Fallout Show, so bad that no one will remember it in 3 months

delitomatoes@lemm.ee to Gaming@beehaw.org – 52 points –
"A bad TV show no one will remember in 3 months…": Some Fallout Fans are Gatekeeping Pretty Hard after New Vegas Revelations and Retcons Send Them Over the Edge
fandomwire.com
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Weird. I really enjoyed it. Loved the characters, liked the story, and all the little nods to the games and fandom were nice and didn't feel out of place. Probably one of the better adaptations I've seen.

Same. Ragebait headline.

Maybe the title was changed after posting, but it's more reasonable on the actual article

“A bad TV show no one will remember in 3 months…”: Some Fallout Fans are Gatekeeping Pretty Hard after New Vegas Revelations and Retcons Send Them Over the Edge

it got better halfway through or so (as a person who never played the games) but really had to just go with the ridiculousness of the world.

I'm glad they kept the ridiculousness. They could have made it super serious and edgy, and I don't think it would have fit as well.

yeah. once I treated it as more a fantasy show and less a scifi it greatly improved my experience.

Gamers are so fucking weird. Really enjoyed the show. Hope they make 2nd season.

Yeah this is the first I've heard of it being bad. Everywhere else, I've read it's pretty good.

::: spoiler spoiler asdfasdfsadfasfasdf :::

not so bad that Fallout fans won’t stick with it for butchering the IP.

Todd already beat them to the punch on that account.

The only way to go is up

@0xtero @delitomatoes same here but I guess it rakes the clicks in.

Old fart FO player since the very first btw.

This is a great TV adaptation of a game (that isn't exactly known for it's "great" story writing as well)

I hate to say this, but it's almost better at Fallout than Fallout.

I think it is extremely likely to get a second season one reason is because it has received tax credit to be filmed. source

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The show is not high art. No one will be winning an Emmy for acting. It certainly doesn't warrant the high rating on RT. But it's entertaining, engaging, visually stimulating and a fantastic adaptation of the games.

If you're expecting a Last of Us calibre deep dive into society and the human condition coping with an apocalypse, you'll be disappointed. If you're expecting a fun romp through the wastelands with body parts gratuitously exploding into red mist, then look no farther!

It certainly doesn't warrant the high rating on RT. But it's entertaining, engaging, visually stimulating and a fantastic adaptation of the games

Which is it? because an entertaining engaging, visually stimulating show which is also a fantastic adaptation of its source material should have a good rating

I've basically given up on ratings and threads about ratings because every idiot thinking they sound bright, reduce everything to either "best ever, Jebus herself couldn't make it better" or "dog shit that will make you pray for cancer to take your disappointment away"

PS: not referring to you (person I'm replying to) when taking about idiots that polarize everything... Referring in general to polarizers (that's a word, right?)

Without having seen the series I'm guessing yours is probably the most accurate descriptor I've seen so far.

Whenever it comes to fandoms like this, the camps are always so divided in extremes. And neither camp is usually correct.

I mean, I saw Twisted Metal season 1 and it was not good by means an "actual reviewer" would stand by. But was it enjoyable? Sure. (Probably more so if I was high while watching it.) Will it be remembered? Not by a long shot.

The Fallout TV Show is likely better than TM, but I doubt it will remembered alongside Breaking Bad, The Sopranos or even Futurama for that matter.

I couldn't wade through the first episode of the Last of Us. I watched this entire thing in one sitting and have now seen most of it twice. It deserves a decent score on RT.

Lol, bullshit. 94%/88% on RT.

The show is awesome, and has already been greenlit for S02. It would have been so easy to fuck this show up, but they knocked it out of the park. As an avid player of the games, I loved it! This reviewer doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

I think the show is solid, but I did notice at one point that it's basically a reskin of Westworld and now I can't unsee it.

I mean, naive girl gets the nature of her world redefined for her and is poised to become a revolutionary fighter? That happens.

A ruthless, cruel cowboy who isn't a cowboy but plays one for a long time, has god mode on and looks like an actor you know was left in the sun for too long? Surprisingly specific, but yep.

Is actually based on a videogame full of NPCs? In different ways but yeah.

Beloved older actor plays a figure of corporate authority with a secret plan? Getting into stretch territory but I see it.

I still enjoyed it, though. Looks so much better than the trailers, too, and it took me a while to realize it's because the trailers really had to hide the gore so they looked really cosplay-y. Hard to look cosplay-y with so many chunks flying around.

This is such a high level description that it is a meaningless comparison. The fact that Fallout doesn't take itself nearly as seriously as Westworld is already a huge difference. Sometimes the implementation is what is valuable, not the idea.

Well... you know, it's the same people exploring the same ideas through the same archetypes. I think that comes through pretty clearly. All joking about specifics aside, it's kinda hard to miss once you notice.

At some point we're gonna get to the synths parts and I'm expecting blow for blow repeated scenes at this point.

Most stories fall into one of a few archetypes at least since the time of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

I've played all the Fallout games, my wife has played none of them. We are both enjoying it quite a bit so far, at least two episodes in.

Yeah my wife and I have played both and were part way through the third episode and are really enjoying it.

Similar boat, except my wife actually got hooked on FO76 a couple of months back and loved it.

I skip a lot of adaption shows or remakes, so she basically forced me to start it, but I wound up really enjoying it. We're trying not to binge it all in a day, so I'm only halfway through, but I look forward to watching it.

Psh everyone I’ve talked to that’s seen it loved it

The title/headline is purely for engagement, right? It has to be.

I haven't seen it yet but I haven't heard a single negative thing about the show yet. Only praise and lots of "it's way better than I expected"

I finished watching it yesterday. Personally, I loved it and this is the first negative thing I've heard about it.

Tbh the way some people dote on this show makes it a little intimidating to throw out a criticism.

It’s not bad, and I’ll certainly watch the whole thing, but as of the first two episodes I’m hovering around a 5-6/10.

I fully expect to be utterly whelmed by it.

Honestly as long as it's entertaining me, it doesn't need to be the best show to ever exist. I don't love The Fift Element because it's high cinema. I love it because it's fun.

This person has zero IMDB credits. Call me after making literally anything even remotely approaching the quality of anything Bethesda has ever sneezed out.

Does he maybe have some semblance of a point about NCR and New Vegas? Sure, but if that makes it a 'bad show' that 'no one will watch', please let me point you at Star Wars, which jettisoned its own extremely substantial extended universe to the chagrin of long time fans and is doing fine.

Can't you just, like, look at it like anime or like Douglas Adams?

Yes, we get multiple iterations of more or less the same story in different mediums. No, they aren't exactly the same. Is that a problem? Does the Ranma 1/2 TV series have to match the OVH or they're both shit?

Do I have to choose only the Hitch-Hiker's Guide books, or the radio series, or the show, or the movie? Am I not allowed to enjoy them all?

Is it really more economically viable to make a living being an entitled and cynical jackass about other people's work than to go make your own?

I'm a franchise loyalist and I am so, so, so past caring about this New Vegas shit. There's no guarantees that New Vegas isn't in despair off an external shot. And even if it is, I'm interested in hearing how it goes.

The show was great.

I enjoyed the show. Even my wife who doesn't like these types of shows enjoyed it mostly besides the gore. She liked the different perspectives from the main characters

Retconning the only modern Fallout game with a decent story and good writing as opposed to all the garbage they put out.

Never change, Bethesda.

New Vegas is the best of the modern Fallout games, but toxic elements in its fan base are making me enjoy the game less and less each year. We should stop giving them the time of day.

The show is great, and these people are just fishing for nonsense to feed their persecution complex.

The show isn't that bad but it's also definitely not as good as the people here are making it sound. The copium levels in this thread are off the charts. The show is mediocre. That's all there is to it. Stop over thinking it

I love Fallout and played 3, NV, and 4 avidly. It's a good adaptation. A little campy, but it feels like something made by people who know and love the source material. And with the goofy moments come some real nasty aspects of the wasteland laid bare with no question as to how nasty it is, even in the first couple episodes.

The Vaults setup was unique enough to feel new, but fit the Vault-Tec MO nicely. 4 felt generic, but I think it was mainly included for people who didn't play the games so they could get a general vibe.

The subtle nods are nice, with enough items and mechanics from the games peppered through to make it feel like part of the universe. Some are on the nose like Sugarbombs, but I've recognized generic NPC armor from the games on extras in the background.

It was also odd but fun to see game mechanics work in real time, like seeing drugs heal a grievous injury

If you want an adaptation of Fallout story it may fall short with the lighter stuff. But if you want an adaptation of a Fallout playthrough I think you're I for a good time.

I've finished 3 fallout games but fortunately don't remember any of it well enough for any of this to mean anything to me so I can just enjoy the show.

Same... but the caveat for me. I remember the gameplay and main story of each game...i can't for the life of me remember any of the flavor text/ world text... so little details that the series gets wrong will likely not erk me like other shows have in the past.

I'm only a couple episodes in at the moment though... who knows, watching might spark all sorts of memories.

My friend described it with the phrase "reddit liked it," and I immediately crossed it off our list

Imagine living your life letting reddit be your filter for meaningful experience lmao.

Touch grass guy.

If the best description of something can only be broken down to "reddit liked it" then either the person doesn't know how to describe anything, or that's an accurate description in itself.

I watched the first episode and found it not interesting. Certain things were good and others bad, but I just didn't care and was waiting for it to end.

Apparently I'm in the minority as fans seem to flock to defend it. To each their own.

I'm not a "fan", haven't played the games, other than some of the shitty mobile one, but knew some of the lore.

Just binge watched all episodes... and judging all of them by just the first one, is a mistake. There's much more to the show than what amounts to a basic introduction.

But to each their own, as you said.

That's fair. I just figured when they introduced the characters and world building and I didn't find most of it interesting, then the following would be similar.

The following is somewhat similar, but it keeps changing, and there is a decent evolution of the characters (hard to pull off in just 8 episodes, but they did it). Basically it's 3 shows in one: in-vault, surface, flashbacks. Each one has its own conspiracy, which all come to a joint conclusion at the end, with a slight cliffhanger for the second season.

It's not the best show I've ever seen, but I'd say they did a good job.

According to my Steam stats I played the 3rd one for about twenty minutes. The game engine seriously hurt it. The show was worth watching because it had nowhere to go but up.

It's amazing how much potential the world of Fallout has when not shackled to a terrible engine, isn't it?

They should have made one more episode to where after she gets out, they explain some of the factions, the monetary system, and where in the Wasteland they are. All in all, I liked it and can't wait until season 2.

On the Prime Fallout site, they have a bunch of extras and bonus content that explains a lot of the background stuff like that. It’s kind of neat. You should check it out.

Its a great show and Im enjoying it despite the massive, glaring world consistency issues.
Like what the hell happened to the NCR?

Or, you know, the lore of all of the games outside of Fallout 3 and 4.

Its painfully clear that Todd is salty that the worst two games in the fallout series are 3 and 4. So he's erasing the pre bethesda games and the best game(that respects the original lore), New Vegas.

So... I keep seeing people say this online.

I assume they're saying it before they finished watching the whole season. Because they do explain what happened to the NCR and explicitly acknowledge New Vegas in at least two very significant ways.

Getting rid of the NCR is ludicrous and is blatantly just Bethesda diminishing the creations of everyone who isn't Bethesda.

3 and 4 are the worst stories in the series. Yet Bethesda seems intent on making them the main stories.

I am dreading seeing how they incorporate New Vegas given what they did to the NCR. I would rather that they not even touch it at this point

Yeah, so... no, that's fanboy stuff. That's not how massive corporations make their decisions, not how artists make their decisions and, very specifically, not what is actually in the show.

Plus of course what you're saying is different to the online panic about NV "not being canon", which Bethesda has now explicitly denied. The NCR very much exists in the show, it's just been significantly downsized to early Fallout levels. Not because Bethesda is "diminishing the creations of everyone who isn't Bethesda", though. If I had to make an educated guess based on how reality actually operates, I'd assume it's because Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan wanted to make a show about a postapocalyptic wasteland and having a democratic government that has been running mostly fine for the past 100 years kinda gets in the way of that.

So yeah, welcome to franchising, where war never changes and neither does the status quo. It's mostly absurd that people in Fallout are still roaming around in reclaimed pre-war gear and doing the Mad Max schtick five generations into the postapocalypse, but Fallout gotta look like Fallout, so Fallout will look like Fallout until Fallout stops making money, at which point it will not look like anything anymore. Yay capitalism.

Hey, wanna know what they'll do to New Vegas? They'll probably do some variation on the plot of New Vegas. Mr. House and the Legion will probably still be around in some form despite it not making a ton of sense in continuity. Just like this season was all about leaving a vault to look for your missing dad, just like Filly just happens to have the same layout and landmarks as Megaton, just like there's a Dogmeat and just like Vault 33 now needs a water chip and will probably have to send someone outside to look for it. Because it's recognizable IP and recognizable IP has to be in the show so it can be fueled by recognizable IP.

Have you finished the series? Because I don’t think I agree with this at all.

Not one bit.

Edit: to explain further would contain massive spoilers.

I know what they are.

Trick is it directly counteracts the games. In the year the show happens is the same year new vegas happens. This is after the brotherhood was reduced to cowering in a hidden bunker with zero force projection capability.

The show is great, but its Bethesda fallout, not Fallout.

No it isn’t. The show is happening in 2296, 11 years after FO4 (2285). FNV takes place in 2281.

That makes it worse.

The western Brotherhood of Steel, at the start of new Vegas, is reduced to One Chapter holed up in One tiny bunker with no vertibirds, no supplies, no manufacturing. They have to send lone scavengers out in the cover of night just to steal enough food to survive.

The battle of Helios One ended the brotherhood as a major player in any capacity. They threw everything they had at the NCR and lost badly.

And you can’t think of them building back up (even one major chapter), with the help of other Brotherhood chapters, in the fifteen years afterwards?

That’s a failure of your imagination, buddy, not a shortcoming of the show.

The only other chapters are on the east coast, have no desire or ability to contact each other. Hell, the west coast group don't even know the east coast chapters survived, let alone thrived because they seized project purity. And while they made the trek before, the middle of the US after that became Caesar's Legion, 15 years after his fall it would be an impassable wasteland.

The east coast chapters were strong enough in DC to send out squads to Boston, but never anything more than a recon. Its even Bethesda lore in fallout 4 that they dont have the resources to move the Prydwin back to DC.

The NCR can make prewar tanks, power armor and vertibirds; they have a GECK.

Edit: to be clear: the only ending the western brotherhood of steel has to survive is to be absorbed into the NCR.

You have no idea what happened in the 15 years between FNV and the show, or the 11 since FO4.

All I’m hearing is that you couldn’t have imagined it, therefore everyone else is wrong— and that just makes you look like you have a very limited imagination, not that everyone else is wrong for coming up with a better story that you could have.

You’re very welcome not to like it, but you still haven’t laid out any solid evidence for your claims other than speculation.

I stopped watching in the first episode when the tiny girl beat up a muscular huge man.

Felt like avengers but she is supposed to be a normal girl right? I felt it was so dumb.

::: spoiler spoiler ...you mean the girl (at the beginning of the episode, shown to be an A+ in all "stats") that took on a man post coitus and still was thrown around the room and only survived thanks to the blender? :::

Seemed pretty realistic, and Fallout to me.

Yeah I don't know the fallout backstory at all, but A+ doesn't change things like physics.

The only backstory you need is right after the prelude, it showed that she was really good at judo.

A woman beating the shit out of a man does not defy physics.

I removed the smiley since I didn't intend it to be condescending. But I'm 100% certain that guy would knock that girl out in a second. It wasn't just "a man", it was a fit fighter man with tons of muscles.

But like I said, if it's a game, there is no real physics so anything is possible.

There is an anecdote about a judo teacher from where I live: he also liked his motorbike, so one day he was joining the highway, when some car rear-ended him at twice the speed, crushing the bike into the barrier. Driver was all panicky, then weirded out when the guy showed up to check if everyone was all right. Turns out he instinctively jumped out of the bike, did a somersault over the car, and landed rolling, then got up and ran to check on the driver.

No game physics needed.

So yeah, go ahead and be "100% certain". I've seen actual martial arts masters IRL, and you wouldn't believe how quick a fight can end with a thug biting the dust, or a lamppost. Technique beats muscles any day.

If anything, that fight on the show was slowed down and drawn out for "dramatic effect".

It's an RPG, of course it does! Particularly if you decide to give your character the 'Bloody Mess' perk, which causes every enemy to violently and horrifically explode in a shower of miscellaneous chunks.

Well I guess, if the TV show is supposed to be like a game, then at least I understand why she is overpowered.

What a journey that was for you to discover the obvious

@1984 in Bethesda games it does 😜 No seriously, their engine is known for most hilarious ragdoll moments.

Yeah I've heard about that actually :) Funny...

Beat up? Are you kidding me? She's described as a combat trained woman in peak physical performance and she's still being overcomed by the man aggressor. She succeeded in winning buy using a blender as a weapon, and that sounds pretty realistic to me.

I mean, as the previous posters have said, if this is supposed to be like a game, then sure. Anything is possible. But if it was reality, she would have no chance against that guy.

But if it was reality

"In a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles brought about by nuclear decimation, citizens must live in underground bunkers to protect themselves from radiation, mutants and bandits."

And you picked a girl punching a guy the exact moment to suspend your belief at? Damn dude.

I disagree, but ok.

Yeah it's fine. Let's move on to other topics. :)

Her introduction montage at the beginning, where she was doing all the exercises and training, didn’t do it for ya? Between the two, I thought the guy was less believable given his circumstances.

Really? So interesting to me that someone would think she could even hurt the guy.

The way he was built in the show, sure, but he’s supposedly very irradiated, malnourished and poorly disciplined. I think the scenario of her winning that fight on makes more sense than him looking so buff in the first place.

Yeah makes sense. I don't know the backstory at all so in that light, it makes sense. Guess they wanted to cast some sexy actor rather than someone who looks the part.

It's a video game show that uses the rules of the video game world.

I played the games. I think the show's sets and designs are good, but I can't get into it. It just feels like sequalitis with no soul.

Best thing in the show was the mistery of vault 31 and the solution was extremely underwhelming. I think people just need time to digest. I hate Maximus.

i am a big new vegas fan, and follow a lot of youtubers and other parts of the fandom - I havent seen this backlash against the show this article mentions? Most NV fans are pretty happy with it that Ive seen.

Maybe this is only happening in the more toxic circles?

Anything I should be aware of if I decide I'd like to give it a watch?

It sometimes runs on video game logic (for example, some pretty bad injuries can be healed instantly with the right equipment while others can't) and is bloodier than I would have expected. I'd say you don't need to be too familiar with the games as the show tells its own story. It has quite a few references to tropes from the games but even if you don't get the reference, it should still be enjoyable.

In general don't trust sensationalist reviews that call it the best or worst show of the year.