Happy Fallout Day! With Fallout Season 2 around the corner and its setting confirmed to be New Vegas years after its 2010 debut, there has never been a better time to dive back into this iconic post-apocalyptic RPG video game series. But where to start? And what’s going on with the Fallout timeline? We’ve put together this handy guide to the Fallout games in order — both chronological and release — to help you get your head around the wasteland’s complicated history.
While playing through the games in release order is pretty straightforward thanks to the mainline entries just being numbered, there are still some cheeky subtitle entries that could confuse newcomers. Chronological order is where things get more complicated, though, as the various games jump all over the post-apocalyptic timeline.
Some of these games are spin-offs in different genres, too. If you’re only interested in the first/third-person shooter/RPG hybrids that began with Fallout 3, you can begin your Fallout journey there; each entry’s main questline works on its own, and the settings have always changed despite sharing the same world and taking place in North America. But if you’re willing to dive into the older titles, you’ll find some excellent stories and a staggering amount of gameplay depth.
Fallout Games in Chronological Order
The Fallout series takes place in the future, starting in the 22nd century after a nuclear war between the United States and China broke out in 2077, devastated the world, and reset modern civilization.
The aesthetic of this universe is post-apocalyptic (much of it was shaped by classic movies like Mad Max) and retrofuturistic, as its unique timeline diverged from our own after World War II, with an advanced atomic age that mixed with the culture and society of the 1950s. This is the chronological order to follow:
- Fallout 76
- Fallout
- Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel – Not entirely canon, but referenced
- Fallout 2
- Fallout 3
- Fallout: New Vegas
- Fallout 4
Also note that two non-canon entries in the series don’t fit into the chronology: Fallout Shelter and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004).
1. Fallout 76
- Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One
- Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Despite being the latest entry in the series and a spinoff game, Fallout 76 actually takes place before every other Fallout game. Set in 2102, only 25 years after the end of the world and the new beginning, players (plural, since this is an online game) exit Vault 76 in West Virginia and are tasked with ‘reclaiming’ the surrounding Wasteland. Appalachia wasn’t hit as hard by the nukes during the war, so the natural environments are greener and richer than other parts of the US (but still extremely dangerous).
The original main questline leads players all over the map to recolonize the area and push back against the Scorched mutants. Besides other players, however, Appalachia was originally devoid of friendly non-player characters (NPCs).
Thankfully, the free Wastelanders update (and subsequent content) fixed that by bringing different groups of people back to Appalachia. Right now, the overarching narrative has advanced to the year 2105, though players joining now can still experience past storylines.
2. Fallout
- Platforms: PC, MS-DOS, macOS
- Developer: Interplay Productions
The original Fallout took us to Southern California in the year 2161, 84 years after the Great War. The player controls the Vault Dweller, a custom protagonist who lives in Vault 13 and is tasked with finding a new water chip after the previous one broke. Living underground without water isn’t ideal, so they’re sent into the outside world with little equipment and their trusty Pip-Boy 2000 portable computer device.
The adventure becomes more complicated (and bloody) once the water chip is returned, as the Vault Dweller is tasked with destroying a mutant army created by The Master, a man-turned-mutant who’s begun using a pre-War virus to try to convert all of humanity into super mutants. At this point, the open-ended nature of Fallout allows the player to choose several narrative paths depending on their choices. We won’t spoil all the endings here; some are good and some are bad. But the Vault Dweller’s ultimate fate is bittersweet regardless.
3. Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel
- Platforms: PC
- Developer: Micro Forté, 14 Degrees East
Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel – commonly shortened to Fallout Tactics – takes place in the American Midwest in 2197 and focuses on the Brotherhood of Steel, a post-War paramilitary order operating across the United States whose core purpose is to preserve and secure advanced technology to prevent another apocalypse.
The game follows a squad of members as the faction enters a fierce war against a shocking threat from the West. Fallout Tactics focused on tactical combat and strategy over the traditional role-playing of Fallout 1 & 2, and the story puts the Brotherhood in confrontation with various enemy factions.
For the most part, the story isn’t considered canon, yet some universe-building elements and even plot beats were later referenced. If you’re someone who wants to get deep into the canon vs. non-canon discussion, it’s an okay game worth checking out at least once. Otherwise, feel free to skip it.
4. Fallout 2
- Platforms: PC, macOS
- Developer: Black Isle Studios
While Fallout 2 can be enjoyed on its own, it does continue the story of the original as it features a tribal village known as Arroyo, located in northern New California, which was founded in the late 2170s by the original Vault Dweller and a group of companions. In 2241, roughly 80 years after the events of the first game, Arroyo faces a terrible drought and tasks the Chosen One, descendant of the Vault Dweller, with retrieving the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K.).
The early twist is the G.E.C.K. is said to be housed inside Vault 13, which makes the Chosen One’s quest a return to the home of their own lineage. No more story spoilers here, but the Enclave, a remnant of the pre-War United States government, also shows up with an agenda of its own. For the most part, Fallout 2 was quite similar as a game to the original, yet its narrative went a bit deeper and expanded both the pre- and post-War worlds.
5. Fallout 3
- Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
- Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
With Bethesda Game Studios at the helm and dropping the CRPG gameplay in favor of a more hands-on first-person approach, Fallout 3 jumped ahead to 2277, exactly 200 years after the Great War. The protagonist, however, is born in the year 2258, and we get to see them grow up over a few stages. The plot kicks off when James (their father) mysteriously leaves Vault 101.
After some disagreements with the vault’s overseer, the Lone Wanderer begins a journey through the Capital Wasteland – the ruins of old Washington DC and its surroundings – as they try to locate their doctor-scientist dad, who’s far more important than anyone in Vault 101 ever thought.
We won’t spoil the later stages of the story here, but it involves water yet again, though the main questline takes a few more twists and turns. In any case, the most memorable characters and quests are mostly found off the main path and in the post-launch expansion packs.
6. Fallout: New Vegas
- Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360
- Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Fallout: New Vegas starts in 2281 and presents an entirely different kind of protagonist: the Courier, who was simply hired to deliver a package to the largely untouched city of New Vegas. In the prologue cutscene, they’re intercepted by a well-dressed man and his goons. They shoot the Courier in the head, leaving them for dead. But that’s not the end of their story.
A combination of sheer luck and a shallow grave allows the Courier to survive the shot and recover in the nearby town of Goodsprings. Shortly afterwards, they get a lead on who shot them and set off into the Mojave Desert to find the man in the checkered suit.
Things, of course, quickly get more complicated, and the Courier ends up in the middle of a war for control of New Vegas and its people. This one’s widely considered to be the best-written of the modern Fallout games, and its fantastic expansions only solidified its cult status.
7. Fallout 4
- Platforms: PC, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series X|S
- Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Fallout 4 fast-forwards to 2287 and returns to the East Coast. More specifically, it takes the player to The Commonwealth, which contains the pre-War state of Massachusetts. It was first mentioned in Fallout 3, but it was this game that first took us to Boston and its surroundings.
Though the game opens on October 23, 2077, the day the bombs fell, the story takes place 210 years later. As far as we know, the expansions also happen in the same year. This is, chronologically, the last Fallout game before the TV show begins in the year 2296.
In Fallout 4, you play as a father/mother looking for their child, Shaun, who’s been taken away from them for mysterious reasons by a man who also kills their spouse. After some time inside a cryogenic pod, the protagonist exits Vault 111 and begins their quest for revenge and their son. The Commonwealth Minutemen, the Brotherhood of Steel, an enigmatic group known as the Institute, and the Railroad are the main factions. Human-like synths are at the center of the story, with many of the ethical questions surrounding thinking machines in science fiction put at the forefront of the main questline.
Bethesda has announced an Anniversary Edition of the game that’s coming soon, too, which will contain all the official expansions and brings the game to a Nintendo console for the first time. It’ll release on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox on November 10, 2025, and on Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026
Fallout Games in Release Order
Below, we’re listing every Fallout game ever made, including the non-canon ones, which aren’t part of the ‘chronological order’ section — just in case you’re doing a completionist run of the entire franchise.
Fallout Pinball is also being left out because there’s no story to be found there, obviously.
- Fallout (1997)
- Fallout 2 (1998)
- Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel (2001) – Not entirely canon, but referenced
- Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004) – Non-canon
- Fallout 3 (2008)
- Fallout: New Vegas (2010)
- Fallout Shelter (2015) – Non-canon
- Fallout 4 (2015)
- Fallout 76 (2018)
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