Some Fallout fans believe the latest episode of Season 2 of the Amazon show confirms a New Vegas ending is canon, while others believe the showrunners have kept their word and avoided picking an ending.
Warning! Spoilers for Fallout Season 2 follow:
Fans of the Fallout video games had wondered how Season 2 might reflect the endings of Obsidian’s much-loved Fallout New Vegas, given the show is canon and is set 15 years after the game.
A quick reminder of where we’re at in the Fallout timeline: the Fallout TV show is set in 2296, nine years after the events of Fallout 4 and 15 years after the events of Fallout: New Vegas. We’ve already seen a debate about which Fallout 4 ending should be considered canon, if any. But what about New Vegas?
Depending on the choices the player, aka The Courier, makes throughout the course of the game, New Vegas can end with victory for the player during the Battle of Hoover Dam, which drives out all factions including Mr. House himself, a victory for Mr. House in which he remains in control of New Vegas and takes over Hoover Dam, a victory for Caesar’s Legion, or a victory for the New California Republic.
Fallout fans think ‘The House Always Wins’ ending is now canon after the events of the show. The Ghoul meets Maximus, and he uses the Cold Fusion diode that Maximus stole from the Brotherhood to power up the machine we saw back when Cooper met House in a flashback on the top floor of Lucky 38. The big terminal boots up, House appears on screen and says: “Well hello, old chum.”
A lot of people think that confirms “The House Always Wins” ending, which saw House survive. But there are some important points to consider. Until the show actually shows House’s body, there’s still potential for all sorts of explanations. Either this meeting between the Ghoul and House, plus whatever happens in the Season 2 finale, pulls the big trick of finally canonising an ending despite the showrunners saying they weren’t going to, or this is, for example, an AI version of House, rather than the weird husk from the New Vegas video game, which would leave us technically still left in the dark about what actually happened.
Fans are already debating the point, with some going so far as to already accepting The House Always Wins ending as canon. Some are even wondering what the point of New Vegas itself was, given the suggestion of a canon ending.
“What was the meaning of the game Fallout NV supposed to be and what was it trying to accomplish if none of the possible actions of The Courier had any lasting impact?” asked one fan. “With the newest episode of the Fallout Tv show, we find out House is alive. So what was the point of playing the game if none of the decisions would have mattered anyway? In the game the biggest consequences are, we get rid of House, give the power of hoover damm [sic] to the NCR, the Legion, or back to the Strip.
“But in the show the NCR is gone, the Legion is disconnected and in-fighting, the BoS is in the middle of a civil war with the East Coast, The strip became overrun with deathclaws. So what’s the point?”
Countering this, some fans have pointed to other explanations for what we see in the show, as mentioned above, but others have insisted that whatever happens on the show, it shouldn’t devalue your enjoyment of the games and how they work.
“The House we see at the end of episode 7 is a digital copy,” another fan added. “It doesn’t matter what happened to the real House’s body, this copy is separate from that. I don’t think there’s anything in the show that contradicts any of the four endings.”
“Seeing the House AI really doesn’t change anything,” said another fan. “The state of the Lucky 38, including a Securitron lying exactly where Yes Man does when you upload him, points strongly towards House’s death as a human at some point.” “I mean House is dead. He just uploaded himself to the Cloud,” joked another.
All eyes are now on the final episode of Fallout Season 2, which, given Season 3 is already confirmed, will no doubt pose just as many questions as it answers. While you wait, be sure to check out IGN’s Fallout Season 2, Episode 7 review.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
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