To say that the Fallout franchise is popular  in my home is a bit of an understatement. I’ve played the games, of course. There are numerous decorations and signs for Vault-Tec and Nuka-Cola scattered throughout my house, and my closet is full of Fallout-themed T-shirts. A while back, my son (at his behest) went trick-or-treating as Vault Boy. I also once ran a home-brewed Fallout TTRPG campaign that still looms large in my imagination to this day.

There’s just something about Fallout’s unique blend of ’50s retro-futurism and optimism mixed with quirky, often dark humor and the existential hell and horror of the post-apocalypse.

When Amazon announced that they were adapting the Fallout universe into a live-action series, I was…cautiously optimistic. I wanted to immediately believe that it would be a slam dunk, an instant classic that would delight new and existing fans alike, but I was held back in my enthusiasm by two points: Fallout 76 and the Halo series on Paramount+.

The last entry into the Fallout video game series was a live-service game with an emphasis on a multi-player experience heavily laden with microtransactions. While there are many who enjoyed it when it came out, and continue to enjoy it, it was not for me.

I found it repetitive and stripped of all the things I enjoyed in a Fallout game. I know that the game has had many updates and expansions over the years, but my initial experience with it was so lackluster that I never returned to it, and likely never will. The game damaged the Fallout brand rather badly, and made me lose a lot of faith in Bethesda Game Studios. 

The Halo show is not only not canon to the regular game timeline, but bears only a passing similarity to the universe that has been built up over the last 20+ years through games, comics, novels, and two other TV shows. There is no attempt to resolve the differences between the normal Halo universe and the Silver timeline here.

It has a passing similarity to the IP, but none of the things that really tap into what made Halo so popular in the first place. So, it’s a thin veneer of a recognizable and highly marketable brand with none of the substance of that brand underneath. It’s Halo in name only.  

Unfortunately, that’s a common occurrence with video adaptations to the big or little screen. Sometimes you get a Mortal Kombat: Annhilation and sometimes, just sometimes, you get something akin to what HBO did with the Last of Us. I’m happy to say that after watching eight hours of Amazon’s Fallout series, it is firmly in the latter category.

Did I like it? Let me put it this way: I think this is one of the few times were the adaptation actually manages to exceed the source material. The funny thing is that, as I followed the three primary characters on their respective journeys, it had me wishing for a game version of their story. And unlike Halo, the story that this series tells is canon. In fact, if the series goes the way I think it will, I suspect that Fallout 5 might be building off of the show, making this series a catalyst for future games and stories set within the Fallout universe.

I do have a few nitpicks, all very minor, that I would like to get out of the way before I get into what I enjoyed about it. I’m about to get into SPOILER territory, so consider yourself warned:

Recycled Motivations: Look, I understand that if you’ve lived in a vault all your life, it’s going to take something pretty powerful to make you want to leave the relative security for the unknown dangers of the wasteland. Family is definitely one of them. So, Lucy leaving the Vault in search of her father is understandable, but does feel like a retread of Fallout 3.

But, later in the series, one of Vault 31’s engineers announces that their water purification chip has been destroyed, and that they only have a few months of fresh water left. This is precisely the reason that the protagonist from the original Fallout game leaves Vault 13. After that scene, this potentially catastrophic problem is never mentioned again. Perhaps that’s setup for Season 2.

New Ghoul Chem: Through the Ghoul, we learn that there’s a chem that helps ghouls stave off becoming feral. When we briefly encounter Roger, a ghoul repeatedly chanting his own name in the efforts of not turning, we see that he has taken loads of this chem and it hasn’t made a difference. The presence of this new chem is not an issue for me, but we need to know two things about it:

• Is this a pre-war drug that cannot be manufactured anymore, making it an increasingly dwindling resource, or is this chem entirely new, and thus is something that can be made by any decent wasteland chemist?
• What is its name? Fallout is replete with drugs named things like Jet, Psycho, Mentats, Day Tripper, and Buffout. If this chem is that important to ghouls, and becomes something of a minor MacGuffin, what is it called? If it’s a post-war drug, I nominate “Zom-B-Gone” as the official name.

Repressed Brotherhood: The character of Maximus is almost entirely sexually ignorant. While it makes for some funny moments, it is implied that the Brotherhood has intentionally fostered this (though one of his bunkmates certainly didn’t have a problem with it). For a military organization that’s co-ed, I’m surprised at this. For one, if you forbid people from exploring their sexuality at all, they will find ways to do it anyway in secret, and practically every military organization is aware of this.

Second, wouldn’t the Brotherhood want to encourage breeding to ensure the next generation of Knights? Of course, this chapter of the Brotherhood does seem to be more overtly religious than some of the other portrayals of them, so it could just be a quirk of this chapter. After all, the difference between the Brotherhood under Elder Lyons in Fallout 3 and Elder Maxson in Fallout 4 is pretty substantial.  Still, it struck me as odd, given how the Brotherhood has been portrayed in the past.

The Chalkboard: Okay, this is one that gets some fans in an uproar for its potential as a lore-break. Lucy finds a chalkboard in Vault 4 with a timeline of events that, at a glance, would seem to imply that Shady Sands, the capital of the New California Republic, fell in the year 2277 when Fallout: New Vegas is set in 2281 and the NCR is still a major player at that time.

I think that there are many ways that this could be interpreted as lore-friendly (explained by Many A True Nerd and Juicehead in particular), but it was an oddly unnecessary detail to include and potentially get wrong, especially when everything else has been so lore accurate.

Okay, now that’s all out of the way, let’s get into what I liked about this show. This could easily be a series of blog posts by itself, but I will just give the highlight reel for you here.

The Cast: This show has some serious acting chops going for it. You need actors who can be both dramatic and silly, and the main three: Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, and Walton Goggins bring this story to life. Each of them gets to portray wonderful moments of strength and vulnerability. Goggins is a particular standout with his dual role as The Ghoul, a bounty hunter in the post-apocalypse, and Cooper Howard, a pre-war A-list celebrity.

Practically every background character is played to perfection. Norman, played by Moises Arias, wound up having one of the most compelling character arcs as he starts to unravel the secret of the interconnected trio of vaults. So, the acting talent on display here is incredible. My proverbial hat is off to everyone who played a part here. Nicely done.

The SETS!: Fallout has never looked so good. The attention to detail here is astounding. The vaults are fully realized live-action interpretations from Fallout 4, right down to the switches on the door handles and the prints on the curtains. I sincerely hope that someplace recreates these sets for people to tour. I would be there in a heartbeat.

Filly looked right at home as a sister town to Megaton or Diamond City. The general store that Lucy enters is a veritable treasure trove of Fallout easter eggs. Every place the characters go fits in seamlessly. I can only imagine the titanic amount of work it took to get the sense of place right, but the production team really knocked it out of the park with this one. 

The Side Quests: What made this feel like a Fallout adventure was simply how priorities shifted as time went on. The Ghoul captures Lucy, but has to abandon the hunt for the scientist’s head (an assignment worth a ton of caps to him) to go get his unnamed ghoul chem from the Super Duper Mart. Maximus and Lucy get sidetracked by accidentally falling into Vault 4, where they have to contend with the weirdness that’s going on there. Maximus reveals his secret to his squire, and then has to track him down.

The side quests and points of interest are what make a Bethesda game, so it feels entirely appropriate that the Ghoul spouts the Golden Rule of the Wasteland.  

The Music: If you’ve played the games, some of the songs that get played are straight from Galaxy News Radio or Diamond City Radio. The showrunners didn’t limit themselves to just what was in the games, however, there are many other instances of them further delving into that 50s/60s musical genre that blends in perfectly. I can’t overstate how well these songs are overlaid onto the visual narrative. The lyrics of these songs often correlate directly to what’s happening on the screen. It’s pretty amazing to watch.

The score is by Ramin Djawadi, who famously composed the score for Game of Thrones and the first Iron Man movie. It’s clear that he takes a lot of cues from the previous game tracks, one notable time being when Lucy sees the NCR flag in the classroom in Vault 4, which echoes back to the Inon Zur themes of Fallouts 3 and 4.

The score is serviceable enough for the most part, though I had hoped to have more of the recognizable modern Fallout themes to go with the spot-on visuals. Not having more of that strikes me as a missed opportunity. The Brotherhood of Steel theme, however, is a stand-out track on this album for sure, along with the western-style trumpet stylings found in “Feo Fuente y Formal.”

The Love: A show that brings this level of detail to the screen and captures the tone of the franchise so well doesn’t happen without love at every level. From the script writers, to the prop-makers, to the special effects crew, and the small army of talented folks it takes to produce a show like this, the love of the source material is crystal clear here.

I was heartened to hear that many of the crew on the sets and behind-the-scenes personnel, as well as many of the actors, were genuine fans of Fallout. It shows. I really hope that Amazon studios is able to keep this same team together for Season 2 (which was just confirmed yesterday as the time of this writing). It’s going to be a long wait to see the continuing journeys of Coop, Lucy, and Maximus, but I’m sure it’s going to be epic once it arrives. I’ll be there Day One.

Final Thoughts: Adaptations are a tricky business, and video game adaptations doubly so. I think what makes this series stand where others like Halo fall is simply an understanding of the source material and why it was so popular in the first place.

Most adaptations of popular franchises these days are definitely not made with the existing fans in mind. (Michael Bay Transformers, anyone?) Too often, it feels like there is a contempt for fans who are already invested in the property. But I think this approach is fundamentally flawed. Sure, filmmakers will want their adaptations to reach, and appeal to, the largest audience possible. Still, if you make something that long-time fans will love, but one with enough on-ramps for new fans to join in, you’re on the right track.

I think that’s what Fallout has done here. There is so much for existing fans to enjoy and sink their teeth into while simultaneously serving as a wonderful introduction to the world of Fallout. That’s pretty much all I could ever ask for.

So, the moral of this story is: In a world full of Halos, be a Fallout.

Thanks for reading!

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