Success of Fallout proves video game adaptations have gone mainstream

nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksmod to Games@sh.itjust.works – 271 points –
Success of Fallout proves video game adaptations have gone mainstream
theguardian.com
89

Well made adaptations can be mainstream.

Well made anything can become mainstream!

FFS this!

Am I losing my head or what!? Because I can't get how everybody else is missing the obvious, the adaptations need to be good, we are not tired of super hero movies, we are tired about garbage adaptations, and I literally can't believe any thinking person would really believe:

Oh, people are really tired of Marvel and DC, but game adaptations are thriving it must be their fault (because we are tired, obviously), so let's focus on adapting videogames now!

Seriously! So many terrible adaptations. It's refreshing to see really good shows based on games. It also doesn't hurt that shows like "The Last of Us" and "Fallout" are based on story driven games so there is already a lot of good story to build off.

Fallout, the game series, is way better at lore than story, in my opinion, and that's what makes it such a great setting for well-written stories like this adaptation. They can literally 1:1 all of the visual assets and pull from a well developed cultural and geo-political landscape, and yet there isn't any specific character that they really have to 'get right', other than, like, Mr. Handy. That's a huge advantage for a good creative team.

Yeah Fallout is more of a setting than anything, and that’s why it’s perfect for an adaptation like this. It benefited great from the fact that they didn’t really have to adapt any characters or any single storyline, but simply created a new story and characters in that world and it still be a faithful adaptation

mostly well made adaptations.

It was pretty good, it was also pretty dumb, cheesy, and flat out badly written at times.

Breaking news: big budget media product that was developed by a competent and hard working team who understood and respected the source material turned out susccessful

cries in The Witcher

So much potential, perfect actor, lots of lore and stories, and they just decide to make whatever story up they wanted.

Hey, it worked out for GoT season 8.

Oh wait...

To be fair they did run out of stories to tell.

And I am already waiting how the Borderlands adaptation is going to flop so hard that fishes out of the water will be envious of the move. For the same reasons.

Even if it's faithful, the humor from the games is dated so much that only diehards will like it. If it's not faithful, diehards will hate it.
It's almost guaranteed to be bad by huge portions of people that will watch it

It's not even the humour, the thing is just miscast so hard I've never seen before.

Jack Black seems to be a good fit

Not a bad fit, but why not the original voice actor? That's what a lot of people want to see. These VAs do amazing work and their faces aren't on screen

there was a whole pile of shit happening between gearbox and the original claptrap.

As for the current(? no idea, havn't played anything after pre-sequal) claptrap, they want star power, which is why the mario movie cast had none of the current voice actors for any of the characters.

I get it, but as a fan of Mario, would you rather watch the movie with the va or Pratt?
I'm 100℅ va, but I may be weird

would you rather watch the movie with the va or Pratt?

I'm explaining the answer to your question, not saying the reasoning is good or bad.

I can almost excuse jack black but what in the everloving fuck were they thinking casting Kevin hart as Roland? I guess we'll see what his acting range is, but seeing as it's a comedy I don't think he's going to be the straight man Roland was.

I'm more iffed by the casting of Tiny Tina. That actress basically acts out an arrogant teenage girl stereotype in every film, which is really not a good fit for TT.

Fucking corpos are so detached from reality that they can’t even draw reasonable conclusions from successes/failures.

Whoever wrote this article needs their fingers chopped. Seriously, it’s just a matter of time they write something so stupid, it kills someone.

The success of Fallout proves that people involved cared. That they took the source material and turned it into a good show. It proves people are happy to watch good stuff.

I've said this in other comments- Fallout succeeds because it's about relationships between people who know each other vs people meeting but finding out they have something in common on a path to somewhat positive interactions which is the basis of all good drama.

Compared to every scene being naked drama with only conflict, exposition via confrontation, transactional relationships centered around a quid pro quo, or "love at first sight" being a romantic motivation.

I've never played a single fallout game or even knew the lore besides its post apocalyptic. Loved the show and it was cool as hell learning about the universe. They told the story well and made me care about the characters.

Whats great is that the people making the show really cared about the lore of the games, so if people like you who have no prior knowledge decide to ever check out the games, there isn't going to be an inconsistency with the lore or setting.

The show looks and feels just like the games. Its great, wish more adaptations had writers, directors, actors, etc. that cared about the source material.

Is this sarcasm? The show literally Retcons Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas out of existence.

No, it does not.

This claim is 100% misinformation.

The only people spreading this are a tiny subset of rabid New Vegas fans that just read one post about one scene and thinks it deleted the entirety of their favorite game right out of the canon universe of Fallout.

Yes, they do, and no it's not misinformation.

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler There is a chalkboard explicitly showing "The Fall of Shady Sands in 2277" with an arrow pointing to a nuke, and yet it is thriving and has a 30,000+ population in New Vegas in 2281.

Similarly, the shot of New Vegas at the end shows it completely dead and desolate.

So either, the in universe chalkboard was a lie / red herring and they were teaching wrong recent history for some unknown reason (bad writing), or the chalkboard labeling the "fall of shady Sands" refers to some other event that happened before the events of New Vegas and then Shady Sands gets nuked after the events of New Vegas (in which the case that chalkboard is badly drawn / intentionally misleading, it's retconning that Shady Sands wasn't thriving in 2281, and it's completely undoing the hopeful endings for New Vegas by nuking them out of existence). :::

Either the Fallout show is retconning the plot of the New Vegas game out of existence, or it's badly written and throwing out ham fisted red herrings while still intentionally undermining NV's narrative themes and hopeful endings.

This has already been refuted multiple times.

No, it did not retcon anything. One scene with a date on a blackboard doesn't change anything, and the date doesn't even refer to what you are saying.

Todd Howard saying something doesn't magically make it true, you should be aware of that by now if you've ever followed anything Bethesda related.

And again, like I said, the chalkboard clearly shows 2277 in clearly seen chalk. If that is not when the nuke falls, then that brings me back to my other point, that it then implies that Shady Sands started to fall before NV (retcon) and it undermines all the hopeful endings of NV.

I.e. even if it doesn't retcon the explicit plot beats of NV it retcons the themes and narrative.

Have you ever played NV? Because for as much as I love the NCR, being my favourite factions out of any media. NV makes it pretty clear things aren't all sunshine and rainbows.

The chalk board itself is also showing a timeline of events. With the "fall" and nuking being separated. They clearly take place at two different times.

2277 was the date of the first battle of Hoover Dam. If you've played NV you'd know marking that date as an arbitrary "fall" date isn't that far fetched.

It retcons the nuking of shady sands by 14-15 years, so undermines the entire fallout universe they are faithful to. What a boring hill to die on

Literally the entire date / time setting of the show is arbitrary. If they want to leave the canon of NV intact they would made that date later, though like I said, even if they do that, they're still undermining the narrative themes of NV by nuking the symbol of hope off the map right afterwards.

"No they didn't because I like the show so nuh-uh" is not only a boring an opinion but one backed up by nothing.

No, it doesn't. Found the guy that hasn't watched it yet! ^^

Literally posted a reply detailing exactly when and why it does.

As much as I liked the show in general, I think the majority of my enjoyment came from much they nailed the aesthetic, so I'm glad to see people enjoying it so much with out that prior experience.

I've always wanted to play them but they're the only games where I just get horrible, horrible, motion sickness. :(

It's just the first season. Witcher season 1 was good too

Fallout is a series filled top to bottom with passionate fans of the games. The Witcher was… very much not that.

If you’re skeptical, watch Tim Cain’s (Game director of Fallout 1) videos about the show and meeting the people who made it.

Director and Executive Producer Jonathan Nolan was also heavily involved in Westworld, which had exactly one good season before it shit itself to death. Also this is Amazon Studios which produced both Rings of Power and Wheel of Time. Executive Producer James Altman, has one other credit: Associate Producer for Super Troopers 2. In fact most of the writers and producers have poor resumes.

I’m hopeful but not naive.

Are fans of the series liking season 1? I thought it was kind of not great...

Edit: Just to clarify, any issues I have with the show are completely unrelated to it not being faithful enough to the source material, or for it being "woke" or some stupid bullshit... It's merely just a taste thing regarding the visuals, pacing, dialogue... Maybe it's just a general trend for TV shows, but it just has this... look to it, that I'm not a fan of. I can't really describe it much more than that. Everything is so goddamn shiny (despite being post apocalyptic ) and I found it super distracting for some reason.

From what I can tell, the show is doing great with most people, but some fans have been proclaiming that “it’s not good if you’re a fan of the video games”, but then I see people responding with “I am a huge fallout fan and I love the show”. Also, Tim Cain, the co-creator of fallout, loves the show; he loves the details in the background so much that he sometimes missed the dialogue.

So, from my pov, who has not watched the show or played the games, it seems like some people are throwing out “as a fan of the series…” to validate their opinion.

I mean I think there is a difference between making a story based in the lore of something vs the same characters.

You just have less creative liberty when you are telling a story about the MC.

No it's not good from the point of the book! In every single episode (every episode is a short story from the first book) they made at least one critical mistake that completely erases what makes the short stories so genius in the book. It's madining because the look and feel is very nicely captured and there was no reason to not follow the book more closely in the crutial plot points... ahhh such a wasted opportunity. I don't care much about the rest. I think only the first Witcher book is really good.

I didn’t even know there is a book that the show is based on, this whole time I thought it was its own story

The CGI on the power armor could be better but otherwise I’m liking it so far

It wasn't though.

1 more...

Well, well, well, producing movies based on "The Sims" and "Monopoly" doesn't seem so far-fetched now, does it?

I mean, they made the emoji movie. And fucking battleship. Nothing's too far-fetched. A family drama based on Connect 4? Why not! How about Dwayne Johnson stars in an action movie based on Hungry Hungry Hippos? It's all too plausible now.

The Sims could be best if they go the Lego movie route and make it a meta narrative

What meta narrative? That we all eventually remove the swimming pool ladder or trap them in a room on fire? Or having to buy the >£300 ($700) dlc multiple times?

The Last of Us: "do i look like a fucking joke to you?"

Yeah I personally like the Fallout show more than TLOU, but TLOU did it first, very successfully.

The resident evil film series has made over a billion dollars at the box office. The first movie came out over 20 years ago.

If you really have to leave out movies for your argument, the Castlevania tv show came out in 2017 and it's a fantastic show.

I definitely wouldn’t count the Resident Evil movies. I don't think you can even really call them adaptations. The only similarities between them and the games are that there are zombies in them.

Uhhh this is not the first successful adaptation. What the successful ones prove are that it's possible when you don't just make a cheap rip for the money.

As for previous adaptations, The Last of Us; Arcane; Resident Evil (how many movies did that series sell again?)

Well, the first 2 resident evil movies sure. And tomb raider and silent hill and the first mortal kombat. Other than those... How many actually good adaptations are there? But that only further proves your point. Adaptations can work, but only if the people making them give a fuck, and that's RARE.

Arcane is not a video game adaptation lol. It's a story that's nowhere ingame except for like two one-line voice lines.

I mean you can almost say that about fallout though too can’t you? There both an adaptation of the world and lore than any specific story

No shit, good video game adaptation have more success than bad ones ?

Well yes, but it also, between TLoU, the new One Piece and Airbender, and now this, proves that it's possible to take something with a good story, adapt it faithfully, and magically, against all apparent reason still end up with a good story. Mind blowing, I know. Good stories can make good stories.

Just for the love of god, do not let Uwe Boll be involved.

Wait, is Kyle McLachlan in this? If so hell yeah

And Walter Goggins.

With multiple Jon Daly cameos as well.

Oh shit my hometown golf lord is in it? Gonna watch asap

A lot of celebrity cameos at that. Most comedians. The show has good humor without being overbearing like Marvel.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


A slew of commercial and critical hits, including last year’s HBO series The Last of Us – which won eight Emmys – and The Super Mario Bros Movie – which made $1.36bn (£1.094bn) in the global box office – has led to market experts comparing them to Marvel adaptations, which have long been big moneymakers for studios.

The adaptation of Minecraft will be on screens next year, while a live-action film based on the Legend of Zelda franchise is in development and Margot Robbie is reportedly working on a The Sims movie.

They attribute this to two things: modern adaptations sticking more closely to the tone of the games while expanding on the story, and studios spending money to secure some of the biggest actors and producers in film and TV.

“In a single year, the Curse of the Terrible Video Game Adaptation has been so comprehensively broken that movie production companies now appear to be flinging themselves into something of a gold rush,” she said.

“However, where the MCU developed a singular, unified vision under the guidance of Kevin Feige [president of Marvel Studios], there is no apparent equivalent of that yet emerging behind video game properties.”

It was a sentiment echoed by Tim Richards, the chief executive of Vue cinemas, who said the key to adaptations’ success was their familiarity to a broad range of audiences.


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