Fallout has extensive lore built up over many years, rich pickings for anyone adapting the franchise for the big or small screen so it’s surprising that it’s taken this long for that to happen, especially when titles like Battleship and Rampage have been adapted before Fallout. There was an attempt to make a Fallout film around the year 2000 and it got as far as a script but was ultimately cancelled.
Fast forward another twenty-four years and Amazon’s Prime Video adaption has arrived with a bang, and I mean that quite literally. It wouldn’t be Fallout with a nuclear explosion or two and we get them within minutes of the show starting. What follows is the tale of Lucy (Ella Purnell), who like every protagonist found in the games emerges from a Vault as naïve, blank slate and gradually evolves in to a fully-formed character as the show progress. We are introduced to her in exactly the same way as you create a character in game, listing her skill levels and everything, and while she is rather one dimensional to begin with she does grow over the episodes, mimicking the levelling up in-game.
Unlike the games the first few episodes are rather slow, there’s a lot of world building both in and out of the Vault but when the action does kick in then the blood is generously splattered across the screen. This is not a show for younger members of your family. We are also introduced to Maximus (Aaron Moten), a Squire in the Brotherhood of Steel who was adopted by the faction as a child, and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a mutated human. Maximus and Lucy really work well as contrasts, one having lived their entire life underground, the other subjected to the harsh realties on life in the Wasteland. The Ghoul has less of an arc but does get a lot more back story, Goggins playing his character as a foul-mouthed but charming version of John Wayne – he’s clearly having a lot of fun.
The main plot is essentially a fetch quest that echoes the start of Fallout 3, but the show isn’t afraid to take a swing at themes such as capitalism and religion, satirising both of these to great effect. There are plenty of side quests as well – Matt Berry’s organ harvesting robot is delightful distraction, and we get to meet plenty of the irradiated monsters from the games.
Co-showrunner Graham Wagner has said this is essentially Fallout 5 and while that’s more important from an overall narrative and theme perspective, fans will be pleased by the many references to the game, within the opening few moments we get Nuka Cola, Grognak the Barbarian and even a cheeky wink at an animation from a Pip Boy tutorial. The attention to detail is quite amazing, from the poses the Vault Dwellers strike to the retro futuristic vehicles which are seen for less a second, it really does look exactly like you would hope for. You can also see Amazon’s money on the screen, the sets are dense and rich, perfectly mimicking the retro-futuristic look of the franchise. The production designers should win all the awards for the level of detail they have achieved.
Fallout joins the rather small pool of video games that have been successfully adapted in to other media. While it’s not quite up there with The Last of Us, it’s certainly much better than Paramount’s Halo television series. Fans are going to love the attention to detail, but it’s fundamentally a great story even if you don’t know your Pip Boy from your Bobblehead.
Highly recommended; go binge all eight episodes as soon as possible.
