Fallout was originally released in 1997, and in the span of a little over two decades, the retro-futuristic RPG series has taken the world by storm. Set in an alternate history following the end of World War II, the atomic age is in full swing, with nuclear-powered cars, autonomous robots, and laser weapons set against tube televisions, checkerboard tiling, and white picket fences.
After a nuclear war, the world was annihilated, with the only remnants of humanity either turning to violent raiders, irradiated ghouls, or taking refuge in a variety of experimental underground vaults. The series has jumped all across the ruins of the United States, from the atomic sea ravaging the eastern Commonwealth to the dusty sands that pile up in the remnants of southwestern Nevada. Now, it’s hitting the small screen.
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Prime Video originally announced an adaptation of the post-apocalyptic games back in 2020, but most details of the series remain locked away. Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on who you ask – IGN reported that the Fallout series would feature a wholly original story, completely separate from those of the games. We’ve seen other shows and films in recent years try something similar to mixed results. The question is: will this be a good or bad thing for the Fallout series?
The Fallout World Can Tell Many Stories
Bethesda Softworks
Having an original story isn’t necessarily a bad idea. After all, the Fallout series has told a wide variety of stories across the country. In the mainline games alone, the player does everything from taking over a hostile Washington D.C. to saving the world from being turned into ravenous Super Mutants in Southern California. The multitude of side quests available also takes the player on all sorts of adventures, with particularly memorable ones including a dispute between a pair of “superheroes,” uncovering the mystery behind blue-star bottle caps, or even navigating a haunted casino under the threat of a neck-attached bomb collar.
From a writing standpoint, the main quests in the mainline games weren’t always the most compelling. It was always the experiences that the player made for themselves – wandering off the beaten path, finding something they weren’t supposed to find, getting suddenly killed by a rampaging Deathclaw – that made the later entries in the Fallout series memorable. The world is prime material to explore in a series, and there’s still so much the games haven’t even touched.
Will the Series Still Feel Like Fallout?
The problem with straying far from the games is that it runs the risk of removing itself from what made Fallout so compelling. It’s not just a post-apocalyptic world with horror-tinged ’50s iconography; it’s an entire alternate timeline with its own rules, technologies, cultures, and issues.
Recreational drug use is a common issue, reflected in both the frenzied raiders and the player should they choose to utilize them. Each faction in the series exists for an established purpose, and while later games in the series played fast and loose with their backstories and intentions, there’s no real singular “good guy” in the original game’s lore. The ramifications of nuclear power and Cold War paranoia being integrated into technologies we now take for granted every day present themselves through rampant radiation poisoning, brains and machinery becoming intertwined, and wildlife being horribly mutated into vicious monsters or unsightly livestock.
It’s important to understand what makes Fallout tick. For example, some have criticized the recently released Halo show for not really getting what made the games so compelling to players. Aside from straying significantly from what fans understood to be the series canon, even casual viewers noticed some issues: a lack of action from a series that was synonymous with it, a new character that split the series’ focus, and a questionable romance plagued the season’s eight episodes. Yes, it’s officially an “alternate universe,” but for some, it came off as an excuse to use an existing property for an unrelated story.
The Fallout series needs to be exactly that: a series based on Fallout. As long as it understands and applies the ideas and themes that loosely tie the games together, it should successfully appeal to both fans and newcomers alike. That means going beyond just throwing in power armor and Vault Boy posters in an otherwise irrelevant story. If it doesn’t bother getting the basics right, it may as well be another generic post-apocalypse show.
How Can We Set Our Expectations?
If you want an idea of what a great Fallout live-action series looks like, look no further than the Fallout: Nuka Break web series. While the series is now defunct due to internal issues, the miniseries followed the adventures of three unlikely companions as they scoured the stretches of the Mojave Desert. Despite its status as a fan-made series, the work that went into replicating the games’ props, setting, and motifs are staggering, with Nuka Break even being referenced in an official downloadable weapon for Fallout: New Vegas. It’s also admittedly pretty funny. Spanning 17 entries across two seasons, it’s well worth a watch if you’ve played the games and want an idea of what they could look like on the small screen.
There is currently no release date for the Fallout series. Based on the production’s status, we can reasonably expect the Fallout series to release sometime in 2023 or 2024.
