Warning: Spoilers for Fallout Season 2 Episode 8!
With Fallout Season 1 set in California, like the original Fallout game, and Fallout Season 2 set in Nevada, like Fallout: New Vegas, I was sort of expecting Fallout Season 3 to take place in another region we’ve visited before in the games.
Would it be Fallout 3’s Washington D.C.? Maybe Fallout 4’s Boston?
Well, that could still happen, I suppose, but the finale of Fallout Season 2 suggests a few characters would remain in New Vegas, while another would be visiting somewhere new in Fallout Season 3—and it’s a place no Fallout game has ever been set.
In the closing moments of the final episode of Fallout Season 2, The Ghoul finally reaches the end of his main quest… except it’s not the end. He discovers that his missing family are not inside their designated cryotubes in New Vegas after all, a major bummer after he spent 200 years searching for them.
On the bright side, he now knows they’re alive, and his wife Barbara has left him a clue as to where they are: he finds a postcard from Colorado in her cryotube. The season ends (except for an intriguing post-credits sequence with another clue about Fallout Season 3) with The Ghoul walking off to Colorado to find them.
So, what do we know about Colorado in Fallout Lore? The games have never taken us there, though one almost did—and the state has been mentioned a few times, both in games and in the Fallout show.
Colorado in the Fallout universe
(Image credit: Prime Video)
Most notably, Colorado (along with Arizona, Nevada, and Utah) was the setting of Van Buren, codename of the original version of Fallout 3 that was developed by Black Isle Studios, makers of the first two Fallout games. That version of Fallout 3 was unfortunately canceled in 2003 by publisher Interplay, which was struggling financially.
Colorado, like most of the rest of the US, was destroyed during the Great War. In the aftermath, factions formed, including Caesar’s Legion, formed by Edward Sallow (who named himself Caesar, who players meet in Fallout: New Vegas, and whose skeletal corpse is seen in Fallout Season 2).
Caesar’s Legion conquered and assimilated other factions in Colorado, including a group called the Hangdogs, a faction of talented dog-trainers, who were occupying the remains of Denver. You can even meet a former member of the Hangdogs in Fallout: New Vegas.
(Image credit: Prime Video)
Colorado is also home to Vault 0, located in Cheyenne, featured in Fallout Tactics. Vault 0 is the rare Vault where no experiments were conducted on its residents: it was a location meant for the great minds of the pre-war to be cryogenically stored, their brains hooked into a computer called The Calculator. Unfortunately, budget cuts meant the Vault wasn’t fully functional and most of the inhabitants suffered severe brain damage, leading The Calculator to become unstable and dangerous.
The Fallout TV show has also mentioned Colorado, sort of. We first see the Enclave outpost in Season 1, when Siggi Wilzig smuggles out the fusion diode, though we’re never told it’s actually in Colorado. It appears to be the same outpost we see at the end of the Season 2 finale.
And prior to Fallout Season 1 even airing, Colorado was mentioned in a Prime Video feature called “A Special LIVE Report from Galaxy News,” which you can watch on YouTube. The video is a fake sales pitch for Vault-Tec, though it feels more pertinent now that we’ve seen Season 2.
(Image credit: Prime Video)
During some technical difficulties, the video’s narrator states “Vault-Tec Vault living is living the dream! And it’s the only way to safety, unless you’re the President of the United States or something like that, and you have a mountain in Colorado to go under and direct the events of the world. Not many of us are that. There’s only one of those. And his various and sundry advisers, I’m sure they’ll be fine. But you won’t! You won’t be fine if a vault is out of your price range.”
So, according to the show, the President is under Colorado in a bunker, and we just met that same President in Fallout Season 2. Interesting! I have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of him, then, and I fully expect Cooper might meet him once again.
Fallout season 2: All the episode reviews and recaps
How to play New Vegas: How to get the old clanker of an RPG running on your 2025 machine
New Vegas console commands: How to use cheats in New Vegas, just in case
Best New Vegas mods: If you’ve had enough of vanilla, soup up the strip with these
