By Julian
I was surprised at how good Fallout started with the first episode. The questions that I had about this series were ‘Why did this video game series need a TV adaptation?’, ‘Who asked for it?’. But then I forgot that Hollywood is too chicken to create something original for us to enjoy. So they reverted to video games as the last resort. They’ve already touched Pokémon, Sonic, Mario, and recently The Last of Us (I don’t know why they made it into a TV series when the video game series are playable movies, but okay). They are going to make a ‘Legend of Zelda’ movie which worries me a lot (I will write my video game reviews of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask at some point). I mean… they can’t do live-action versions of Monolith Software’s Xenoblade Chronicles games or Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear franchise (It would be really funny if they tried because they are practically playable movies). 
Image via IMDb/Bethesda Game Studios/Amazon Prime Video
However, Fallout was a video game series that I peeked in at the window on YouTube. If I had my personal favorites out of the franchise, it would be Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas because for one they don’t start out by exiting a vault (I’ll have to write a list of my favorite mediums that do the complete opposites later). For now, let’s talk about Fallout.
Image via Playstation Lifestyle/Bethesda Game Studios
Episode One The End starts in Los Angeles in 2077, still stuck in the 1950s era in a world where nuclear power is embraced instead of being feared in the real world (Image above representative of what happens in the show, which is practically the start of Fallout 4 and the opening scene from the trailer of Fallout 76) . Former Marine and current actor Cooper Howard (Walter Goggins) appears at a birthday party along with his daughter Janey (Teagan Meredith) posing as cowboys. Right before they decide to leave, the nuclear bombs are dropped; prompting Howard to escape to safety with his daughter in tow.
Image via IMDb/Amazon Prime Studios/Bethesda Game Studios
219 years later after the bombs were dropped (and after the events of every previous Fallout game ever made), we are introduced to Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) of Vault 33: An All-American woman with a can-do attitude. She gets prepared to find a husband from the nearby Vault 32 in the form of Monty (Cameron Cowperthwaite). Her brother Norm (Moises Ares) finds the visitors of Vault 32 completely off. Monty and the rest of the ‘visitors’ are surface raiders in disguise. Ultimately, Vault 33’s overseer and Lucy’s father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) gets taken by the raider’s leader Lee Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury). Lucy decides to leave Vault 33 and into the Wasteland to find her father. 
Image via IMDb/Amazon Prime Studios/Bethesda Game Studios
In the Wasteland, we are introduced to Maximus (Aaron Moten) who is part of the game’s fictitious army known as Brotherhood of Steel. Their mission is to secure the Wasteland and seize any remnants of pre-war tech. Maximus is shown as a total screw-up and gets beaten up by his comrades. But when his best friend Dane (Xelia Mendes-Jones) wakes up to a razor blade in his boot after being anointed as a squire, the suspicion falls on Maximus. Maximus truthfully says that he has no idea who put the razor blade in Dane’s boot but is willing to give his life for the Brotherhood, thus accelerating his promotion and replacing Dane. He is then assigned to find an Enclave runaway and his dog who is claimed to have a vital package regarding the fate of the Wasteland.
Image via IMDb/Amazon Prime Studios/Bethesda Game Studio
Elsewhere, a band of bounty hunters led by Honcho awakens The Ghoul (also played by Walton Goggins) to partake in a similar hunt for the Enclave runaway. However, The Ghoul ends up killing the bounty hunters and walks off after petting a chicken.
Image via IMDb/Bethesda Game Studios
Well…this sounds like the plot of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. A band of unlikely characters goes after one person who is deemed important to the entire plot. It’s a good start to the series given that it’s only episode one. It sounds like Fallout 2 was more important than I previously thought. Given the fact that the person our main characters will eventually meet is someone from the Enclave.
Image via Wiki Commons/Bethesda Game Studios
For those who don’t know Fallout lore, the Enclave appeared in Fallout 2 as a faction of what remains of the United States Government and ultimately the bad guys. They are similar to the RDA (Resource Department Administration) in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise or the human bad guys in the Planet of the Apes reboot series: willing to exterminate everybody who is not ‘true human’ to recolonize America and the globe to become the world’s policeman again. Oh, and they are also responsible for the creation of the Vaults as part of a manipulative social experiment besides being used as fallout shelters. In short terms, they are awful people and were defeated by ‘the Chosen One’, the descendant of the Vault Dweller of the original Fallout game. However, they lived on in other games like Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 (unsure about Fallout 4), and appeared in the prequel Fallout 76 as a joinable faction.
Image via IMDb/Amazon Prime Studios/Bethesda Game Studio
Anyhow, I’m looking forward to watching more of this series as it happens. And quite honestly, this, X-Men 97’, Dune: Part Two, or A24’s Civil War are much better watches than Netflix’s Good Times.
