^Pretty much that. It is canon, because the keyholders deem it canon. Bethesda could stand by that forever, with 76 being solidly planted in lore longer than any of us are alive, or Bethesda could come out next Tuesday, declaring the whole thing is a noncanonical toy box which exists to have fun first and foremost, or they could use the wiki's "favorite" term semi-canon and leave everyone's heads spinning as to what that means exactly.
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I might not like Fallout 76 but I accept that it is Canon.
Fallout 3 I hate the game and two of its DLCs but I accept that it is Canon.
There are enough reasons to dislike 76, but the lore is actually pretty good and - aside from a few retcons, which is nothing new for the Fallout franchise - makes perfect sense.
No, Fallout 76 is canonical, even though it takes place prior to the events of the original Fallout.
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Honestly I think it should be non canonical so the devs can be free to throw in whatever they like without worry about keeping the lore semi-consistent.
^Maybe it is semi canon just like Tactics? It is still a Fallout game, so it has to be canonical, but it takes place way before the first fallout game takes place, so IDK
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76 is canon unless Bethesda decides otherwise.
Some things like the Atomic Shop and the Nuclear Winter game mode are obviously non-canon but the story is canon.
I second @Road Warrior-NCR Patriot on this, if anything the amount of retcons and silly contrivances so far has been just enough to make the game annoying from a lore perspective. It's always going to be an open question whether or not anything in 76 is actually canon, there's no satisfying answers that even the writers & developers could provide let alone anyone else, insisting that it is canon and trying to bend the rules without breaking them is trying to please everyone and pleasing no one in the process.
76's retcons and assorted lore f*ckery are a nuisance for the established canon and at the same time stifling for 76 itself that can't push the boundaries too far without completely devaluing the concept of what is and isn't canon in their games. If anything they should just cop to the fact that 76 is a third party product and likely to have a lot of sh*t retconed under the carpet anyway, it's not canon and any crazy sh*t you can imagine can happen. The Enclave could show up riding mechanised tyranosaurs led by the ghost of John Quincy Adams, no lore, no rules, no limits.
^Is it bad I want that to happen?
What do you think?
