Highlights

• The Fallout series spans a massive story over centuries with self-contained and shared universe stories, making it a rich gaming experience.
• Fallout 76 serves as a prequel, focused on rebuilding after a nuclear war with better gameplay and fixed glitches.
• Fallout: New Vegas raised the bar for role-playing freedom, adding diversity and depth to the franchise, despite no visual improvements.

Since its first release in 1997, the Fallout series has remained one of the most popular in all gaming. The games tell a massive story that spans hundreds of years of lore, featuring many epic stories that are both self-contained and part of a greater shared Fallout universe.

Set in an alternate timeline post-apocalyptic United States, players throughout the existence of the franchise have been able to explore a number of reimagined iconic American settings with that trademark Fallout aesthetic. With so many games and so many stories spanning such a large amount of time, keeping track of the Fallout games in chronological order can certainly be a challenge, but it's absolutely worthwhile for fans of the series.

Updated on April 21, 2024, by Ritwik Mitra: Fallout is one of the most popular video game series of all time, and the success of its TV adaptation has led to even more eyes toward it, allowing even non-gamers to experience one of the most fascinating settings ever explored in a video game. With the threat of nuclear war being ever-present, Fallout takes a bleak look at what life would be like in a world ravaged by a nuclear apocalypse, where wildlife and humans themselves have evolved in a bid to live life in a post-nuclear wasteland where lawlessness runs rampant. Each game in the series occupies its own space in the timeline, forking up some amazing stories that Fallout fans feel right at home with. For newcomers looking to give the series a try or those who simply wish to brush up on their knowledge of the timeline, here is every Fallout game in chronological order.

8 Fallout 76

Year: 2102

Releasing in 2018, Fallout 76 is chronologically set earliest. The game takes place in the year 2102 and covers an event that is incredibly significant to the wider lore of Fallout. Serving as a prequel to the main games, it is set 25 years after the nuclear war that devastated the world during the era of reconstruction.

The player controls one of the lucky (or arguably unlucky) few who survived the bombs in the Vault-tec-made shelter, Vault 76. These are the characters controlled by real people who populate the world of Fallout 76. The goal of these chosen few is to re-settle the wastelands and try and get the world back on track.

When the game was first released, discussions about it were, unfortunately, not about the story, world, or online play, but about the number of glitches that many players were encountering. Thankfully, Fallout 76 is in a far better state today, which will undoubtedly please Microsoft, as its purchase of Bethesda has made the Fallout series one of its flagship franchises.

7 Fallout

Year: 2161

While the residents of Vault 76 returned to the surface just 25 years after the great war, many of the people living in vaults were still underground by the time of the first Fallout game. This includes the player character, a dweller in Vault 13. The protagonist is sent by the vault's overseer to the wastelands to replace the water chip, a device used for the recycling of water.

Development on the surface world at this point in the chronology is fairly modest, even by the standards of the wastelands. But there is a settlement in the game called Shady Sands. The protagonist of the first game is unable to return to their home vault at the end and, by remaining on the surface, helps to kickstart the development of the wastelands.

The original Fallout kicked off the series with a bang, wowing fans and critics alike and winning GameSpot's Role-Playing Game of the Year award in the same year that Final Fantasy 7 was released. The game does, of course, fail to hold up visually compared to the series' modern releases, though in terms of gameplay, particularly the freedom of choice available to players, Fallout is still an engrossing experience.

6 Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood Of Steel

Year: 2197-2198

The world of Fallout at this point in the timeline is still far from the landscape of many major factions and civilizations that many are familiar with. However, in the late 2100s, there were still early signs of what the world would become. This is because of Fallout Tactics' look into one of the franchise's most consistently represented factions — the titular Brotherhood of Steel.

Fallout Tactics is an interesting entry, as while most of the games will allow the player to explore different factions and groups as an individual and then decide if they wish to join one, this game starts the player out as an Initiate of the notorious Brotherhood of Steel. By the later games, the brotherhood has become a militaristic and technological superpower, so it's fascinating to see them at a much earlier stage of building up their military strength.

Although Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel lacks many of the series' quintessential features, its fairly central placement in both the chronological and release order of the games gives players a nice change of pace when playing through the franchise in order. Moreover, the game's turn-based combat has a surprising amount of strategic depth to it, which makes it a great alternative to games like XCOM for Fallout fans.

5 Fallout: Brotherhood Of Steel

Year: 2208

Not to be confused with Fallout Tactics, 2004's Brotherhood of Steel is an action RPG released exclusively on consoles. While not considered one of the best Fallout games, this entry did introduce the franchise to PlayStation and Xbox owners, so it is still an important part of the franchise's legacy. That said, the game is not considered canon, and its events are essentially never referenced by any of the other releases. Consequently, there is really no reason to play this title if someone is specifically looking to consume all of Fallout's lore.

Taking inspiration from console dungeon-crawlers, Brotherhood of Steel is far more action-oriented than the typical Fallout project, something that works both in the game's favor and as a detriment. The combat is competent enough for an isometric hack-and-slash style game, and it can provide mindless entertainment; however, the system is quite shallow and struggles to remain interesting throughout the fairly short campaign. The story is quite uninspired and does not add much to the overall Fallout mythos.

Fallout Shelter is also not canon and does not quite fit in Fallout's timeline, although it is assumed to place between Fallout 3 and 4.

4 Fallout 2

Year: 2241

Although it takes place almost 100 years after the first game, Fallout 2 serves as a kind of direct narrative sequel to it. The player takes control of a descendant of the original game's main character who leads the humble surface village of Arroyo (originally founded by the vault dweller of the first game).

This is a major point in time for the Fallout chronology as it shows the first signs of major development in the new America. After the player obtains the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, they help the village of Arroyo become a major city as part of the New California Republic, which would go on to become one of the biggest and most significant factions in the whole series.

Fallout 2 didn't try to reinvent the wheel and kept its core gameplay very similar to its ground-breaking predecessor. Although this drew some criticism at the time, the second game refined many of the original's features and mechanics, making it the best way to play the old-school style of Fallout games.

3 Fallout 3

Year: 2277

The first of the 3D games and likely the first game a lot of fans played, Fallout 3 continues the series of world events established previously. However, it does jump to the opposite side of the country from New California over to the remains of Washington DC, giving the player a fresh and oddly beautiful new location to explore. By now in the chronology, a proper sense of civilization can be felt in the post-war United States, though it's still a somewhat crude one.

Fallout 3's placement on the timeline puts it well after the age of vaults. Despite this, players will remember that, in the introduction of the game, the protagonist is shown to have been born and raised into adulthood within a vault. This is because Vault 101 was intended as an experiment to see a group of survivors living indefinitely in a vault, rather than until they can return to the surface to settle the wastelands. This makes the primary vault of the game rather unique as it continues its activities after everyone else has moved on.

Despite its huge mainstream success upon release, Fallout 3 doesn't always seem to get the respect that it deserves today. Granted, many of its mechanics and open-world features have been improved upon since, but it's important to remember that, for many people, Fallout 3 was the first open-world game that they played. Because of this, the moment when the player left the vault was special for many people as they suddenly found themselves with a level of freedom they had never experienced in gaming before.

2 Fallout: New Vegas

Year: 2281

Returning to the West 40 years after the first great cities were built in Fallout 2, the New California Republic is now a fully operational federal government with territory spanning almost the entirety of the West coast of the US and stretching into Nevada. They still face struggles, however, as they fight a brutal war for control against Caesar's Legion. This game takes place four years after Fallout 3 on the timeline.

Uniquely, the player character of Fallout: New Vegas is a courier instead of a vault dweller, making it the only main game to have a protagonist entirely from the new society developed from the wastelands. The region may be more developed than in games further back on the timeline, but in true Fallout fashion, there are still plenty of terrifying monsters populating the vast desert region.

Fallout: New Vegas is one of the key reasons why, as mentioned before, Fallout 3 doesn't seem to get much adulation today. Although there was little to no visual improvement, Fallout: New Vegas did raise the bar for role-playing freedom, not just for the Fallout series but for the role-playing genre as a whole. Bethesda handed New Vegas' development duties to Obsidian Entertainment, who certainly didn't disappoint, creating one of gaming's most diverse and engrossing adventures.

1 Fallout 4

Year: 2287

Fallout 4 takes place 10 years after the events of Fallout 3 and only a few years after Fallout: New Vegas. The player can now explore a region known as "The Commonwealth," which is the remains of Boston and some of the wider New England region.

While officially the furthest game into the future chronologically so far, Fallout 4's opening does provide a playable glimpse of pre-war America. Initially set in 2077, which is the earliest playable time in the franchise, the bulk of the game takes place 210 years after the bombs dropped, as the main character (known as the sole survivor) is cryogenically frozen, finally emerging in 2287.

Fallout 4 is a somewhat divisive entry in the series. Although it offered one of the best open worlds, new base-building mechanics, and some impressive technical features, the game stripped away much of the player's freedom in favor of a more railroaded adventure. This wasn't seen as a bad thing by some people, and the game reached an impressive 88 Metascore, though many were disappointed that the excellent role-playing aspects of New Vegas weren't expanded upon.

Special Mention: The Fallout TV Adaptation (2296 - 2297)

• Released: April 10, 2024
• Creators: Graham Wagner, Geneva Robertson-Dworet
• No. of Episodes: 8
• Genres: Action, Drama, Post-Apocalyptic

The Fallout TV adaptation is considered by many to be the finest video game-inspired TV show to date, which is hefty praise given the sheer quality of recent video game adaptations that fans have been graced with. The love that oozes out of every pore of this show for the series is simply amazing, and it's easy to see why the show has caused many veteran gamers and newcomers alike to go back to the titles that started it all.

Featuring several clever references to the video games coupled with an original story that's as engaging as they come, it's easy to see why Fallout fans are more than happy to sink their teeth into this adaptation. With a second season now greenlit, many are likely eager to find out what will happen next, especially since the show takes place even further into the future than the games.