The Fallout Story Explained: Every Game in Order

Fallout is the story of America after a nuclear war, told one region and one generation at a time. Six main games came out between 1997 and 2018, set between 2102 and 2287, and the Prime Video series carries the story on to 2296. This page runs through every main game in story order, with its plot and ending, and links to the full story page for each. It has spoilers for all of them. (Fallout; Fallout 76; Fallout, "The End")

Before the games: the Great War#

Fallout's America split from ours after the Second World War and never left the 1950s behind. By the 2070s it was fighting China over oil, had annexed Canada and was turning its soldiers in power armour on its own starving cities. Vault-Tec built shelters across the country, most of them secretly designed as experiments on the people inside. (Fallout; Fallout 3)

The Great War came on 23 October 2077 and lasted a matter of hours. Vaults across the country sealed in time. Those caught outside died, mutated or became ghouls. Among the survivors were an army unit at Mariposa that became the Brotherhood of Steel, and the Enclave, the hidden remains of the US government. (Fallout; Fallout 2; Fallout 4)

Fallout 76 (2102)#

Twenty-five years after the war, on Reclamation Day, Vault 76 opened in West Virginia. Its dwellers expected to rebuild. Instead they found Appalachia nearly empty. The Scorched plague, spread by giant mutant bats called scorchbeasts, had killed or taken over the people who survived the war, including the Responders, the Free States and the region's first Brotherhood chapter. (Fallout 76)

The dwellers followed the trail of their Overseer, who had left the vault early on a secret Vault-Tec mission to secure the region's nuclear silos. In the Enclave's bunker under the Whitespring resort, a military AI called MODUS gave them the training and launch codes they needed. They fired a nuke into the scorchbeasts' main fissure and killed their queen. (Fallout 76)

Later updates carried the story on. Humans came back to the region looking for a treasure that turned out to be the gold in Vault 79. A Brotherhood expedition from California arrived to rebuild the chapter, and super mutants created by a local scientist's FEV experiments began spreading. One update even takes players to Ohio, where the Ghoul from the TV series is working as a bounty hunter. Fallout 76 is the earliest game in the timeline, and nothing in it changes the later games. See the Fallout 76 story. (Fallout 76)

Fallout (2161)#

In 2161 the water chip in Vault 13, under Southern California, broke. The Overseer sent one dweller out with 150 days of water left to find another. The Vault Dweller crossed a wasteland of small towns, from the farming village of Shady Sands to Junktown and the Hub, and found a working chip in Vault 12, under the ghoul city of Necropolis. (Fallout)

On the way, they learned that an army of super mutants was gathering. Its leader was the Master, once a doctor named Richard Grey, who had fallen into a vat of the Forced Evolutionary Virus at Mariposa Military Base. He wanted to turn all of humanity into super mutants, and people from the vaults, kept clean of radiation, made the best recruits. (Fallout)

With help from the Brotherhood of Steel, the Vault Dweller blew up the vats at Mariposa and killed the Master under his Cathedral, or convinced him his plan had failed, since super mutants can't have children. Back home, the Overseer thanked them and then exiled them, afraid their stories would make others want to leave. The Vault Dweller walked off into the desert. See the Fallout story. (Fallout)

Fallout 2 (2241)#

The Vault Dweller went north and founded a tribal village, Arroyo. Eighty years later, in 2241, Arroyo was dying in a drought, and the Vault Dweller's grandchild, the Chosen One, was sent to find a Garden of Eden Creation Kit, a GECK, in Vault 13. (Fallout 2)

The search crossed northern California. Shady Sands had grown into the New California Republic, led by President Tandi, whom the Vault Dweller had once rescued. New Reno was run by crime families, and Vault City by citizens who looked down on everyone else. Vault 13, when the Chosen One found it, was home to intelligent deathclaws; its people had been taken. (Fallout 2)

The Enclave had taken them, and on returning home the Chosen One found Arroyo raided too. The prisoners were on the Enclave's oil rig, off the coast, where President Dick Richardson planned to release a new strain of FEV that would kill everyone with mutated DNA. The Chosen One sailed out on an old tanker, freed the prisoners, killed the giant super mutant agent Frank Horrigan and blew up the rig. Arroyo and Vault 13 built a new village together with the GECK. See the Fallout 2 story. (Fallout 2)

Fallout 3 (2277)#

The story jumps across the country to Washington DC, the Capital Wasteland. The Lone Wanderer grew up in Vault 101 with their father, James. In 2277, when they were 19, James walked out of the vault, and the Lone Wanderer had to escape to follow him. (Fallout 3)

James had gone back to Project Purity, a huge water purifier at the Jefferson Memorial that he and his late wife had designed to clean the Potomac. Father and child met again, and the project restarted, until the Enclave arrived under Colonel Autumn and seized it. James flooded the control room with radiation to stop them and died. (Fallout 3)

The Lone Wanderer joined Elder Lyons's Brotherhood, found a GECK in Vault 87 and was captured by the Enclave. At Raven Rock, President John Henry Eden, really a supercomputer, wanted them to put a modified FEV into the purifier and kill every mutated thing in the wasteland. The Lone Wanderer escaped, the Brotherhood retook the memorial behind the giant robot Liberty Prime, and someone had to enter the irradiated control room to start the purifier. In the original ending that cost a life. The Broken Steel add-on let the Lone Wanderer survive and finish off the Enclave. See the Fallout 3 story. (Fallout 3; Fallout 3: Broken Steel)

Fallout: New Vegas (2281)#

Back west, in the Mojave, the NCR held Hoover Dam against Caesar's Legion, a slave army built on ancient Rome. Between them sat New Vegas, run from the Lucky 38 casino by Mr. House, a pre-war businessman kept alive by machines, with an army of Securitron robots. (Fallout: New Vegas)

In 2281 a courier carrying a platinum poker chip for House was shot in the head and buried near Goodsprings by Benny, a casino boss with plans of his own. The Courier survived, tracked Benny to the Strip and learned what the chip did: it upgraded House's Securitrons into an army able to hold the Mojave alone. (Fallout: New Vegas)

From there, the Courier chose who would win the Second Battle of Hoover Dam: the NCR, the Legion, House, or an independent New Vegas with the help of Benny's robot, Yes Man. Each ending gives the Mojave a different future, and no later game or episode has named one as canon. Fifteen years on, the TV series shows Caesar dead, his Legion split and the Strip overrun by deathclaws. See the New Vegas story. (Fallout: New Vegas; Fallout, "The Strip")

Fallout 4 (2287)#

The prologue is the morning of the Great War in Boston. A family reached Vault 111 as the bombs fell and was frozen without being told. Years later the frozen parent woke briefly to see a mercenary, Kellogg, kill their spouse and take their baby son, Shaun. (Fallout 4)

In 2287, 210 years after the war, the Sole Survivor woke properly and went looking. The Commonwealth was afraid of the Institute, a hidden group of scientists under the ruins of a university who replaced people with synths, androids that could pass for human. The trail led through Diamond City and the detective Nick Valentine to Kellogg, and from his memories into the Institute itself. (Fallout 4)

Shaun was there, an old man now called Father, dying of cancer and running the Institute. Sixty years had passed since the kidnapping. He wanted his parent to take over. The Sole Survivor's choice decided the ending: join the Institute, or side with the Brotherhood of Steel under Elder Arthur Maxson, the Railroad, who smuggled synths to freedom, or the Minutemen, and destroy it. See the Fallout 4 story. (Fallout 4)

After the games: the TV series (2296)#

The Prime Video series picks up nine years after Fallout 4. In season 1, Lucy MacLean leaves Vault 33 to rescue her father, Hank, and learns that he destroyed Shady Sands with a nuclear bomb, just after the events of New Vegas. Season 2 follows Lucy and the Ghoul to New Vegas, where Hank is making mind-control chips in a secret Vault-Tec facility, and ends with a new Caesar marching on the city. Our guide to the TV series covers both seasons and the main characters. (Fallout, "The Beginning"; Fallout, "The Golden Rule"; Fallout, "The Strip")

In what order#

In story order: Fallout 76 (2102), Fallout (2161), Fallout 2 (2241), Fallout 3 (2277), Fallout: New Vegas (2281), Fallout 4 (2287), then the TV series (2296). In release order, Fallout 76 moves to the end. Each game stands on its own, so either order works. Our games in order guide has dates, platforms and the spin-offs, and the Fallout timeline puts every event in date order. (Fallout 76; Fallout 4; Fallout, "The End")