I have been hyped about the Amazon release of the Fallout TV series for a while now, and the entire 8-episode run dropped around a week ago. I’m going to talk about it in this post, but I also understand how someone talking about a show you haven’t watched yet can technically constitute as spoilers. Like if there is some drama out there and a friend says “I liked it, but the ending was sad,” a good slap to their face is an appropriate response. So, this post will have stops and you can exit at your leisure. The comments though, are a free-for-all.

That said, Fallout TV: it’s good.

But is it good?

For me, I had an excellent time watching it. Going in, I am not even sure what I was expecting. Well, I was hoping that the show wouldn’t suck and otherwise be another entry on the Very Long List of Bad Game Adaptations. And I do believe that it, ahem, vaulted over that very low bar. The humor was there, the ultra-violence was there, shit even the common player-behavior tropes were there (e.g. getting distracted by side-quests). It was a very faithful and respectful recreation of the games.

I just don’t know if it’s good for non-Fallout viewers.

I mean that quite literally: my wife isn’t really a gamer, and I don’t know if I should even recommend it. Again, I enjoyed the show and felt it was worth my time. Would she? Like, think about all the retro 1950s aesthetics, the general Vault-Tec intentional weirdness, and so on. None of this would have been independently chosen for a post-apocalypse tale; these things do not enhance the plot or character arcs in any way. It’s there because it’s Fallout. Which, fantastic, I’m happy to see one of my favorite franchises be more culturally recognized. If this gets people curious about the games, that’s more potential fans later.

Maybe that’s enough?

At the same time, I think about Game of Thrones. You don’t have to have read the books or even be into low-magic medieval fantasy shows to be entertained – the acting and dialog and action carries itself. In comparison, I do feel that the source material for Fallout does most of the heavy lifting – Lucy and the Ghoul notwithstanding. Perhaps it is an unfair comparison to begin with though, considering Game of Thrones had a ready script for most of the seasons whereas Fallout is telling a new (canon!) story within the setting.

Speaking of canon, I do want to comment a bit about some of the “controversy” I see online.

Err… I was going to talk about it, but everything appears to have been settled in the interim.

For posterity though, in the show there was a blackboard with a timeline of important dates written on it to illuminate the post-post-apocalyptic things going on in the Fallout universe. One of those dates was “2277 – The Fall of Shady Sands”… followed by an arrow further pointing to a mushroom cloud. Some fans took that to mean that Shady Sands was nuked in 2277, which contradicts the events of Fallout: New Vegas, e.g. no one mentioned the city being destroyed, the NCR were still a prominent faction in New Vegas, etc. Furthermore, the parting shots of Season 1 clearly show New Vegas in a, let’s say, less civilized way than encountered in-game. Ergo, Todd Howard is wiping New Vegas from canon in his years-long quest to get revenge on Obsidian devs who dared make a better Fallout game!

Or something.

Except… nah. Emil Pagliarulo (writer/director of Fallout 3 & 4) said New Vegas is canon, Todd Howard (Bethesda man) said New Vegas is canon. They showed a pre-war Mr. House in the goddamn show! “Ackshually, the games say that Mr. House predicted when the bombs would fall, which contradicts the show where they just tell him who would launch them.” Unless, I dunno, China (or the US!) launched them before Vault-Tec was ready. Perhaps that is a mystery better explored in deeper detail in future seasons of the show. It might even be especially topical as the gang heads toward New Vegas, as seen in the final minutes of the ending.

In any case, I had zero issues with anything the show presented continuity-wise, and am excited to see where it goes from here. Are there still some lingering questions? Sure. But I’m more interested in things like “what happens next?” rather than “How did Hank not instantly recognize Moldaver” or “How did Moldaver survive the war,” and so on. Season 2 has been approved, so we’ll possibly get answers to those questions and then see what New Vegas purists will get mad about next. Since there’s pretty much no way to dance around a canon ending to that game, there will be plenty of material.