Fallout Season 1
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
(First watched 2024-04-10) Well... it's definitely Fallout. And I do mean that in a good way. Not everything seems exactly like I would've imagined the games come to life, but it's no more different than I might expect Fallout 5 to be from what came before. Except for more blatant discussions about incest, maybe.
We haven't seen numbered vaults connected before, but as much as they all differed from each other, some of them being set up in a community of communities seems reasonable enough. Though for being direct neighbors with at least telegraph communications between them, they seem surprisingly disconnected. Enough so nobody caught on that they were all fakes. They've apparently connected every few years, so even aside from sending messages back and forth you might think somebody would be looking for some familiar faces from previous visits.
(First watched 2024-04-10) I haven't quite figured out Maximus. On the one hand, he could really be the guy trying to do right, and legit thinking that the asshole knight he was assigned to not worthy of his role. But on the other hand... he could just be full of himself and jumping on excuses to further his own advancement.
The show sure doesn't shy away from the ultraviolence and exploding limbs.
(First watched 2024-04-11) Maximus digging himself in a hole with the Brotherhood. Not just refusing to help his knight, which they wouldn't have anything but his word as the survivor to go on, but now actively impersonating said knight to continue the mission. Props to him, though, for not being quite as much of an asshole to his new squire, at least when it comes to dealing with dangerous monsters.
I realize it's a macguffin, but I do wonder what's in the head. We've seen people with implants before, but... that one just seems to be sitting in the side of the head, not a brain implant or vision or anything like that. I don't suppose he just stuck the equivalent of a USB stick in his neck, though? But if it was doing anything else... I don't think we saw him make use of any abnormal abilities when he was living.
I thought Vault 33 would basically be a memory once Lucy left, but nope, we're still cutting back there and seeing what her previously unmotivated brother is getting up to now that there are major things going on he cares about.
The extra pre-War bit was unexpected and kind of gave me goosebumps. I had noticed the similarity of Cooper's cowboy colors to the Vault suits and wondered if they'd play off that connection eventually. But the color design being directly inspired by his suits, and the famous Vault Boy thumbs up pose coming from him? That's prequel stuff done pretty well, giving new insight without overloading or lingering on it too much.
(First watched 2024-04-11) Ghouls needing to take a substance to keep from going feral seems like it would be a pretty big change from the way things have worked. But I think they mean it's only necessary once a degrading process has begun, to stave off the inevitable indefinitely.
So Vault 32 now seems like a standard Vault, in that something crazy caused everyone to die... just most of the ones seen in games didn't last hundreds of years before reaching that point.
Nice to hear Matt Berry.
(First watched 2024-04-12) Well, Maximus's bad side shows again. When he reveals himself to Thaddeus and Thaddeus is not cool with the ongoing deception, his immediate reaction is "Better kill him!", and it's certainly not the same situation as it was with an asshole knight who was putting him in danger, making threats, and already mortally wounded.
So this show is adding more to the overall series lore than I expected. I better understand why some fans of certain/earlier games are upset. Wondering why the New California Republic isn't a bigger presence in the show? Apparently some time shortly after Fallout: New Vegas, that society went down in bombs as well. It's a bit of a punch in the gut for things like that to happen, but in several ways it makes sense for the series. It sidesteps the need to choose a canon ending for New Vegas by making it not have lasting effects. And for Fallout as an ongoing series it makes sense that it's stuck as a world of junk and radiation rather than having major ongoing successful society within the continental United States. Maximus doesn't even think of 2077 as the big war, since to him the end of the NCR was the end of society.
So who bombed the NCR? Left vague intentionally so it could be one of several factions from New Vegas? Oooor we see the Brotherhood of Steel in the area in the immediate aftermath, and we know they're not above wiping out areas they deem too dangerous. Did Maximus accidentally go on to worship the people who took his world away?
The Vault 33 stuff remains pretty interesting, too. As I've said before usually in games we deal with the Vault briefly and then move on with our lives, but here we see the people left behind slowly coming to learn how... staged things are in the way Vault-Tec set them up, with apparently all of 32's and 33's overseers being from 31; and the carnage of 32 being cleaned up before most residents of 33 could see it. It also recontextualizes Hank McLean as one of the "bad guys" or at least "manipulative forces", since he too was an immigrant from 31 who became overseer.
I don't think I realized until about now that Cooper Howard is probably named for Todd Howard.
(First watched 2024-04-12) The continuing 21st century stuff is actually pretty compelling. From the games of course we knew Vault-Tec to be a pretty messed up company, but here we see it presented as a company who is actively working against world peace because their products wouldn't sell in a peaceful world. And Cooper's wife clearly knows about the experimental vaults, which is why she thinks it's so important to get her family into one of the "good vaults". In the first episode we were presented with a divorced Cooper, so I imagine the familial Vault-Tec conflicts will lead to that.
So this Moldaver survives to the late 23rd century, but doesn't seem to be a ghoul... mysteries. There are cryo-pods, but she didn't seem like someone fresh from pre-War days either.
Vault 4 had Maximus's power armor that they left hidden. He didn't seem surprised to see it there, so did they tell them where to go pick it up or what?
The Ghoul just sewed his finger back on and considered that good enough... maybe ghoul transplants/reattachments are just that easy.
Fallout 4 theme played when Lucy saw the New California Republic flag. I know it's an overall series theme, but I wonder why not closer to the New Vegas version for that specific moment? Which reminds me: the composer of Fallout 3/NV/4/76, Inon Zur, has also worked on TV and film, but they didn't use him for this show? I wonder why.
So the strange stuff going on on level 12 of Vault 4. Is that suggesting that some of the wasteland's weird creatures like mirelurks (or whatever those things on the video are) are creations rather than just nuclear mutations? Certainly seems more realistic than just mutations making things more humanoid over a few centuries, but until now that was just how broad the suspension of disbelief needed to be.
(First watched 2024-04-13) So 21st century Moldaver was working on advanced energy technology, which Vault-Tec bought and buried. Safe to guess this is what's in the head, maybe it is just a "USB stick" after all.
So the quack doctor was slightly less of a quack than anticipated. His cure did work... even if it resulted in Thaddeus becoming a ghoul.
108: The Beginning 2024 April 10
(First watched 2024-04-13) You maniacs! You blew it up! So Vault-Tec actively made sure the bombs dropped all along. Yikes. From the games they seemed carrion-eaters, but now they're the mass murderers. And it was Vault-Tec again in the person of Hank McLean that took out Shady Sands. So it wasn't part of a war with another faction or anything. Looks like next season they'll be visiting New Vegas, which is more of a mess than we last saw it. Since it wasn't the NCR entirely being bombed that's no longer a direct explanation, but I'd buy that the capital being blown up left the rest of the NCR in disarray allowing places like New Vegas to collapse. I guess we'll see.
I've seen fans of 1/2/NV say this series puts the canonicity of those games in modern Fallout in question... but I don't see that. I mean, I don't know every detail, and I doubt every detail was perfectly maintained, but this show seemed MUCH more heavily connected to the events of those games than 3 or 4. I think they just... don't like what became of the places and groups they'd grown an attachment to.