The Fallout TV show has revived an ancient argument about Vault Boy's thumb

10.04.2024 - 13:25 / rockpapershotgun.com / Todd Howard / Bethesda Softworks / Walton Goggins / Ella Purnell / Aaron Moten

Last week I went to a screening of Amazon and Bethesda's Fallout TV show, a spin-off yarn starring Ella Purnell (who voiced Jinx in the Arcane Netflix adaptation) as a recently surfaced Vault Dweller, scouring the irradiated wastelands for [SPOILERS REDACTED]. It's early days, but the show's first two episodes didn't make a massive impression on me, though I will concede that the sight of Amazon's branding on Fallout's infamous Please Stand By emergency broadcast titlecard makes a dangerous amount of sense.

As with the company's Rings Of Power adaptation of Lord Of The Rings, it's a design-by-committee assemblage of fan-favourite props and fittings, all recreated in flat, bright, HD-optimised shades that felt as sterile as the mocked-up Vault interior our screening took place in. That feeling of falseness makes sense within the artificial confines of a Vault, of course, but it defines the show's above-ground scene-setting as well. The plot also screws up what is arguably the best moment in any Fallout game - cracking the Vault's seal and seeing a ravaged post-nuclear Earth for the first time. Its parallel storytelling cuts to one above-ground location well before Purnell's Lucy MacLean bids Vault 33 goodbye, ruining the suspense.

Still, there's some excitement in the shape of Aaron Moten's Maximus, a rapidly disillusioned Brotherhood Of Steel trainee, and Walton Goggins's The Ghoul, a figure from before the Fall who is as good at gunslinging as he is chewing the scenery. And there's intrigue in the fact that the Fallout TV show has absent-mindedly resurfaced an argument between Fallout players and fans that goes back years. Before I get to that, though, here are some thoughts from Bethesda boss Todd Howard.

There was a very rehearsed group Q&A after the screening, in which Howard mostly sat quietly while the cast enthused about things like wearing Brotherhood Of Steel power armour on set. Towards the end, the host threw Howard and videogames journalists a bone by asking how it felt to watch the show as official Fallout uncle, and is there anything here that might show up in a Fallout game - dare we utter the magic words, Fallout 5? "Well, I think the main way we approached this was to do something new, you know - treat it like we do with each game where we want to tell an original story, find some good geography," Howard replied. "I say that the main character in all of the Fallout games and everything we've done is the world itself. And so being able to work with all of these people, and tell a new story, about what would the next chapter be and moving it forward."

"You know, as I think about the franchise, the one thing the show is able to do that we were really never able to do in the games and the