Summary
- Fallout successfully pays homage to base lore with references, callbacks, and motifs.
- Characters in the show are unique and authentic with varying motives, not just poster children for factions.
- The show accurately showcases Fallout's notorious bloodshed and gore, staying true to the game series' essence.
The first season of the Fallout TV series has quickly become one of the most celebrated video game adaptations in history. It masterfully represents its source material and is recognized as an exceptionally successful TV show in general markets, acquiring 16 Emmy nominations this coming award season.
Fallout fans, new and old, have been digging into a show that faithfully represents a well-regarded franchise while confidently making its own necessary add-ons. With tons of fantastic lore and history backing it, Fallout, available on Amazon, hits the target dead center, from its sardonic opening moments to its shocking cliffhanger ending.
So, from the perspective of general audiences and long-time fans, here is what we think the Fallout TV show did perfectly in its premiere season.
10 References And Callbacks
Reminding Us That This Really Is Fallout
A disconnect between the film's world and its video game source material is sadly noticeable in many video game adaptations. Despite many of these shows pulling a lot from the game they're based on, they often seem wholly different from what fans expect.
So, when longtime Fallout fans catch references such as the iconic Red Rocket gas station and the prominent in-universe food brands, there's a sense that the show is humbly paying homage to the games we fell in love with.
These more casual callbacks to the games, along with other more significant ones, make this show feel like a true Fallout experience set in the universe we've already come to know.
9 Characters And Their Motives
Deep, Nuanced People Who Roam The Wasteland
Our main characters include a vault dweller, a ghoul, and a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. While each of these explicitly comes from some part of the Fallout universe, the characters' variety of motivations and viewpoints makes them feel unique and authentic to this show.
Maximus, our main Brotherhood of Steel member, is rebellious, which perfectly clashes with the Brotherhood of Steel's traditional ways (like a better version of Finn from the recent Star Wars trilogy). On the other hand, there's our initially open-minded kind vault dweller, Lucy, who is slowly exposed to the savage ways of the mutated wasteland.
Because of their intricate journeys, most characters don't feel like poster children for their given faction or background. Like the actual characters from the Fallout games, they are complex, individual pawns in an intertwining story.
8 The Brutal Violence
Fallout's Notorious Lust For Bloodshed And Dismemberment
Fallout is loaded with enough blood and gore to frighten even the most seasoned Jet junkie. We seriously can’t overstate how much bodily gore is shown in this show. Yet this emphasis on decapitations, limb dismemberment, and bodily carnage is, interestingly, one of the most faithful aspects of Fallout.
People don’t get grazed and scraped: heads are blown off, people die, and these acts of violence impact our main characters and their stories.
If you’ve played Fallout, you likely have used the infamous VATS game system to target your enemies' heads, limbs, and even eyes. So, the TV show seems to honor these aspects of the games because even if it makes us turn from the screen, they decided to show the blood and gore in all its glory.
7 Inspiration From Fallout 1 and 2
Taking Hints And Useful Lore From The Classic Titles
Many Fallout fans were reasonably skeptical when the show was announced to take place in California, as Bethesda's newer Fallout titles are exclusively set on the East Coast. Claiming California means coinciding with original lore.
Luckily, Fallout elitists can now let out a great communal sigh of relief. Classic lore and locations such as Shady Sands become pivotal plot points and add credibility to the deeper story of this show.
So, despite the show's original characters and story, it's fantastic how well it attempts to stick to the history of Fallout we already know and worship.
6 The World Before The Bombs Dropped
The Show's Greatest Original Addition To The Fallout Universe
The Fallout TV show's best original contribution to the Fallout franchise is its portrayal of the world before the Great War and the bombs dropping. The original character, Cooper Howard, who we know in the wastelands as the Ghoul, is developed throughout the 8-episode run of the series as a figurehead celebrity icon in the pre-war world.
Through this storyline, we get insight into Vault-Tec, the state of the world before the bombs dropped, and tons of information and world-building we’ve only technically seen first-hand in the opening moments of Fallout 4. Especially because of the transition to television, this addition was utterly necessary for the show to make.
Instead of the game series' computer terminals and slowly pieced-together subtext, the Fallout show uses the visual medium's emphasis on non-linearity to flash us back in time, expertly giving us that pre-war background we’ve all been hoping for.
5 The Outstanding Music
Celebrating Those Tunes That Helped Us Wander The Wasteland
When we hear those twentieth-century tunes, many of us are automatically taken back to our journey in various Fallout games. So, more than most adaptations, they needed to get this quality of the franchise right.
Luckily, throughout this first season, we were consistently given returning and new tunes that fit that retro-future 50s aesthetic. Unlike the disappointment of We Need a Hero and Thunderstruck in the Mario movie, Fallout is solely filled with canonically pleasing melodies.
With a cameo of Fred Armison as a radio technician playing pre-war music for the scavengers of the wastelands to jam out to, it's evident that getting the music right was a top priority, and quite honestly, they nailed it.
4 Factions Old and New
Meet The Groups Ruling The Wastes
Factions largely embody Fallout and the story it is trying to tell. We're pleased to see the Brotherhood of Steel, individual groups of cultists, vault dwellers, and even the New California Republic as part of the collection of factions this show explores.
The phrase “war never changes” is as relevant as ever, as, throughout this season, the factions and their conflicts consistently rise from the ashes of Armageddon to fight for land, power, and status.
When asked if the Brotherhood of Steel are good guys, the show responds, "It's a complicated organization." Bearing bad actions with a good conscience.
All parts of the story depend on how the factions try to take a hostile planet and shape it into what they individually view as paradise. With all of these references and elaborate perspectives present in the show, it has clearly nailed the factions of the Fallout universe.
3 The Wasteland Itself
Our Nuclear, Post-Apocalyptic, Retrofuture Wonderland
Taking place in California, we all expected a desert, Mad Max-like appearance of the wasteland that was the baseline aesthetic of much of the original games. Although Bethesda’s titles get a bit more colorful with their foliage (definitely incorporated in parts of this show), we were happy to say that the wastelands are still that barren hellscape with danger looming around every corner.
In the games, the wasteland's random and unexpected personality almost becomes its own character, a presence that is likewise present in the show.
Along with odd characters popping up randomly and the wide variety of mutated wildlife our characters find themselves against, the wasteland's influence is as ever-present as it is in the games.
2 Vault-Tec And Their Vaults
The Underlying Benefactor Of The Nuclear-Burdened World
Hidden beneath it all, shifting behind the shadows of each game, Vault-Tec has been an underlying current that oversees the more sheltered parts of the wasteland. With their experiments ongoing through nuclear destruction, nothing is as much of a time capsule to the past as the vaults themselves.
In the show, Vault-Tec and its vaults are prominent, and an entire plot runs through the series, in which we figure out the secret, despicable nature of this cheerful, cartoon-branded company.
The underlying plot of The Vaults and Vault-Tec is so perfect in how it becomes integral to the finale of this season's plotline.
1 The Main Story
The Story of the Fallout series is the bow that ties this perfectly depicted world together.
The show begins with a first-hand account of the bombs being dropped and vault dweller Lucy being guided to find her father long after, so you'd think it's just a Fallout 3 or 4 ripoff, but eventually, the plot becomes much deeper than that.
Maximus, Lucy, the Ghoul, and the other pawns moving around the wasteland, following scraps of the same mystery, are a perfect narrative device. They have their own perspectives but follow the same guiding light to the next clue on the verge of being uncovered.
Ultimately, we discover how connected these individual perspectives are to each other and how integral they are to the pre-apocalypse world. Everyone in the wasteland has a burning desire, and their stories are always somehow influenced by the wild wasteland they inhabit.
The story is truly a wonderful example of game-to-screen adaptations. It has its own perspective and feel while sticking to the lore and source material where it truly matters.
This show has easily reinvigorated even the most exhausted Fallout fan, making us even more pumped for the next season, which, hopefully, is right around the corner.