While reading an AMA of an original Fallout developer, someone asked him why the Fallout series doesn't have an expanded universe(As in novels, comics etc.). He gave the only answer feel most people can think of; "Good question". In a time when almost every successful game series has expanded universe of varying sizes (TES, Halo, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Warcraft, Starcraft, Bioshock, Doom, Crysis and many many more for example). Why is it that a series so rich with lore such as Fallout lacks any form of expanded universe. And I do know about the All Roads comic and the One man and a crate of puppets by penny arcade, but they don't really expand the universe for most part imo.

I'm glad it doesn't. If the devs had to consider the expanded universe canon while creating their games, they'd be [censored].

The more extensive the universe, the less likely it is to be consistent. I think they should leave that to the games.

I have to agree. It's strange. But I also agree with General Garbage. But not wholly. You see. I would love to see an expanded bestiary for locations. Something that tells us that in cannon these creatures exist regardless of their appearance in games due to technical limitations, same for population and general weather. But if they followed every bit of source material colonelcy. Then the consistency can be at risk.

If they want their games to be as open as possible with a swath of choices which have been slim in recent games. Then they'll have to be careful just what they publish as cannon. That isn't to say it wouldn't be difficult, in fact I think it would be the opposite. Considering just how little we know of the Fallout world.

Obviously they should never publish books in the current timeline. Dating books and comics on events that have happened long before current events allows a creative freedom yet gives the developer some established lore to work off of.

The thing is that the Fallout universe is huge. We can have a book set in Houston, Texas and it wouldn't see or hear the effects anything in a future Fallout game (that is unless the game is set in Houston). And while i do believe that Fallout should only be in America, that's still a lot of ground to cover. We're 6 games in and we've only seen Cali, parts of Nevada, a small part of Utah, D.C. and Pittsburgh (Which several NPC's imply there are more parts of The Pitt we haven't seen) and a small park in Maryland, The midwest and Texas (But those two games are non-canon and only "broad-strokes" so who really knows what happened in the midwest.) There is still so much out there in Fallout world we've only head bits about or nothing at all. And with Bethesda's long development times, we may never see any of it.