9 details the Fallout TV show absolutely nails from the games

Key Takeaways

The Fallout series on Amazon Prime has an impressive 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Show recreates iconic weapons and armor from the Fallout games.
The series captures the essence of the Fallout series with unique characters and mutated creatures from the games.

Amazon’s adaptation of Bethesda’s nuclear-apocalypse video game series, Fallout, has finally arrived.

All eight episodes of the sci-fi series are now available for binge-watching on Amazon Prime. The series is set in the year 2296, just over 200 years after a nuclear war wiped out most of humans. It follows Ella Purcell’s character, Lucy Maclean, who leaves the safety of Vault 33 to find her father, who has been abducted by a band of raiders.

The series is currently sitting at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is rare for a video game adaptation. The biggest reason for the show’s success is how it weaves a compelling story while absolutely stockpiling the show with elements — big and small — pulled directly from teh Fallout games.

Fallout

A live-action series based on the popular video game series from Bethesda.

Creator: Jonathan Nolan
Starring: Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, Aaron Clifton Moten
Studio: Amazon
Format: TV series
Genre: Sci-Fi
Number of Seasons: 1
Number of episodes: 8

1 Lucy’s introduction is S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Live-action character creation

Amazon

In the first episode of Amazon’s Fallout TV series, we meet Lucy, a new character who’s not in the Fallout games. She’s kind of like the character you’d play in the games.

She’s pitching herself to a bunch of higher-ups in her Vault, making a case to marry a guy from a different Vault. It might just seem like she’s listing her skills — like she’s good at fighting, using weapons, and even gymnastics. But if you’ve played Fallout before, this moment feels a lot like when you start a new game and pick your character’s skills and attributes using the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system (you know, where you distribute points among Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck).

Lucy’s journey in this episode also mashes up the beginnings of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. In Fallout 3, your character grows up in a Vault and then has to leave to track down their dad in the wild, harsh world outside. Fallout 4’s start has you looking for your kidnapped son after raiders hit your Vault.

In the show, Lucy ends up having to brave the wasteland to find her dad after he’s taken by raiders.

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2 The Weapons

One of Fallout’s weirdest weapons makes an appearance

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One of the best parts of the Fallout video games is the weapons, and the series wasted no time showing off one of the weirdest weapons the Fallout universe has to offer, with the Junk Jet appearing near the end of episode one. You’ll notice an unnamed guard gets impaled by a doll’s arm before the show switches to a smoking Junk Jet. Fans of the games will recognize it as a cannon you load with the random junk you find throughout the wasteland and then shoot out at enemies.

That’s not all, though, as just about every gun from the game has been meticulously recreated for the show. That includes pipe pistols, laser and plasma weapons, and the classic 10mm, one of the first guns players find in Fallout games.

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3 The Factions

What’s a wasteland without a few cults

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Fallout’s wasteland setting feels so alive thanks to the people and factions you meet as you explore it. From the naive Vault-dwellers to the hardcore zealots in the Brotherhood of Steel, the random people and factions in the Wasteland are the best part of the games, helping to capture the humor and tragedy that exists in the world. The Prime Video series has really nailed that part of the Fallout series.

The naive innocence of the Vault-dwellers and the Brotherhood of Steel followers we meet alongside Lucy and Maximus in episode one could have been ripped from recent Fallout games, but the show shines most once it begins introducing a wider cast of characters from the Wasteland. The first person Lucy meets after leaving the Vault is a wastelander clad in plastic bag underwear trying to turn sand into water using a water purifier. While it’s played for laughs, their conversation sets up the world Lucy is entering perfectly — and lets gamers know they’re in a familiar environment.

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4 Perfect sets

Atomic age meets nuclear wasteland

Amazon

The Fallout games have a fantastic Atomic Age aesthetic. The series takes place in a universe where transistors were never developed, which stunted the development of computers and led to more advancements in things like nuclear technology and robotics. This locked American society into a weird futuristic version of the 1950s until a nuclear war hit in 2077.

You can see the challenges this adaptation presented to Amazon: just picture a live-action version of The Jetsons set in a nuclear apocalypse. Luckily, Amazon backed up the Brinks truck with a $153 million budget that series creator Jonathan Nolan used to perfectly capture the world of the Fallout video games. From the first scenes of pre-war life before the bombs, to Lucy’s life in the Vault, and the wider, grimy world of the Wasteland, the Fallout series looks better, and more like a Fallout video game, than even the most devoted Fallout fans could have pictured.

5 Comics and books

It’s always good to be well-read

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Gamers will certainly recognize the comics and books scattered throughout the Fallout series. In the games, players can find comics and books throughout the Wasteland and read them to gain skills. So, you can read things like Grognak the Barbarian to improve your melee combat skill or Tesla Science Magazine to boost your science skill. Both of these magazines appear in the series for eagle-eyed viewers to spot, with Walton Goggin’s character The Ghoul seen reading the Tesla Magazine.

Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for season two of Fallout if we’re looking to catch a character reading Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor.

fallout 4 first impressions review image 1

6 Medicine and drugs

From Stimpaks to Jet

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One of the best moments from episode one of the Fallout series is when we get our first glimpse at a stimpak, the Fallout universe’s version of a fix-it-all medical device. Lucy uses one after being stabbed by a raider who has invaded Vault 33, and for a split-second, it seems as if the stimpak cured her stab wound like it would in a Fallout game, but shortly afterward we see her needing stitches.

The creators spent just as much time recreating the medicinal world of Fallout as they did every other detail of the universe. They seem to know it too, because they love to let the camera linger on the stimpaks, as if they’re saying to the viewers, “Don’t these look just like in the game?” We also see some of the drugs in the wasteland that essentially serve as power boosts in the game. In episode one, a raider uses Jet (a drug that slows down time in Fallout 4) moments before tripping and being crushed to death by a closing door. We also see more drugs like RadAway in the series.

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7 A companion that carries all your stuff

“I am sworn to carry your burdens”

Amazon

If you’ve ever played a Bethesda game, you’ll be familiar with the practice of making one of the NPC companion characters carry all of your extra stuff that you don’t have room for. For the first time ever, we get to see this practice in live-action, as Maximus (Aaron Clifton Moten) is forced to carry around Knight Titus’s equipment, a duffle bag that’s about the same size as Maximus. We can see weapons dangling out of it at a few points.

Knight Titus has a classic encounter with his companion when he sends Maximus to check out a dark, scary room.

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8 Mutated animals and deadly robots

Giant bugs, monstrous bears, and two-headed cows

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A scary aspect of the Fallout series is the mutated creatures you have to battle in the apocalypse. There’s no shortage of them in the Fallout show. We see a Yao Guai, the Fallout universe’s version of a mutated bear monster. But that monster isn’t alone, as we also get glimpses of radroaches, brahmin, and Gulpers.

We also see some of the robots that populate the wasteland. Early on, we see a destroyed Assaultron Robot, one of the tougher enemies from the games. There’s also a terrifying version of a Mister Handy, voiced by Matt Berry, who performs organ removal for a gang of bandits.

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9 Dogmeat

The best Fallout companion comes to live-action

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One of the few characters that appears in multiple Fallout games, Dogmeat, is a German Shepherd-player companion. He debuted in the first Fallout game, but more versions of Dogmeat popped up in Fallout 2, 3, and 4. So, the Prime Video version of Fallout needed its own version of man’s best friend for the apocalypse, naturally.

We get that in the form of a pup narrowly escaping death, thanks to the help of an Enclave scientist named Wilzig (Michael Emerson). The dog doesn’t get his trademark name until much later, but he’s the one character that you could suggest makes an appearance from the Fallout video games.

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FAQ

Q: Will there be a season 2 of the Fallout series?

Amazon hasn’t announced whether Fallout will return for a second season, but with the series getting rave reviews early on and gaining traction on social media, it’s looking good that the series will get a second season.