Fallout Producer Explains Season 2’s Canon New Vegas Ending
Players of Obsidian Entertainment’s Fallout: New Vegas are in for a treat.
Prime Video’s TV adaptation Fallout will return for its second season on 17 December, with this next outing acting as a sequel to Obsidian’s legendary game.
The Ghoul and Lucy will lead the charge, venturing off to New Vegas in search of Hank MacLean.
As such, the season will introduce plenty of familiar individuals, locations, and factions, including, of course, Robert House.
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There is one conundrum though that comes with following up New Vegas’ events.
Fallout is canon to the franchise’s timeline, which implies that New Vegas must have a canon ending.
Anyone who’s played the game will know that it can end in a number of ways; House, the Legion, and the New California Republic can reign victorious or, to various severities, be defeated.
Or there’s the ‘Yes Man’ ending which sees the player, The Courier, align with no particular faction.
With Lucy and The Ghoul soon arriving in New Vegas, Fallout will confirm once and for all the events that unfolded, although the minds behind the series have already outlined its approach.
Everyone’s a Winner
Fallout executive producer Jonathan Nolan has explained that the show will honour all of New Vegas’ endings, telling GAMINGbible the series “reflects the s**tshow of a moment we’re in” where “everyone thinks they won”.
“I think it was brilliant,” Jonathan began. “Geneva [Robertson-Dworet] and Graham [Wagner], our showrunners, from the beginning, knew that we were adapting games that are defined by choice, by agency.
“And so with this one, you're committing when you're doing a linear television adaptation of things; you have to make decisions on behalf of [the player], you know? There is less interactivity. There is less agency.”
He continued, “Approaching New Vegas, which is a game defined by its factionalism and the ambiguity of who's gonna win, I think was one of the biggest and most challenging questions.
“The answer that we all came to and that Geneva and Graham landed on, which I thought was quite brilliant actually and reflects the s**tshow of a moment we're in in the real world, is that there's a fog of war element that takes control.”
Essentially, Fallout will see each individual faction under the assumption that they won, including the likes of the Legion and NCR.
“The series picks up with events set years after the end of the game,” Jonathan added.
“There's this question of ‘Who won?’ The fun of it becomes, and you're seeing this play out in the real world around us, in a lot of these conflicts, everyone thinks they won, right?
“The answer is all these factions believe that they were victorious, and in some ways, they all kind of were, but they're all still extinct. They're all still rebuilding and reasserting themselves. And to me, that was a truer answer and a brilliant way of handling it.”
The House Conundrum Remains
While the Legion and NCR are confirmed to appear in Fallout’s second season, there are question marks surrounding key figure Robert House.
In the show’s marketing materials, Robert House is exclusively shown via flashbacks, so it’s interesting that the series is keeping his present-day fate under wraps.
It’s Justin Theroux bringing House to life, and the actor wasn’t phased by the various iterations of who House can be by the time the credits roll on New Vegas.
“I didn't really ask any of the creators where he was going,” he told me.
“Only because, you know, I think it makes it more interesting to play, because my character doesn't know what's gonna happen, although he obviously creates scenarios and algorithms in his head to try and best determine what happens.
“I just sort of chose to let it end where my pages ended and, you know, there'll be more to come. You'll see more in subsequent episodes, how [House] factors into things, but it's more liberating to sort of just play the moments as they come.”
Fallout Season 2 returns on Prime Video on 17 December.
Topics: Fallout, Bethesda, TV And Film, Amazon, Interview