This is your obligatory SPOILER WARNING, as we’ll be discussing the events of the Fallout TV show on Amazon Prime, presented by Amazon MGM Studios, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 4.
Read no further if you don’t want major plot details of this franchise ruined for you.
What’s up Wastelanders?
Greg the Ghoul here with the latest installment of The RADical Wasteland Podcast, the bi-weekly Fallout podcast presented by SciTrek.
This week, Harris and I tackle one of the most hotly-debated topics within the Fallout community since this image hit screens at the very end of Fallout Season 1 on Amazon Prime:
The post-apocalyptic city of New Vegas, as rendered in the Fallout TV Series on Amazon Prime
We’re headed to New Vegas!
For the past fifteen years, Fallout: New Vegas has been consistently rated as one of the greatest video games of all time, because of its high quality lore, storytelling, and mechanics. In this game, you are constantly faced with making choices that affect not only your character, but radically shape the entire political and social spectrum of the Mojave, giving this game an incredibly high replayability factor.
The best example of this is how, based on the choices you make throughout your gameplay, when you complete the game, you will see one of four possible major endings.
- Will you side with the New California Republic and help them defend Hoover Dam from the oppressive Caesar’s Legion, and give Representative Democracy a foothold in the region?
- Will you instead lead the Legion to victory over the NCR for the glory of Caesar, bringing a new era of Pax Romana to the Mojave under an oppressive dictator’s boot?
- Will you side with Mr. House, the billionaire oligarch who was there when the bombs first fell two hundred years ago, who saved (most of) Las Vegas on the day of The Great War, then spent the next two centuries hooked up to machines to stay alive and re-shape the legendary Strip to his will?
- Or will you decide that New Vegas needs no gods, no masters, and overthrow Mr. House while rebuffing the yolks of both the NCR and the Legion, and with the help of Yes Man and his automated army, turning New Vegas into an Anarchist state?
Some big choices right there, and as I mentioned earlier, the fact that you could make such major choices and get such drastically different endings is part of the game’s appeal, which brings us to…
The Problem Opportunity for Fallout TV Writers
The Fallout video game franchise has been very good about respecting canon, in spite of the multiple different game studios (Interplay, Obsidian, Bethesda) involved.
Season 1 of the show was declared canon before it even dropped, and fans have haled it as a massive lore dump, confirming or debunking fan theories, making certain potential plot options from previous games canon (ie – The Prydwen clearly survived the events of Fallout 4 in this reality), and answering major questions about the franchise’s history (although not definitively) that have lingered since the first game was released in 1997.
So we know the show’s not afraid to get it’s hands dirty and stir things up.
However, if we’re headed to New Vegas for Season 2, it means that the writers have some big decisions ahead of them if they want to deal with the established source material authentically, and they’re going to have to pick which of of the four endings is the “official” one.
Thus the topic of this week’s episode and debate – which ending do we think the writers are going to go with? Which of the four major options will they canonize? Or will they do something completely unexpected? Fourteen years is a long time, after all.
The obvious peril they here is that whichever ending they pick would render the other endings “moot” in the eyes of the fanbase, and potentially having a major impact on the game’s appeal and G.O.A.T. status. A serious consideration when you’re talking about a 10+ year old video game that still sees thousands of active daily players.
Whichever way they choose to go, though, this Wastelander is looking forward to the ride!
So Wastelanders, what do you think they’re going to do?
Harris and I take an hour and a half to discuss our theories, as well as debate who or what else may show up (Deathclaws in Quarry Junction, anyone?)
But I want to know what you think! Give the episode a listen, and then hit me with your best theory in the comments! We’ll feature the best ones at the top of the next episode.
Until then, in the words of Doc Mitchell, “That’s all she wrote.”
About Fallout: New Vegas by Obsidian Studios
Welcome to Vegas. New Vegas.
It’s the kind of town where you dig your own grave prior to being shot in the head and left for dead…and that’s before things really get ugly. It’s a town of dreamers and desperados being torn apart by warring factions vying for complete control of this desert oasis. It’s a place where the right kind of person with the right kind of weaponry can really make a name for themselves, and make more than an enemy or two along the way.
As you battle your way across the heat-blasted Mojave Wasteland, the colossal Hoover Dam, and the neon drenched Vegas Strip, you’ll be introduced to a colorful cast of characters, power-hungry factions, special weapons, mutated creatures and much more. Choose sides in the upcoming war or declare “winner takes all” and crown yourself the King of New Vegas in this follow-up to the 2008 video game of the year, Fallout 3.
Enjoy your stay.
Learn More >>
About Fallout, presented by Amazon Studios
Based on one of the greatest video game series of all time, Fallout is the story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have. Two-hundred years after the apocalypse, the gentle denizens of luxury fallout shelters are forced to return to the irradiated hellscape their ancestors left behind—and are shocked to discover an incredibly complex, gleefully weird, and highly violent universe waiting for them.
Ella Purnell is Lucy, an optimistic Vault-dweller with an all-American can-do spirit. Her peaceful and idealistic nature is tested when she is forced to the surface to rescue her father. Aaron Moten is Maximus, a young soldier who rises to the rank of squire in the militaristic faction called Brotherhood of Steel. He will do anything to further the Brotherhood’s goals of bringing law and order to the wasteland. Walton Goggins is the Ghoul, a morally ambiguous bounty hunter who holds within him a 200-year history of the post-nuclear world. These disparate parties collide when chasing an artifact from an enigmatic researcher that has the potential to radically change the power dynamic in this world.
The series comes from Kilter Films and executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. Nolan directed the first three episodes. Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner serve as executive producers, writers and co-showrunners. The series stars Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets), Aaron Moten (Emancipation) and Walton Goggins (The Hateful Eight). Athena Wickham of Kilter Films also executive produces, along with Todd Howard for Bethesda Game Studios and James Altman for Bethesda Softworks. Amazon MGM Studios and Kilter Films produce in association with Bethesda Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks. The series cast includes Moisés Arias (The King of Staten Island), Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks), Sarita Choudhury (Homeland), Michael Emerson (Person of Interest), Leslie Uggams (Deadpool), Frances Turner (The Boys), Dave Register (Heightened), Zach Cherry (Severance), Johnny Pemberton (Ant-Man), Rodrigo Luzzi (Dead Ringers), Annabel O’Hagan (Law & Order: SVU), and Xelia Mendes-Jones (The Wheel of Time). It will be available to stream exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide.
0 Comments