Prime Video’s Fallout TV Show Is Canon

Prime Video’s upcoming Fallout TV series is canon to the video games.

In an interview with Vanity Fair (via GameSpot), Bethesda’s Todd Howard said, “We view what’s happening in the show as canon. That’s what’s great, when someone else looks at your work and then translates it in some fashion.” Howard even went on to admit that he’s a bit jealous of some of what’s in the TV show, saying his reaction was, “Ah, why didn’t we do that?”

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Howard’s statement came alongside first look photos for the Fallout TV series which have me as a long-time fan of the franchise extremely hyped.

Originally created by Interplay Entertainment, the Fallout franchise began in 1997 with what was, at the time, a sort of spiritual successor to another game called Wasteland. The series takes place in a post-apocalyptic future, which draws from retro-futuristic aesthetics, in which nuclear war has turned the planet into a wasteland. Some ended up going underground and living in giant vaults at the onset of the war.

Bethesda eventually got the rights to Fallout and released its first installment in the franchise, Fallout 3, in 2008. That new ownership also brought with it a gameplay style change. The Interplay-era Fallout games were primarily turn-based CRPGs. However, Bethesda brought the series into first-person and made it more of a shooter.

The idea that the upcoming Fallout series is canon to the games is definitely exciting to me, because I’m something of a mark for anything related to the franchise, and getting to know more about the various pockets of the universe is always neat.

Fallout will premiere on Prime Video on April 12, 2024. The series was developed by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan and stars Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, and Kyle MacLachlan.