argument against bottlecaps....

Really, I think it's just a matter of how attached you want to be to every little detail. Maybe it sounds like I'm saying "don't sweat the small stuff," but really - in the grand scheme of things, all this so far is - even if I were to concede your point - pretty minor stuff.

And some of those actually aren't "breaking" any canon:

There was nothing in existing lore previous to Fallout 3 that said Harold couldn't have (don't want to have to resort to spoiler tags) ended up how he did. You might find it odd, you might not like it. But that doesn't mean there's a contradiction, there. That's adding onto existing lore, sure. But... that's kind of going to happen. If back in Fallout 2 Harold had said "yep, good thing this tree growing out of my head isn't going to get any bigger, absolutely no chance of growing any more than this," then yeah, that might be breaking something. But he didn't. So it doesn't.

Exploding cars kind of fall into that same category, as well. There's nothing to contradict. There were no exploding cars in Fallout 1 or 2, given. But no one ever said "gee, sure am glad none of these cars can ever blow up..." So that's another addition, but there's nothing previous for it to break.

And anyway, the rest of this so far? That they actually kept an iconic currency from the original game instead of just calling it "money?" That centaurs - failed genetic aberrations - look different? You have to admit that's pretty small stuff in the grand scheme of things. I know you're not losing sleep over any of this stuff. I don't think even the guy who originally modeled the centaur for Fallout 1 exactly shed a tear when he saw what the new ones looked like. Sure, those are two things that are objectively different, without an in-game explanation, even if it's pretty easy to rationalize. By that definition, they qualify as "lore-breaking." But I don't think we're actually going to argue that it's really all that big of a deal, either.

As far as Ghouls go, however, I'm standing my ground on this one. Sure, they did a lot of shuffling around. But I'm going to remain adamant that they got some extra movement allowance during combat - because the only enemy that could close the distance more efficiently than them seemed to be the wild dogs. It took a long time for their animations to get them there in one turn, but the fact was that they could run up a good number of hexes and still have AP left over for a melee attack. I'm saying maybe the animations for Ghouls in Fallout 1 and 2 didn't exactly match what was happening in-game, but that game-wise what you see in Fallout 3 is basically what was being represented in the previous games, as well. It would have actually gone against canon, I would say, if in Fallout 3 they were stuck shuffling towards you like zombies.

Absolute nonsense. Swans in the UK are white, in Australia they are black. If someone was born, lived, and died in the UK before the discovery of Australia, they would only see White swans, but Black swans still existed unseen by the white man - It isn't a breach of canon to have a different species or breed of creature - It would only be a breach if it was said "All mole rats everywhere are hairy", which it is not. Also, Hair loss is a symptom of radiation poisioning, radiation levels in the Captial wasteland are clearly higher than in Cali - It isnt a breach of canon to follow what we know about radiation sickness.

Again, Complete nonsense. Its a shiny item, a bottle cap isnt that different from a coin (metal, round and shiny). People like shiny items.
The concept of currency in many cultures typically come from a common source - a certain, pre-measured amount of shiny metal certified by some important figure somewhere by mold; Not only that, we see Concurrent development all the time, even in recent history - key elements of Manned flight, and even the lighbulb have "Disputed Inventorship" status as different inventors played around with the same things.

If its conceivale for one post apocolyptic proto-civilisation to adopt one currency, then its arguably more likely that another would choose the same thing, because the circumstances in the choice here are exactly the same (Relatavely abundant and portable item, easy to ascertain value, not produced any more so impossible to counterfit).


And you've offered no evidence as to how these are lore breaking.