Ok, so I've seen a few people talk about an updated Fallout Bible and it got me thinking: What would you guys say to an actual Fallout Lore Book?

Since Bethesda has slowly started doing the whole Merchandise thing, I thought it might (eventually) be a logical step for them to look into this. (And maybe make a collectors items worth the money ;D )

So two questions for now, maybe more later.

I don't really think it would work out. Given that Bethesda doesn't like to establish canon and they have a habbit of saying one thing and then later changing their minds or at least some devs do after the fact. As in the game says one thing multiple times and months after the game one of the devs in an interview says something that completely contradicts everything the game has to say about that issue and it starts a war amongst the fans of who is right the game or the devs.

I can see that happening with any attempt at a New Fallout Bible. BTW the old Fallout bible has that problem as well. The games say one thing and the Bible says another, so this isn't my way of saying "Bethesda isn't "capable enough to do it." Chris Avellone made mistakes with his bible, that is why he updated it many times and it had mistakes that contradicted the games.

The thing about the original Fallout Bible itself is that it was updated many times, added new information, corrected information and so on.. So if they were to do it, they would have to be willing to keep working on it as the series grows and if they make mistakes, I would hope they fix them.

But as I said when the orginal Bible made mistakes the way to "fix them" was to say "the game is wrong." And I hate that. I really do. The games should be the main source of info, not something after the fact. A New Bible like the old Bible should just be to fill in information that the games themselves don't address or only give limited information and should not contradict the games itself but confirm what the games say.

I would hope they added info on Fallout Tactics as well.

Anyways, I have mixed feelings on the idea of a New Fallout Bible based on what I just said. In many ways I would want one and in many ways I don't want one and just leave the games to explain things.

I get your point. The original had a lot of Lost-And-Found material which I seem to remember being source of much lore debate. This could more easily be remedied with the "Lost Diary" approach though.

Games Workshop's Liber Chaotica was quite nice in that sense, a bit vague though, but I thing it works.

The orginal Fallout Bible was done by just one guy, Chris Avellone and he was pretty much doing it to keep people interested in Fallout between Fallout 2 and what would be Fallout 3.

Another concern would be that future games don't contradict what the New Fallout Bible says. As in they make up the bible, we as fans fall in love with it and take it to be canon and then a future game just ignores all of it or key parts of it. We can't be sure if the that would have happened the the orginal Bible or not, but it might have. Given that the games are developed by many people and the bible was made by just one person and those working on the game might not know everything there is to know about Fallout.

Chris knows alot about Fallout and still made mistakes and contradicted Fallout 2, the game he worked on.

A New Bible could just be a source of more complicated information and the Fallout universe when it comes to canon is already a complicated place. Every game being made by different development teams and many different developer interviews and the old Fallout Bible... I would love it to be made simpler but I would want it to be people who really care about Fallout to work on a new bible, not people just doing it for a paycheck.

I agree.

It is, and would be, hard to pull off. And it should definitely be done by someone who really cares about it.

But personally, I'm not going to say "all or nothing" to something like this. Because, no matter how thorough a lore writer would be, there are still a lot of stuff from game to game that just doesn't add up.

So with that in mind, a lore tome could, hypothetically, be a way to set the record straight. Simply saying once and for all, this is the lore we've chosen to be correct, and this is what we're going with from now on.

Sure, the choices may not be to everyone's liking, but it would make a point of some controversies not being up for discussion any more, from both fans and publishers.

I know bethesda's approach when it comes to stuff like this, and from what I've heard, there's been some heated arguments between their key TES lore guy (was it Michael Kirkbride?) and the developing team.