My kids and I watched the first two episodes last night, and I’m impressed. It feels like Fallout. I like the characters so far, and they squeeze in enough game references to keep my brain spiking with recognition.
We set the bar pretty low on video game adaptations, but I feel this one’s doing alright so far!
What does everyone else think? (Let’s keep spoilers to a minimum. Most of us probably weren’t able to watch the whole thing in one night.)
I just finished watching it and for the most part they got a lot of the tone down and it is well done overall. I liked how they showed Vault-Tec and what they stood for, the general world building, vault stuff. But I have these niggling inklings that bother me with the location of where the show takes place.
It is enjoyable to me it is a solid 7 - 8 out of 10, but had some things that felt off to me and rubbed me the wrong way because I am trying to fit into the narrative I have for my intepretation of the Fallout game timeline. Not saying it is a bad show, just things that subjectively felt off to me.
Going to spoiler tag these things as it has Fallout 1, Fallout 2, New Vegas and the show possible spoilers
spoiler
Again, maybe it is my nostalagia goggles here, so please take what I write with a grain of salt
NCR, The Enclave and The Brotherhood of Steel
NCR
In Fallout 2, Shady Sands is the capital of NCR and that place was well defended - walls, armed guards roaming the streets and fairly civilised if I can recall correctly - I look at the runes of Shady Sands in the show and feels like a mix of the Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. By New Vegas they seemed to have “settled” California considering the fact that cattle barons are running rough shod, political corruption is in full swing and NCR is on the search for more resources and have probably integrated the various towns and city’s of the waste into itself places like New Reno, Vault City, San Franscisco, etc…
They were at war with the Brotherhood at one point and were able to beat them back and integrate some of the tech they requistioned, they had supply lines and it was an established Republic.
The fact that Shady Sands was nuked and they just left it to waste makes sense somewhat - some decrepencies notwithstanding, but how badly developed California appears, doesn’t sit completely right with me, I mean the Fiends from New Vegas have spread there and this is from the same NCR that nearly eradicated the Khans - who where the big drug raiders of California.
NCR in the show seem no better than Bandits at worse or could be considered moderately equipped conscripts at best from how they are organised in relation to the potential for power they were pursuing. They had divisions of very well equipped and trained soldiers armed with good gear especially considering the tech they were able to recover from the Brotherhood when they finally decided to make a push for Hoover Dam in New Vegas
The Enclave
The Enclave was pretty much hunted down and villianised on the East Coast after the events of Fallout 2, The Brotherhood had interest seeing them fall and the NCR continued with that desire to put them under heel. One can maybe make an argument that the NCR have repurposed the Enclave, but they are still known as “The Enclave” and have above ground bases, it does bother me somewhat.
The Brotherhood
The Brotherhood tech feels off to me, maybe I am just nostalgic for the old East Coast Brotherhood that were very hands-off and did their work through trusted proxies. They were a tech-obessed warrior cult based of the branch of the military that tried their best to minimise outsiders knowing of their existence and the existence of technology. It feels off with them Vertibird dropping in broad day light, reliance of mechanical weaponry for knights, feeling indifferent to tech in general and showcasing their tech for all to see.
I mean they kind of address it in showing how the Brotherhood has lost their way, still feels weird for them to be so grandiose which runs a bit in opposition to traditional Brotherhood recruiting of accepting outsiders, which probably must mean they were really down on their luck at some point as I doubt all those recruits were able to perform an exemplary service to be admitted.
The tenants of the Brotherhood are mostly there but feels like it is falling into some mix of Enclave with some East Coast Brotherhood influence
Miscellaneous
The magical yellow substance ( which I know I can be completely wrong on) makes me think of the FEV experiments or a successful substrain of it that does exactly what it was designed for - just feels weird that Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and Fallout 3 show how destructive the benefits of the project were and now it has been perfected to work with any physiology with the added “benefit” of addiction ( or being beholded to require constant dosing over prolonged exposure)
I understand that a lot can happen in time and humans are just as easy to stuff up things and as its own thing it does feel “Fallout” and does a lot to be faithful to the games, so in that I do give credit where credit is due
Maybe Season 2 and beyond will answer the questions I have or fill in the holes, or not I need to just enjoy the show for what it is 🤷