Wait, Does Fallout: New Vegas Have a Canon Ending Now?

Around a year ago, I predicted that Bethesda's tendency to rewrite the story and lore of the Fallout series however they please, combined with Fallout: New Vegas' fanbase being one of the most passionate video game fanbases you will find, would make the second season of Amazon's Fallout TV series – set in the Mojave Wasteland, just like FNV – a tick-tick-ticking time bomb, ready to go boom the moment the first episode hits the air.

Sadly, it appears that this prediction is shaping up to come true, with the adaptation's latest official trailer apparently doing something Bethesda has never done before and confirming one of the game's endings to be canon.

To the disappointment of Legion, NCR, and independent Vegas loyalists alike, around the 1:42 mark, the trailer features a certain middle-aged gentleman on a familiar set of analog computer screens – seemingly none other than Robert Edwin House himself, the CEO of RobCo and the sole representative of one of the factions the player can side with in the game.

Portrayed by a different actor rather than Rafi Silver, who briefly played Mr. House in the show's first season, the last zoomer on Earth appearing in the trailer immediately raises several questions, the most important being the implications of his being alive in the first place.

The thing is, Fallout: New Vegas has four possible endings, and in all but one of them, Mr. House has to be killed for the story to move forward. With him and Walton Goggins's Ghoul shown in the same room – and with the scene clearly not being a flashback of some sort – this suggests that Bethesda has now chosen Mr. House's ending as the canonical one – a decision likely to disappoint a significant portion of New Vegas fans, even among those who actually prefer this outcome.

Another major implication is that, if House lives and the Jewel of the Mojave – the city itself – looks like it came straight from Paul W. S. Anderson's Resident Evil 3, most of what the technocrat told Courier 6 about reviving the region, building factories, and eventually creating an intergalactic spaceship was a load of nonsense, intended only to get the protagonist to work for him, making it a bit odd why House was even chosen as the apparent canon ending, rather than the most chaotic option – which would probably make more sense if the showrunners really wanted New Vegas to look as disheveled and disorderly as it does – the Yes-Man route.

Naturally, until the show premieres, it can't be said with unquestionable certainty that Mr. House's ending is now canon – hence all the "apparentlies" scattered across this article. For all we know, the show's version of the Second Battle of Hoover Dam could have had NCR soldiers and Securitrons fighting side by side, like in one of the scrapped FNV scenarios that would have allowed a truce between the two factions.

It's also possible the show could go its own way and invent a completely new, fifth ending, which, don't get me wrong, would still be a tad disappointing, but at least everyone would be disappointed equally. Heck, it's not impossible that it was Yes-Man and not House in the trailer – different actors in seasons 1 and 2 and whatnot – and the reprogrammed Securitron just happened to display the old man's image. The only way to know for sure is to wait for the show's arrival, which is scheduled to take place on December 17, 2025.

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