The Wasteland has something for everyone.
The Big Picture
- Prime Video’s
Fallout
series is a pleasant surprise, catering to both gamers and newcomers with a unique and original story. - Understanding the game lore may enhance the viewing experience, but the series does a great job of explaining key elements to everyone.
- Fallout’s self-aware humor and nods to the original games make the viewing experience even more enjoyable for fans of the franchise.
Prime Video’s Fallout is definitely among the best surprises of the year. Rarely does a game adaptation work so well on screen, and watching it is a pleasure for gamers who have been following the franchise for decades. The series incorporates many elements from the game, but its strong suit is how understanding it is of the fact that not everyone has played a Fallout game — at least not yet. Of course, every adaptation provides a richer experience if the viewer knows the original material, and that’s no different with Fallout, so a few things may go over the average viewer’s head while being a delight for those who know the franchise well. Still, this is likely to work better as a way of getting people to play the games than drive them away from the franchise.
Fallout
In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits.
- Release Date
- April 11, 2024
- Cast
- Moises Arias , Johnny Pemberton , Walton Goggins , Kyle MacLachlan
- Main Genre
- Sci-Fi
- Seasons
- 1
- Creator(s)
- Graham Wagner , Geneva Robertson-Dworet
- Producer
- Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan
- Streaming Service(s)
- Prime Video
Prime Video’s ‘Fallout’ Is an Original and Self-Contained Story
One of the biggest concerns when starting a new series nowadays is usually: “Do I have to know something beforehand?” Adaptations are the trend, regardless of what they are adapting — books, games, movies, other television series, you name it. So it’s natural that this question pops up when we are talking about Fallout, too. It’s a gaming franchise, after all, and gaming isn’t really something that everyone does. Besides, Fallout has been around for decades, so there is a lot of lore, which is enough to scare anyone away from any adaptation.
The good news is that Prime Video’s Fallout series really is for everyone. It may be set in the same universe and timeline as the games, but it’s a 100% original story. It uses many pre-existing elements from the games, like the overall setting and a few locations, but the characters and the plot are completely new to the franchise. And the series acknowledges the fact that not everyone has played a Fallout game before, doing an excellent job of making its universe clear to the average viewer. Everything that is connected to the main characters is thoroughly explained to keep everyone on the same page, so the experience for newcomers isn’t diminished.
This was made with the intent of making the series accessible even to those who have never had any contact with the Fallout games. It wouldn’t make sense for a huge streamer like Prime Video to develop an expensive series such as this one with only a small audience in mind. On the contrary, the bigger the audience, the better. For those concerned about missing something from not having played the games, the series is meant to be an entry point to the franchise, leading people to the games, and not the other way around. And if you enjoyed the series, we do highly recommend playing the games, because they are just as good.
For a Complete Understanding of ‘Fallout’, Knowing the Games May Make a Difference
“So I will be able to understand 100% of everything in Fallout?” you may ask. Well, not quite. The Prime Video series is still an adaptation of pre-existing material, so there are some things that may go over the average viewer’s head. The Fallout universe is vast, and the series makes a point of using as much of it as it can (as it should, really). Again, you don’t have to know everything about this world to watch the series, and many things that haven’t been explained in Season 1 will likely have their moment in future seasons.
Many terms are dropped throughout the series, and even some locations that already existed in the Fallout universe appear. The city of Shady Sands and the New California Republic, for example, show up in two Fallout games, so anyone who has played them has a headstart. Another thing is how Dr. Siggi Wilzig (Michael Emerson) once worked for the Enclave, which is mentioned a few times and shown in a flashback in Episode 2, “The Target.” The series doesn’t explain what exactly the Enclave is — remnants of a shadow government that existed within the US government before the apocalypse. But knowing this isn’t exactly essential for understanding the plot of the series. The Enclave may become an important piece of the puzzle in future seasons, but, as far as Season 1 goes, just knowing it exists suffices.
This is true for everything Prime Video’s Fallout brings from the games to the streaming. The franchise lore is explained as it shows up and plays an important role in the story. For gamers, the reaction upon seeing a few things is only slightly different from newcomers, like knowing that every Vault has its own thing when Lucy (Ella Purnell) and Maximus (Aaron Moten) end up in Vault 4 in Episode 6, “The Trap.” “So that’s what they do over there!” is what most gamers thought at that time, and newcomers had this reaction a few minutes later.
‘Fallout’s Humor Is Self-Aware, With Many Nods to the Games
Fallout didn’t become one of the biggest gaming franchises for nothing. The games have many things that keep people coming back for more whenever a new one is released, from their mechanics to new pieces of lore. But if we were to single out just one defining aspect of the games, it would be the dark and absurdist humor. Different from most franchises set in the post-apocalypse, Fallout makes fun of itself, rendering the whole game funnier and lighter for the player. The same thing happens in Prime Video’s Fallout.
The series is very faithful to the original material in many different ways, from the overall look and feel of the Wasteland and the Vaults, to how characters behave, but its use of humor is the best one. It’s through humor that the series establishes its biggest connections to the games, with nods to people who have played them. In this sense, Prime Video’s Fallout is incredibly self-aware, making the whole viewing experience better for people who know the franchise. For example, when the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) mocks Lucy in Episode 3, “The Head,” by telling her about “the golden rule of the Wasteland,” he says it’s “thou shalt not get sidetracked by bullshit.” This is a direct nod to one of the games’ defining traits: the sheer amount of side quests. There are so many that some players even forget the main quest entirely and spend most of their time wandering around the Wasteland doing random stuff. The series and the games take place in the exact same universe, so this is definitely something the Ghoul has probably seen firsthand, which makes it even funnier to imagine.
Not just nods to the games, the Fallout series also uses humor in the same dark and absurdist way the games do. The whole setting is absurd, with the world having come to an end because executives preferred to destroy it and make a profit rather than use their technology for good. This is what establishes the contrast between the Vaults and the Wasteland, leading to interactions such as Lucy being all polite and righteous — downright clueless — to everyone in Filly in Episode 2, without realizing that people there probably hate her just because she has grown up in a safe environment. People can die or be killed in ridiculous ways at all times in the Wasteland, and she’s worried about being polite. For proper laughs, playing the games might make a difference in the viewing experience, but the truth is that the Wasteland has something for everybody.
Fallout is streaming exclusively on Prime Video in the U.S.
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEO
This article was originally published on collider.com