Fallout Works Because It Isn't Ashamed Of Being A Video Game

Amazon’s Fallout is drenched in fan service. Evﷺery frame is filled with familiar iconography or references to the RPG series🍒, with entire sets lifted from the games themselves as its cast of new characters explore towns and vaults which wouldn’t feel out of place in another medium.

Everything works and looks as we’d expect it🐼 to as Fallout fans, and there’s a loving charm to this attitude. Instead of seeking to make needless changes for fear of being immature or illogical, Fallout instead leans into its relative absurdity. And it more than works.

Characters use Pip-Boys, don power armour, inhabit vaults, fire plasma rifles, and do almost everything w♊e’d expect them to in this universe, and not once is it treated like a wink at the games, as if it to say ‘we know how ridiculous this material is, but we’re making it work as best we can.’ It is taken seriously with the amount of conviction you’d sincerely hope for.

Not all video game adaptations are like this. In decades past, we've seen properties like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Dead or Alive, House of the Dead, and countless others adapt the bare necessities before leaving the rest on the cutting room floor. We’ve evolved past that point, with the medium now being treated with far more respect.

The Video Game Adaptation Curse Was Broken A Long Time Ago

Sometimes this isn’t enough though. Creators often feel the need to introduce a new spin on the source material that is largely unnecessary. Take HBO’s 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us for example, which remov🐬ed the need for characters to wear gas masks to help prevent infection because showrunner Craig Mazin wanted to take h🦹is virus in a new direction. It still focuses on cordyceps and fungal infection, but in order to get stronger performances out of actors, a key part of the lore was removed. It believed the game to hav🐼e made a decision which didn’t work in its favour, and decided to wipe it away with a reasoning that could have made for more immersive storytelling if they decided instead to embrace it.

In an 🙈interview with , Mazin described The Last of Us as “the greatest story ever told in video games” which, to me at least, feels like a reductive perspective to take. Naughty Dog set a worthy benchmark for narrative blockbusters in video games, but the we𝓰ll goes so much deeper than that, and to label it as the ultimate example of storytelling disregards god knows how many games that have taken compelling and unorthodox approaches to the stories they tell. However, it’s worth remembering that he was being paid to market his TV series through the medium of spicy quotes that could go viral.

“They didn’t shoot anything out of their eyeballs. They were just people,” explained Mazin. “And that, in and of itself, is remarkably rare in games. The fact that they kept it so grounde꧟d, and really made you feel – I had never experienced anything like it, and I’ve been ♌playing video games since 1977.”

HBO was interested in The Last of Us because it was already proven as the best story that video games had or ever would tel꧟l, and so it offered the perfect foundation for them to build on. The cable network will likely have the same reverence as it adapts Part 2, but adaptations shouldn’t be constrained to the very best as we enter this strange new era. If anything, more compelling adaptations can be found by tackling games which aren’t traditionally associated with excellent, character-driven stories. And by leaning into the mechanical nature of video games, film and TV can stretch beyond their traditional definitions.

Adaptations Should Lean Into What Makes Video Games So Special

Fallout TV Show Maximus With Brotherhood Of Steel Out Of Power Armor

Look at Arcane or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Castlevania, which both achieved immense success by thinking outside the box and using their respective universes as blueprints instead of relying on existing tales t🌟o do all the heavy lifting. Fallout is the same, and works because it weaves its iconic identity into a narra✨tive filled with excellent writing and characters who stand on their own two feet.

Fans are jumping into Fallout and gleefully eating up eve🍰ry reference to the Brotherhood of Steel or Vault-Tec, reading between the lines of dialogue and set design to predict where it might take us in the future. But even newcomers can step into this show and still be bowled over by a brilliant post-apocalyptic story with an unmistakable tongue-in-cheek attitude.

It is silly and nonsensical at times in the video game logic it employs, both through its camera wo🐻rk — which incorporates mechanics like V.A.T.S — and character development that heavily relies on the games. It isn’t afraid to lean into all the games it draws inspiration from, even if it means the audience needs to suspend its disbelief. Drawing so much from the games means bending the rules we’ve come to expect from streaming-era television.

But so long as the narrative remains grounded with proper emotional stakes, th𝄹at sort of thing is easy to forgive. If anything, the video game-ness makes the whole thing so much better.