As Fallout Season 2 draws to a close, all signs point towards Colorado as the setting for the next adventure. A postcard left in an abandoned cryopod all but confirms that The Ghoul’s wife and daughter are waiting for him there, and a shot of the Enclave’s secret headquarters suggests that the show’s newly-revealed big bad is operating out of the Rocky Mountains.
For fans, this is an interesting new direction. After the first season explored California, the setting for the original two Fallout games, and the second expanded into the Mojave wasteland of Fallout: New Vegas, it seemed logical that the story would continue to visit familiar locations. Washington, D.C. or Boston, the settings of Fallout 3 and 4, respectively, seemed sensible bets. But certainly not Colorado, which despite geographically making sense for the next steps beyond the New Vegas strip, is barely a footnote in the RPG’s extensive lore.
Dive deeper into the Fallout archives, though, and Colorado becomes significantly more important. The state was planned to be the setting for what would have been Interplay and Black Isle Studios’ third Fallout game, codenamed “Van Buren”, which was cancelled back in 2003. Since then, dozens of design documents have fallen into public hands, revealing the intended storyline for what could have been the original Fallout 3. And as the show signals its intent to travel to the Centennial State, it’s impossible not to wonder if Season 3 will be at least a little inspired by the Fallout that never was.
The Second Apocalypse
Akin to Hank MacLean’s attempts to bring “civilization” to the wasteland, Van Buren would have told the story of a man who looked out at what’s left of humanity and yearned for a better world. That man, Doctor Presper, saw hope in the fires of nuclear armageddon (yes, another one) and planned to take command of an orbital missile system in an effort to cleanse the planet’s surface. He and his followers would sit safe in Colorado’s Boulder Dome, a colossal, bomb-proof research facility, and later emerge into a brighter tomorrow. Sounds a little like Vault-Tec’s plans for the original apocalypse, right? Which, as we’ve learned this season, was actually orchestrated by the Enclave.
It seems unlikely that Van Buren’s exact plot could become the story of Fallout Season 3, though. Introducing Presper’s cohort of mad scientists and their mission to preserve their vision of the human “master race” seems redundant when the Enclave, a faction of mad fascist scientists, are already a key part of the show’s story. But the overlap between these two groups, in conjunction with the Colorado setting, points to exactly where the two projects could merge: What if Presper, or a Presper-like figure, is in charge of the Enclave’s activities in the American Southwest? And now, 200 years after the first bombings, the faction intends to do it all over again in an effort to achieve the exact results it hoped for the first time around?
There’s another interesting overlap: In Van Buren, the orbital missile system is locked behind a series of safeguards. The satellite continually assesses the planet’s population and tracks the spread of “New Plague”, a highly contagious disease that had previously required a complete quarantine of the US to control. Should the number of New Plague-infected people increase past a certain threshold, the satellite will release its missile launch codes, allowing its controller to end the epidemic in nuclear fire. Presper’s plan was to spread the plague across the wasteland, which in turn would grant him control of the missiles.
The New Plague is an interesting piece of Fallout lore because, during the 2050s, the race to develop the cure led to the development of the Forced Evolutionary Virus. The FEV is already one of the show’s mystery plot points, somehow linked to the Vault 31, 32, and 33 experiment. And, as we can infer from Steph’s triggering of “Phase 2” in the Season 2 finale, the experiment is likely controlled by the Enclave. The question, then, is why does the Enclave want a bunch of FEV-infected vault dwellers? Well, perhaps in an adaptation of Van Buren’s story, they’re the key to wiping the surface clean and allowing the Enclave complete control of the wasteland.
New Van Buren
The introduction of Colorado, a virus, and a clan of genocidal scientists obsessed with human purity by no means guarantees that Fallout Season 3 will adapt the ideas created for Van Buren. But I present this theory not based on wild speculation, but Fallout’s own history. While the Fallout 3 that was eventually released to the world in 2008 shared nothing in common with Black Isle Studio’s blueprint, Fallout: New Vegas did. Van Buren was set to feature multiple competing factions, difficult choices that shape the wasteland, and deep character-building systems – the very structure that New Vegas was built atop. But it goes deeper: Caesar's Legion, the violent army of Roman cosplayers, was originally created for Van Buren, as was a battle for control of the Hoover Dam, the climax of New Vegas’ campaign.
The resurrection of those cancelled ideas was in no small part thanks to the fact that several of Van Buren’s designers became the architects of Fallout: New Vegas at Obsidian Entertainment. The show, however, has no such connection to the series’ lost past. And yet, despite being executive-produced by Bethesda’s Todd Howard, the show is keen to continually explore beyond the boundaries of his studio’s tenure as Fallout’s owner. Shady Sands, the NCR town so key to Maximus’ and Lucy’s stories, was only ever in the original Interplay games. Vault 33’s failing water chip storyline is a direct nod to the plot of the first Fallout. And the depiction of the Brotherhood of Steel veers closer to that shown in the early games than it does Bethesda’s interpretation. All that considered, it wouldn’t be that surprising if showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet decide to dive into the Van Buren files and adapt its ideas, turning Fallout Season 3 into a homage to the Fallout game we never got.
Dead Tactics
When talking about Colorado, though, we can’t ignore Fallout Tactics. While not exactly “dead” in the way Van Buren is, Fallout Tactics is something of a dead end; a spin-off created in 2001 that failed to start a sub-franchise for the series. It tells the story of a Brotherhood of Steel squadron on a mission to find Vault 0, a pre-war command bunker buried deep below the Rocky Mountains in El Paso County, Colorado. Their journey towards the vault sees them battle an army of robots, which are revealed to be controlled by The Calculator; a fusion of human brain and digital computer that resides at the heart of Vault 0.
Considering Season 2’s post-credits scene sees the Brotherhood’s Elder Quintus proclaim himself “The Destroyer” while unfolding the blueprints for a giant nuclear robot, it’s easy to see how Season 3 could draw inspiration from Fallout Tactics. Quintus could dispatch his knights to Colorado in search of a vault that contains the parts required to build Liberty Prime. The Calculator would be long gone – Fallout Tactics takes place in 2197, a century before the show – but the valuable relics that Quintus requires could well lie in wait for him.
While Fallout Tactics’ position in the lore is a little murky, we do know that Vault 0 was designed as the “nucleus” of Vault-Tec’s bunker system. Well, that was its final form: during the development of the original Fallout RPGs, series creators Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky had the idea that it could have been controlled by the Enclave, collecting data from every other vault to aid their grand plan. And who, according to the show, is the shadowy puppet master behind Vault-Tec? The Enclave. Season 3 has the opportunity to weld these ideas together. And if the Fallout games are anything to go by, the Brotherhood of Steel and Enclave are destined to butt heads eventually. Will Vault 0 be where Quintus proves his destroyer credentials by eradicating the Enclave?
This is, of course, all just theorycrafting. An exploration of the lesser-known corners of the Fallout universe on the off chance that their stories become relevant, rather than a genuine prediction of the show’s future. But writers – especially those handling pre-existing universes – don't dive in blind. They’ll know about Fallout Tactics. They’ll know about Van Buren. And so, even if Fallout Season 3’s trip to Colorado is entirely composed of original material, I’m willing to bet that there will be references to Fallout’s dead past littered among the Rockies.
Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.
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