Oh wow, I’m about a year late to the party but nothing says desperate for clicks like binge watching the latest streaming show and pumping out a ham-fisted review fifteen minutes later, huh?
On the other hand, after my third playthrough of Fallout 4, dusting off the Fallout Shelter mini-game, and pondering if I would ever find anyone to play the Fallout TTRPG game I bought and for which I 3d-printed and painted a milkcrate full of minis, I finally settled into the couch to watch the streaming show starring Purnell and Goggins that debuted nearly a year ago now.
If I still have to mention I am a bit of a Fallout fan here you haven’t been reading very carefully at all.
And too, I’ll spare you the plot recap.
There have been no shortage of universe-extending cross-over flicks and series this past decade or more. It used to be that video games were regarded as something of a culturally broke medium when it came to rich storytelling, so much so that I recall multiple times trying to justify playing them for story and citing the narrative complexity of titles like Final Fantasy VII and—um—maybe that was the only one there for a while. I’m sure there were more, but that was my go to. No, video games can tell complex stories and still be interesting as video games.
Fallout, I do believe, started as a pretty bog standard franchise back in the first couple iterations, but the nuances of a retro-futuristic world of absurd atomic era fancies and frustrations was embraced with vigorous as more and better titles emerged. And some would argue with the release of Fallout 4 the series hit peak style, locking in a vibe and a backstory and a completeness of universe lore that exceeded even the higher bars for acheivement in this award category.
I love Fallout. I will admit. The groove that it etches in your mind, a tragically optimistic juxtaposition of economic cynicism and techno-optimism. One is thrust into a world where war and corporate greed have been pushed to their very extremes, and where morality is blurred into a green and bloody smear as a result.
It was with this sensibility locked into my skull that I pressed play on the television series. It had two jobs: mantain the vibe and tell an interesting story.
A few minutes after I watched the end credits roll on the last episode of season one, I turned on my Playstation and loaded up Fallout 4. Again. The series had the energy of the game and I wanted to revisit the world, to spend a few more minutes poking around that crazy alternate universe. If that’s not a ringing endorsement of both, I don’t know what is.
