Overview of the Fallout Franchise Timeline

The Fallout franchise has a long and complex history and timeline that has been expanding its post-apocalyptic future ever since the original game's release back in 1997. With four mainline games, a handful of spin-offs, and now a TV show that's set within the same universe, the series has a big, meaty timeline to wrap your head around. Interplay and Bethesda's bleak, bonkers franchise has a megaton of lore that spans centuries and even overlaps with our own real-world timeline. But how exactly does it all tie together? Well, despite the mainline games rolling in a roughly chronological order, it can all get a little bit confusing, especially with all the extra world building and timeline diversions that happen years before the games even take place. Not to mention a handful of games that are now considered non-canon and have mostly been thrown out of the timeline. I'll explain that in more detail a little later on. And with the TV show extending the timeline out further into the future, there's a lot to get through, so I better get straight into it. Naturally, there will be spoilers for the TV show as well, which I'll call out when I get to them, so consider this your warning. Hey, my name's Adam, and there is no better time than now to dive into the lore of Fallout. So join me as I break down and explain the franchise's nutty timeline. Our timeline kicks off in the mid-20th century, in a post-World War II world that looks very much like our own. But that is all about to change. You see, the world of Fallout diverges from our own in the period after World War II, at some point between 1945 to 1961, and imagines a technologically advanced world steeped in the design aesthetics of the 1950s, hence all the retro-futuristic vibes. Despite this, our own history and Fallout share a few key moments, namely the US entering the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s amid a heightening of tensions in the Cold War. But in 1969 the similarities come to an abrupt end, and the Fallout franchise branches off in its own unique direction. Yep, with the threat of communism looming large in Fallout's America, the US makes the radical decision to reshape itself from 50 states into 13 commonwealths. While this plan kinda works in that none of the 13 commonwealths become communist, it does turn the country into a volatile cesspit of political strife, paranoia and unrest. But the hostile intensity of this new political environment coupled with the ever-rising temperature of the Cold War, leads the US to make huge technological advancements in the fields of AI and robotics. Harnessing the atomic power that brought WWII to a close brings about inventions that used to be consigned to the realm of science fiction. And at the forefront of these technological leaps is one Robert House, who is born in the year 2020. House grows up to become a leader in the robotics space and he eventually sets up a company by the name of Robco. who become quite instrumental to the world of Fallout. Among their most notable creations are the Protectrons, the Sentry Bots, Fallout 3's Liberty Prime, and the iPhone of the Fallout world, the wrist-mounted Pip-Boy. But despite all these nifty bits of tech, the threat of nuclear war still looms large over the world of Fallout. And by April 2052, things have gotten so dire on the global scene that a new war takes hold of the world, the Resource War. With fossil fuels running on empty, the superpowers of the world start to fight over the limited reserves that they have left. Europe declares war on the Middle East in a bid to lay claim to the region's bountiful supply, while in the Western Hemisphere, the US invades Mexico, annexes Canada, and has to defend its Alaskan territory from the armies of China. And this resource war naturally sets off the spark that leads to the nukes dropping. But I'm getting ever so slightly ahead of myself. You see, before we get to the fateful day of nuclear devastation, we have to talk about Fallout's iconic vaults. The year is now 2054, and international tensions are sky high. Reading the room, the US government and a secretive organisation known as the Enclave commissions Vault-Tec and Robco to start work on a little something known as Project Safehouse. This involves building 122 public vaults across America, with each vault capable of housing 1,000 US citizens from a potential nuclear cataclysm. Well, that's the official story anyway. The reality is far more bizarre, as each vault was the basis for a completely different social experiment, some of which I'll dig into as we make our way through this weird and wonderful timeline. Many of these vaults open in the years preceding the Great War of 2077, most notably Vault 76, which opens on the 300th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Across the nation, local citizens are picked as the lucky, or unlucky depending on the vault in question, future population. Naturally, Vault-Tec is quite a prominent enterprise at this point of time, to the point where they're basically the biggest company in the US. And in the Fallout TV show, we get a closer look at the inner workings of the company through the eyes of Cooper Howard, played by Walton Goggins. If you haven't yet seen the show, consider this your spoiler warning as I'm about to get into some of the major story beats. Skip ahead about a minute to get back on track with the games, okay? Right, so Coop is a big time Hollywood star who's basically the John Wayne or Clint Eastwood of the Fallout timeline. His wife Barb, however, is one of Vault-Tec's leading executives, who's pretty much in charge of the aforementioned Project Safehouse, which is all but up and running by the time of the pre-war sections of the teleshow. Anyway, Barb encourages her Hollywood husband to help advertise the Vaults to the American masses, with one photoshoot in particular inspiring the company's future mascot, Vault Boy, a picture-perfect blonde lad with a gleaming smile and a big thumbs up. Thanks, Coop. But as Coop learns more about Vault-Tec, he becomes disillusioned with the company's message, and eventually meets with a radical group seeking to undermine the Megacorp. And so Coop starts spying on his wife. which leads to him overhearing a handful of major revelations. In a meeting with some of the US's biggest players, including Rob Coe's Robert House, among others, he learns the horrifying truth behind the Vaults and their bizarre social experiments. Not only that, but he learns that Vault-Tec even intend to drop the bomb themselves to guarantee their business model, the Twisted Bastards. Anyway, all of this eventually leads us to the fateful date of October 23rd, 2077, the day when the bombs fell. With the resource war reaching a fever pitch, the superpowers of the world started launching nukes at each other, and in the space of two short hours pretty much destroyed the entire world. Naturally, the vast majority of the planet's population straight up died. But the aftermath of the fallout brought about just as much devastation, as a never-ending storm of black rain lashed the nuclear wastelands and poisoned the world with high levels of radiation, which in turn killed scores of old species and created, um, new ones to replace them. And this brings our grim history lesson to an end, as we reach the prologue of Fallout 4, which takes place on the day that the world ended. Yeah, before you've even got time to finish your morning coffee, a Vault-Tec representative turns up at your door and asks you, the player character, aka the sole survivor, a few personal questions about your future. Good thing too is a few short minutes later the first nukes start to fall on the US, and you, your spouse and your infant son Sean are whisked off to the local vault, number 111. And just in the nick of time as well as a nuclear blast eviscerates the horizon as you descend into the underground vault. The sole survivor and his family don the iconic blue and yellow vault suits and settle in for a long peaceful sleep in a cryogenic chamber. We'll catch up on their slumber in a good 200 odd years, But in the meantime, we're heading west to LA for even more nuclear devastation. Yep, happening concurrently to the blast back in Boston is the total nuclear obliteration of Los Angeles, as seen in the prologue of the Fallout TV show. Here we catch up again with Cooper Howard, who's fallen from the heights of his Hollywood career to become, well, a glorified children's entertainer. He's performing at a birthday party at a swanky LA villa overlooking the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. Said skyscrapers are not long for this world, though, as the horizon is inevitably lit up by the harrowing sights of mushroom clouds. With the sky falling down on the City of Angels, Coop scoops his young daughter up onto his horse in an ill-fated attempt to escape the nuclear devastation. We'll catch back up with Coop later on in the timeline, but before that, let's get our first taste of the irradiated wastelands. The first vault to open, that we know about at least, is Vault 76, which opens 25 years after the Great War, on Reclamation Day 2102. Situated in the Appalachians of West Virginia, Vault 76 is home to the best and brightest mines that the USA has to offer, which makes it ironic if you choose one as your intelligence, but that's a moot point. Tasked with repopulating the wastelands of West Virginia, the clever little citizens of Vault 76 head on out into, well, a bit of a lifeless, lonely world. Well, at least that was the case when the multiplayer game originally launched. You see, non-player characters or NPCs didn't start populating the game until the Wastelanders DLC launched, but I'm getting ahead of myself again. Anyway, the player character is given a secret mission by the Vault Overseer, a mission to secure a metric f*** ton of nuclear weaponry. Only there's a bit of a problem in the Appalachians. In the 25 or so years since nuclear devastation, a plague of beasts known as the Scorched have taken control of the lands. Mind controlled by some giant bee-like Scorched beast, the Scorched have been able to take Scorched present quite the obstacle to repopulating the wastelands. And so the bulk of Fallout 76's narrative sees the player character tracking down a way to destroy the Scorched. And the answer, as we all know, is to nuke them. On route to this endgame, the player character eventually discovers that the Scorched might actually have been created in a lab, but despite this revelation, the plan is still to nuke the ever living crap out of them. And after they kill the Scorched Beast Queen thing, the connection to the rest of the Scorched breaks. Only there'll be treasure in them hills, bub! Or so the rumours go in the first DLC expansion for Fallout 76 called Wastelanders. Yep, as I mentioned before, with the threat of the Scorched extinguished, people start to return to the area in dribs and drabs, and two major factions begin to emerge out of the rabble. The Settlers and the Raiders. Rumours of a vast treasure lead the player character to discover the existence of Vault 79, which basically houses the entire gold reserves of the US in one tiny living space. Anyway, the player chooses their allegiance to either the settlers or the raiders, and heads off to raid Vault 79. And depending on your decision making, you can choose to spread the wealth any number of ways, most of which will just break the delicate balance of power in the area between the two factions. Naturally, as an ever-expanding multiplayer game, the story is constantly evolving, but there are a few key beats still to mention. The first is the introduction of a Fallout franchise staple, the Brotherhood of Steel. This highly militaristic faction is a post-war creation, built up out of the remnants of the US Army with the core goal of securing and preserving technologically advanced pre-war weaponry and kit, and they're often seen sporting that great big hulking tank-like power armour. Anyway, they set up their base of operations in West Virginia in the old Atlas Observatory, which they rechristened Fort Atlas as that has presumably got more of an army vibe to it. As the player character, you can ally yourself with the Brotherhood in a bid to help keep the Wastelanders of the Appalachian safe, and or help the Brotherhood of Steel double down on their mission to secure pre-war weaponry. And lastly for Fallout 76 are the Expeditions, which takes the player character away from West Virginia to visit the ruins of Pittsburgh, affectionately known as The Pit, and Atlantic City. From the wastelands of West Virginia, we travel west to the remnants of California in the year 2161 for the events of the very first Fallout game. Here we witness the story of the Vault Dweller, a citizen of the ill-fated Vault 13 which has got a problem, a big one. An all-important microchip that controls their water processing unit has given up the ghost, and it's the Vault Dweller's job to venture out into the wasteland to locate a new one. This mission takes the Vault Dweller to the ruins of the nearby Vault 15. And then onwards to Vault 12, which is located underneath a city known as Necropolis, which is populated by ghouls, humans who've become hideously deformed by nuclear radiation. And it's here, underneath this city of the walking dead, that the Vault Dweller finds a replacement chip to solve Vault 13's water problem. One of the first major settlements that the Vault Dweller visits is a little place by the name of Shady Sands, which will become one of the most important townships in the whole series. For now, it's a humble little place that's managed to establish itself as a thriving little community. We'll catch up with this place a few times on the timeline, but let's just say its future is not looking bright. Only, there's a lurking threat in the wastelands of California, a contingent of mutants that have proliferated throughout the world known as super mutants. The Vault Dweller traces these reports back to a quasi-religious movement called the Children of the Cathedral, which is headed up by a super mutant called the Master. Long story short, the Vault Dweller is tasked by the Overseer of Vault 13 with eradicating the super mutants. Which leads him to encountering a conspiracy within the cathedral. You see, it turns out that the master is capturing humans and turning them into super mutants using something known as the Forced Evolutionary Virus, or FEV, which is contained within a series of vats that glow with an unhealthy green glow, which just screams danger to me. Anyway, as Fallout is a classical RPG, you can see about this mission in a handful of different ways. with the ultimate end goal of destroying the vats of green FEV goop and neutralising the super mutant threat. And for all the Vault Dweller's efforts, you'd think they'd be cheered back into Vault 13 as a hero, right? Wrong. The Overseer flat out denies the Vault Dweller entry back into their home on the grounds that he's worried that your actions will inspire future generations to leave the Vault and undermine all the hard work of keeping it going strong. And so Fallout comes to an end with the Vault Dweller exiled back into the wastelands. All of which brings us to the year 2197, the year in which Fallout Tactics Brotherhood of Steel takes place. And this is where the timeline gets a little funky, as while... Tactics isn't canon, some elements of the story are canon. Let me explain. The main gist of Tactics is that it vastly expands the story behind the Brotherhood of Steel, specifically one of the faction's chapters in the Midwest of America. The game sees you join the Brotherhood as an initiate, and help them move across the country from Chicago down to Colorado. Bethesda have outright said that the game isn't a part of the larger franchise's canon, but they have included a few references to the Brotherhood's operations in the Midwest since they took over the series. And all of this is further confused by another game, helpfully called Fallout Brotherhood of Steel, which launched on consoles in 2004 and is also considered totally non-canon. In short, we can largely ignore both of these games in the grand scheme of things. After our non-canonical detour, we're back on the west coast in the year 2241, for the events of Fallout 2. Here we learn what became of the Vault Dweller after he was exiled in the first game. He eventually settles in a village called Arroyo, where he has a family and 80 odd years down the line we catch up with one of his descendants, who goes by the grandiose name of The Chosen One. You were The Chosen One! Much like their ancestor, The Chosen One is tasked with saving their community. In this case, Arroyo. which is suffering from the effects of a devastating drought. And so the Chosen One is sent out into the world to find something that is known as the Garden of Eden kit, or GECK for short, a terraforming kit that is capable of creating life out of… well, nothing. Although as the advert says, results may vary. Anyway, the Chosen One ventures out in search of the GECK and eventually comes across the remains of Vault 13, which has now become infested with Deathclaws, which are vicious dinosaur-like beasts, Just a quick word on our old pals at Shady Sands, which the Chosen One can visit in Fallout 2. Not content with being just a thriving community, Shady Sands has become the home and capital of one of Fallout's biggest factions, an organisation known as the New California Republic, or NCR for short. In Fallout terms, they are basically the nearest thing to an actual functioning community. Remember the NCR, they'll become very important further down the line. Upon returning home to report on their findings, the Chosen One discovers that Arroyo has been taken over by an organisation called the Enclave, which is basically made up of what's left of the US government. Sitting on a cache of sophisticated technology and weaponry, the Enclave basically tries to rule the US with an iron fist, so naturally they need taken down a peg or two. And so that becomes the Chosen One's core mission, take down the Enclave and save the poor citizens of Arroyo. They set about this by charting a course on a giant freight ship to the Enclave's base of operations. an offshore oil rig where they discover that both the residents of Arroyo and Vault 13 are being held captive. To make matters worse, the Enclave have evolved the nasty FEV from the original game into an airborne virus, which will help them maintain their control over the local populations. The Chosen One naturally throws a spanner into the works, though, saves the Arroyo and Vault 13 hostages, and kills the head of the Enclave, who's also the President of the US to boot. And with this happy ending, the combined forces of Vault 13 and Arroyo create a prosperous community together with the aid of a newly found GECK. Just don't mention those devastating deathclaws. Next up, we're heading back east to Vault 101, the home of the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3, whose early life we see play out in the prologue of that game. Kicking off in 2258, Fallout 3's prologue starts right at the very beginning of the Lone Wanderer's life, as they're brought into the world and into the arms of their father, voiced by Liam Neeson and his wonderful Irish purr. And across the next 16 years, we see the Wanderer grow up. toddling around their playpen, having their 10th birthday and sitting their goat exams as a teenager. Life seems pretty idyllic in Vault 101. Well, as idyllic as you can get for a life underground in a grim grey vault. Naturally, that piece doesn't last. The shit hits the fan in Vault 101 as the lone Wanderer turns 19 in the year 2277, and this kickstarts the main plot of Fallout 3. Yep, things go sideways for the Wanderer when they're awoken to be told that their father has left the Vault, something that has never happened before in Vault 101. Although that'll prove to be a fib, I'll explain shortly. With the Overseer and his men going a little crazy in the circumstances, The lone wanderer is forced to flee for their safety and into the surrounding capital wasteland, the irradiated remains of the land surrounding Washington, D.C. Yeah, it's a real out-of-the-frying pan in... into the fire moment for our young hero. And so the lone wanderer ventures out into the capital wasteland in search of their father, a quest that makes up the main bulk of Fallout 3's story. On their travels through the wasteland, the wanderer travels to a variety of different settlements. Chief among them, the town of Megaton, named for an unexploded nuclear bomb buried in the foundations of the city, the remnants of Washington DC, which houses the Galaxy News radio station, and the toppest of toplads, Three Dog. and a giant battleship that's been rechristened Rivet City. While chatting with Colin Moriarty, one of the inhabitants of Megaton, the Lone Wanderer discovers a great deal more about their parents'history, namely that they weren't actually born in Vault 101, which is actually a double shock as we also discover that 101 was designed never to be opened as part of those sinister social experiments I mentioned earlier. Anyway, as they continue to explore the Wastes, the Wanderer eventually meets a scientist called Dr. Madison Lee, who worked alongside their father. While chatting to Dr. Lee, we learn that James, the Wanderer's father, was once involved in something known as Project Purity, more on that in just a second, but had to take refuge in Vault 101 in the wake of his partner's death during childbirth. On top of all these meaty revelations, the Lone Wanderer gets embroiled in the power struggle between the two heavyweight factions in the wasteland, the corrupt bureaucratic bastards at the Enclave led by President Henry Eden, whose shock twist is actually an AI, and a splinter group of the Brotherhood of Steel led by the charismatic Elder Owen Lyons. And at the centre of these two warring factions is the aforementioned Project Purity, a giant water processing plant that helps feed a clean water supply to the wider DC area. While you can ally yourself with either faction, along with a whole host of other oddballs and eccentrics across the Capital Wasteland, you're largely pushed towards joining the Brotherhood after you learn that the Lone Wanderer's father worked with them in the past. All of this eventually leads the lone Wanderer into taking up their father's mission, by seeking out a GECK in order to reignite Project Purity. Amidst helping out with the project, the Wanderer actually tracks down their father to another vault, 112 to be precise, where they have to free him from some bizarre virtual reality nightmare. And with James and the Wanderer reunited, they team up with the good Dr. Lee to resume work on the gestating project. The Enclave has different ideas though, and an ambush led by Henry Eden's right hand man, Colonel Autumn Augustus results in James'death, when he sacrifices himself to keep the project out of the bureaucrats'hands. The Wanderer eventually hunts down a GECK in Vault 87 with the aid of the Brotherhood of Steel and a top super mutant lad called Forks, if you choose to befriend him, that is. But it's all for naught, as they're captured by the Enclave when they leave the Vault. And this all leads us towards the bombastic conclusion of Fallout 3. You see, after they break free from the shackles of the Enclave, After learning about their dastardly plan to pollute the water supply with a modified anti-mutation variant of the FEV, no less, the Wanderer is thrown into a full-scale assault against the Enclave. Joining them in this daring attack is the Brotherhood's poster boy, a big iron giant by the name of Liberty Prime. Yeah, cause nothing hits harder than democracy. And a giant killer robot. This all leads to a final confrontation with Colonel Augustus, who you can either kill or convince to f*** off, and with the Colonel out the way, the route is clearer to save Project Purity. Or not, the fate of the wasteland is in your hands, you do what you please. As the control centre for the project is in the middle of a highly irradiated area, turning it on will kill whoever does so, which leads to yet more life or death decision making. Except that is in the Broken Steel DLC, which added the option to send the Brotherhood's Sarah Lyons, or your radiation-immune buddy Forks, to switch the machine on and save the Capital Wasteland. And if you opt for this ending, the Lone Wanderer wakes up two weeks later to witness how the consequences, good or bad, play out across the wastelands. And it's a good thing that they're still alive, as Fallout 3 had a healthy dose of story DLC expansions in the wake of its release. Alongside Broken Steel, there were a total of five expansions for Fallout 3, which expanded the story in a number of different directions, literally. The first took the lone wanderer to Anchorage, Alaska, albeit via virtual reality, for a military simulation of the pivotal moment in Fallout's history where the US took back control of their northernmost territory from the Chinese. Next up, there's The Pit, which saw the wanderer travel to the remains of Pittsburgh, which has become overrun by raiders and slavers alike. Then there's the meaty Broken Steel expansion, which as I've already mentioned, altered the ending, raised the game's level cap to 30, and sees the Wanderer root out the remaining members of the Enclave after Liberty Prime is destroyed. The fourth expansion, Point Lookout, takes the Wanderer to the state park of the same name in Maryland, where they have to settle a feud between an irradiated ghoul and a giant talking brain. And if that doesn't sound bonkers enough, Fallout 3 is rounded out with a trip to the mothership Zeta, a UFO that actually started out life as an easter egg in both the original Fallout and Fallout 3. And with that, we are done. in the capital wasteland. Fallout New Vegas is next up on the timeline, taking us back west to the Mojave Desert and the glowing city of New Vegas, the post-apocalyptic overhaul to the City of Sin. The year is 2281, and unlike the irradiated wastelands we've already visited, New Vegas is a thriving city, complete with running water and electricity, courtesy of the nearby Hoover Dam. And all of this is because of our good old mate, Mr. House, aka Robert House. Yep, the same pre-war Robert House who founded RobCo over 200 years ago. He's still knocking about as a result of his defence system shooting down most of the nukes heading for Vegas, and the judicious use of a stasis chamber located within his base of operations in the Lucky 38 casino. And it's from here that he's poured his extensive resources into keeping New Vegas alive and kicking. But his dominion over the city is under threat from a whole host of different factions, all vying for control of New Vegas. For starters, there's our old friends the New California Republic, who have expanded from their base in Shady Sands to build its empire across the west. The NCR is looking to expand into the Mojave and annex the currently independent New Vegas. However their resources are divided, with much of their attention put towards combating Kaisar's Legion. the antithesis of the NCR, which is an extremist faction that has styled itself on the ancient Roman Empire. Their end goal is basically to wipe out the NCR and enact a military dictatorship over the city of New Vegas, so quite different then. And with both of these major factions vying for power, their primary target becomes the Hoover Dam, which basically controls New Vegas. While the game takes place in 2281, Kaisar's Legion made an unsuccessful attempt at taking control of the Hoover Dam in 2277, a conflict that went down in the history books as the first battle of the Hoover Dam. Anyway, into this chaotic mix falls the Courier, the main protagonist of Fallout New Vegas, who, well, starts off the game with a bullet to the brain. The bullet in question is fired by the dapper gangster Benny. voiced by the late Matthew Perry in an opening sequence that sees the Courier robbed of his quarry, the Platinum Chip, and dumped in a shallow grave. Naturally, the story doesn't end there, or else New Vegas would be a very short game. Rescued by a robot called Securiton Victor, and then nursed back to health by a lovable old lad by the name of Doc Mitchell, the Courier is all patched up and unleashed on the Mojave Desert. And from here, the main quest of Fallout New Vegas kicks in, and at its core, it's relatively simple. Locate and kill Benny, and retrieve the Platinum Chip. While the Courier's quest for revenge against Benny might be simple on the surface, it unravels into something a lot more complicated. For starters, Benny is looking to use the Platinum Chip to take New Vegas for himself, right from under the watchful eye of his boss, Mr. House. You see, the Platinum Chip, a pre-war invention, contained an all-important upgrade program that was originally designed to help protect Vegas, but in the wrong hands could completely change the balance of power in the city. And this is where the storytelling of Fallout New Vegas falls into the hands of the player. as there are four different endings available depending on what factions you pledge your allegiance to. It all boils down to a great big bloody battle for the Hoover Dam, though, with the Courier on the attacking side as part of Kaisar's Legion, on the defence with the NCR, as part of a sneaky-beaky infiltration with Mr House, or lastly by taking Benny's mission and claiming New Vegas as an independent territory. Depending on your actions, you get a neat little slideshow of your impacts across New Vegas and the Mojave Desert. But the story of New Vegas doesn't end there, as much like Fallout 3 before it, there was a healthy dose of post-release story content. The story of New Vegas continued across four meaty story DLCs, which saw the Courier roped into a variety of different misadventures. The first, Dead Money, whisked the Courier off on a heist within the Sierra Madre Casino on the behalf of a crazed member of the Brotherhood of Steel, while the second, Honest Heart, saw the Courier travel to Utah's Zion National Park. and get caught up in a tribal war between two different factions. The leader of one of these factions is one Joshua Graham, aka the burned man, who is set on fire and thrown into the Grand Canyon by Kaisar due to his failure to take the Hoover Dam during the first battle. Anyway, he's now a raving mad post-apocalyptic mormon. The third expansion is titled Old World Blues, and sees the courier kidnapped and sent to the big MT research facility to take part in a series of heinous scientific experiments, by the suspended brains of a group of pre-war scientists. While the fourth expansion, titled Lonesome Road, concludes the story of the Courier by taking them to the extremely hostile region surrounding the Continental Divide. Here they become embroiled in the story of Ulysses, a former Courier himself. whose decision to not ferry the Platinum Chip to Mr House led to the events that came to be in the main campaign of New Vegas. Long story short, Ulysses has a bit of a bee in his bonnet about the Courier and lures our hero to the Divide to enact revenge on them. And naturally, this doesn't end well for Ulysses, who despite being one of the strongest characters in the entirety of the Fallout franchise, finally gets his comeuppance, which brings the story of New Vegas and the Courier to an end. Right, it's finally time to catch back up with our old friend the Soul Survivor, who we last saw over two centuries ago when they were cryogenically frozen within Vault 111. It's not a happy reunion for our nuclear family though, as at some point before the Soul Survivor is awoken from their cryogenic slumber, they witness the murder of their spouse and the kidnap of tiny little Sean to boot. And so the main quest of Fallout 4 kicks off, which in a similar vein to Fallout 3 is all about the rescue of a family member. Couple this with a Fallout TV show which we'll get to shortly and we're starting to see something of a trope develop. Anyway, the Sole Survivor ventures off into the Commonwealth, the irradiated wastes of the city of Boston and its surroundings, and experiences something of a Fallout greatest hits all within the first hour of the game. Befriend a new canine companion? Check. Meet a new faction? Check. Don some power armour and fight a deathclaw? Double check. After this breathless intro, the Sole Survivor makes their way to Diamond City. a township located within the remains of Fenway Park, the old baseball stadium of the Boston Red Sox. And it's here that they start to hear whisperings of Fallout 4's Big Bad. No, not the lad who kidnapped Sean, but a secretive organisation that goes by the name of the Institute. The rumours that surround the Institute talk about a terrorist group of sorts who go around the Commonwealth kidnapping ordinary folk and replacing them with synths, basically human-like synthetic robots. The Sole Survivor gets caught up in the machinations of the Institute when they finally locate their son's kidnapper, a lad called Conrad Kellogg. Kellogg is a means to an end though as he reveals that Shaun is now in the possession of the Institute, which means that the Sole Survivor will have to venture into the belly of the beast. Only that's easier said than done as the Sole Survivor soon finds out. They discover that the only way into the Institute is via teleportation, and in order to build a working teleporter they have to ally themselves with one of the game's three anti-institute factions. For starters there's the Minutemen, the faction that the Soul Survivor meets in that mad intro, and who are styled after American Revolutionary War soldiers. Then there's the iconic Brotherhood of Steel, who have a giant f**k off airship hovering around the skies of the Commonwealth. And lastly there's the Railroad, a group who are based on the Underground Railroad, who seek to save and rehabilitate synths from the Institute. Naturally, you can ally yourself with any one of them en route to entering the Institute, which all leads you to the shock revelation of who the game's big bad actually is. Sean. Yep, your own kid is all grown up, 60 to be precise, and is the big bastard at the centre of the Institute's evil shenanigans, which confirms that the sole survivor overslept by a whopping 60 years in their cryogenic pod. Sean, who now confusingly goes by the name Father, reveals that he was originally kidnapped so that his precious pre-war DNA could be used to experiment on with the synths. And so we reach that moment in a Fallout game where the story choices fall back onto the player. And this one's a bit out there. Sean invites the sole survivor to become his successor after his death, and if you accept this enticing offer, your son reveals to you that he's not long for this world as he has cancer. But if you refuse Sean's offer... things get a little bit more explodey. You see, the Soul Survivor hightails it back to their faction of choice to devise a plan to destroy the Institute, which eventually leads them to blowing up their son's evil organisation by detonating a nuclear reactor, which brings the main campaign of Fallout 4 to a close. But wait, there is of course a whole host of story DLCs still to get through in the Commonwealth. Yep, the story of the Soul Survivor continues in four more story expansions. with the first Automatron introducing the cast of Robot Wars to the Commonwealth. Not sure if that show made it across to the States, but I'm going to stick with the reference. Anyway, the Soul Survivor gets caught up in a war with the Mechanist, a supervillain of sorts that looks like a kid's drawing of a robot, which, to be fair, turns out to be exactly the case. Next up, we've got Far Harbor, not sure of my local pronunciation, but I thought I'd give it a go, which sees the Soul Survivor travel north to a spooky island community with a fair few secrets. They're sent there on a mission to find a missing person by the name of Kasumi, an investigation that naturally unravels into something far more sinister. Then there's the Vault-Tec workshop, which saw the sole survivor discover Vault 88, an unfinished nuclear bunker. While this expansion predominantly offered players the chance to build their own vault, it did offer a narrative throughline of sorts, with the Soul Survivor effectively becoming the overseer of Vault 88. And lastly there's the absolutely bonkers Nuka World, which, well, sounds exactly like it is. Here the Soul Survivor secures a lucky ticket to the hottest amusement park on the eastern seaboard, only it's completely overrun by raiders and nightmarish creatures. It's always the way. The Sole Survivor explores the ruins of Nuka World and eventually defeats the Head Raider, giving them the chance to run their own theme park. What a way to round out Fallout 4. All of which finally brings us to the main events of the Fallout TV show, which takes us back to the Wastes of California in the year 2296. Yep, the Fallout teleshow takes place at the furthest reaches of our timeline, and expands on the lore and history of the California region. At the heart of the show is Vault 33, which houses a seemingly idyllic society who are waiting for their chance to head to the surface and re-civilise the planet. Little do they know that they've missed that boat by a long shot. Anyway, Vault 33 is part of a trio of neighbouring vaults, the others being 31 and 32. which work in tandem to keep their populations going. Into this mix, we meet our plucky young hero, Lucy McClane, her brother Norm, and her father Hank, who also happens to be the overseer of Vault 33. Their lives are pretty peachy until a group of murderous raiders ambush them from within Vault 32 and kidnap Lucy's father Hank, which naturally kick-starts the game's main campaign, I mean show's core plotline, as Lucy pursues her father's kidnappers above ground. Up on the surface, we catch up with what is left of Cooper Howard, and he's still going, which is a bit of a surprise as he's well over 200 years old by this point. He's seen better days, though, as he has been poisoned by radiation to the point of becoming what's known in the Fallout universe as a ghoul. Life is imitating Art in the case of Coop, who now ventures around the wastelands making his living as a gunslinging bounty hunter. He gets thrust into the plot of the show due to a bounty that he's after, namely an Enclave defector who has a critical piece of technology on his person. The Brotherhood of Steel is also after the Enclave scientist, and one of their young new recruits, a lad by the name of Maximus, finds himself on a mission to help secure the bounty as well. And so the telly show falls into a plot that is largely about people hunting MacGuffins. Well, the simple version of this synopsis is that, at least. But naturally, there is far more than that going on in the show's balmy wastelands. As the show progresses, the worlds of the Ghoul, Lucy, and Maximus come crashing together, with all three chasing after the Enclave scientist, who by this point is just a severed head with the tech embedded in his neck. Yeah. the show leans hard into Fallout's grim violence. As Lucy and Maximus team up, they eventually discover the fate of Shady Sands, which was destroyed via a nuclear blast back in 2277. Maximus learned this first hand however, as Shady Sands was his hometown, until, well, it became a giant crater in the dust. While looking for medical supplies, the pair stumble onto Vault 4, which they learn housed a team of scientists that have, well, they've done some pretty horrifying experiments to say the least. The Vault is now home to many of the surface refugees from the Shady Sands Blast Zone, good honest folk just trying to live their lives peacefully. Meanwhile, Lucy's brother Norm is discovering the equally screwed up history of Vaults 31-33 in the wake of the Raider attack. As he investigates the ruins of Vault 32, he eventually uncovers the true conspiracy behind the trio of neighbouring Vaults. It turns out that Vault 31 is actually home to the cryogenically frozen management employees of Vault-Tec, and the mission behind the trio of Vaults is to play out Vault-Tec's idealised version of a civilised future post-Great War. And this all leads to the major revelation at the heart of the Fallout show, Hank McLean is a pre-war Vault-Tec employee, who entered Vault 33 after waking from his cryogenic slumber. It turns out that his wife discovered a clue to the truth behind the three neighbouring vaults and this led her to leave Vault 33 with Lucy and Norm. They eventually wound up at Shady Sands and when Hank pursued them there, he was found he was the one responsible for destroying the city when his wife refused to come home with him. Lucy learns all of this when she finally finds her father at the New California Republic base at Griffith Observatory. After a big climactic battle between the NCR and the Brotherhood of Steel, the NCR are able to get their hands on the Enclave Defector's piece of tech, which turns out to be a cold fusion device, a source of unlimited power. It's useless without a Vault-Tec Parskey though, until Hank is coerced into giving his over, which results in LA finally getting its power supply back on. And the telly show ends with Hank escaping into the wastelands donned in power suit armour, Lucy and the Ghoul teaming up to get revenge on Vault-Tec, and in its final, final shot, we see Hank coming across the city of New Vegas, which looks like it has now fallen into ruins. I guess we'll just have to wait for the second season to find out what exactly has happened canonically to Mr House's vibrant city. And that, friends, is the Fallout timeline fully explained. I really hope you enjoyed this video, and if you like these kinds of gaming timelines, make sure to check some of our others up on the channel, like Assassin's Creed, Mortal Kombat and Uncharted. Thanks a lot for watching guys, I'll see you next time.

Not to mention a handful of games that are now considered non-canon and have mostly been thrown out of the timeline. I'll explain that in more detail a little later on. And with the TV show extending the timeline out further into the future, there's a lot to get through, so I better get straight into it.

Naturally, there will be spoilers for the TV show as well, which I'll call out when I get to them, so consider this your warning. Hey, my name's Adam, and there is no better time than now to dive into the lore of Fallout. So join me as I break down and explain the franchise's nutty timeline. Our timeline kicks off in the mid-20th century, in a post-World War II world that looks very much like our own. But that is all about to change.

You see, the world of Fallout diverges from our own in the period after World War II, at some point between 1945 to 1961, and imagines a technologically advanced world steeped in the design aesthetics of the 1950s, hence all the retro-futuristic vibes. Despite this, our own history and Fallout share a few key moments, namely the US entering the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s amid a heightening of tensions in the Cold War. But in 1969 the similarities come to an abrupt end, and the Fallout franchise branches off in its own unique direction.

Yep, with the threat of communism looming large in Fallout's America, the US makes the radical decision to reshape itself from 50 states into 13 commonwealths. While this plan kinda works in that none of the 13 commonwealths become communist, it does turn the country into a volatile cesspit of political strife, paranoia and unrest. But the hostile intensity of this new political environment coupled with the ever-rising temperature of the Cold War, leads the US to make huge technological advancements in the fields of AI and robotics.

Harnessing the atomic power that brought WWII to a close brings about inventions that used to be consigned to the realm of science fiction. And at the forefront of these technological leaps is one Robert House, who is born in the year 2020. House grows up to become a leader in the robotics space and he eventually sets up a company by the name of Robco. who become quite instrumental to the world of Fallout. Among their most notable creations are the Protectrons, the Sentry Bots, Fallout 3's Liberty Prime, and the iPhone of the Fallout world, the wrist-mounted Pip-Boy.

But despite all these nifty bits of tech, the threat of nuclear war still looms large over the world of Fallout. And by April 2052, things have gotten so dire on the global scene that a new war takes hold of the world, the Resource War. With fossil fuels running on empty, the superpowers of the world start to fight over the limited reserves that they have left. Europe declares war on the Middle East in a bid to lay claim to the region's bountiful supply, while in the Western Hemisphere, the US invades Mexico, annexes Canada, and has to defend its Alaskan territory from the armies of China.

And this resource war naturally sets off the spark that leads to the nukes dropping. But I'm getting ever so slightly ahead of myself. You see, before we get to the fateful day of nuclear devastation, we have to talk about Fallout's iconic vaults. The year is now 2054, and international tensions are sky high.

Reading the room, the US government and a secretive organisation known as the Enclave commissions Vault-Tec and Robco to start work on a little something known as Project Safehouse. This involves building 122 public vaults across America, with each vault capable of housing 1,000 US citizens from a potential nuclear cataclysm. Well, that's the official story anyway.

The reality is far more bizarre, as each vault was the basis for a completely different social experiment, some of which I'll dig into as we make our way through this weird and wonderful timeline. Many of these vaults open in the years preceding the Great War of 2077, most notably Vault 76, which opens on the 300th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Across the nation, local citizens are picked as the lucky, or unlucky depending on the vault in question, future population.

Naturally, Vault-Tec is quite a prominent enterprise at this point of time, to the point where they're basically the biggest company in the US. And in the Fallout TV show, we get a closer look at the inner workings of the company through the eyes of Cooper Howard, played by Walton Goggins. If you haven't yet seen the show, consider this your spoiler warning as I'm about to get into some of the major story beats.

Skip ahead about a minute to get back on track with the games, okay? Right, so Coop is a big time Hollywood star who's basically the John Wayne or Clint Eastwood of the Fallout timeline. His wife Barb, however, is one of Vault-Tec's leading executives, who's pretty much in charge of the aforementioned Project Safehouse, which is all but up and running by the time of the pre-war sections of the teleshow.

Anyway, Barb encourages her Hollywood husband to help advertise the Vaults to the American masses, with one photoshoot in particular inspiring the company's future mascot, Vault Boy, a picture-perfect blonde lad with a gleaming smile and a big thumbs up. Thanks, Coop. But as Coop learns more about Vault-Tec, he becomes disillusioned with the company's message, and eventually meets with a radical group seeking to undermine the Megacorp.

And so Coop starts spying on his wife. which leads to him overhearing a handful of major revelations. In a meeting with some of the US's biggest players, including Rob Coe's Robert House, among others, he learns the horrifying truth behind the Vaults and their bizarre social experiments.

Not only that, but he learns that Vault-Tec even intend to drop the bomb themselves to guarantee their business model, the Twisted Bastards. Anyway, all of this eventually leads us to the fateful date of October 23rd, 2077, the day when the bombs fell. With the resource war reaching a fever pitch, the superpowers of the world started launching nukes at each other, and in the space of two short hours pretty much destroyed the entire world. Naturally, the vast majority of the planet's population straight up died.

But the aftermath of the fallout brought about just as much devastation, as a never-ending storm of black rain lashed the nuclear wastelands and poisoned the world with high levels of radiation, which in turn killed scores of old species and created, um, new ones to replace them. And this brings our grim history lesson to an end, as we reach the prologue of Fallout 4, which takes place on the day that the world ended. Yeah, before you've even got time to finish your morning coffee, a Vault-Tec representative turns up at your door and asks you, the player character, aka the sole survivor, a few personal questions about your future.

Good thing too is a few short minutes later the first nukes start to fall on the US, and you, your spouse and your infant son Sean are whisked off to the local vault, number 111. And just in the nick of time as well as a nuclear blast eviscerates the horizon as you descend into the underground vault. The sole survivor and his family don the iconic blue and yellow vault suits and settle in for a long peaceful sleep in a cryogenic chamber. We'll catch up on their slumber in a good 200 odd years, But in the meantime, we're heading west to LA for even more nuclear devastation. Yep, happening concurrently to the blast back in Boston is the total nuclear obliteration of Los Angeles, as seen in the prologue of the Fallout TV show.

Here we catch up again with Cooper Howard, who's fallen from the heights of his Hollywood career to become, well, a glorified children's entertainer. He's performing at a birthday party at a swanky LA villa overlooking the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. Said skyscrapers are not long for this world, though, as the horizon is inevitably lit up by the harrowing sights of mushroom clouds.

With the sky falling down on the City of Angels, Coop scoops his young daughter up onto his horse in an ill-fated attempt to escape the nuclear devastation. We'll catch back up with Coop later on in the timeline, but before that, let's get our first taste of the irradiated wastelands. The first vault to open, that we know about at least, is Vault 76, which opens 25 years after the Great War, on Reclamation Day 2102. Situated in the Appalachians of West Virginia, Vault 76 is home to the best and brightest mines that the USA has to offer, which makes it ironic if you choose one as your intelligence, but that's a moot point.

Tasked with repopulating the wastelands of West Virginia, the clever little citizens of Vault 76 head on out into, well, a bit of a lifeless, lonely world. Well, at least that was the case when the multiplayer game originally launched. You see, non-player characters or NPCs didn't start populating the game until the Wastelanders DLC launched, but I'm getting ahead of myself again. Anyway, the player character is given a secret mission by the Vault Overseer, a mission to secure a metric f*** ton of nuclear weaponry. Only there's a bit of a problem in the Appalachians.

In the 25 or so years since nuclear devastation, a plague of beasts known as the Scorched have taken control of the lands. Mind controlled by some giant bee-like Scorched beast, the Scorched have been able to take Scorched present quite the obstacle to repopulating the wastelands. And so the bulk of Fallout 76's narrative sees the player character tracking down a way to destroy the Scorched.

And the answer, as we all know, is to nuke them. On route to this endgame, the player character eventually discovers that the Scorched might actually have been created in a lab, but despite this revelation, the plan is still to nuke the ever living crap out of them. And after they kill the Scorched Beast Queen thing, the connection to the rest of the Scorched breaks. Only there'll be treasure in them hills, bub! Or so the rumours go in the first DLC expansion for Fallout 76 called Wastelanders.

Yep, as I mentioned before, with the threat of the Scorched extinguished, people start to return to the area in dribs and drabs, and two major factions begin to emerge out of the rabble. The Settlers and the Raiders. Rumours of a vast treasure lead the player character to discover the existence of Vault 79, which basically houses the entire gold reserves of the US in one tiny living space. Anyway, the player chooses their allegiance to either the settlers or the raiders, and heads off to raid Vault 79. And depending on your decision making, you can choose to spread the wealth any number of ways, most of which will just break the delicate balance of power in the area between the two factions.

Naturally, as an ever-expanding multiplayer game, the story is constantly evolving, but there are a few key beats still to mention. The first is the introduction of a Fallout franchise staple, the Brotherhood of Steel. This highly militaristic faction is a post-war creation, built up out of the remnants of the US Army with the core goal of securing and preserving technologically advanced pre-war weaponry and kit, and they're often seen sporting that great big hulking tank-like power armour.

Anyway, they set up their base of operations in West Virginia in the old Atlas Observatory, which they rechristened Fort Atlas as that has presumably got more of an army vibe to it. As the player character, you can ally yourself with the Brotherhood in a bid to help keep the Wastelanders of the Appalachian safe, and or help the Brotherhood of Steel double down on their mission to secure pre-war weaponry. And lastly for Fallout 76 are the Expeditions, which takes the player character away from West Virginia to visit the ruins of Pittsburgh, affectionately known as The Pit, and Atlantic City.

From the wastelands of West Virginia, we travel west to the remnants of California in the year 2161 for the events of the very first Fallout game. Here we witness the story of the Vault Dweller, a citizen of the ill-fated Vault 13 which has got a problem, a big one. An all-important microchip that controls their water processing unit has given up the ghost, and it's the Vault Dweller's job to venture out into the wasteland to locate a new one.

This mission takes the Vault Dweller to the ruins of the nearby Vault 15. And then onwards to Vault 12, which is located underneath a city known as Necropolis, which is populated by ghouls, humans who've become hideously deformed by nuclear radiation. And it's here, underneath this city of the walking dead, that the Vault Dweller finds a replacement chip to solve Vault 13's water problem. One of the first major settlements that the Vault Dweller visits is a little place by the name of Shady Sands, which will become one of the most important townships in the whole series.

For now, it's a humble little place that's managed to establish itself as a thriving little community. We'll catch up with this place a few times on the timeline, but let's just say its future is not looking bright. Only, there's a lurking threat in the wastelands of California, a contingent of mutants that have proliferated throughout the world known as super mutants.

The Vault Dweller traces these reports back to a quasi-religious movement called the Children of the Cathedral, which is headed up by a super mutant called the Master. Long story short, the Vault Dweller is tasked by the Overseer of Vault 13 with eradicating the super mutants. Which leads him to encountering a conspiracy within the cathedral. You see, it turns out that the master is capturing humans and turning them into super mutants using something known as the Forced Evolutionary Virus, or FEV, which is contained within a series of vats that glow with an unhealthy green glow, which just screams danger to me. Anyway, as Fallout is a classical RPG, you can see about this mission in a handful of different ways.

with the ultimate end goal of destroying the vats of green FEV goop and neutralising the super mutant threat. And for all the Vault Dweller's efforts, you'd think they'd be cheered back into Vault 13 as a hero, right? Wrong.

The Overseer flat out denies the Vault Dweller entry back into their home on the grounds that he's worried that your actions will inspire future generations to leave the Vault and undermine all the hard work of keeping it going strong. And so Fallout comes to an end with the Vault Dweller exiled back into the wastelands. All of which brings us to the year 2197, the year in which Fallout Tactics Brotherhood of Steel takes place. And this is where the timeline gets a little funky, as while... Tactics isn't canon, some elements of the story are canon.

Let me explain. The main gist of Tactics is that it vastly expands the story behind the Brotherhood of Steel, specifically one of the faction's chapters in the Midwest of America. The game sees you join the Brotherhood as an initiate, and help them move across the country from Chicago down to Colorado. Bethesda have outright said that the game isn't a part of the larger franchise's canon, but they have included a few references to the Brotherhood's operations in the Midwest since they took over the series.

And all of this is further confused by another game, helpfully called Fallout Brotherhood of Steel, which launched on consoles in 2004 and is also considered totally non-canon. In short, we can largely ignore both of these games in the grand scheme of things. After our non-canonical detour, we're back on the west coast in the year 2241, for the events of Fallout 2. Here we learn what became of the Vault Dweller after he was exiled in the first game.

He eventually settles in a village called Arroyo, where he has a family and 80 odd years down the line we catch up with one of his descendants, who goes by the grandiose name of The Chosen One. You were The Chosen One! Much like their ancestor, The Chosen One is tasked with saving their community. In this case, Arroyo.

which is suffering from the effects of a devastating drought. And so the Chosen One is sent out into the world to find something that is known as the Garden of Eden kit, or GECK for short, a terraforming kit that is capable of creating life out of… well, nothing. Although as the advert says, results may vary.

Anyway, the Chosen One ventures out in search of the GECK and eventually comes across the remains of Vault 13, which has now become infested with Deathclaws, which are vicious dinosaur-like beasts, Just a quick word on our old pals at Shady Sands, which the Chosen One can visit in Fallout 2. Not content with being just a thriving community, Shady Sands has become the home and capital of one of Fallout's biggest factions, an organisation known as the New California Republic, or NCR for short. In Fallout terms, they are basically the nearest thing to an actual functioning community. Remember the NCR, they'll become very important further down the line. Upon returning home to report on their findings, the Chosen One discovers that Arroyo has been taken over by an organisation called the Enclave, which is basically made up of what's left of the US government.

Sitting on a cache of sophisticated technology and weaponry, the Enclave basically tries to rule the US with an iron fist, so naturally they need taken down a peg or two. And so that becomes the Chosen One's core mission, take down the Enclave and save the poor citizens of Arroyo. They set about this by charting a course on a giant freight ship to the Enclave's base of operations.

an offshore oil rig where they discover that both the residents of Arroyo and Vault 13 are being held captive. To make matters worse, the Enclave have evolved the nasty FEV from the original game into an airborne virus, which will help them maintain their control over the local populations. The Chosen One naturally throws a spanner into the works, though, saves the Arroyo and Vault 13 hostages, and kills the head of the Enclave, who's also the President of the US to boot. And with this happy ending, the combined forces of Vault 13 and Arroyo create a prosperous community together with the aid of a newly found GECK. Just don't mention those devastating deathclaws.

Next up, we're heading back east to Vault 101, the home of the Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3, whose early life we see play out in the prologue of that game. Kicking off in 2258, Fallout 3's prologue starts right at the very beginning of the Lone Wanderer's life, as they're brought into the world and into the arms of their father, voiced by Liam Neeson and his wonderful Irish purr. And across the next 16 years, we see the Wanderer grow up. toddling around their playpen, having their 10th birthday and sitting their goat exams as a teenager. Life seems pretty idyllic in Vault 101. Well, as idyllic as you can get for a life underground in a grim grey vault.

Naturally, that piece doesn't last. The shit hits the fan in Vault 101 as the lone Wanderer turns 19 in the year 2277, and this kickstarts the main plot of Fallout 3. Yep, things go sideways for the Wanderer when they're awoken to be told that their father has left the Vault, something that has never happened before in Vault 101. Although that'll prove to be a fib, I'll explain shortly. With the Overseer and his men going a little crazy in the circumstances, The lone wanderer is forced to flee for their safety and into the surrounding capital wasteland, the irradiated remains of the land surrounding Washington, D.C. Yeah, it's a real out-of-the-frying pan in... into the fire moment for our young hero. And so the lone wanderer ventures out into the capital wasteland in search of their father, a quest that makes up the main bulk of Fallout 3's story.

On their travels through the wasteland, the wanderer travels to a variety of different settlements. Chief among them, the town of Megaton, named for an unexploded nuclear bomb buried in the foundations of the city, the remnants of Washington DC, which houses the Galaxy News radio station, and the toppest of toplads, Three Dog. and a giant battleship that's been rechristened Rivet City.

While chatting with Colin Moriarty, one of the inhabitants of Megaton, the Lone Wanderer discovers a great deal more about their parents'history, namely that they weren't actually born in Vault 101, which is actually a double shock as we also discover that 101 was designed never to be opened as part of those sinister social experiments I mentioned earlier. Anyway, as they continue to explore the Wastes, the Wanderer eventually meets a scientist called Dr. Madison Lee, who worked alongside their father. While chatting to Dr. Lee, we learn that James, the Wanderer's father, was once involved in something known as Project Purity, more on that in just a second, but had to take refuge in Vault 101 in the wake of his partner's death during childbirth. On top of all these meaty revelations, the Lone Wanderer gets embroiled in the power struggle between the two heavyweight factions in the wasteland, the corrupt bureaucratic bastards at the Enclave led by President Henry Eden, whose shock twist is actually an AI, and a splinter group of the Brotherhood of Steel led by the charismatic Elder Owen Lyons.

And at the centre of these two warring factions is the aforementioned Project Purity, a giant water processing plant that helps feed a clean water supply to the wider DC area. While you can ally yourself with either faction, along with a whole host of other oddballs and eccentrics across the Capital Wasteland, you're largely pushed towards joining the Brotherhood after you learn that the Lone Wanderer's father worked with them in the past. All of this eventually leads the lone Wanderer into taking up their father's mission, by seeking out a GECK in order to reignite Project Purity. Amidst helping out with the project, the Wanderer actually tracks down their father to another vault, 112 to be precise, where they have to free him from some bizarre virtual reality nightmare.

And with James and the Wanderer reunited, they team up with the good Dr. Lee to resume work on the gestating project. The Enclave has different ideas though, and an ambush led by Henry Eden's right hand man, Colonel Autumn Augustus results in James'death, when he sacrifices himself to keep the project out of the bureaucrats'hands. The Wanderer eventually hunts down a GECK in Vault 87 with the aid of the Brotherhood of Steel and a top super mutant lad called Forks, if you choose to befriend him, that is.

But it's all for naught, as they're captured by the Enclave when they leave the Vault. And this all leads us towards the bombastic conclusion of Fallout 3. You see, after they break free from the shackles of the Enclave, After learning about their dastardly plan to pollute the water supply with a modified anti-mutation variant of the FEV, no less, the Wanderer is thrown into a full-scale assault against the Enclave. Joining them in this daring attack is the Brotherhood's poster boy, a big iron giant by the name of Liberty Prime.

Yeah, cause nothing hits harder than democracy. And a giant killer robot. This all leads to a final confrontation with Colonel Augustus, who you can either kill or convince to f*** off, and with the Colonel out the way, the route is clearer to save Project Purity.

Or not, the fate of the wasteland is in your hands, you do what you please. As the control centre for the project is in the middle of a highly irradiated area, turning it on will kill whoever does so, which leads to yet more life or death decision making. Except that is in the Broken Steel DLC, which added the option to send the Brotherhood's Sarah Lyons, or your radiation-immune buddy Forks, to switch the machine on and save the Capital Wasteland. And if you opt for this ending, the Lone Wanderer wakes up two weeks later to witness how the consequences, good or bad, play out across the wastelands.

And it's a good thing that they're still alive, as Fallout 3 had a healthy dose of story DLC expansions in the wake of its release. Alongside Broken Steel, there were a total of five expansions for Fallout 3, which expanded the story in a number of different directions, literally. The first took the lone wanderer to Anchorage, Alaska, albeit via virtual reality, for a military simulation of the pivotal moment in Fallout's history where the US took back control of their northernmost territory from the Chinese.

Next up, there's The Pit, which saw the wanderer travel to the remains of Pittsburgh, which has become overrun by raiders and slavers alike. Then there's the meaty Broken Steel expansion, which as I've already mentioned, altered the ending, raised the game's level cap to 30, and sees the Wanderer root out the remaining members of the Enclave after Liberty Prime is destroyed. The fourth expansion, Point Lookout, takes the Wanderer to the state park of the same name in Maryland, where they have to settle a feud between an irradiated ghoul and a giant talking brain.

And if that doesn't sound bonkers enough, Fallout 3 is rounded out with a trip to the mothership Zeta, a UFO that actually started out life as an easter egg in both the original Fallout and Fallout 3. And with that, we are done. in the capital wasteland. Fallout New Vegas is next up on the timeline, taking us back west to the Mojave Desert and the glowing city of New Vegas, the post-apocalyptic overhaul to the City of Sin. The year is 2281, and unlike the irradiated wastelands we've already visited, New Vegas is a thriving city, complete with running water and electricity, courtesy of the nearby Hoover Dam.

And all of this is because of our good old mate, Mr. House, aka Robert House. Yep, the same pre-war Robert House who founded RobCo over 200 years ago. He's still knocking about as a result of his defence system shooting down most of the nukes heading for Vegas, and the judicious use of a stasis chamber located within his base of operations in the Lucky 38 casino.

And it's from here that he's poured his extensive resources into keeping New Vegas alive and kicking. But his dominion over the city is under threat from a whole host of different factions, all vying for control of New Vegas. For starters, there's our old friends the New California Republic, who have expanded from their base in Shady Sands to build its empire across the west. The NCR is looking to expand into the Mojave and annex the currently independent New Vegas.

However their resources are divided, with much of their attention put towards combating Kaisar's Legion. the antithesis of the NCR, which is an extremist faction that has styled itself on the ancient Roman Empire. Their end goal is basically to wipe out the NCR and enact a military dictatorship over the city of New Vegas, so quite different then.

And with both of these major factions vying for power, their primary target becomes the Hoover Dam, which basically controls New Vegas. While the game takes place in 2281, Kaisar's Legion made an unsuccessful attempt at taking control of the Hoover Dam in 2277, a conflict that went down in the history books as the first battle of the Hoover Dam. Anyway, into this chaotic mix falls the Courier, the main protagonist of Fallout New Vegas, who, well, starts off the game with a bullet to the brain.

The bullet in question is fired by the dapper gangster Benny. voiced by the late Matthew Perry in an opening sequence that sees the Courier robbed of his quarry, the Platinum Chip, and dumped in a shallow grave. Naturally, the story doesn't end there, or else New Vegas would be a very short game. Rescued by a robot called Securiton Victor, and then nursed back to health by a lovable old lad by the name of Doc Mitchell, the Courier is all patched up and unleashed on the Mojave Desert.

And from here, the main quest of Fallout New Vegas kicks in, and at its core, it's relatively simple. Locate and kill Benny, and retrieve the Platinum Chip. While the Courier's quest for revenge against Benny might be simple on the surface, it unravels into something a lot more complicated.

For starters, Benny is looking to use the Platinum Chip to take New Vegas for himself, right from under the watchful eye of his boss, Mr. House. You see, the Platinum Chip, a pre-war invention, contained an all-important upgrade program that was originally designed to help protect Vegas, but in the wrong hands could completely change the balance of power in the city. And this is where the storytelling of Fallout New Vegas falls into the hands of the player.

as there are four different endings available depending on what factions you pledge your allegiance to. It all boils down to a great big bloody battle for the Hoover Dam, though, with the Courier on the attacking side as part of Kaisar's Legion, on the defence with the NCR, as part of a sneaky-beaky infiltration with Mr House, or lastly by taking Benny's mission and claiming New Vegas as an independent territory. Depending on your actions, you get a neat little slideshow of your impacts across New Vegas and the Mojave Desert.

But the story of New Vegas doesn't end there, as much like Fallout 3 before it, there was a healthy dose of post-release story content. The story of New Vegas continued across four meaty story DLCs, which saw the Courier roped into a variety of different misadventures. The first, Dead Money, whisked the Courier off on a heist within the Sierra Madre Casino on the behalf of a crazed member of the Brotherhood of Steel, while the second, Honest Heart, saw the Courier travel to Utah's Zion National Park.

and get caught up in a tribal war between two different factions. The leader of one of these factions is one Joshua Graham, aka the burned man, who is set on fire and thrown into the Grand Canyon by Kaisar due to his failure to take the Hoover Dam during the first battle. Anyway, he's now a raving mad post-apocalyptic mormon.

The third expansion is titled Old World Blues, and sees the courier kidnapped and sent to the big MT research facility to take part in a series of heinous scientific experiments, by the suspended brains of a group of pre-war scientists. While the fourth expansion, titled Lonesome Road, concludes the story of the Courier by taking them to the extremely hostile region surrounding the Continental Divide. Here they become embroiled in the story of Ulysses, a former Courier himself. whose decision to not ferry the Platinum Chip to Mr House led to the events that came to be in the main campaign of New Vegas. Long story short, Ulysses has a bit of a bee in his bonnet about the Courier and lures our hero to the Divide to enact revenge on them.

And naturally, this doesn't end well for Ulysses, who despite being one of the strongest characters in the entirety of the Fallout franchise, finally gets his comeuppance, which brings the story of New Vegas and the Courier to an end. Right, it's finally time to catch back up with our old friend the Soul Survivor, who we last saw over two centuries ago when they were cryogenically frozen within Vault 111. It's not a happy reunion for our nuclear family though, as at some point before the Soul Survivor is awoken from their cryogenic slumber, they witness the murder of their spouse and the kidnap of tiny little Sean to boot. And so the main quest of Fallout 4 kicks off, which in a similar vein to Fallout 3 is all about the rescue of a family member.

Couple this with a Fallout TV show which we'll get to shortly and we're starting to see something of a trope develop. Anyway, the Sole Survivor ventures off into the Commonwealth, the irradiated wastes of the city of Boston and its surroundings, and experiences something of a Fallout greatest hits all within the first hour of the game. Befriend a new canine companion? Check. Meet a new faction?

Check. Don some power armour and fight a deathclaw? Double check. After this breathless intro, the Sole Survivor makes their way to Diamond City. a township located within the remains of Fenway Park, the old baseball stadium of the Boston Red Sox.

And it's here that they start to hear whisperings of Fallout 4's Big Bad. No, not the lad who kidnapped Sean, but a secretive organisation that goes by the name of the Institute. The rumours that surround the Institute talk about a terrorist group of sorts who go around the Commonwealth kidnapping ordinary folk and replacing them with synths, basically human-like synthetic robots. The Sole Survivor gets caught up in the machinations of the Institute when they finally locate their son's kidnapper, a lad called Conrad Kellogg. Kellogg is a means to an end though as he reveals that Shaun is now in the possession of the Institute, which means that the Sole Survivor will have to venture into the belly of the beast.

Only that's easier said than done as the Sole Survivor soon finds out. They discover that the only way into the Institute is via teleportation, and in order to build a working teleporter they have to ally themselves with one of the game's three anti-institute factions. For starters there's the Minutemen, the faction that the Soul Survivor meets in that mad intro, and who are styled after American Revolutionary War soldiers.

Then there's the iconic Brotherhood of Steel, who have a giant f**k off airship hovering around the skies of the Commonwealth. And lastly there's the Railroad, a group who are based on the Underground Railroad, who seek to save and rehabilitate synths from the Institute. Naturally, you can ally yourself with any one of them en route to entering the Institute, which all leads you to the shock revelation of who the game's big bad actually is. Sean. Yep, your own kid is all grown up, 60 to be precise, and is the big bastard at the centre of the Institute's evil shenanigans, which confirms that the sole survivor overslept by a whopping 60 years in their cryogenic pod.

Sean, who now confusingly goes by the name Father, reveals that he was originally kidnapped so that his precious pre-war DNA could be used to experiment on with the synths. And so we reach that moment in a Fallout game where the story choices fall back onto the player. And this one's a bit out there.

Sean invites the sole survivor to become his successor after his death, and if you accept this enticing offer, your son reveals to you that he's not long for this world as he has cancer. But if you refuse Sean's offer... things get a little bit more explodey. You see, the Soul Survivor hightails it back to their faction of choice to devise a plan to destroy the Institute, which eventually leads them to blowing up their son's evil organisation by detonating a nuclear reactor, which brings the main campaign of Fallout 4 to a close.

But wait, there is of course a whole host of story DLCs still to get through in the Commonwealth. Yep, the story of the Soul Survivor continues in four more story expansions. with the first Automatron introducing the cast of Robot Wars to the Commonwealth.

Not sure if that show made it across to the States, but I'm going to stick with the reference. Anyway, the Soul Survivor gets caught up in a war with the Mechanist, a supervillain of sorts that looks like a kid's drawing of a robot, which, to be fair, turns out to be exactly the case. Next up, we've got Far Harbor, not sure of my local pronunciation, but I thought I'd give it a go, which sees the Soul Survivor travel north to a spooky island community with a fair few secrets.

They're sent there on a mission to find a missing person by the name of Kasumi, an investigation that naturally unravels into something far more sinister. Then there's the Vault-Tec workshop, which saw the sole survivor discover Vault 88, an unfinished nuclear bunker. While this expansion predominantly offered players the chance to build their own vault, it did offer a narrative throughline of sorts, with the Soul Survivor effectively becoming the overseer of Vault 88. And lastly there's the absolutely bonkers Nuka World, which, well, sounds exactly like it is. Here the Soul Survivor secures a lucky ticket to the hottest amusement park on the eastern seaboard, only it's completely overrun by raiders and nightmarish creatures.

It's always the way. The Sole Survivor explores the ruins of Nuka World and eventually defeats the Head Raider, giving them the chance to run their own theme park. What a way to round out Fallout 4. All of which finally brings us to the main events of the Fallout TV show, which takes us back to the Wastes of California in the year 2296. Yep, the Fallout teleshow takes place at the furthest reaches of our timeline, and expands on the lore and history of the California region.

At the heart of the show is Vault 33, which houses a seemingly idyllic society who are waiting for their chance to head to the surface and re-civilise the planet. Little do they know that they've missed that boat by a long shot. Anyway, Vault 33 is part of a trio of neighbouring vaults, the others being 31 and 32. which work in tandem to keep their populations going.

Into this mix, we meet our plucky young hero, Lucy McClane, her brother Norm, and her father Hank, who also happens to be the overseer of Vault 33. Their lives are pretty peachy until a group of murderous raiders ambush them from within Vault 32 and kidnap Lucy's father Hank, which naturally kick-starts the game's main campaign, I mean show's core plotline, as Lucy pursues her father's kidnappers above ground. Up on the surface, we catch up with what is left of Cooper Howard, and he's still going, which is a bit of a surprise as he's well over 200 years old by this point. He's seen better days, though, as he has been poisoned by radiation to the point of becoming what's known in the Fallout universe as a ghoul.

Life is imitating Art in the case of Coop, who now ventures around the wastelands making his living as a gunslinging bounty hunter. He gets thrust into the plot of the show due to a bounty that he's after, namely an Enclave defector who has a critical piece of technology on his person. The Brotherhood of Steel is also after the Enclave scientist, and one of their young new recruits, a lad by the name of Maximus, finds himself on a mission to help secure the bounty as well. And so the telly show falls into a plot that is largely about people hunting MacGuffins. Well, the simple version of this synopsis is that, at least.

But naturally, there is far more than that going on in the show's balmy wastelands. As the show progresses, the worlds of the Ghoul, Lucy, and Maximus come crashing together, with all three chasing after the Enclave scientist, who by this point is just a severed head with the tech embedded in his neck. Yeah.

the show leans hard into Fallout's grim violence. As Lucy and Maximus team up, they eventually discover the fate of Shady Sands, which was destroyed via a nuclear blast back in 2277. Maximus learned this first hand however, as Shady Sands was his hometown, until, well, it became a giant crater in the dust. While looking for medical supplies, the pair stumble onto Vault 4, which they learn housed a team of scientists that have, well, they've done some pretty horrifying experiments to say the least. The Vault is now home to many of the surface refugees from the Shady Sands Blast Zone, good honest folk just trying to live their lives peacefully.

Meanwhile, Lucy's brother Norm is discovering the equally screwed up history of Vaults 31-33 in the wake of the Raider attack. As he investigates the ruins of Vault 32, he eventually uncovers the true conspiracy behind the trio of neighbouring Vaults. It turns out that Vault 31 is actually home to the cryogenically frozen management employees of Vault-Tec, and the mission behind the trio of Vaults is to play out Vault-Tec's idealised version of a civilised future post-Great War.

And this all leads to the major revelation at the heart of the Fallout show, Hank McLean is a pre-war Vault-Tec employee, who entered Vault 33 after waking from his cryogenic slumber. It turns out that his wife discovered a clue to the truth behind the three neighbouring vaults and this led her to leave Vault 33 with Lucy and Norm. They eventually wound up at Shady Sands and when Hank pursued them there, he was found he was the one responsible for destroying the city when his wife refused to come home with him.

Lucy learns all of this when she finally finds her father at the New California Republic base at Griffith Observatory. After a big climactic battle between the NCR and the Brotherhood of Steel, the NCR are able to get their hands on the Enclave Defector's piece of tech, which turns out to be a cold fusion device, a source of unlimited power. It's useless without a Vault-Tec Parskey though, until Hank is coerced into giving his over, which results in LA finally getting its power supply back on. And the telly show ends with Hank escaping into the wastelands donned in power suit armour, Lucy and the Ghoul teaming up to get revenge on Vault-Tec, and in its final, final shot, we see Hank coming across the city of New Vegas, which looks like it has now fallen into ruins.

I guess we'll just have to wait for the second season to find out what exactly has happened canonically to Mr House's vibrant city. And that, friends, is the Fallout timeline fully explained. I really hope you enjoyed this video, and if you like these kinds of gaming timelines, make sure to check some of our others up on the channel, like Assassin's Creed, Mortal Kombat and Uncharted. Thanks a lot for watching guys, I'll see you next time.

Transcript for:Overview of the Fallout Franchise Timeline

Transcript for:
Overview of the Fallout Franchise Timeline