3) Interpretation 3: Whoever owns or gets the rights to write a portion of the Fallout series, that is now a part of the canon.

The GECK as presented in FO1 and 2 was nothing like that.

Replicator Unit- replicates food
and basic items needed for building
your new world. Just add water!
(powered by cold fusion)

That does imply that it can create life out of lifelessness, and the existence of NCR and Vault City which both have trees I might add also implies as such.

Not really, it just fertilizes the soil and contains various seeds, and the food it replicates is probably not "life" but some synthetic goo.

I picked the second option. I can't say I'd agree with everything they did, but I was happy with it for the most part. For the most part, the biggest gripes I would have is a lack of explanation of certain things (what the Supermutant "plan" is, for example. Or how Jet got all the way to the East Coast - especially considering I shut down their operation in Fallout 2...)

On the other hand - it's not like I thought they weren't going to make some changes to the lore. It's their game now, and they had their own ideas on the direction the series was going to go. I highly doubt I would have agreed with everything regardless of what they were going to do with it.

This is my own interpretation to how Canon works; with a caveat. The addition to the FO series is considered canon as long as it is accepted by most fans. Especially if the events that happen in that addition is mentioned in a later game/book/movie etc.

There's few here on the official forum, or even on NMA or other forums who would say FO:BoS is canon, either fully or partly. And I'm sure it will stay like that if Bethesda or another company wants to stay on the good graces of those who enjoy the Fallout series.

No, canon is canon. Fans who don't want to believe it is have that option but it doesn't make it not canon.

Whoever owns the rights makes it canon, and anyone who thinks BOS isn't canon is fooling themselves.

No, canon is canon. Fans who don't want to believe it is have that option but it doesn't make it not canon. Whoever owns the rights makes it canon, and anyone who thinks BOS isn't canon is fooling themselves. There's not "few" who don't think it is, that's preposterous.

I think it's fun to read all the people who throw around the word "Canon", as if its the newest fashion statement. Here's an actual definition of the word:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_(fiction)


So as you can see, the word Canon isn't really up for discussion. It's an objective word, and defining it subjectively is like saying that a car, or the color green, or 30 years old age, is a personal opinion. Completely illogical. But this is not to say that you can't have an opinion about the parts of Fallout 3 that you think is true to the previous games. But it has nothing to do with the word "Canon". Fallout 3 is an official Fallout product, automatically making it Canon (per definition).

I always likened the Vault 87 Super-Mutants to the Jurassic Park cloned Raptors, without a "master" they have devolved into a basically unorganized monsters and just want to create more.

Also after Jet gets out Im sure it could be reveresed engineered and spread, illegal drugs right now are like cockroaches..

From what I've played of FO1 and heard/read about FO2, it seems a bit absurd to speak of Fallout "canon". The entire Fallout universe is over-the-top, campy humour, almost like the Flintstones. It doesn't seem that it was intended to be taken so seriously as to speak of "canon", no matter what somebody wrote up after the games were released.

Grigori Rasputin (January 22, 1869 ? December 29, 1916)

The Mad Monk, Grigori Rasputin, was a peasant and mystic healer who found favor with the royal court of Russia by providing relief to Crown Prince Aleksey, a hemophiliac and heir to the throne.

Wielding much influence on the royal court, the unkempt, vulgar, and amazingly resilient Rasputin made many political enemies. He had to go; much easier said than done. The conspirators first tried poison, enough poison to kill a man three times his size, but he seemed unaffected. Next they snuck up behind him and shot him in the head. This should have done it, but no; while one of the assassins was checking his pulse, the mystic grabbed the conspirator by the neck and proceeded to strangle him. Running away, the would-be assassins took up the chase, shooting him 3 times in the process. The gunshots slowed him down enough to allow his pursuers to catch-up. They then proceeded to bludgeon him before throwing him in the icy cold river (Russian winter). When his body was recovered an autopsy showed that the cause of death was drowning.

I'm guessing that Fallout 4 will be even more convoluted and will add more questions than answers to the Fallout "Canon".

Questions demand answers, which would mean they would ensure a 5th game, which might be the plan.

How so? Bethesda, who do own the rights now, declared FO:BOS as non-canon.

Okay, it's Canon that Jet is on the East Coast now,

and that Vault 87 "mysteriously" had access to FEV, as well. What's decidedly not Canon is that there's any explanation for these things at all.

Jet spreads. Just like opium and heroin did in real life. It doesn't take a genius to take a load of Jet over the continent and establish a huge market with dealing drugs. 30 years is far more than enough to make Jet spread.