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As Fallout continues to expand past the video games like a radioactive mushroom cloud, lead Bethesda writer Emil Pagliarulo says the company is incredibly against retconning existing lore, and keeping the Fallout universe together is actually one of the "biggest honours" of his role.
"In Fallout, [all of] the lore matters, and if you think it doesn't, the internet will remind you that it does," Pagliarulo explained in an interview with PC Gamer Magazine. "It's important to Fallout fans, whether something was made pre-war or post-war, it all matters. And it's a huge responsibility."
Pagliarulo's been shouldering that responsibility for years at this point, having served as a quest designer on Fallout 3 and a lead writer for Fallout 4 and Fallout Shelter, while also working on everything from Skyrim to Starfield in between post-apocalyptic tales.
"I actually consider that one of the biggest honours and responsibilities of my job, keeping the lore together and tight," Pagliarulo continued. "Retconning is a terrible thing generally - you don't want to change something that's come before. We never want to retcon, but we do like to add on to the existing fiction, and do that in a way that doesn't spit in the eye of what came before, and that's a challenge a lot of times."
Prime Video's live-action adaptation of the beloved sci-fi franchise hasn't exactly retconned anything major, but it did recently enshrine one Fallout: New Vegas ending as canon for the show, at least. Co-showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet argued that the streaming series didn't intend to push one ending as the ending, however.
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