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Ahead of the release of Prime Video's now-lauded Fallout TV series, there was a great deal of commotion surrounding the canonicity of the series compared to the games: Did the show and games take place in the exact same universe? Now that the answer has proven to be 'yes,' fans of the franchise are asking another big question: Will the two ever crossover? Or, to put it more specifically, will Fallout players ever get to interact with folks like Lucy, Maximus, or the Ghoul?

At the moment, the answer appears to be 'no'... but that's not to say the creative minds behind the game and show, respectively, haven't been in communication. In a recent interview with Variety, Fallout 76 creative director Jon Rush gave fans a peek behind-the-scenes of the franchise's cross-media discussions, beginning with explaining a big reason why the latest game will probably not "overlap" with the Prime show: They're set two-hundred years apart.

"I think a distinct trait of the Fallout 76 game," says Rush, "is that we’re the furthest back in time. And it’s kind of funny, because the show’s the furthest into the future. So there’s a lot of room where we don’t necessarily need to overlap. There are some things that we could overlap the stories that could exist, but we largely try to keep those pretty simple."

It might be a little anticlimactic, but this appears to be the major reason that, for the moment, the Fallout games and TV show don't cross paths: it's simply unnecessary.

"The show is very effective storytelling," continues Rush, "Great storytelling, very ‘Fallout,’ being made by folks that are big fans of the game and the series, and so are we. The two go together really well. So folks see the show and want more of that same kind of story, and they’re going to come into ’76,’ they’re going to come into 'Fallout 4,' or come into 'Fallout 3.'"

We're no game developers here at Popverse, but we'd figure that, if a series is already bringing new fans into your games, there's no need to hit the gas on creating crossover material to attract more players. But that's not to say that a crossover is never going to happen between the two Fallouts.

"Lining things up with the seasonal releases of the show," Rush concludes, "It’s stuff that we talk about all the time, and we do have plans for things here and there. I’m not going to go into detail on any of those now, but the two teams do talk to one another."

Oh to be a freakishly mutated fly on that radioactive wall.

Fallout season 1 is streaming on Prime Video now.  

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