As you wander the wasteland of Appalachia, you may notice what looks like an oddly dressed ghoul stumbling down the cracked pavement toward you. It’s actually a Scorched, which isn’t anything special, but lately you might’ve seen them dressed in holiday attire. The bright red and white frock of a Scorched Wanderer stands out in the bleak post-apocalypse, and if you manage to beat your fellow survivors to the punch, you can actually farm Holiday Scorched in Fallout 76 for fantastic rewards. Why would you want to? Well, read on. – Brandon Morgan Read More
Genre content doesn’t always do well at the Emmys but this year, it’s getting some love. Fallout, What We Do in the Shadows, and X-Men ’97 each got a nomination for the best show in the drama, comedy, and animation categories this year.
Fallout has the steepest competition in the drama category, up against another genre show in Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, plus The Crown, The Gilded Age, The Morning Show, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Slow Horses, and Shōgun. In comedy, What We Do in the Shadows will face off against Abbott Elementary, The Bear, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Hacks, Only Murders in the Building, Palm Royale, and Reservation Dogs. Over in animation, X-Men ’97 is nominated alongside Blue Eye Samurai, Bob’s Burgers, Scavengers Reign, and The Simpsons.
Walton Goggins also got a lead actor nomination for his work in Fallout, which is exciting though winning will be tough against Idris Elba in Hijack, Donald Glover in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Gary Oldman in Slow Horses, Hiroyuki Sanada in Shōgun, and Dominic West in The Crown. Matt Berry also got a lead acting nomination for What We Do in the Shadows but his competition is also stiff; he’s up against Larry David for Curb Your Enthusiasm, Steve Martin and Martin Short for Only Murders in the Building, Jeremy Allen White for The Bear, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai for Reservation Dogs.
You can see the full list of nominees at this link. The awards will be given on September 15.
It’s the middle of May 2024 and that means we’re nearly halfway through the year. What has this year been like in video game news? Tons of layoffs (sad), lots of new games (glad), and some weird outliers, as usual. This week, we saw set photos and official shots from The Last of Us season two, dove back into the GameStop stock market, and asked the dude who nuked Phil Spencer in Fallout 76 about his motivations. Click through for all of this week’s best breaking news.
Ever since watching the Fallout show, I can’t get enough of it. The show was my introduction to its world, and the ending only inspired me to dive deeper in the worlds of the video games that inspired the show. Everything from the evils of Vault-Tec to the eccentric characters fascinated me. Clearly I’m not alone — the game series received an influx of players following the release of the show — but not everyone can commit to playing the games. It can be a massive time investment and even require hundreds of mods to play. Luckily for me, I’ve found a great way to experience the games without actually playing them: Watching clips on TikTok.
I can already hear the groans from seasoned fans — that’s valid! — since watching short videos about specific quests, locations, or characters doesn’t at all replace actually playing the game. But now I get to see a highlight reel from the people who put those hundreds of hours into the game and learn about the series in way that’s tailored towards the viewers of the show. For example, the video below shows an undetonated bomb in Fallout 3’s Megaton and discusses theories on who first dropped the bombs — which the show directly addresses.
Clips like the above allow me to learn about the world as it’s presented in the game series and can also give additional information about the lore of the game. Sure, I could go and read Wikis on the game, but that’s just not as fun. In the below clip, we can learn about a guy who runs the radio — a role played by Fred Armisen in the show — and what happens if you kill the radio guy in the game. (Spoilers: It’s funny.)
Even if I were to put the time and effort into the games, it wouldn’t guarantee that I’ll get to go and see everything I want in a perfect way. Like, I could play, but I might not know how funny the result would be if I killed the radio host. In other examples, people have just been really good at highlighting goofy moments. The clip below talks about a mysterious cult that formed around the Gravitron theme park ride.
People also just pull hilarious stunts in the games that I wouldn’t have the time or patience to pull off. Like this person, who collects dozens of Protectrons to defend against an invasion from the The Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 4.
Prior to the show, I might have scrolled past these videos, and TikTok’s algorithm might have taken that as a sign I wasn’t interested in that content. However, now, the show has given me just enough knowledge to contextualize the big moments shown in the clips. The videos hit a sweet spot where I know enough to understand the clips and can recognize certain sects or recurring characters, but I don’t know so much that none of it surprises me. All in all, it’s been an enjoyable way to learn more about the games, and I’d recommend poking around on TikTok if you’re looking to scratch that Fallout itch.
Plucky heroine Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) leaves the safety of Vault 33 to find her kidnapped father Hank (Kyle MacLachlan). Maximus (Aaron Moten) is devoted to his found family, the Brotherhood of Steel. And Cooper Howard a.k.a. The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) has wandered the wasteland for centuries in search of his long-lost family.
Before he became the noseless gunslinger we know and love, The Ghoul was Hollywood star Cooper Howard, known for playing heroic cowboys in Western films. Howard was a devoted husband to his wife Barb (Frances Turner), a Vault-Tec executive, and a loving father to their daughter Janey (Teagan Meredith).
Barb recruits Cooper to be the spokesman for Vault-Tec and assures him that she’s reserved their family spots in the “management” vaults. But after he’s confronted by Moldaver (a.k.a. Ms. Williams), he realizes that something nefarious is happening at Vault-Tec. After planting a bug in his wife, Cooper overhears Vault-Tec execs in a meeting with other CEOs. Cooper listens as his wife lays out their grim plan: Vault-Tec will drop the bombs themselves, ending the world to rebuild it in their image.
After discovering his wife’s betrayal, Cooper and Barb (presumably) got divorced and Cooper started working as an entertainer at children’s birthday parties. Cooper and Janey are working a party gig when the first bombs drop in 2077, and when we meet Cooper 200 years later he’s become The Ghoul. But what happened during those lost years?
The last we see is Cooper and Janey riding away from the nuclear fallout. Did Janey and Barb make it into a vault? Cooper certainly seems to think so, as we learn in the season one finale that he is still searching for his family. Did Barb and Janey enter cryostasis like Hank and Betty? Are either of them still alive? We’ll have to wait until season two to find out.
(featured image: Prime Video)
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The depository hasn’t heard from parent company Outfox Hospitality, and neither have vendors like Dana Cree Salls, owner of Pretty Cool Ice Cream. Salls Cree, an acclaimed pastry chef and author, tells Eater she’s reached out to Outfox — Foxtrot represented her largest account — but no one has responded. She’s asked for the public’s help in buying inventory that Pretty Cool was to deliver to Foxtrot. To worsen matters? Foxtrot closed on Salls Cree’s birthday.
Despite the challenge, Salls Cree says Pretty Cool is hiring which would make the ice cream shop a nice land spot for former Dom’s or Foxtrot workers. Others in Chicago’s culinary community are stepping up. Derrick Tung at Paulie Gee’s Pizza is offering specials for Foxtrot and Dom’s workers throughout May. For vendors, like Pretty Cool, that need a place to sell their goods, Tung is offering vendors space at his pizzeria on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in Logan Square. Interested vendors can register via a Google Form. Tung says he lacks any direct connections with Foxtrot. His Wicker Park pizzeria is across from a Foxtrot store and some workers would stop in for a slice.
While some note — and resent — that Foxtrot and Dom’s only had North Side locations, one South Sider wants to help. Ed Marszewski of Marz Community Brewing is pushing his brewery’s initiative, Snack Wave, to help former Foxtrot and Dom’s vendors. The program’s purpose is to sell snacks made in Chicago or its surroundings at Marz’s McKinley Park and Bucktown breweries: “If you are a producer or know someone who is a producer who has been affected by the closures, contact us, or please tag them and send them our way,” Marszewski writes on Instagram. “We will do our best to try selling the products in our spots. We can’t guarantee that everything will be a fit with us, but we will consider every product sent our way.”
Signage remains at all Foxtrot’s and Dom’s locations, including in River North where “coming soon” messages are up where Dom’s planned to open. In Lincoln Park, paper signs list Cash App and Venmo handles from former employees at a space shared with Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, 900 W. Armitage Avenue. A “for lease” sign is also up in the window, though it’s partially covered by painted letters. A small paper sign reads that Jeni’s remains open. Another reads that Jeni’s is “getting a facelift, but are still open!”
Despite the signs, a Jeni’s rep tells Eater that the store is temporarily closed and that they have no further information. Large lines are familiar sights during the summer with customers waiting for ice cream on Armitage. As Foxtrot and Dom’s closures surprised its employees, Jeni’s also seems to need a minute to plot their next step in Lincoln Park.
Fallout 76, Bethesda’s MMORPG set in the Fallout universe, is probably more popular today than ever thanks to Amazon’s new TV series. So it makes sense that in a recent interview, Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard was asked aboutFallout 76and crossplay. And while the ability for PC and console players to mingle sounds off the table, Howard at least seemed more positive about cross-progression.
Why Fallout: New Vegas Is Still Canon After The TV Show
Since the launch of the Fallout TV show earlier this month, all of the Fallout games have exploded in popularity. This includes the black sheep of the family, Fallout 76. The online-only spin-off is seeing more players than ever across all platforms. And as thousands of new players rush into the open-world post-apocalyptic MMORPG, they might expect—like most games in 2024—that Fallout 76 would support crossplay or, at least, cross-progression. However, if you play on Xbox you can’t play with PC players or PlayStation gamers, and all your progress is tied to that platform, too. And while crossplay seems unlikely, Todd Howard seems more open to a future where cross-progression is a thing in Fallout 76.
“We keep looking into it, but [Fallout 76] wasn’t designed that way from the beginning. So obviously we get into server and database silos,” said Howard.
When asked about crossplay or cross-progression, he offered Bethesda’s opinions on the features that have become standard in 2024.
“Here’s what I would say, which is for us the the more the important thing is cross-progression than cross-play—and we do separate them—we’d love to have it all, sure. It’s something we are looking at but I will say it’s quite—the way that [Fallout 76] architected from the beginning—a technical lift. Not saying we are or aren’t doing anything, we are looking at it and seeing where that’s going to impact people.”
He continued: “I think going forward in the world we want to be in, I think it’s it’s very important and something that you know in our future games that we’re going to be really, really mindful about to make sure—in particular the progression—that where you pick up a game you’re able no matter what screen you’re on you’re able to just keep going with your character and what you were doing.”
Funnily enough, Howard did suggest that if employees are annoyed by something in their games—like no crossplay—it becomes a higher priority for them and they fix it.
“When we can’t pick it up and [make progression,] it does move it up the stack internally.”
So we just need some folks at Bethesda to get annoyed about Fallout 76‘s lack of cross-saves, I guess!
I love destroying things. The physical destruction of objects can be funny and cathartic. Thankfully, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth lets me indulge my desires for destruction in a limited but fun way. While in Costa del Sol, you can hop on a “wheelie,” the game’s in-world equivalent of a Segway vehicle, and smash it into restaurant tables, seats, barrels, and other property. Fun! Better still, you can earn some neat items for riding around on a wheelie, and finding ways to weave some destruction into your travels can liven up the otherwise pretty boring process of gliding around on your own personal transporter device. – Claire Jackson Read More
Amazon’sFallout TV series is considered a huge success by critics and fans alike, and has already been renewed for a second season! While season one was amazing, it left us with some burning questions that season two needs to answer.
1. What’s the deal with Lee Moldaver?
(Prime Video)
TMS‘ Sarah Barrett touches on many of the questions viewers have about Lee Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury). Namely, how the heck has she survived intact since before the Great War? Cooper Howard is now a ghoul. Hank MacLean was a Vault-Tec employee frozen in a cryopod, as was every Vault 33 overseer. So, where does Moldaver fit into all this? She’s clearly not a ghoul, so she must have been frozen at some point. But where, how, and by whom?
Also, what’s her connection to the New California Republic? Was she one of the founders of the NCR and Shady Sands?
And lastly, what was the nature of her relationship with Lucy’s mother, Rose? Whether romantic or platonic, their relationship seemed to be a close one. Moldaver knew Rose well enough to speak knowledgeably about the kind of person she was and to recognize the same qualities in Lucy. As Barrett asks in her piece, if they were so close, how could Moldaver then allow such violence to come to Rose’s children while planning the attack and fake marriage at Vault 33? Children she knew when they were younger. Did she believe they would be strong and smart enough to survive and count on that? Or have her feelings about them turned sour over the years she’s lived with Rose as a feral ghoul?
Moldaver is dead, but in Fallout‘s world, death may only be temporary. I hope we get more information about Lee Moldaver as the show continues.
2. Does Norm get into a pod?
(Prime Video)
When we last see Norm MacLean (Moisés Arias), he’s been trapped in Vault 31 by Brain-on-a-Roomba Bud Askins (Michael Esper) after learning the truth about the nature of the Vault 31-32-33 relationship: Vault 31 is where Vault-Tec managers are kept frozen to act as overseers for the other two vaults, and Vault 32 and 33 are breeding pools designed to breed future managers to rebuild civilization in Vault-Tec’s image.
Bud suggests that, since he won’t let Norm leave Vault 31, Norm should get into his father’s cryopod to ride out the apocalypse until vault-dwellers can return to the surface. We see Norm step toward the cryopods with a worried expression … but we don’t see him climb in it and freeze himself.
From the start of the show, Norm has been a contrary character. When others go left, he goes right. When his family tries to start a book club, he plays games on his Pip-Boy instead. And when the Vault 33 council accuses him of “lacking enthusiasm,” he doesn’t exactly try to change that impression.
Hell, he’s in Vault 31 in the first place because, like his sister, he couldn’t let his questions rest. Though others warned him to forget what he saw in Vault 32, he had to keep investigating. So, it doesn’t seem likely that Norm would willingly freeze himself just because Bud tells him. Especially since Bud isn’t necessarily a physical threat. I predict that Norm will try to outsmart Bud and reach Vault 32 to get help from Chet (Dave Register) and Woody (Zach Cherry) to overthrow the Vault-Tec leadership.
Either way, we need to find out what happened to Norm!
3. What’s the status of the New California Republic?
(Prime Video)
As I mentioned in my piece about the Fallout season one finale, just because Shady Sands was destroyed doesn’t mean that the NCR is no more. Lucy passes a billboard where Shady Sands is touted as “the first” capital of the NCR, meaning that the capital has changed. Meanwhile, Bethesda’s Todd Howard has confirmed that not only is the Fallout series canon, but that the events of “Fallout: New Vegas” happened, and that the “fall of Shady Sands” doesn’t necessarily refer to Hank and Vault-Tec bombing it.
In the Fallout games, the NCR became a bloated organization that had trouble managing its holdings. Communication is tricky when all you have are holo-tapes, a janky computer terminal system for inter-departmental mail, and word of mouth. It would stand to reason that, Shady Sands or no Shady Sands, the NCR still exists. Weaker perhaps, but still in existence. After all, Moldaver is still flying the flag and working out of NCR headquarters at the Griffith Observatory.
With season two likely taking us to New Vegas, we’ll surely learn more about the NCR in season two!
4. What happened to Mr. House after “New Vegas?”
(Prime Video/Bethesda Game Studios)
Fallout viewers learned that fan-favorite game villain Mr. House (Ravi Silver) was at the Vault-Tec apocalypse-planning meeting in the season finale. Gamers know that he survived by putting his consciousness into a robot. House then controls New Vegas (at least at the time of Fallout: New Vegas), which takes place 15 years before the TV series. Since New Vegas is still standing in the show’s timeline, many players believe that this makes the game-ending where Mr. House wins the canonical ending.
But did New Vegas’ survival require Mr. House? Will the New Vegas that Hank walks into in his stolen power armor be the same New Vegas of the game, or will 15 years have changed it significantly? Will Mr. House appear in the present-day timeline of Fallout season two? How will the show address his backstory if he does? Or, does Mr. House have an even more frightening and mysterious successor whom we’ll meet as a new character? Inquiring robo-brains want to know.
5. What happened to Cooper Howard’s family?
(Prime Video)
We know that Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) was the spokesperson for Vault-Tec and the origin of the “Vault Boy” logo. Howard, his wife Barb (Frances Turner), and their daughter Janey (Teagan Meredith) were guaranteed a spot in a management vault. After discovering his wife’s betrayal, they were divorced and Cooper started working as an entertainer at children’s birthday parties. Cooper and Janey are working a party gig when the first bombs drop, and when we meet Cooper 200 years later he’s become The Ghoul. But what happened during those lost years?
How did he lose his spot in a vault? Did Barb and their daughter get into one? When the bombs fell, did Cooper take Janey to a vault, or somewhere else? Did he still think he had a spot in a vault only to be turned away? Did he get into a vault, but eventually leave? Did Vault-Tec make him a ghoul?
When he confronts Hank toward the end of the Fallout season finale, he asks him “Where’s my f*cking family?” He expects Hank to know, meaning there’s a good chance they’re still alive. Perhaps they’re in Vault 31. Or maybe they’ve since been thawed and located elsewhere. Regardless of their whereabouts, The Ghoul is a fan-favorite character on the show, and we want him to get answers!
Speculation is an extremely fun pastime when it comes to genre shows. That’s why they call it “speculative fiction.” And we’ll have to entertain ourselves with a lot of speculating until Fallout returns to Prime Video for its second season … whenever that will be.
(featured image: JoJo Whilden/Prime Video)
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Fallout’s a pretty good show, and one of the big reasons why is the ever-reliable Walton Goggins. As the Ghoul—or Cooper Howard, once upon a time—he’s a menace to Lucy and everyone else throughout the season, while being enjoyable to watch both in the irradiated present and the pre-nuclear past. Creating him and others like him took some time, partially because they are and aren’t like anything else you’ve seen before on TV.
Will the Fallout TV Series Radiate the Tone of the Video Games?
Talking to Polygon, associate costume designer Amy Westcot explained how the costuming team concepted different “ghoulness” stages, of which there are “so many different degrees.” In the games, ghouls can exist as an average person with the right meds, otherwise they become Feral and attack basically anything that moves. They’re that world’s zombie equivalent, just in two different flavors where one is “kind of on their way out” and considerably deadlier. But watching ghouls go from normal to Feral isn’t a pleasant experience, one the show’s creators clearly wanted to make as clear as possible.
For the show, keeping the ghouls in a mostly human state was “super important,” particularly as it pertains to their humanity. Westcott revealed the costuming department worked hard with the textile team to make sure they looked right for their age while still garnering sympathy from the audience. “These were people once, and that was important to remember—even the Feral ghouls,” she noted. “They were supposed to be in rags, but…you get some remnant that they were a person once, and I think that we all empathize with them as well.”
In the case of the Ghoul, Westcott said that he couldn’t help but be the least grotesque of the bunch we see. Throughout the season, we see him guzzle down those aforementioned meds, which enable him to “still [have] his wits about him” and stand out from the other ghouls. He’s not fully one way or the other, but it was vital to have him seem like a regular (albeit irradiated) person while also “at a stage of ghoulness, [he just] couldn’t be Feral.” With a second season in the cards, it may be that he ends up sliding closer into Feral territory.
The first season of Fallout is fully available to watch over on Prime Video.
If you thought that Excel spreadsheets were just for mind-numbing office work, think again. A gaming hobbyist has created an Excel-based RPG game that he based on the popular post-apocalyptic game Fallout. It’s the end of the world, all over again.
Will the Fallout TV Series Radiate the Tone of the Video Games?
How do you turn spreadsheet software into a video game? Don’t ask me because I have less than zero idea. That said, the game’s creator, YouTuber “Dynamic Pear,” has offered a quick tutorial on how to use his weird, makeshift game that was developed via everybody’s least favorite office software.
On his website, “Pear” gives a brief description of the game’s story like so:
It is the 145th year of the second age. Life in Mercer is unrecognisable to that which came earlier – The bombs saw to that. Humanity may never fully recover…Adventure beckons once more, and you are ready to answer its call!
The YouTuber explains that his game has two components: “Mapping and Questing” and “Battling.” You can move through the various areas of the bombed-out RPG environment…
Screenshot: YouTube/Dynamic Pear
…or you can duel with the various characters you encounter along the way.
Screenshot: YouTube/Dynamic Pear
The website also offers more details about the various quirks of the gameplay and includes a link where you can download the game.
The inspiration behind this creation, Fallout, is a popular post-apocalyptic video game that takes place after a nuclear war. The first version of it was originally released in 1997 and was playable on Mac, Windows, and MS-DOS. It was originally spawned by a previous 1988 game, dubbed Wasteland. Since then, there have been four sequels and a number of spinoffs. But the big reason we’re seeing this now is that the Amazon Prime Video TV series based on the games has exploded in popularity and inspired people to head back to the experiences that started it all. In this case, someone made a new experience just for you.
Anyway, if you’re looking to make your workday slightly more interesting and you don’t have access to the Eggman Game, my suggestion would be to check out Dynamic Pear’s interesting creation. It’s probably the most fun you’ll ever have with spreadsheets.
When I started playing Fallout 76 in 2018 there were no backpacks. So I never thought about it. But when I learned from a random comment that backpacks had been added after that point and had been in the game for years, I felt stupid for never crafting one. And then I went to collect the recipe for a pack and felt even dumber. Let me help you avoid this situation.
Fallout’s Michael Esper On Being ‘Obsessed’ With The Series, Luigi, And More
Yes, like many players, I’ve returned to the irradiated online wasteland ofFallout 76. I had started feeling the itch for my on-again-off-again MMO months before the Fallout show. But I resisted. However, after watching the entirety of Amazon’s excellent live-action series based on the post-apocalyptic RPG franchise, it was too hard to stop myself from re-installing Bethesda’s online version of Fallout. As is often the case, I spent a chunk of my time in Fallout 76 trying to figure out more ways to carry all the random junk needed to build structures and craft items in the game.
My annoying quest to get a backpack
During a random perusal of the Fallout 76 subreddit, I discovered that backpacks had been added to the game in a past update. And they let you carry more stuff. I was intrigued! I also felt like a dummy. A moment later, I did a quick Google search and found a Reddit post and a couple of guides explaining how to get a backpack. Seemed simple enough. So I booted up Fallout 76 and headed to the Morgantown Airport.
According to Reddit, the blueprint for crafting the useful pack was upstairs in the airport in an area you visit in the early hours of Fallout 76. I had been here years ago, but never came back since making my original character. During the 2019 Wild Appalachia update, Bethesda added the backpack blueprint in this early game area. Makes sense, as many new players will stumble upon it.
However, for players who have been journeying through the game for years already, you could easily miss it as you’d have no need to return to the airport. So back I went. I fought my way through the enemies inside and found the chest upstairs and discovered… no blueprint.
Screenshot: Bethesda
Why the backpack isn’t in the Morgantown Airport
At that moment I had a thought, the same one that I have many times in Fallout 76: “Hmmm, did I do something wrong or is the game just broken?”
So I booted up Fallout 76 again, joined a new world, quickly fought my way up through the airport and…no backpack in the chest. Again. This time I checked the web for anyone else experiencing this bug and many others were complaining that, yes, the backpack wasn’t in the airport.
Turns out Bethesda actually moved where the blueprint spawns to a different area a few months ago, a spot that new players will encounter even earlier in their opening hours of Fallout 76.
I felt dumber than ever. But now, let me help you get a backpack—which is very useful—and help you avoid this silly series of events.
How to unlock and craft the backpack in Fallout 76
To get a backpack now (in April 2024) you need to head to the Overseer’s Camp located south of Fallout 76 near the Wayward bar. It’s near a river just north of Green County Lodge and is located in a chest marked as the Overseer’s cache.
Screenshot: Bethesda / Fallout Wiki / Kotaku
Loot the plans and then check your inventory—you should be able to activate or “learn” the recipe. At that point, assuming you have the materials, you can now craft a backpack at an armor bench. You’ll need one piece of cloth, one piece of leather and a piece of steel. As you level up you can craft better versions of the pack that hold even more weight.
If you are a new player who started playing in the last few weeks, you likely already picked up the plans for the backpack after visiting the Overseer’s Camp.
If you can’t craft a pack, check the “Notes” section of your inventory and make sure you’ve activated the backpack plan. Just keep in mind you can’t use a backpack while wearing power armor in Fallout 76.
The popular game series Fallout is now an equally popular streaming show, becoming Amazon’s most-watched TV season since The Rings of Power. This despite the belief that a Fallout show or movie was never really right or even possible.
The series of video games date back to 1997, with the franchise’s most recent release in 2018. Set in a retrofuturistic alternate United States after a tense resource war in 2077 where the world powers unleashed their nuclear arsenals on each other, the planet is now a nuclear wasteland.
Pockets of humans survive in underground shelters called vaults created by Vault-Tec. The games usually follow someone born in a vault venturing out into the surface world on a quest ranging from finding a new water chip for their Vault to tracking down their dad, who mysteriously leaves the vault. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwK_h75ySZs
Fallout takes the world of the video game and creates its own original story that is canon to the series. As the story goes, society stopped developing some time in the 1950s and remnants of that time still exist.
The series follows three main characters. Lucy (Ella Purnell), a vault Dweller, is thrust into the wasteland on a quest to find her father (Kyle MacLachlan) after he is kidnapped by raiders from the surface. Maximus (Aaron Moten) is a squire from The Brotherhood of Steel, a techno-theocratic cult that wants to control the old-world technology in the wasteland.
The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) is a radiated human bounty hunter with a mysterious past. All three characters and their storylines show different aspects of the world of the show. The Vault is much different than the surface world, and Lucy is a fish out of water. Large factions inhabit the wasteland with their own ideals and missions.
The performances of the show’s big three are fantastic. Purnell is great at playing the wide-eyed and naive Lucy. Aaron Moten’s performance as Maximus is hilarious and nuanced. Maximus is similarly naive but is dogged in his mission, and in his stunted adulthood, he is very conflicted. As the Ghoul/Cooper Goggins is the perfect and smooth-talking outlaw. The show also features great performances from the likes of Kyle MacLachlan, Moisés Arias, Sarita Choudhury, and many more.
The show’s most interesting part might be the situation in Vault 33, where Lucy hails from. The show could have quickly abandoned the vault when Lucy ventures out into the wasteland, but it instead makes the vaults integral to the plot.
The vault is a controlled environment in the show with rules, and something is clearly going on behind the scenes. The vault dwellers of Vault 33 are polite and have a civic responsibility. So, throwing in a massive conspiracy and violence from the outside makes for an interesting dynamic.
The games are known for their humor and atmosphere and this carries on into the show which is funny and weird and hard to watch at times. Humor can instantly turn to terror in Fallout’s uncertain world.
Roaming the wasteland, you might get kidnapped and sold to a robot to have your organs harvested. You might stumble upon a community that feels safe but is hiding a terrible secret. The episodes sometimes feel like quests in a game, and they work pretty well. In the games, you keep moving and might get sidetracked, but those side missions might give important context to your experience.
Is the show exclusively for fans of the game? No, it is surprisingly open for fans with no knowledge of the series to jump in. It explains its world through its three main characters and flashbacks to the times before the bombs fell.
It may not be for everyone. The episode length can be grating at times, and some plot reveals down the line may be obvious (most are very well done). There are some big exposition dumps toward the end that can put a wrench in the momentum, but these shows always have big exposition dumps. It may feel daunting or weird if you are unfamiliar with the source material, but it can be rewarding.
Fallout is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
If you loved the Fallout TV series and want to dive into a game that’s like it, but not too like it, we curated a list for you. We’ve also got some hidden Nintendo Switch secrets to make the most of the handheld console, lingering Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth help, and yeah, we’re back into Destiny 2. Read on for the major tips of the week.
Will the Fallout TV Series Radiate the Tone of the Video Games?
Variety, Deadline, and the Hollywood Reporter all shared the news, with THR including this statement from Amazon MGM Studios head Jennifer Salke: “Jonah [Nolan, co-producer], Lisa [Joy, co-producer], Geneva [Robertson-Dworet, co-showrunner and writer], and Graham [Wagner, co-showrunner and writer] have captivated the world with this ground-breaking, wild ride of a show. The bar was high for lovers of this iconic video game and so far we seem to have exceeded their expectations, while bringing in millions of new fans to the franchise … We are thrilled to announce season two after only one week out and take viewers even farther into the surreal world of Fallout.”
The renewal confirmation comes on the heels of reports in Variety and elsewhere that season two will film in California to take advantage of $25 million in tax credits—a shift that will definitely add fuel to speculation that the show could continue its adventures in New Vegas, as seen in the games.
THR also has a quote from Nolan and Joy, whose previous sci-fi projects include the prematurely cancelled Westworld: “Praise be to our insanely brilliant showrunners, Geneva and Graham, to our kick-ass cast, to Todd and James and all the legends at Bethesda, and to Jen, Vernon, and the amazing team at Amazon for their incredible support of this show. We can’t wait to blow up the world all over again.”
Throughout its first season, Fallout tees up what seemingly are a bunch of mysteries that are either not connected at all or by the loosest of threads—why is the Ghoul so fascinated when he learns Lucy’s full name? What’s going on with dwellers from Vault 31? How did Moldaver make her way from the pre-war days to lead the New California Republic, and just what did she need from Wilzig the Enclave defector? What really happened to Lucy’s mom, and will she be able to save her dad? Will Maximus be able to make his way back to Lucy—and away from the Brotherhood once and for all?
All this smashes together in the finale (appropriately called “The Beginning”) to reveal that actually everything is much messier, more personal, and interconnected than anyone thought. As Lucy comes face to face with what was always her goal from the moment she left Vault 33, we and she alike get to learn, thanks to a flashback to Cooper’s perspective, that it was Vault-Tec itself, spearheading a conglomerate of multiple pro-war companies, that fired the first bombs that set off the apocalypse, ensuring their products would be used. Also, along the way, Vault-Tec froze all of its managers—from the lowest assistants to the highest bosses—to control the world that came after the fallout and ensure that capital remains in their own hands. And not only that, we’ve met a bunch of those Vault-Tec staffers throughout the season, like Betty, and of course, Hank himself—revealed as the assistant to Cooper’s wife, Henry, in pre-war times.
It does a lot to make clear the way the show views Fallout’s world, while once again putting all three of the main characters together, if not ideologically or geographically, in just how related to all this mess they each are.
Okay so maybe don’t hit Kyle McLachlan with the CG-deaging-ray but still, in spite of that, it all works!
Fans of the Fallout games won’t be shocked to learn that Amazon’s new TV show based on the franchise is gruesomely violent. This is a franchise known for its Bloody Mess perk, and for the VATS system, which lets players target and blow off heads and limbs. But the violence of the Fallout TV series still has the power to shock; viewers can expect multiple severed heads and lopped-off extremities in this post-apocalyptic world where mutated monsters feed on human flesh.
While the gore of Fallout may be uncomfortable to watch, it’s rarely (if ever) gratuitous. Instead, it’s done in the service of world-building. In many cases, it’s played for comedy and surprise, in the style of Sam Peckinpah or Quentin Tarantino films.
The first few minutes of Fallout may give viewers the incorrect impression that the show treats violence only with deadly seriousness. The first episode of the series starts with the nuclear destruction of Los Angeles. It’s a chilling scene, and since young children are involved, it sets a grim tone.
And yes, in later episodes, there are scenes that are difficult to watch. Puppies are incinerated at a research facility. Innocent Vault Dwellers are casually murdered. Body parts are sliced, crushed, and made into human jerky. In the show’s above-ground post-apocalyptic society, extreme violence is presented as a daily occurrence, and that society has the means to address it. Medicines that can instantly heal wounds are as commonplace as off-the-shelf replacement body parts.
Some of the show’s instances of violence are nods to the games. One big shootout plays like a VATS-powered killing spree, in which viewers watch in slo-mo as a bullet rips through multiple poor wastelanders. The show’s creators highlight that bodies are squishy and life is cheap in this world, but that its residents have adapted accordingly. Death and violence don’t seem to bother anyone all that much. Hell, becoming a brainless zombie is treated as something of an inconvenience in Fallout’s world.
Fallout also delves into body horror. One of the show’s more disturbing creatures, as seen in trailers, is a giant mutant axolotl covered in hundreds of human fingers. Adding an extra layer of grossness, we see one of those creatures vomit up the rotting contents of its massive stomach before it dies. It is extremely unpleasant! We see horrifying examples of human-mutant experiments. Giant mutant cockroaches run rampant, and they burst open with green gooey guts when stomped on.
All of this is to say that violence in the Fallout show is fast, frequent, and unrepentant. But it isn’t dreary or humorless in the way other post-apocalyptic worlds, like The Walking Dead or The Last of Uscan be. Instead, it borrows a page from the Mad Max movies. Like the Fallout games, Fallout the TV series isn’t for the queasy. But for fans of black comedy and copious amounts of fake blood, it’s a hoot.
All eight episodes of Fallout season 1 are now streaming on Prime Video.
Yeah, he can have all my caps. Photo: Prime Video/YouTube
Ella Purnell’s time on Yellowjackets may be over, but she’s ready to set the world on fire in a new series for Amazon. Purnell joins Walton Goggins and Aaron Motenas the stars of a new show based on the long-running Fallout video-game franchise. Set in a dieselpunk post-nuclear wasteland, the Fallout games explore issues of morality, strategy, and how much Mad Max can inspire a work before you have to give out an associate-producer credit.
Bethesda director Todd Howard said on the Lex Fridman podcast that the show won’t directly adapt any of the games, but instead will go off-map. “For this, it was ‘Let’s do something that exists in the world of Fallout.’ It’s not retelling a game’s story. It’s basically an area of the map and like, Let’s tell a story here that fits in the world we built and doesn’t break any of the rules,” he said. “It can reference things in the games, but isn’t a retelling of the games. It exists in the same world, but it’s its own unique thing, so it adds to it.” Varietysays that Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan will executive produce, fresh from Westworld getting sent to the Valley Beyond by HBO.
Various Fallout games have taken place in the irradiated ruins of California, West Virginia, Las Vegas, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Prime Video released a tweet showing people in jumpsuits for Vault 33, which has been identified as part of Los Angeles. Within the games, LA is known as the Boneyard. By 2296 (when the series takes place), the Boneyard has been “civilized” under the New Californian Republic’s flag for years. The Fallout series takes place after all the games, whose timelines give Jeremy Bearimy a run for its money (Fallout Shelter is Tuesdays, and also July, and sometimes never).
Per Variety, Purnell will be playing an “upbeat and uncannily direct” woman, with all-American gumption and a dangerous twinkle in her eye. That describes almost every female NPC in the games. Empirereports that Purnell will be a vault-dweller leaving her safe shelter for the first time ever. Aaron Moten will be playing Maximus, a member of the Brotherhood of Steel (like…techno-monks?). According to Deadline, Goggins is playing a ghoul — humans whose flesh has melted off owing to nuclear radiation. But an upside? They’re essentially immortal. At the show’s March 6 press conference, the crew revealed Goggins’s ghoul is known only as the Ghoul. “The Ghoul is, in some ways, the poet Virgil in Dante’s Inferno. He’s the guide, if you will, through this irradiated hellscape that we find ourselves in in this post-apocalyptic world,” Goggins said. Pre-Great War, the Ghoul was known as Cooper Howard, and he acted as spokesman for Vault-Tec, the shady corporation that built the series’s iconic vaults.
All three will be searching for the same MacGuffin. “We talked a lot about The Good, The Bad And The Ugly,” co-creator Graham Wagner told Empire. “That’s three characters in search of a box of gold, so we asked ourselves, ‘What’s the gold in this world?’” Chris Parnell, Michael Emerson, Zach Cherry, Kyle MacLachlan and Xelia Mendes-Jones have also been cast as series regulars.
Hopefully not. The crew made a point at the March 6 press conference to talk about how cathartic it is working on an apocalyptic show with a sense of humor. “I think you also have a moment that we’re in right now in which the world, you know, it seems to be evermore frightening and dour,” said executive producer and director Jonathan Nolan. “And so an opportunity for us to work on a show that gets to look that in the eye, right, and we get to talk about the end of the world, but to do it with a sense of humor. There’s a thread of optimism woven into the show.”
Fallout comes to Prime Video a few days earlier than anticipated. On Monday, they announced the show will be streaming all eight episodes on April 10, 2024.
Fallout: New Vegas has endured in the cultural zeitgeist in a way that few other games have. Even within the Fallout fandom, it’s earned a prized position as a true classic of the RPG genre. That love is still reflected today, in goofy memes and fan art and enduring debates over which endgame is the right one. Even though the game has aged terribly in some respects — characters look rough, and not just from living in the apocalypse — it still persists as one of the high points of the Fallout franchise. The new Fallout TV series is set to premiere on Amazon, so there’s seldom been a better time to revisit New Vegas or play it for the first time.
Fallout: New Vegas opens with an exploration of the Mojave Wasteland, setting up some of the factions vying for control of this region of post-apocalyptic America. This game builds off the lore of the first two isometric RPGs, returning to the West Coast. The New California Republic, a democratic attempt at building back an old America, has expanded too far. Here, at the Hoover Dam, they struggle to hold on to territory. Caesar’s Legion, an army emulating the empire of old Rome, has met the NCR here in a clash of ideologies. New Vegas, a sparkling city of progress run by the mysterious Mr. House, dominates the skyline with its neon towers.
Unfortunately, the player character will need to work up to confronting these forces. The game begins with the Courier being waylaid by a smooth-talking group of goons. You awake in a friendly local doctor’s home, having miraculously survived being shot in the head and left in a shallow grave. You sort out matters in the small town of Goodsprings and then begin your trek into the Mojave.
Image: Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks
New Vegas is built on the bones of Fallout 3, and the gameplay is honestly so-so. But the game is elevated by its fantastic writing. There are four possible paths the Courier can choose from: joining the NCR, allying with Mr. House, enlisting in Caesar’s Legion, or pursuing an independent Mojave. There’s a similar structure to Fallout 4, but I failed to connect with the various ideologies of the Commonwealth. They were a little too simplistic and flat. Fallout: New Vegas is anything but that.
The questions posed in New Vegas are much more interesting to me as a player. At first, the NCR appears to be the default good guy faction. But one companion, Cass, openly expresses skepticism of the government. She critiques their expansion with the memorable line: “Nobody’s dick is that long, not even Long Dick Johnson. And he had a fucking long dick, hence the name.” Hanging out with Boone, a stoic and surly sniper I meet in the mouth of a giant dinosaur tower, complicates things further. After enough time working together, he shares the trauma incurred by his time with the NCR.
Every companion in this game has opinions, and they’re interesting. New Vegas has a bunch of wildly interesting ideas, and it’s not shy about running with them. Lily Bowen is a giant nightkin super mutant who wears a giant sun hat and shades. Raul is a ghoul gunslinger who’s been press-ganged into service as a mechanic for a hostile state of super mutants. Arcade Gannon is a doctor and scientist who automatically joins your party if you have an intelligence of 3 or less, because he feels like someone needs to take care of you.
The NCR may be complicated, but Caesar’s Legion poses a serious threat — or opportunity, depending on your decisions — to the denizens of the Mojave. The player is introduced to the faction through Nipton, a sinful town sentenced to a gruesome ritual known as the Lottery. The encounter starts with a guy running at you, hysterically laughing and screaming that he won, he won! You quickly realize that his joy is closer to a wild hysteria, and something truly terrible has happened in Nipton.
Image: Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks
Mr. House offers a potential third path, but as I quest around the Strip, I can’t help but realize how many impoverished communities have sprung up in its shadow. I can’t even get in — under penalty of being shot by a giant murder robot — unless I meet specific qualifications. Can I trust the reclusive master of the Strip and its casinos? Or is it worth forging a new path for the Mojave, with no masters or kings?
Each of these factions have interesting characters. Caesar is definitely a bad guy, and I have journeyed through his camp to blow him up in new and satisfying ways many times over the years. But it’s also worth talking philosophy with him, and learning more about the Legion and the sort of civilization they would establish. He’s not a mustache-twirling villain, but a satisfying antagonist to face and defeat.
This is all skimming the surface of what New Vegas has to offer. The cherry on top of this great RPG is a radio station that’s full of bangers, with a particular shoutout to Big Iron. But the game takes big swings, and the overall vision is able to balance both serious themes and some intense goofiness.
Similar open-world RPGs have quickly faded from conversation after their launch. Even a recent big RPG epic like Starfield has fallen off most of our radars. But Fallout: New Vegas fans are still making memes, arguing about the endgame variables, and sharing build tips to this day. It’s a clunky game in many respects, the characters don’t look great, and there’s the occasional glitch. I don’t care. Fallout: New Vegas is still the apple of my eye, and showcases how brilliant the setting can be.
Fallout: New Vegas is available to play on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Game Pass, and Windows PC via Steam and GOG.
I got to chat with Fallout executive producer Jonathan Nolan and cast member Michael Emerson, who’ve worked together before on Nolan’s first TV series, Person of Interest, where Emerson played Harold Finch for five seasons.
In Fallout, Emerson plays a mysterious character known only as “Wilzig,” a man being pursued by several entities in the Wasteland, who has a connection to a prominent organization in Fallout lore.
It’s well known that Nolan is a huge fan of the Fallout series. For some creators, it’s daunting to try to adapt something they love so much, and so they prefer “not to touch it.” So, I asked Nolan what it was about his experience of playing this series of games that made him feel like he had to be the one to bring this world to live action.
“I don’t know that it was about feeling that it had to be me, but I certainly had never experienced anything like the tone of the games,” Nolan says. “The retro-futurism of it. The violence of it. The political commentary of it, and the humor of it. I’d never felt all of those things brought together. So that, for me, felt like something I would be excited to share with, I’m not going to say a ‘larger audience,’ but maybe the audience including people who hadn’t had the opportunity to play the games and people who had and wanted to see another chapter in this story.”
Staying firmly in spoiler-free territory, I had to ask Emerson what drew him to this project and the role of Wilzig, especially since his participation in the story is … interesting, to say the least.
Of course, Emerson was drawn to “the pedigree of the project” and the fact that it was being put together by people he loved working with. “It looked like it might be kind of a summer vacation lark. It was a little more than that when push came to shove, but it was an adventure! And it was good fun. And technically amazing!”
Emerson seemed like a kid describing a great summer vacation when he went on to say, “And I got my foot blown off! And other indignities!”
“Not just your foot! Not just your foot, sadly,” Nolan chimed in.
Seriously, y’all. Wilzig’s whole deal is bananas. We can expect his presence to be “felt through the season.”
While both Nolan and Emerson hope that those who have no experience with the Fallout games might be inspired to try the games by watching this show, they are very clear that this is not a show “for the whole family.”
“Leave the kids at home,” Nolan says. Considering how many body parts explode on this show? That’s probably for the best.
Fallout arrives on Prime Video on April 11. Check out my full interview with Nolan and Emerson at our TMS YouTube channel:
Teresa Jusino (she/her) is a native New Yorker and a proud Puerto Rican, Jewish, bisexual woman with ADHD. She’s been writing professionally since 2010 and was a former TMS assistant editor from 2015-18. Now, she’s back as a contributing writer. When not writing about pop culture, she’s writing screenplays and is the creator of your future favorite genre show. Teresa lives in L.A. with her brilliant wife. Her other great loves include: Star Trek, The Last of Us, anything by Brian K. Vaughan, and her Level 5 android Paladin named Lal.
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