I'm not sure if anyone has asked this question or if anyone knows the answer or even what I'm talking about, but its been bugging me for months.

Certain aspects are, and certain parts are being used in New Vegas and are altered. The war at Hoover Dam between NCR and BOS is canon, for example.

as lolapples said, some parts are canon, some are not. It just depends

Are you talking about Van Buren the canceled game or is there a book or something?

New Vegas pretty much makes Van Buren non-canon in the sense that whatever Obsidian didn't use in New Vegas is not canon. If I recall correctly the only location the two games share is the Hoover Dam. There are other things it uses, of course, such as Caesar's Legion, but whatever was in Van Buren that doesn't show up in New Vegas can be ruled as non-canon from now on. Think about it this way, if developers from Black Isle didn't use something from it in their newest Fallout game, they aren't going to use it in the future, so there's no reason to consider it as canon anymore.

I don't think Van Buren is canon, but bits and pieces of it got rescued from the trashcan for FONV's plot.

Yes, the canceled game, since it also took part in the general area. I understand the BOS/NCR feud is canon, but I was thinking more along the lines of 'Hey, remember the time that NCR mad scientist and high ranking conspuracy tried to wipe out all life as we know it with plagues and nuclear sattelites while nearly succeeding?'

EDIT: Thanks for the explanations!

I don't think it'll be like that. Just recycled bits and pieces. That's all that's been confirmed.

I would say that New Vegas replaces Van Buren. I wouldn't say they're the same game, definitely no, but Canonically we can only consider parts of Van Buren that have been incorporated into New Vegas to be Canon.

So basically, if it was in Van Buren, it's not necessarily canon unless it was in New Vegas too, or at least referenced.

There were a few ideas from Van Buren that were used in FO3 and its DLC as well. A good way to sum it up, is to say that VB is semi-canon.

The parts of Van Buren that were put into NV will be canon. The parts that were not are not.

My take has been that they're using a lot of stuff from Van Buren, in New Vegas. If we want to get really technical and split hairs (and we're on a videogame forum, so I guess that's pretty much a given :wave:) I figure it's not so much that Van Buren itself then becomes "canon," but a lot of what's used from that will be.

ie, insofar as a I believe a word like "canon" is applicable to an ostensibly open-ended roleplaying game focused on player choice and customization - elements from Van Buren will become canon when they show up in New Vegas.

This.

From my understanding that Van Buren is not cannon because it was never released, but some ideas from Van Buren are being implemented in fallout New Vegas so I'd say bits and pieces of Van Buren may just become cannon in New Vegas.

Parts of Van Buren that appear in New Vegas will obviouslly be canonized..making those parts in Van Buren canon, other parts, they would be considered canon flavor..unless they contradict a canon work, which would then make it non-canon.

To clarify, just because something in New Vegas came from Van Buren, does not mean that what happened to that something in Van Buren suddenly becomes canon. For example, if the Caesar's Legion invaded a specific town during the events of Van Buren, that does not mean they invaded that specific town before the events of New Vegas. Only once that invasion is mentioned in New Vegas will it become canon. I like to think of it as two separate universes that share some similarities but not others. The Caesar's Legion in the universe of New Vegas is different than the Caesar's Legion in the universe of Van Buren.

Only some of it (as only some of it is in the game).

No, Vegas is Canon. Van Buren is not.
Meaning = What has been dissected from Van Buren will be canon but all other things will be left un-canon.

Well, not entirely. They might regard some of the concepts from Van Buren as canon and intend them to e.g. show up in future games, but they did not include them in New Vegas not because they're not canon or contrary to canon, but because they e.g. are too far from Vegas to appear, like Denver. And most of Van Buren, while not confirmed, will probably not be contradicted by New Vegas either, so it can be used as flavor info.

And the same applies to Fallout Tactics too - only the things mentioned in Fallout 3 are 100% confirmed as canon, and the rest of the events from Tactics could be either canon or non-canon, until confirmed either way.

"While Van Buren (the canceled Fallout 3 by Black Isle Studios) is not officially canon, some elements of it were incorporated into Fallout 3 and its add-ons, as well as into Fallout: New Vegas, and are now part of the Fallout canon."

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Canon

meh.. just take it as canon until something that turns up in FO4 or FO5 that contradicts it, then it's not.

Taken as a whole, Van Buren is non-canon. However, as others have said, some of the concepts from Van Buren have been used in Fallout: New Vegas, and thus those parts are canon; other parts were not used in New Vegas but were not contradicted; those parts can be considered canon as well unless they are contradicted in the future; and some parts were contradicted, and thus are not considered canon.

My point was that nothing in Van Buren is canon unless an existing game says otherwise. Yes, there is the slim possibility that some elements we wont see in New Vegas will be used in a future game, but until that time they can't be considered canon. "Flavor info" is just a fancy way of saying non-canon information that has a slim chance of becoming canon at some point in the future.

I can only pray that Obsidian's next game takes us far away from where Van Buren was supposed to take place. There's nothing wrong with Van Buren but I for one am tired of people arguing over whether or not Bethesda or Obsidian will continue to pick from the bones of a long dead game. We need to stop thinking about the unrealized past and start thinking about the future of the series.

In my eyes nothing of van Buren is canon. Some parts were taken from van Buren to exist in Fallout 3 and Fallout new vegas and thus become canon from said game. (even though the ideas came from van Buren.)

That is a good question, parts of it could be considered canon but I'm not sure.