Retcons you’d like (excluding Bethesda’s lore)

ElloinmorninJ

ElloinmorninJ

Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
You have the ability retcon any pieces of lore from any classic Fallout game (+Fallout NV). Whatever you do will somehow magically have become canon from the start. What would you do, and why? (Also, you can add stuff as well as removing)

My first retcon would be simple: Make it so that Broken Hills was never abandoned after the ending of Fallout 2. Make it so that it became a new trading post city in the North, with Ghouls, Super Mutants, and Humans working together.

My second retcon would be to remake most of San Francisco. 1) by intergrating the settlement closer into the economy of the world (have the Shi trade fish and rice) so that is doesn’t feel isolated, make it so that you can go there at lower levels when your not overpowered, and removing the Kung-fu. Also, make the Hubologists more “creepy-cultish” then “silly innuendo”.
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Give your opinions on my ideas and leave your own below.
 
Add [more] exposition clearly stating that the event at Necropolis —resulting in the creation of Ghouls— was a nearly unrepeatable fluke.

Add [more] exposition clearly stating that the Enclave only existed at the rig, and the new Navarro base, where they were only just getting a toe-hold on the mainland.
 
  • The Ghost in the Den
  • Seymour the Talking Plant
  • Chess Scorpion
  • Mr House waking from his coma way, way later than in canon so he wasn't just idly spectating for decades upon decades
  • Less a retcon but I have a shopping list of minor changes I'd make to Caesars Legion
 
Retcon any ghoul physiology lore in Fallout New Vegas back to classic Fallout. I don't like them running, I don't think that a dirty bomb should have the ability to create more ghouls, I do not think that rotting bonebags should hit like a truck (reavers, glowing ones), glowing one's magic rad cloud can piss off too while we're at it and I don't think that ghouls should go feral. They should go crazy or brain-fried and turn into hollow shells of human beings (romero zombies) and not animalistic movie monsters (28 days later rip-offs).

And as to the Legion it's more like adding a little bit of lore than a retcon but fuck it, I want a simple little line that clearly states that there are peaceful towns under Legion's control that aren't treated like slaves. You have to dig around all kinds of lore and go through Sawyers Formspring to get this information and I don't like how Legion got completely shafted because of the short development cycle so yeah, I'd add in a dialogue line from someone, probably over at Crimson Caravan to be honest, that states that Legion does not touch those who are "civilized" meaning they enslave and kill enemies or uncivilized people (tribals) but allow civilized towns to continue existence under Legion rule.

Though depending on how much leeway I'd get with retconning I might just retcon a shitload of Legion lore simply because they promised morally ambiguous factions and did not fucking deliver when it came to the Legion and they had 4 DLC's to correct their mistake and didn't. So yeah there's a ton of Legion lore I'd retcon.

Such as the idea that they are willing to "buy slaves" off of other people or factions. Never made much sense to me considering how they want to brainwash people, especially when they're young, yet Jeannie May sold off Boone's wife just fine. If anything Vulpes would enslave Jeannie May in retaliation for being of low moral fiber as she's not enslaving for the furthering of the Legion, rather she's enslaving for personal gain.

I'd also make it very clear that the girl up in The Fort is lying just to get you to turn on the Legion and that the Legion does not allow rape in the slightest. It happens as it is a shittier part of human nature but it is not condoned or tolerated and those who step out of line to indulge in the flesh wrongly are severely punished, probably castrated in public or something and left to bleed out. A very extreme form of punishment but it would show a better side of the Legion that for all their faults when you are in their territory and you are not an enemy then you are not to be touched and free to go about your business so long as it does not interfere with the Legion and that again, NO ONE is above the law, ANYONE will be made an example out of.

Don't want to go around writing entire paragraphs about expanding the lore though. Just little tweaks here and there to lighten their pitch black morality just a tad more towards a grayer side.
 
I've said this before but I think the Legion's treatment of women needed a major overhaul. An internalised oppression rather than the more externalised obvious stuff. Make women of the Legion like North Koreans completely brainwashed.

The Legion shouldn't view women as inferior subhumans but rather just have a different purpose in total service to Casaer. The men are disposable toy soldiers meant to die and the women are meant to be propagandist teachers, healers and broodmares. Obviously still mysoginistic but less cartoonishly evil and more creepily totalitarian. They are lifelong servants to the Legion same as the men but their "natural role" is simply different.

Considering the Legion is only 30 odd years old the cultivation of culture and propaganda should have been way more strongly emphasized. They'd need to be an absolute machine of indoctrination in order to function so young in their lifespan as a society.

Also yeah for the Ghouls I'd much prefer for them to be slow, wandering ghosts of the old world. Radioactive to the touch. Wouldn't work too well in 3D as opposed to isometric turn based though.
 
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ElloinmorninJ said:
Like what?
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I don't like his retcon idea but you could say that some kind of chemical lining used in the construction of Vault 12 made by a cheap company in Bakersfield itself had some sort of unique combination effect with the radiation in order to produce the Ghoul mutation.
 
Yeah I don’t really like the idea myself. It would make the Ghoul population pretty limited/small. They’ve been slaughtered en masse a couple times so by the time Fallout 2 rolls around there’d only be like...low hundreds of them left. Plus you wouldn’t be able to have any if you set it outside of California/Nevada.
 
Considering what little we know of the ghouls out of Bakersfield I never liked the idea that they somehow was so much more particular than anyone else and got this strange mutation. It should have happened elsewhere too. But since it is a retcon, yeah we're gonna need some sort of a vault experiment. Regenerative cellular research?
 
Mr Fish said:
It should have happened elsewhere too.
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I disagree— but (as I am sure the OP will soon mention ;) ) this is not a thread for disagreements, or arguments about retcon ideas... This post is simply to clarify the intent of my earlier post.

Personally I would not like there to be a scientific explanation for it. I'd just want there to have been an unclosed door, where the government & industry failed them, and they were helplessly exposed to the Atomic effects of the war—fear and the unknown changing them into the rotting ghouls by some mysterious fashion right out of EERIE or Heavy Metal magazine.



ElloinmorninJ said:
Like what?
Click to expand...
Possibly additional dialog from Set, or Lenny; anecdotes.
 
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The reason that the ghouls in Necropolis were created was a combination of their vault door not closing properly and their vault being so close to the Glow, allowing airborne FEV and radiation to seep into the vault, grotesquely mutating the inhabitants. Without the FEV they would have just died from radiation, and without being in an underground vault they would have died from the blasts or the exposure. This isn’t so much a retcon as it is the original intention of Fallout 1’s developers (at least some of them, the devs disagreed on how ghouls were created). We don’t need a vault experiment to explain this. All of the problems with Vault 12, 13, and 15 can be easily explained with cost-cutting and shoddy workmanship.
 
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Iprovidelittlepianos said:
The reason that the ghouls in Necropolis were created was a combination of their vault door not closing properly and their vault being so close to the Glow, allowing airborne FEV and radiation to seep into the vault, grotesquely mutating the inhabitants. Without the FEV they would have just died from radiation, and without being in an underground vault they would have died from the blasts or the exposure. This isn’t so much a retcon as it is the original intention of Fallout 1’s developers (at least some of them, the devs disagreed on how ghouls were created). We don’t need a vault experiment to explain this. All of the problems with Vault 12, 13, and 15 can be easily explained with cost-cutting and shoddy workmanship.
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If that’s the cause that would mean anyone in a crappy bunker could get ghoulified
 
Iprovidelittlepianos said:
The reason that the ghouls in Necropolis were created was a combination of their vault door not closing properly and their vault being so close to the Glow, allowing airborne FEV and radiation to seep into the vault, grotesquely mutating the inhabitants.
Click to expand...

Would you say that it was a kind of 'perfect storm' situation —one in which they could survive the nukes and (via FEV) survive the extreme radiation? Resulting in Ghouls?
(Not at all a common circumstance; for instance: Megaton should have been vaporized along with all inhabitants, and —any trace of the town.)

*I still think there is more to it (to everything in the setting) than just scientific cause & effect.
 
Gizmojunk said:
Would you say that it was a kind of 'perfect storm' situation —one in which they could survive the nukes and (via FEV) survive the extreme radiation? Resulting in Ghouls?
(Not at all a common circumstance.)

*I still think there is more to it (to everything in the setting) than just scientific cause & effect.
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Wait if it was airborne FEV and Radiation then that would mean ghouls would also form after the apocalypse too
 
Not if the levels required of each are each lethal —without very unusual circumstance... like the vault with its door partially ajar. It might be more than just the radiation, or FEV, it could also be proximity to the blast (which itself would usually be lethal).

ElloinmorninJ said:
If that’s the cause that would mean anyone in a crappy bunker could get ghoulified
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I still say that it should not be cause & effect; the Fallout setting should not be that predictable.

And it pretty much destroys the mystique of ghouls.
 
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Gizmojunk said:
Not if the levels required of each are each lethal —without very unusual circumstance... like the vault with its door partially ajar. It might be more than just the radiation, or FEV, it could also be proximity to the blast (which itself would usually be lethal).

I still say that it should not be cause & effect; the Fallout setting should not be that predictable.

And it pretty much destroys the mystique of ghouls.
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I know I ask this all the time, but what was the original confirmation again? I forgot
 
It's a mixed bag; I don't think that there is anything confirmed. The devs' didn't all agree on what made the ghouls. Some had more influence than others.

If you look in Fallout 2, Typhon describes [all] ghouls as long lived and sterile. He mentions a ghoul expression, "There are only old ghouls", and and further states, "We are the first, and last generation".

He means Necropolis, and presumably what happened there, the event that created all ghouls.

**If there are only old ghouls... ;)
 
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ElloinmorninJ said:
If that’s the cause that would mean anyone in a crappy bunker could get ghoulified
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Yeah, that’s true, but they would have to be close enough to the Glow to get hit with such a large dose of FEV. Not to mention life must’ve been tough immediately after the war, it’s possible that ghouls without access to a vault’s advanced life support facilities just didn’t make it.
 
Gizmojunk said:
Would you say that it was a kind of 'perfect storm' situation —one in which they could survive the nukes and (via FEV) survive the extreme radiation? Resulting in Ghouls?
(Not at all a common circumstance; for instance: Megaton should have been vaporized along with all inhabitants, and —any trace of the town.)

*I still think there is more to it (to everything in the setting) than just scientific cause & effect.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I don’t think Moira should’ve become a ghoul, for example (there shouldn’t even be any airborne FEV on the east coast, or any FEV for that matter). Becoming a ghoul should be a very rare occurrence, and the conditions of vault 12 caused much more ghouls to be created than usual. Personally I don’t mind ghouls being created outside of Necropolis, as long as it’s not overdone. My post was just meant to add some information regarding how fallout 1 implies ghouls were created.
 
The original dev team agreeing with each other about ghoul\super-mutant lore, instead of having Cain vs Taylor vs whoever, then Avellone's bible make the decision, to be contradicted by Bethesda and Josh Sawyer years later.
 
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