If the nuclear annihilation of mankind is surely to come, the question still hangs of what comes after. How will people navigate these wastelands, flooded with radiation, in order to rebuild society in a nuclear dark age? Since 1997, one computer game has pondered that question, and became a videogame staple of the Post-Apocalypse. Fallout - once developed by Interplay Entertainment, until Bethesda Softworks’s acquisition of the IP in 2006 - is an RPG video game that allows you to take your own character on any path you choose in these wastelands. Now, nearly 30 years since the release of the first game, a live-action adaptation comes to us on Prime Video with all 8 episodes dropping at once. With Jonathan Nolan, showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner give us a lively wasteland and a charming band of characters that will surely make Fallout a big hit. 

 

Video game adaptations are tricky. Now that we’re in an age of mostly satisfactory adaptation, it’s interesting how these adaptations approach their source material. Fallout comes in feeling aware that it is in fact a video game adaptation. Not only does it emulate many things a player would do while playing a Fallout entry, but it even acknowledges the loose logic that comes in these video games. Like healing items that heal wounds quicker than normal, or even characters surviving what the human body normally shouldn’t, Fallout likes to bend logic in its heightened world that satirizes our obsession with the post-apocalypse while also giving us a nearly identical feeling of what it’s like to play the games. 

 

The show follows three separate characters as if it's a post-apocalypse Dungeons & Dragons party. There’s Lucy, the good natured vault dweller forced to leave in search for her father. Maximus, a Brotherhood of Steel scribe who has stolen the valor of a knight of the brotherhood, and Cooper, a ghoul who’s lived since the dawn of nuclear annihilation. Though these characters have a lot of charm to them, I did find myself not connecting to Maximus quite as well as I did Lucy and Cooper. Sadly, I think it's due to both flat writing, and Aaron Moten’s performance which doesn’t quite lock into the character as well as the others. However, it’s never a poor performance. Just one that misses the mark in a few places to really sell this character.

 

There’s also a unique sarcasm to Fallout. Whether it's poking fun at the altruism of our characters, or making fun of American culture and capitalism, it always manages to tie into the same hilarious core. Sometimes though, it does feel like it’s trying too hard to be funny despite being quite a riot most of the time. It feels as if repetitive and constant swearing are funny, but it never manages to really use its profanity in another way. One may argue that it’s also emulating the feelings of the player while fighting irradiated creatures of this wasteland, but it still feels like a half-baked attempt at humor in a thoroughly funny show.

Though it ain’t all that perfect, Fallout comes in swinging and establishes itself as one of the stronger video game adaptations of this generation.  There’s so much to chew on for fans of the games, but also the show serves as an excellent introduction to this wild wild wasteland. Strap on your Pip-Boy, open an ice-cold Nuka-Cola, and relax as you take a journey into Fallout’s wonderful post-apocalypse.