Culture Amazon Prime Video's Fallout sci-fi show won't just "please fans" of the games - "I think you have to come into this trying to make the show that you want to make and trusting that, as fans of the game [ourselves], we would find the pieces that were essential to us... and try to do the best version." the show's director said.

(Image credit: Amazon Prime Video / Future)

Amazon will finally debut its most eagerly-awaited new series on its Prime Video streaming service next month and although, like The Last of Us, it's based on a video game, it hasn't solely been made for "the fans".

Speaking at a press event with T3 in attendance, the director and driving force behind the Fallout TV series, Jonathan Nolan, explained that setting out to simply appease the fans of the games would've been "a fool's errand".

"I don't think you really can set out to please the fans of anything," he said. "Or please anyone other than yourself.

"I think you have to come into this trying to make the show that you want to make and trusting that, as fans of the game [ourselves], we would find the pieces that were essential to us... and try to do the best version."

But those worried that the Prime Video series will deviate too much from Fallout lore needn't – Nolan himself is a big fan of Bethesda's apocalyptic RPGs, which prompted him to co-create the show in the first place.

"It started, for me, with Fallout 3, which devoured about a year of my life," he added.

"I was an aspiring young writer at that point, and it almost derailed my entire career. It's so ludicrously playable and fun... seriously, the games were just incredible.

"It's such a rare and unbelievable thing that I've gotten to do twice in my career, to take something that you love and get a chance to play in that universe, to create your own version.

"The first go-round for me was Batman, and this time with Fallout – a a series of games that I absolutely loved."

So does that mean he's happy with the end result?

"It's kind of a fool's errand to try to figure out how to make [other] people happy... You've got to make yourself happy. And I've made myself very happy with the show."

The Fallout TV series will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on 12 April 2024 with all eight episodes available to binge from day one.

Article Link

Archive

 

[X Prime]

When New Vegas was announced, I saw it as basically miraculous. Situations like that simply don't happen in the video game industry. It was always going to be a last hurrah for "old" Fallout. The narrative that "they would have made New Vegas 2 if only it had got an 85 on metacritic" is something that people only started saying years later, and it was always stupid.

It's not even just that.

Things just change in a time-gap. Even if you get supposedly a good chunk of the old team together, the reality is that there's any number of things that could have influenced them in the interim. And this is on top of the corrupting influence of increasingly-leftist new blood.

Even revivals headed by supposed "fans" of the old games are a coin toss, because it's pretty easy to fake those credentials through fandom tourism.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Fallout is a dumb game to adapt because 90% of it is finding random notes and plotlines in the middle of nowhere
It's either going to turn into a monster of the week show with no overarching plot, or they'll cram everything in anyway it fits and suddenly random deathclaw #3 was working for the arch villain in a stupid overarching way that makes no sense. Also what's the over/under on the lone wonderer now having a party containing a stupid love interest and a couple of diverse friends as deep as a puddle of water?

It’s not a direct game adaptation. I’d be very worried if it was. Direct adaptations don’t do very well and personally I’d rather not watch something that I’ve already played. I’d rather a show or movie be set in universe rather than trying to directly adapt a video game’s storyline into its own.

I’ve followed the interviews and leaks on this show, and it doesn’t have a lot of the red flags that Rings of Power has.

The first being that Nolan in the past before the project was announced had mentioned he actually played Fallout 3 and likes it. Which is where some of the lore conflict comes up with some things from the east coast being in the west. Contrast that to RoP in which the writers had open disdain for Tolkien and his books. That doesn’t mean it’ll be good, fans can sometimes have character or factions they love or hate, but it’s an improvement over outright hatred of the setting. *cough* Todd Howard *cough*

The second is that Nolan is not a minority and not a harpy.

I’m not saying that it’s going to be good, just that its floor is higher than RoP’s, Halo’s, or the Witcher’s ceiling. Which isn’t a very high bar to be fair. I could very well see it be “ok” and people act like it’s the best thing ever because they weren’t being shit on for not being a minority.

 

[Misericordia]

Things just change in a time-gap. Even if you get supposedly a good chunk of the old team together, the reality is that there's any number of things that could have influenced them in the interim. And this is on top of the corrupting influence of increasingly-leftist new blood.

Even revivals headed by supposed "fans" of the old games are a coin toss, because it's pretty easy to fake those credentials through fandom tourism.

I agree. None of the people who came up during the renaissance of PC RPGs in the late 90s should be idolized. Every one of them has dropped the ball at some point in the last 25 years. I hope that Brian Mitsoda's abortive script for VTMB2 will be the end of these people being dug up and put on a new project for marketing purposes.

 

[Grub]

Except the LOTR films don't adapt everything; there's no Tom Bombadil, no "Ai, ai a balrog!", no Scouring of the Shire, unnecessary Arwen girlboss moments in Fellowship, Faramir being slightly more of a jackass, elves at Helm's Deep...

I'm in the middle of rereading Lotr for the first time since I was a kid. I never realized just how different the books and the movies actually are. I didn't really remember much of the books when the movies came out but there's a ton of differences. A huge chunk of the fellowship of the ring just isn't in the movies. It's more than Tom Bombadil, it's the majority of everything between leaving the shire and getting to rivendell. Characters act totally different, the elves act totally different. I'm almost halfway through the two towers now and pretty much, while the movies have the major plot points of the story, that's about it. There's a ton of shit missing and changes and additions in the movies that seem baffling now that I'm rereading the books.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Could be a Gulper, which are fairly common enemies in 76 and the FO4 expansion. Giant mutated salamanders.

I'm a big 76 enjoyer and even I am not excited about this show. Making it take place in an already established area like Shady Sands is such a colossal mistake. If it took place in an area we hadnt seen yet we could hand wave inconsistencies away easier.

IMO it would be better to have done it somewhere else, at least another part of California or the West Coast.

View attachment 5832802
It's this image in the trailer that amuses me. What good is it to shoot at someone in point blank range when they've got Power Armor?

My hope is that the NCR gets wrecked and/or are villains. So many trannies are already crying about the NCR that even if the show is terrible, if it shows the NCR in a bad light, as getting fucked up, or as the antagonists, the lulz will be immense and far more enjoyable than the show itself.

Aside from turning Shady Sands, a key city hub of the first two Fallout games that would go on to unify all of California and lead to the rise of probably the first true nation-state in the post-war world into a crater?

They could’ve gotten nuked at a later date.

 

[Molly Millions]

From the looks of it, they have already done huge damage to the lore. In the trailers Shady Sands, one of the most important settlements in FO and FO2 and the capitol city if the New California Republic, is a massive crater. It looks to me that Bethesda was so salty over fans preferring New Vegas because it was crated by people who made the original games and was closer in tone and more lore accurate to the OG Fallout games that they decided to nuke the NCR and ruin the lore. Because Bethesda has made it clear that this show is canon with the games.

I had a whole big post about the NCR never being mentioned in Bethesda Fallout. Then I remembered that fucking Kellogg is from San Francisco and you relive his memory of the NCR being founded.

So the NCR 100% exists.

 

[A Real Munson]

I don't know, I really enjoy the meta of these terrible adaptations. I never watched the show, but loved watching millions of dollars be set on fire for that trash tier LOTR show.

I love seeing these Hollywood DEI retards fail spectacularly, and it never really tarnishes the brand either. When you hear the name Aragorn, you don't immediately picture the black guy from the MTG Card; you picture Vigo Mortenson. None of this shit has any real cultural purchase, but it does actually destroy peoples' careers before they start.

 

[X Prime]

Pleasing fans really isn't as hard as people think it is.
Look at the Mario movie. It was simply a Nintendo ad comprised of a giant circle jerk of Easter eggs and it was really entertaining. Fans loved it.

Now if only somebody would upload a copy with Japanese audio so I can see for myself.

Like absolute hell will I listen to Jack Black as Bowser.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Chances are Fallout 3 is gonna look like a masterpiece compared to this.

Speaking of which, hot take: Starting with Fallout 3 is fine. Especially for younger folk and such. The real sign of importance and worthy is weather or not the person has bothered to learn the lore and appreciate the older games even if they haven't played them.

Given this show is making it sound like Todd Howard invented Fallout, it obviously isn't one of the respectful and decent Fallout 3 people that is making it but a n*rmie.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

From the looks of it, they have already done huge damage to the lore. In the trailers Shady Sands, one of the most important settlements in FO and FO2 and the capitol city if the New California Republic, is a massive crater. It looks to me that Bethesda was so salty over fans preferring New Vegas because it was crated by people who made the original games and was closer in tone and more lore accurate to the OG Fallout games that they decided to nuke the NCR and ruin the lore. Because Bethesda has made it clear that this show is canon with the games.

I watched the trailer and was wondering where TF the NCR was.....

 

[Dick Mason]

Now if only somebody would upload a copy with Japanese audio so I can see for myself.

Like absolute hell will I listen to Jack Black as Bowser.

Everyone: We need more highly-diverse "games" - what is a game, really, but a place to hang my fetishes - with 4K UHD FSR AT&T Graphical Fidelity. Every pubic hair and grimy toenail must be modeled. Starfield is the ideal.
Nintendo: Make it fun. People love that.

I'm sure this show will be the perfect companion to Starfield. ha ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha.

 

[Meat Target]

I had a whole big post about the NCR never being mentioned in Bethesda Fallout. Then I remembered that fucking Kellogg is from San Francisco and you relive his memory of the NCR being founded.

View attachment 5833936

So the NCR 100% exists.

I think in FO3 there's a terminal in the Citadel that mentions the NCR.

 

[frozen_runner]

90% of games are damn near impossible to adapt "properly" because of their gameplay.

The only thing you can really do is try to capture their spirit in a thumbnail sketch of a narrative or take the basic foundations and do something else with it. The latter is a much better idea, but neither really works all that often. You're not going to get the best screenwriters working on licensed properties, and it's not like the studios have any respect for the franchises or any artistic integrity.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Except the LOTR films don't adapt everything; there's no Tom Bombadil, no "Ai, ai a balrog!", no Scouring of the Shire, unnecessary Arwen girlboss moments in Fellowship, Faramir being slightly more of a jackass, elves at Helm's Deep...

To be fair I understand why they cut the Old Forest and Bombadil's segment, it doesn't really advance the plot even if his character and this segment is extremely important in the context of the books and Tolkein's broader mythos.

The encounter with the barrow-wights could have been a really tense, spooky scene but without Tom's segment you'd need some ridiculous deus ex machina, like Gandalf showing up out of nowhere. Omitting the Scouring of the Shire was a mistake though. I think it really hammers home how evil lives on and even the most innocent people can be corrupted to commit evil acts no matter how good or how many greater evils have been defeated.

I am not optimistic about Amazon's interpretation of Lawd dem Falloutz.

 

[TheHarbinger]

I'm in the middle of rereading Lotr for the first time since I was a kid. I never realized just how different the books and the movies actually are.

They are terrible adaptations but they are now the official version of LOTR for the majority of 'fans'. To the point where book readers literally become blind to the changes and forget that the movies are noticeably different in plot and tone. But the decay of LOTR with the movies with its dwarf tossing and stupid one-liners in battles and removal of half of the story are still lauded as being the definitive way to adapt a story.

The majority of LOTR fans now want stuff like dwarf tossing in battles or ridiculous barrel riding sequences shot with Go-Pro cameras. Peter Jackson is more important to them than the guy that wrote the original novels whoever he was. And now Fallout is getting the same treatment. One-liners during combat are already in the previews. Probably a whole bunch of lore breaking changes are incoming. And the tone has gone from apocalyptic wasteland to wacky silly carnival theme park. And Todd Howard is now recognized as the creator of Fallout and not the teams of 1 and 2 and the guys who wrote the Fallout Bible.

 

[Grub]

But the decay of LOTR with the movies with its dwarf tossing and stupid one-liners in battles and removal of half of the story are still lauded as being the definitive way to adapt a story

I think a lot of that has to do with just how bad the other adaptations are. Before the Jackson movies there was what, some Russian version and the Bakshi version? I actually do like the bakshi version despite the differences to the books but I can see why the Jackson movies are regarded as a good adaptation. The others are pretty fucking bad as far as staying true to the books.

And now Fallout is getting the same treatment. One-liners during combat are already in the previews. Probably a whole bunch of lore breaking changes are incoming. And the tone has gone from apocalyptic wasteland to wacky silly carnival theme park. And Todd Howard is now recognized as the creator of Fallout and not the teams of 1 and 2 and the guys who wrote the Fallout Bible.

I actually kind of had decent hopes for like the first 15 seconds of the trailer and then it just reminded me why I don't watch TV shows any more.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

The ironic part is that this is making me want to get Fallout 1 & 2, along with Tactics since it’s currently on sale on Steam, and I forgot that this was being adapted as a TV show.

If I learned anything from HBO’s version of The Last of Us is that “gamers” that makes these TV show adaptations are not fans of the games themselves, nor the lore of them.

This today is your modern “Fallout (TV show)” fan, and I say this as someone who has not finished Fallout 3 yet:

 

[Sargon's wife's son]

The thing that makes me laugh are all the people that obviously played the game late and act like Bethesda is constantly pissing and shitting themselves over how much better New Vegas is and how everyone loves it so much more than their games even though New Vegas was a buggy piece of shit even worse than typical Bethesda fare at launch and Fallout 4 to this day has like 4x the amount of engagement than New Vegas does.

Fallout New Vegas sold a million more copies than Fallout 4
People still love the game even though it's clearly buggy
If Obsidian Entertainment was given another year or year and a half to work on Fallout New Vegas it would all and ironically probably be the greatest real time RPG of all time.

Anyone who has any experience in game design can tell that Fallout New Vegas is half finished



But what's Fallout 4's excuse for having 10 times more half finish areas dog s*** side quests mediocre DLC and more bugs than a roach motel.

Absolutely nothing Fallout 4 somehow is even worse than Fallout 3 when it comes to the overall plot I would say it's probably slightly above Brotherhood of Steel and that game is atrocious.

The funny thing is clearly the people at Obsidian Entertainment know how to create a compelling narrative and understand the concept of continuity better than anybody at Bethesda softworks.

Really at this point people should just declare Fallout 4 no longer canonical the same thing with 76
Just create a remastered version of Fallout New Vegas with all of the cut content added in you could charge me $60 for that and $30 for the add-ons and I'd still buy it.
Because when I play a role-playing game .
Cuz when I'm playing a role playing game I want to feel like I'm playing a role playing game not Minecraft simulator with the Fallout aesthetic.
Every single game doesn't need a settlement building mechanic

 

[Oilspill Battery]

Woman + Black protagonist guarentees the series will be dogshit because neither of them will be allowed to face any real adversity or have flaws or grow in any capacity. Its not rocket science.

 

[The Dude]

I had a whole big post about the NCR never being mentioned in Bethesda Fallout. Then I remembered that fucking Kellogg is from San Francisco and you relive his memory of the NCR being founded.

View attachment 5833936

So the NCR 100% exists.

Yep, he even mentions the Shi, a faction in FO2 who control a large portion of postwar Frisco, a technological powerhouse that can actually rival the BoS and Enclave, and descendants of the ChiCom submarine that nuked San Francisco. The captain of the Prydwyn even mentions the Midwest Chapter of the BoS from Tactics, so they're canon too. He talks about the airships they used to go to Chicago and how primitive they were compared to the Prydwyn.

The ironic part is that this is making me want to get Fallout 1 & 2, along with Tactics since it’s currently on sale on Steam, and I forgot that this was being adapted as a TV show.

If I learned anything from HBO’s version of The Last of Us is that “gamers” that makes these TV show adaptations are not fans of the games themselves, nor the lore of them.

This today is your modern “Fallout (TV show)” fan, and I say this as someone who has not finished Fallout 3 yet:

View attachment 5834363

No one involved in Hollywood anymore care about lore and canon. They despise it because respecting the lore and canon means they cannot write their preferred fanfiction and make the main characters self-inserts. It's a big reason all entertainment sucks tranny dick these days. All the Woketards involved with the planning and writing of these movies and games all want to turn whatever they're working on, from Star Wars to Fallout to capeshit, into their own personal story where the main characters have been rewritten to be the Marry Sue/Gary Stu self-insert of them and their friends. It's literal Middle School level Tumblr fanfic shit.