Fallout on Prime post-release thread

[oudeis]

Looks like it might not suck. (https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2024/04/fallout-show-review/678023/?gift=aCdVam7a_vJqdHeNP-ri9T-ACFo4liPnhz-neEguPys&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share) (spoiler-free)

The series comes on line 6pm PST for me and I'm planning on watching the first 2-3 episodes to get a feel for whether I like it. Based on the review above, it sound like Prime managed to stay out of the way and actually let the creatives make a good adaptation.


Note: The author of the piece, in addition to being an avid gamer, is a former professor at Dartmouth and the US Naval War College and an expert on the policy and politics of nuclear weapons and deterrence.

[t209]

Not sure how standalone it would be.
Like a bit iffy trying to connect it with videogame series.

[oudeis]

Episode 1 review:

STOP READING THIS THREAD AND GO WATCH THE GODDAMNED SHOW.

IMMEDIATELY

(I had more to say about this, but the site decided to glitch out on me before I could submit my comment and I'm too irked to retype everything).

Seriously, just watch the show. Everything about it so far is amazing- acting, dialogue, story, effects, etc. The production values are stellar. This is the kind of genre show we all want so desperately to see but so rarely get. Watch it and rave about it on social media so Amazon gets the message and greenlights more series of this caliber.

[Errorname]

So initial impressions are that it's much better than anyone expected but from reactions to later episodes:

It seems to have done the NCR exactly as badly as people feared it might.

[t209]

So initial impressions are that it's much better than anyone expected but from reactions to later episodes:

It seems to have done the NCR exactly as badly as people feared it might.
Well, further proving why people dislike Bethesda, especially Todd’s approach on Obsidian and Black Isle lores.

[Trixie_One]

I watched the first episode, and decided that was enough for me.

Visually great, some decent performances, and the pre-war stuff is very well done, but so much of it after that I was going 'hang on?' so often that it kept taking me out of the show.

I suspect it would have helped if I hadn't have watched that ep of X-Men '97 which is easily the best thing I've seen all year, and so likely anything would pale in comparison to that.

[Tyndmyr]

Tried to post once, think the post got eaten by the forum, so here goes again.

Watched the first episode. It is meh. Not sure I will be watching further. Perhaps if I get bored and there's nothing else around.

Good:
Music is old timey, and there's at least one classic that any fallout fan'll appreciate in the first episode.
Many of references to fallout things. Some are kinda memberberryish, but there are also many shots that would make a perfectly fine painting of a fallout world.

Bad:
Continuity of shots is not great. Positioning isn't always consistent between cuts, which can be distracting. In at least one case, an item that was at least partially destroyed significantly earlier in the episode is awkwardly whole again later. This mostly just appears to be sloppy.

Terrible:
The characters.
The plot.
There's no good way to discuss these without spoilers, so off to a spoiler, shall we?


The characters basically use a template based on the Star Wars sequel. There are three characters who have stories viewed from their perspective, and that will theoretically overlap later in the show, though they do not in the pilot. First, we have the blank slate female character who is generically good at everything, has no hobbies or notable defining traits, and is loved by all. She will receive the most screen time, and will be hereafter referred to as Lady Boring. Second we have the soldier archetype who is treated as kind of dumb, but means well, and is really too kind hearted to be a soldier. This character is also cast as Black, because I guess awful stereotyping isn't dead yet, and they wanted a Finn clone real bad. Lastly, we have the action heroesque white guy who shoots his way into and out of everything while wisecracking.

I kind of hate this template. It's really, really light on any actual personality and background. Characters mostly do not have much in the way of families, and when they do, it's solely for the purpose of fridging them. They don't have hobbies, nor are they terribly unique. They're just...their role, and that's pretty much it. Soldier guy doesn't even get much in the way of a backstory. He was a kid once, and thought soldiers looked cool, and also some unexplained bad thing happened to him. That's it.

Anyways, on to discussing the plot. Lady Boring is, despite being universally loved by everyone, especially her daddy, who is the vault overseer, unable to find a mate. She proposes that she be selected for the triannual exchange with the neighboring vault to be given a random hubbie. Because everyone loves her, everyone enthusiastically agrees immediately. Daddyseer tells her this is great, they do it all the time, and he himself came from this vault.

The connected vaults thing is mildly unusual, but since each vault historically has had one notable oddity to it, I cannot fault them for this. Two connected vaults swapping people on some wild system can absolutely be the designated experiment for them.

Everyone from vault is welcomed, old times are discussed, trade deals are made, a wedding party is had. All is well...except these are not actually their fellow vault dwellers, but raiders acting as them for...reasons. How did they get in? Why does daddyseer not recognize that this is a wholly different group of people than the family he grew up with? Don't know. Instead, watch as invaders all telepathically decide to go murderhobo at the same time. Fortunately, the six invaders are killed off by Lady Boring, but oh no, the six are now thirty because reasons.

So, the leader of the other vault//the raider chief is basically the Joker, and she monologues about how choices are important and define everything. So, daddyseer has to make a choice. He must choose to save Lady Boring, or the rest of the vault, which is like five people. He chooses her, of course. Joker Raider responds to this by letting the rest of the people go because....I guess choices do not matter after all or something. Instead she laughs manically in front of random explosions before kidnapping Daddyseer so the rest of the plot can happen. The rest of the vault is left alone by the raiders and everything basically goes back to normal.

We switch to the B plot, in which soldier boy is established as a soldier. Thanks to the obvious need to spend half of this time watching power armor shots in slow motion, and the rest of the time observing latrine duty, very little progress is made here. He is still a soldier.

In the C plot, cool guy is established as having been a nice, kind hearted guy who cares about others, and also as a person who kills for the fun of it, and who'll cheerfully murder people who helped him basically for the lulz. Still probably the most interesting character to watch.

Basically all of the charming goofiness of vault-tec instructional videos or salespeople is not to be found. This is sort of disappointing. Fallout is a retro futuristic pulpy story, not a sad period piece.

[Lemmy]

I couldn't even get through the first episode...

The music and visuals are pretty good... And that's about it for positives.
The writing and characterization are as horrible as expected.

Soldier black guy and generic girlboss are so dull I honestly can't even remember their names.

Good visuals, crappy writing... Who could've foreseen this???

Everyone. That's who.

[t209]

Tried to post once, think the post got eaten by the forum, so here goes again.

Watched the first episode. It is meh. Not sure I will be watching further. Perhaps if I get bored and there's nothing else around.

Good:
Music is old timey, and there's at least one classic that any fallout fan'll appreciate in the first episode.
Many of references to fallout things. Some are kinda memberberryish, but there are also many shots that would make a perfectly fine painting of a fallout world.

Bad:
Continuity of shots is not great. Positioning isn't always consistent between cuts, which can be distracting. In at least one case, an item that was at least partially destroyed significantly earlier in the episode is awkwardly whole again later. This mostly just appears to be sloppy.

Terrible:
The characters.
The plot.
There's no good way to discuss these without spoilers, so off to a spoiler, shall we?


The characters basically use a template based on the Star Wars sequel. There are three characters who have stories viewed from their perspective, and that will theoretically overlap later in the show, though they do not in the pilot. First, we have the blank slate female character who is generically good at everything, has no hobbies or notable defining traits, and is loved by all. She will receive the most screen time, and will be hereafter referred to as Lady Boring. Second we have the soldier archetype who is treated as kind of dumb, but means well, and is really too kind hearted to be a soldier. This character is also cast as Black, because I guess awful stereotyping isn't dead yet, and they wanted a Finn clone real bad. Lastly, we have the action heroesque white guy who shoots his way into and out of everything while wisecracking.

I kind of hate this template. It's really, really light on any actual personality and background. Characters mostly do not have much in the way of families, and when they do, it's solely for the purpose of fridging them. They don't have hobbies, nor are they terribly unique. They're just...their role, and that's pretty much it. Soldier guy doesn't even get much in the way of a backstory. He was a kid once, and thought soldiers looked cool, and also some unexplained bad thing happened to him. That's it.

Anyways, on to discussing the plot. Lady Boring is, despite being universally loved by everyone, especially her daddy, who is the vault overseer, unable to find a mate. She proposes that she be selected for the triannual exchange with the neighboring vault to be given a random hubbie. Because everyone loves her, everyone enthusiastically agrees immediately. Daddyseer tells her this is great, they do it all the time, and he himself came from this vault.

The connected vaults thing is mildly unusual, but since each vault historically has had one notable oddity to it, I cannot fault them for this. Two connected vaults swapping people on some wild system can absolutely be the designated experiment for them.

Everyone from vault is welcomed, old times are discussed, trade deals are made, a wedding party is had. All is well...except these are not actually their fellow vault dwellers, but raiders acting as them for...reasons. How did they get in? Why does daddyseer not recognize that this is a wholly different group of people than the family he grew up with? Don't know. Instead, watch as invaders all telepathically decide to go murderhobo at the same time. Fortunately, the six invaders are killed off by Lady Boring, but oh no, the six are now thirty because reasons.

So, the leader of the other vault//the raider chief is basically the Joker, and she monologues about how choices are important and define everything. So, daddyseer has to make a choice. He must choose to save Lady Boring, or the rest of the vault, which is like five people. He chooses her, of course. Joker Raider responds to this by letting the rest of the people go because....I guess choices do not matter after all or something. Instead she laughs manically in front of random explosions before kidnapping Daddyseer so the rest of the plot can happen. The rest of the vault is left alone by the raiders and everything basically goes back to normal.

We switch to the B plot, in which soldier boy is established as a soldier. Thanks to the obvious need to spend half of this time watching power armor shots in slow motion, and the rest of the time observing latrine duty, very little progress is made here. He is still a soldier.

In the C plot, cool guy is established as having been a nice, kind hearted guy who cares about others, and also as a person who kills for the fun of it, and who'll cheerfully murder people who helped him basically for the lulz. Still probably the most interesting character to watch.

Basically all of the charming goofiness of vault-tec instructional videos or salespeople is not to be found. This is sort of disappointing. Fallout is a retro futuristic pulpy story, not a sad period piece.

Like I said, it wouldn’t get “Dr Strangelove meets A Boy And His Dog” dark humor (maybe Helldiver juxtaposition) right.
I mean entire Fallout intro begins with soldiers shooting a prisoner and waving to audience on TV after “Our boys keeping peace” as an example of its tone.


Good visuals, crappy writing... Who could've foreseen this???

Everyone. That's who.
Well, this reminded me of Bethesda games in general. I mean at least after Morrowind.

[Rynjin]

First episode was pretty good. Maximus is laughably (intentionally?) dull to the point that he comes across as borderline disabled, but I enjoyed all the Vault stuff and the little bit we got of "The Ghoul" whose identity they are trying to keep a mystery for some reason even though it's pretty clear he's the guy from the start which...the guy who did Westworld season 1 did this, right? I thought it was kinda dumb when that show did the EXACT SAME THING too.

But overall a solid setup. We'll see how the payoff goes in later episodes.

Edit: Speaking of Maximus, I did think it was pretty funny that the one black guy* in the Brotherhood is introduced by being beaten, punished for no discernible reason, singled out for punishment again, caned, dragged off with a black hood over his face, then sold/gifted to somebody else and actually ****ing BRANDED, and his only contribution to that sequence is...being grateful for being given a home.

Like that was unlikely to be intentional but holy **** did NOBODY look at that sequence of events and have a big think about it?


*With lines.

[Errorname]

The way this series handles the NCR reminds me a lot of how the Sequel Trilogy handled the New Republic, casually annihilating it in order to reset back to the starting point, and it just sucks. It makes me question why they couldn't just start a fresh telling of the story and why they feel the need to make their story a follow up to a story that they do not actually want to follow up on.

It's a real shame because I think if this show had just taken place in a completely fresh part of the setting I'd be able to pretty unreservedly enjoy it, but they've boxed themselves into being a sequel to my favourite game of all time and clearly have very different narrative and thematic goals to what made that game special.

[t209]

Part of me now wonder how much they got the script from Van Buren and old scrapped Fallout movie.

Like Shady Sands’ fall being based on NCR-BoS war where a group of Brotherhood commandos used stealth boys destroyed their gold reserves (hence why NCR reverted back to cash that is so inflated that caps have to be reissued) along with towns to disrupt supply lines. Maybe not enough to destroy NCR but get the capital moved and survivors to seek somewhere.
And
Vault Tec (and by extension Enclave) kick starting nuclear war.

[Pax1138]

The way this series handles the NCR reminds me a lot of how the Sequel Trilogy handled the New Republic, casually annihilating it in order to reset back to the starting point, and it just sucks. It makes me question why they couldn't just start a fresh telling of the story and why they feel the need to make their story a follow up to a story that they do not actually want to follow up on.

It's a real shame because I think if this show had just taken place in a completely fresh part of the setting I'd be able to pretty unreservedly enjoy it, but they've boxed themselves into being a sequel to my favourite game of all time and clearly have very different narrative and thematic goals to what made that game special.

You and me? We agree on more than just avatars.

Combine that with the 1-2 punch of Vault-tec seemingly being the bomb dropper, the stupidest idea from the old Fallout movie script, and this whole thing has got me real down. Unless they go on to clarify that this is part of the larger Enclave attempt to subborn the business elites and then have House bow out later, and then have China suprise them all by dropping the bombs ahead of schedule anyway, I can see it being the biggest, dumbed addition to Fallout in years. Making Vault-tec the bomb dropper makes no sense, and missed just about the entire point of Fallout in my opinion, all for confirming the most obvious, thoughtless twist that people have been speculating for decades anyway. Sorry, can you see it really, really bothers me?

I hate that I'm already seeing this Lucy=Mary Sue BS that dogs just about every female character in modern media. The word you're looking for is PROTAGONIST. She's not even that good at everything! She spends most of the show getting her ass beat and thrown from one terrible situation to another. If this was my player character in a Fallout game, trust me, she'd be a lot more bad-ass. As it is, she's about the only character in the show I don't want to eat a bullet. Even so-called fellow protagonists Max and Coop have pretty much passed the moral event horiizon a couple of times in my opinion, so the best they can hope for is to die doing something worthwhile.

[Tyndmyr]

First episode was pretty good. Maximus is laughably (intentionally?) dull to the point that he comes across as borderline disabled, but I enjoyed all the Vault stuff and the little bit we got of "The Ghoul" whose identity they are trying to keep a mystery for some reason even though it's pretty clear he's the guy from the start which...the guy who did Westworld season 1 did this, right? I thought it was kinda dumb when that show did the EXACT SAME THING too.

Ah, Westworld. It started out so very interesting, and then....

Kind of a shame. The early setup, the music, the world, all pretty fascinating, just the plot got increasingly derailed as it went on. But yes, I agree, the mystery here is so very obvious as to make the whole exercise pointless.



Edit: Speaking of Maximus, I did think it was pretty funny that the one black guy* in the Brotherhood is introduced by being beaten, punished for no discernible reason, singled out for punishment again, caned, dragged off with a black hood over his face, then sold/gifted to somebody else and actually ****ing BRANDED, and his only contribution to that sequence is...being grateful for being given a home.

Like that was unlikely to be intentional but holy **** did NOBODY look at that sequence of events and have a big think about it?


*With lines.

Yeah. Yeah, one does wonder how literally nobody involved with the show looked at this and had a problem with it. Like, sure, I get that you want representation, but who is looking at that depiction and saying "yeah, that represents who I am?" Somebody had to have noticed.




I hate that I'm already seeing this Lucy=Mary Sue BS that dogs just about every female character in modern media. The word you're looking for is PROTAGONIST. She's not even that good at everything! She spends most of the show getting her ass beat and thrown from one terrible situation to another. If this was my player character in a Fallout game, trust me, she'd be a lot more bad-ass. As it is, she's about the only character in the show I don't want to eat a bullet. Even so-called fellow protagonists Max and Coop have pretty much passed the moral event horiizon a couple of times in my opinion, so the best they can hope for is to die doing something worthwhile.


It doesn't. Movies like Atomic Blonde or the last Mad Max film come out and are generally well liked.

This character? She's boring. Lacks much in the way of defining traits, mostly doesn't have much in the way of real motivations, which makes her...not really a protagonist. A protagonist makes the plot happen. She's mostly reactive....to a world that focuses on her for no real reason. Her character would be exactly as bad if she was male, gender really isn't the cause of it.

[Pax1138]

It doesn't. Movies like Atomic Blonde or the last Mad Max film come out and are generally well liked.

This character? She's boring. Lacks much in the way of defining traits, mostly doesn't have much in the way of real motivations, which makes her...not really a protagonist. A protagonist makes the plot happen. She's mostly reactive....to a world that focuses on her for no real reason. Her character would be exactly as bad if she was male, gender really isn't the cause of it.

But... not really? She's optimistic and wants everyone to get along, a trait that gets her in trouble multiple times, but also has that spark to do the thing that needs to be done. Her motivation is to find her Dad, (Standard Bethesda plot #2 (#1 is "You're a prisoner")), which then becomes to take the doctor/his head to Moldaver so she can find her Dad once she finds out there's a link between them. They get involved with Vault 4 because she insists on trying to find some medical supplies for Max, and they get kicked out because she's trying to figure out what's going on in the Vault. They can even find the head again after that because she had the foresight to plant a tracker on it beforehand.

[Tyndmyr]

Video games ain't movies or tv shows. You can't generally get away with doing the same things for one as for the other. Blank slate protagonists are really, really common in video games specifically so that the player determines motivations, actions, and becomes the protagonist. That works fine. In a TV show, there is no player to supply that, so the scriptwriter must do it.

The other way, of imposing tv show/movie standards on games, basically takes the form of lots of mandatory story via quicktime events, and is similarly terrible.

If the plot involves fifty hours of random side quests before returning to the urgent main plot, as is also typical for Bethesda video games, it would also be terrible in a TV show.

[Darth Credence]

The show is great - my favorite video game to screen adaptation ever. Lucy is fun and funny, Walter Goggins as Coop is as outstanding as he always is, Maximus and the rest of the Brotherhood are bad people but that is who they are supposed to be, the action scenes are everything I hoped for.

The people I work with who are currently talking about it and love it consist of a half dozen people who have played the games and love the show, five people who haven't played the games but like sci-fi/fantasy type stuff and love the show, two people who have only liked Game of Thrones in terms of sci-fi/fantasy and love the show (we had to convince them to give it a shot), and one person who can't watch because of the gore, but enjoyed the stuff they saw before too much gore put them off.

My wife has never played the games before, although she knows about them because of me. After asking which one I would recommend, she started playing Fallout 4 last night (I went with that for the more modern playability, since I can't mod the others for her as she is only comfortable on console). She and her friend, who never played before, are both talking about it and discussing how to play and what to do. Neither would have without the show.

[oudeis]

Tim Cain gives it the Pip-Boy thumbs up:


https://youtu.be/5D_C0gNjaiw?si=Ow7p5bSiLEUFb3RA

[Mx.Silver]

It doesn't. Movies like Atomic Blonde or the last Mad Max film come out and are generally well liked.


No, Fury Road absolutely had people doing this about Furiosa (and how her portrayal was coming at Max's 'expense') — there's still a few of the dead-enders who'll go-off about that now — they were just mostly a minority of the really die-hard 'culture warriors' and were largely ignored after a couple of weeks.

There were also some similar grumblings about Atomic Blonde when that was announced, although I don't think that lasted after the actual release. Not that much discussion about Atomic Blonde in general lasted for very long either, obviously.

[Lemmy]

As someone who watched MMFR 4 times in theaters...

Yes. There were half a dozen nobodies complaining about Fury Road... And no one took them seriously. They were a tiny tiny minority who still keep being used as an example as if they represented a significant part of anything...

That doesn't change the fact that Lucy is a pretty boring character and would still be just as boring if she were Luke instead. One can claim it's "the BS that dogs female protagonists"... But to me, that sounds like once again blaming viewers for not liking a poorly written character, and using said character's gender as an excuse to do it.

Lucy is dull. So dull that i only remember her name because I saw it here... And so are the other characters, TBH... Though not quite as much as her.

[Rodin]

Watched the first couple episodes, and as one of the pre-release naysayers I'm compelled to admit I was wrong (so far at least). It's not perfect, but they managed to get a very good Fallout vibe on this thing and I was thoroughly entertained by these opening episodes. It can get a bit whacky in places (some of the Wastelanders felt too dumb/crazy to live) but this is Fallout we're talking about here. The action and comedy are both the right kind of over-the-top.

I only have three complaints with what I've seen so far, two of which are pretty minor and the third will depend on how the story plays out (so you if you've seen further please keep in mind my lack of knowledge if you respond).

The first is that the references are a bit in your face. I really felt like the show was dancing up and down and pointing at some of the references going "See! It's the thing! Remember the thing? Isn't it cool we have the thing?" It's not enough to ruin the experience, but it did jar me out of my watching a couple times.

The second is that some of the CGI/special effects are pretty dodgy. The power armor in particular has issues in episode 2, where a couple of the action shots look like an amateur could have done them better. Again, not the worst thing in the world, but if I'm noticing CGI problems somebody goofed somewhere.

The third is a plot point from episode 1:

How did the sister vault get overrun with raiders with nobody noticing? It's implied that the crops failed and then either the people inside died on their own or were killed a long time ago (long enough for the bodies to rot down into cadavers), and then the raiders took over the vault and used documentation they found to spoof their way into the attack. Which seems like an awful long-laid plan given that the inciting incident comes from inside Lucy's vault - specifically, she initiates her own arranged marriage. So the Raiders took over the other vault, didn't clear away the bodies, and then just...sat there and waited? Wasn't the other vault in contact with Lucy's vault regularly through telegram? Why wouldn't they have been in constant communication with their sister vault letting them know of problems like the crops dying?

Based on the information we're given in episode 1, it doesn't make any sense. I hope we get more information later that explains this in a satisfying way.

I also have...not a complaint, but a disagreement with the characters.

When Lucy asks to go look for her father, she is voted down immediately. Not just by the council, but by everybody. Her little group say that this is because the council wants to hang on to power now that the Overseer is gone, and that they're acting selfishly.

NO THEY FREAKING AREN'T!

The Vault was just devastated by an attack. Given the carnage we see they've probably lost half their population, if not more. The place has been badly damaged, and most of the survivors are wounded. Opening the Vault doors at this time is the height of stupidity, and sending a couple of your remaining people out into the irradiated wasteland is a fool's mission. You have no idea where the Raiders went, what other dangers are out there, and if you do manage to track down the Raiders...what are you going to DO about it? These guys were hardened warriors that just kicked your ass. How are you going to get him back even if you find him?

Someone going out to rescue him only makes sense in action movies and videogames. The series is basically both so I don't have a problem with Lucy deciding to go, but the idea that the council is somehow wrong is just...No.

Again, this isn't really a complaint, because realism takes a back seat to swashbuckling action adventure. But I needed to rant about that. :smalltongue:

[ArmyOfOptimists]

Haven't finished yet, but without spoiling anything specific, both of your points are addressed later on, Rodin. Vault 33 actually becomes its own viewpoint alongside the other three "main" characters, which was something I didn't expect.

Overall, 4 episodes in, I'm really enjoying it. I has a good mix of old Fallout and Bethesda Fallout. I think the writing is solid, hitting just enough camp and zaniness without going overboard and smothering the intrigue, and the acting is superb. I'm pleasantly surprised that it hasn't made the mistake of the Bethesda Fallouts and gone full 50s with everything. It seems to carry on the spirit of the original games where the post-war world was its own thing and the 50s retrofuture optimism was deliberately juxtaposed against what the future actually became, instead of Bethesda's Fallout world which was trying to ape the 50s as much as possible.

I did notice that the initial appearance of the power armor was some terrible CGI, but it seems to blend in better later on. I don't know if they just didn't have the budget to go back and clean up some scenes or if there's some practical effects worked in, but I haven't been distracted since then. The rad-creatures look pretty good, too.

[Maelstrom]

Fantastic adaptation, exceeded my expectation, which, frankly, were not that high, but having said that, I guess they knocked it out of the ballpark. Nailed the humor, ambience and feel of the fallout universe (color palettes, the VATS system, crits, etc). Yeah, many corny things, but hello...they are definitely in the games and felt familiar. Acting was top notch, writing was mostly very well done. I do look forward to a second season and heck, I might even blow the dust off of the fallout diskettes (well, maybe not, those will stay in my collection, but I'll spin up my Steam copy)

Now to ...


Edit: Speaking of Maximus, I did think it was pretty funny that the one black guy* in the Brotherhood is introduced by being beaten, punished for no discernible reason, singled out for punishment again, caned, dragged off with a black hood over his face, then sold/gifted to somebody else and actually ****ing BRANDED, and his only contribution to that sequence is...being grateful for being given a home.

Like that was unlikely to be intentional but holy **** did NOBODY look at that sequence of events and have a big think about it?


*With lines.

If you're going to go looking for such things, you'll find it wherever you look, no matter what it is. This 21st century of the Rorschach test is just done. Let it be.

[Darth Credence]

I did notice that the initial appearance of the power armor was some terrible CGI, but it seems to blend in better later on. I don't know if they just didn't have the budget to go back and clean up some scenes or if there's some practical effects worked in, but I haven't been distracted since then. The rad-creatures look pretty good, too.

The power armor, when it's Titus and Maximus, is a practical suit with a stuntman in it. The actor who plays Lucy was on the Tonight Show and they showed a clip of the stuntman flossing in the suit.

[Rodin]

The power armor, when it's Titus and Maximus, is a practical suit with a stuntman in it. The actor who plays Lucy was on the Tonight Show and they showed a clip of the stuntman flossing in the suit.

The actual suit looks great, it had a good feel of weight to it when they were stomping around in it. It's also instantly recognizable as the T-60 power armor, which should be a given but sadly isn't when it comes to adaptations (looking at you, Wheel of Time). The problem came when they needed to do CGI stuff with it during the action sequences. When the suit was flying through the air in episode 2 it looked like someone had superimposed Clipart over the screen, which is something I expect out of a Youtube content creator. There's other bits during the same sequence where the physics don't feel right.

It's not a major thing, hence why I'm calling the CG "a bit dodgy". There's some sequences where it feels unfinished and could have done with another pass.

Planning on resuming my watch either tomorrow or Monday. I do wish that they had released one or two episodes a week instead of dropping the whole thing. There's a lot of pressure to binge the whole thing when it all shows up at once, because it's impossible to have water-cooler conversations about each episode.

[t209]

I am wondering but was Fallout 3 really solidify 1950’s aesthetics?
Like franchise as a whole took inspiration from it BUT 1 and 2 seems to play more loosely like P90, Desert Eagle, and 10mm Submachine Gun having 90’s vibe.
Gonna miss the FN Fal assault rifle though (or maybe go with Combat Shogun look).

[ecarden]

Generally quite enjoyed it. I didn't particularly like the two big larger canon choices:

As I think the destruction of the NCR is just boring and frankly repetitive storytelling. You've already got the Ghoul and a bunch of other characters, both in and outside this series who are survivors of the fall of civilization, you don't have to do the same thing again to get some more.

Additionally, I think having a more definitive Big Bad for the entire franchise, which is what Vault-Tec is now, is just a bad idea. Fallout works a lot better as a Warhammeresque setting than as a Star Warsesque story, in my opinion.

If this had been set in a different location, or I had been less familiar with the larger canon, I think I would have really loved it. There's a lot of really good stuff in there, but...bit hard to figure out how to phrase this. A really good plot twist recontextualizes everything to make more (or at least, the same amount just in a different way) sense than it did before you knew the plot twist. Like, the twist at the end of Scream, that there are two killers, explains a lot of stuff that didn't make sense otherwise, but got a pass as typical slasher jump scare stuff. Here, once we know the twist, the plot makes less sense? Like

Okay, So Moldaver is, somehow, from the pre-apocalypse age and is desperate to regain her stolen cold fusion technology so she can bring it to the world and restart civilization. Vault-tec stole it, but she's going to get it back from an Enclave scientist and needs a code from a Vault-tec lackey to unlock it once she gets it. She knows that there's at least one Vault-tec lacker in Vault 32, the overseer, Hank. She's allied herself with the remnants of the NCR for support and has fairly significant military force, as well as an impressive reputation in the area.

She also has a bunch of pipboys from Vault 32 and managed to get into Vault 32 at some point, presumably revealing the secret of what Vault-Tec was up to, which resulted in the civil war there? Maybe? It's not entirely clear if she was involved in that, though she had Rose and presumably Rose's Pipboy, so I don't know who else it could have been? Anyway, she's able to get into Vault 32, she arranges this deal with Vault 33 to get access, presumably because she can't break in there like she could in 32, even though no one knows that she (or someone) broke into 32...but even though she knows the protocol and knows that Hank is going to be the one answering the door (or if not him, than whoever the overseer is will be a Vault-tec stooge) she goes through this elaborate infiltration with a bunch of crazed raiders, all to kidnap Hank, who is the guy who answered the door for her. Like, two NCR guys with rifles and she could have grabbed him right there and not set up her friend's daughter to be raped and murdered.

But okay, she goes for this whole infiltration, sets up a choice (which isn't a choice, because everyone survives, without anyone doing anything clever, they just run away from the bomb and are fine) and leaves Lucy behind, even though she needs to be able to force Hank's compliance and Lucy is right there. Take them both, then when you get the device, tell Hank, put in the code, or I cut Lucy's throat. Also, if she hates Vault-Tec so much, it's really weird to just leave Vault 31 alone?

So, the reveal that she's hooked in with the NCR remnants and her actual motives are basically good doesn't explain her earlier actions, it just confuses the heck out of them? Especially given that she has to at least seen what happened in Vault 32, where once people knew what was going on, they turned on the Vault 31ers in a bloodbath...speaking of which, who the hell cleaned up Vault 32? I was assuming there was a large staff in Vault 31, but then it's just a brain and a bunch of frozen executives...

[Errorname]

As I think the destruction of the NCR is just boring and frankly repetitive storytelling. You've already got the Ghoul and a bunch of other characters, both in and outside this series who are survivors of the fall of civilization, you don't have to do the same thing again to get some more.

I also found the idea that the NCR represented a threat to the grand conspiracy and thus had to be destroyed is a less interesting way to push it than the sort of fracturing under the weight of it's own expansionism that New Vegas was setting up. I thought it was frustrating when Bethesda kept saying "well, someone was rebuilding into a functioning state but the big bad [institute/scorchbeasts] destroyed them so it's still just wasteland" about factions I hadn't met yet, pulling that stunt on a faction with three games of build-up feels so much worse.


Additionally, I think having a more definitive Big Bad for the entire franchise, which is what Vault-Tec is now, is just a bad idea. Fallout works a lot better as a Warhammeresque setting than as a Star Warsesque story, in my opinion.

It's also kind of repetitive, the Enclave already were the brains behind Vault-Tec that survived into the Wasteland era and tried to kill everyone.

This show is not convincing me that it should have been a sequel rather than retelling the story of the first game forward in a new medium.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

Okay, So Moldaver is, somehow, from the pre-apocalypse age and is desperate to regain her stolen cold fusion technology so she can bring it to the world and restart civilization. Vault-tec stole it, but she's going to get it back from an Enclave scientist and needs a code from a Vault-tec lackey to unlock it once she gets it. She knows that there's at least one Vault-tec lacker in Vault 32, the overseer, Hank. She's allied herself with the remnants of the NCR for support and has fairly significant military force, as well as an impressive reputation in the area.

She also has a bunch of pipboys from Vault 32 and managed to get into Vault 32 at some point, presumably revealing the secret of what Vault-Tec was up to, which resulted in the civil war there? Maybe? It's not entirely clear if she was involved in that, though she had Rose and presumably Rose's Pipboy, so I don't know who else it could have been? Anyway, she's able to get into Vault 32, she arranges this deal with Vault 33 to get access, presumably because she can't break in there like she could in 32, even though no one knows that she (or someone) broke into 32...but even though she knows the protocol and knows that Hank is going to be the one answering the door (or if not him, than whoever the overseer is will be a Vault-tec stooge) she goes through this elaborate infiltration with a bunch of crazed raiders, all to kidnap Hank, who is the guy who answered the door for her. Like, two NCR guys with rifles and she could have grabbed him right there and not set up her friend's daughter to be raped and murdered.

But okay, she goes for this whole infiltration, sets up a choice (which isn't a choice, because everyone survives, without anyone doing anything clever, they just run away from the bomb and are fine) and leaves Lucy behind, even though she needs to be able to force Hank's compliance and Lucy is right there. Take them both, then when you get the device, tell Hank, put in the code, or I cut Lucy's throat. Also, if she hates Vault-Tec so much, it's really weird to just leave Vault 31 alone?

So, the reveal that she's hooked in with the NCR remnants and her actual motives are basically good doesn't explain her earlier actions, it just confuses the heck out of them? Especially given that she has to at least seen what happened in Vault 32, where once people knew what was going on, they turned on the Vault 31ers in a bloodbath...speaking of which, who the hell cleaned up Vault 32? I was assuming there was a large staff in Vault 31, but then it's just a brain and a bunch of frozen executives...

I think they still have a lot to explain about Moldaver and I wouldn't be surprised if she came back in Season 2. She obviously had some way to survive for 200+ years. The fact that everyone knows her and she hasn't seemed to age at all suggests it wasn't just cryonics. If she was frozen all this time, she wouldn't have a cult, and if she'd been thawed earlier, she'd have aged more. Maybe she has some mutation or science quackery keeping her going. I think her quote in the flashback about hypocrisy being necessary to avoid defeat explains a lot about her character.
She's not above being exactly as horrible as Vault-Tec because she thinks she has a better goal.

I think the attack on Vault 33 was just her getting revenge. It's pretty clear she hates Vault-Tec enough that she'd consider everyone in there acceptable collateral. Maybe she just spared Lucy and the gang at the end because she remembered her mother? Vault 32 was cleaned up by the 31ers. It's implied that there are more of them, since both Betty and Steph are from there and are in on it.

Moldaver's definitely the most confusing and weakest character in the show, though. I also found it funny that Hank even gave her the code at the end. Like, why? All he had to do was say nothing and she loses. He didn't have anything to gain by telling her and she had no leverage against him.
If she'd threatened Lucy, it'd make more sense.

All said and done, it's not like the Fallout games are at all renowned for their amazing plots. The show largely rehashes Fallout 3 with the vault dweller leaving in search of their father with a mysterious past and, in doing so, commits almost all of the same plot fumbles. It was still an enjoyable show and one of the better video game adaptations I've seen.

[ecarden]

I think they still have a lot to explain about Moldaver and I wouldn't be surprised if she came back in Season 2. She obviously had some way to survive for 200+ years. The fact that everyone knows her and she hasn't seemed to age at all suggests it wasn't just cryonics. If she was frozen all this time, she wouldn't have a cult, and if she'd been thawed earlier, she'd have aged more. Maybe she has some mutation or science quackery keeping her going. I think her quote in the flashback about hypocrisy being necessary to avoid defeat explains a lot about her character.
She's not above being exactly as horrible as Vault-Tec because she thinks she has a better goal.

I think the attack on Vault 33 was just her getting revenge. It's pretty clear she hates Vault-Tec enough that she'd consider everyone in there acceptable collateral. Maybe she just spared Lucy and the gang at the end because she remembered her mother? Vault 32 was cleaned up by the 31ers. It's implied that there are more of them, since both Betty and Steph are from there and are in on it.

Moldaver's definitely the most confusing and weakest character in the show, though. I also found it funny that Hank even gave her the code at the end. Like, why? All he had to do was say nothing and she loses. He didn't have anything to gain by telling her and she had no leverage against him.
If she'd threatened Lucy, it'd make more sense.

So, I don't think that works:

I agree that I doubt we're done with her, though I expect she only shows up in flashbacks going forward as she ends the series (unless I'm confused) dead at the feet of the Brotherhood invaders, who aren't likely to just leave her to resurrect, or whatever. Now, I agree that there's likely to be some additional backstory, amongst other things, the Ghoul comments on her not looking like he remembered, or something to that effect and there's presumably a reason despite them working together (presumably) in the past, they aren't buddies now. When you add in the hypocrisy statement, I wouldn't be shocked if she'd made herself into an AI in a vault somewhere, or something, but we'll see. Assuming it gets a second season, which I do hope for.

So, I've heard the notion that she was planning to do worse, then was reminded of Rose by seeing Lucy (though she also sees her at the start, and throughout, but you can handwave that as its seeing Lucy fight back, not be a perfect Vault Dweller that triggers the memory/mercy) but at that point she's already on her way out. She very transparently is not finishing the job, but is rather abandoning the fight (and 16 of her raiders--who apparently aren't NCR? Why is she using raiders for this? If it's supposed to be deniability she needs to be a lot more secret, after all 'everyone knows who she is, right?').

Like, if this was actually about her hatred of Vault-Tec, then Vault 33 ought to have ended up just like Vault 32. I'd have also expected some attempt at getting into Vault 31, given how easy it appears to be. If her goal was to snatch Hank, there's a lot better ways to do that with the resources she has. If her goal is to wipe out the Vault and she just fails due to sheer numbers, or the handful of folks who fight back effectively, or whatever, that really doesn't seem to be conveyed, at least to me? Now, scale is always a problem with these sorts of productions, because people and costumes are expensive, especially if they have to be visibly fighting. And the usual shorthand used for this just doesn't work for raiders, who simply aren't' going to start yelling out status reports and that their perimeters are being overrun and all the usual signallers. But in the end, it feels to me like the attempted misdirect to set up the twist of Moldaver's actual goals/resources simply confuses the issue. I mean, even something little like pulling the trigger at the actual wedding, so you aren't getting your dear friend's stolen daughter married off to a psychopathic raider, might be nice?

I really don't think it can be the Vault 31 folks. If they're popping in and out of cryo like that, then the overseer would have woke some of them up to help him deal with Norman. Also, they're a bunch of middle managers and executives, I don't exactly picture them scrubbing up brains...

So, Vault 32 has been dead for, as I understand it, approximately 2 years. Rose's Pipboy was used to access it at some point (I don't think we got a date, just that it was the last one to do so?). Rose (and presumably her Pipboy) are in Moldaver's hands. Rose has been dead/feral since Shady Sands, which was ~20 years ago. Vault 32 was not stormed, but rather fell to civil war/suicide, presumably because they learned the truth about what Vault-Tec had done and was doing, based on what we see.

No one in Vault 31 or 33 knows about this, so presumably either they don't communicate much, even to their boss, who is a brain in a jaw with basically nothing to do but communicate, or Moldaver/one of her people was lying to them. This might explain the 'famine' if they understood Vault 31's tactics, you could do a whole thing about 'previous overseer died, instigating famine to ensure I'm elected' but then...what? If she was able to get into Vault 32 and do as she pleased, why does she need this trade to do in Vault 33? Does anyone have a clear timeline here for what happened?

I do hope it gets a second season and think it's extremely fun tonally, extremely impressive visually and I'm actually quite impressed by the characters and the willingness for the characters to be *******s/messed up and the moment-to-moment writing is fine-to-good, with moments that are either great, or made great by the actors (the whole selling her to be dissected section is excellent and I really enjoyed the wasteland golden rule) but the actual plotting is, in my view, quite weak for an eight episode miniseries, which is basically what this is.

I agree that the writing on a lot of fallout games isn't the tightest and it suffers from classical open-world syndrome of either repeating information ad-nauseum, or assuming you know/did something you didn't, or vice versa and even when it does work, the plotting tends to be fairly simple as it needs to account for a lot of variables and allow the player to self-insert, but this is an eight episode miniseries--tight plotting ought to be quite straightforward! They don't have to account for 'what do we do if Maximus actually does give that **** the stimpack he wants?'

[Talakeal]

I binged it in a single sitting yesterday.

Way exceeded expectations. It is obvious they spent a lot of money on this and were very careful to not contradict the game's lore.

At times it is a bit too goofy or too dark for my taste, but I guess that is Fallout.

Lot's of cool Easter egg references to the games, both in universe and out.

The power armor was awesomely done, they really sold how impressive it was (until about the last five minutes).

Yes, I also felt myself making a lot of comparisons to The Force Awakens.

Sad we didn't see any super mutants, death claws, or rad scorpions. At least, not living ones.

The ending left so much up in the air, I am really looking forward to season two. But at the same time, I am really dreading them messing up New Vegas, or having a canon ending / identity for the courier.


My nitpicks:

Why could they not license Viva Las Vegas for the end credits? Netflix was able to do it for the opening of Army of the Dead!

The soldiers of the brotherhood are PALADINS. The Knights are the guys who build and maintain the equipment. (I think Fallout 4 gets this wrong as well).

They are sealed in a vault for over 200 years. They are worried about inbreeding and everyone is kissing cousins. So why are there still distinct ethnic minorities in the vault? Is it really that hard to find biracial actors?

Odd that Lucy keeps her dress on during her wedding night, but then everyone in Vault 4 strips naked for no reason later on.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I'd venture the assumption that Lucy doesn't get naked on her wedding night or anywhere else in the show because Ella Purnell didn't agree to do nude scenes. It's kinda funny given how extremely sex-positive her character is, but I don't begrudge an actress for not wanting to put herself on display.

[JadedDM]

I have a theory on the Moldaver plotholes. It's mostly head-cannon, but I think it fits. But I haven't put too much thought into it, so feel free to tear it to shreds if you can find some inconsistencies.

I think Moldaver worked for Vault-Tec. It was never specifically stated, as far as I remember, but she seemed to have intimate knowledge of what was going on there in the past (claiming to personally know Cooper's wife and having seen a side of her that he was not aware of). I'm not sure if she infiltrated them with intent or if she was an earnest employee who learned the truth about how horrible they were and decided to betray them. Either way, she was working against them from the inside.

So I suspect she actually was frozen with the rest of them in Vault 31. At some point she was thawed and put into Vault 32. I suspect she fled the vault and integrated into the NCR, climbing the ranks there. Maybe with the intent of using them against Vault-Tec some day, or maybe she was just trying to start a new life. That's when she met Rose. After Hank retrieved his kids and nuked Shady Sands, she put together a band of raiders, used Rose's Pipboy to access Vault 32, and revealed to them the Truth (tm). Which caused mass panic and hysteria and they all killed each other and themselves (not sure if that had been her intent or not, but it happened regardless).

In any case, she took over the now empty Vault 32, sending telegrams to the other two vaults that she had been elected leader after the previous one tragically died. This explains why Hank didn't freak out when he saw her. It's possible he had no idea she had ever left Vault 32 in the first place, since it was made clear the three vaults don't communicate all that much directly. As far as he knew, she remained in 32 and was eventually elected leader since, 'when things look glum, vote 31.'

Admittedly there are still some minor holes here, like why did Moldaver infiltrate 32 instead of going straight for 33? (Maybe she had originally intended to use the 32 Overseer for her plan, but when he was killed, she made a new plan to get into 33? But considering Hank was Overseer of 33 and she had a personal grudge against him for nuking Shady Sands...I'm not sure why she would not have wanted to use him in the first place.)

But this theory does at least fill a few of the holes.

[ecarden]

I have a theory on the Moldaver plotholes. It's mostly head-cannon, but I think it fits. But I haven't put too much thought into it, so feel free to tear it to shreds if you can find some inconsistencies.

I think Moldaver worked for Vault-Tec. It was never specifically stated, as far as I remember, but she seemed to have intimate knowledge of what was going on there in the past (claiming to personally know Cooper's wife and having seen a side of her that he was not aware of). I'm not sure if she infiltrated them with intent or if she was an earnest employee who learned the truth about how horrible they were and decided to betray them. Either way, she was working against them from the inside.

So I suspect she actually was frozen with the rest of them in Vault 31. At some point she was thawed and put into Vault 32. I suspect she fled the vault and integrated into the NCR, climbing the ranks there. Maybe with the intent of using them against Vault-Tec some day, or maybe she was just trying to start a new life. That's when she met Rose. After Hank retrieved his kids and nuked Shady Sands, she put together a band of raiders, used Rose's Pipboy to access Vault 32, and revealed to them the Truth (tm). Which caused mass panic and hysteria and they all killed each other and themselves (not sure if that had been her intent or not, but it happened regardless).

In any case, she took over the now empty Vault 32, sending telegrams to the other two vaults that she had been elected leader after the previous one tragically died. This explains why Hank didn't freak out when he saw her. It's possible he had no idea she had ever left Vault 32 in the first place, since it was made clear the three vaults don't communicate all that much directly. As far as he knew, she remained in 32 and was eventually elected leader since, 'when things look glum, vote 31.'

Admittedly there are still some minor holes here, like why did Moldaver infiltrate 32 instead of going straight for 33? (Maybe she had originally intended to use the 32 Overseer for her plan, but when he was killed, she made a new plan to get into 33? But considering Hank was Overseer of 33 and she had a personal grudge against him for nuking Shady Sands...I'm not sure why she would not have wanted to use him in the first place.)

But this theory does at least fill a few of the holes.

So, I think some of this is fairly likely, but there's still a lot of issues.

Given her statements about hypocrisy and reappearance (especially lack of aging over ~20 years on camera), it seems likely she was either pursuing her own route to survival, or did more than just take a buyout from all those companies which Vault-Tec took over. I really doubt she was in 31, though, as that seems to just be Bud's Buds, not the real Vault-Tec elite, as seen by the plan to follow Hank to the actual leadership, which clearly isn't in 31.

I don't think 32 works as immediate vengeance for the nuking, as there appears to be a 15-20 year gap. If raiders had been all she could pull together in the immediate aftermath, that would make a lot of sense, but by this point in the timeline, she's working with the NCR remnants and has her own base of operations/reputation.

Given the Raiders statement to Norm, I don't think they were involved in what happened in 32, he could be lying, but his line about not knowing what was going on in there, but the people weren't innocent, doesn't gibe with someone who actually does know what happened and saw Vault 32 erupt into civil war and mass suicide. But the other problem is the two-year delay between the fall of 32 and the trade with 33. Given that they deliberately give a time frame for it, I hope there's going to be some sort of explanation of this in season 2 (assuming it happens) as we've still got Norm and other characters back in those vaults.

[t209]

The soldiers of the brotherhood are PALADINS. The Knights are the guys who build and maintain the equipment. (I think Fallout 4 gets this wrong as well).
I think it was Fallout 3 that started mixing up knights with Paladins.
Or ignoring the context (3’s brotherhood being breakaway and had to arm Knights due to manpower shortage).

[Errorname]

I think it was Fallout 3 that started mixing up knights with Paladins.
Or ignoring the context (3’s brotherhood being breakaway and had to arm Knights due to manpower shortage).

My understanding has always been that while Paladins were the elites, the Knights are also expected to be soldiers. More of a support role but still frontliners.

[t209]

My understanding has always been that while Paladins were the elites, the Knights are also expected to be soldiers. More of a support role but still frontliners.
Yeah, they do.
But FO3 had them in power armor as well.
https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Knight_(Fallout_3)

[Pax1138]

In the original games, the Paladins had the power armor, and were the elite soldiers/officers. Knights were like enlisted grunts and non-comms who got to do all the grunt work and work in the "motorpool", and if they went soldiering, it was in standard combat armor.

Since the Bethesda games, that's been changing, until Fallout 4's rendition, where Scribes now handle all of the tech work, Knights are soldiers, some with combat armor and some with power armor, and Paladins seemingly are even more elite and rare.

We can probably blame this one the newer Brotherhood's seemingly larger supplies of T-60 power armor (however it is they got them), and losing a lot of the more experienced soldiers during campaigns against the super mutants and Enclave. So now that power armor is more plentiful, and veterans more rare, the bar for who gets it is lowered, which also makes their general forces a lot more dangerous, and with more of the Knights in a field role, Scribes have had to take up the tech slack.

[Tyndmyr]

The actual suit looks great, it had a good feel of weight to it when they were stomping around in it. It's also instantly recognizable as the T-60 power armor, which should be a given but sadly isn't when it comes to adaptations (looking at you, Wheel of Time). The problem came when they needed to do CGI stuff with it during the action sequences. When the suit was flying through the air in episode 2 it looked like someone had superimposed Clipart over the screen, which is something I expect out of a Youtube content creator. There's other bits during the same sequence where the physics don't feel right.

It's not a major thing, hence why I'm calling the CG "a bit dodgy". There's some sequences where it feels unfinished and could have done with another pass.

Yeah, I made it halfway through episode 2, and have the same grumble. Like, look at when he punches the (person he is fighting to avoid spoilers). The physics are insane. You can basically see the rope pulling the latter slowly away. It doesn't feel at all like the power that was attempted to be conveyed earlier.

Perhaps I shall see if I can get further later.

[Talakeal]

Yeah, I made it halfway through episode 2, and have the same grumble. Like, look at when he punches the (person he is fighting to avoid spoilers). The physics are insane. You can basically see the rope pulling the latter slowly away. It doesn't feel at all like the power that was attempted to be conveyed earlier.

Perhaps I shall see if I can get further later.

Yeah, the wire-work is pretty bad.

I really like the shows depiction of power armor overall, it is one of the few pieces of media that really shows the weight and mass and force behind it, but it does not look right when people are getting tossed around.

[Rodin]

For what it's worth, I thought the effects in episode 3 were a significant step up. It had some really good creature effects. It's pretty much just the power armor, and as noted earlier the power armor looks great whenever its the practical suit.

[Rynjin]

All right, finished my fairly leisurely stroll through the series. Overarching rating of the series is that it's a 7/10 overall; I had it at about an 8.5 before the final episode.

Detailed thoughts on various subjects:


Sadly as good of an actor as Walton Goggins is..."The Ghoul"/Post-war Coop is easily the weakest link of the series. Basically nothing he does make sense. I simply do not buy him as a survivor and world-renowned badass. It seems like the only reason he's lived as long as he has is that while he is incredibly, unbelievably stupid everyone else around him is somehow dumber. Like the "President" cutting him loose...not disarming him...then having his own guard DISARMED, and then, only then telling them to kill him. Or the Brotherhood guys sitting there and listening to him monologue while he explains a heretofore unknown fatal flaw with the T-60 that lets somebody with a shotgun kill any Power Armor wearer instantly. The plot armor is strong with this one, ugh.

The motivations of most of these characters make zero sense. This in itself is kinda fine for most of the series but it really rears its head when Moldaver explains her motivations and yet it explains absolutely NOTHING. How does she know this stuff? And more importantly, what was her ****ing endgame with this cold fusion reactor?

I don't mind TOO much that Shady Sands was destroyed, though it being nuked makes little sense. Would have made more sense if it was sacked or something. I mind IMMENSELY that it seems like New Vegas has fallen in the last 15 years, and I don't see a way they can write their way around how spiteful and nonsensical that seems. Especially after featuring Mr. House in the flashback.

But the main thing is that the three main characters have...[precisely zero reason to be at odds, and yet they are because the plot demands they be. I genuinely have no clue why Maximus and Lucy split up at the end, or why Lucy thinks she has any leverage at the end. Or why Hank gives Moldaver the code.

Basically, the core issue with the plot is that everyone is ****ing stupid.

[Maelstrom]

All right, finished my fairly leisurely stroll through the series. Overarching rating of the series is that it's a 7/10 overall; I had it at about an 8.5 before the final episode.

Detailed thoughts on various subjects:


Sadly as good of an actor as Walton Goggins is..."The Ghoul"/Post-war Coop is easily the weakest link of the series. Basically nothing he does make sense. I simply do not buy him as a survivor and world-renowned badass. It seems like the only reason he's lived as long as he has is that while he is incredibly, unbelievably stupid everyone else around him is somehow dumber. Like the "President" cutting him loose...not disarming him...then having his own guard DISARMED, and then, only then telling them to kill him. Or the Brotherhood guys sitting there and listening to him monologue while he explains a heretofore unknown fatal flaw with the T-60 that lets somebody with a shotgun kill any Power Armor wearer instantly. The plot armor is strong with this one, ugh.

The motivations of most of these characters make zero sense. This in itself is kinda fine for most of the series but it really rears its head when Moldaver explains her motivations and yet it explains absolutely NOTHING. How does she know this stuff? And more importantly, what was her ****ing endgame with this cold fusion reactor?

I don't mind TOO much that Shady Sands was destroyed, though it being nuked makes little sense. Would have made more sense if it was sacked or something. I mind IMMENSELY that it seems like New Vegas has fallen in the last 15 years, and I don't see a way they can write their way around how spiteful and nonsensical that seems. Especially after featuring Mr. House in the flashback.

But the main thing is that the three main characters have...[precisely zero reason to be at odds, and yet they are because the plot demands they be. I genuinely have no clue why Maximus and Lucy split up at the end, or why Lucy thinks she has any leverage at the end. Or why Hank gives Moldaver the code.

Basically, the core issue with the plot is that everyone is ****ing stupid.

My thoughts on those plot holes/scenes is that, like in the first episode in that big shootout, there were references/tie-ins on how VATS might look in the "real world". We all know how the real world works, and it's not like that, but to get a sense of how the game world is, it was directed as such. The scene where Coop is soliloquizing about this and that..yeah, makes no sense in our world, but in the video game world of Fallout, when actions are paused during dialog...it fits. For me, it brought the game to life in a film format (for better or worse, depending on what one likes, of course)

[Rynjin]

My thoughts on those plot holes/scenes is that, like in the first episode in that big shootout, there were references/tie-ins on how VATS might look in the "real world". We all know how the real world works, and it's not like that, but to get a sense of how the game world is, it was directed as such. The scene where Coop is soliloquizing about this and that..yeah, makes no sense in our world, but in the video game world of Fallout, when actions are paused during dialog...it fits. For me, it brought the game to life in a film format (for better or worse, depending on what one likes, of course)

VATS works off a Pip-Boy. The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. Coop doesn't have one.

But even if he did, it's still...frustrating to watch.

[Spore]

I'd venture the assumption that Lucy doesn't get naked on her wedding night or anywhere else in the show because Ella Purnell didn't agree to do nude scenes. It's kinda funny given how extremely sex-positive her character is, but I don't begrudge an actress for not wanting to put herself on display.

Sex positive does not mean nudist necessarily. Plus, you really dont want a bunch of hyper nerds on reddit to get footage of your nude body if you value your sanity, honestly.

On a larger note, I think you can only have fun with this series if you can silence your brain and make it go on "video game logic". With shotguns piercing power armor, stims mending life threatening injuries, Vault dwellers overlooking gigantic logic holes in both their own vault and with behavior of other people. Yes, vaulties are naive, but they are not stupid. If you say hobble secretively away from the overseer's computer, they are gonna know you did something. Yes, they are no secret service to bind you to a chair and torture the info out of you, but you WILL be interrogated.

And my only big complaint: HOW ON EARTH DOES NO ONE IN FALLOUT KNOW WHAT A ****ING DOOR IS?! HOW DOES NO ONE CHECK WHO IS BEHIND THE DOOR BEFORE OPENING?! HOW ARE PEOPLE SWAYED AFTER FOUR LINES?


The Vault 33 overseer's bureau is not locked.
Vault 31 letting Norm who claims to be Betty, but doing a DNA scan a minute later.
The Brotherhood questioning Maximus after Titus' death, with like three lines fully convincing the Elder to let him off the hook.
The Enclave going into full lockdown after an alarm blaring, and a high ranking scientist hurriedly leaving with his favorite (?) dog
No one noticing Maximus' BoS knight/squire gear. Geez, in any decent post apo scenario you would be the first one to be pick pocketed and/or shot. Get a ****ing duster to cover up, mate.

People generally get into and out of situations way too easily here. And its not difficult. Have Norm hack the overseer's bureau door. Have Maximus shoot a few locks. Have Lucy Goosey talk her way into some situations. Have the doctor just egghead their way through discussions. but hey, I am maybe expecting too much from a video game adaption.

I take immense amusement in how awkward Chet is in fighting situations and with the whole birth/labor thing. He is a big muscular blond white male, and many must have seen him as "THE" protagonist, and then they decided on his cousin, lol. I wonder if this is a middle finger towards conservatives.

[Tyndmyr]

I would like to submit for the list of grievances the fact that the way to overcome a blazing autoturrent is to just slowly hobble as it shoots at you, wholly comfortable in the idea that machine gun fire cannot possibly hit you over an extended period at very close range.

I get that a lot of action movies and shows have had something of a plot armor, but leaning on it that hard is painful.

[Murk]

I saw this, I liked it!
I am strengthened in my belief that most adaptations are better if you're unfamiliar with the source material. I didn't know anything about Fallout beyond Thumbs-Up Vault Dude, Nuka Cola and Dogmeat, and I think the show was improved by my ignorance.

I do agree the answers and twists we get in the last episode are largely unsatisfying, and the setting seemed unrealistically simplistic.
But the show treats death and horror as something to chuckle at, so that matches well with a simplistic setting and plot. Just chuckle at it and move on.

And I liked Lucy! Contrary to some of what I read here, I felt of all the characters she had the most depth and complexity. She definitely isn't a Mary Sue, because she consistently suffers because of her own flaws.

I think the show was a good closing act for my Prime subscription, because they doubled the price and I'm not sticking around for that.

[Mastikator]

Besides "OYG what an amazing show" there's one bit of speculation I have.


Ok so in the final episode we learn THE TRUTH, that vault tech means to drop the bombs. And Barb Howard wants to do it for the safety of her child.

In the first episode we see Cooper and his and her child watch as the nukes drop.

Why, oh why, weren't they in the vault when this happened?

A thing to remember. That their plan to "eliminate all competition" was the very same plan that the Enclave had in Fallout 2.

We also learned in Fallout 2 that the experiments in the vaults was to learn about long term confinement for the enclave's generational ship to another planet.

So here's what I'm wondering. Did Vault Tech actually drop the bombs? Because it seems to me that they collaborated with the US federal government (aka The Enclave as per Fallout 2, 3), and the Enclave got wind of this plan and accelerated it even further. The Enclave caught Vault Tech off-guard by my estimations

[Pax1138]

Besides "OYG what an amazing show" there's one bit of speculation I have.


Ok so in the final episode we learn THE TRUTH, that vault tech means to drop the bombs. And Barb Howard wants to do it for the safety of her child.

In the first episode we see Cooper and his and her child watch as the nukes drop.

Why, oh why, weren't they in the vault when this happened?

A thing to remember. That their plan to "eliminate all competition" was the very same plan that the Enclave had in Fallout 2.

We also learned in Fallout 2 that the experiments in the vaults was to learn about long term confinement for the enclave's generational ship to another planet.

So here's what I'm wondering. Did Vault Tech actually drop the bombs? Because it seems to me that they collaborated with the US federal government (aka The Enclave as per Fallout 2, 3), and the Enclave got wind of this plan and accelerated it even further. The Enclave caught Vault Tech off-guard by my estimations


I would say it goes even deeper. Vault-tec's plan to drop the bombs first *is* the Enclave's plan to drop the plan first, because in a perfect world, there is no distinction between them (at least from the shadow government/Enclave's point of view - individual ambitious folk like Bud in Vault-tec might have a different view). The best case scenario from here, to me, is that both were caught off guard by China launching first. That fits with why the daughter was at the party and half the Vaults we see in the games aren't ready yet. It's also possible that the Enclave knew that China launching early was a possibility (the President was already on the oil rig days early, after all, but they might not have shared that wisdom with Vault-tec's management.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

Sex positive does not mean nudist necessarily. Plus, you really dont want a bunch of hyper nerds on reddit to get footage of your nude body if you value your sanity, honestly.

Like I said, I definitely do not begrudge her wanting to keep clothed. She's done a nude scene in the past, but I feel most actresses are pressured into that earlier and start to opt out when they have the clout to do so (see also: Emilia Clarke). It's a bit of a grungy mark on the film industry, to be honest.

[Rynjin]

I saw this, I liked it!
I am strengthened in my belief that most adaptations are better if you're unfamiliar with the source material. I didn't know anything about Fallout beyond Thumbs-Up Vault Dude, Nuka Cola and Dogmeat, and I think the show was improved by my ignorance.

Generally I agree, since most adaptations kinda suck. But the Fallout show is an interesting example since as a big fan of Fallout most of my major gripes are with the plot and general writing, not the adaptational elements. It's a pretty faithful adaptation of the tone and thematic elements of Fallout (which is the big thing that matters) and has a lot of tasteful fanservice thrown in (like the music) which keeps it feeling like it's supposed to.

The only "adaptation changes" that bother me are really plot points I have issues with other than the "they changed it =(" element.


Namely the nuking of Shady Sands, and teased destruction of New Vegas in the post-credits of the last episode.

So, first the "they changed it" perspective:

The nuking of Shady Sands makes little sense for multiple reasons, the two big ones being "how" and "when". Nukes are kinda hard to come by post-war and most importantly: the Fallout universe has no internet or long-range computer connections. Nukes are traditionally shown as needing to be fired from the actual silo, so how did Hank manage to get his hands on any in the California area, which should be well picked clean?

But that's less important than the "when". Shady Sands being nuked in 2277 makes zero sense with the existence of New Vegas, which takes place in 2281 and has the NCR still ticking.

Now for the more important narrative issues:

Giving Hank, who has been trapped in a Vault most of his life, the power to just casually launch nukes because he's jealous of his wife is frankly kinda dumb. Even from an out-of-lore perspective this **** just doesn't line up. Right up until the timeline reveal I actually thought Shady Sands had been destroyed because they were canonizing the "Nuke the NCR" choice from New Vegas's Lonesome Road DLC. This would have made more sense as the kind of random tragedy that happens in the Wasteland.

But more importantly than that, losing the NCR and especially Shady Sands as a whole is a pretty huge blow to storytelling potential. Combined with New Vegas also being gone, that implies there are now...no major settlements or cities on the entire West Coast. And no major factions, either. The NCR was one of the big ones, and with New Vegas gone that means the Khans, House (and all the casino gangs), and Caesar's Legion are likely all gone as well.

Not having any major factions or groups to interact with is gonna kinda suck in future seasons. And TBH I think having Lucy have the chance to interact with a bustling city would have been a greater impact than just being informed it's just gone now. Setting up a conflict of the NCR vs the Enclave for realsies would have IMO been a much more interesting plot than some random Vault-Tec middle managers being able to go completely rogue and do **** like that with impunity.

It's also, frankly, gonna be pretty said in the games going forward, as it basically canonizes that everything you fought for in Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas was...pointless. Your choices did not matter, some random Vault-Tec goon was more important than you, the player.

Oh and also nothing about Moldaver makes sense, period. That was the other big one. How she's alive, what her actual plan was (if she had one), etc. all seems like it was left on the cutting room floor for some reason.

[Rodin]

Just finished watching, and my thoughts are pretty much the same as everyone else here. Great scene-setting, great general vibe, great moment-to-moment storytelling...but when you finish the fridge logic sets in hard. And there's also a lot of goofy stuff (like the absence of locked doors or guards on secure areas) that a more serious show wouldn't get away with at all.

The thing about Shady Sands that really gets me is the all-but-stated total destruction of the NCR from having their capitol nuked. That shouldn't be the case. The NCR is having trouble in New Vegas because they have expanded all the way across California to Nevada. The NCR might have broken up into smaller factions, maybe even fallen into city-states. But it wouldn't just be GONE.
Towns like Filly would have fallen under NCR rule, and that rulership would still exist by the time the show takes place. If it didn't, it would be because whoever the local NCR governor was split off and built his own kingdom. Instead it seems to be the sort of random settlement you see in Fallout 3 and 4, like Megaton.

Shady Sands getting nuked doesn't bother me that much. The NCR ceasing to exist does.

Overall review is about an 8 out 10. Turn the brain off and enjoy.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I echo a lot of your complaints Ryn, but I also feel like that's been Bethesda's fault since Fallout 3. They don't really "get" Fallout, especially the post-post-apocalyptic parts in FO1 and 2 (even BoS) that showed humanity successfully rebuilding. Their writers seem dead set on the world being stuck in a nuclear dump. No big cities, no sanity, no stability. Just a bunch of lunatics, cannibals, and weirdos living in the burning garbage heap of post-war America.

Like, it's been over two hundred years since the nukes fell. In modern comparisons, it's been only 80 years or so since Hiroshima and Nagasaki; both nuked cities that have been rebuilt into thriving metropolises. 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster, the area is recovering and is a now green nature preserve and home to abundant wildlife. Obviously the Fallout world got hit much harder than that, but after two centuries we should at least have organized, quasi-feudal societies and power structures with their own network of cities and villages. New Vegas is the closest we've seen to that, and that wasn't written by Bethesda. Every time Bethesda writes the series, they pull back to ground zero (and send someone out to find a family member).

I reiterate that I liked the series, but I also treated it more as if it was set in 2196 instead of 2296.

Given that the flashbacks straight up said that Vault-Tec was prepared to drop nukes themselves and planned for their own people to take over the apocalypse, I wouldn't be surprised if season 2 reveals that Vault-Tec had nukes stashed away and they figure into his goals going forward. He didn't really nuke Shady Sands because of his wife. He nuked them because Vault-Tec's plan assumed nobody would survive on the surface. Shady Sands and the NCR was a huge obstacle to their endgame of having a subservient group of Vault-Tec raised vault dwellers rebuild things. It's possible we'll actually get a real city in Season 2 and the conflict will be stopping Hank from nuking it again.

[BananaPhone]

I binged this last night and on the whole, I was pleasantly surprised. Overall I'd give the series a solid 8/10. They handled it way better than I initially dreaded. The main character, Lucy, is one of my favourite main protagonists in a long time. She's plucky, warm and a likeable person, she takes hard knocks and learns from them and grows. The Ghoul is a garbage person, though he's an excellent character, while Maximus...I dunno. In terms of character, he's very flawed, he has these moments of relatable likeability then ridiculous stupidity.

I do understand hard-core Fallout fan's dislike of the changing of the lore. I sympathise greatly with that (particularly these days). But I'll say that it's fine imaging the TV series and the game series being two different entities, because they have to be.

Some things that didn't make sense (Spoiler alert):


1) Um, what, Lucy's dad has access to nukes? How? From where? His wife and kid go to Shady Sands and so he nukes it?! Wth? This ridiculous 'get rid of the competition' thing that'll come up at a later point.

2) That commie woman, the leader of the NRC remnant, what a psycho. She wanted to kidnap Lucy's dad. Because she was the leader of Shady Sands, he nukes Shady Sands, so she wants to capture him for trial/revenge, okay, but then she infiltrates the vault with raiders who proceed to massacre innocent people, as well as putting Lucy in direct risk (remember the flashback scenes of this woman smiling and picking up little kid Lucy? Fast forward 20 years and now she's fine having her killed/SA'ed by her raider boy goon). Wth, this made no sense. She could have infiltrated with her NCR troopers in disguise, pull out guns, capture Lucy's Dad and leave with him. Instead they go through that whole charade...I dunno, I don't understand that.

3) Why didn't Lucy's dad recognize this woman the moment she stepped out of the shadows in Episode 1? Why? He knew who she was, they had history together, but he just acts like it's all good in the hood and it's nothing to worry about and goes through with the wedding anyway knowing that no one can be coming from Vault 32 because they're all dead.

4) Um, since when did Ghouls become invincible? Maybe they're just putting in an easter-egg like "health bar" where we see the Ghoul get shot multiple times to no effect...yet later he uses a knife to cut pieces off another ghoul and the flesh seems just as vulnerable there, so why does him getting shot multiple times not effect him? We see just 1 bullet kill living people, so it's not like everyone has 'health bars' or something.

5) I'm no Brotherhood of Steel fan, but they really did the BoS dirty in the last action sequence. The lone ghoul against 4 power-armored units + squires with guns an the ghoul kills them all?! Without a scratch? One bullet kills a guy in power armor cos he "knows where to shoot" - well why didn't he do that earlier in Filly when fighting Maximus in the power suit? The BoS looks like they lost 9 knights in power armor to a couple dozen NCR troopers with machine guns. If powered armor is that useless then why invest all the resources to maintain it in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Lore-wise the Power Armor was supposed to be a war-changer, and their deployment to Alaska won them the campaign, and they were being used to drive deep into China. But here they go from bullet-proof to ridiculously vulnerable as the writers need, there's no consistency.

6) Maximus and Thaddius.
Dude, wth?

When questioned by Thaddeus about what happened to Titus, Maximus should have said something like "Knight Titus died fighting a mutated bear, can you see the scratches on the suit? *Gesture to scratches* I buried him, put the armor on and now I'm finishing the mission we started."

That's not what he says. Instead he's like "He died..." then looks super suspicious and instead of allaying Thaddeus' fears, he straight up tries killing him.

7) Ummmm, why did everyone in Vault 32 go crazy and kill themselves?

Why?

Because they found out that Vault 31 were the cryogenically frozen managers from Vault-tec pre-war so the natural reaction is to murder and hang themselves?

See when they first showed that Vault 32 was like this, I thought the show makers were bringing in the Vault Experiments. Vault 33 was a control group that got to live nice lives, while Vault 32 had some flaw, and the two vaults were being overseen by a 'master' Vault 31 that was using the data to make their lives better.

Instead we get a mystery around Vault 32 with no answer. And who cleaned up all the corpses and made the place nice and livable again? In ONE night? I was convinced Vault 31 was bigger and had more people in it, but it's just a little brain-bot roomba. You're telling me that thing that was stuck for years, cleaned up Vault 32?

Did the new overseer send people to clean it up? We saw no hint that she did. So what gives, how'd it happen?

8) Speaking of which, what was that coup talk in the vaults?
When Vault 33 is having their little meeting to decide what to do with the raiders and the residence/council are showing unbelievable naivity (which is in character), Norm is like nah waste them all they're irredeemable psychopaths, which is true, we get this moment afterwards of the blonde, pregnant girl secretly approach him and say she agrees with him, and that she hopes when the time comes he'll do the right thing. Cue sinister music.

Later, when Norm is on prisoner lunch duty, he talks to the black girl behind the computer, and she echoes similar concerns.

I thought they were slowly building almost a coup-like situation in the vaults, with the naive vault dwellers vs the the vaulties that are like nah waste the raiders, look what they did to us.

But it...kinda fizzled out, and went nowhere. I mean, it's clear someone poisoned all the raiders and the black girl gets blamed for it (she claims innocence), but if so, what's with the almost conspiratorial vibes to the whole thing?

Speaking of which...

9) That blonde pregnant woman.

This character. I dunno.

She starts off as a good character. She's the archetype vault dweller. She's young, pretty, she's pregnant (as girls that age would be in that situation) she seems like a genuine friend of Lucy's. She seems to playfully put her hubby down, but it didn't seem serious (maybe I'm just reading it wrong). During the raider attack she's seen mourning her husbands death, genuinely in tears over it - she might have made fun of him, but she seemed to genuinely love him, or at least his company. She then goes nuts, takes a fork to the eye, but still keeps fighting and machineguns some raiders down, while pregnant.

Good stuff so far.

Then she secretly approaches Norm (as I mentioned above), and the sinister music plays while she's telling him that the raiders murdered her husband and she'll have his back if he's going to 'do the right thing'. This is good, this shows she's grown: she seems to genuinely mourn for her dead husband, realising what she lost in him and wanting those who took him from her, took her childs father, to get what's coming to them. She's no longer the naive, bubbly blonde we saw in the opening, she's more cynical and hardened now.

Then she turns into an almost caricature of a manipulative housewife. She goes from mourning her husband to now just crapping over his memory again, making fun of him again and shacking up with the gatekeeper. The latter I can understand, she wants to move on, so she secures a tall, good looking husband for herself. But then she becomes this manipulative, bossy nag out of nowhere. Then we're told she's from Vault 31, and it seems as if the show is making her out to be in on the big secret, especially as she gets appointed Overseer of recolonised Vault 32, and she seems to embrace it - and that just opens up a whole 'nother line of questioning. Does she know what happened there? She's from Vault 31, right? She looked like she was low-key telling Norm she'd back him if he chose to murder the raiders sneakily or almost coup the place.

Is she a pre-war Vaultec exec? Maybe the early 20s daughter of an executive? Her character seems inconsistent and...I dunno. It's another point of confusion that I'm not sure what they're going for here.

10) The Vault Experiments.
They HINT at this during the final scenes of the last episode, that the new investors will get clusters of vaults whose conditions they can change to measure what they want. But instead of being a part of the 'vault experiments', which were actually testing people under different circumstances so Vaultec could use that to escape the planet safely and recolonize somewhere else, it's instead this attack on the management class or something?

11) The Management Class and Capitalism.

As a bit of a free market lover it annoys me to no end when people confuse capitalism with corporatism. What the Fallout world has pre-war, is Corporatism. That's where big companies use their influence in the government to pass laws favourable to themselves while hindering their typically smaller competition, and overtime they entrench these further and further, thus helping them secure either monopolies or huge, cartel-like cooperatives over important segments of the economy. This is not a free market where someone with an idea, know-how etc can start a small business and either grow it via good/wise decisions or get it to a stage they're happy at while employing others. This is crony capitalism, and I hate it as much as the next person.

So use that.

The pre-war Fallout US government is broke, and in exchange for contracts and $$ and support from these huge companies, the government is passing more and more regulations and laws that are favourable to them, entrenching their power over every day citizens lives. The actor, Cooper, as someone deep in advertising, can see this and it's disgusts him because the country is losing its way and becoming as authoritarian and controlled by a pyramid-tip at the top, much the way the communist reds are, thus making him open to going along and listening to a group who want to bring that system down - surprise, they're actually communists, and even though he hates them and tries to back out it's too late he's been associated with them and his career is wrecked.

See, that's how easy it is.

Instead we get this...weird, "Time is the biggest weapon", and "Our management will outlast the others", and "Let's start the war ourselves". Now that last part is a theory from the games, as no one knows who shot the bombs first, it could have been Vaultec...but the show is saying that peace threatens Vaultec's bottom line, which is true, but nuclear annihilation also threatens Vaultec's bottom line. Their most profitable course of action is to keep the fear of nuclear war high, so they can sell more vaults while enjoying their parties and the world infrastructure. It doesn't make any sense for Vaultec to want to end the world.

However.

We do see some mysterious, shadowy figure in some elevated, hidden viewing room looking down at the Vaultec secret meeting, the one Cooper's wife is at, and she looks up at this mysterious figure as if receiving some body language go ahead from him. So I think what is going to be revealed is that she's actually a member of the Enclave.

As far as I can tell, we haven't learned how they broke up or what happened with Coopers family.

My guess, is that his wife is actually a member of the Enclave, and she's putting that "We can drop the nukes first" idea out there. She doesn't actually care about Vaultec, she's a member of the Enclave who welcome nuclear Armageddon because it'll finally rid the world of communism for good. They helped create the vaults to create the vault experiments, the data they gather from which was going to be used to help them leave for space and colonize another planet. However, that didn't happen and I'm rambling on fallout lore here, but you get the idea.

But yeah, TL:DR this angle made no sense to me and it was just confusing and convoluted. Vaultec are an evil company, but it would've been so much easier to show them entrenching themselves with the government via Corporatism, and not wanting the war to end because it'll impact their bottom line. However, Coopers wife (Barb I think her name is) is a secret member of the Enclave and pushes the idea of dropping the bombs first. That would make more sense to me.

Honorable Mention: "Would you like to have sex?"

The Vaults are supposed to be microcosms of 1950s Americana. Some things can get changed around for the circumstances, but under none of those circumstances do I envision a young woman from that culture willy-nilly offering sex to someone she's only known for a couple of days. Especially not one the show has been portraying as rather principled and suffering for those principles but mostly sticking by them. Her jumping the raider as soon as she's married makes sense and is fine. But this is some alien-pretending-to-be-a-human level of out of character, to me at least.

They kinda hint at this in the opening scenes where she's telling the committee that her "reproductive organs are in working order" or something cringe, but even that felt out of place.

It felt even weirder hearing Maximus not know what sex was, referring to erections as pimples or something outlandish. You're telling me all those young people training to be soldiers, in the barracks together, all those hormones and testosterone raging and no one knows what sex is? Gtfo here, for real, no, don't buy it.




I could go on, but I think that's enough.

Overall, like I said, 8/10. I was pleasantly surprised, and I hope Season 2 is even better.

[Rynjin]

Spoilered responses to two of your things:



4 and 5.) Ghouls are actually in-lore pretty damn tough to kill, it's just poorly represented in the games. Though that doesn't excuse the sheer incompetence displayed by everybody Coop fights or how nerfed Power Armor is.

10.) Yes, she's from Vault 31, as confirmed in her convo with Norm. Everyone from Vault 31 is a Vault-Tec executive.

[BananaPhone]

Spoilered thoughts:

I dunno, that tough? We see feral ghouls go down to one or two shots.

Could be. Could be the daughter of one, as she looks on the young side. But still, I thought her minor character arc was a good one until it took a 180 and she became like a caricature. I hope they develop/explain it better in Season 2.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

Spoilered thoughts:

I dunno, that tough? We see feral ghouls go down to one or two shots.

Could be. Could be the daughter of one, as she looks on the young side. But still, I thought her minor character arc was a good one until it took a 180 and she became like a caricature. I hope they develop/explain it better in Season 2.

Her name is on the list of unfrozen execs in the Vault 31 terminal. She's the same as Hank and Betty. A cryo-frozen pre-war VaultTec exec.

Also, re: Maximus lying. Dude's experiencing the first taste of freedom he's had in a long time and the opportunity to be a knight like he always wanted. If he radios back to the Brotherhood and tells them what happened to Titus, they show up, repossess the armor, and he's back to shoveling latrines and getting beaten. Having his knight die on his first outing means he's most likely never getting squired ever again, too, if not outright executed since he has two suspicious incidents linked to him now. Max is dumb, but his actions make sense viewed through the lens of his experiences. He tells Thaddeus believing they'd bonded enough to trust him, but then immediately regrets it because Thaddeus indicates he's going to do exactly what the rest of the Brotherhood would do.

About Hank, he didn't nuke Shady Sands just because of his wife. He nuked it because there weren't supposed to be any thriving settlements on the surface to oppose Vault-Tec's society. His wife running there just exposed it to him. As for where he got nukes, Vault-Tec is implied to have enough to cause the war in the first place, so not out of the question that they'd have some stashed after the end.

[BananaPhone]

Her name is on the list of unfrozen execs in the Vault 31 terminal. She's the same as Hank and Betty. A cryo-frozen pre-war VaultTec exec.

Also, re: Maximus lying. Dude's experiencing the first taste of freedom he's had in a long time and the opportunity to be a knight like he always wanted. If he radios back to the Brotherhood and tells them what happened to Titus, they show up, repossess the armor, and he's back to shoveling latrines and getting beaten. Having his knight die on his first outing means he's most likely never getting squired ever again, too, if not outright executed since he has two suspicious incidents linked to him now. Max is dumb, but his actions make sense viewed through the lens of his experiences. He tells Thaddeus believing they'd bonded enough to trust him, but then immediately regrets it because Thaddeus indicates he's going to do exactly what the rest of the Brotherhood would do.

About Hank, he didn't nuke Shady Sands just because of his wife. He nuked it because there weren't supposed to be any thriving settlements on the surface to oppose Vault-Tec's society. His wife running there just exposed it to him. As for where he got nukes, Vault-Tec is implied to have enough to cause the war in the first place, so not out of the question that they'd have some stashed after the end.


Ah, I must have missed the passing detail of her name in the records (though I'd figured they'd be there cos she came from there). Still she seems pretty young for an exec. Ah well, maybe. Still, I'll stick with what I said that she had an interesting character arc that did a sudden 180 that I thought kinda ruined it.

I don't agree about that. It's clear Thaddeus is worried about the consequences, and all Max had to do to allay his fears was assure him they'll be fine if they get the mission done and bring the head back (which is pretty much true). Instead his first port of call is looking super shady and murder, especially after they'd just been bonding so much. Seems kinda out there if ya ask me.

That's a pretty weak reasoning though, to me. Hank is supposed to be a smart guy (he apparently knows about New Vegas, as he flees there at the end of the eighth episode - so why not nuke there too?), he must surely be able to deduce there's going to be more settlements other than Shady Sands. To me this removal of the New California Republic and reducing them to just a weird little cult in a vault was one of the least pay-off divergence from the source material, and on weak grounds, in my opinion.

Though where is it implied that Vaul-tec has nukes? As I mentioned before, I think their reasons for starting the nuclear exchange are really convoluted and self-defeating, at least as it is presented in the show.

[Maelstrom]

A response to


...questions...



2) That commie woman, the leader of the NRC remnant, what a psycho. She wanted to kidnap Lucy's dad. Because she was the leader of Shady Sands, he nukes Shady Sands, so she wants to capture him for trial/revenge, okay, but then she infiltrates the vault with raiders who proceed to massacre innocent people, as well as putting Lucy in direct risk (remember the flashback scenes of this woman smiling and picking up little kid Lucy? Fast forward 20 years and now she's fine having her killed/SA'ed by her raider boy goon). Wth, this made no sense. She could have infiltrated with her NCR troopers in disguise, pull out guns, capture Lucy's Dad and leave with him. Instead they go through that whole charade...I dunno, I don't understand that.
Yeah, she's a bit of a psycho (hopefully we'll get more exposition in season 2 as to why) but she kidnapped Hank for the code to open the encryption for her cold fusion research, plain and simple.


3) Why didn't Lucy's dad recognize this woman the moment she stepped out of the shadows in Episode 1? Why? He knew who she was, they had history together, but he just acts like it's all good in the hood and it's nothing to worry about and goes through with the wedding anyway knowing that no one can be coming from Vault 32 because they're all dead.
Well, to be fair, she's aged quite a bit, and given the background we've seen, we do not see much interaction between Hank and her...but fair enough.



6) Maximus and Thaddius.
Dude, wth?

When questioned by Thaddeus about what happened to Titus, Maximus should have said something like "Knight Titus died fighting a mutated bear, can you see the scratches on the suit? *Gesture to scratches* I buried him, put the armor on and now I'm finishing the mission we started."

That's not what he says. Instead he's like "He died..." then looks super suspicious and instead of allaying Thaddeus' fears, he straight up tries killing him.
Yeah, Maximus is definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed...


7) Ummmm, why did everyone in Vault 32 go crazy and kill themselves?

Why?

Because they found out that Vault 31 were the cryogenically frozen managers from Vault-tec pre-war so the natural reaction is to murder and hang themselves?

See when they first showed that Vault 32 was like this, I thought the show makers were bringing in the Vault Experiments. Vault 33 was a control group that got to live nice lives, while Vault 32 had some flaw, and the two vaults were being overseen by a 'master' Vault 31 that was using the data to make their lives better.

Instead we get a mystery around Vault 32 with no answer. And who cleaned up all the corpses and made the place nice and livable again? In ONE night? I was convinced Vault 31 was bigger and had more people in it, but it's just a little brain-bot roomba. You're telling me that thing that was stuck for years, cleaned up Vault 32?

Did the new overseer send people to clean it up? We saw no hint that she did. So what gives, how'd it happen?

I'm gonna just chalk this up to limits on what they could include in this season. Were there any hints dropped, beside the "everyone went mad"? Not that I caught, but would have been nice to have one or two in there to let the audience know that this is an unclosed thread and to be answered in the future (which, I'm sure, still will be)

[Rodin]

Spoilered thoughts:

I dunno, that tough? We see feral ghouls go down to one or two shots.

Could be. Could be the daughter of one, as she looks on the young side. But still, I thought her minor character arc was a good one until it took a 180 and she became like a caricature. I hope they develop/explain it better in Season 2.

I'm pretty sure the feral ghouls we see go down are shot in the head. So the show is treating them like zombies, which works for me. They're not human, they ignore pain, but if you take a limb off they're seriously inconvenienced and if you destroy the brain its game over.

[ecarden]

Responses in the original quote


Some things that didn't make sense (Spoiler alert):

1) Um, what, Lucy's dad has access to nukes? How? From where? His wife and kid go to Shady Sands and so he nukes it?! Wth? This ridiculous 'get rid of the competition' thing that'll come up at a later point.

So, as noted, the theory here is that no non-Vault-Tec controlled civilization is allowed to form on the surface. Now, whether the NCR would have risen the level of 'nuke it' or they'd have just ignored it until it came knocking is unclear, but at the point when Hank found out about it, he arranged to have it nuked. The implication is, he did that as revenge, after retrieving his kids, while Vault-Tec did it because they're *****.

2) That commie woman, the leader of the NRC remnant, what a psycho. She wanted to kidnap Lucy's dad. Because she was the leader of Shady Sands, he nukes Shady Sands, so she wants to capture him for trial/revenge, okay, but then she infiltrates the vault with raiders who proceed to massacre innocent people, as well as putting Lucy in direct risk (remember the flashback scenes of this woman smiling and picking up little kid Lucy? Fast forward 20 years and now she's fine having her killed/SA'ed by her raider boy goon). Wth, this made no sense. She could have infiltrated with her NCR troopers in disguise, pull out guns, capture Lucy's Dad and leave with him. Instead they go through that whole charade...I dunno, I don't understand that.

Tend to agree, this is my objection too.

3) Why didn't Lucy's dad recognize this woman the moment she stepped out of the shadows in Episode 1? Why? He knew who she was, they had history together, but he just acts like it's all good in the hood and it's nothing to worry about and goes through with the wedding anyway knowing that no one can be coming from Vault 32 because they're all dead.

It's not at all clear they did, actually. Moldaver was a figure in Shady Sands and knew Lucy's mother, but there's no indication Hank and her actually met (that I'm remembering). She knows who he is from his wife, but vice-versa doesn't seem to be true. He recognizes her eventually, but that could be from a 20 year old campaign poster, for all we know.

4) Um, since when did Ghouls become invincible? Maybe they're just putting in an easter-egg like "health bar" where we see the Ghoul get shot multiple times to no effect...yet later he uses a knife to cut pieces off another ghoul and the flesh seems just as vulnerable there, so why does him getting shot multiple times not effect him? We see just 1 bullet kill living people, so it's not like everyone has 'health bars' or something.

Ghouls here seem to be operating on Zombie rules. A shot to the head seems to kill them, a shot to the body does diddly squat. I think? I'd need to rewatch the feral ghoul scene to confirm. You could justify this in universe based on different radiation levels in different areas, as I believe ghouls are healed by radiation?

5) I'm no Brotherhood of Steel fan, but they really did the BoS dirty in the last action sequence. The lone ghoul against 4 power-armored units + squires with guns an the ghoul kills them all?! Without a scratch? One bullet kills a guy in power armor cos he "knows where to shoot" - well why didn't he do that earlier in Filly when fighting Maximus in the power suit? The BoS looks like they lost 9 knights in power armor to a couple dozen NCR troopers with machine guns. If powered armor is that useless then why invest all the resources to maintain it in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Lore-wise the Power Armor was supposed to be a war-changer, and their deployment to Alaska won them the campaign, and they were being used to drive deep into China. But here they go from bullet-proof to ridiculously vulnerable as the writers need, there's no consistency.

I tend to agree. The final episode was fine as a stand-alone, but makes a mess of the overall plot.

6) Maximus and Thaddius.
Dude, wth?

When questioned by Thaddeus about what happened to Titus, Maximus should have said something like "Knight Titus died fighting a mutated bear, can you see the scratches on the suit? *Gesture to scratches* I buried him, put the armor on and now I'm finishing the mission we started."

That's not what he says. Instead he's like "He died..." then looks super suspicious and instead of allaying Thaddeus' fears, he straight up tries killing him.

I believe they're drunk and as a result, there's a miscommunication which results in violence. Maximus is trying to avoid admitting he let Titus die, which leads Thaddeus to believe Maximus killed him. Thaddeus is warning that the story Maximus is giving won't pass muster with the BOS, which it won't, which Maximus interprets as a threat to out him and reacts as you might expect to a threat to have him killed.

7) Ummmm, why did everyone in Vault 32 go crazy and kill themselves?

Why?

Because they found out that Vault 31 were the cryogenically frozen managers from Vault-tec pre-war so the natural reaction is to murder and hang themselves?

See when they first showed that Vault 32 was like this, I thought the show makers were bringing in the Vault Experiments. Vault 33 was a control group that got to live nice lives, while Vault 32 had some flaw, and the two vaults were being overseen by a 'master' Vault 31 that was using the data to make their lives better.

Instead we get a mystery around Vault 32 with no answer. And who cleaned up all the corpses and made the place nice and livable again? In ONE night? I was convinced Vault 31 was bigger and had more people in it, but it's just a little brain-bot roomba. You're telling me that thing that was stuck for years, cleaned up Vault 32?

Did the new overseer send people to clean it up? We saw no hint that she did. So what gives, how'd it happen?

So, Vault 32 as a whole is extremely confusing at this point. Given that we've still got POV characters in the Vault, I give this one a pass until we see how they actually explain it. I do think it's especially confusing given that Moldaver (presumably) apparently accessed the Vault years earlier?

8) Speaking of which, what was that coup talk in the vaults?
When Vault 33 is having their little meeting to decide what to do with the raiders and the residence/council are showing unbelievable naivity (which is in character), Norm is like nah waste them all they're irredeemable psychopaths, which is true, we get this moment afterwards of the blonde, pregnant girl secretly approach him and say she agrees with him, and that she hopes when the time comes he'll do the right thing. Cue sinister music.

Later, when Norm is on prisoner lunch duty, he talks to the black girl behind the computer, and she echoes similar concerns.

I thought they were slowly building almost a coup-like situation in the vaults, with the naive vault dwellers vs the the vaulties that are like nah waste the raiders, look what they did to us.

But it...kinda fizzled out, and went nowhere. I mean, it's clear someone poisoned all the raiders and the black girl gets blamed for it (she claims innocence), but if so, what's with the almost conspiratorial vibes to the whole thing?

Speaking of which...

So, the clear implication is that Norm did it, as he's bringing them food. But it seems about equally likely that either of the two from Vault 31 did it, to get them out of the way. I don't think there was ever any suggestion of a coup coming, just that Norm wanted the raiders dead and that didn't fit the Vault's standard protocol. The question was, would he accept that, or not and we still don't know the answer.

9) That blonde pregnant woman.

This character. I dunno.

She starts off as a good character. She's the archetype vault dweller. She's young, pretty, she's pregnant (as girls that age would be in that situation) she seems like a genuine friend of Lucy's. She seems to playfully put her hubby down, but it didn't seem serious (maybe I'm just reading it wrong). During the raider attack she's seen mourning her husbands death, genuinely in tears over it - she might have made fun of him, but she seemed to genuinely love him, or at least his company. She then goes nuts, takes a fork to the eye, but still keeps fighting and machineguns some raiders down, while pregnant.

Good stuff so far.

Then she secretly approaches Norm (as I mentioned above), and the sinister music plays while she's telling him that the raiders murdered her husband and she'll have his back if he's going to 'do the right thing'. This is good, this shows she's grown: she seems to genuinely mourn for her dead husband, realising what she lost in him and wanting those who took him from her, took her childs father, to get what's coming to them. She's no longer the naive, bubbly blonde we saw in the opening, she's more cynical and hardened now.

Then she turns into an almost caricature of a manipulative housewife. She goes from mourning her husband to now just crapping over his memory again, making fun of him again and shacking up with the gatekeeper. The latter I can understand, she wants to move on, so she secures a tall, good looking husband for herself. But then she becomes this manipulative, bossy nag out of nowhere. Then we're told she's from Vault 31, and it seems as if the show is making her out to be in on the big secret, especially as she gets appointed Overseer of recolonised Vault 32, and she seems to embrace it - and that just opens up a whole 'nother line of questioning. Does she know what happened there? She's from Vault 31, right? She looked like she was low-key telling Norm she'd back him if he chose to murder the raiders sneakily or almost coup the place.

Is she a pre-war Vaultec exec? Maybe the early 20s daughter of an executive? Her character seems inconsistent and...I dunno. It's another point of confusion that I'm not sure what they're going for here.

As stated, yes, she is. So, I missed this too, but remember the 'executives' in there are 'Bud's Buds' IE the Vault-Tec management folks in Bud's training/mentorship program. Hank is the PA to a Vault-Tec executive and quite young himself in the flashback. The theory here, though it doesn't make a lot of sense, is that the entire Vault is basically a giant eugenics experiment to create either the perfect middle manager, or the perfect worker, or both, by controlling who is breeding with who and introducing Vault-Tec managers to the breeding pool when desired.

Given that, they basically have to be young and let out early. They marry and have kids with the inhabitants of the vault, then when they're older either create, or take advantage of a crisis to ensure they're elected overseer and maintain control of the vaults and the trades. But due to the deaths in 32, she's getting made overseer early and without an election. I think part of the issue here is that the show seems to have real issues with showing scale. It looks like there's basically as many survivors as there are raider prisoners (stated to be 16), but that's obviously not correct, as if it was, the raiders would simply have won. My assumption is that it's just standard scale issues in a show and there are hundreds of additional occupants just off screen.

10) The Vault Experiments.
They HINT at this during the final scenes of the last episode, that the new investors will get clusters of vaults whose conditions they can change to measure what they want. But instead of being a part of the 'vault experiments', which were actually testing people under different circumstances so Vaultec could use that to escape the planet safely and recolonize somewhere else, it's instead this attack on the management class or something?

So, arguably that? But more it was a matter of competition. I think the theory was that the most successful vaults would be the ones to survive and prosper, proving some theories correct and others wrong. Others are clearly just curiosity, sadism, or a god complex, but that's always been true of the Vaults.

11) The Management Class and Capitalism.

As a bit of a free market lover it annoys me to no end when people confuse capitalism with corporatism. What the Fallout world has pre-war, is Corporatism. That's where big companies use their influence in the government to pass laws favourable to themselves while hindering their typically smaller competition, and overtime they entrench these further and further, thus helping them secure either monopolies or huge, cartel-like cooperatives over important segments of the economy. This is not a free market where someone with an idea, know-how etc can start a small business and either grow it via good/wise decisions or get it to a stage they're happy at while employing others. This is crony capitalism, and I hate it as much as the next person.

So use that.

The pre-war Fallout US government is broke, and in exchange for contracts and $$ and support from these huge companies, the government is passing more and more regulations and laws that are favourable to them, entrenching their power over every day citizens lives. The actor, Cooper, as someone deep in advertising, can see this and it's disgusts him because the country is losing its way and becoming as authoritarian and controlled by a pyramid-tip at the top, much the way the communist reds are, thus making him open to going along and listening to a group who want to bring that system down - surprise, they're actually communists, and even though he hates them and tries to back out it's too late he's been associated with them and his career is wrecked.

See, that's how easy it is.

Instead we get this...weird, "Time is the biggest weapon", and "Our management will outlast the others", and "Let's start the war ourselves". Now that last part is a theory from the games, as no one knows who shot the bombs first, it could have been Vaultec...but the show is saying that peace threatens Vaultec's bottom line, which is true, but nuclear annihilation also threatens Vaultec's bottom line. Their most profitable course of action is to keep the fear of nuclear war high, so they can sell more vaults while enjoying their parties and the world infrastructure. It doesn't make any sense for Vaultec to want to end the world.

However.

We do see some mysterious, shadowy figure in some elevated, hidden viewing room looking down at the Vaultec secret meeting, the one Cooper's wife is at, and she looks up at this mysterious figure as if receiving some body language go ahead from him. So I think what is going to be revealed is that she's actually a member of the Enclave.

As far as I can tell, we haven't learned how they broke up or what happened with Coopers family.

My guess, is that his wife is actually a member of the Enclave, and she's putting that "We can drop the nukes first" idea out there. She doesn't actually care about Vaultec, she's a member of the Enclave who welcome nuclear Armageddon because it'll finally rid the world of communism for good. They helped create the vaults to create the vault experiments, the data they gather from which was going to be used to help them leave for space and colonize another planet. However, that didn't happen and I'm rambling on fallout lore here, but you get the idea.

But yeah, TL:DR this angle made no sense to me and it was just confusing and convoluted. Vaultec are an evil company, but it would've been so much easier to show them entrenching themselves with the government via Corporatism, and not wanting the war to end because it'll impact their bottom line. However, Coopers wife (Barb I think her name is) is a secret member of the Enclave and pushes the idea of dropping the bombs first. That would make more sense to me.

Eh, Coop's backstory clearly isn't over, neither is his wife's, neither is Moldaver's. We see him at the start, divorced and performing at kid's parties, blacklisted for being a communist. He ended this season, married, but discovering his wife is a monster, but still a spokesman for Vault-Tec and movie star. We're clearly going to see his fall from grace and his wife/daughter going forward, so I think this is still explicable.

I don't love Vault-Tec as an overarching villain either, though I'm not getting into the RW issues you touch on, but given the Enclave clearly exists, as we've got a classical Enclave scientist here, and they've got the tech which Moldaver expressly said Vault-Tec bought up, I wouldn't be surprised if we get more connections between the two groups.

Honorable Mention: "Would you like to have sex?"

The Vaults are supposed to be microcosms of 1950s Americana. Some things can get changed around for the circumstances, but under none of those circumstances do I envision a young woman from that culture willy-nilly offering sex to someone she's only known for a couple of days. Especially not one the show has been portraying as rather principled and suffering for those principles but mostly sticking by them. Her jumping the raider as soon as she's married makes sense and is fine. But this is some alien-pretending-to-be-a-human level of out of character, to me at least.

They kinda hint at this in the opening scenes where she's telling the committee that her "reproductive organs are in working order" or something cringe, but even that felt out of place.

It felt even weirder hearing Maximus not know what sex was, referring to erections as pimples or something outlandish. You're telling me all those young people training to be soldiers, in the barracks together, all those hormones and testosterone raging and no one knows what sex is? Gtfo here, for real, no, don't buy it.

I agree about Maximus, especially given that we see a sight gag in the barracks shot of someone clearly masturbating under a blanket. On Lucy...it seems like the Vault has changed somewhat on sexual/social norms over the centuries, given the acceptance of 'cousin stuff' so long as you marry and procreate with someone else. Frankly, given their very limited entertainment options and activities, that makes a lot of sense to me, but your mileage may vary.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I like ecarden's formatting of putting the comments in the spoiler quote, so I'm gonna do that.


Ah, I must have missed the passing detail of her name in the records (though I'd figured they'd be there cos she came from there). Still she seems pretty young for an exec. Ah well, maybe. Still, I'll stick with what I said that she had an interesting character arc that did a sudden 180 that I thought kinda ruined it.

I don't agree about that. It's clear Thaddeus is worried about the consequences, and all Max had to do to allay his fears was assure him they'll be fine if they get the mission done and bring the head back (which is pretty much true). Instead his first port of call is looking super shady and murder, especially after they'd just been bonding so much. Seems kinda out there if ya ask me.

Thaddeus isn't wrong. Neither is Max. It's a horrible miscommunication and both of them basically act like idiots. But both of them *are* idiots. They're barely experienced, untrained acolytes in an organization that sees them as disposable fodder for the real members. ("Are you sure you don't want another squire? We've got tons of them.") Max is trying to cling to his freedom, but lets his guard down. Thaddeus rightfully suspects him of being shady given he just learned how much he was being lied to. Then Max overreacts and it all goes to pot. It's think it's really good writing - both of their actions make sense, even if they aren't the perfect responses.

That's a pretty weak reasoning though, to me. Hank is supposed to be a smart guy (he apparently knows about New Vegas, as he flees there at the end of the eighth episode - so why not nuke there too?), he must surely be able to deduce there's going to be more settlements other than Shady Sands. To me this removal of the New California Republic and reducing them to just a weird little cult in a vault was one of the least pay-off divergence from the source material, and on weak grounds, in my opinion.

I assume dropping nukes is a last resort, though New Vegas looks destroyed or at least decrepit in the last shots. So it's possible Vault-Tec already got to it through other means or had a hands-off agreement since we see Vault-Tec coordinating with Mr. House of RobCo and he has a big influence there.

Though where is it implied that Vaul-tec has nukes? As I mentioned before, I think their reasons for starting the nuclear exchange are really convoluted and self-defeating, at least as it is presented in the show.

During the flashback where Cooper spies on his wife in the Vault-Tec meeting, House says "There's a lot of earning potential, but we can't invest in a hypothetical. How can you guarantee results?" and Barb replies "By dropping the bomb ourselves." Can't drop a bomb you don't have, so Vault-Tec must have some nukes of a fashion.

[Rynjin]

This interview actually fixes a fair chunk of my issues with the show. (https://www.ign.com/articles/fallout-official-timeline-confirmed-how-the-show-fits-in-with-the-games)

TL;DR: The show is confirmed to have flubbed the timeline.

So Shady Sands was definitively destroyed AFTER the events of New Vegas.

[MammonAzrael]

This interview actually fixes a fair chunk of my issues with the show. (https://www.ign.com/articles/fallout-official-timeline-confirmed-how-the-show-fits-in-with-the-games)

TL;DR: The show is confirmed to have flubbed the timeline.

So Shady Sands was definitively destroyed AFTER the events of New Vegas.

Reading through the article, I saw no assertion that the show messed up. Merely “All I can say is we’re threading it tighter there, but the bombs fall just after the events of New Vegas.”

Did I miss the point where they said they flubbed it? Or was that in the actual interview and not in the written article?

[Phobia]

I think they just thought people would understand that writing a date and then having an arrow after that and then a bomb depiction would indicate a passage of time.

[Rynjin]

Reading through the article, I saw no assertion that the show messed up. Merely “All I can say is we’re threading it tighter there, but the bombs fall just after the events of New Vegas.”

Did I miss the point where they said they flubbed it? Or was that in the actual interview and not in the written article?

The show indicates that said event happens in 2277, which is the same year as Fallout 3, and 4 years before New Vegas. The clarification is that the event happens sometime after New Vegas (i.e. after 2281).


I think they just thought people would understand that writing a date and then having an arrow after that and then a bomb depiction would indicate a passage of time.

The issue is that Shady Sands could not have fallen before 2281, elsewise none of the events of New Vegas make sense. "The Fall of Shady Sands" is listed as 2277 on the chalkboard.

[MammonAzrael]

The show indicates that said event happens in 2277, which is the same year as Fallout 3, and 4 years before New Vegas. The clarification is that the event happens sometime after New Vegas (i.e. after 2281).

Ahh, I see. You aren't happy because they took ownership of a mistake. You're happy because they explicitly confirmed that NV is still canon. Thank you for the clairification!

[dancrilis]

I solidly enjoyed the show - I went in with no real positive expectations (anything after Fallout 2 has been something of a let down - to put it mildly) and it turned out to be very good in my view.

[Rodin]

I’ve been playing Fallout 2 again, and it has only made me more annoyed with this particular plot point.

The NCR is supposed to cover most of California. In Fallout 2, prior to the 40 years of growth it gets before New Vegas, the NCR is supposed to have a population of 700K+. This is before they canonically take over places like Vault City and Redding. It doesn’t account for them taking over San Francisco (though that may have been nuked by the Enclave depending on which version of canon you pick).

How the hell did Shady Sands only have 22K people? How did nuking it matter at all to the survival of the NCR? The place is flipping HUGE. It is hundreds of miles of more or less civilized territory that wouldn’t have been scratched by the size crater we see in the show.

It would have been far better if they had set the show concurrently with Fallout 1. Set it somewhere just far enough off the beaten path to not upset canon and make up a new settlement to get nuked. Or he’ll, set it BEFORE Fallout 1 and use The Glow as your nuked location. It would be a retcon, but at least it wouldn’t be pants on head stupid. Or just do what other adaptations have done and call it an AU.

Though I’ll reiterate, I still found the show a lot of fun, despite its issues.

[Rynjin]

Shady Sands had 34k from what I recall, and TBH I don't think it's too far-fetched that a country with a population of 700k has a capital with a population of 34k. Eg. the US has a population of 333 million, DC has a population of just under 700k.

And losing the seat of all your bureaucracy at once would definitely be a helluva blow to your coherency as a nation. That said, some remnants should still exist and I hope they go into that as splinter governments have popped up elsewhere.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

Remnants did exist. Moldaver is even in charge of one. I hope Bethesda isn't going with "the NCR was completely wiped off the wasteland" but, as you opined, just scattered and disorganized. As I recall, they were already showing signs of decline and corruption in New Vegas, so it wouldn't be entirely off base for them to splinter into smaller factions in the wake of the capital falling.

[t209]

So I was wondering about Vault 31, 32, and 33. Because it reminded me of a novel called Wool.

Like Fallout, Wool had Silos that acted as last vestige of human civilization.
Also part of experiment and controlled by single vault/silo via Vault 31 resident/IT department.
Plus Vault 32 might have suffered like one Silo who overthrew their IT department…except it was chemical gas with only one survivor (but judging by the corpses, most corpses in Vault 32 didn’t have choking posture or “died where they stood”, so not that case).

[dancrilis]

I’ve been playing Fallout 2 again, and it has only made me more annoyed with this particular plot point.


I don't remember much of playing computer games over the years but I do remember some of by first playthough of Fallout back in 1997 (maybe 1998) - I didn't find the water chip as I missed the area of a map in the Necropolis that linked to the needed map, and Shady Sands was essentially destroyed as I got into a fight with Ian and everyone decided to help him are two pieces that I do remember.

So as far as I am concerned everything related to the NCR is dubious anyway so it is hard to be annoyed at any choices that are made regarding it.

[Rodin]

Shady Sands had 34k from what I recall, and TBH I don't think it's too far-fetched that a country with a population of 700k has a capital with a population of 34k. Eg. the US has a population of 333 million, DC has a population of just under 700k.

And losing the seat of all your bureaucracy at once would definitely be a helluva blow to your coherency as a nation. That said, some remnants should still exist and I hope they go into that as splinter governments have popped up elsewhere.

I think we saw the “splinter government”. It was those 3 guys in NCR uniforms, two of whom are now dead.

My point is that the NCR is BIG. Size of California big. It doesn’t have the population of modern California, but it’s still got a lot of ground under its remit. What we are shown in the show is The Wasteland as it exists in Fallout 3. No central power anywhere, and nobody trying to make one. But that doesn’t track with the entire region having been settled and recivilized for the past 50 years, with only Shady Sands going bye-bye 20 years ago. The entire region would be under the control of somebody, and the remnants of the NCR wouldn’t be a camp full of barbarian raiders (remember how Moldavers forces acted in episode 1), there would be full city states and after 20 years probably full countries springing up to fill the power vacuum.

We aren’t getting a functioning country as a breakaway successor to the NCR. Or even several less functioning ones. To Bethesda, Fallout will always exist in the “day after the bombs hit” with nobody but radroaches and super mutants living in the ruins. Post-post apocalypse isn’t the story they want to tell, and I think that’s kinda sad because there’s lots more interesting stories that will never be explored.

[Maelstrom]

Shady Sands had 34k from what I recall, and TBH I don't think it's too far-fetched that a country with a population of 700k has a capital with a population of 34k. Eg. the US has a population of 333 million, DC has a population of just under 700k.

And losing the seat of all your bureaucracy at once would definitely be a helluva blow to your coherency as a nation. That said, some remnants should still exist and I hope they go into that as splinter governments have popped up elsewhere.


And more to the point, modern day California has a population of around 39 million, while the capital, Sacramento has a population just over 500k, or around 1.3 percent of the total population. In game, shady sands has nearly 5% of the population, so a relatively believable number

[gbaji]

Accidentally put my response in the wrong thread, so I'll put my comments here.

Generally, I enjoyed the series. Yeah. It did have a few "why did that happen?" bits. Some of them were the classic idiot ball bits (but honestly, could be explained by the two main characters basically being super naive about the world they were traveling in, so not so bad).

I only actually played through Fallout 1 and 2 myself, but had a number of friends play (and talk about) the later games, so I guess I didn't have the same kinda dogmatic connection to various setting elements that others maybe did (NCR specifically). I felt that the elements that were there were sufficient for telling the story they were telling, and felt sufficiently "Fallouty" to me.



I wasn't as bothered by the whole Vault 32 bits. It felt to me like this was specifically left as a mystery to perhaps be explained at a later date. It did seem odd to me that, upon realizing that their entire valut existence was about an experiment in control that they'd go nuts and kill eachother. That seemed... extreme. Honestly, given the environment they lived in and grew up in, I'd expect the response to discovering that Vault 31 was made up of frozen managers who were there to take control and run the other two Vaults should have been "Oh. Well that makes sense". We're literally talking about people who are a dozen generations of folks living in Vaults and are pretty darn indoctrinated into "follow the rules" mentalities anyway. That felt less like some horrific experiment as a pretty standard command structure one might set up for something like this. When the only "Horrific truth" is that the leaders aren't just born into Vaults like everone else, but were selected from frozen managers specifically there to guide and run the vaults, but otherwise seemed to actually be trying to run the vaults with the exact objectives and methods that everyone living there already know about, there really isn't a whole lot to be upset about. Cerrtainly not something that would drive a population of (let's be honest "sheeple") into suicidal violence.

Also assume that more stuff about The Ghoul will be revealed in season 2. Glaringly missing is how he became a ghoul, and what happened between the events in the final flashback and the scene at the very begining whe he and his daughter are doing the birthday party.

Ditto about Moldaver. We see that she's running around in the past, harping about technolog being horded/blocked by Vault-Tec, and running some sort of resistence organization. But other than an almost flyby flashback sequence, we don't know anything else about that. It's just enough to set up the whole "fusion power tech" bit, but nothing else. How she survived this long. Where she was. Why she's doing what she's doing. All missing. I will say that the whole "turned on the power source and all the lights come back on" was silly (why can't they hire people who can write for TV/Film who also have a basic grounding in science/reality?), but given the setting itself bothered me a lot less than when the same thing happened in the Revolution TV series (which wasn't supposed to already be a parody of 50s science gone wrong).

And yeah, lots of stuff about the Enclave that is just missing. That's honestly the one bit I could see someone who's never played the games being completely confused by in the series, since I don't recall them ever saying what it was, how it came to exist, what its purpose was, etc. It's just there. Has folks doing science stuf. And the one science guy escapes (with his dog), and has the fusion thingie, but how they came to be there, what their purpose is, and how they fit into other groups/places is just never even addressed at all. It's one thing for someone coming from the Vaults thinking nothing is left on the surface to find the dregs floating around, and even the Brotherhood makes a bit of sense (and there's enough time spent on that due to Maximus), but the Enclave? No backstory or explanation is given for it.

The series could have done with maybe even one character serving as narrator to the audience (and done via dialogue with Lucy) to explain how the Enclave, Vaults, BoS, and the various towns/states/whatever (and the NCR) fit together (even if it's just how that narrator thinks they fit together). Dr. Wilzig would have been the perfect character for this, but wasn't used (possibly because they wanted to hold some stuff/mystery back to points after when he dies). So unfortunately, everything was in dribs and drabs, and there isn't really a complete picture.

Still. I felt that there was enough there for the story they told to work. But yeah, it definitely felt like season 1 of a 2 season story arc. Nothing is really resolved at the end. What we did get was reveals about people and events, which fits more into a mid-act spot in a full story.

Also not explained is the drug that the ghouls use to keep themselves human(ish). Where does it come from? How did The Ghoul apparently have access to this the whole time? And yeah, I expect that those are more details to come in season 2 (and presuambly will come with more explanation of the Enclave and how it fits in with the events leading up to the first war). Someone clearly was operating on the surface the whole time and capable of using tech, and doing science (likely involving experiments in human survival in a radioactive environment, leading to the ghouls in the first place). My assumption is that in the process of explaining this, and The Ghoul, they'll also explain more about the Enclave (and New Vegas) as well. And that's slated for season 2.

All in all though, it was a fun romp. I had no issues with some of the more absurd bits, because it's supposed to have a bit of that. People don't always behave how they should. They behave like they're in a "future as envisioned in the 1950s gone horribly wrong". Which is exactly right IMO.

[Tyndmyr]

I've gotten a few episodes further. I have additional complaints.



So, it's definitely three vaults, cool. It still...doesn't answer my question about how the dad let this disaster happen. He's the overseer, clearly the overseers are communicating, it's as if they are distinctly trying to make this all as incoherent as possible. If they did all kill themselves in the one vault because they learned the truth, uh, why? This is weird. Some sort of SCP like knowledge that kills, cool, I'm down for that as a plot element, but this appears to be just some "oh, we were lied to, and they were actually evil" which doesn't really justify mass suicide. That's...not the logical next step here.

The ghoul's motivations remain sort of incoherent. He goes from being willing to do literally anything for drugs to literally just dropping them on the ground because he saw an old tv show of himself. Cool, I guess. It doesn't even make sense why he has to shovel them from the box to his hat. Why not just take the box of them? Was it just important to show him dropping them on the ground, I guess?

Maximus still remains kind of unsympathetic. As a schemer, he isn't amazing. He's slowly getting a little development, but mostly it just extends the lack of sympathy to most of his faction. If everyone in a group is evil and incompetent, why would I care about them? I just kind of want them to get offed.

It is really weird for them to focus on making stimpacks basically magic solutions to everything. Especially when your plot hinges around a guy getting an unfixable slow wound, which requires a horrific limb addition, which is basically terrible and he has to die anyways. Seriously, one stimpack would fix this, apparently, but everyone forgot this, despite this guy literally being deus ex expositiona the rest of the time. It feels like a strange element to fixate on in any case. It's a game mechanic, not an essential setting bit. Tons of games have instant heals for gameplay purposes, but aren't a big factor in the narrative.

I am relatively sure that the drug that keeps ghouls human is a new invention. It's not terrible, but it sort of is at odds with prior depictions of ghouls. 3, in particular, had large factions of both fairly human and feral ghouls, and drug usage wasn't connected to this. I am also going to deduct at least 500 Batman V Superman points for the "My name is Martha" bit.

It seems pretty clear already that we're foreshadowing a Vault Tec is actually evil reveal. This should surprise basically nobody who has paid attention to prior games. However, in the games, there's already kind of a narrative about why the bombs drop, why the vaults exist and are experiment chambers, etc. Essentially, it all boils down to the aliens. The aliens exist, and various factions are aware of them. The vaults seem designed to test problems with interstellar travel, and the whole experiment basically designed to force humanity into preparing to go deal with the aliens...albeit in ways that predictably go wholly wrong, of course. I do not expect the show to remain consistent with this, since aliens haven't really been mentioned at all.

The raiders form kind of a weird plot point. The naivety felt...over the top. Yes, vault tec advertisement is cheery to the point of ridiculousness, but vault dwellers in general have not been portrayed as insanely gullible. Time capsuled and sort of out of touch? Absolutely. But the acceptance of the raiders is deeply at odds with their fear of what is outside the vault. The latter makes sense, and the former should provoke at least a little of the latter.

I don't hate the show. It's really good with music and setting. It's just...plot and character keeps getting jumbled.

[gbaji]

I've gotten a few episodes further. I have additional complaints.



So, it's definitely three vaults, cool. It still...doesn't answer my question about how the dad let this disaster happen. He's the overseer, clearly the overseers are communicating, it's as if they are distinctly trying to make this all as incoherent as possible. If they did all kill themselves in the one vault because they learned the truth, uh, why? This is weird. Some sort of SCP like knowledge that kills, cool, I'm down for that as a plot element, but this appears to be just some "oh, we were lied to, and they were actually evil" which doesn't really justify mass suicide. That's...not the logical next step here.

Yeah. It is strange and makes no sense for that to be their reaction. What does make sense is if, in resopnse to them discovering "the truth", the overseers (or brain in Vault 31) decided to pump in some kind of "make everyone suicidal and crazy" gas into Vault 32, wipe them out, and then clean up, repopulate from Vault 31, and move on, with the secret/experiment intact.

What doesn't make sense is the timing of this (appears to have happened some time ago), no one seeming to have realized that they all died off and enacted any plan to deal with it, and then the raiders showing up (and them all just happening to be dead when they get there). I'm still holding out the possibility that this may be explained in season 2 though. There must have also been some reason why Moldaver used Rose's pipboy to enter Vault 32 instead of going directly to Vault 33. Heck. Why did her pipboy open Vault 32 in the first place? Rose was from Vault 33. She was married to the overseer of Vault 33. She escaped with her children from Valut 33. As far as we know (again, unless the history is even more faked then we were told), she never once stepped foot into Vault 32. We also know that the vaults are all sealed off from each other, requiring someone from "inside" each vault to allow someone to enter from a different one. One would expect/assume that the front doors, leading to outside, would be even better defended/blocked than the ones between the three vaults.

So yeah. Either a much bigger plot hole is present *or* there's some additional information about both the deaths of the folks in Vault 32 *and* Moldaver's entry to said Vault. I'm going to be optimistic and hope that gap is filled at some point.


The ghoul's motivations remain sort of incoherent. He goes from being willing to do literally anything for drugs to literally just dropping them on the ground because he saw an old tv show of himself. Cool, I guess. It doesn't even make sense why he has to shovel them from the box to his hat. Why not just take the box of them? Was it just important to show him dropping them on the ground, I guess?

Eh... I just chalk this up to the standard film/tv "dramatic representation of scarce things", where the super scarce thing, which the character should be ultra careful with, will instead be treated very uncarefully instead, to highlight the fact that it is scarce. We see this in every scene where the character is drinking from a canteen/waterskin and is short on water (and in the middle of a desert). Real people would carefully make sure to not lose a single drop. TV/Film characters will hold the container above their heads, tip them over, and spill the water all over/down their chins.

Yes. It's annoying. Yes. It makes me scream at the TV "why the heck are you doing that!", but... that's just the way they do things. The reality is that the effect of "lack of water" or "lack of ghoul drug" will be whatever the script says it will be, regardless of how the character is portrayed as handling it.

And actually, on that subject, one of the bits that annoyed me more than a little, was the characters seeming lack of care about scarce things all the way though. Including weapons and ammunition. You'd think someone realizing they are in a post appocalyptic worlds with minimal and dwindling supplies of... well... everything, would be super careful and cautions with everything. Yet, despite a large number of bad guys killed along the way, most of them armed in some way, no one ever seems to pick up their weapons so they can use them. There are several points where this happens. Heck. Right off the bat, when Titus dies to the bear, he drops his big honking gun when the bear first attacks him. Ok. But then, after he dies, and Maximus takes the armor, Maximus.... leaves the gun? Why? That would certainly have come in super useful later on.

This happens so frequently in the series that it becomes laughable. And flies in the face of what any actual person playing the game would have done. You pick up *everything*, and you keep everything you can physically carry. The only time they kinda played this, was when Lucy leaves the super mart place (can't remember the name now), and she's clearly taken some items. But IMO, not nearly as much as she could have. She's still way under equipped for having an entire huge store full of stuff she could have taken with her. It felt like they wanted the characters to have specific conflicts and specific levels of difficulty in each, so they ensured that the characters had only the weapons/equipment that would make that next conflict work and nothing more. Even if it made zero sense.

Again though, I can overlook most of the oddities as being reflective of the setting itself being kind warped/crazy to start with. No one behaves quite like we might think people should, so that's just the way things are. Some of them were a bit over the top. But most? I can look past them.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

And actually, on that subject, one of the bits that annoyed me more than a little, was the characters seeming lack of care about scarce things all the way though. Including weapons and ammunition. You'd think someone realizing they are in a post appocalyptic worlds with minimal and dwindling supplies of... well... everything, would be super careful and cautions with everything. Yet, despite a large number of bad guys killed along the way, most of them armed in some way, no one ever seems to pick up their weapons so they can use them. There are several points where this happens. Heck. Right off the bat, when Titus dies to the bear, he drops his big honking gun when the bear first attacks him. Ok. But then, after he dies, and Maximus takes the armor, Maximus.... leaves the gun? Why? That would certainly have come in super useful later on.

This happens so frequently in the series that it becomes laughable. And flies in the face of what any actual person playing the game would have done. You pick up *everything*, and you keep everything you can physically carry. The only time they kinda played this, was when Lucy leaves the super mart place (can't remember the name now), and she's clearly taken some items. But IMO, not nearly as much as she could have. She's still way under equipped for having an entire huge store full of stuff she could have taken with her. It felt like they wanted the characters to have specific conflicts and specific levels of difficulty in each, so they ensured that the characters had only the weapons/equipment that would make that next conflict work and nothing more. Even if it made zero sense.

Again though, I can overlook most of the oddities as being reflective of the setting itself being kind warped/crazy to start with. No one behaves quite like we might think people should, so that's just the way things are. Some of them were a bit over the top. But most? I can look past them.

No real defense for anything else - characters do leave materials behind far too often - but wasn't the rifle crushed by the bear right at the start of the fight? I distinctly remember that being the reason Titus goes from "mildly panicked" to "eff this I'm out of here."

[JadedDM]

The ghoul drug was an invention of the show, as far as I know (I haven't played the Bethesda versions, so maybe it was introduced there, but I haven't heard of it). My guess is it was just introduced as a shorthand for the audience. Why do some ghouls go feral and others don't? In the game cannon, the answer is, "Nobody really knows." Maybe they felt TV audiences wouldn't accept that.

It also provided Cooper with a need, which can help offer motivations for some of the things the writers want him to do.

[Errorname]

I don't mind the idea that after 200 years someone figured out how to stave off the feral process. That's a pretty logical progression for the setting.

[ecarden]

I don't mind the idea that after 200 years someone figured out how to stave off the feral process. That's a pretty logical progression for the setting.

I don't either, but I believe it's intended to be older than that, as I believe it's the same drug that was running down to our boy's coffin to keep him non-feral while buried alive.

[Pax1138]

I like the speculation that the serum was something developed by the NCR to help their ghoul citizens out. NCR was always depicted as accepting of ghouls and super mutants, so it makes sense for them, with their stable and (relatively) technologically advanced society to work on the problem of some of their citizens occassionally losing their minds and turning into ravening cannibals.

But my preferred option is that it's some snake oil (not to be confused with the goods offered by the completely reputable Snake Oil Salesman), that's actually just an addictive drug someone convinced ghouls to take, and the feelings they get when they're low aren't necessarily going feral, but instead just a nasty withdrawl.

[Tyndmyr]

Eh... I just chalk this up to the standard film/tv "dramatic representation of scarce things", where the super scarce thing, which the character should be ultra careful with, will instead be treated very uncarefully instead, to highlight the fact that it is scarce. We see this in every scene where the character is drinking from a canteen/waterskin and is short on water (and in the middle of a desert). Real people would carefully make sure to not lose a single drop. TV/Film characters will hold the container above their heads, tip them over, and spill the water all over/down their chins.

Yes. It's annoying. Yes. It makes me scream at the TV "why the heck are you doing that!", but... that's just the way they do things. The reality is that the effect of "lack of water" or "lack of ghoul drug" will be whatever the script says it will be, regardless of how the character is portrayed as handling it.

Yeah, this trope with water has always annoyed me. It's in so very many films, but it absolutely takes me out of the moment with how dumb it is. Greedily drinking water? Sure. Spilling it everywhere shouldn't be a thing that people do intentionally. Accidentally, because you're portraying a person so dehydrated that their fingers aren't working right or the like? Okay, sure. But that's not usually how it's portrayed. Ah, well.


And actually, on that subject, one of the bits that annoyed me more than a little, was the characters seeming lack of care about scarce things all the way though. Including weapons and ammunition. You'd think someone realizing they are in a post appocalyptic worlds with minimal and dwindling supplies of... well... everything, would be super careful and cautions with everything. Yet, despite a large number of bad guys killed along the way, most of them armed in some way, no one ever seems to pick up their weapons so they can use them. There are several points where this happens. Heck. Right off the bat, when Titus dies to the bear, he drops his big honking gun when the bear first attacks him. Ok. But then, after he dies, and Maximus takes the armor, Maximus.... leaves the gun? Why? That would certainly have come in super useful later on.

This happens so frequently in the series that it becomes laughable. And flies in the face of what any actual person playing the game would have done. You pick up *everything*, and you keep everything you can physically carry. The only time they kinda played this, was when Lucy leaves the super mart place (can't remember the name now), and she's clearly taken some items. But IMO, not nearly as much as she could have. She's still way under equipped for having an entire huge store full of stuff she could have taken with her. It felt like they wanted the characters to have specific conflicts and specific levels of difficulty in each, so they ensured that the characters had only the weapons/equipment that would make that next conflict work and nothing more. Even if it made zero sense.

Again though, I can overlook most of the oddities as being reflective of the setting itself being kind warped/crazy to start with. No one behaves quite like we might think people should, so that's just the way things are. Some of them were a bit over the top. But most? I can look past them.

This also does annoy me sometimes. I don't mind the guns blazing trope because, well, Fallout has always kind of treated ammo as somehow plentiful, so I'll kind of give that a pass. But relentlessly looting everything available is also absolutely a Fallout thing. If you're gonna get fixated on video game lore, characters should absolutely pick up weapons, gear, etc if convenient and it is obviously helpful. Maybe even when it isn't.


I don't mind the idea that after 200 years someone figured out how to stave off the feral process. That's a pretty logical progression for the setting.

Given the portrayal, withdrawal happens in a matter of days, and as he is The Ghoul, who clearly has existed in roughly the same state for those entire 200 years, the drug'd basically need to be there when the bombs drop.

That could be a thing, I guess. Just...it implies a lot more intentionality to the setting than is normally the case. Ghouls are generally portrayed as a not particularly desired consequence of radiation, not as part of some grand plan.

Also, another aside:

Why is the dude surprised by there being a party, AND its at his house, and he doesn't know its happening until that very moment, when they are leaving to go to the party.

But then at the party, he is complaining that only one of the people he invited showed up. How exactly did he go about inviting all these people and when? This feels like a weird and pointless sort of incongruity. Maybe editing or reshoots happened, I dunno, but there's a lot of little nuggets that don't quite make sense.

[LibraryOgre]

I don't mind the idea that after 200 years someone figured out how to stave off the feral process. That's a pretty logical progression for the setting.

Doctor Barrows was working on something like that in Fallout 3. (https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Barrows) He was trying to reverse it, but "keeps you from going feral" would be a big step forward.

The Spoose and I watched the first episode yesterday. I had to stop for a bit during Cooper Howard's opening... I played Fallout 4 with my then-newborn firstborn on my lap, and watching that opening with my 7 year old playing in the next room was pretty hard. But once I got past that, I really liked it; there was a lot of Fallout in there, and I also liked how they played up the religious aspect of the Brotherhood.

[Talakeal]

I thought Coop was intentionally spilling the water to mock Lucy.

[Tyndmyr]

I thought Coop was intentionally spilling the water to mock Lucy.

In that example, yeah, probably, but the earlier example with the random wastelander that chugs Lucy's water, it doesn't fit. His stated goal is to drink all the water, tossing it over his face is not particularly reasonable.

[MammonAzrael]

In that example, yeah, probably, but the earlier example with the random wastelander that chugs Lucy's water, it doesn't fit. His stated goal is to drink all the water, tossing it over his face is not particularly reasonable.

Additionally, deliberately wasting a precious resource to mock someone has always read as an unhinged move to me. It can be appropriate for a given character, but it paints any character that does it as short sighted, reckless, deranged, or otherwise not someone focused on their own survival and making sane choices to accomplish that. It's an action that almost always pulls me out of of a story and see it as a lazy trope, rather than a deliberate bit of characterization.

[Trafalgar]

Additionally, deliberately wasting a precious resource to mock someone has always read as an unhinged move to me. It can be appropriate for a given character, but it paints any character that does it as short sighted, reckless, deranged, or otherwise not someone focused on their own survival and making sane choices to accomplish that. It's an action that almost always pulls me out of of a story and see it as a lazy trope, rather than a deliberate bit of characterization.

I thought it was a reference to this scene:

Lip Balm? (https://youtu.be/L08fJmbHcPo?si=msOsHErz2NAFTmu3)

[ecarden]

Additionally, deliberately wasting a precious resource to mock someone has always read as an unhinged move to me. It can be appropriate for a given character, but it paints any character that does it as short sighted, reckless, deranged, or otherwise not someone focused on their own survival and making sane choices to accomplish that. It's an action that almost always pulls me out of of a story and see it as a lazy trope, rather than a deliberate bit of characterization.

Except the point is that there is water available. It's irradiated, but its present. He can drink it without harm (ghoul), she can't. He is in no danger of dehydration.

[gbaji]

Given the portrayal, withdrawal happens in a matter of days, and as he is The Ghoul, who clearly has existed in roughly the same state for those entire 200 years, the drug'd basically need to be there when the bombs drop.

That could be a thing, I guess. Just...it implies a lot more intentionality to the setting than is normally the case. Ghouls are generally portrayed as a not particularly desired consequence of radiation, not as part of some grand plan.

Yeah. If we assume that ghoulism has existed the whole time, and that The Ghoul is the first, and that this drug is needed to avoid going feral, then we kinda have to assume that he's been on this drug the whole time. Which somewhat begs the question as to where it's all coming from?

I'm assuming this is part of his backstory that we wont learn until season 2. If I were to speculate, I'd assume that after the first round of bombs fall, folks start scrambling for the shelters. He must somehow find a way to protect his daughter *and* probably knows something about the Vaults and their long term plans (else why ask about his family, if it's been 200 years and they should be long dead no matter what happened to them?). He, on the other hand, somehow gets stuck "outside", but also has contact/access to folks who have some other resources (early Enclave maybe?). Maybe in the process he gets irradiated, and is told that the only way to surrive is to take this drug, which will make him "immune to radiation", but it has the side effect of turning him into The Ghoul.

Regardless of specifics, he's somehow the test subject for the drug, and that's why he's The Ghoul. Everything else is what he's done since then, presumably trying to find whomever took his daughter (presumably his wife), and where they were taken. There's also large gaps (specifically involving the Enclave). Vault-Tec certainly assumed that everyone outside the Vaults would die, and they'd stay inside until the radiation subsided, and then return to repoulate the Earth or something, but clearly theirs was not the "only plan". It's quite clear that at least one other group also had plans, and were prepared for the bombs dropping, but didn't restrict themselve to just "stay locked in a Vault". And at least one of these groups must have had their "make people immune to harm, aging, and radiation" serum pretty much ready to go right when the bombs first dropped (and perhap were on board with that plan specifically thinking "we'll make billions selling our serum to the survivors").

There are other gaps as well (how does Moldaver fit in?). Again though, I'm hopeful that at least some/most of this stuff will be cleared up in the next season.



Except the point is that there is water available. It's irradiated, but its present. He can drink it without harm (ghoul), she can't. He is in no danger of dehydration.

Yeah. But that still makes the move silly/dumb. We have to assume that he's only keeping her alive because he needs her, right (else why keep her, if she's just going to slow him down)? So.... he needs her, but he's also in a hurry (trying to catch up to the head, right?). So it is absolutely in his best interest to keep her healthy and able to travel as fast as possible. So instead of him drinking the irradiated water and letting her drink the non-irradiated stuff, ensuring that both of them are maximally able to do exactly that which he wants/needs, he instead effectively sabotages himself with his silly bit with the water.

I get it. It makes for great TV drama, and showcases his "I'm a mean ol cowpoke" persona, I guess. But it's incredibly dumb and not something I'd expect a 200+ year old person with massive experience operating in the wastelands to actually do.

[ecarden]

Yeah. But that still makes the move silly/dumb. We have to assume that he's only keeping her alive because he needs her, right (else why keep her, if she's just going to slow him down)? So.... he needs her, but he's also in a hurry (trying to catch up to the head, right?). So it is absolutely in his best interest to keep her healthy and able to travel as fast as possible. So instead of him drinking the irradiated water and letting her drink the non-irradiated stuff, ensuring that both of them are maximally able to do exactly that which he wants/needs, he instead effectively sabotages himself with his silly bit with the water.

I get it. It makes for great TV drama, and showcases his "I'm a mean ol cowpoke" persona, I guess. But it's incredibly dumb and not something I'd expect a 200+ year old person with massive experience operating in the wastelands to actually do.

I don't think this is correct, as I believe at this point, he isn't after the head, he's after the drugs. He needs her alive, but his plan is to literally sell her to be chopped up for spare parts. He does not care about her condition (except that it is sufficient to get him the amount of drugs he needs, which it transparently is even after her treatment).

He is quite deliberately brutalizing her, if you want to be nice because he's seeking to toughen her up, if not, because he's trying to prove that everyone is as messed up as he has become. Alternatively, he is brutalizing her because he knows he's about to do something horrifying, sell someone to be murdered (when, to be clear, he absolutely has alternatives, as is made clear, he could go in there and do exactly what she did and get all the drugs he needs/wants) and is either, to be nice, attempting to get her to hate him as much as he hates himself. To be not so nice, to try to provoke a reaction which he can use to justify what he's doing.

But again, I'm not sure what about his behavior makes you think he's particularly smart? He's an extremely skilled combatant and a smooth talker, but...essentially none of his plans actually work, we meet him when he's buried alive and he would have gone feral but for our protagonist's mercy. He's survived a long time, but that, in itself, doesn't mean much.

[Errorname]

Yeah. If we assume that ghoulism has existed the whole time, and that The Ghoul is the first, and that this drug is needed to avoid going feral, then we kinda have to assume that he's been on this drug the whole time. Which somewhat begs the question as to where it's all coming from?

Do we? The rules of how ghouls work are inconsistent as hell but I think it's easy to imagine that whatever causes 'ferals' becomes more of a problem over time. Coop's like 200 years old, that's a lot of time for him to develop a degenerative condition that needs increasingly strong amounts of treatment. Possible he had decades where he just never needed this sort of treatment.

[Tyndmyr]

Do we? The rules of how ghouls work are inconsistent as hell but I think it's easy to imagine that whatever causes 'ferals' becomes more of a problem over time. Coop's like 200 years old, that's a lot of time for him to develop a degenerative condition that needs increasingly strong amounts of treatment. Possible he had decades where he just never needed this sort of treatment.

Well, another ghoul made it what, a dozen years before he ran dry on the meds and the feralness took him, and he considered that a really good run. So, whatever the timeline is for going feral, it definitely isn't a significant part of 200 years.

[ecarden]

Well, another ghoul made it what, a dozen years before he ran dry on the meds and the feralness took him, and he considered that a really good run. So, whatever the timeline is for going feral, it definitely isn't a significant part of 200 years.

I think the intent (assuming its just not a retcon) is that it's pretty widely variable. Coop made it a long time before he started to degenerate, others degenerate almost instantly. Once you do, you need the drugs and if you fail to get them degeneration is presumably permanent.

[t209]

Some people wonder if Coop was a Marked Man (https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Marked_men) from Lonesome Road, BUT
- so far not sure if he got radiation exposure from dust storm, which ghoul transformation and dust storm strong enough to flay his skin that meant that he should be in constant pain.
Plus Marked Man seems to retain their sapience better despite their feral status (enough to hold weapons and organized into groups) in Lonesome Road.

[Phobia]

I mean did yall miss the part where the Ghoul filled up his canteen with just a random puddle of radioactive water later on? The reason he didn’t give her his canteen to drink is because the Ghoul had no purified water whatsoever and was just mocking her.