In 1997, Interplay Entertainment released Fallout, the first entry in one of the most popular video game franchises ever. Just a year later, they released Fallout 2, and after nine years of silence from Fallout, Bethesda purchased the rights to the franchise.
Bethesda released some of the franchise’s most loved games in the next decade, including Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 4. In mid-2022, production began on a Fallout TV show in partnership with Amazon Prime.
Fans finally got to watch the show on April 10th, 2024. However, leading up to the release, there was some apprehension and mistrust in the series due to recent missteps in video game TV adaptations.
The Halo community very negatively received the 2022 show Halo as it did not stay true to the game’s story, feel, or theme. The producers of that show even bragged that they never played the game because they wanted to make their own story.
There was hope, however, as the 2023 adaptation of The Last of Us was very well received. Nevertheless, the general public tends to focus more on the negative possibilities, so many were worried about how the show would impact the story of Fallout.
When the show finally came out, it was met with high praise; despite some lore inaccuracies, a large majority of the community loved the show. Fans were relieved that the show stayed true to the gritty and brutal nature of the games.
The show’s description on Amazon Prime reads, “Fallout is the story of haves and have-nots in a world in which there’s almost nothing left to have.” This is the main theme of the games and echoes throughout the show.
It’s obvious that the show’s producers worked closely with the Bethesda team to get it right. “TV is about finding the characters, and how do we get the tone right in the show? So all of our initial conversations were mostly about tone,” said Todd Howard, executive producer at Bethesda, in an interview with IGN, ”it’s one of the things that you wish people could see. Well, I think you see in the show, in terms of the passion, everybody involved in it brought to it.”
The show’s main story is decent, nothing crazy innovative, but the amount of content it elaborates on from the overall Fallout story is almost overwhelming. Fans were right that the show would seriously affect the overall story of Fallout, but they were happily surprised at how it did so.
The show ends with a shot of the protagonist walking towards the New Vegas strip, the setting for Fallout: New Vegas. Fans are excited for new additions to the story of one of the best Fallout games ever in season 2. The show has a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.6/10 on IMDb. Hopefully, this show will serve as an example to other video game developers who want to invest in a TV adaptation. The execution of season 1 has the entire Fallout fandom excited for season 2.