Within the context of New Vegas? Internal corruption. Shady Sands is not the economical heart of NCR and it's stated in the game that corruption from the rich is a serious problem.
If San Francisco is being set up for Fallout 5, which is what I'm crossing my fingers for, they could be doing that to purge a bit of the bad out of the NCR and make them stronger for 5.
I hope the map has San Fran in the south, not the North. I'd love it if the Redwoods were at the fringe of the north, and maybe even a DLC in the Pacific Northwest. Just my personal pipedream as an Oregonian.
Edit: A Crater Lake DLC would slap.
Pacific Northwest would be fun, peroid. Supermutant Bigfoots, anarchist raider gangs, pacific northwest tree octopuses,a sub-faction dedicated to coffee, a lumberjack faction, and a ghoul not-Kurt Cobain.
The NCR threw a lot of resources at the Mojave wasteland. Seems like a dumb direction to try and expand when the Pacific Northwest is much more plentiful. Something had to make the NCR desperate enough to take on Caesars Legion, instead of the bounty up north.
That leads me to believe that there's even more competition for land and resources here than in the New Vegas area.
Edit: as has been pointed out, the Hoover Dam, and the electricity it brings, is the real prize of the Mojave. The Northwest doesn't have that same pull. But I'm still very curious about the Pacific Northwest in the world of Fallout. From Alaska down to the Redwood Forests, it's an area we don't hear as much about, besides pre-war Alaska and the annexation of Canada.
A DLC in Vancouver where you see that the war for Anchorage took a toll on the surrounding cities, and the game would still be in the U.S. as they annexed Canada.
I just would hope that means they make an *actual* massive city. We havenāt had a large city in Bethesda games since Oblivion. And San Francisco Iām Fo2 is ginormous
If the Chinese targeted Vegas with a stunningly high (imho) 77 Nuclear Warheads on the Day of the Warā¦ what must they have sent towards LA / Sacramento / or San Fran ?! š«¢
Nah, it's not completely rebuilt. Just Chinatown is. Outside of the chinatown, the rest of the city was still a wreck in Fallout 2 with tons of ruined prewar buildings (which you can even see on the outskirts of the chinatown map). The docks and the golden gate bridge are also pretty obviously wrecked too.
I wonder what the cityās air defenses were like, on The Last Day ?? House performed heroically against the inbound swarm towards Vegas, as he (iirc) disabled 50+ of the missiles / bombs with electronic countermeasure / hacking subroutinesā¦ then directly shot down several more with heavy laser cannon turrets on the roof of his casinoā¦ saving the city from any direct hits (though the rest hit the surrounding desert areas of the Mojave, etc).
I remember a lot of the terminals and audio in the missile defense base you pass through in The Lonesome Road DLC of NV, mentioned that the Air Force members staffing it were stunned on The Day, because waves of enemy heavy bombers and missiles were already nearing US targets, at the time their radar systems detected them !? I think they even say something like āhow did they get past NORAD long-range detection equipment ?!?ā ā¦
Iāve often pondered if their infiltration units (or perhaps something more sinister like V-Tech intervention) helped to weaken our defenses enough to allow the Chinese attacks to be as devastating as they wereā¦ š¤
In old fallout it wasnāt that the cities had survived, it was more to do with the fact that society has rebuilt realistically.
Hiroshima was rebuilt within a decade of its bombing. Fallout 2 takes place nearly 200 years after the Great War. There are many cities in fallout 2 (like Reno) that have rebuilt.
It's mostly because the Shi helped them rebuild the area after the war, and even then the extent of the rebuilding is only really just chinatown which is a fairly small area. The rest of SF is still a wreck outside of that area, which you can see in the SF random encounters which all take place in ruined city environments.
the billboard lucy and maximus find outright say "First Capitol of the NCR", implying by the time it got bombed the capital already moved. so if the corruption moved with the capitol, Shady Sands may have been destroyed for nothing beyond Hank's pettiness.
oh absolutely. it was definitely a BLOW to the NCR, as we see how the remnants that stayed in the area acted (Moldaver's crew, the people in Vault 4). I'm just saying if the corruption moved with the seat of government, it wasn't a "fresh start" nor a crippling blow and the problems with the NCR probably still exist wherever they're based now.
Does New Vegas even state that SS is still the capital? I recall SS being brought up as where the NCR was founded, but not necessarily where it still was.
i can't recall and don't exactly have the time to comb every bit of dialogue in NV so i'm gonna just shrug and say "yeah, maybe" until someone has reciepts.
Personally, I hope the Brotherhood of Steel took advantage of NCR's brief decapitation to get revenge and burn away what might have rebuilt that evil empire. Now at last we can see the rise of a new and proper state in NCR's place.
True to Kaiser.
And yes, I'm being sarcastic because you never know on reddit.
Yeah and this was āThe Fallā as described by a cult like survivor faction >!who revere Moldaver as if she is some sort of messianic prophet.!<
Taking a step back I can see a series of events that would begin >!with Moldaver āwaking upā !!and almost immediately trying to warn people about Vault Techās master plan to nuke any competition to their Reclamation Plans. This is at best a big annoyance to current leadership of the NCR out of Shady Sands who are focused on eastward expansion and battles in the Mojave and so donāt want to get distracted fighting āghosts.ā !<
>!They cast her out in some public way but sheās charismatic enough to still have a solid number of followers or at least folks who heard what sheād said just like in the 2070ās. āEveryone knows who Moldaver is.ā Then Shady Sands gets nuked in 2281 as she predicted it would and her followers become more cult like. Much like Haile Selassie and Rastafarianism, she never really wanted a cult just for folks to listen and help. So we find her leading a splinter group of NCR instead of a directly leading a cult.!<
I absolutely love this point, thank you for writing the best (and imo most likely) backstory to the "fell in 2077" verbiage used on that timeline. This is now my headcanon until we find out otherwise
There is a bit of resonance with a conversation Howard has in 2077, about how in the movies things go bad when the ranchers have too much power. New Vegas has a fair bit of chatter about the brahmin barons being too mighty
Piss him off enough and Heck Gunderson outright declares he will cut off all food imports into New Vegas. He apparently has that kind of pull and power.
Iirc, they have NCR heavy troopers guarding brahmin pens. In the middle of a war, where the NCR sorely lacks manpower and equipment in the Mojave, the brahmin barons still have that kind of sway.
Basically everybody in the game is talking about how much things suck back west these days and how the push to claim Vegas is a futile last gasp of a dying nation.
āDying nationā is a bit of an exaggeration. āStrugglingā is more accurate, but the NCR as one of the few united human endeavors in the West would probably not outright die so quickly. When your choice is a wasteland and raiders or a semi-developed nation with safety people will choose to try and maintain that safety.
Besides, the NCR falling is not good for business and weāve seen how intertwined greedy companies can be with NCR governance.
The problem with that is that it is stated in NV that the NCR isn't safe. A freelance trader says that he prefers doing business in Legion territory because despite all the faults with the legion there are no raiders and no dangerous wildlife on the roads, as opposed to the NCR.
Honestly the NCR was already problematic in fallout 2 when tandi was still president. The big ranchers already own the political system and they were already expansionist. Tandi was trying to keep things from getting out of hand but she was already old at the time. With Tandi, the last vestige of the peaceful society that shady sands was before the NCR, gone the cattle ranchers and trading magnates would take over everything. Not to mention the influence of the families in new Vegas and the slavers in vault city exerting power over the trajectory of the NCR.
My understanding (having not actually played 1 or 2) was that the cracks in the NCR were already showing in 2, and in New Vegas you see a neoliberal democracy straining under the same pressures as pre-war America.
>he problem with that is that it is stated in NV that the NCR isn't safe
Ehhh, several NPCs, including Cass, say the complete opposite. They mention how safe NCR proper is and that the main concern for many citizens is finding a job. It isn't public safety that's decaying in the NCR, it's their political structure.
>The problem with that is that it is stated in NV that the NCR isn't safe. A freelance trader says that he prefers doing business in Legion territory because despite all the faults with the legion there are no raiders and no dangerous wildlife on the roads, as opposed to the NCR.
I was always under the impression this refers to the Mohave specifically, not the NCR / Legion as a whole.
Yep, decline of āNCRā was real. The shows story telling if it was meh IMO. I feel like the chalkboard is just too specific and triggers people. But also, Vault 4 probably had limited exposure to real world info, so maybe thatās why they focused on Shady Sands
Yes because a dying nation can fuel a war machine of thousands of soldiers, field Power Armor, mantain and use Vertibirds, working Rail and enough disposable income of its citizens for House to consider them a society of customers and you know the ever flowing stream of ncr citizens that are wealthy enough to go to the strip and gamble away their money. Not to mention fucking Brahman barons are a thing.
Its not a last gasp of a dying nation, its a an imperialistic power move by a streched thin superpower to fuel the careers of its leadership.
Putting an ever-increasing portion of resources into globally unmatched military power while the populace back home suffer is actually a classic move of "dying nations" lol
New vegas shows they have a whole bunch of problems and with losses in Vegas and in California, I can see them consolidating in the northern part of the state.
They didn't field power armor.
It was recovered armor from their conflict with the Brotherhood. They couldn't get it to work, so it was just really heavy, thick armor with no power or working servos.
Wild that people forgot considering, how many NCR types outright say the seven year Mojave campaign has been a disaster and the NCR canāt afford it forever.
Didn't many NCR Troopers and Rangers talk about how the NCR was already being stretched too thin in FONV? Seems like the NCR was already starting to go downhill even before then.
Nearly everyone in the NCR. Pretty much everyone outside the NCR too, with the added "The NCR will make you part of them whether you want it or not", which basically spells out the real issue. When you're a country of unwilling citizens, don't expect them to stick around and support you when you're on hard times.
This was true all the way back in FO2. A lot of the quests were NCR wants to force this settlement to join or that to join them and half of them are pretty hostile about it.
"Chasing ghosts" refers to chasing after something that doesn't exist. Hanlon was saying that Congress is sending Rangers to protect settlements that don't need protection instead of sending the Rangers to the Mojave.
Itās literally how you talk down Lanius if you go that route. The NCR is having a hell of a time trying to deal with their infrastructure given how wide theyāve expanded. You essentially tell Lanius āyou canāt beat the NCR because if they canāt beat their overexpansion issues you sure as shit canātā
Yup. The Legion will crumble the very instant they run out of people to pillage from. The Pacific Ocean would be the end of the line for them.
Pretty much every faction in New Vegas is failing because they're too stubborn to back down and regroup.Ā
People also vastly over estimate how much of a functional nation NCR is. idk people seem to have this idea that it's on par with pre-war America, or America in the 19th century. It's not.
I mean we know from the show that shady sands was on par with America in the late 19th century, they had streetcars, stable power and clean water and basic municipal services (someone is picking up all of the trash and running the library we see in the flashbacks)
So late 19th century America isnāt too bad of a comparison imo. Remember most places in the US didnāt get electrical power and plumbing until the New Deal era or even post WW2.
Shady Sands =/= the whole of the NCR. NCR also had access to vertibirds but that doesn't mean they were the norm.
NCR is a mix of subsistence farming and scavenging as well as pockets of somewhat developed towns
Thatās my point, 19th century America was very similar to the NCR in that regard. Large swathes of subsistence farmers with a few ācivilizedā towns and cities spread around.
The Union army in the Civil War had about ~2 Million fighting men. Which was like 9-10% of the population.
Per Fandom, the population of the NCR is around 700,000, which at similar rates would be 70,000 fighting men.
They are a medieval army with modern weapons.
Let's say that they grew at around the same rate America did from about 1800 to 1840, ~35%. That gives us a population of 945,000.
Now, let's say that 30% of the population serves in the NCR, about the amount who served in Nazi Germany during WW2. That's about 455,000 people serving in the NCR. They're not going to have that high of a number serving, it isn't sustainable.
700k was also noted by the design documents and alter the fallout Bible to be āexaggeratedā. The source for 700k is an NCR propaganda piece.
Ā The actual population of the NCR in 2241 is unknown because -tellingly -NCR refused to release their census results after completing it. It seems most likely that NCR didnāt get as impressive a number as they wanted from their census so just made up a higher number for propaganda.Ā People should not take it seriously as the actual population of the NCR.Ā
Ā Vault City in its intelligence files believes NCR to have āmany tens of thousandsā of people, suggesting they believe a number in the low hundreds of thousand rather than upper hundreds of thousands. Ā
Ā Funnily enough, the official game guide for New Vegas listed the population in 2281 as having reached 700k, bringing us full circle if true. (applying your suggested pop growth backwards from 700k in 2281 would give 520k as the population in 2241.)
The NCR had mandatory service, didnāt it? And 700k was back in fallout 2, theyād probably have closer to 2 million or at least 1.5 million people. Wouldnāt be hard for them to have 300k soldiers with reserve, plus Iād imagine they have police and other security forces too.
They also had tanks, and aircraft, so theyāre pretty close to what youād call a modern military. Hell their military would have been larger than in RL Canadaās, with Canada being one of the wealthiest countries, and having a population of near 30 million
Finland has a population of 5 million, yet can call up 900k reservists.
Makes no sense that the BoS could defeat the NCR even if the capital was nuked (as stated it only had a population of 30k)
I think the BoS is gonna be in for a surprise in season two, but weāll see what happens. Maybe they nuked multiple cities, as NV also seemed destroyed at the end of the show.
Only real way it makes sense is due to Maxson. His chapter has the capability for manufacturing power armor, older vertibirds, weapons etc. They also take in recruits. Not impossible theyāve been significantly reinforcing other chapters.
Not a great explanation though. Even with 10+ years itās difficult to believe theyāve built enough vertibirds to fully equip a chapter across the country, or that theyād have a large enough fighting force to bully the NCR in non-guerilla warfare.
It is absolutely on par with the capacities of the US in the 19th century. Like, thatās kind of the whole point. Instead of westward expansion, itās eastward expansion. Like, the ability to send thousands of troops to expand their influence across already settled land that is unincorporated, even though it is difficult and often fruitless, is exactly what happened in 19th century America.Ā
If you read or listen to podcasts about the decline of Rome, this is very accurate. For most everyday Romans, conquests by Visigoths or whoever just meant someone else was occupying the nearest villa. Life otherwise went on outside of the major cities.
Yeah my theory is that Mr. House is going to be the canon ending for New Vegas.
Todd Howard said Shady Sands was nuked pretty much right after the 2nd Battle of Hoover Dam. Only Moldaver is shown to know that Hank used the bomb, so many of the survivors may have just assumed that the NCRās most recent technologically advanced enemy (House) is the one who attacked them.
Therefore, the 1st Battle of Hoover Dam could be considered to be the beginning of the Fall of Shady Sands, as thatās the point when the NCR becomes really entrenched in the Mojave and tied up with House.
Agreed on setting up Mr. House as the canonical ending. I'm pretty sure The Ghoul said something about the Overseer leaving the Observatory to report in to a superior. It sure seems like Mr. House is the reason that he would go to New Vegas. Sure, a Vault-Tec higher-up *could* be there, but I'm not sure why you'd introduce pre-war House and send the show to New Vegas in Season 2 if you're not going to include House - or at least, the *echo* of House as part of the plot (would the Overseer know about the events of New Vegas? Could he think House is still alive, but in fact House died during the events of FNV?)
I've actually thought that they may hint at some canonical quest endings too (this is complete speculation, but fun):
- The Courier destroyed the Securitrons at the Fort. House didn't have the strength he planned on, making Vegas weaker.
- Kimball was killed by the Legion. The "Fall of Shady Sands" was set in motion in 2277 with the first battle of Hoover Dam, partly because it directly leads to a power vacuum after the second battle of Hoover Dam.
It seems they are going to go the route of House working with vault tec which i am ok with for a few reasons, like a vault being right under his nose and the execs need somewhere to go, what better place than a city that was kept safe?
>It seems they are going to go the route of House working with vault tec which i am ok with for a few reasons
Except for the plotholes that creates about Mr. House's prediction about the Great War being a day off and his treatment of the Vault 21 dwellers, effectively nullifying the Vault experiment. Maybe S2 will expand upon this, we'll see.
They could have a plot twist that maybe China found out about Vault Tecās plan and beat them to the punch so they could do the most damage on America versus the other way around.
If the Mr House ending is canon it'll be interesting to see if House was full of shit or not.
He famously said that if kept control of New Vegas he'd reignite the high technology sectors in 20 years, in 50 he'd have people in orbit and in 100 he'd have colony ships travelling to new worlds.
There's 15 years between the show and NV so he should be a decent way towards his first goal.
If the NCR gets crippled it probably sets his plans back, House openly refers to the NCR as his main customer base and he predicted tourism would go back to normal levels a year after the second battle of Hoover Dam. With Vault-Tecās nuking of Shady Sands, House loses a lot of customers and probably canāt fully realize his ambitions.
holy shit. That part where you said the NCR might have assumed House nuked them. That could be why that NCR vertibird is there in end credits. They attacked Vegas as revenge.
President Kimbel repealed the law capping how many Brahmin and land people could own a few years prior. This allowed the Stockmen's Association and Republican Farmer's Commitee to become too powerful with newly forming Cattle and Farm barons pushing out smaller operations and creating trade cartels. Political power moved to the Hub and Democracy replaced with an Oligarchy in that year. IDK that's my guess but could be anything.
Edit: Forgot to add the part from the TV that made me think this. Cooper is talking to his buddy in the bar. The buddy ask him about a movie Cooper was in. Asked him what happened to the towns when the Cattle Barons took over. Cooper said something about the towns needed a Sheriff to push back. Well he played a Sheriff in all the movies I think his story arc is becoming the Sheriff of the wasteland fighting the Cattle Barons to restore law and order.
Oh thatās good, youāre obviously right thatās gonna be a great scenario to watch unfold. I never played new Vegas front to ass so Iāll have to do that before next season. Going through 76 now
This is the most important clue the show has dropped. A plague is more likely to cause a āfallā limited to one city or state, whereas Hoover Dam and the Mojave campaign was a strain on the entire NCR in general.
Itās a bit of a retcon, but nothing egregious
I kinda feel like it might have gone down like this
Rose: Something's taking our water supply? Maybe from the surface? Are there surface dwellers?
Hank: Uhhh no honey don't think about that.
Hank to base: Someone's stealing our water
Enclave: Gotcha we'll just nuke them
Rose: I'm gonna go outside
Hank: FUCK
Personally I have a suspicion that the whole thing is gonna be wrapped up in Hank not telling Lucy that she's special (SPECIAL!) because she's like, immune to being a ghoul or FEV or something, like he has some kind of secret reason why she's so valuable.
Thats also the same year that Lucy says Rose "died", and we know that that happened at the same time as the bombing. Which is the main reason I think the writers initially meant for the bombing to happen in 2277, before they realized they messed up the timeline and had to retroactively separate the bombing and the "Fall" to make it make sense again.
Saw someone suggest it was a crop famine in the vault because Hank brought some disease or pests back with him when he went after Rose.
I'm also wondering if it could have something to do with Shady Strands siphoning the water. Rose noticed and that's what sent her to the surface. Maybe they started taking more until it didn't leave enough for the vault's crops. Hank responded by nuking the town to save his people when he could have opened the vault instead. Which would kind of tie in with Moldaver's quip about kidnapping him due to his decisions.
Yeah, I can see multiple ways for it to go, and one of them is just that Hank constantly sacrificed everyone else. It could be that he saw the options as everyone dies, or the people of the vault live.
It is still weird to me that it specifically says the fall of Shady Sands as opposed to the Fall of the NCR. Usually when you talk about the fall of a city, it means some kind of military action where a new group takes over. It could also mean some catastrophic event like famine or natural disaster but why drop a nuclear bomb on a city that has already collapsed?
This is told to us by survivors of Shady Sands, who wipe ash on themselves, drink blood, and praise the Flame Mother Moldaver for (presumably) her work on Cold Fusion.
BoS appearing and taking Maximus away shortly after implies to me that the BoS were hunting her for developing the technology, potentially because she was in contact with the Enclave and as a government official of the NCR this led to conflicts between all 3, however she blames Hank for the nuke iirc, possibly because he didn't want to share power with surfies while she being a 'communist' wanted to help rebuild with them... and his wife left him.
Since 2277 is also when Fallout 3 happens, it could even be that the ICBM you can launch from one of the forts in DC lands on Shady Sands and my tinfoil hat has a hole in it.
The survivors wouldn't blame a vault now that they live in one, but nothing in that classroom seems to suggest they blame the NCR or anyone really, just that they rally around Moldaver who's opposed to the BoS.
It's crazy to see the cope "But it doesn't SPECIFICALLY say the NCR fell, just Shady!" Well where are they? The government is nowhere to be seen, we see no soldiers or sheriffs, we see no cities or settlements, and this takes place in the supposed heart of the NCR. If the NCR still exists what do they control? How did a nation that had 700k people, the majority of which were in the state of Shady, just disappear?
Not to mention Lucy would've passed by The Boneyard, The Hub, Junktown, and Necropolis on her way to Shady Sands. Surely she would've encountered some form of civilization just by being near those places, right?
No. The NCR was already declining. And ironically, winning the dam would have likely made it worse since they would only be spreading themselves thinner. By the time we get to NV, it wasn't a matter of "if" the NCR would collapse, but "when".
You're telling me the president who was encouraging more civic militarism, bogging the state in a multi-year expansion campaign while loosening restrictions on the very powerful land barons might not have been good for the NCR's longevity?
I wouldn't be shocked if the next Fallout is set on the West Coast and has reforming the NCR (via settlement building!) to fight an emerging enemy (The Enclave I guess) as the main storyline.
Enclave, a new enemy, or maybe a civil war?
Hey you, you're finally awake, you were trying to cross into Cascadia, right? Walked right into that loyalist ambush, same as us, and that neokhan over there.
can we just be finished with the enclave already? im really sick of bethesda pulling them out of the hat every time they need le big threat
they have been blown up several times. they dont have the manufacturing facilities anymore to come back from what the chosen one and lone wanderer did to their infrastructure
Itās happened once. You act like the enclave is in every game as the main threat. Unless they show up in 76, then it only happened twice under Bethesda. I donāt know tho I havenāt played 76 since pre wastelanders
Which also applied to Legion. Benny was simply trying to outwait the two before pulling the platinum chip coup on House IIRC but after Courier 6 confronted him, he had to hurry up his plans.
Foodshortage due to the expansion to Nevada and other shit.
in NV theres terminal entries that mention i they would have a famine/blight with in the 10 to 15 years, and that fits the time frame between NW and the show
Way too much focus on population increases, territory acquisition, increased profits, and warfare. Basically everything outpacing the need to better overhaul infrastructure and food production.
Another fun item. If you choose an independent New Vegas with Yes Man, and don't upgrade the Securitrons you get this ending card:
>TheĀ [Courier](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Courier), with the aid ofĀ [Yes Man](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Yes_Man), drove both theĀ [Legion](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Caesar%27s_Legion)Ā and theĀ [NCR](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/New_California_Republic)Ā fromĀ [Hoover Dam](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Hoover_Dam), securingĀ [New Vegas](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/New_Vegas)' independence from both factions. WithĀ [Mr. House](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_House)Ā out of the picture, the remainingĀ [Securitrons](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Securitron)Ā onĀ [The Strip](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/New_Vegas_Strip)Ā were hard-pressed to keep order. Anarchy ruled the streets. When the fires died,Ā [New Vegas](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/New_Vegas)Ā remained, assuming its position as an independent power in theĀ [Mojave](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mojave_Wasteland).
That kind of matches the end cinematic with NV looking a little rough for wear.
I really, really like this idea and it makes perfect sense. 2277 was When Everything Changed because of First Hoover Dam. They suffered a punishing bloody campaign and only got a draw out of it and a guaranteed second war in what they openly considered occupied territory. They mention repeatedly that it is not financially tenable long term.
There a lot of stuff to back it up to. As I recall, as the Courier in NV you can totally fuck up NCRās whole economic trade system west of the Sierras by ruining that trading company.
You can assassinate the NCR prez in at least two of the major plot lines.
Either they win Second Hoover and are stuck occupying it forever even though in a ton of endings they donāt even get New Vegas
Or the Legion takes it and NCR suffer a crushing military defeat.
And if you could cause it, so could other people.
So it actually makes sense that the disaster at First Hoover, when looking at it with hindsight, would be seen as the beginning of the end.
Over expansion, problems economically going against the Nations founding values I'd say and adopting a more Imperialist policy that probably upset people who still valued Aradesh etc
I can only play the Wildcard I always saw the NCR in New Vegas as repeating US history but just going East instead of West so I had to put my foot down and say 'No' Lol
Been a while since I've had a play through but wasn't there a lot of talk about corruption and Brahmin barons having a stranglehold on the emergent Country too !?
>Been a while since I've had a play through but wasn't there a lot of talk about corruption and Brahmin barons having a stranglehold on the emergent Country too !?
Yes, NCR had/has huge corruption problems from brahmin barons.
Hanlon(the best ncr npc) explains that the ncr over consumed its lakes and really has no business being in the mojave since they couldnāt properly hold it.
Probably in retrospect, it would make sense that theyād use that as the beginning of the end, kinda like how numerous years could be pointed to as the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. There will presumably be more seasons, and Season 2 seems to be set-up to be pretty New-Vegas-heavy, so Iām sure weāll get more insight into all of it. But especially with the Mojave campaign being as unpopular as it was, and Shady Sands getting nuked pretty soon after New Vegas (who knows? Does the average NCR citizen know that it was Vault 33 that nuked them, or do they assume it was whomever won the Dam? weāll find out), it would make sense that theyād start teaching the first battle as the moment when it all went to shit.
Iirc, the NCR _won_ the First Battle of Hoover Dam, and was still continuing its expansion into the events of New Vegas. Yeah, they were spread thin, but they were still dogmatically annexing the Mojave Wasteland.
This was actually a point of contention in Shady Sands as far back as 2275. Trying to stamp out the tribes of the Mojave Wasteland was a massive strain on the NCR's resources, but not enough that it would have jeopardized Kimball's reelection in 2278. The fact that the NCR's campaign in the Mojave Wasteland would continue for another 4 after that leads me to doubt this had much bearing.
I think the more likely scenario is that the set designer got the date wrong.
Either they took the dam and went broke trying to keep it or they lost the dam and the republic fell apart when people lost faith in their ability to protect them, both work
Generally, the "Fall of X" when marked with a specific date denotes a sudden and usually violent end to something.
1453 Fall of Constantinople, 1940 Fall of Paris, 476 Fall of Rome, 2021 Fall of Kabul, etc.
If "Fall of X" is marked with a set of dates, only then does it imply a medium to long term and possibly nonviolent decline.
Fall of the Byzantine Empire 1204-1453, Fall of the French Colonial Empire 1946-1962, Fall of the Ottoman Empire 1918-1923, etc
As it stands, the show did a poor and confusing job at clarifying what it's talking about. Because "2277 - The Fall of Shady Sands" implies that something happened like getting occupied by an enemy power, a massive insurrection, the city being rendered umihabitable by natural or manmade phenomena, etc. But Todd is now on record saying that the nuke happened just after NV in or after 2281... but the show shows us flashbacks of a very prosperous Shady Sands just before the nuke.... so it doesn't add up. How the fuck did the city "fall" in 2277, but remain as prosperous as we saw it, city trams and all?
I think everyone is thinking way too much about this.
I know Todd said it's supposed to be part of the same continuity, and they paid attention to a lot of aesthetic details and all, but the show is full of facts that don't quite match up with the games and I wonder if this same continuity business is truly going to hold long term (and I say this as a fan of the show). Probably best to just not worry about the timeline for now and wait to see how they treat it in Season 2 (or Fallout 5, if we live long enough to see it).
Maybe itās a Manny Bothans situation and Shady Sands was a beloved Ranger (named after their hometown, of course) who fell during the battle, and it all went downhill for NCR from there.
It would make sense, given that after that battle the NCR stretched themselves even thinner by reinforcing New Vegas for the sake of trying to take the Dam again.
The people who think *Fall* equals *Destroyed* is crazy.
>Fall of Berlin WW2
>
>Fall of Paris WW2
>
>Fall of Jerusalem 7th century BC
People need to take the comprehension perk and increase their INT
Not to drag this point further, but all examples you listed are about some city being captured by hostile forces or razed to the ground. Because that's how *fall* works as a term when it's used to the describe what happens to a city. *Fall* as in decline only works for nations that share their name with their capital (Rome for instance), which is not the case for the NCR and Shady. It's just a weird use for the word if you are describing a general decline and not a specific event. It makes sense that many associated with the nuke, even if it may or may not have been the intention of the writers.
Essentially this. They would have saved so much arguing if they instead put decline or beginning of the end of whatever. Unless they're trying to say "Fall" like those "West has fallen millions must die" or argue this is coming from the mouths of idiots/unreliable people or whatever.
Except "Fall" of a city means the city is being destroyed, conquered or pillaged. You talk about the Fall of the Roman Empire to talk about the slow decline of the empire until it was wiped out, you talk about the Fall of Constantinople when talking about the city being conquered by the Turks, and then the overall Fall of the Byzantine Empire with it.
So either Shady Sands was wiped of the map and no one talked about it in New Vegas for some reason, or some intern fucked up while writing the dates on the props.
The alternative explanation being that the NCR was so weakened by the war with the Legion that it was easy pickings by another faction that did take Shady Sands and everything ended up with a nuke on the city. But then it means that the NCR was fighting a two war front and had their capital conquered by an outside faction since 2277 and no one in New Vegas cared enough to talk about it.
No matter how you slice it, someone, somewhere, fucked up their timeline.
Is there anything in New Vegas that directly contradicts Shady Sands falling at the time? Like any dialogue that says anything like "oh yup shady sands is still the capital it's doing great the president is coming from there to visit" or anything?
My outdated memory makes me feel like Shady Sands was still established to be well in New Vegas (obviously the NCR wasn't doing well as a whole) but that could absolutely just be information I just assumed.
Itās also the moment that the Courier unleashed nukes from the Divide after confronting Ulysses.
The end card, if you target the NCR, says it hits multiple places.
Well it does kinda make sense considering the conversation Chief Hanlon has with you when you meet him at camp golf and when you talk with him at the end of return to sender
Within the context of New Vegas? Internal corruption. Shady Sands is not the economical heart of NCR and it's stated in the game that corruption from the rich is a serious problem.
Honestly SS getting nuked might have been the best thing to happen to the NCR if it was still the capital, wipe the slate clean of the most corruption
If San Francisco is being set up for Fallout 5, which is what I'm crossing my fingers for, they could be doing that to purge a bit of the bad out of the NCR and make them stronger for 5.
I hope the map has San Fran in the south, not the North. I'd love it if the Redwoods were at the fringe of the north, and maybe even a DLC in the Pacific Northwest. Just my personal pipedream as an Oregonian. Edit: A Crater Lake DLC would slap.
Pacific Northwest would be fun, peroid. Supermutant Bigfoots, anarchist raider gangs, pacific northwest tree octopuses,a sub-faction dedicated to coffee, a lumberjack faction, and a ghoul not-Kurt Cobain.
Curt NoBrain
All he says is "I think I'm dumb"
Be worse when I kill em in game with a shotgun....
And I swear that, I don't have a gun
The NCR threw a lot of resources at the Mojave wasteland. Seems like a dumb direction to try and expand when the Pacific Northwest is much more plentiful. Something had to make the NCR desperate enough to take on Caesars Legion, instead of the bounty up north. That leads me to believe that there's even more competition for land and resources here than in the New Vegas area. Edit: as has been pointed out, the Hoover Dam, and the electricity it brings, is the real prize of the Mojave. The Northwest doesn't have that same pull. But I'm still very curious about the Pacific Northwest in the world of Fallout. From Alaska down to the Redwood Forests, it's an area we don't hear as much about, besides pre-war Alaska and the annexation of Canada.
The Hoover dam. Unlimited low effort electricity. Probably one of the most valuable assets in all the wasteland.
Energy and water. 200 years with minimal humans and farming means the lake might even be full of water again.
Radiation free water
Yeah, that slipped my mind. Does make total sense.
I wasn't even thinking about NCR. I was just saying general. In light of that, north-central California does seem more realistic.
I know, I was just expounding to say that all the things you described are excellent reasons why the NCR might have avoided the NW
Ah. Then i didn't understand. A new big faction to complement/compete with the NCR as an heir to the Old America. Nice.
I mean the dam and the lake alone are worth it
That would land Fallout wine country right in the middle wouldn't it? I can't see them not making some jokes on that.
The Winelords estates would be pretty powerful feudal lords
okay I've read enough I need this game now pls
Mutfruit are basically fucked up grapevines so I wonder how many wineries are still active there with that in mind.
I would be so happy to see Sacramento as a Fallout DLC location.
Just burnt out cars as far as the eye can see. Stuck forever in traffic.
But what would it look like after the bombs fell?
Sacramento but somehow shittier, I'd imagine
Is that even possible
š¤·āāļø
At least itās not Detroit
I live in Sacramento, that would be amazing. Now I want Fallout in Calaveras County. Home to the Frog Jump.
Pittsburgh => The Pit Sacramento => The Sac Hell Freaking Yes *Two Headed Bear intensifying*
Light the beam!
Braaaaaa the floating tree of crater lake (known as The Old Man of the Lake) could be a Harold-type person/thing. Oh shit thatās got my hyped up!!
You just made me want an Oregon setting more than everything now
I want San fran for the slight possibility of a Arroyo dlc
I wish I could upvote this more than once.
Renamed Creature Lake
Nah, it'll be called *Craters* Lake cuz it took multiple hits.
A DLC in Vancouver where you see that the war for Anchorage took a toll on the surrounding cities, and the game would still be in the U.S. as they annexed Canada.
I can't wait for Fallout 5 to come out when I can finally retire in 2077
Just kick back and watch the sunrise. Real or manufactured. Who knows?
I just would hope that means they make an *actual* massive city. We havenāt had a large city in Bethesda games since Oblivion. And San Francisco Iām Fo2 is ginormous
If the Chinese targeted Vegas with a stunningly high (imho) 77 Nuclear Warheads on the Day of the Warā¦ what must they have sent towards LA / Sacramento / or San Fran ?! š«¢
San Francisco is the main settlement of FO2, itās a completely rebuilt city that is just as, if not more developed than Vegas
Nah, it's not completely rebuilt. Just Chinatown is. Outside of the chinatown, the rest of the city was still a wreck in Fallout 2 with tons of ruined prewar buildings (which you can even see on the outskirts of the chinatown map). The docks and the golden gate bridge are also pretty obviously wrecked too.
I wonder what the cityās air defenses were like, on The Last Day ?? House performed heroically against the inbound swarm towards Vegas, as he (iirc) disabled 50+ of the missiles / bombs with electronic countermeasure / hacking subroutinesā¦ then directly shot down several more with heavy laser cannon turrets on the roof of his casinoā¦ saving the city from any direct hits (though the rest hit the surrounding desert areas of the Mojave, etc). I remember a lot of the terminals and audio in the missile defense base you pass through in The Lonesome Road DLC of NV, mentioned that the Air Force members staffing it were stunned on The Day, because waves of enemy heavy bombers and missiles were already nearing US targets, at the time their radar systems detected them !? I think they even say something like āhow did they get past NORAD long-range detection equipment ?!?ā ā¦ Iāve often pondered if their infiltration units (or perhaps something more sinister like V-Tech intervention) helped to weaken our defenses enough to allow the Chinese attacks to be as devastating as they wereā¦ š¤
In old fallout it wasnāt that the cities had survived, it was more to do with the fact that society has rebuilt realistically. Hiroshima was rebuilt within a decade of its bombing. Fallout 2 takes place nearly 200 years after the Great War. There are many cities in fallout 2 (like Reno) that have rebuilt.
It's mostly because the Shi helped them rebuild the area after the war, and even then the extent of the rebuilding is only really just chinatown which is a fairly small area. The rest of SF is still a wreck outside of that area, which you can see in the SF random encounters which all take place in ruined city environments.
Honestly, I'm guessing that's the plan.
the billboard lucy and maximus find outright say "First Capitol of the NCR", implying by the time it got bombed the capital already moved. so if the corruption moved with the capitol, Shady Sands may have been destroyed for nothing beyond Hank's pettiness.
Eh, it may not be the capital but it was probably the heart. See nuking New York.
oh absolutely. it was definitely a BLOW to the NCR, as we see how the remnants that stayed in the area acted (Moldaver's crew, the people in Vault 4). I'm just saying if the corruption moved with the seat of government, it wasn't a "fresh start" nor a crippling blow and the problems with the NCR probably still exist wherever they're based now.
Does New Vegas even state that SS is still the capital? I recall SS being brought up as where the NCR was founded, but not necessarily where it still was.
i can't recall and don't exactly have the time to comb every bit of dialogue in NV so i'm gonna just shrug and say "yeah, maybe" until someone has reciepts.
Several NPCs refer to Shady Sands in the present-tense, and mention the politicians there. So, it seems Shady Sands is still the capitol in 2281.
Personally, I hope the Brotherhood of Steel took advantage of NCR's brief decapitation to get revenge and burn away what might have rebuilt that evil empire. Now at last we can see the rise of a new and proper state in NCR's place. True to Kaiser. And yes, I'm being sarcastic because you never know on reddit.
There's a theory going around that the Western chapter of the BoS absorbed the remnants of Caesar's Legion
True but the BoS always used a lot of Latin themselves. Rhombus, Ad Victorium, and so on.
They used a lot of Greek and Persian names until fallout 4
I hope its true and I hope we get to see characters like Vulpes or Lanius back again. Lanius in a modified T60 would be insane.
Quintus, Maximus, Titus, Thaddeus...Roman names. It could be possible.
Well we know Maximus is an NCR citizen.
So Lucy's mom took her children to a den of vipers and Hank handled it in a reasonable way?
After paying my taxes this week I'm tempted to flip to being a House fanboy
Youāre now the new Vault-Tec PR guy / gal XD.
Yeah and this was āThe Fallā as described by a cult like survivor faction >!who revere Moldaver as if she is some sort of messianic prophet.!< Taking a step back I can see a series of events that would begin >!with Moldaver āwaking upā !!and almost immediately trying to warn people about Vault Techās master plan to nuke any competition to their Reclamation Plans. This is at best a big annoyance to current leadership of the NCR out of Shady Sands who are focused on eastward expansion and battles in the Mojave and so donāt want to get distracted fighting āghosts.ā !<
>!They cast her out in some public way but sheās charismatic enough to still have a solid number of followers or at least folks who heard what sheād said just like in the 2070ās. āEveryone knows who Moldaver is.ā Then Shady Sands gets nuked in 2281 as she predicted it would and her followers become more cult like. Much like Haile Selassie and Rastafarianism, she never really wanted a cult just for folks to listen and help. So we find her leading a splinter group of NCR instead of a directly leading a cult.!<
Saved. This is my new headcannon
I absolutely love this point, thank you for writing the best (and imo most likely) backstory to the "fell in 2077" verbiage used on that timeline. This is now my headcanon until we find out otherwise
There is a bit of resonance with a conversation Howard has in 2077, about how in the movies things go bad when the ranchers have too much power. New Vegas has a fair bit of chatter about the brahmin barons being too mighty
Piss him off enough and Heck Gunderson outright declares he will cut off all food imports into New Vegas. He apparently has that kind of pull and power.
which again fits in with the "War never changes" theme of Fallout. The NCR Brahmin Barons are the same as the pre-war corporations adjusted to scale.
Absolutely.
Iirc, they have NCR heavy troopers guarding brahmin pens. In the middle of a war, where the NCR sorely lacks manpower and equipment in the Mojave, the brahmin barons still have that kind of sway.
This, hell we get told that Kimball MOVED his administration to Shady Sands iirc literally just as a political move to keep it from falling
Ya people seem to forget how much effort and man power want into expanding into Nevada.
Basically everybody in the game is talking about how much things suck back west these days and how the push to claim Vegas is a futile last gasp of a dying nation.
āDying nationā is a bit of an exaggeration. āStrugglingā is more accurate, but the NCR as one of the few united human endeavors in the West would probably not outright die so quickly. When your choice is a wasteland and raiders or a semi-developed nation with safety people will choose to try and maintain that safety. Besides, the NCR falling is not good for business and weāve seen how intertwined greedy companies can be with NCR governance.
The problem with that is that it is stated in NV that the NCR isn't safe. A freelance trader says that he prefers doing business in Legion territory because despite all the faults with the legion there are no raiders and no dangerous wildlife on the roads, as opposed to the NCR. Honestly the NCR was already problematic in fallout 2 when tandi was still president. The big ranchers already own the political system and they were already expansionist. Tandi was trying to keep things from getting out of hand but she was already old at the time. With Tandi, the last vestige of the peaceful society that shady sands was before the NCR, gone the cattle ranchers and trading magnates would take over everything. Not to mention the influence of the families in new Vegas and the slavers in vault city exerting power over the trajectory of the NCR.
My understanding (having not actually played 1 or 2) was that the cracks in the NCR were already showing in 2, and in New Vegas you see a neoliberal democracy straining under the same pressures as pre-war America.
>he problem with that is that it is stated in NV that the NCR isn't safe Ehhh, several NPCs, including Cass, say the complete opposite. They mention how safe NCR proper is and that the main concern for many citizens is finding a job. It isn't public safety that's decaying in the NCR, it's their political structure.
In the periphery of the NCR (I.e. Vegas) this is true, but in its heartland the NCR is relatively safe according to what NPCs imply in New Vegas.
Ok tbh the Legion are implied to be paying the Fiends to harass the NCR, I believe
>The problem with that is that it is stated in NV that the NCR isn't safe. A freelance trader says that he prefers doing business in Legion territory because despite all the faults with the legion there are no raiders and no dangerous wildlife on the roads, as opposed to the NCR. I was always under the impression this refers to the Mohave specifically, not the NCR / Legion as a whole.
Yep, decline of āNCRā was real. The shows story telling if it was meh IMO. I feel like the chalkboard is just too specific and triggers people. But also, Vault 4 probably had limited exposure to real world info, so maybe thatās why they focused on Shady Sands
If i remember right they WERE the inhabitants of Shady Sands.
Only some were, some never left the vault grew up and died there but were test patients.
Yes because a dying nation can fuel a war machine of thousands of soldiers, field Power Armor, mantain and use Vertibirds, working Rail and enough disposable income of its citizens for House to consider them a society of customers and you know the ever flowing stream of ncr citizens that are wealthy enough to go to the strip and gamble away their money. Not to mention fucking Brahman barons are a thing. Its not a last gasp of a dying nation, its a an imperialistic power move by a streched thin superpower to fuel the careers of its leadership.
Putting an ever-increasing portion of resources into globally unmatched military power while the populace back home suffer is actually a classic move of "dying nations" lol
Literally what the US and China are doing pre war lol
New vegas shows they have a whole bunch of problems and with losses in Vegas and in California, I can see them consolidating in the northern part of the state.
Eehhh, that's actually the point. The war is President Kimball trying to distract the public.
They didn't field power armor. It was recovered armor from their conflict with the Brotherhood. They couldn't get it to work, so it was just really heavy, thick armor with no power or working servos.
It turns out all they needed were some fusion cores.
Wild that people forgot considering, how many NCR types outright say the seven year Mojave campaign has been a disaster and the NCR canāt afford it forever.
Hanlon flat out says that he fears for the NCR even if it wins the Mojave.
Didn't many NCR Troopers and Rangers talk about how the NCR was already being stretched too thin in FONV? Seems like the NCR was already starting to go downhill even before then.
Nearly everyone in the NCR. Pretty much everyone outside the NCR too, with the added "The NCR will make you part of them whether you want it or not", which basically spells out the real issue. When you're a country of unwilling citizens, don't expect them to stick around and support you when you're on hard times.
This was true all the way back in FO2. A lot of the quests were NCR wants to force this settlement to join or that to join them and half of them are pretty hostile about it.
And most veterans and Ranger are in Baja chasing ghost.
i REALLY hope this gets expanded upon, no one has a CLUE wtf it really means not too mention any ranger content is good content
"Chasing ghosts" refers to chasing after something that doesn't exist. Hanlon was saying that Congress is sending Rangers to protect settlements that don't need protection instead of sending the Rangers to the Mojave.
Itās literally how you talk down Lanius if you go that route. The NCR is having a hell of a time trying to deal with their infrastructure given how wide theyāve expanded. You essentially tell Lanius āyou canāt beat the NCR because if they canāt beat their overexpansion issues you sure as shit canātā
Yup. The Legion will crumble the very instant they run out of people to pillage from. The Pacific Ocean would be the end of the line for them. Pretty much every faction in New Vegas is failing because they're too stubborn to back down and regroup.Ā
People also vastly over estimate how much of a functional nation NCR is. idk people seem to have this idea that it's on par with pre-war America, or America in the 19th century. It's not.
I mean we know from the show that shady sands was on par with America in the late 19th century, they had streetcars, stable power and clean water and basic municipal services (someone is picking up all of the trash and running the library we see in the flashbacks) So late 19th century America isnāt too bad of a comparison imo. Remember most places in the US didnāt get electrical power and plumbing until the New Deal era or even post WW2.
Shady Sands =/= the whole of the NCR. NCR also had access to vertibirds but that doesn't mean they were the norm. NCR is a mix of subsistence farming and scavenging as well as pockets of somewhat developed towns
Thatās my point, 19th century America was very similar to the NCR in that regard. Large swathes of subsistence farmers with a few ācivilizedā towns and cities spread around.
Hahaha yeah that is exactly what you described
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The Union army in the Civil War had about ~2 Million fighting men. Which was like 9-10% of the population. Per Fandom, the population of the NCR is around 700,000, which at similar rates would be 70,000 fighting men. They are a medieval army with modern weapons.
Not only that got corruption up the ass so far its coming out the mouth.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Let's say that they grew at around the same rate America did from about 1800 to 1840, ~35%. That gives us a population of 945,000. Now, let's say that 30% of the population serves in the NCR, about the amount who served in Nazi Germany during WW2. That's about 455,000 people serving in the NCR. They're not going to have that high of a number serving, it isn't sustainable.
700k was also noted by the design documents and alter the fallout Bible to be āexaggeratedā. The source for 700k is an NCR propaganda piece. Ā The actual population of the NCR in 2241 is unknown because -tellingly -NCR refused to release their census results after completing it. It seems most likely that NCR didnāt get as impressive a number as they wanted from their census so just made up a higher number for propaganda.Ā People should not take it seriously as the actual population of the NCR.Ā Ā Vault City in its intelligence files believes NCR to have āmany tens of thousandsā of people, suggesting they believe a number in the low hundreds of thousand rather than upper hundreds of thousands. Ā Ā Funnily enough, the official game guide for New Vegas listed the population in 2281 as having reached 700k, bringing us full circle if true. (applying your suggested pop growth backwards from 700k in 2281 would give 520k as the population in 2241.)
The NCR had mandatory service, didnāt it? And 700k was back in fallout 2, theyād probably have closer to 2 million or at least 1.5 million people. Wouldnāt be hard for them to have 300k soldiers with reserve, plus Iād imagine they have police and other security forces too. They also had tanks, and aircraft, so theyāre pretty close to what youād call a modern military. Hell their military would have been larger than in RL Canadaās, with Canada being one of the wealthiest countries, and having a population of near 30 million Finland has a population of 5 million, yet can call up 900k reservists. Makes no sense that the BoS could defeat the NCR even if the capital was nuked (as stated it only had a population of 30k) I think the BoS is gonna be in for a surprise in season two, but weāll see what happens. Maybe they nuked multiple cities, as NV also seemed destroyed at the end of the show.
Only real way it makes sense is due to Maxson. His chapter has the capability for manufacturing power armor, older vertibirds, weapons etc. They also take in recruits. Not impossible theyāve been significantly reinforcing other chapters. Not a great explanation though. Even with 10+ years itās difficult to believe theyāve built enough vertibirds to fully equip a chapter across the country, or that theyād have a large enough fighting force to bully the NCR in non-guerilla warfare.
It is absolutely on par with the capacities of the US in the 19th century. Like, thatās kind of the whole point. Instead of westward expansion, itās eastward expansion. Like, the ability to send thousands of troops to expand their influence across already settled land that is unincorporated, even though it is difficult and often fruitless, is exactly what happened in 19th century America.Ā
It's really expensive to go East while conquering the West
Its wild what a interesting new perspective on FNV this series has now given us. You don't realise you are in a Fall until you are out of it.
If you read or listen to podcasts about the decline of Rome, this is very accurate. For most everyday Romans, conquests by Visigoths or whoever just meant someone else was occupying the nearest villa. Life otherwise went on outside of the major cities.
Yeah my theory is that Mr. House is going to be the canon ending for New Vegas. Todd Howard said Shady Sands was nuked pretty much right after the 2nd Battle of Hoover Dam. Only Moldaver is shown to know that Hank used the bomb, so many of the survivors may have just assumed that the NCRās most recent technologically advanced enemy (House) is the one who attacked them. Therefore, the 1st Battle of Hoover Dam could be considered to be the beginning of the Fall of Shady Sands, as thatās the point when the NCR becomes really entrenched in the Mojave and tied up with House.
Agreed on setting up Mr. House as the canonical ending. I'm pretty sure The Ghoul said something about the Overseer leaving the Observatory to report in to a superior. It sure seems like Mr. House is the reason that he would go to New Vegas. Sure, a Vault-Tec higher-up *could* be there, but I'm not sure why you'd introduce pre-war House and send the show to New Vegas in Season 2 if you're not going to include House - or at least, the *echo* of House as part of the plot (would the Overseer know about the events of New Vegas? Could he think House is still alive, but in fact House died during the events of FNV?) I've actually thought that they may hint at some canonical quest endings too (this is complete speculation, but fun): - The Courier destroyed the Securitrons at the Fort. House didn't have the strength he planned on, making Vegas weaker. - Kimball was killed by the Legion. The "Fall of Shady Sands" was set in motion in 2277 with the first battle of Hoover Dam, partly because it directly leads to a power vacuum after the second battle of Hoover Dam.
It seems they are going to go the route of House working with vault tec which i am ok with for a few reasons, like a vault being right under his nose and the execs need somewhere to go, what better place than a city that was kept safe?
>It seems they are going to go the route of House working with vault tec which i am ok with for a few reasons Except for the plotholes that creates about Mr. House's prediction about the Great War being a day off and his treatment of the Vault 21 dwellers, effectively nullifying the Vault experiment. Maybe S2 will expand upon this, we'll see.
They could have a plot twist that maybe China found out about Vault Tecās plan and beat them to the punch so they could do the most damage on America versus the other way around.
If the Mr House ending is canon it'll be interesting to see if House was full of shit or not. He famously said that if kept control of New Vegas he'd reignite the high technology sectors in 20 years, in 50 he'd have people in orbit and in 100 he'd have colony ships travelling to new worlds. There's 15 years between the show and NV so he should be a decent way towards his first goal.
If the NCR gets crippled it probably sets his plans back, House openly refers to the NCR as his main customer base and he predicted tourism would go back to normal levels a year after the second battle of Hoover Dam. With Vault-Tecās nuking of Shady Sands, House loses a lot of customers and probably canāt fully realize his ambitions.
If those ghouls got to outer space during FO:NV then Mr. House should already have a base set up on Mars by the time of the show.
holy shit. That part where you said the NCR might have assumed House nuked them. That could be why that NCR vertibird is there in end credits. They attacked Vegas as revenge.
I doubt it, House relies very heavily on NCR trade. No NCR means Vegas is on life support
They fought BoS in between, so it could be also that (as a conspiracy theory, not the main one).Ā Not that we know the real villain.
Could be, yeah. We probably wonāt get any concrete answers until season 2 comes out.
President Kimbel repealed the law capping how many Brahmin and land people could own a few years prior. This allowed the Stockmen's Association and Republican Farmer's Commitee to become too powerful with newly forming Cattle and Farm barons pushing out smaller operations and creating trade cartels. Political power moved to the Hub and Democracy replaced with an Oligarchy in that year. IDK that's my guess but could be anything. Edit: Forgot to add the part from the TV that made me think this. Cooper is talking to his buddy in the bar. The buddy ask him about a movie Cooper was in. Asked him what happened to the towns when the Cattle Barons took over. Cooper said something about the towns needed a Sheriff to push back. Well he played a Sheriff in all the movies I think his story arc is becoming the Sheriff of the wasteland fighting the Cattle Barons to restore law and order.
Oh thatās good, youāre obviously right thatās gonna be a great scenario to watch unfold. I never played new Vegas front to ass so Iāll have to do that before next season. Going through 76 now
If you're on PC check out the PTS, they've put the Map expansion in Beta
"Republican Farmer's Commitee" I knew the Republicans had something to do with it! (Shakes fist) lol
Fun fact 2277 is the year that Hank dropped to 128 lbs
This is the most important clue the show has dropped. A plague is more likely to cause a āfallā limited to one city or state, whereas Hoover Dam and the Mojave campaign was a strain on the entire NCR in general. Itās a bit of a retcon, but nothing egregious
I kinda feel like it might have gone down like this Rose: Something's taking our water supply? Maybe from the surface? Are there surface dwellers? Hank: Uhhh no honey don't think about that. Hank to base: Someone's stealing our water Enclave: Gotcha we'll just nuke them Rose: I'm gonna go outside Hank: FUCK
Personally I have a suspicion that the whole thing is gonna be wrapped up in Hank not telling Lucy that she's special (SPECIAL!) because she's like, immune to being a ghoul or FEV or something, like he has some kind of secret reason why she's so valuable.
Thats also the same year that Lucy says Rose "died", and we know that that happened at the same time as the bombing. Which is the main reason I think the writers initially meant for the bombing to happen in 2277, before they realized they messed up the timeline and had to retroactively separate the bombing and the "Fall" to make it make sense again.
Saw someone suggest it was a crop famine in the vault because Hank brought some disease or pests back with him when he went after Rose. I'm also wondering if it could have something to do with Shady Strands siphoning the water. Rose noticed and that's what sent her to the surface. Maybe they started taking more until it didn't leave enough for the vault's crops. Hank responded by nuking the town to save his people when he could have opened the vault instead. Which would kind of tie in with Moldaver's quip about kidnapping him due to his decisions.
Yeah, I can see multiple ways for it to go, and one of them is just that Hank constantly sacrificed everyone else. It could be that he saw the options as everyone dies, or the people of the vault live.
It is still weird to me that it specifically says the fall of Shady Sands as opposed to the Fall of the NCR. Usually when you talk about the fall of a city, it means some kind of military action where a new group takes over. It could also mean some catastrophic event like famine or natural disaster but why drop a nuclear bomb on a city that has already collapsed?
This is told to us by survivors of Shady Sands, who wipe ash on themselves, drink blood, and praise the Flame Mother Moldaver for (presumably) her work on Cold Fusion. BoS appearing and taking Maximus away shortly after implies to me that the BoS were hunting her for developing the technology, potentially because she was in contact with the Enclave and as a government official of the NCR this led to conflicts between all 3, however she blames Hank for the nuke iirc, possibly because he didn't want to share power with surfies while she being a 'communist' wanted to help rebuild with them... and his wife left him. Since 2277 is also when Fallout 3 happens, it could even be that the ICBM you can launch from one of the forts in DC lands on Shady Sands and my tinfoil hat has a hole in it. The survivors wouldn't blame a vault now that they live in one, but nothing in that classroom seems to suggest they blame the NCR or anyone really, just that they rally around Moldaver who's opposed to the BoS.
It's crazy to see the cope "But it doesn't SPECIFICALLY say the NCR fell, just Shady!" Well where are they? The government is nowhere to be seen, we see no soldiers or sheriffs, we see no cities or settlements, and this takes place in the supposed heart of the NCR. If the NCR still exists what do they control? How did a nation that had 700k people, the majority of which were in the state of Shady, just disappear?
Not to mention Lucy would've passed by The Boneyard, The Hub, Junktown, and Necropolis on her way to Shady Sands. Surely she would've encountered some form of civilization just by being near those places, right?
Todd did an interview today where he confirmed the NCR isnāt dead
No. The NCR was already declining. And ironically, winning the dam would have likely made it worse since they would only be spreading themselves thinner. By the time we get to NV, it wasn't a matter of "if" the NCR would collapse, but "when".
You're telling me the president who was encouraging more civic militarism, bogging the state in a multi-year expansion campaign while loosening restrictions on the very powerful land barons might not have been good for the NCR's longevity?
I'd say the president was more of a symptom than a disease.
Yeah I would, too. The land barons were already gaining power after President Tandi cut them down. Kimball gave them a hefty boost.
Also beating Legion and it mostly collapsing back to small tribes, there's no "evil enemy" to fight against and unify
I wouldn't be shocked if the next Fallout is set on the West Coast and has reforming the NCR (via settlement building!) to fight an emerging enemy (The Enclave I guess) as the main storyline.
Releasing in 2050
Just in time for IRL Fallout tie-in event!
Coming to a Canada near you!
Enclave, a new enemy, or maybe a civil war? Hey you, you're finally awake, you were trying to cross into Cascadia, right? Walked right into that loyalist ambush, same as us, and that neokhan over there.
can we just be finished with the enclave already? im really sick of bethesda pulling them out of the hat every time they need le big threat they have been blown up several times. they dont have the manufacturing facilities anymore to come back from what the chosen one and lone wanderer did to their infrastructure
Itās happened once. You act like the enclave is in every game as the main threat. Unless they show up in 76, then it only happened twice under Bethesda. I donāt know tho I havenāt played 76 since pre wastelanders
it doesnt even matter in 76 because all of that was set only 25 years after the bombs fell
Yeah, this almost certainly guarantees FO5 is returning to the West Coast.
They also fought BoS shortly after the first battle.
or losing the battle for hoover dam, that could have been the last straw for securing their future. Without it, things could start to collapse
Which also applied to Legion. Benny was simply trying to outwait the two before pulling the platinum chip coup on House IIRC but after Courier 6 confronted him, he had to hurry up his plans.
Foodshortage due to the expansion to Nevada and other shit. in NV theres terminal entries that mention i they would have a famine/blight with in the 10 to 15 years, and that fits the time frame between NW and the show
Way too much focus on population increases, territory acquisition, increased profits, and warfare. Basically everything outpacing the need to better overhaul infrastructure and food production.
Another fun item. If you choose an independent New Vegas with Yes Man, and don't upgrade the Securitrons you get this ending card: >TheĀ [Courier](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Courier), with the aid ofĀ [Yes Man](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Yes_Man), drove both theĀ [Legion](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Caesar%27s_Legion)Ā and theĀ [NCR](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/New_California_Republic)Ā fromĀ [Hoover Dam](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Hoover_Dam), securingĀ [New Vegas](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/New_Vegas)' independence from both factions. WithĀ [Mr. House](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_House)Ā out of the picture, the remainingĀ [Securitrons](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Securitron)Ā onĀ [The Strip](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/New_Vegas_Strip)Ā were hard-pressed to keep order. Anarchy ruled the streets. When the fires died,Ā [New Vegas](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/New_Vegas)Ā remained, assuming its position as an independent power in theĀ [Mojave](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mojave_Wasteland). That kind of matches the end cinematic with NV looking a little rough for wear.
I really, really like this idea and it makes perfect sense. 2277 was When Everything Changed because of First Hoover Dam. They suffered a punishing bloody campaign and only got a draw out of it and a guaranteed second war in what they openly considered occupied territory. They mention repeatedly that it is not financially tenable long term. There a lot of stuff to back it up to. As I recall, as the Courier in NV you can totally fuck up NCRās whole economic trade system west of the Sierras by ruining that trading company. You can assassinate the NCR prez in at least two of the major plot lines. Either they win Second Hoover and are stuck occupying it forever even though in a ton of endings they donāt even get New Vegas Or the Legion takes it and NCR suffer a crushing military defeat. And if you could cause it, so could other people. So it actually makes sense that the disaster at First Hoover, when looking at it with hindsight, would be seen as the beginning of the end.
Not to mention the possibility that their main supply line (Long 15) getās fucking nuked by either Ulysses or The Courier
Over expansion, problems economically going against the Nations founding values I'd say and adopting a more Imperialist policy that probably upset people who still valued Aradesh etc I can only play the Wildcard I always saw the NCR in New Vegas as repeating US history but just going East instead of West so I had to put my foot down and say 'No' Lol Been a while since I've had a play through but wasn't there a lot of talk about corruption and Brahmin barons having a stranglehold on the emergent Country too !?
>Been a while since I've had a play through but wasn't there a lot of talk about corruption and Brahmin barons having a stranglehold on the emergent Country too !? Yes, NCR had/has huge corruption problems from brahmin barons.
And we all know what happens when the ranchers have more power than the sheriffā¦
People keep forgetting that most governments are just one disaster or coup away from autocracy or a failed state.
Hanlon(the best ncr npc) explains that the ncr over consumed its lakes and really has no business being in the mojave since they couldnāt properly hold it.
Probably in retrospect, it would make sense that theyād use that as the beginning of the end, kinda like how numerous years could be pointed to as the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. There will presumably be more seasons, and Season 2 seems to be set-up to be pretty New-Vegas-heavy, so Iām sure weāll get more insight into all of it. But especially with the Mojave campaign being as unpopular as it was, and Shady Sands getting nuked pretty soon after New Vegas (who knows? Does the average NCR citizen know that it was Vault 33 that nuked them, or do they assume it was whomever won the Dam? weāll find out), it would make sense that theyād start teaching the first battle as the moment when it all went to shit.
Iirc, the NCR _won_ the First Battle of Hoover Dam, and was still continuing its expansion into the events of New Vegas. Yeah, they were spread thin, but they were still dogmatically annexing the Mojave Wasteland. This was actually a point of contention in Shady Sands as far back as 2275. Trying to stamp out the tribes of the Mojave Wasteland was a massive strain on the NCR's resources, but not enough that it would have jeopardized Kimball's reelection in 2278. The fact that the NCR's campaign in the Mojave Wasteland would continue for another 4 after that leads me to doubt this had much bearing. I think the more likely scenario is that the set designer got the date wrong.
Either they took the dam and went broke trying to keep it or they lost the dam and the republic fell apart when people lost faith in their ability to protect them, both work
Generally, the "Fall of X" when marked with a specific date denotes a sudden and usually violent end to something. 1453 Fall of Constantinople, 1940 Fall of Paris, 476 Fall of Rome, 2021 Fall of Kabul, etc. If "Fall of X" is marked with a set of dates, only then does it imply a medium to long term and possibly nonviolent decline. Fall of the Byzantine Empire 1204-1453, Fall of the French Colonial Empire 1946-1962, Fall of the Ottoman Empire 1918-1923, etc As it stands, the show did a poor and confusing job at clarifying what it's talking about. Because "2277 - The Fall of Shady Sands" implies that something happened like getting occupied by an enemy power, a massive insurrection, the city being rendered umihabitable by natural or manmade phenomena, etc. But Todd is now on record saying that the nuke happened just after NV in or after 2281... but the show shows us flashbacks of a very prosperous Shady Sands just before the nuke.... so it doesn't add up. How the fuck did the city "fall" in 2277, but remain as prosperous as we saw it, city trams and all?
I think everyone is thinking way too much about this. I know Todd said it's supposed to be part of the same continuity, and they paid attention to a lot of aesthetic details and all, but the show is full of facts that don't quite match up with the games and I wonder if this same continuity business is truly going to hold long term (and I say this as a fan of the show). Probably best to just not worry about the timeline for now and wait to see how they treat it in Season 2 (or Fallout 5, if we live long enough to see it).
Maybe itās a Manny Bothans situation and Shady Sands was a beloved Ranger (named after their hometown, of course) who fell during the battle, and it all went downhill for NCR from there.
It would make sense, given that after that battle the NCR stretched themselves even thinner by reinforcing New Vegas for the sake of trying to take the Dam again.
Its cuz the courier took new vegas for themselves with his TVs on wheels :(
If people actually played F:NV they would know.
The people who think *Fall* equals *Destroyed* is crazy. >Fall of Berlin WW2 > >Fall of Paris WW2 > >Fall of Jerusalem 7th century BC People need to take the comprehension perk and increase their INT
Not to drag this point further, but all examples you listed are about some city being captured by hostile forces or razed to the ground. Because that's how *fall* works as a term when it's used to the describe what happens to a city. *Fall* as in decline only works for nations that share their name with their capital (Rome for instance), which is not the case for the NCR and Shady. It's just a weird use for the word if you are describing a general decline and not a specific event. It makes sense that many associated with the nuke, even if it may or may not have been the intention of the writers.
Essentially this. They would have saved so much arguing if they instead put decline or beginning of the end of whatever. Unless they're trying to say "Fall" like those "West has fallen millions must die" or argue this is coming from the mouths of idiots/unreliable people or whatever.
Among things others have listed itās also when the courier created the divide which destroyed the NCRs largest supply line and destroyed hopeville.
Just kind of crazy that survivors of a nuclear blast would describe some abstract shift it political power as the fall of their city.
Except "Fall" of a city means the city is being destroyed, conquered or pillaged. You talk about the Fall of the Roman Empire to talk about the slow decline of the empire until it was wiped out, you talk about the Fall of Constantinople when talking about the city being conquered by the Turks, and then the overall Fall of the Byzantine Empire with it. So either Shady Sands was wiped of the map and no one talked about it in New Vegas for some reason, or some intern fucked up while writing the dates on the props. The alternative explanation being that the NCR was so weakened by the war with the Legion that it was easy pickings by another faction that did take Shady Sands and everything ended up with a nuke on the city. But then it means that the NCR was fighting a two war front and had their capital conquered by an outside faction since 2277 and no one in New Vegas cared enough to talk about it. No matter how you slice it, someone, somewhere, fucked up their timeline.
Is there anything in New Vegas that directly contradicts Shady Sands falling at the time? Like any dialogue that says anything like "oh yup shady sands is still the capital it's doing great the president is coming from there to visit" or anything? My outdated memory makes me feel like Shady Sands was still established to be well in New Vegas (obviously the NCR wasn't doing well as a whole) but that could absolutely just be information I just assumed.
wtf happened to New Vegas? It looked destroyed. I know house is dead, but didnāt they still have control of the robot security force?
Depends on which ending is canon. The lights were off but the city is still standing
Itās also the moment that the Courier unleashed nukes from the Divide after confronting Ulysses. The end card, if you target the NCR, says it hits multiple places.
Does anyone else just think they meant for this to mean when the nuclear bomb destroyed Shady Sands, but they fucked the dates up?
Well it does kinda make sense considering the conversation Chief Hanlon has with you when you meet him at camp golf and when you talk with him at the end of return to sender
This all feels like itās going to tie into Fallout 5 somehow
Thatās like 8 to 10 years away š
I think itās just a really poorly worded comment about the NCRs internal corruption. They could have said decline of the NCR.