Canonically, the Brotherhood-specific stuff (the dirigible, the rank insignia) starts with the East Coast chapter in Boston, since (IRL) it was introduced in FO4. The original airship was built in DC (where Fallout 3 takes place), but after the events of Fallout 3.) The rank insignia is also specific to Fallout 4.
(I guess the writers can retcon the internal details of the Brotherhood like the rank insignia to say “It’s always been like this across the entire Brotherhood”, I guess.)
T-60 armor is canonically pre-war across the US military at the time the bombs fell, so those may be “native” to the west coast Brotherhood.
The series is reportedly set in 2296, making it nine years after the events around Boston. Doesn’t sound like the setting is planned to leave the Los Angeles wasteland any time soon.
Speaking for myself, I really don’t care how close the show adheres to Fallout canon, so long as it captures the Fallout tone. Continuity between different forms of media is a fools’ game, anyway.
There are two different Brotherhoods in the Fallout universe. They started out as the same organization. Then a group went east to see what they could find and were never seen again (probably ended up somewhere near Chicago). A second group went to find them, completely missed them, and ended up in Pittsburgh and D.C.
Because they were limited in numbers and resources, the east coast Brotherhood was forced to integrate more into the wasteland. They accepted outsiders into their ranks. They cooperated with other groups, to the point where they became the heroes of the Wasteland when they took over Project Purity.
On the west coast, things went from bad to worse. While the East Coast BoS had the best weapons and tech around, the West Coast BoS had stiff competition from the Enclave and the Shi. Instead of being seen as heroes, they were the enemy of most folks. To be fair, the BoS tried to wipe out the NCR because they didn’t like them getting too powerful, so the BoS brought that one on themselves.
The West Coast BoS dug deeper into the isolationist viewpoint, refused to accept outsiders, refused to share tech or help other settlements in any way, and were general assholes. The East Coast BoS were the heroes of the wasteland, loved by all.
However, there is still a split, even in the East Coast BoS, which you see a lot more clearly in FO4 than you do in FO3. In FO4, the hard liners who don’t want to accept outsiders into the BoS and think that the BoS alone deserves to inherit the Earth have regained a lot of power inside the BoS. Wastelanders aren’t people to cooperate and give water to. They are wasteland scum that needs to be eliminated so that the BoS can take its proper place at the top of the food chain.
One question for the show is how much contact does the East Coast BoS have with the West Coast BoS. At the end of FNV, the West Coast BoS is in pretty sad shape. The NCR has overcome the BoS’s superior weaponry through sheer overwhelming numbers, leaving the BoS shattered and broken into small splinter groups like the one at Hidden Valley. Do these splinter groups keep on being assholes, or do they become local heroes to the wasteland, cooperating with the locals out of need for survival? Does the East Coast come back to help its West Coast brothers? There are so many ways that the show can take this, and pretty much all of them fit within the established lore.
If they keep the East and West groups separate, then they can do pretty much whatever they want and the different endings for FO4 don’t really matter.
Personally I’m hoping they are more towards the asshole side. I always thought that was more interesting. “To hurt the people who hurt me” sounds a lot more like the classic asshole West Coast BoS than Lyons’ new and improved East Coast version.
FWIW, the lore within Fallout 4 paints the West Coast Brotherhood at more involved with the affairs of the East Coast Brotherhood than Fallout New Vegas might imply. The East Coast Elder as of Fallout 4 (Arthur Maxson) received (presumably by radio) the blessing of the West Coast leadership and apparently there’s regular communication.
Depending on timelines, it’s hypothetically possible that the airship in the show is the Prydwen, brought west by whomever the East-coast elder may be at that time.
Well, there’s also the West Virginia Brotherhood in Fallout 76, but I consider their existence to be canon-breaking and so I try not to think about them very much.
I’d disagree with that description. The Boston faction as seen in Fallout 4 is a proto-fascist and human supremacist organization that doesn’t have much use for democracy and sees groups like the Railroad (and probably also the Minutemen) as a threat to their control of the region. I went with their ending on my first playthrough because I wanted to fix Liberty Prime and found myself thinking “are we the baddies?” sometime between when they ordered me to hunt down Paladin Danse and when they told me to kill everyone at Railroad HQ. I get the impression that at some point after their ending they’d probably start trying to purge the Commonwealth of ghouls and super mutants, feral or not.
I wouldn’t go in expecting total canonical fidelity to previous games. Sounds like they’re leaning into the overall lore of the setting but also treating it as its own story. “Brotherhood of Steel”, yes. “The western faction of the BoS was established in the year whatever by this guy and extended no further than location…” probably not.
In an interview with Total Film (via GamesRadar), executive producer Jonathan Nolan said the project is “almost like we’re Fallout 5”. "From the first conversation with Todd [Howard, Bethesda development chief and executive producer on the show] we were most excited about an original story.
"Fallout, in my career, is closest to the work we did in adapting Batman, where there’s so much storytelling in the Batman universe that there is no canonical version of it, so you’re free to invent your own.
“Each of the [Fallout] games is a discrete story – different city, distinct protagonist – within the same mythology. Our series sits in relation to the games as the games sit in relation to each other. It’s almost like we’re Fallout 5. I don’t want to sound presumptuous, but it’s just a non-interactive version of it, right?”
Point in order, that the leader of the BOS in Fallout 4, Maxon, specifically reintegrated the Outcasts (the faction of the East Coast BOS that left to keep to their primary mission, rather than the “kindler, gentler” version of the Lyons) and while more flexible than the Outcasts (who to be fair, in F3 would deal with friendly outsiders, just not treat them as equals or invite them to their ranks) they’re very much in the OG BOS mold.
For that matter, while I fully acknowledge that the BOS is rigid to the point of idiocy, I’m still not convinced that they are wrong. They’re far too arrogant and sure of themselves, and they’ve got plenty of factions that aren’t just proto-fascists, but out and out fascists (Elijah, I’m looking at YOU) - but in Fallout 4, I was more sympathetic rather than less.
The Minutemen were a lot cause and entirely propped up by the actions of a single person (the PC), the Railroad means well, but since they’ll mind wipe any synth to “free” them and give them security (some of whom end up as freakin’ raiders!) they lose the moral highground IMHO, and the Institute is going full speed into the past with their actions and factions, and don’t even get to pretend to moral high ground.
Still, and back to the thread purpose, yeah, Bethesda has been extremely fluid about canon and lore since at least F4. So, I’m at the point where I’m starting to consider (head canon) that each sequel is set in distinct new fracture points that remain close to each other, but are not actually the same timeline.
That could possibly explain why Los Angeles still looks like a no man’s land and there’s a shot of Shady Sands in ruins, when by this point in the timelime the latter should be the capital of the NCR with electric lights and uniformed police and all, and the former should be a member state with at least some sort of law & order and a functioning economy.
Or possibly this is a setting where Caesar’s Legion won the Battle of Hoover Dam and the NCR fractured afterward.
A thought - have they ever established that the Dogmeats in FO3 and FO4 are descendants of the original Dogmeat (the FO2 Dogmeat being the original who jumps forward 80 years via time travel), or is it supposed to be the same immortal dog that’s spent centuries roaming the wasteland, occasionally changing appearance because radiation is magic in this world, and making friends with historically significant lone wanderers? I like to think it’s the latter. Perhaps this CX404 is a synth version of Dogmeat that the Institute made in the likeness of FO4’s protagonist’s dog.
I dunno that I consider perks canon. An immortal dog wouldn’t be the craziest thing in the setting, especially since there is a legit pre-war dog (albeit with cybernetic enhancements and a replacement brain) available as a companion in F:NV.
Well, according to the manual in Fallout 2 (written by Chris Taylor), Ian bit the bullet in Necropolis, and Dogmeat died in the Mariposa Military Base. Tycho and Katja are not mentioned, so it’s assumed they didn’t join the Vault Dweller. Still, even though it’s mentioned in the manual, I’d substitute your own experiences with them and let that be the true history… even though Dogmeat’s pretty likely to bite it in the Military Base because of those damn force fields and because you can’t tell him to park his doggie ass in a safe place (without locking him in a force field cage).
So officially (remember fluid canon these days) OG Dogmeat is dead, but, keeping to the second half, he’s Schrödinger’s Dog, in that if you want to substitute your own person experience you can. Or, you can, in the words of Mythbusters -
See, it even supports my many seperate but closely related time line theories!
ETA - Oh, later it addresses that, no, the Dogmeat in 2 is an easter egg / non-canonical version of the earlier Dogmeat:
BTW, even though information is included on the Vault Dweller’s journey in Fallout 1 below, you don’t have to use it - it was included in the F2 manual, and it does tell you what happened to Ian and Dogmeat. (Granted, the Dogmeat in the F2 special encounter technically was “Dogmeat,” but it was a special encounter, so he shouldn’t be considered as the real Dogmeat from Fallout 1, if that makes any sense.)
(So much like the issues when you use the “Weird West” perk in F:NV - it happened to your playthrough, but not really “real” as far as Fallout canon is concerned)
Oh you better believe I kept him alive on that mission regardless of how much save-scumming I had to do to make it happen. For the final mission I left all my companions outside the cathedral and went to confront the Master alone. (I’m pretty sure FO1’s manual even recommended save-scumming so you wouldn’t get stuck in an unwinnable state).
