It wont be canon only if bethesda will say so. Its in the game and the game is canon.

I have seen this response before. Is that your personal opinion? That is what I am curious about. Some people seem to feel it is canon by definition. I would like to know if you think it is canon based on your own feelings about the game. Feel free to share your own thoughts here, thats what this thread is about.

Where's the "yes, but if I had a choice, it would be declared completely noncannon because it's going to totally screw up the Fallout universe from here on out" option?

It's not in the vanilla game, it's the last DLC and tbh, I see it as a joke. Todd himself said it was hilarious...I'm opting not to take it seriously.

If you are going to say that the mirrored shades are an easter egg, and therefore not canon, then you might as well say that any unique item isn't canon. In fact, I don't think the mirrored shades were even unique (nor was the lucky 8-ball if you were thinking about that). There were two of them in FO2.

Which is to say, canon is entirely subjective once you start eliminating stuff that actually shows up in the game, and the easter-egg argument is flawed attempt to lend validity to that subjective judgment. The mirrored shades are a good example of that, because I think it's a perfectly reasonable buffing item, but others might think it's a complete joke.

I didn't think of it...lol

If we go by how Bethesda treats the canon in their Elder Scrolls series, then the physical presence of aliens and their interference with the Earth is definitely canon now. Whether or not the events of Mothership Zeta took place (as in; whether or not the LW was ever abducted and went through the MZ questline) is likely going to be left ambiguous. While the quests are triggered by happening upon one of the game's easter eggs, the entire DLC seems to be far too detailed to be considered one itself.

This is based on how Bethesda has addressed the actions of the player in their past games, by introducing new elements to cover multiple endings (The Warp in the West to cover all of Daggerfall's endings), leaving the fates of certain characters ambiguous (was Vivec killed by the Nerevarine, or did he simply disappear, etc.?), and the noteable of absence of every character that the player had the potential to kill in the previous games (the exception being M'aiq, who is Bethesda's chief easter egg). Generally, the only established details of the player characters are that they completed their respective main questlines.

Generally; if something can happen it could've happened, with the lore surrounding it being definitely canon, but whether or not it did happen is not canonized. So "aliens" yes, "LW's great escape" maybe.

While Fallout is obviously a different franchise than the Elder Scrolls, the rogue-like exploration-heavy nature of Fallout 3 suggests that they intend to take the Fallout franchise in a similar direction, so it's not far-fetched to assume they'd treat what's canon in a similar way.

And yes, I'd also like a "Yes, but I sure as hell wish it wasn't" option. The conflicts in a post-apocalyptic setting should revolve around human nature in some way, but the aliens as they're written fail to do that and feel horribly juxtaposed against everything else.

Very well articulated Drg6520. You have my highest compliments on this topic. Even though your opinion is different than mine you have made a great many very valid points. :trophy:

He didn't say that. He said:



He was referring to the crashed Star Trek shuttle encounter in Fallout 1. His reply had nothing to do with aliens, the Alien Blaster or Mothership Zeta.

Cheers,

Max

Bethesda came up with the idea, so i guess it's canon. But if i like..that's something else...

Perhaps it's something that will be expanded in future instances of the Fallout universe? Maybe the aliens will be a bigger feature in Fallout 4, or Project V13, etc...

As for my view on the whole Easter-egg ray-gun discussion: Evidently the aliens are far more advanced than humans, and in their natural state, we wouldn't be able to comprehend their existence - therefore, they assumed a form that humanity knows as alien, and would probably be the most commonly expected appearance of aliens (in the Fallout reality, of course).

I've opted no on this one.

Voted No.

But who knows, alien played a really minor role in previous fallout games, IMO, if Mothership Zeta is canon, fallout will get [censored] up even more.

Easter eggs more is more like it, but yea.. let's both pray real hard that it wont be canon and this was all just some "this is our last DLC so let's make it go out with a bang" type of thing

Too many options make a poll stop being funny IMO.
Yes, they are.
I don't mind them being in a dlc but I don't want them to be the new major antagonists.

Well technically it is canon. Technicalities aside...

Where's the "I would prefer it wasn't" option?

They way it was handled really made it the worst DLC.

I think it's canon.

But is very minor and probably wont influence other games except in easter eggs and cameos.

If it does, well [censored] me.

This poll has too many options, it's hard to make out if 'no' or 'yes' gets the most votes.

o.o

I don't care myself. It wouldn't matter anyway, most DLC/Expxansion story lines rarely appear in Bethesda's sequels, only references just to to avoid/create deus ex syndrome. Too bad that they didn't make Commonwealth DLCs though, that would've been at least somewhat canon DLC after borked steel.

Well, since it's made by Bethesda and it's not in the fanfic section of this forum...

...Obviously, it's Cannon.

I really don't get why everyone's crapping themselves over this. The entire theme of Fallout is and always has been a parody of campy 1950's sci-fi, and that's exactly what MZ gives you, complete with chromed and glowing guns, half-pint wee aliens, implied anol probing, the works. Why does everything have to be GrimDark and EBIL all the time, is there no room for humour in anything?

Regardless of that, what effect does it have on the game world anyway? Only two of the characters head back to the wasteland, and one of them is the PC, and how likely is it that your everyday wastelander will believe some fancy tale about being abducted by aliens? So the net result is; nobody except your character and one other know it happened, neither of you is likely to talk about it so it will likely remain that way. Even if it does become "full canon", I can't see how it's going to "[censored] up Fallout even more".

MZ didn't bring much of anything to the table in terms of satire, humor or camp. Fallout 2 had a bunch of Monty Python referencing encounters, that doesn't mean there should be some sort of monty python DLC.

The problem with MZ is that it sets a precedent that could be extrapolated upon in the future by Beth staff with less respect for the Fallout IP.

That's fine. Really I just wanted to encourage diverse opinions to be shared here. I don't want to hear a lot of agreement or argueing. Just opinions. Thank you for yours. =)



Covered by the 'no thank you' option? No? Sorry I only got twenty slots and I wasted four of them. Two haven't been voted last I saw and Two were removed by a prudent mod.



So far yes has gotten the most. =)

Interplay made BoS after Fallout 1,2 and Tactics and yet that wasn't considered canon...despite clearly being a Fallout-related game. The only way we'll know is in future vanilla games and/or news from the devs. Until then I'm sticking to 'no'.