Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel isn't canon.

F1, 2 & 3 are completely canon. Tactics had way too many deviations and contradictions from F1 and 2 (the BoS coming from a military vault, furry deathclaws, internal inconsistencies, etc), so only general and major events are considered canon, and even then only if they don't contradict the other games. FOBOS, as far as canon goes, doesn't exist. VB is potentially canon as far as Bethesda used a few concepts from it. The Fallout Bibles are also canon.

When viewing canonocity, I take the following "Hierarchy", I think a lot of Fallout vets follow a similar hierarchy. Its based on what devs have said, what constants have been kept, and to a lesser extent, the games themselves)

Fallout 1 and 2 are at the top tier of Canonocity. Messing with the originals is asking for trouble.
Fallout 3 and its expansions slots in next (There aren't any major contradictions that I can immediately think of that can't be explained away) Arguably it could sit at the top tier, but there's a lot of people who'd get annoyed if I dared put it on the same level as 1-2.
Next comes the Fallout Bibles, by Chris Avalone, which originally sought to fill the place that the Wiki now does (The information is "reliable" as it was what was going on in the FO1-2 Dev's heads, but could be trumped by a future game)
Next comes Tactics (The Overall story is accepted to have happened, but the specific details are considered non-canon and unreliable)

BOS... Well, we don't talk about that in polite company.

New Vegas, as its described as a spin off doesn't have a clear home in this hierarchy yet, but I think is likely to sit on the same tier as FO3.

However, Canon in this sense isnt like the Catholic Canon in that the Bible is more or less fixed. Its more like the Star Trek Canon - things have been canon, and later fallen out of the Star Trek Canon (such as the entire Animated Series), the same could happen with the Fallout canon (At the moment, its Canon that Wanamango's are only found in the immediate Redding Area, nowhere else in the world, and so will remain *unless* they appear in a game again.)

So what makes BOS non-canon? (If you could explain without spoilers) I've yet to play it, or the originals. It seems to get a real negative reviews from fans, which could be well deserved for all I know, I've only played FO3.

Still, I have BOS coming in the post and now I'm wishing I didn't bother.

http://www.duckandcover.cx/content.php?id=11 is a good place to start. It completely ignored the fallout canon, and the devs said so.

agreed for the most part.. though the fallout bible wasnt just a wikia.. it also explained why there wee inconsitancies between one and two as well as discussion of some of the devs for those games having conflicting views on the F universe its-self

kinda one of the thngs that makes my smirk a bit when i read too many of the "this is cannon, this is law!" kind of posts on here.

That's it in a nutshell.

When we're talking about a videogame (and especially one that's ostensibly open-ended, where each player's experiences are going to be largely subjective,) then "canon" is only useful insofar as it provides a consistency across those games in the series. Whether or not it's canon, for instance, that the Vault Dweller decided to side with Gizmo or Killian in Junktown is irrelevant. Because either (or neither) could have taken place for all that the subsequent games are concerned. It's status, as far as canon is concerned, is negligable.

Fallout 1, 2, and 3 are, of themselves, "canon." Yet of the specific events within those games, only a small handful have anything to do with "official canon." Canon is that which is set in stone, that which will override any conflicting events. Fallout 3 has little set canon, then, not because of it's distance from the events of the previous games, but simply due to the fact that it's the most recent game in the series. It has very few specific canon elements because there isn't yet a Fallout 4 to set any of those events in stone.

I figure Brotherhood of Steel shares the same fate, in regards to canon, that Highlander 2 had with it's franchise. It was near-unanimously disliked, and so was retro-actively removed from the events of the series. You can still play it, and consider yourself to be playing a "Fallout game" (or watching a "Highlander movie,") but the specific events within that game have no bearing on the rest of the series; which doesn't consider anything within that game to have "happened." Rather, it's like reading a "What If?" issue of Marvel comics; or watching an episode of a TV series that takes palce in an alternate universe.

Fallout Tactics is, by the same token, considered "semi-canon" by popular belief. You can play it, and consider that you're playing a "Fallout game." You can even consider those events in the game to have "happened," but the rest of the games in the series aren't necessarily bound to recognize any of those events - and in the events of any potential conflicts, the "official" games will win out.

As far as modern weapons are concerned - I don't see where this is a problem. Sure, we're dealing with a game where, ostensibly, our timeline split from that of Fallout during the 1950's. But that's really largely irrelevant. All that really matters is that by 2077, the world ended up looking like The World of Tomorrow, as imagined by 50's pulp sci-fi. It doesn't mean, for instance, that a building built in 1970 can't have been destroyed in the War - only that it doesn't "have" to have. We don't, for example, know whether or not Kennedy was ever president - because the games make no mention of him. We know that Nixon was, because there's mention of him in the game (and, of course, there's that Nixon doll to be found.) And yet he wasn't President until '69, well after this "split" took place.

By that same rationale, any weapon designed after 1950 could very well have existed in the Fallout universe. The timeline split means only that it doesn't have to exist, not that it definately can't.

Yeah, I find that as well.

Well I believe it's been stated several times by developers that the inclusion of modern weapons in Fallout 2 and Fallout: Tactics was a mistake; hence why there weren't any in Fallout 3. :shrug:

Fallout 1-3: 99% canon. The real non-canon bit is how the player reacts.

Fallout Tactics etc: Only usable as "flavour material". Can not be taken 100% seriously as som details are contradictions.

Well obviously, the devs take precedence. I can see how, stylistically, "modern" weapons might not fit into the overall aesthetic so well.

I thought the problem was more along the lines of "building X can't exist in Fallout, because it wasn't built before 1950," which you see popping up around here on occasion. Which like I said, only points to it not "having to" exist, not as evidence that it doesn't inherently belong at all. Since that doesn't seem to have been the case, this time, then I agree with you, there.

It's like rap music, for example. There's no logical reason that rap couldn't have been invented in the Fallout universe, but chances are it wouldn't fit so well, stylistically. Chances are we won't be seeing any rap music in any upcoming Fallout games for that reason alone.

Well the pre-war details are pretty murky. It's true that for all we know they had flat screen full color LCD TVs and decided to go back to black and white because it was more "reliable" (they just don't make TVs like they used to ). I think it's intentionally left that way so that the player can fill in the blanks. Did culture really freeze for over a hundred years, or did it just revert? We don't really have an answer to that question because it doesn't really matter as Fallout is a post-apocalyptic series; the details concerning the war and the prelude to the war don't really matter. There very well could have been rock music as well as rap prior to 2077, but the old stuff simply came back into style (which often happens in real life as fashion from previous decades as well as music from past decades is coming back into style right now).

I don't see the American military reverting from M-16s to old school assault rifles, however. Granted I suppose you could come up with many explanations as to why they would, but even with those there probably wouldn't have been enough in circulation to account for the high volume of them in Fallout 2 and Fallout: Tactics.

I do agree about the structure thing however; even though it's an alternate timeline it's really not that different from our own. The primary differentiations is (supposedly) science and some aspects of culture. It's not far fetched for there to be a lot of modern structures from the 1950's and onwards in the Fallout world; on the contrary it's actually very likely.

Yeah, I think it's one of those things you're not supposed to think about too hard. You're not generally supposed to try to apply Hard Sci-Fi concepts to a Soft Sci-Fi story - and Fallout is definately well in the realm of Soft Sci-Fi. (ie, trying to figure out the exact chain of events that led to the end result in 2077 is like trying to figure out how hyperspace works in Star Wars - it is so because that's the setting.) There are some who consider Soft Science Fiction to be a subset of Fantasy; and in this regard it's probably best to think of it in that manner.

I mean, you look at a fantasy game like Dragon Age, for example, and you don't usually spend a whole lot of time looking for holes in the settting. The world simply exists for what it is.

I'm not so sure I'd classify Fallout as "soft Sci-Fi" myself. There are certainly aspects of the series that wouldn't hold up to the real world, and realistic science as well as logic, but that can be said of every single sci-fi story in existence. There's no such thing as an entirely realistic sci-fi setting, so basically every single one would be "soft sci-fi" at least by your interpretation. There are also aspects of Fallout that are a bit more grounded in reality than other science fiction licenses. Fallout 1/2's Power Armor for example is one of the more realistic interpretations of the concept I've seen in sci-fi. It gives a boost to the wearer's strength, and it's able to withstand more damage than typical combat armor. At the same time it also leaves the user more vulnerable in some cases because of openings in the joints and lower torso area (similar to the Stormtrooper armor from Star Wars), and it's certainly not attractive as its bulky and practically designed.

I don't believe in any difference between soft or hard sci-fi because every setting as aspects of it that are highly unlikely if not flat out impossible. Star Trek for example is heralded as realistic by its legion of fans, but the chances of encountering other intelligent life in the universe with a form much like our own is very slim, and of the few episodes I've watched there are plenty of outlandish and illogical aspects that are likely never going to ever be possible such as those machines that can create matter out of nothing.

Actually- that last bit, creating matter out of nothing- is plausable.

You see, Matter is pretty much "frozen" energy; that's why when Matter and Antimatter combine, all of the matter is converted into energy, and why the equation E=MC² works as well as it does. If Matter and energy were entirely different things, then there'd be issues with um... living (which is based on using molecules to store and release energy.)

Aside from all that, turning pure energy into, say, a hydrogen atom is a pretty difficult thing; it would take a large amount of energy to convert into matter (roughly half the amout that is released from matter/antimatter reactions, since both are turned into pure energy.)

But, it looks like this thread certainly went away from the OP's original question, so to get back on-track....

Pretty much, Canon is anything within the franchise that is considered to be "official" by the developers, to help make sense for later sequals and/or prequals. Fans can have an influence (there are events in franchises where characters/episodes have been dropped from official cannon due to backlash from fandom, Fo:BoS is one such example) but mostly, it's what the creators say. As Bethesda is the current owner of the FO franchise, what they say goes in terms of canon irregardless of what the original creators or fans of the originals say (though it would be wise to take in their considerations.)

I disagree. Certainly, the whole "hard" vs "soft" sci-fi thing is more of a sliding bar than distinct categories that everything will fit nice and snug into. (And not to mention that sci-fi fans have been having this debate for something close to a century, by now.)

The definition that I go by is that "soft" sci-fi doesn't generally get bogged down in the details. A spaceship, for example: A "soft" sci-fi ship might look absolutely plausible. But the distinction is that it's been designed from the look down - it's all about appearance. The Millenium Falcon looks like it does because it looks cool, not because George Lucas sat there at a drafting table with a team of theoretical rocket scientists working out how a spaceship would run, and what sort of design that would lead to. Not to mention that it flies faster than light because of "hyperspace," which is really just an easy way of not having to avoid the concept of relativity when what you're really trying to do is tell a story about Jedis.

Star Trek is "soft" sci-fi for the very same reason. There's entire tomes of technical reasons on how everything in the Enterprise works, and why. But it still comes down to dilithium crystals and such. The details in "soft" sci-fi are there only as needs to tell the story, and not get in the way too much.

2010 is more distinctly "hard" sci-fi. That space station is what an actual real-life space station could very well look like - it was designed by Arthur C. Clarke deciding what the best way to build a space station would be, in engineering terms. He didn't start out by thinking that a ring would look neat, and then come up with reasons to support that, to make it more "realistic," he set about actually coming up with the concept of a workable space station. That's "hard" sci-fi - most times, it's about the logical extrapolation of the conept that's being explored. Clarke's written tons of stories where that's really what it's all about. (ie, "Hey, you could probably make a spaceship that runs on solar wind - here's what that would look like," as opposed to "solar sails would look cool on a spaceship, here's a story about some guys who happen to fly one.")

Fallout, by that definition, I classify as "soft" sci-fi. How realistic the end result is has nothing to do with it. It's not a logical extrapolation. They didn't go "hey, let's figure out what the world would really be like if it got blown up in a nuclear war." That right there classifies it as "soft," in an of itself. Back to my original point, that's why I don't think we should be thinking overly hard about the finer details - most creations probably shouldn't be scrutinized to a greater degree than the creator itself did. It's trying to force logic into an end result that wasn't arrived at by logical conclusions.

We have Power Armor in Fallout because they thought it would look cool. It looks relatively realistic because that's what they went for. But it only "looks" realistic. It's not like they made a bunch of prototypes before they were able to to finally get a working scale model, and then finalized that as their design. Or even worked with an engineer to build a concept that would theoretically actually work. And that's what makes it "soft" sci-fi; no matter how realistic it may feel. That's good art direction and design - but science doesn't really play a part in it.

Fair enough, but even the most accurate of science in a fictional story is possibly inaccurate as science is constantly changing and evolving.

no, thats where the fiction part comes in.

i see what youre saying about soft and hard sci-fi though.
theres b-movie sci-fi and nerdery sci-fi

i would beg to differ that both have inspried actual scientists to create though.

I still don't get this canon thing. From Reading a post on the first page I get the asumptio that if some one else bought the license for example me I cud just say that the enclave didn't exist they woundnt exist any more just because I own it. Is it that true or have I got the wrong idea here. Please don't hurt me if it's wrong

No, that's pretty much it.

The guys who hold the license get final say in what is and is not canon, weather or not "proof" of it exists in other games (I.E. Bethesda could say there was never an Enclave, so all of a sudden, the plots of FO2 and FO3 are simply gone or retconned. Of course, that would be the end of Bethesda's FO series, but that's a different story entirely.)

They could, yes. You're the one with the rights (and more improtantly, you're the one making the next game,) so you get to do what you want with it. On the other hand, it's usually in your best interest to at least pay a little bit of respect to what's gone before, as well. Otherwise you end with the Highlander 2 situation - sure, they had every right to make the sequel to the movie some sort of wierd dark future thing, and all the Immortals are aliens - but it also wasn't very well recieved by the fans of the first movie (so much so that there's now a version of that movie available which strips out pretty much all of the stuff that was "added" to the Highlander "canon," to make it more inline with what people were expecting out of it.)

There's nothing stopping Bethesda, now that they're the ones making the games, from having the next Fallout take place on Mars; and everything's bright and cheerful, and you spend the game making teddy bears for all the boys and girls. But it would likely be a bad idea to do so.

ok thanks for clearing that up i get now.

getting srsly off topic here guys, and all questions have been answered