Here’s a crazy idea: Elder Scrolls and Fallout occur within the same universe. Here’s an even crazier idea: Elder Scrolls takes place after Fallout. According to a recent Easter egg dug up in Fallout 4, though, those ideas might not be so crazy after all.
It could be argued that an Easter egg in a video game is exactly that: A clever nod to something else. No more, no less. Then again, when said Easter egg points directly to another similar game series developed by the same team, you have to pause and wonder.
And pause and wonder is exactly what the team at Kotaku recently did after harvesting a seemingly innocent plant in Bethesda’s recently launched Fallout 4.
Its fun to hypothesis what games actually take place in the same universe. I myself have written a 47 page dissertation explaining why Crash Bandicoot clearly takes place in the same world as the Uncharted series. But as far-fetched as my ideas are, this recent find within Fallout 4 actually has some legitimate proof behind it.
All you need to do to see this proof for yourself is head on over to the Brotherhood of Steel’s airship, the Prydwen. Onboard, you need to head over to the research station where all sorts of experiments are being carried out. If you investigate the experimental pant, you’ll notice what some Skyrim-loving folks have already figured out: The experimental plant in Fallout 4 looks an awful lot like the healing plant known as Nirnroot in the Elder Scrolls series.
But the similarities don’t stop at visuals alone. The findings for this plant are filed under “NRT,” which seems like a pretty convincing argument that it points to the Scrolls series’ Nirnroot. Additionally, you can read a whole bunch of log entries from the scribe who initially discovered and began experimenting with the root. After a while, they created a viable plant and, upon ingesting it, discovered that it appeared to have restorative properties. He refers to the new plant as “glowleaf” but, after becoming addicted to the stuff, they are fired.
If all of this points to a Fallout scientist creating Nirnroot through crossbreeding, then that means that the Fallout series had to occur before Elder Scrolls, where it grows freely in the wild. In other words, the crazy creatures you encounter in Elder Scrolls, as well as magic and all of that jazz, are simply due to nuclear fallout and the subsequent evolution that takes place in the appropriately named Fallout series. And since Fallout takes place in an alternate version of our own history, that means that Elder Scrolls does too…I’m starting to feel like maybe this rabbit hole is a bit too deep.
Anyway, your thoughts on the matter are, as always, welcome in the comments section below.
