Nah, that was the red Nuka Cola model - mine’s the standard grey.
Megapost -My list of fanwank/theories after finally finishing the series today and responding to the thread:
The Brotherhood - What we’re seeing is largely the result of nearly 20 years of not having an enemy, after years of being brutally suppressed. Remember, the NCR largely won the wars against the BoS after they were previously uneasy allies. So suddenly, BOOM Shady Sands is gone, and the BoS pops out like daisies and likely uses the chaos to finish the job of killing any remaining leadership… and that’s IF they weren’t informed ahead of time (considering how soon a BoS knight was on the scene). Now it’s nearly 20 years later, and the quality of the knights, squires, and everything else have fallen.
So why, oh why, is Arthur Maxon letting the West Coast leadership call the shots? Well, after the first few decades, there was no effective coast-to-coast communication, or even much past short range wireless communication for… reasons. So, the East Coast BoS has been immensely successful after F3, has absorbed much of the Enclave’s tech, and is even expanding north from Maryland into the Commonwealth. Given the BoS ending as needed for the airship to still exist, Maxon may well be ruling the NE reasonably well, and has sent the ship west to re-establish contact and decide if it’s worthwhile to recombine (as he did Lyon’s group and the Outcasts out east) - he is the last remaining Maxon after all.
And that may be why they’re letting the Westies call the shots while they watch and decide.
Alternately, we KNOW the Institute was able to get synths into the East Coasties. For all we know, the day after the climax of F4, a doomsday synth, operating under a directive “If the Institute is damaged or destroyed, kill Maxon” whacked him in the night, and now the East Coast chapter has packed up and headed West because there is NO leadership, no Maxon, and are coming home. Which might ALSO explain why our Eastie Deacon is so set on creating a new leadership, a new BoS.
Mr. House - given what we see, and assuming most of FNV remains cannon, I tend to think that meeting could absolutely have pushed him into making his decisions to set up an independent anti-ballistic missile system. He knows that even if the two nations don’t start the war, others are willing to do so, and he doesn’t trust ANYONE. Thus independent defenses, and independent and uncorruptible (by his standards) private army. And knowing that he was ready to go his own way, it would be interesting retcon to find that V-T made sure that his precious chip was produced too late, and not ready on time…
Of course, being Mr. House, he could have been having it both ways (the House always Wins) and made a contribution to Vault-Tec but in exchange for some of the tech he used for life prolongation (which was NOT his area of expertise). Which would in and of itself also have been a reason for V-T to screw with him. But if he survived, and Hank knows of it, he could be the only “surface” contact Hank knows how to reach without access to a connected terminal.
I’d say the Followers of the Apocalypse are about as good as it gets. And even they have their schisms.
Barb is likely rational, and absolutely evil, but as many evil characters do, she justifies it to herself. Obviously she believes that despite the (in the context of the past segments) short upward turn towards peace, that the End is going to happen. And arguably, she’s correct. The states had won a large victory, but the Chinese were actually (by the games) pretty damn successful with their infiltration programs and the people are obviously terrified of a fifth column. Even if China were to have negotiated in good faith, I don’t think peace would have been the result. A delay at best. Now, grated, if cold fusion had finished and in a position to be rolled out QUICKLY maybe that could have slowly reduced the tensions. But I doubt it. The retro-futuristic world of the game and the show is steeped in propaganda to the point that even talking about finding a route to peace other than by force is nearly a no-go.
Given that assumption, then putting yourself and your immediate family first, rather than trying to slow down or prevent the war, at IMMENSE cost to others, is evil, horrifically selfish, but not irrational.
Which NV ending?
I think the case for the House ending is solid, as above, but with the nuance I suggested. It would lean the most into the V-T as the big enemy that the series has been stressing. But if New Vegas is as trashed as the credits sequence indicated prior to the heroes showing up, I’d think the Legion ending makes the most sense. In FNV, the NCR was arguably overextended trying to take the Mojave. If the NCR lost, it would have been weakened, and the nuking of Shady Sands would have been a finishing blow (especially if the BoS “helped”). BUT our new Cesar is old, and even if you were able to cure him, he could have died soon after the events, causing the Legion to fracture into many factions or even tribes again.
In F76, there are multiple sources of super mutants. Some were created PRE-WAR, some were the result of the enclave, many (most?) of the current crop were created as a result of (spoilers for a major storyline) a rogue “good intentioned” scientist who believed that FEV could be used to create a new strain of human able to survive in the wasteland. The Supermutants are failed experiments that he dumps in the wasteland because it’s become too burdensome to try to safely dispose of them..
Therefore, none of them have any relation with, or knowledge of the Master (other than a few wanderers from the far west). Especially F76, whose supermutants pre-date the Master.
Random thought: might all the Latin names among Brotherhood members have something to do with the Legion popularizing those?
On the other hand, Quintus is probably too old for that, even if Titus and Maximus could have been born in Legion lands?
Or maybe Brotherhood initiates adopt Latin names and it’s more about Knightly Order = Catholic = Latin as opposed to Caesar’s Legion = Latin.
The Legion speaks Classical Latin as opposed to Church Latin (E.g. “Caesar” is kai-czar instead of seize-er, “Ave” is ah-way instead of ah-vay, etc.) so that would be a major tell, but I can’t recall them using any Latin in complete sentences, just in people’s names.
I don’t know how long before New Vegas the Legion was established, though - if it was 20 years or so, that’d be 30 years before now, so Quintus could have been a young man who was given a Latin name when Caesar absorbed his tribe.
ETA: Per the Fallout wiki, the Legion was established in 2247, so 49 years ago as of the show, so Quintus could have been a child at the time. (He looks older than his fifties, but half a century in a radioactive desert probably isn’t great for your skin.)
The show is set in 2296 and Caesar’s Legion formed in 2247 so actually longer than I thought (FNV is in 2281).
Further I didn’t consider your good point there - if he joined the Legion as a young man and took a Roman name before serving under that name for a good 30 years, he might well keep that name afterwards, even if it wasn’t the name that his parents gave him.
The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the Brotherhood having Legion influences. Caesar is a big believer in Hegelian dialectics - if you get to talking philosophy with him, he explains that he sees the Legion and the NCR as thesis and antithesis, and once the Legion inevitably triumphs it will create a new synthesis by absorbing the best aspects of the NCR and discarding the rest. Perhaps the opposite happened - after the collapse of the NCR, there was a Brotherhood-Legion War that the Brotherhood won, but as a result they wound up absorbing some of the more mystical aspects of the pseudo-Roman culture Caesar created.
This is kind of inspiring me to write some sort of Quintus fanfic - he starts out as a tribal whose clan joins the Legion, becomes a formidable fighter and one of the leaders of the Legion remnants post-Caesar, defects to the Brotherhood at some point, and rises through their ranks to leadership only to see himself become a servant again when Maxson shows up on the Prydwen.
Side note: I looked it up and Michael Cristofer, the actor who plays Quintus, is 79 and is a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright! If Quintus is meant to be the same age as his actor, then he’s old enough to have been an adult by the time Fallout 2 took place.
Of course, I could be reading way too much into it out of a hope that the Legion, or its aftermath, shows up again.
But I really do wonder. In the past, Brotherhood knights were known as Paladin Lastname, and while some had odd names, they definitely were not universally Latin or anything like that. Now, most of them seem to only have one name which happens to be Latin?
Either it’s an arbitrary retcon to make the BoS seem more archaic, or it’s related to the Legion.
Also, Quintus’ philosophy about taking power 100% seems like something you might develop under Legion rule.
That’s pretty cool!
Random side note about the actors… you know the guy in episode 2 or 3 who Lucy meets out in the wasteland? He’s trying to fix a sand filter and asks Lucy for some water, and to move in.
I was watching a Tim Cain (fallout 1 dev) video and he said that the way the actor moved around reminded him of the “loser” NPC from FO1, I guess they awkwardly shuffle around. So he asked the director at the FalloutTV launch party if that was an intentional reference, and the director answered that he isn’t sure, because moving that way was the actor’s idea; and, again per the director, many people in the cast and crew are big Fallout fans - so if it was a reference, it was that actor’s alone.
I think the show has shown that they aren’t going to go into the weeds like that. They’re just names.
Sure, go and ruin our fun. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to film a video essay about the lore implications of purebred German shepherds still existing 219 years after a nuclear war.
Dogmeat is an Institute Synth, confirmed!
I 100% have seen that theory floated.
He was great in Mr Robot also
Thanks for reminding me. What a great show.
There are now rumors that the Fallout 5 release may be accelerated due to the unexpectedly positive reception of the Fallout series:
Yes, Todd Howard has indicated they hate waiting as well. I think they should outsource it to another developer and just supervise its creation.
I don’t get why a game studio can only make one game at a time.
Are they actually quite small? I don’t get it, either. They will be working for 5+ years now on Elder Scrolls VI.
Fallout 5 would come out in 10 years minimum if they do one game at a time.
How did they ever deliver Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim in a span of 9 years or so?
They outsourced Fallout New Vegas.
The article I posted does mention that F05 will possibly be outsourced to Obsidian, who FNV was also outsourced to.
That would be terrific, though I thought they were making their own Outer Worlds game right now. Hopefully, Falout 5 is next.
The games industry is abusive and broken. I DON’T want a rushed Fallout 5. I don’t want a buggy, rushed game made off the broken backs of overworked game devs. I’ll wait.