Really at this point I think you should take that arguement to PM. You've more or less quadrupled the length of the thread by yourselves....

Your right we have hogged the topic to much.


Qawsed Asap if you want to continue this let's do in PM's give others a chance to talk about this subject.

Quite so, but it would be likely that of 100 PMs of circle argument that we both never bound to agree. No one going to agree, so just let this topic get axe'd.

It is semi-canon. Parts that don't contradict FO1 and 2 and are not inconsistent with the retro stylistics are canon. Some events from Tactics are mentioned in FO3.

First time poster, but I made an account so I could mention something here. It seems to me like everyone is assuming that these aliens are going to become a definitive, integral part of the game world. There's lots of debate over whether this would be cannon, semi-cannon, or whatever. If you don't mind, I'd like to add another possibililty.

We know, or at least have been told, that this will be an abduction-type event, right? Well, how do the stories of "real" alien abductions play out? Their is little-to-no evidence left behind, and often times the people telling the story claim they didn't believe what happened either. From a strcitly scientific view, what they claim to happen, didn't happen. They might have some very questionable evidence, but very few people would accept their story as fact.

So, what if the Lone Wanderer is wandering (as he does), and suddenly a bright light shines down from above. He is then pulled onto the ship, and the whole DLC plays out. At the end, though, he is dropped or left right where he started, not more than a few minutes after the whole thing started. Now this contentious DLC is basically a giant random encounter. Your inventory could be randomized (often abductees report that their clothes and the like are out of order), and maybe you could have a small piece of equipment you get to keep for winning, and possibly a perk. But no definitive evidence of an actual abduction. It would basically be put down on the same level as the alien ship in FO 1, or the multiple alien encounters in FO 2. It's there, and it's fun to play, but the effects on cannon can either be there or not be there depending on how future designers want to run it.

Plus, it would play out more like a "real" abduction.

Additionally, they could also add a couple NPCs who also claim to have been abducted. I mean, with all the crazies in the wasteland, this wouldn't be surprising. Maybe add one who claims to be a multiple abductee, and have his sell Alien Power Cells. Maybe.

Anyway, just a thought.

Good thought Raul Torin. And if after returning from the abduction a few NPCs have it in their dialogue something about an alien abduction and you can tell them about it they could say something like, "we have another nut case here" or the like. You know it happened but nobody else believes you. :shrug:

He put a disclaimer up saying mistakes and inconsistenices may crop up. He made such a mistake on the Wanamingoes, and corrected it. I don't see the problem here. The term Wanamingo isn't exactly a common word, so it's easy to mess up, especially if he didn't have the doc immediately handy. I got the impression that their documents weren't incredibly well organized at times, and finding one specific thing was a bit of a challenge.

But in the end, his work on the bible, since he had access to the peeps and docs at BIS, is the final word on the BIS universe of Fallout. There are several times he quotes other BIS devs, like Chris Taylor, Tim Cain, etc. There's really not much to debate on that, to be honest :shrug:



I don't know. It would be hard to write off someone if they had alien artifacts on their person. Some might, but there would be a lot of open minded individuals. People listen to 3Dog after all

And there were several times when he thoughtlessly retconned things. And there were times when the fans had to correct him. Don't you see that your position is untenable? If he was drawing from the plans or personal communications with the creator of the wanamingos, don't you think he would have come up with something that didn't contradict the game in an incredibly obvious way? I'm not saying that you should ignore everything in the bible. Certainly, it's useful when he cites the other devs or talks about his own work. But he loses all authority when the fans know more than he does about a topic. It's one of multiple instances in which he is thoughtlessly deleting something from the universe (also see the discussion of talking deathclaws and Broken Hills).

Why would I see it like that? He pointed out that there might be mistakes in the disclaimer. It wasn't like the bible was going to be something BIS used for a profit (unless they were thinking of going into pen and paper publishing, and putting out a Fallout source book ).

His disclaimer was enough for me to excuse errors and the such :shrug:

Extra content that doesn't HAVE to exist? So basically anything after I leave vault 101 isn't canon, since I can avoid doing it? Does that make the side quests negative canon, since not only do they not HAVE to exist, but they're not even part of the main quest. I mean, c'mon, it all makes sense as long as we're arguing that only the things that HAVE to exist, DO exist.

You're not really somebody that should be criticizing others about logical fallacies. Every DLC package is a part of Fallout 3, and thus canon.

When did being DLC become grounds for excluding anything from canon? There's no rational basis for it.

This should be clear. You said:

There's an obvious contradiction here. If he was referencing documents or individuals who made the wanamingos, then he wouldn't have made a thoughtless retcon that the fans needed to correct. In other areas, he tells fans to simply ignore parts of Fallout 2 because they are no longer part of the continuity. That's not something you can get from design documents. Some of the bible contains clarifications, but other parts (like the part about wanamingos) are retcons made by Avellone that he never had a chance to implement because he never made his own Fallout game.

:shrug:

I suppose we're at a point where we cannot come to an agreement then.

You see some of his work on the bible as a bad fan retcon. I cannot agree with that view, since he was part of BIS, which discounts the fan bit, and a retcon is a deliberate change to established facts, and I found that entry in particular to be a clarification rather then a retcon, even if he made an error on it, something he warned might happen.

Here's the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroactive_continuity I'm not going to get into a semantic dispute, but you can see that the accepted definition would certainly include a post-hoc origin story that fundamental changes the future of the item in question (e.g., it turns out that wanamingos were designed to not exist anymore, so they're all dead). It's certainly a retcon by the traditional definition. You can use another word if you'd like, but you now understand what the rest of us mean. The only question is whether he has any sort of standing that would make this retcon any more legitimate than my retcon or your retcon. Well, he certainly didn't make the wanamingos. Furthermore, the fans know more about the wanamingos than he does. Now, if he had managed to get these ideas into a Fallout game, then I would have embraced it. But he didn't. So, it's just a retcon from some guy that didn't make them in the first place, and doesn't really know much about them other than the fact that he doesn't care for them.

I'd place just as much stock in your take on the wanamingos.

"Most vaults" is a conflict. It doesn't say ALL VAULTS except 13.

So it left the door open for others to be finished later, nullifying the complaints.

I know this does bug some people but if you want a game where your actions really count and have an affect on the world and allow multiple endings than that's the cost only one of those play throughs gets considered Canon. Otherwise there is only one way you can end the game, or the Daggerfall ? Morrowind thing it all happened at once in some strange explanation that unless I go back makes little sense.
I wish devs would just create game lore, and canonical elements that could be adhered to in future games, its not that hard.

Bethesda can make Aliens canonical no one can deny that but it can be argued if they would fit in with the rest of the world. I don't think the alien space ship in FO1+2 was meant to be canon. One issue with post apoc putting too much in that redeems and saves man kind (alien tech for examples) means you have to start moving away from PA I think if aliens become Canonical Bethseda needs to be careful in altering the tone of the series too much