Amazon’s Fallout TV series is even more impressive than The Last of Us

12.04.2024 - 11:13 / digitaltrends.com / Todd Howard / Giovanni Colantonio

When the first trailer for Amazon’s Fallout dropped, the internet was hit by a familiar wave of eye rolls. Every aspect of it was scrutinized, from its Power Suit design to its title card gags. Now, days after the entire series was released on Amazon Prime Video to rave reviews, those preemptive haters are eating irradiated crow.

The skepticism wasn’t entirely unwarranted, and not just because the first trailer didn’t paint a full picture of just how damn funny the series is. The term “video game adaptation” still has some red flags attached to it. The term still brings to mind schlocky blockbusters like Doom and Prince of Persia. That perception is turning, though. HBO’s The Last of Us proved that a video game could translate into Emmy-nominated prestige television. Fallout is likely to follow in that show’s footsteps, doing for comedy what The Last of Us did for drama.

Fallout’s success may be the more impressive feat, though. While The Last of Us was born from developer Naughty Dog’s cinematic instincts, the Fallout games aren’t ones that can translate as neatly to TV. They’re sprawling RPGs where players get to forge their own path in the wasteland while juggling tons of storylines at once. It shouldn’t work outside the confines of a video game, but it does. That’s thanks to a bold decision that future filmmakers should take notes of: It adapts the world of Fallout, not its story.

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Selective adaptation

On paper, Amazon’s Fallout is a loose adaptation of Bethesda’s RPG series. It contains lots of references to the games, but it has an entirely invented story. The series takes place 219 years after a nuclear attack decimates America and follows three different characters whose paths intersect. Lucy (Ella Purnell) is a “vault dweller” who encounters the surface world for the first time in a quest to find her kidnapped father. She crosses paths with both Maximus (Aaron Moten), a soldier in a tech-obsessed faction dubbed the Brotherhood of Steel, and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a mutated bounty hunter who’s seemingly been turned immortal by radiation poisoning.

While the story doesn’t directly adapt the quests of Fallout 4 or Fallout: New Vegas, the puzzle pieces are all there. Lucy acts as a stand-in for the usual player character, as Fallout games generally cast players as a vault dweller experiencing the outside world. Factions like the Brotherhood of Steel, Raiders, and The Enclave all play a significant role. Lucy comes face-to-face with Radroaches and Gulpers. And of course, the series