Fallout - Season One

One of my first PC titles was the first Fallout, by Black Isle Studios. Perhaps because of my young age at the time, or because I wasn't as fluent in the language of RPGs as I was 26 years later, that first playable approach wasn't special to me, but it did lay a stone foundation in the building of my love for science fiction. The retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic world landed with the force of a thousand megatons in my young brain, and many years later I can say that the game series (now in the hands of Bethesda) is one of my favourites as a gamer. So I was sure I wasn't going to make it easy for Kilter Films and Amazon with Fallout, this time as a viewer. And while they haven't had an easy time either in trying to bind three decades of games and stories in the wasteland, Fallout has managed to glue me to the screen and transcended the adaptation classification to be a great big-budget fictional series that flies on its own.

Jonathan Nolan and his magnificent team, as I said before, have not had it easy, because unlike the other great television adaptations of a video game in recent times such as The Last of Us, here there was no previous character construction, because the protagonists of Fallout have always been an avatar of the player. However, knowledge and affection for the games have meant that anyone who sees Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten or Walton Goggins on screen will find themselves remembering some similar moments from their gameplay. And that's those of us who have played, because the other point where Fallout hits the mark is in making a world as complex, brutal and charismatic as theirs accessible to viewers who have never held a controller or keyboard.

The series begins at a slow burn, showing us a thriving dystopian America in which nuclear power developed much more rapidly after World War II, and technologies such as robot assistants, reconstructive surgeries or cutting-edge weaponry advanced much faster than societal mentality, clothing or culture. That's why we hear songs by The Ink Spots, Nat King Cole or Roy Brown while watching fusion cell-powered vehicles or a Mr. Crafty robot hovering in mid-air while serving a cold Nuka Cola to his master. However, this American dream lives under the growing threat of nuclear war with China, and it seems that the McCarthy witch hunt survives in the autumn of 2077 as well. It's all smiles, birthday cakes and barbecues until, suddenly, a blinding light illuminates the screen, and a huge atomic mushroom consumes the city of Los Angeles. And then another one appears, and another one.

Fallout wants to explore the post-apocalyptic world by asking from the outset the question of how best to rebuild civilisation: will it be how the inhabitants of Vault-Tec's Vault 33, who live happily under tons of lead and steel and see themselves as the saviours of the meagre humanity outside, trust? Will it be as the Brotherhood of Steel imposes, through military supremacy and military life? Or will it be anarchy and the law of the strongest, as we see with the character of The Ghoul (it seems that the term ghoul has not been adapted this time).

The answer, evidently, is much greyer than the viewer initially discovers, and over the course of the eight one-hour episodes the lines and boundaries that delineate your morality and how far you will go to survive are twisted and bent until they crack, as does your idea of trust, sincerity and loyalty. And the casting carries this weight on their shoulders with great success.

Although the three have a more or less similar on-screen development, there is no doubt that Ella Purnell and, above all, Walton Goggins completely steal the show. Goggins' case is, if anything, of greater merit than that of the young Vault dweller Lucy MacLean, because his character serves as a bridge between the world before the bombs and the present, and his record over 200 years of life is as broad, as rich in detail and as stark as his own skin. It is arguably the actor's best starring work, and he certainly deserves an Emmy nomination. Ella Purnell does follow a more visible path in her hero's journey, and while Aaron Moten performs well, his screen presence without a T-60 power armour suit is not as impactful as that of his co-stars, though he delivers his lines well.

And while we're on the subject of power armour, Vaults and all that, the other big plus point of the series is making you actually believe what you're seeing on screen. The Fallout games have always had such a distinct aesthetic that if you saw a simple smiling face with a thumbs-up you knew it was Vault Boy. Amazon had to go all-in on both budget and production if they wanted to convince audiences, and boy did they succeed. Plus, it's easy to spot when it all suddenly makes sense, which is about half an hour into the first episode, from there, and the moment you stop looking for the intentional reference with posters or objects on screen, it all feels like a genuine experience that we could find in any Fallout game. And it's full of references, nods and plots that draw heavily from what we've already played, so it's not all that original in this story, though it's woven together well.

Perhaps there are moments when the pace of the narrative loses a bit of momentum due to having to attend to several simultaneous plots, but in the end Fallout leaves a great taste in the mouth in almost all of its episodes. Recurring supporting characters like Steph, Norm and Hank also have their moments of brilliance, and the music, sarcastic humour and action sequences make Fallout one of the best video game adaptations ever, and I suspect one of the biggest TV hits of 2024. And I can't wait to see where this promising season finale takes us. Because war... war never changes.