He’s so inconsistent between being a real character and a wide-eyed dope. I actually thought he was being drugged in the vault but nope, turns out he’s just an idiot.
He’s so inconsistent between being a real character and a wide-eyed dope. I actually thought he was being drugged in the vault but nope, turns out he’s just an idiot.
I’ve been a fan of Fallout since the original and obsessed with post apocalyptic stories since seeing Road Warrior at the drive-in as a child. So yes, I plan on watching this despite all the standard red flags, but curious to hear what another Fallout nerd has to say about this.
I’ve been a fan of Fallout since the original and obsessed with post apocalyptic stories since seeing Road Warrior at the drive-in as a child. So yes, I plan on watching this despite all the standard red flags, but curious to hear what another Fallout nerd has to say about this.
There's plenty of valid criticisms that can made of the show, but I don't think even the most rabid hater would say faithfulness to the source material is one of them.
The show is just 100% fallout, arguably one of the most true-to-spirit video game adaptations ever done.
Shit, it's probably more Fallout than Fallout 76 is.
Its one thing to adapt a fixed narrative game like The Last of Us, where you can essentially cut out the gameplay bits and film the cutscenes with people on sets, but adapting an open world game like Fallout, where the only thing all runs will have in common is visiting a handful of critical path locations (and even there, the player could be visiting as their savior or their executioner) is a much more complex challenge. It is even more difficult when the show isn't an adaptation, but a sequel, canonical with everything that has already happened and will happen with the games.
The best you can do then is not adapt the narrative, but instead the setting, and the show does this in spades, showing off a number of factions, the tech and gear, and even the greatest hits of locations - the mutated animal attack, the creepy vault experiment, the raider attack on the surface, the warehouse or office building dungeon, the amorally programed robot trap, the ramshackle new settlement, the landmark turned base, the lunatic NPCs out in the wilds. And the production design is fucking absurdly well done, with recognizable weapons, armor, tech, etc. on screen virtually every second of the show.
So why is my rating good but not great?
The characters: Lucy is fine as the naive vault dweller finding out what reality is the hard way. She's skilled but by no means a modern girlboss, racking up a tremedous number of injuries over her trip and (as far as I can remember) pulling out zero chosen one shenanigans.
Maximus is all over the place, by design - one second he's cowardly, one murderous, one determined, one contented. Which might make him interesting to watch, but also hard to root for.
The Ghoul is played by a fantastic actor in Goggins. But the character frequently crosses the line from ruthless into actually sadistic. I'd honestly be fine with him catching up with the powers that be and getting shot in the face for his past misdeeds, especially when he knew what he knew and spent his time at kids' birthday parties.
And there's the elephant in the room, the lore
The first issue is Shady Sands, which gets nuked well after the creation of the NCR. While the event gets tied into the younger characters' backstories, it seems like it is mainly there for the show to A) Not have to deal with any fixed outcomes from the-pre Bethesda games, and B) Not have to deal with a standing NCR army in the area. But the timeline doesn't really match up with the existing lore, given that Shady Sands is getting power from Vegas in 2281 (with the show taking place in 2296). Furthermore, Maximus has to be at least 4+ when Shady Sands is nuked, meaning unless he's supposed to be ~19 or less in the show, results in Shady Sands being nuked before '81. It also makes no sense that the "Surfies" in Vault 4 wouldn't get assistance from the rest of the NCR, which (as far as we're informed) still exists, as their capital moved out of Shady Sands before it was nuked.
The second is Vault Tec being to blame for the Great War. The concept isn't preposterous, as there's enough theorycrafting out there guessing the same, and (if I recall) was the backstory for the Fallout movie script from years ago. But the execution is so laughably bad I literally can't believe it - a batch of super wealthy individuals say "You know what would be better than the 51% of the market we currently have? Having 100% of the 1% of civilization that will survive, after hundreds of years of no profit (since everyone is dead), in moneyless vaults. Also, we'll blow up virtually all our holdings on Earth in the nuclear exchange." Keep in mind, this is almost directly after someone basically says "If you're not a Communist, you're a lunatic." You know, in the show produced and aired by one of the largest companies in the world, involving an IP now held by the largest company in the world?
(Also, Vault Tec bought out Cold Fusion tech and instead of using it to help their vaults, either did nothing with it or gave it to The Enclave to not finish for 200 years.)
Again, I am not entirely opposed to Vault Tec being the aggressor, if you assume Vault Tec / The Enclave have been running in the background the whole time, explaining why The Enclave keeps reappearing, though we'll likely find out Vault Tec is essentially an arm of the old US Government, because modern politics. (It also explains why Wilzig knows all about Lucy's vaults, since they are the same org in reality.) But the execution is so laughably bad, including people like Mr House in that list of participants stops being a neat reference and turns into intentional character assassination (of coincidentally non-Bethesda written characters).
If Bethesda's plan for their old games is to say "And then Vault Tec blew everyone up five minutes after that game ended, so don't worry about long term consequences, just buy the new thing", its efficient for not dealing with conflicting lore, but deeply unsatisfying for Bethesda to prune the world down to the sacred timeline the second we stop playing.
Finally, the little bit of pre-War America we see is all wrong. By the mid 2070s when those bits take place, the US should be a great depression-like hellhole, between mass deaths from the latest batch of New Plague, starvation, war rationing, and resource shortages. Instead they just dug the 50s and pre-hippie 60s clothes out of their wardrobe departments and said good enough. I get that they have already spent a ton on the post-War period, but they don't even try with the pre-War stuff. They also do virtually nothing with satirizing pre-War commercialism, and the branding is just bizarre, as apparently the Vaults are still cranking out new Yum Yum and Blamco branded foodstuffs? Or something? Because out of the 60 people that live in Vault 33, a couple of them are keeping the Blamco box printer going?
So yeah, given the challenges, the TV show is pretty good. But the lore stuff (which almost exclusively shits on the non-Bethesda written chunks) is going to rub a ton of people the wrong way.
I don't give a shit what y'all say. I was talking about this with some of my coworkers, and pretty bright coworkers, and they were just like, "Really? Fallout is in a universe where the transistor was never invented?"
I mean, yah, you can get pretty deep into the lore... Which I consider myself to be. But some of you neckbeards, man. I mean, fuck...
The show didn't explain what caused him to go from Hollywood and face of vault tec to doing kids birthday parties. The dad's at the party comment on his fall from grace
The most obvious explanation is he confronted his wife and/or she figured out her was eavesdropping. One man trying to bring down a powerful corporation is unlikely to succeed.
It seems there were consequences for him that destroyed his acting career
Regime
posted a review yet?
