The Best Thing About The Fallout Show Is It's Canon

There are more than a few things that make the television adaptation of Fallout so good. Everyone involved seems to have understood the assignment. The visual design of the show from sets to characters to clothes - all perfect, even if there are actual, living human b𒆙eings online making characters’ butts bigger with AI. Meanwhile, the writing spot-on hits the tone of the series, constantly diving between deeply sad and absurdly goofy.

And the acting? Hoo boy, do we love us come Walton Goggins as Coop! Not to mention Ella Purnell and Aaron Clifton Moten, who absolutely land the feeling of being a new, very naive person in a new, very cruel world. I’m embarrassed to say 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:how much they feel like low level PCs. But if there’s one thing that brings everything together to make Fallout feel like, well, Fallout, it&rsquoဣ;s the bonkers fact that the show is canon.

Fallout Has Always Changed Its Canon

Lucy covered in blood in the Fallout show

Before we get into this, yes, I know there are some parts of the Fallout TV show that fa𓂃ns of the games don&rsqu💯o;t love. There are a few implied retcons, and because the series is linear rather than interactive, certain previous in-game choices and endings will now also be cemented as canon. Some viewers are upset that the New California Republic has gone from a growing government to a tiny, almost non-existent faction. Others worry that going by dates and imagery, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout: New Vegas (a game that I also think is the best in the series) either didn’t happen or, perhaps, the most depressing ending in the game did happen.

That said, Fallout is a series that has constantly retconned itself. Every Fallout game seems to play with its historical dates and technologies. We got advanced T-60 power armor in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fallout 4 and suddenly it existed everywhere before the war. Meanwhile, the biology behind Super Mutants - which we haven’t seen in the show yet - has changed, what, three or four times? And the way people actually get a spot in the vaults seems to work multiple contradictory ways, depending on both the morality tale of the sidequest. Apparently you can get a spot if you’re incredibly wealthy or incredibly ꦍunlucky or if you live within walking distance of a vault and sign a form on the day of the apocalypse. Hell, I recently played Fallout pinball and one of the side quests is in a very different Vault 33 than the show. I sure hope somebody got fired for that blunder!

So if Fallout games never stuck 100 percent close to the series canon, why is it great that the show is part of it anyway? Because that means the show has to buy into the current series rather than create a new series. Even when it’s stretching the canon or making choices that upset fans, the show still exists within the current world of the games. There isn’t a separate Fallout Cinematic Universe for us to🧔 parse out and differentiate. Everything we know about the games applies here - including that things can be a bit loosey goosey if it works for th🀅e bit.

The Fallout TV Show Goes Beyond Easter Eggs

One massive benefit of this is that fan service in the show actually matters. When a character tries to hack a computer, it looks like the hacking in the game. Sure, this is great aesthetically! We all like a reference! 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:But it goes beyond that. They didn’t create a similar version of hacking or design one that makes more logical sense outside of a video game. They just did the hacking because that’s how hacking works in Fallout. When a character needs healing or to get rid of radiation, they use♒ Stimpacks and RadAway. The people who live in the Fallout TV show act the same way as we do wheඣn we play characters in the Fallout games. And that makes sense, because they are explicitly in the same fictional universe.

This extends past fan service into th♏e actual plot. What happens in the Fallout show also matters to the past and future of the games. The twist in the last episode hits hard because it’s not a big reveal for eight episodes of television; it’s a big reveal for twenty-five years of great games. And it fits! While some might not love the creative decision, it’s definitely earned. Vault-Tec has always been evil. Them having a hand in the end of the world has both been hinted at and makes sense. And, again, gives us a fun way to look at the older games from a new perspective. The show informs the games just as much as the games inform the show.

And although the Fallout TV show (and every game since the very first Fallout) 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:adjusts the canon, the fact that it’s still beholden to it keeps things from running off the rails. While we’re in a golden age of game adaptations, it would be extremely easy to pick and choose which elements of Fallout were worth keeping in a ‘re-imagining&𒆙rsquo; of the series. Maybe there are vaults, but the nuclear war took place later! Ugh, does everyone have to wear those blue outfits? Hmm, these animal mutations seem a little unrealistic.

By sticking to the canon, the Fallout TV show is forced to trust the game series and the fans. No show will ever be tamper free, but it keeps the Bud Askins of Hollywood from wondering if television audiences really have to see Walton Goggins’ ghoul with 🐎no nose (the answer is “yes”). Side note, in a fictional universe in which people casually blow off each others’ limbs an🍃d nightmarish experiments happen in vaults, it’s a testament to the quality of the show that the cheerful, confident Bud Askins is actually one of the more disturbing characters. Dude gives me the goddamn creeps.

Rather than basing the Fallout TV show on the games, by keeping it within canon, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:it is the games. The show’s producers were 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:making an entry in the game series, not an entirely new series. Canon can certainly be a curse, and just because something’s canon doesn’t mean it can’t make missteps or add dreaded new canon. But here at least it puts up some creative guardrails. Fallout wasn’t turned into an unrecognizable retel💮ling of the series. And fans knew that references within the series had real weight beyond the s🌱tandard “REMEMBER THIS?” You want to know why so many of us are going back to the old games? Because the show put us all right at home in Vault 33.