FALLOUT’s Canceled Game, VAN BUREN, May Hold Season 3 Secrets Jess Harshbarger | usagoldmines.com

Before Bethesda made its Fallout 3, Interplay descendant Black Isle Studios had its own version in development. This in-progress game was codenamed Fallout: Van Buren. It was cancelled mid-development, but concepts, factions, and even characters have made their way into recent titles. The game with the most connections to Van Buren is Fallout: New Vegas, as the two games were worked on, in part, by the same team. But the most interesting part about Fallout: Van Buren was one of its major settings… Colorado. And Colorado just so happens to be the very same location that the Fallout series will be heading toward in season three. So, as The Ghoul sets his course for Colorado in the live-action world, let’s explore what we know about Van Buren, what could have been for Fallout in Colorado, and what all this information could tease about what happens next in Fallout season three and beyond.

Fallout: Van Buren Is NOT Canon in the Fallout World, But Parts of It Have Turned Into Canon

One disclaimer before we begin: the information here is gathered from 700 pages of unfinished design documents. Van Buren is considered non-canon to Fallout, but I’ll try to note when bits and pieces have been canonized. 

Fallout: Van Buren’s Main Story: The Prison & The Prisoner

The main character of Van Buren would have been referred to as the Prisoner. The Prisoner wakes up in a fully-automated prison, brought there by an evil mad scientist (it’s a Fallout game, you gotta have one of those) and NCR defector Victor Presper. 

The Fallout Series Has Already Canonized Parts of Van Buren, Including Tibbets Prison

Victor Presper is the main antagonist. He has turned you and seven others into walking biological weapons by infecting you with a worse version of the New Plague that existed before the war, also referred to as the Blue Flu or Limit 115. Interestingly, the New Plague is the disease the Forced Evolutionary Virus was created to cure. And with the Fallout series diving into the lore of the FEV, it could have something to say about the New Plague as well.

The facility The Prisoner finds themselves in, meanwhile, is called Tibbets Prison, and it’s somewhat based on the real-world prison, Leavenworth. Tibbets Prison is located in Kansas, which, of course, is not far from Colorado. Now, something interesting about Van Buren‘s Tibbets—the show has actually already canonized it! If you look closely, you can see it marked on a Brotherhood map in Fallout season two, episode three’s “The Profligate.” And interestingly, the Fallout season two version of Van Buren‘s Tibbets prison appears to be, yes, in Colorado. We’re feeling like that can’t be a coincidence or just a fun Van Buren Easter egg, especially as the Fallout series heads east.

What Happens in Fallout: Van Buren‘s Tibbets Prison? Could It Take The Fallout Series to Space?

Ultimately, as we mentioned, madman Presper wants to reinfect the world with the New Plague. To do that, he’s going to let The Prisoner escape Tibbets Prison. AS The Prisoner, you and the other prisoners hit bricks, having no idea the damage you’re about to do as you flee, of course. But, it’s not that easy for The Prisoner or Presper. In Act 1 of Fallout: Van Buren, the Prisoner realizes they’re being pursued by a giant multi-legged robot (ARGOS) with missiles and lasers, that will drag them back to Tibbets at the behest of ODYSSEUS, an advanced anti-plague AI that runs Tibbets, which has one goal and one goal only: keep the New Plague from infecting the world again. Thankfully (or not), putting you back in an already breached prison doesn’t actually keep you from going anywhere. 

Act II of Fallout: Van Buren picks up after you’ve figured out that you and all of the other prisoners must return to get the AI to snap out of its alert phase. Once you do this, you can go into Tibbets prison and speak directly to ODYSSEUS, who will let you in on the fact that when Presper experimented with the New Plague, he made it worse, and then injected it into you. But the really wild thing is that Presper is currently holed up in a Ballistic Orbital Missile Base—yes it’s called BOMB—with potential access to nukes… And BOMB is located… in space. Yes, the knowledge we gain in Tibbets Prison helps take Fallout into space. Because Presper is another crazy asshole trying to ‘purify’ the world, so you gotta shoot up into the atmosphere and stop him. 

You spend the second half of the Fallout game gathering resources and assistance to rebuild a rocketship and head up to space to visit the BOMB. Once there, you can kill Presper and save the day, agree with Presper that to save humanity, you first have to destroy it, OR you can kill Presper and point the big fat nuclear bombs at anybody you want. A little endgame grudge settling never hurts anybody—except all the people who pissed you off.

What Tibbets Prison Could Mean for The Fallout Series If It Makes a Pit Stop There?

Well, if Van Buren‘s Tibbets Prison does indeed exist in the world of the Fallout series, then it might introduce to us the idea of the New Plague, a new all-powerful AI, and a whole bunch of interesting robots and weapons. Of course, the most fascinating revelation The Prison receives in Fallout: Van Buren is the idea of space stations armed with nuclear weapons. In Fallout 76, we see a crashed space station, but otherwise, the series has not specifically tackled the notion of space before. It doesn’t seem that likely the Fallout series will actually head to space, but hey, Van Buren sets it up. And, we know the series is always up to try something fun and weird. Additionally, the idea that there are more nuclear weapons out there to be claimed is something we can see the show incorporating into its story.

Finally, according to Fallout: Van Buren, the CODE program was also developed in Tibbets Prison. The CODE program is a pre-war tool for education, weaponized for brainwashing in the years leading up to the bombs dropping. The CODE program may have heavily influenced the Automated Man of House’s creation, or it could exist independently in the Fallout series world, or maybe not at all—but the connection seems worth mentioning, though!

Boulder Dome Blues: How Colorado Figures Into Fallout: Van Buren & What This Could Mean for the Show

But all of that is in Kansas, in Fallout: Van Buren, at least, and in space. How does Colorado figure into Fallout: Van Buren, and what could the location bring to the Fallout series? Well, a very significant location intended for Fallout: Van Buren is the Boulder Dome, a highly advanced pre-war science facility that is still in operation, located, of course, in Boulder, Colorado. This location, in large part, inspired Big Mountain and the Think Tank in the Fallout: New Vegas DLC, Old World Blues. This is also one of two possible bases for the player in Fallout: Van Buren, and up until heading spaceward, it’s where Big Bad Presper hangs his hat at night. 

The History of Colorado’s Boulder Dome in Fallout: Van Buren and Its Importance

According to Fallout: Van Buren, Boulder, Colorado, was near a few crucial military locations, such as real-life NORAD and the Rocky Mountain Armory. Both were nuked into near nonexistence when the bombs fell, along with Boulder itself. The Boulder Dome survived relatively unscathed. While dealing with the various quests surrounding the Dome, you’ll find out that the ZAX supercomputer that helps maintain the facility is running out of memory. 

The more significant thing to know about the Boulder Dome is the large cryofacility on site. Presper can’t have a new world order with no population. 600 of his followers, the people he deemed elite and worthy enough, were put into cryogenic stasis. At least, the ones who resisted his plans were. The ones who were into it are awake and working for him.

I’m not implying anything. I’m just saying, it’s an interesting connection, isn’t it? Could this play into what Hank MacLean said about the surface being the experiment? Perhaps the Enclave has a similar plan to Presper? Could there be a cryofacility full of the Enclave’s most loyal in Fallout season three, just waiting to be awoken up in Colorado?

Fallout: Van Buren Reveals Wetware Was Created in Colorado, a Technology Just Used In the Series

It turns out that the use of ‘wetware’ was pioneered in Colorado’s Boulder Dome, at least in Fallout: Van Buren canon. You know how Hank had a bunch of shit wired up to our favorite Congresswoman’s brain in Fallout season two? Well, that’s wetware. Bud Askins and his little brain-on-a-tiny-robot? Wetware. This location’s potential companion BAJAR (short for Brain In A Jar) is, you guessed it, more wetware! It’s using human brains for machine purposes. You can also convince the brains to help without wiping them. They’ll sometimes ask you to bring them different chemicals that’ll make them feel funny, to break up the monotony of being a disembodied brain in a tank of biogel. A Thinktank. Get it? The Colorado origination of Wetware hasn’t been canonized in Fallout, it only exists in Van Buren. But since the Fallout series has been making use of the technology so intently, it could happen if Fallout the series digs into Colorado’s history in a similar way.

Could Van Buren’s The Nursery Provide a Cure for the FEV in the Fallout Series?

What Is The Nursery?

Another crucial Colorado location in Van Buren is The Nursery, Fallout’s equivalent of the real-world Svalbard Global Seed Vault. While Svalbard is chilling on an island up in the Arctic Circle, the Nursery is in Black Canyon, part of Gunnison National Park in Colorado. Originally the brainchild of a jaded ex-Poseidon Energy scientist, Derek Greenway, Fallout: Van Buren‘s Nursery is not just a seed vault, but also a self-sustaining ecosystem. Derek Greenway, is also responsible for the ODYSSEUS AI we mentioned in previous, and the not-quite-AI that runs the Nursery, called DIANA. DIANA ran the facility uninterrupted for a long time before an earthquake knocked her offline. 

The player character can save the Nursery and keep it from falling into total disrepair, putting the world one step closer to healing. This location looks to be the inspiration for Oasis from Fallout 3, the bastion of flora and fauna hidden among endless stretches of burnt-out wasteland. More importantly, this is where the player can find a way to cure the New Plague in Fallout: Van Buren. And interestingly enough, The Nursery is another Van Buren location that Fallout season two canonized into its world.

The Nursery Exists in the Fallout Series’ World

The same season two Brotherhood map that canonizes Tibbets Prison into the world of the Fallout series also canonizes The Nursery. We see the location clearly marked on our screens… and so we have to ask, could the Nursery secretly hold a cure for the Forced Evolutionary Virus on Fallout season three? Here’s why we think that’s possible.

Van Buren’s The Nursery Would Have Allowed Disease to be Cured on Fallout

The Fallout: Van Buren design docs seem to indicate the Nursery is capable of manufacturing something similar to Garden of Eden Creation Kits, a long-loved macguffin of the Fallout games. The Garden of Eden Creation Kit—just one of them—allowed for Project Purity to succeed, and Project Purity purified the entire Potomac Basin of radiation and other muck in DC during the events of Fallout 3. In Fallout: Van Buren, a similar tool could be used to cure the New Plague. And, as mentioned, the New Plague is the very virus that the Forced Evolutionary Virus was created to combat. If the Nursery could deliver a cure for the New Plague in Van Buren, perhaps it is also capable of curing the Forced Evolutionary Virus in Fallout‘s world.

With the Forced Evolutionary Virus poised to majorly impact the world of the series soon, it feels like Fallout could be hinting at a possible hope for a cure with its Colorado location and this Van Buren connection. Though it’s too soon to tell if that’s definitely where we’re heading, a cure for the FEV feels like it could come in super handy in Fallout season three.

What we’re saying is, Colorado might paint a streak of hope on the horizon for the future of the Wasteland… Um. If the Legion’s gone.

Wait, What Was that About the Legion in Colorado?

This bit’s canon lads—the first state that Caesar’s Legion took for itself was Colorado. There are many tribes of varying sizes around the Four Corners, the 700 square-mile area where Van Buren was intended to take place. Per Ulysses, of New Vegas DLC fame (yes, all of them), “Lanius put Colorado to the sword.” Every tribe in the state was absorbed into Caesar’s Legion as either soldier or slave. Anyone who resisted was murdered. And many, many, many were murdered.

But that was a long time ago, and the Legion doesn’t seem to be a tenth of what it once was. If Macaulay Culkin’s Casaer is marching on New Vegas, it doesn’t seem like we should be expecting too many more reinforcements from the east… Although, we do see on The Brotherhood’s canon map that the Legion appears to have some Eastern presence and other strongholds dotted across America in the Fallout series. There do seem to be some hints of the Legion’s past power. But we’ll have to see what Colorado and its neighboring states hold for Casaer’s Legion in Fallout season three.

So, What Will Fallout: Van Buren Bring to the Fallout Series?

Who rules Colorado now? Are the incredible feats of human engineering we see in Fallout: Van Buren there in the current canon timeline? Will Cooper have to fly to space in a giant rocketship to save his family!? Probably not that one, I guess. In the end, we just don’t know if Fallout: Van Buren will have ANY impact at all on the Fallout series, in season three and beyond. But it sure is interesting to consider what once could have been in Colorado.

The answers to the above questions and more are a long way away, but just like last time, we at least know where we’re going. We’ll find out what’s left when we get there.

Fallout season two is now streaming on Prime Video.

The post FALLOUT’s Canceled Game, VAN BUREN, May Hold Season 3 Secrets appeared first on Nerdist.

This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak

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