Call Out To The Fallout (Amazon Prime show)

[WATDUDEYEET]

2 minutes ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

What is difficult to disregard is the show since future games will build on it and it most likely destroyed something that could have been an excellent foundation of the series.

Plus it sucks when something you love gets a shitty ending in tv series. See the countless "Rant and Rave" threads for evidence.

 

I don't think future games are going to build much on it. I got the impression that the Fallout show was set on the West Coast because the East Coast was Bethesda's territory, it's a similar arrangement the company made with Obisidian in regards to New Vegas and how it related to Fallout 3.

Although I do find the reactions to 

Spoiler

the NCR falling apart somewhat interesting. From what I can recall, it was sort of a consensus in the fandom that the downfall or decline of the faction was inevitable considering its state by the time of New Vegas and it is pointed out in-game multiple times that they're just repeating the mistakes that led to the Great War in the first place.

But the show takes the route of the NCR falling apart due to an external threat and it's very loose and inconsistent with the specifics like what happened with the rest of New California since only Shady Sands was nuked. It does leave room for soft-retconning in season two, like I can almosy see them pulling a Duffer Bros and editing one of the S1 eps to subtly change the year when Shady Sands got destroyed to a later date that doesn't conflict with New Vegas.

 

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

16 minutes ago, WATDUDEYEET said:

I don't think future games are going to build much on it. I got the impression that the Fallout show was set on the West Coast because the East Coast was Bethesda's territory, it's a similar arrangement the company made with Obisidian in regards to New Vegas and how it related to Fallout 3.

Let me dream

Ironically the West Coast was Black Isle's/Obsidian's territory.

17 minutes ago, WATDUDEYEET said:

Although I do find the reactions to 

  Reveal hidden contents

the NCR falling apart somewhat interesting. From what I can recall, it was sort of a consensus in the fandom that the downfall or decline of the faction was inevitable considering its state by the time of New Vegas and it is pointed out in-game multiple times that they're just repeating the mistakes that led to the Great War in the first place.

But the show takes the route of the NCR falling apart due to an external threat and it's very loose and inconsistent with the specifics like what happened with the rest of New California since only Shady Sands was nuked. It does leave room for soft-retconning in season two, like I can almosy see them pulling a Duffer Bros and editing one of the S1 eps to subtly change the year when Shady Sands got destroyed to a later date that doesn't conflict with New Vegas.

 

Spoiler

The NCR faced significant problems, but they could be overcome and were not of the nature that would have let to its total collapse within less than two decades. Even then you would have expected successor states.

That Vault-tec gets to be the one killing them off is really just the cherry on top.

 

[Kalbear]

41 minutes ago, Ran said:

Take whatever I say with a grain of salt. My total knowledge of Fallout comes through cultural osmosis and four episodes of the TV show. I've never played the games. I just know that when someone says Fallout to me, it's a game set in a post-apocalyptic world along the lines of Mad Max or Wastelands. There's nomads, there's factions, there's pockets of recovery and pockets of chaos, etc. I've never heard of a Fallout game that doesn't have something along these lines, presumably because they wouldn't really be Fallout.

Yeah, this is very much not really the games. That's how you usually start the games but even they start meeting small villages and doing the equivalent of killing 10 rats. All of the fallouts have had significant development of factions and behaviors, and all of them have been about how humanity both adapts and splinters to these things. 

It is definitely not mad max. It's far more high-tech and advanced than that. Fallout has a few major themes I would say:

• The retrofuture style, especially evoking the capitalist/communist split
• Often very tongue-in-cheek humor
• A combination of both people barely getting by with spit and bailing wire and very high-tech components both from a bygone age and advancements
• Completely off-the-rails ethical behaviors

But things like pockets of society? No - there are societies, big ones, big factions and behaviors and people getting back together. It is a lot of competing societies in most of the games and quests that matter. 

[Ran]

Take "pockets" as just... what you describe: places where things are going along and things where they definitely aren't. If the world is still scarred by the apocalypse, it's post-apocalyptic. Once it's all recovered, it's basically post-post-apocalyptic.

On this show, the giant roaches, the gulpers, the rad meters, etc., all of it says "post-apocalyptic". The power armor and the healing tech are advancements (at least compared to our world, I don't know how they compare to pre-war 2077), but it's still post-apocalyptic.

 

Edited April 12 by Ran

[Werthead]

It's very clear that they're not ignoring New Vegas.

Spoiler

Mr. House (!) shows up in the corporate conspiracy flashback, alongside some of the corporate guys who are referenced on log terminals in New Vegas. Then the final shot shows not just New Vegas in the distance, but nearby settlements like Nipton (possibly Goodsprings way off to the side though the angle would be weird).

We also get the New Vegas theme music - the theme of the NCR - when Lucy finds the NCR flag in Vault 4.

I think I've got a better handling on what happened now. It looks like the writing staff fucked up and assumed New Vegas happened in 2277, the same year as Fallout 3, rather than three years later. If you assume that it makes more sense:

Spoiler

Assume the events of New Vegas happen in early 2277, culminating in the destruction of Caesar's Legion at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam and Mr. House securing supremacy over the New Vegas region.

As per Lucy remembering her mother dying in the famine of '77, her mother tries to escape to Shady Sands, Hank flips and nukes Shady Sands, triggering the collapse of the NCR, despite its recent victory. The survivors flee to Vault 4.

 

[Werthead]

In Fallout VR you can watch Fallout inside Fallout, dawg.

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Take "pockets" as just... what you describe: places where things are going along and things where they definitely aren't. If the world is still scarred by the apocalypse, it's post-apocalyptic. Once it's all recovered, it's basically post-post-apocalyptic.

I guess? To me your quibble was that there were too many actual new countries and places, and things were recovering. That's been true everywhere in Fallout. There are going to be a whole lot of wild places for a very long time - especially since the radiation doesn't die down in a whole lot of spots - but civilization is coming back and thriving, and it's not all brutal raiders killing everyone and eating each other for funsies. 

2 hours ago, Ran said:

On this show, the giant roaches, the gulpers, the rad meters, etc., all of it says "post-apocalyptic". The power armor and the healing tech are advancements (at least compared to our world, I don't know how they compare to pre-war 2077), but it's still post-apocalyptic.

I think this is mostly how you're interpreting the word and the world, and I'm likely not going to convince you otherwise to change how you're using the definition or thinking that you're right. I'll just say that the show is deeply close to the games, and the notion that you have to nuke everything so people can go back to playing Fallout 'the way it was intended' is really not remotely accurate by the way the games have been done. 

[Werthead]

To be clear on the extensive nature of rebuilding in the Fallout universe, there's a bloody Europa Universalis mod which has North America divided between the canonical Fallout factions, which would be completely impossible unless fairly extensive actions existed.

The factions, and those factions being big and organised and sometimes capable of traversing the entire continent through vehicles, and projecting power across hundreds of miles, is a big thing in Fallout 3, 4 and 76 (the Bethesda games) as well as 1, 2, Tactics and New Vegas (the Black Isle/Obsidian games).

[Ran]

Fan estimates of the population of North America in 2277 range from 10 million to 25 million, with the NCR apparently canonically set at 700k people.. Boston has like 10k-11k people. Estimates of the entire population of North America range from 10 million to 25 mllion The EU Fallout map is explicit that it's speculative and includes fan-fic-created locales, apparently, to try and fill out the half-empty map. This is apparently a semi-canon map with only canon tribal and nation-state territory guesses... whole lot of nothing listed, though.

If this is not a post-apocalyptic world, I don't know what it is. It still seems like a mostly lawless continent filled with undeveloped wastelands with pockets (yes, pockets) of tribes, cults, and glorified city-states. I can't answer as to force projection, but then Imperator Joe sends his forces hundreds of miles chasing after Furiosa, so... does having technology that let you travel large distances mean you're no longer post-apocalyptic?

No doubt I'd have a different impression if I actually played the games. 

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

A reminder that the West Coast is developed enough to have porn studios

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

A reminder that the West Coast is developed enough to have porn studios

And in the games too.

[WATDUDEYEET]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

It's very clear that they're not ignoring New Vegas.

I think I've got a better handling on what happened now. It looks like the writing staff fucked up and assumed New Vegas happened in 2277, the same year as Fallout 3, rather than three years later. If you assume that it makes more sense:

  Hide contents

Assume the events of New Vegas happen in early 2277, culminating in the destruction of Caesar's Legion at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam and Mr. House securing supremacy over the New Vegas region.

As per Lucy remembering her mother dying in the famine of '77, her mother tries to escape to Shady Sands, Hank flips and nukes Shady Sands, triggering the collapse of the NCR, despite its recent victory. The survivors flee to Vault 4.

 

If you watch the end credits visuals, 

Spoiler

New Vegas is in ruins with crashed NCR vertiberds and Securitrons literred everywhere. I get the feeling the show is going to do something similar to what they did to the NCR where it collapsed due to some seperate event rather than anything to do with the events of NV (as I don't recall the battle actually reaching there).

I think they can still retcon the 2277 error by going back and editing the Vault 4 episode to change the timeline on the chalkboard to later date, like what Stranger Things did when someone pointed out that Will's stated birthday would coincided with the events of S4 so they just went back and changed it.

 

Edited April 13 by WATDUDEYEET

[A True Kaniggit]

I’ve only watched episodes one and two so far, but about Vaults 32 and 33. 
 

I guess their deal is they are connected vaults that are allowed to trade every now and then, but are only allowed to communicate through telegraph?

Edited April 13 by A True Kaniggit

[dbunting]

I've never played the game. So far I've only watched one episode and it was pretty good. I'll be binging it this weekend for sure.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Why didn’t they check the radiation levels of vault 32 people before letting them in ? 

[A True Kaniggit]

14 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Why didn’t they check the radiation levels of vault 32 people before letting them in ? 

Trading with 32 seemed to be a fairly common occurrence. 

Edited April 13 by A True Kaniggit

[Ran]

Linda recognized an actor and was trying to figure out where she knew him from. Turns out it's Chris Parnell, who (among many other things) does the voice of Jerry on Rick and Morty, which she doesn't even watch, but has heard me watching enough that she somehow picked up the similarity.

I was totally thrown because I'd assumed it was an actor who performed in some live action show and didn't get it and assumed I couldn't place him because of 

Spoiler

the cyclops thing.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Linda recognized an actor and was trying to figure out where she knew him from. Turns out it's Chris Parnell, who (among many other things) does the voice of Jerry on Rick and Morty, which she doesn't even watch, but has heard me watching enough that she somehow picked up the similarity.

I was totally thrown because I'd assumed it was an actor who performed in some live action show and didn't get it and assumed I couldn't place him because of 

  Reveal hidden contents

the cyclops thing.

The combination of being Jerry and Cyril from Archer is too funny (I really need to catch up on both). Dude has made a lot of money playing the sad underdog. I think I first saw him in Anchorman. His IMDB is pretty interesting though. Never a leading man, but is solid in a lot of good to great projects. Respect.

I've never played the games, but I liked the first episode. I didn't know they were dropping the whole season at once. After finishing a few other things I can see myself binging this one. 

[Ran]

Done binging it. Linda and I both quite liked it (she could have done with less gore). It's not the greatest TV show ever, but it's very, very solidly entertaining, the pacing never flags and make you feel a scene is going on to long, and it's well-performed. It's an excellent genre show, an excellent adaptation of a video game, and (if I may say so) I probably prefer it to The Last of Us because the setting, if nothing else, is much more inventive.  She preferred the back half to the first half, as it dove more and more into the lore and the grand design of the seasons started coming together, and I think there's something to that for me as well as we spent more and more time

Spoiler

in Cooper's past and getting pieces of the puzzle building towards the big reveal(s) in the finale.

The way it's left with some major questions hanging and a foreshadowing of the future season also was a great way to go. Very surprised but pleased that at least one character I expected to die will be making it to the next season. 

There are some dangling questions that I'm not sure we'll get answered,

Spoiler

like how Wiliams/Moldaver survived to 2277 -- but I'm guessing it'll be something like... her own independent wealth let her set up a cryo chamber in a safe place and she'd pop her head out every once in awhile until she saw signs of civilization returning, efforts she'd try to single-handedly hasten with the help of a dash of Marxism to basically beat Vault-Tec and the capitalist-oppressors at their own game.

Another one I think I can ask openly: are the Brotherhood of Steel people supposed to be extremely tolerant of pain through training, drugs, genetic manipulation, or what? Both Maximus and *other character* take significant injuries and either barely react or fail to crumple into screaming agony as would happen with most normal people. Or maybe this is a game nod, and the way characters can take massive wounds and then recover with barely a squeak?

Finally, the finale does touch on the idea of

Spoiler

the return of civilization and who'll be in charge of it, etc. All I can say is that some civilization somewhere does not make the world no longer firmly in the post-apocalypse. It sounds like it'll take centuries well beyond where the games have ended for global society to be back to something like where it was before the War.

 

Edited April 13 by Ran

[Werthead]

I think that's a nod to the game, where you can get flattened by a deathclaw in combat, quickly take a stimpak, and then be absolutely fine.

I mean, you can get your leg blown clean off, hit the stimpak, and be magically fine immediately with no explanation of what the hell happened to your limb. Fallout has only passing familiarity with physical realism.