Can you Squint and fit Wasteland into Fallout?

The plot of Wasteland 1 is practically identical to the plot of Fallout 1, thematically at least, so it would seem a bit contrived to have both of them happening at roughly the same time.
One could argue that Fallout 1 and 2 already have retrofitted the essential elements of Wasteland 1 into the Fallout lore. Fallout 1 by having the Guardians of the Old Order turn into the Brotherhood of Steel and Cochise into the Master and his army. Fallout 2 by turning Vegas and it's rival gangs into New Reno and it's rival Families.

However it's still a fun experiment we have here, let's see how far we can take it. The fact that Tycho is a former Desert Ranger and that Fallout: New Vegas references Wasteland 1 in more ways than is just subtle fan service gives us a case I think.

Thank you for your posts about the Guardians. This gets right to the core I believe:

I would like to agree with you on Guardians of the Old Order, but they're explicitly a pseudo-knightly pseudo-monastic order. The odds of their being two Army remnants within a few hundred miles of each other that explicitly devote themselves to hoarding technology in a the fasion of religious fanatacism, and also seem to be massive DnD fans... I dunno, it stretches my credulity far too much. I guess you could rewrite the Guardians to be more of a generic army remnant if you really wanted to but that takes away basically all their flavor.

Since we would need to go with a kill-your-darlings approach, as to not get a Bethesda level of writing, I would say that we will have to cut the faction and just have a base with army remnants. I agree that it's sad since the Guardians were a big part of Wasteland 1, but we already have the Brotherhood of Steel back in California so this faction has to go.

However those army remnants could always be made part of the Brotherhood at a later stage I believe. It's not improbable that the original Brotherhood would try to get in contact with other remnants of the former US military. And remember that there is a Brotherhood bunker to be found in Fallout: New Vegas.

The Citadel was a military base once, but was expanded and modified by the Guardians ever since the great war.

The Guardians are descendant from US military personnel and Base Cochise personnel that abandoned their bases in the aftermath of the nuclear war and Chinese invasion.
The above quote informs us why the Guardians had the keys to Cochise, it's because some of it's founding members came from that place. I guess that in our version of Wasteland 1 where the game is converted into Fallout format, the Citadel would just be some base that's home to former militaries. It's still possible to make something cool out of it - and that's our task! How would they be organised for example?


Wiki said:
The platinum chip was due for delivery by courier on October 23, 2077, the day of the Great War. The attack, however, came 20 hours earlier than House had predicted, and before the platinum chip could leave Sunnyvale, the city was reduced to rubble, with the chip buried beneath it. House was forced to make do with his relatively primitive systems, but still managed to stop 68 of the 77 ICBMs aimed at the Vegas area. Although most of Vegas was saved, he suffered numerous system crashes and was eventually forced into a coma. While many citizens were spared and even began celebrating, fallout from the warheads that did hit blew into the city, killing all of them. In 2138, House awoke from his coma, but only observed - did not interfere - as the city was settled by tribals, raiders, and at least one overweight gangster similar to Junktown's Gizmo was known to have made his mark on pre-new Las Vegas.

The quoted above is very interesting. We would have to go with the version where the population of Las Vegas is killed by poisonous clouds as to not contradict actual Fallout lore. However, as is confirmed by the quote, an empty city that's unharmed by war would be resettled. Nine warheads still hit the Vegas area so with a lot of other places destroyed people would probably come in droves to re-inhabit the city. When law and order no longer exists chaos erupts. Obviously someone would try to fill to power vacuum and here we have Fat Freddy and Faran Brygo being the main players.

However, Robert House woke up from his coma 61 years after the bombs hit. This gives us some trouble since that would be in the year of 2138 which is 23 years before Fallout 1. However since Robert House didn't send out his Securitrons untill the NCR arrived in 2274, it doesn't matter that much.

In 2274:
House ordered the Securitrons to emerge from the Lucky 38, offering an ultimatum to the raider tribes settled on the Strip: join House and be part of his New Vegas, leave the Strip, or die. Three tribes accepted his offer, eventually taking up the identifies of the Chairmen, the Omertas, and the White Glove Society, henceforth known as the Three Families. Only the Kings and the Great Khans refused, with the Kings settling in Freeside while the Great Khans were exiled to Bitter Springs.

Some of those tribes could very well be descendents of Fat Freddy and Faran Brygos.

If we let the conversion of Wasteland into Fallout, let's call it Fallout: Desert Rangers from now on, take place in the year 2137 that would make things easy for us. It solves two problems. One, we get to see Vegas as it was before Robert House woke up. And two it makes it plausible that Tychos father was a Desert Ranger.

It would probably be a good idea to settle on a year first. When we have that it's easier to make judgement on other necessary adjustments.
 
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I'm still not totally sold on making the Guardians distinct from the Brotherhood and in the process removing all of their flavor to keep from having an absurd coincidence. Brotherhood establishing a colony this far out doesn't seem to be out of the question.

Of course in Fallout 3, a decent size Brotherhood contingent walked all the way from Lost Hills to DC and has a good sized army that doesn't have a single Wastelander recruit - in fact, it's big enough that they were able to fight a full scale war in the Pitt before getting to DC, are able to split into two decent sized organizations, and then serve as an effective fighting force in the Wasteland. More substantially IMO in Fallout 3 is the mention of a "Montana Bunker," the Elder of which is quoted by Lyons in somewhat religious terms, suggesting to me that that colony was established a long while ago.

Ignoring Fallout 3 entirely, we of course have Tactics, where a decent sized Brotherhood force is sent out in an airship in 2185 on the vague rumors of a Super Mutant remnant. This group of course did need to recruit from the locals, but initially it was decently sized.

And of course in Fallout 2, the Brotherhood has managed to build - from scratch - three seperate bunkers all across Northern California, including the Den which is some hundred miles further than the Citadel would be.

New Vegas unfortunately doesn't help the case all that much. While it is mentioned that multiple Brotherhood bunkers were taken by NCR in the NCR-Brotherhood War showing that the Brotherhood had facilities beyond Lost Hills, the fact that the Mojave Chapter was only established some two decades prior to the events of the game speaks against the establishment of extensive Brotherhood colonies.
 
You are right! Maybe they should be kept as a faction since they are so iconic and then keep silent about the absurd coincidence. For all we know it might be common for military personnel to develop that kind of organisation when the army is dissolved and society gone.

Either that or just have them be part of the Brotherhood of Steel but with a contrived explanation as to why. Can we conjure a better explanation than what they did in Fallout 76? It's not that far-fetched that they were in contact with the founders of the Brotherhood since they are all ex-military but there might be a more interesting explanation.

If we keep the Citadel we must explain what will happen to it years later as it's neither present or mentioned in New Vegas. We can't introduce stuff that's then never heard about again. I must admit I have yet to play Wasteland 1 but it seems like the Desert Rangers clears the Citadel and eradicates the faction. As Atomic Postman said it might make things difficult to introduce a war between the Desert Rangers and BoS. That calls for the faction that inhabits the Citadel to be the Guardians. When they are finished by the Rangers they are never heard from again.
 
The following is excerpted from a larger fan project I have been working on:

The question asked is: Can you Squint and fit Wasteland into Fallout? The obvious answer is yes, these two works of fiction can be reworked and retconned and headcanoned until the Brahmin come home and everything fits together. Isn’t that true for anything? Just use your imagination and you’ll find that the answer is quite clear. People imagine much more far-fetched things than this, all the time.


However, I’m interested in the approach: as presented in their current forms, there are almost no fundamental differences between Wasteland and Fallout’s universes, just presentation in the way. In my opinion, the best way to make them fit together is to adapt the events depicted in Wasteland into Fallout’s setting, rather than vice-versa. Please note that I am not advocating that the events depicted in Wasteland as-is can be directly ported into the Fallout setting; there are so many reasons why that cannot be the case, too numerous to list here. Instead, I am going to describe a reimagining of the events of Wasteland and Wasteland 2 that fits into the Fallout setting, addressing timeline discrepancies and consolidating similar elements. The goal is to adapt, convert, and reformat Wasteland to Fallout.

Elements that Require Headcanon
These are the major examples that explicitly require some reconciliation. Your mileage may vary for how you feel about the best way to reconcile these elements.

Factions: Other than the Desert Rangers, prominent factions in Wasteland include the Guardians of the Old Order and the Children of the Citadel. Being xenophobic tech-hoarders, the Guardians of the Old Order are the faction that directly inspired the Brotherhood of Steel; in my opinion, the Guardians can be reworked into an Arizonan chapter of the Brotherhood without issue, and the difference in naming is moot. The Children of the Citadel are the antagonists of Wasteland 2, made up of survivors from the Guardians of the Old Order when they were attacked and driven out by the Desert Rangers. The Children are a bit more interesting to square: their name is actually the name given to Fallout’s Children of the Cathedral in early design documents, such as in this timeline document. Given that they occupy a base on the south beach of Los Angeles and are a transhumanist cult, and that many Fallout alumni went to work on Wasteland 2, this connection is probably intentional. The easiest reconciliation is that the Children of the Citadel eventually become the Children of the Cathedral, trading their cybernetic god Matthias for a new biological god in the Master.


Timeline: The Wasteland timeline posits that World War III occurs in 1998, and that the two games take place in 2087 and 2102, respectively. Since Fallout’s Great War took place in 2077, does refactoring the timeline mess anything up for Wasteland? Not really. There are many anachronisms present in Wasteland and its sequel implying that the Apocalypse took place much closer to the game’s events, and there are very few plot elements that actually require a hundred-year gap between the Apocalypse and the games. The only implication is that most characters ported over to the Fallout setting will be old enough to remember the years before the Great War.


Rail Nomads: I will focus on this faction specifically because they touch on both of the above points. The Rail Nomads are a tribe based around riding pre-war railways on repaired trains. Some people might take issue with the idea that a tribal culture could exist in the Fallout setting in 2087, only a decade after the Great War. It’s worth noting, however, that Wasteland 2 depicts most of the Rail Nomads as being of Native American descent; the use of the word tribal might therefore imply an ethnic affiliation, rather than an assumed tech level. As an aside, it is a misconception that Fallout’s tribals are inherently pre-industrial or have gone through a process of societal degeneration. The Rail Nomads are simply a group of Native Americans who took up a culture of riding the rails like the hobos of the 1930s, and continued that practice into the post-war era.


Los Angeles: Wasteland 2’s third act predominantly takes place in Los Angeles, previously depicted in the first Fallout. There is a tendency for fans to look at prequel works–which Wasteland 2 would become, in this scenario–and wonder why elements introduced in a prequel are not referenced in the original story. Is it a problem that Wasteland 2 depicts Los Angeles as a wetlands populated by farming communities and religious militias? I don’t think so. Sixty years pass between the events of Wasteland 2 and Fallout, enough time for communities to rise and fall, for the city to lose its vegetation to droughts and nuclear winter, and for new groups to take prominence. “Why didn’t the Vault Dweller visit the Mannerites at the Angel Oracle or the agave farmers at Rodia?” Because they weren’t relevant to his or her quest in defeating the Master. Fallout’s background lore also explains that many of the prominent groups in Los Angeles in 2162 arrived around 20-30 years prior from other regions, long after the events of Wasteland 2.

Reasons Why Wasteland and Fallout Cannot be Reconciled
Here are a few of the counter-arguments I have encountered as to why reconciling the two settings is a bad idea or otherwise undoable. I will try to present them fairly, and then counter them with my own points. One of the reasons many feel that the two series cannot be reconciled is down to a matter of approach: on face value, integrating Wasteland and Fallout as-is is improbable. However, the approach I am taking is adapting Wasteland to the Fallout universe and acknowledging the areas that would require alteration.


Tone: Wasteland and Fallout are said to have different tones by many fans; the usual claim is that Wasteland is less grounded and more pulpy than Fallout, while Fallout’s world is more built up. I submit that the Fallout series has never had a consistent tone, has just as much pulp in it as Wasteland, and that Wasteland’s lack of in-depth lore is a boon for its integration with Fallout, not a hindrance.


Tech level: Synthetic humanoids are a major plot element in both Wasteland games, while in Fallout they are a relatively new innovation by the Institute by the mid-23rd century. In general, Wasteland implies that AI was successfully miniaturized outside of supercomputers, which is not the case in Fallout. Actually, the lore presented in the games doesn’t present many contradictions with Fallout’s lore: the Cochise AI built synthetic bodies with the goal of downloading itself into them, and most of those synths actually contain human brains.


Circumstances of the Great War: Wasteland’s World War III occurs between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1998, while Fallout’s World War III occurs between the United States and China in 2077. Remember that while on face value these are irreconcilable, the approach I take is to adapt, convert, and reformat Wasteland to the Fallout setting. This is an inconsequential difference. More importantly: Wasteland 2 offers a conclusive explanation for the cause of the Apocalypse. The Cochise AI intentionally misinterpreted a meteor shower as a missile salvo to spark nuclear war between the world powers, with the goal of destroying all of Humanity. Many Fallout fans mistakenly believe that the matter of who and what caused the Great War is settled, but this is not the case. There is no confirmation that Aliens did it, or that Vault-Tec launched the first nukes. While Wasteland 2 offers the most conclusive explanation, there is also the possibility that Cochise is lying. Interestingly, Skynet from Fallout 2 claims that there is a high probability that a rogue AI goaded the world powers into nuclear war.


Aesthetic: Wasteland is rooted in 1980s iconography, whereas Fallout takes a 1950s retrofuture aesthetic. Actually, there are plenty of places where Fallout uses 1980s aesthetics: the Followers of the Apocalypse with their punk ideology and mohawks, the Mad Max-style leather jackets and raider bands. Fallout’s aesthetics are much richer than many believe. Furthermore, both settings are inspired by 1960s and 1970s post-apocalyptic novels like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, A Canticle for Leibowitz, A Boy and His Dog, and The Stand.


Hoover Dam: The existence of Hoover Dam is the single biggest divergence between Wasteland and Fallout: in Wasteland, the dam was destroyed by nuclear blast and water from Lake Mead surged out through the Colorado, destroying many towns in its wake. In Fallout, Hoover Dam is the prominent setting of the climax for Fallout: New Vegas. The only solution here is to go with a hard retcon and remove references to Hoover Dam’s destruction.

A Corporate Argument
While I’ve been trying to argue mostly in favor of headcanon for fans who are interested in incorporating elements from both settings into each other, there is another argument that isn’t often brought up: what if the corporate powers that be were to merge the IPs of Fallout and Wasteland? At present, Fallout’s owners Bethesda Softworks and Wasteland’s owners InXile Entertainment are owned by the same company, Microsoft. It is not unheard of for companies that own similar intellectual properties to merge them together to reduce competition and cannibalization of their own products. This is most often seen in comic books: DC Comics, for example, has acquired pantheons of different superheroes from buying out other comic book companies over the decades. About once a decade they soft-reboot their mainstream continuity to include elements of whatever they purchased. It is entirely possible that Microsoft will turn Wasteland into a sub-brand of Fallout to reduce the number of post-apocalyptic RPGs they own and to possibly use as a bargaining chip with parts of the Fallout fanbase.
 
I love this topic so thank you for keeping it alive!

Some comments from the top of my mind:

1. How would you transform the Guardians of the Old Order into the Brotherhood of Steel? What's your comments on what has previously been said on this issue earlier in the tread?

2. Do you have another link to that timeline document?

3. Is it correct that your version of this takes place in the year 2087? Just ten years after the war? I don't have the dates in my head but doesn't Wasteland take place some 80 years after the apocalypse? What's your thoughts on that? Since Tycho in Fallout 1 mentions his father having been a ranger and seen Fat Freddy in Vegas then Wasteland 1 would have to have taken place like a generation before Fallout 1. Maybe 20-30 years prior.

4. I like the fact that you are already trying to squint in WL2 as well. I was thinking that would have to be a divergence from the primary Fallout timeline. Like if you merge the settings then Mathias becomes The Master. So WL2 takes place if the Vault Dweller is unsuccessful and the Master wins. Then he would expand and eventually the Desert Rangers would have to send a squad to California and LA to take him out.

If the Vault Dweller is successful then Fallout 2 happens. But if he fails then Wasteland 2 happens.
 
I love this topic so thank you for keeping it alive!

Some comments from the top of my mind:

1. How would you transform the Guardians of the Old Order into the Brotherhood of Steel? What's your comments on what has previously been said on this issue earlier in the tread?

2. Do you have another link to that timeline document?

3. Is it correct that your version of this takes place in the year 2087? Just ten years after the war? I don't have the dates in my head but doesn't Wasteland take place some 80 years after the apocalypse? What's your thoughts on that? Since Tycho in Fallout 1 mentions his father having been a ranger and seen Fat Freddy in Vegas then Wasteland 1 would have to have taken place like a generation before Fallout 1. Maybe 20-30 years prior.

4. I like the fact that you are already trying to squint in WL2 as well. I was thinking that would have to be a divergence from the primary Fallout timeline. Like if you merge the settings then Mathias becomes The Master. So WL2 takes place if the Vault Dweller is unsuccessful and the Master wins. Then he would expand and eventually the Desert Rangers would have to send a squad to California and LA to take him out.

If the Vault Dweller is successful then Fallout 2 happens. But if he fails then Wasteland 2 happens.
Hello Proletaren! You know, I had this nice succinct post written for you about a month ago, but then as I hit reply, the site went down at the same moment. Very unfortunate timing, but I'll recreate it as best I can. This is one of my favorite topics on the site as well, I find the dismissive posts on the first page very unfortunate because I have always advocated the incorporation of Wasteland content into Fallout. It also reminds me how much I miss Atomic Postman and the life he brought to this website.

1. First, I'll address the name for the Guardians of the Old Order versus the Brotherhood of Steel: the name simply doesn't matter. I mean, if we're migrating Wasteland content to the Fallout universe, then changing something's name is the least of the concerns and it's amusing to see that it was brought up as a substantial obstacle on the last page. In my mind, the Guardians are simply a satellite outpost for the Brotherhood, converted to the cause shortly after the Great War. The Guardians were so hostile because the Desert Rangers are a legitimate continuation of United States law enforcement and military, which Roger Maxson saw himself as in direct sedition against. Maxson compares himself to Jefferson Davis, isn't that a little extreme for someone who is deserting for observing his superiors commit war crimes? No, I think that Maxson always had anti-American sentiments, and took advantage of the situation to form a Knights of the Golden Circle-type organization.

So, Maxson gets his soldiers together shortly after the Great War, heads south for Lost Hills, and then at some point he either sends a detachment to the base that will become the Citadel to do reconnaissance against the Rangers, or they were another military unit that he folded into the cause--more realistic to call someone in Arizona than in West Virginia, don't you think?

2. A month ago I would have been happy to link you the document, but unfortunately in the month since the site went down I have been working on adding Nevada content and it's not in a concise format yet. Maybe I'll take the Wasteland-only stuff and post it?

3. Yes, in Wasteland's universe the first game takes place in 2087, which is 89 years after World War III in 1998. However, very little content from the first game indicates that the Apocalypse has to have occurred almost a century ago, it's much more flexible than that. And indeed, there's actually a surprising number of hints in Wasteland 2 that the game takes place 150 years after the Apocalypse, rather than in 2102 or only 104 years after the Apocalypse.

Let's talk Tycho: Tycho states that his father told him about a "fat freak" (taken to mean Fat Freddy) that was active in Las Vegas. First, this interestingly contradicts the New Vegas game guide that Vegas was completely abandoned for 200 years before being rebuilt, but that's an aside. Second, this means that Wasteland's events had to have happened prior to Fallout. That begs the question: how old is Tycho? He was born in Nevada and has traveled as far east as Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, and as far west as the Pacific--he's probably meant to be older than the Vault Dweller, whom I would estimate was around 20 in 2161. Fallout: Nevada includes a special encounter with Tycho and that game takes place in 2140, so I favor putting Tycho closer to 40, born in 2121 or so. He is a third-generation Desert Ranger, so if we assume that his father was of average age when he had Tycho then he was probably born in 2100 or earlier, and Tycho's grandfather may have been born prior to the Great War and could have been one of the inaugural Desert Rangers in the first place.

4. Some people will argue that Wasteland 2 depicts a completely different Los Angeles from Fallout's Boneyard. I would argue that a lot can change in 60 years, and that much happened in Fallout that was offscreen. However, if people favor a divergent timeline, I don't have a strong stance on that. My basic order of events is as follows:

  • 2077: The Great War. Maxson forms the Brotherhood of Steel relatively early, perhaps having ideas for it prior to the war broke out. The 253rd Army Engineer Corps takes over a federal prison and declares martial law in Arizona, christening themselves the Desert Rangers.
  • 2087: Cochise amasses a large enough army to invade Las Vegas, with assistance from the Arizonan Brotherhood (used as a patsy). A war breaks out between the Rangers versus the Brotherhood and Cochise, wherein Cochise is destroyed and the Brotherhood are scattered to the desert. Maxson learns of Cochise and excommunicates the surviving Arizonan Brotherhood for heresy.
  • 2102: A fifteen-year long war between the excommunicated Brotherhood and the Rangers has ensued, the former becoming the Children of the Citadel based around Cochise-Matthias. The Rangers once again blow up Cochise, leaving the Children without a dark god... although something happens in Mariposa that year.
  • 2152: The Children of the Citadel are discovered by agents of the Master and are inducted into the Unity as an intelligence arm. The existing New Citadel in Seal Beach, Los Angeles is refitted with a Cathedral exterior and built atop the demo vault in LA.
  • 2161: Vault 13's water chip breaks...
  • 2162: ...and is replaced, but Overseer Jacoren gets mighty startled by those mutants and sends the Vault Dweller back out to beat them down.
Further questions and ideas? I'll see what I can do about whipping up my Wasteland doc sans F:Nevada.
 
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A fusion-setting of WL and Fallout seems like an interesting fanfic, but I can't see the two being the same.
I like the idea of WL and Fallout being Parallel Earths tho - one could say WL is Earth-1 while Fallout is Earth-2. Which would explain any similar concepts that pop into both (like the Desert Rangers). There may be even some "It came to me in a dream" (which, if you know your DC Comics, is a by-word for "I just dreamed up something that happened in the multiverse/another timeline and am now making it real somehow").

There is something I think Wasteland is better able to fit with: The Moontrap Timeline.

Basically, the notion I want to play with is that most of the 'non-franchise' Science Fiction movies and television of the 80's and 90's, can be fit into an alternate history continuity I call the Gigerverse. (Although arguably, we could call it the Cameronverse, the Ridleyverse, the Shwarzeneggerverse, etc.).


The underlying idea is that our Sci Fi visual media, film and television, represented a relatively homogenous view of the future and of the universe and our place in it, which, surprise surprise, reflects where we are now.


In the 50's and 60's, Sci Fi was essentially optimistic, the ships were gleaming silver needles, the heroes were establishment men - space pilots and captains, military officers and engineers, at the top of a hierarchical system with that hierarchal system backing them up. The state was a benign thing. The enemy was 'othered'.


But by the 80's, that optimism had withered. The Sci Fi that was birthed in the contortions of the 1970's - of Vietnam, Watergate, the near financial crash of New York, of corporate and state malfeasance, and of new environmental awareness was much more battered.

Instead of being crack rocketjockeys or square jawed military men, the heroes of this age, Mad Max, Snake Plissken, Deckard were near outcasts or renegades, alienated from authority. And that authority, be it the state or corporation, as Ellen Ripley finds, at best indifferent, and often actively hostile. There's a much more ramshackle build to this universe, more a feeling of palpable decay, from the rusting corridors of the Nostromo, to the decaying rain city of New L.A., to the wrecked landscapes of the Road Warrior or Plissken's New York. As always, the actual number of ideas floating around is far outnumbered by the product - hence, we get a large number of very suspiciously 'Aliens' type creatures, we get dystopian cyberpunk futures, we get lots of analogues of the ill fated crew of the Nostromo, lots of post-holocaust stuff, all freely mixed, matched and borrowed, stolen and recycled.
 
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