Everything you need to know about Amazon's Fallout ahead of release: we spoke to its creators

If you're a fan of recent film and TV adaptations of video game hits like The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the Castlevania and Tekken series on Netflix, or The Last of Us on HBO Max, you certainly don't want to miss Fallout, which premieres on Prime Video on April 11.

Yes, you read that right. Fallout brings forward its premiere on Amazon's streaming platform by one day (the first trailer announced it for April 12), and it does so by releasing all the episodes at the same time. The production company is very proud of the work of both the cast and crew, and yesterday we attended a closed-door presentation where we were able to ask questions of director and executive producer Jonathan Nolan, showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, stars of the show Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten, and producer and director of the game series Todd Howard as they unveiled the new gameplay trailer, which you can see below.

The main driving force behind Fallout as a TV series was Jonathan Nolan, who has been a self-confessed fan of the game franchise since playing the third instalment in 2008, and that the first move to create the series on Amazon came five years ago, when he was able to meet Todd Howard in person. "At the time I was a young aspiring writer. It almost derailed my whole career. It's so ridiculously playable and fun. No, seriously, the games were amazing."

"It's such a rare and incredible thing, and I've done it twice in my career, to take something you love and have the opportunity to play in that universe, to create, you know, your own version of that universe. The first time was with Batman, and this time with Fallout, a series of games that I love."

In recent statements both Nolan and Howard have said that the series could be considered Fallout 5, even though it's a completely original story set in the same universe. As you'll see when we talk about the details of what was seen in the trailer, there are many details that connect to the entire game series, including the early Black Isle and Interplay titles before Bethesda took over the IP. Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner also spoke about this:

"It's set in the world of Fallout, but it's a new story that takes place, more or less, after the events we've seen. The series is based on 25 years of creativity, thinking and building. And we thought it was best to continue that, rather than retread it. Because that's what's worked with Fallout over the years. It's changed hands, it's been altered, and it's a living thing. And yeah, we felt like we should try to put a new piece on top of all that."

Whether this transition from video game to TV format works depends on the production's attention to detail, and Nolan took the opportunity to share with us the moment he was sure it would work: "We talked a lot about the Power Armor. The tone was another important thing. I think the tone was perhaps the hardest and most intimidating thing for me. But working with Geneva and Graham, I knew we were going to be in a good place with an incredibly ambitious story. On a technical level, the scope of the world and the Power Armor in particular, it was one of those things where you wonder, how the hell are we going to do that? But we pulled it off."

A story like that couldn't work without a cast of actors who know how to tackle it. At this point Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten entered the conversation, to tell us a bit about their roles and the contrast their characters, Lucy and Max, offer to span the entire Fallout universe.

"Lucy is a denizen of the Refuge," Ella began, "and what excited me most about playing her was that she's so innocent and naïve and obviously also very privileged, as you mentioned. It was exciting for me to start in that place. You know, she's essentially a newborn baby. She hasn't had any real life experience. All she knows is what she's been taught and what she's read in the books that she has in the vault. She's limited. And then you put her in the Wasteland, and, you know, what happens? What happens with that? That's really exciting to me to begin with."

"I play Maximus. He's part of the Brotherhood of Steel," Aaron followed up. "(...) a person who's lived in the Wasteland his whole life, and he has to, you know, have a certain kind of moral ambiguity imposed on him, I think, living in the world that he lives in, and where you go from there. How you hold on to what your unique, pure self is, and how that changes, and how you figure out what it is that you want."

We were also able to see a video with a special greeting from Walton Goggins, who was unable to attend the event, in which he talked about what it's been like to play the Ghoul (whose Ghoul name was not revealed), the complexity of his character, and how he bridges the pre-war world with the post-apocalyptic Wasteland we'll see in the series, almost 200 years later. "The Ghoul is, in a way, the poet Virgil in Dante's Inferno. He is the guide, so to speak, of the group and the viewer through this post-apocalyptic paradise."

The best details and secrets you shouldn't miss from the Fallout trailer

If you've been a fan of the games from 1998 to the present, you've probably noticed some of the details that make the Fallout series' production design so detailed, but perhaps there are others that you've missed. For example, Lucy walks by the Shady Sands sign, a location that has been an important part of the Fallout games since their inception. Shady Sands is where the Dweller of Vault 13 arrives in the original Fallout while searching for the water chip, and that settlement would eventually grow to become the capital of the New California Republic, one of the main factions in Fallout New Vegas.

While it's not likely to be the same place (mostly due to the geography of the United States itself), the settlement where the Ghoul has a gunfight has many similarities to Megaton, the first settlement we visited right after leaving Vault 101 in Fallout 3. The Fallout series is set on the West Coast, while Megaton is near the ruins of Capital Wasteland (Washington D.C.), but the design of the setting is undoubtedly heavily influenced by it.

The Vertibirds that appear are straight out of the designs of the modern releases, with side doors for Power Armor deployment. Also, the take-off area looks just like the Hidden Valley area in New Vegas' Mojave Wasteland, which could make sense as a hidden base for the Brotherhood of Steel operating in Los Angeles.

In one of the display cases Lucy walks past, we can see a Stimpak with the same design as in the games. In addition, there is a Vault Boy bobblehead with the same Bethesda design.