Microsoft has appointed Jill Braff as head of Bethesda/ZeniMax studios.
05.12.2023 - 01:51 / pcgamer.com / Todd Howard / Tim Cain / Will
We got our first look at the Fallout TV series last week with a trailer on Saturday preceded by a behind-the-scenes report from Vanity Fair, which included looks at the show's main characters and surprisingly bright and colorful post-nuclear world, and of course some words from Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard. The report also included a small and frankly baffling detail for fans to look forward to: Vault Boy, the real-world mascot of the series and in-game avatar of fictional megacorp Vault-Tec, is going to get his very own origin story.
Details weren't shared, naturally, but Howard seems to think it's a good idea: «That was something that they came up with that's just really smart,» he said in the Vanity Fair article.
Origin stories are a staple of cinematic retellings—how many times have we borne witness to the radioactive spider bite, the murder of the Wayne folks, or the kid from Krypton?—but… Vault Boy? Really? It feels not only entirely unnecessary to me, but also painfully obvious: Vault-Tec needed a fun, family-friendly mascot to help sell its otherwise apocalyptic products to the public at large, so it rounded up a few underpaid ad guys (or maybe hired an external consulting firm) and stuck them in a conference room to kick around ideas until they came up with something.
Making the whole thing even stranger is its redundancy, because the TV series origin story will almost inevitably reflect how the actual Vault Boy came into being: People workshopping ideas for a memorable character to help them sell a product. According to the Fallout Wiki, original Fallout art director Leonard Boyarsky sketched what he referred to as «Skill Guy» to help illustrate some ideas he was trying to explain; it then went to artist George Almond, who refined the concept on the first few in-game stat images, after which Tramell Ray Isaac took over, finalizing the look.
Fallout producer Tim Cain shared a more compact version of the creation of Vault Boy in a 2002 interview with Duck and Cover: «All I remember is Leonard telling T. Ray Isaac to draw something like Mr. Moneybags in Monopoly.»
I'll admit, it would be a nice little Easter egg if the Vault Boy origin story in the Fallout TV series saw a Vault-Tec marketing vice president named Leonard telling ad reps George and T. Ray that they've got until the end of the day to mash out something the company can put on television to juice sales. And it might go over well with people who aren't hip to the deep Fallout lore, which is to say, just about everyone. But as an important, or even just slightly noteworthy, part of the story? I really don't see it.
The Fallout TV series is set to air on Prime Video on April 12.
Microsoft has appointed Jill Braff as head of Bethesda/ZeniMax studios.
Bethesda has discussed what’s coming to Fallout 76 in 2024, and confirmed the multiplier-focused post-apocalyptic role-playing game now has more than 17 million players.
We often discuss the impressive turnaround of games like No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk, but Fallout 76 should probably be included in that discussion. While the game launched as an empty wasteland back in 2018, Bethesda has since added a ton of new features to make it feel more like, well, a Fallout game. NPCs, new locations, more fulfilling quests, iconic Fallout factions like the Brotherhood of Steel, and downright weird stuff like alien invasions. It may have suffered a torrid development, but the general consensus is that it's now a Good Videogame.
Developer and writer Chris Avellone, formerly of Interplay and Obsidian Entertainment, has recently been musing on Twitter about some of the roads not travelled during his time at the latter studio. One of Avellone's biggest credits is his work on Fallout: New Vegas, regarded by some as the finest 3D Fallout and the closest in spirit to the original isometric games, and—as spotted by GamesRadar+—he says after that Obsidian wanted to do the same: but for The Elder Scrolls.
Bethesda has delayed Fallout 4’s PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC update to 2024.
Amazon Prime's Fallout TV adaptation will not arrive with any references to bugs and glitches in its first season.
is Bethesda Softworks’ biggest game yet in almost every respect, featuring an unprecedented amount of playable space, an inventive New Game Plus feature, and a record-breaking launch. The game took roughly seven years to complete—typical Bethesda games take around four—and is considered a true passion project on behalf of Bethesda director Todd Howard and the rest of the developers. In December 2023, was reported to see 1.2 million daily players, and had amassed somewhere around 12,000,000 players in total.
Amazon has released the first trailer for its upcoming Fallout TV series.
After years of waiting, Amazon Studios has released the first trailer for its upcoming TV adaptation of Fallout. The series is set to premiere on April 12 on Amazon Prime, and this teaser proves that visually speaking, the series appears to faithfully capture the essence of Bethesda’s beloved RPG.
The Fallout TV series just got a trailer, giving us a glimpse into its irradiated post-apocalyptic world. Unveiled during the Comic-Con Expo (CCXP) event in Brazil, the show brings forth an original story set in a dilapidated Los Angeles and runs canon to the Bethesda game's universe — adding to the franchise, instead of adapting from one of its titles. However, just like the games, the tale largely follows a vault dweller who heads out into the nuclear wasteland in search of answers and in the process, meets countless eccentric characters — both good and bad — and uncovers the larger politics surrounding class divide, morality, and more. Fallout premieres April 12 on Amazon Prime Video.
Amazon has dropped a new meaty teaser to get us in the mood for the upcoming Fallout TV show.
Amazon’s Fallout TV series has got its first teaser trailer, and a release date, with the studio confirming the series will be available to stream from April 12th. The series focuses on a Vault Dweller from Vault 33 making the way to the surface, learning to survive in a new world 200 years after the bomb’s fell.