Will Fallout Season 3 Resurrect a Dead Fallout Game?

As Fallout Season 2 draws to a close, each signs constituent towards Colorado arsenic the mounting for the adjacent adventure. A postcard near successful an abandoned cryopod each but confirms that The Ghoul’s woman and girl are waiting for him there, and a changeable of the Enclave’s concealed office suggests that the show’s newly-revealed large atrocious is operating retired of the Rocky Mountains.

For fans, this is an absorbing caller direction. After the archetypal play explored California, the mounting for the archetypal 2 Fallout games, and the 2nd expanded into the Mojave wasteland of Fallout: New Vegas, it seemed logical that the communicative would proceed to sojourn acquainted locations. Washington, D.C. oregon Boston, the settings of Fallout 3 and 4, respectively, seemed sensible bets. But surely not Colorado, which contempt geographically making consciousness for the adjacent steps beyond the New Vegas strip, is hardly a footnote successful the RPG’s extended lore.

Dive deeper into the Fallout archives, though, and Colorado becomes importantly much important. The authorities was planned to beryllium the mounting for what would person been Interplay and Black Isle Studios’ 3rd Fallout game, codenamed “Van Buren”, which was cancelled backmost successful 2003. Since then, dozens of plan documents person fallen into nationalist hands, revealing the intended storyline for what could person been the archetypal Fallout 3. And arsenic the amusement signals its intent to question to the Centennial State, it’s intolerable not to wonderment if Season 3 volition beryllium astatine slightest a small inspired by the Fallout that ne'er was.

The Second Apocalypse

The main paper for the Van Buren tech demo. | Image credit: NoMutantsAllowed / Interplay

Akin to Hank MacLean’s attempts to bring “civilization” to the wasteland, Van Buren would person told the communicative of a antheral who looked retired astatine what’s near of humanity and yearned for a amended world. That man, Doctor Presper, saw anticipation successful the fires of atomic armageddon (yes, different one) and planned to instrumentality bid of an orbital rocket strategy successful an effort to cleanse the planet’s surface. He and his followers would beryllium harmless successful Colorado’s Boulder Dome, a colossal, bomb-proof probe facility, and aboriginal look into a brighter tomorrow. Sounds a small similar Vault-Tec’s plans for the archetypal apocalypse, right? Which, arsenic we’ve learned this season, was really orchestrated by the Enclave.

It seems improbable that Van Buren’s nonstop crippled could go the communicative of Fallout Season 3, though. Introducing Presper’s cohort of huffy scientists and their ngo to sphere their imaginativeness of the quality “master race” seems redundant erstwhile the Enclave, a faction of huffy fascist scientists, are already a cardinal portion of the show’s story. But the overlap betwixt these 2 groups, successful conjunction with the Colorado setting, points to precisely wherever the 2 projects could merge: What if Presper, oregon a Presper-like figure, is successful complaint of the Enclave’s activities successful the American Southwest? And now, 200 years aft the archetypal bombings, the faction intends to bash it each implicit again successful an effort to execute the nonstop results it hoped for the archetypal clip around?

There’s different absorbing overlap: In Van Buren, the orbital rocket strategy is locked down a bid of safeguards. The outer continually assesses the planet’s colonisation and tracks the dispersed of “New Plague”, a highly contagious illness that had antecedently required a implicit quarantine of the US to control. Should the fig of New Plague-infected radical summation past a definite threshold, the outer volition merchandise its rocket motorboat codes, allowing its controller to extremity the epidemic successful atomic fire. Presper’s program was to dispersed the plague crossed the wasteland, which successful crook would assistance him power of the missiles.

The New Plague is an absorbing portion of Fallout lore because, during the 2050s, the contention to make the cure led to the improvement of the Forced Evolutionary Virus. The FEV is already 1 of the show’s enigma crippled points, someway linked to the Vault 31, 32, and 33 experiment. And, arsenic we tin infer from Steph’s triggering of “Phase 2” successful the Season 2 finale, the experimentation is apt controlled by the Enclave. The question, then, is wherefore does the Enclave privation a clump of FEV-infected vault dwellers? Well, possibly successful an adaptation of Van Buren’s story, they’re the cardinal to wiping the aboveground cleanable and allowing the Enclave implicit power of the wasteland.

New Van Buren

Fallout: New Vegas adopted and adapted ideas from Van Buren. | Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment / Bethesda Softworks.

The instauration of Colorado, a virus, and a clan of genocidal scientists obsessed with quality purity by nary means guarantees that Fallout Season 3 volition accommodate the ideas created for Van Buren. But I contiguous this mentation not based connected chaotic speculation, but Fallout’s ain history. While the Fallout 3 that was yet released to the satellite successful 2008 shared thing successful communal with Black Isle Studio’s blueprint, Fallout: New Vegas did. Van Buren was acceptable to diagnostic aggregate competing factions, hard choices that signifier the wasteland, and heavy character-building systems – the precise operation that New Vegas was built atop. But it goes deeper: Caesar's Legion, the convulsive service of Roman cosplayers, was primitively created for Van Buren, arsenic was a conflict for power of the Hoover Dam, the climax of New Vegas’ campaign.

The resurrection of those cancelled ideas was successful nary tiny portion acknowledgment to the information that respective of Van Buren’s designers became the architects of Fallout: New Vegas astatine Obsidian Entertainment. The show, however, has nary specified transportation to the series’ mislaid past. And yet, contempt being executive-produced by Bethesda’s Todd Howard, the amusement is keen to continually research beyond the boundaries of his studio’s tenure arsenic Fallout’s owner. Shady Sands, the NCR municipality truthful cardinal to Maximus’ and Lucy’s stories, was lone ever successful the archetypal Interplay games. Vault 33’s failing h2o spot storyline is simply a nonstop motion to the crippled of the archetypal Fallout. And the depiction of the Brotherhood of Steel veers person to that shown successful the aboriginal games than it does Bethesda’s interpretation. All that considered, it wouldn’t beryllium that astonishing if showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet determine to dive into the Van Buren files and accommodate its ideas, turning Fallout Season 3 into a homage to the Fallout crippled we ne'er got.

Dead Tactics

Fallout Tactics journeys into the depths of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. | Image credit: 14° East / Bethesda Softworks.

When talking astir Colorado, though, we can’t disregard Fallout Tactics. While not precisely “dead” successful the mode Van Buren is, Fallout Tactics is thing of a dormant end; a spin-off created successful 2001 that failed to commencement a sub-franchise for the series. It tells the communicative of a Brotherhood of Steel squadron connected a ngo to find Vault 0, a pre-war bid bunker buried heavy beneath the Rocky Mountains successful El Paso County, Colorado. Their travel towards the vault sees them conflict an service of robots, which are revealed to beryllium controlled by The Calculator; a fusion of quality encephalon and integer machine that resides astatine the bosom of Vault 0.

Considering Season 2’s post-credits country sees the Brotherhood’s Elder Quintus proclaim himself “The Destroyer” portion unfolding the blueprints for a elephantine atomic robot, it’s casual to spot however Season 3 could gully inspiration from Fallout Tactics. Quintus could dispatch his knights to Colorado successful hunt of a vault that contains the parts required to physique Liberty Prime. The Calculator would beryllium agelong gone – Fallout Tactics takes spot successful 2197, a period earlier the amusement – but the invaluable relics that Quintus requires could good prevarication successful hold for him.

While Fallout Tactics’ presumption successful the lore is simply a small murky, we bash cognize that Vault 0 was designed arsenic the “nucleus” of Vault-Tec’s bunker system. Well, that was its last form: during the improvement of the archetypal Fallout RPGs, bid creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky had the thought that it could person been controlled by the Enclave, collecting information from each different vault to assistance their expansive plan. And who, according to the show, is the shadowy puppet maestro down Vault-Tec? The Enclave. Season 3 has the accidental to weld these ideas together. And if the Fallout games are thing to spell by, the Brotherhood of Steel and Enclave are destined to butt heads eventually. Will Vault 0 beryllium wherever Quintus proves his destroyer credentials by eradicating the Enclave?

This is, of course, each conscionable theorycrafting. An exploration of the lesser-known corners of the Fallout beingness connected the disconnected accidental that their stories go relevant, alternatively than a genuine prediction of the show’s future. But writers – particularly those handling pre-existing universes – don't dive successful blind. They’ll cognize astir Fallout Tactics. They’ll cognize astir Van Buren. And so, adjacent if Fallout Season 3’s travel to Colorado is wholly composed of archetypal material, I’m consenting to stake that determination volition beryllium references to Fallout’s dormant past littered among the Rockies.

Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.