Fallout

Given the dead Caesar has the same outfit as FONV Caesar, presumably it is the same guy.

I do agree the "no ending matters cause they all died after you played the game lololol" is fucking dumb - Todd just needs to grow a pair, say "X is canon", and go from there. They picked a canon ending for FO3, not sure why they are so coy with FONV and FO4.

As for Anchorage, I think they're going to use it to introduce the deathclaw (a preview showed a deathclaw in Anchorage). While that seems anachronistic, it really isn't. As far back as Fallout 2, the game suggested deathclaws were developed BEFORE the war. The Enclave has also been obsessed with deathclaws since the introduction of that faction. Fallout 76 even went a bit further to explain WestTek FEV research on animals and how deathclaws were promising weapons, but an inability to control them made them a liability. I wouldn't be shocked if we see a deathclaw in Anchorage and it has a control device on it.

My theory: Coop goes to Las Vegas and meets House (the one we see in the show using the control devices). Coop sees the device and immediately knows what it is, which leads us to the flashback to Anchorage where he first sees the device being used on a deathclaw (and maybe "chinese communist invaders"). This simultaneously introduces the audience to the deathclaw and coop's familiarity with the devices.

Gravel said:

This might be why I'm not particularly enjoying it.

I played Fallout and Fallout 2 in the 90's and loved them. Played Fallout 3 and 4 on release. Played New Vegas. Played 76.

I couldn't tell you a fucking lick of "lore" because it's either been to long or it just wasn't good enough for me to make space in my brain to remember. So all these little easter eggs about shit like Mr House mean fuckall to me (I couldn't tell you who Mr House is). I don't remember the ending to any of the games. Hell, I'm not sure I remember any quests except for the main one in Fallout 2 was to get a G.E.C.K. or water chip or something.

So as a standalone, the plot of this show isn't really impressing me so far. It's funny, in the "previously on" shit for episode 2 it showed everything that happened at the end of season 1, and while I remember the set pieces, I couldn't for the life of me tell you what actually happened. It just wasn't interesting enough apparently.

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Yeah, so reading the comments about this latest episode, I'm going to reiterate my above post. The problem with this show is they're relying on fans of the IP with easter eggs (see, it's those things you remember!). This does absolutely nothing for someone who doesn't remember or know this shit.

The Caesar thing just seemed like something out of a slapstick comedy and meant nothing to me. It just seemed out of place and bizarre with no context. Same with the NCR thing. I recognize the NCR as a concept, but I don't even know what the purpose was. The purpose seems to have been to establish the Ghoul doing "bad things" for a good outcome, but since I don't have any ties to the characters he kills it means nothing to me.

The Brotherhood stuff was equally confusing. Although I think this is more because they haven't done enough to show me why I should empathize with them. Or maybe I'm not supposed to, but in that case, why show it at all? If I'm not attached to either side of the conflict, why do I care if they go to war?

And that's it, that was the entire episode. The problem then becomes as someone without any attachment to the games, this is all meaningless. They haven't taken the time to build these locations and factions, they just throw them in willy nilly. And then the people who eat up the games are apparently annoyed with every scene because it doesn't follow the games close enough (or conflicts with various endings). All around it seems like a failure.

Why can't anyone write a second season of a TV show worth a shit anymore?

Cybsled said:

As for Anchorage, I think they're going to use it to introduce the deathclaw

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Ah, now that could work, as you said the audience hasn't been introduced to designed bioweapons (vs mutated creatures). Hell, let's go full cheese - Coop meets Barb soon afterward (who's just a mid-level Vault-Tec grunt) who says "Vault-Tec doesn't deal with monsters", the invalidation of that statement being what gets later Coop to agree to kill House.

I disagree on the timing, however - I don't think the audience actually knows New Vegas is ruined yet, so The Ghoul and Lucy finally getting to the city and seeing it is fucked will be how episode four ends, with episode 5 being a mirror episode as Coop hits Vegas pre-war while The Ghoul and Lucy see what New Vegas is like now, with the endings being Coop meeting the real House and The Ghoul seeing TV screen House is still around.

Gravel said:

Yeah, so reading the comments about this latest episode, I'm going to reiterate my above post. The problem with this show is they're relying on fans of the IP with easter eggs (see, it's those things you remember!). This does absolutely nothing for someone who doesn't remember or know this shit.

The Caesar thing just seemed like something out of a slapstick comedy and meant nothing to me. It just seemed out of place and bizarre with no context. Same with the NCR thing. I recognize the NCR as a concept, but I don't even know what the purpose was. The purpose seems to have been to establish the Ghoul doing "bad things" for a good outcome, but since I don't have any ties to the characters he kills it means nothing to me.

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It's not just you, or people who aren't familiar with the game, the Caesar thing was very much slapstick comedy and totally out of place. For once though, I don't think it's the writing - it was the tiny size of the split camp, the number of people involved and the generally casual attitude to what should be an semi-active warzone.

The game makes fun of them a bit, they are a bunch of complete retards, but they are the organized, deadly, mass atrocity style retards, not the cast of Life of Brian.

Gravel said:

The problem with this show is they're relying on fans of the IP with easter eggs (see, it's those things you remember!). This does absolutely nothing for someone who doesn't remember or know this shit.

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I don't really buy the idea that this show "only works if you're a superfan." If anything, I'm probably the target case you're describing. I played Fallout 1 and 2 back when dial-up was still a thing, played Fallout 3 when it came out, and that's about it (I feel like once it went FPS, it was ruined for me). I don't have deep emotional attachment to Caesar's Legion endings, NCR politics from New Vegas, or Brotherhood lore spreadsheets. And the episode still made sense to me.

The Caesar reference didn't come across as slapstick fanservice, I read it as Fallout being Fallout. That franchise has always mashed together absurd ideology, dark humor, and violence without stopping to lecture you about it. Even in Fallout 1 and 2, you constantly ran into factions that were bizarre, half-broken, or operating on warped logic. The show isn't asking you to already care about Caesar, it's showing you that this world produces lunatics who wrap brutality in philosophy. You don't need a wiki tab open to get that.

Same thing with the NCR. I recognized them vaguely from Fallout 2 and 3, but I didn't need a lore dump to understand their function here. They're a "civilization trying (and failing) to be a state again." That's been Fallout's core tension since the beginning: order vs. survival, institutions vs. wasteland reality. The point isn't "remember this faction you loved," it's showing how fragile and compromised these attempts at rebuilding always are.

As for the Ghoul, I don’t think the scenes hinge on caring about the people he kills. Fallout has never framed morality in a clean, empathetic way. In Fallout 3 especially, you routinely did horrible things to people you barely knew because the world itself was broken. The Ghoul's actions aren't meant to be emotionally cathartic, they're meant to be unsettling. He's a walking embodiment of what surviving too long in this world does to someone. Especially someone who seems to be a pretty "good" person at his core - hence the flashback to his war buddies. You don't need attachments to understand that tradeoff.

The Brotherhood criticism also feels off. You're not supposed to empathize with them, at least not cleanly. Even in Fallout 1 and 3, the Brotherhood was insular, authoritarian, and more concerned with technology than people. The show presenting them as rigid, cult-like, and morally questionable is extremely on-brand. The reason to show them isn't so you can "pick a side," it's to underline that none of these factions are heroes. War between them isn't tragic because we love them, it's tragic because it's inevitable - hence Fallout's long running tag-line of, "War...war never changes".

And honestly, the idea that the show "hasn't taken time to build these factions" ignores that Fallout as a setting has always relied on implication and environmental storytelling. The games didn't stop to explain everything either. You pieced it together by observation, tone, and consequence. The show is doing the same thing, just visually instead of through terminals and dialogue trees.

You don't have to love the show, but calling it meaningless unless you've memorized the IP feels wrong. I'm about as mid-investment as it gets in Fallout, and the themes, tone, and conflicts still landed. Fallout has always been messy, morally gray, and occasionally absurd.

Yeah I don't get people harpying about game endings like that's even going to be a thing in this world. Obviously fallout new vegas is their main inspiration for characters and setting, but I don't expect the plot to be a continuation of any of the game storylines.

velk said:

It's not just you, or people who aren't familiar with the game, the Caesar thing was very much slapstick comedy and totally out of place. For once though, I don't think it's the writing - it was the tiny size of the split camp, the number of people involved and the generally casual attitude to what should be an semi-active warzone.

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There is a blink or you'll miss it moment towards the start of the episode where there is a giant map of the Mojave behind the elder. If you pause it, you can see multiple Caesar's Legion markers on the map in different locations, so the camp we see isn't their only settlement. I presume the only reason they are even in that location is because OG Caesar's body is there out in the open and neither side is going to let the other retrieve it.

Speaking of which, you can see part of the note in the pocket and it says something like "I am" and the rest is hidden. Given Caesar's personality in FONV, the letter probably says something like "I am the only Caesar" rather than name an heir like each side seems to presume it does.

Its on the same level as 1. I kind of watch it for the main actress. I am waiting for her to just face reality and rage out. That scene will be fun.

Last episode was one of the best of the series

Interesting theory - there was a small bonus video released on Prime with episode 3.

is s2 worth watching for the laughs?