Fallout on Prime post-release thread

[ecarden]

Responses in the original quote

Some things that didn't make sense (Spoiler alert):

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1) Um, what, Lucy's dad has access to nukes? How? From where? His wife and kid go to Shady Sands and so he nukes it?! Wth? This ridiculous 'get rid of the competition' thing that'll come up at a later point.

So, as noted, the theory here is that no non-Vault-Tec controlled civilization is allowed to form on the surface. Now, whether the NCR would have risen the level of 'nuke it' or they'd have just ignored it until it came knocking is unclear, but at the point when Hank found out about it, he arranged to have it nuked. The implication is, he did that as revenge, after retrieving his kids, while Vault-Tec did it because they're *****.

2) That commie woman, the leader of the NRC remnant, what a psycho. She wanted to kidnap Lucy's dad. Because she was the leader of Shady Sands, he nukes Shady Sands, so she wants to capture him for trial/revenge, okay, but then she infiltrates the vault with raiders who proceed to massacre innocent people, as well as putting Lucy in direct risk (remember the flashback scenes of this woman smiling and picking up little kid Lucy? Fast forward 20 years and now she's fine having her killed/SA'ed by her raider boy goon). Wth, this made no sense. She could have infiltrated with her NCR troopers in disguise, pull out guns, capture Lucy's Dad and leave with him. Instead they go through that whole charade...I dunno, I don't understand that.

Tend to agree, this is my objection too.

3) Why didn't Lucy's dad recognize this woman the moment she stepped out of the shadows in Episode 1? Why? He knew who she was, they had history together, but he just acts like it's all good in the hood and it's nothing to worry about and goes through with the wedding anyway knowing that no one can be coming from Vault 32 because they're all dead.

It's not at all clear they did, actually. Moldaver was a figure in Shady Sands and knew Lucy's mother, but there's no indication Hank and her actually met (that I'm remembering). She knows who he is from his wife, but vice-versa doesn't seem to be true. He recognizes her eventually, but that could be from a 20 year old campaign poster, for all we know.

4) Um, since when did Ghouls become invincible? Maybe they're just putting in an easter-egg like "health bar" where we see the Ghoul get shot multiple times to no effect...yet later he uses a knife to cut pieces off another ghoul and the flesh seems just as vulnerable there, so why does him getting shot multiple times not effect him? We see just 1 bullet kill living people, so it's not like everyone has 'health bars' or something.

Ghouls here seem to be operating on Zombie rules. A shot to the head seems to kill them, a shot to the body does diddly squat. I think? I'd need to rewatch the feral ghoul scene to confirm. You could justify this in universe based on different radiation levels in different areas, as I believe ghouls are healed by radiation?

5) I'm no Brotherhood of Steel fan, but they really did the BoS dirty in the last action sequence. The lone ghoul against 4 power-armored units + squires with guns an the ghoul kills them all?! Without a scratch? One bullet kills a guy in power armor cos he "knows where to shoot" - well why didn't he do that earlier in Filly when fighting Maximus in the power suit? The BoS looks like they lost 9 knights in power armor to a couple dozen NCR troopers with machine guns. If powered armor is that useless then why invest all the resources to maintain it in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Lore-wise the Power Armor was supposed to be a war-changer, and their deployment to Alaska won them the campaign, and they were being used to drive deep into China. But here they go from bullet-proof to ridiculously vulnerable as the writers need, there's no consistency.

I tend to agree. The final episode was fine as a stand-alone, but makes a mess of the overall plot.

6) Maximus and Thaddius.
Dude, wth?

When questioned by Thaddeus about what happened to Titus, Maximus should have said something like "Knight Titus died fighting a mutated bear, can you see the scratches on the suit? *Gesture to scratches* I buried him, put the armor on and now I'm finishing the mission we started."

That's not what he says. Instead he's like "He died..." then looks super suspicious and instead of allaying Thaddeus' fears, he straight up tries killing him.

I believe they're drunk and as a result, there's a miscommunication which results in violence. Maximus is trying to avoid admitting he let Titus die, which leads Thaddeus to believe Maximus killed him. Thaddeus is warning that the story Maximus is giving won't pass muster with the BOS, which it won't, which Maximus interprets as a threat to out him and reacts as you might expect to a threat to have him killed.

7) Ummmm, why did everyone in Vault 32 go crazy and kill themselves?

Why?

Because they found out that Vault 31 were the cryogenically frozen managers from Vault-tec pre-war so the natural reaction is to murder and hang themselves?

See when they first showed that Vault 32 was like this, I thought the show makers were bringing in the Vault Experiments. Vault 33 was a control group that got to live nice lives, while Vault 32 had some flaw, and the two vaults were being overseen by a 'master' Vault 31 that was using the data to make their lives better.

Instead we get a mystery around Vault 32 with no answer. And who cleaned up all the corpses and made the place nice and livable again? In ONE night? I was convinced Vault 31 was bigger and had more people in it, but it's just a little brain-bot roomba. You're telling me that thing that was stuck for years, cleaned up Vault 32?

Did the new overseer send people to clean it up? We saw no hint that she did. So what gives, how'd it happen?

So, Vault 32 as a whole is extremely confusing at this point. Given that we've still got POV characters in the Vault, I give this one a pass until we see how they actually explain it. I do think it's especially confusing given that Moldaver (presumably) apparently accessed the Vault years earlier?

8) Speaking of which, what was that coup talk in the vaults?
When Vault 33 is having their little meeting to decide what to do with the raiders and the residence/council are showing unbelievable naivity (which is in character), Norm is like nah waste them all they're irredeemable psychopaths, which is true, we get this moment afterwards of the blonde, pregnant girl secretly approach him and say she agrees with him, and that she hopes when the time comes he'll do the right thing. Cue sinister music.

Later, when Norm is on prisoner lunch duty, he talks to the black girl behind the computer, and she echoes similar concerns.

I thought they were slowly building almost a coup-like situation in the vaults, with the naive vault dwellers vs the the vaulties that are like nah waste the raiders, look what they did to us.

But it...kinda fizzled out, and went nowhere. I mean, it's clear someone poisoned all the raiders and the black girl gets blamed for it (she claims innocence), but if so, what's with the almost conspiratorial vibes to the whole thing?

Speaking of which...

So, the clear implication is that Norm did it, as he's bringing them food. But it seems about equally likely that either of the two from Vault 31 did it, to get them out of the way. I don't think there was ever any suggestion of a coup coming, just that Norm wanted the raiders dead and that didn't fit the Vault's standard protocol. The question was, would he accept that, or not and we still don't know the answer.

9) That blonde pregnant woman.

This character. I dunno.

She starts off as a good character. She's the archetype vault dweller. She's young, pretty, she's pregnant (as girls that age would be in that situation) she seems like a genuine friend of Lucy's. She seems to playfully put her hubby down, but it didn't seem serious (maybe I'm just reading it wrong). During the raider attack she's seen mourning her husbands death, genuinely in tears over it - she might have made fun of him, but she seemed to genuinely love him, or at least his company. She then goes nuts, takes a fork to the eye, but still keeps fighting and machineguns some raiders down, while pregnant.

Good stuff so far.

Then she secretly approaches Norm (as I mentioned above), and the sinister music plays while she's telling him that the raiders murdered her husband and she'll have his back if he's going to 'do the right thing'. This is good, this shows she's grown: she seems to genuinely mourn for her dead husband, realising what she lost in him and wanting those who took him from her, took her childs father, to get what's coming to them. She's no longer the naive, bubbly blonde we saw in the opening, she's more cynical and hardened now.

Then she turns into an almost caricature of a manipulative housewife. She goes from mourning her husband to now just crapping over his memory again, making fun of him again and shacking up with the gatekeeper. The latter I can understand, she wants to move on, so she secures a tall, good looking husband for herself. But then she becomes this manipulative, bossy nag out of nowhere. Then we're told she's from Vault 31, and it seems as if the show is making her out to be in on the big secret, especially as she gets appointed Overseer of recolonised Vault 32, and she seems to embrace it - and that just opens up a whole 'nother line of questioning. Does she know what happened there? She's from Vault 31, right? She looked like she was low-key telling Norm she'd back him if he chose to murder the raiders sneakily or almost coup the place.

Is she a pre-war Vaultec exec? Maybe the early 20s daughter of an executive? Her character seems inconsistent and...I dunno. It's another point of confusion that I'm not sure what they're going for here.

As stated, yes, she is. So, I missed this too, but remember the 'executives' in there are 'Bud's Buds' IE the Vault-Tec management folks in Bud's training/mentorship program. Hank is the PA to a Vault-Tec executive and quite young himself in the flashback. The theory here, though it doesn't make a lot of sense, is that the entire Vault is basically a giant eugenics experiment to create either the perfect middle manager, or the perfect worker, or both, by controlling who is breeding with who and introducing Vault-Tec managers to the breeding pool when desired.

Given that, they basically have to be young and let out early. They marry and have kids with the inhabitants of the vault, then when they're older either create, or take advantage of a crisis to ensure they're elected overseer and maintain control of the vaults and the trades. But due to the deaths in 32, she's getting made overseer early and without an election. I think part of the issue here is that the show seems to have real issues with showing scale. It looks like there's basically as many survivors as there are raider prisoners (stated to be 16), but that's obviously not correct, as if it was, the raiders would simply have won. My assumption is that it's just standard scale issues in a show and there are hundreds of additional occupants just off screen.

10) The Vault Experiments.
They HINT at this during the final scenes of the last episode, that the new investors will get clusters of vaults whose conditions they can change to measure what they want. But instead of being a part of the 'vault experiments', which were actually testing people under different circumstances so Vaultec could use that to escape the planet safely and recolonize somewhere else, it's instead this attack on the management class or something?

So, arguably that? But more it was a matter of competition. I think the theory was that the most successful vaults would be the ones to survive and prosper, proving some theories correct and others wrong. Others are clearly just curiosity, sadism, or a god complex, but that's always been true of the Vaults.

11) The Management Class and Capitalism.

As a bit of a free market lover it annoys me to no end when people confuse capitalism with corporatism. What the Fallout world has pre-war, is Corporatism. That's where big companies use their influence in the government to pass laws favourable to themselves while hindering their typically smaller competition, and overtime they entrench these further and further, thus helping them secure either monopolies or huge, cartel-like cooperatives over important segments of the economy. This is not a free market where someone with an idea, know-how etc can start a small business and either grow it via good/wise decisions or get it to a stage they're happy at while employing others. This is crony capitalism, and I hate it as much as the next person.

So use that.

The pre-war Fallout US government is broke, and in exchange for contracts and $$ and support from these huge companies, the government is passing more and more regulations and laws that are favourable to them, entrenching their power over every day citizens lives. The actor, Cooper, as someone deep in advertising, can see this and it's disgusts him because the country is losing its way and becoming as authoritarian and controlled by a pyramid-tip at the top, much the way the communist reds are, thus making him open to going along and listening to a group who want to bring that system down - surprise, they're actually communists, and even though he hates them and tries to back out it's too late he's been associated with them and his career is wrecked.

See, that's how easy it is.

Instead we get this...weird, "Time is the biggest weapon", and "Our management will outlast the others", and "Let's start the war ourselves". Now that last part is a theory from the games, as no one knows who shot the bombs first, it could have been Vaultec...but the show is saying that peace threatens Vaultec's bottom line, which is true, but nuclear annihilation also threatens Vaultec's bottom line. Their most profitable course of action is to keep the fear of nuclear war high, so they can sell more vaults while enjoying their parties and the world infrastructure. It doesn't make any sense for Vaultec to want to end the world.

However.

We do see some mysterious, shadowy figure in some elevated, hidden viewing room looking down at the Vaultec secret meeting, the one Cooper's wife is at, and she looks up at this mysterious figure as if receiving some body language go ahead from him. So I think what is going to be revealed is that she's actually a member of the Enclave.

As far as I can tell, we haven't learned how they broke up or what happened with Coopers family.

My guess, is that his wife is actually a member of the Enclave, and she's putting that "We can drop the nukes first" idea out there. She doesn't actually care about Vaultec, she's a member of the Enclave who welcome nuclear Armageddon because it'll finally rid the world of communism for good. They helped create the vaults to create the vault experiments, the data they gather from which was going to be used to help them leave for space and colonize another planet. However, that didn't happen and I'm rambling on fallout lore here, but you get the idea.

But yeah, TL:DR this angle made no sense to me and it was just confusing and convoluted. Vaultec are an evil company, but it would've been so much easier to show them entrenching themselves with the government via Corporatism, and not wanting the war to end because it'll impact their bottom line. However, Coopers wife (Barb I think her name is) is a secret member of the Enclave and pushes the idea of dropping the bombs first. That would make more sense to me.

Eh, Coop's backstory clearly isn't over, neither is his wife's, neither is Moldaver's. We see him at the start, divorced and performing at kid's parties, blacklisted for being a communist. He ended this season, married, but discovering his wife is a monster, but still a spokesman for Vault-Tec and movie star. We're clearly going to see his fall from grace and his wife/daughter going forward, so I think this is still explicable.

I don't love Vault-Tec as an overarching villain either, though I'm not getting into the RW issues you touch on, but given the Enclave clearly exists, as we've got a classical Enclave scientist here, and they've got the tech which Moldaver expressly said Vault-Tec bought up, I wouldn't be surprised if we get more connections between the two groups.

Honorable Mention: "Would you like to have sex?"

The Vaults are supposed to be microcosms of 1950s Americana. Some things can get changed around for the circumstances, but under none of those circumstances do I envision a young woman from that culture willy-nilly offering sex to someone she's only known for a couple of days. Especially not one the show has been portraying as rather principled and suffering for those principles but mostly sticking by them. Her jumping the raider as soon as she's married makes sense and is fine. But this is some alien-pretending-to-be-a-human level of out of character, to me at least.

They kinda hint at this in the opening scenes where she's telling the committee that her "reproductive organs are in working order" or something cringe, but even that felt out of place.

It felt even weirder hearing Maximus not know what sex was, referring to erections as pimples or something outlandish. You're telling me all those young people training to be soldiers, in the barracks together, all those hormones and testosterone raging and no one knows what sex is? Gtfo here, for real, no, don't buy it.

I agree about Maximus, especially given that we see a sight gag in the barracks shot of someone clearly masturbating under a blanket. On Lucy...it seems like the Vault has changed somewhat on sexual/social norms over the centuries, given the acceptance of 'cousin stuff' so long as you marry and procreate with someone else. Frankly, given their very limited entertainment options and activities, that makes a lot of sense to me, but your mileage may vary.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I like ecarden's formatting of putting the comments in the spoiler quote, so I'm gonna do that.

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Ah, I must have missed the passing detail of her name in the records (though I'd figured they'd be there cos she came from there). Still she seems pretty young for an exec. Ah well, maybe. Still, I'll stick with what I said that she had an interesting character arc that did a sudden 180 that I thought kinda ruined it.

I don't agree about that. It's clear Thaddeus is worried about the consequences, and all Max had to do to allay his fears was assure him they'll be fine if they get the mission done and bring the head back (which is pretty much true). Instead his first port of call is looking super shady and murder, especially after they'd just been bonding so much. Seems kinda out there if ya ask me.

Thaddeus isn't wrong. Neither is Max. It's a horrible miscommunication and both of them basically act like idiots. But both of them *are* idiots. They're barely experienced, untrained acolytes in an organization that sees them as disposable fodder for the real members. ("Are you sure you don't want another squire? We've got tons of them.") Max is trying to cling to his freedom, but lets his guard down. Thaddeus rightfully suspects him of being shady given he just learned how much he was being lied to. Then Max overreacts and it all goes to pot. It's think it's really good writing - both of their actions make sense, even if they aren't the perfect responses.

That's a pretty weak reasoning though, to me. Hank is supposed to be a smart guy (he apparently knows about New Vegas, as he flees there at the end of the eighth episode - so why not nuke there too?), he must surely be able to deduce there's going to be more settlements other than Shady Sands. To me this removal of the New California Republic and reducing them to just a weird little cult in a vault was one of the least pay-off divergence from the source material, and on weak grounds, in my opinion.

I assume dropping nukes is a last resort, though New Vegas looks destroyed or at least decrepit in the last shots. So it's possible Vault-Tec already got to it through other means or had a hands-off agreement since we see Vault-Tec coordinating with Mr. House of RobCo and he has a big influence there.

Though where is it implied that Vaul-tec has nukes? As I mentioned before, I think their reasons for starting the nuclear exchange are really convoluted and self-defeating, at least as it is presented in the show.

During the flashback where Cooper spies on his wife in the Vault-Tec meeting, House says "There's a lot of earning potential, but we can't invest in a hypothetical. How can you guarantee results?" and Barb replies "By dropping the bomb ourselves." Can't drop a bomb you don't have, so Vault-Tec must have some nukes of a fashion.

[Rynjin]

This interview actually fixes a fair chunk of my issues with the show.

TL;DR: The show is confirmed to have flubbed the timeline.

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So Shady Sands was definitively destroyed AFTER the events of New Vegas.

[MammonAzrael]

This interview actually fixes a fair chunk of my issues with the show.

TL;DR: The show is confirmed to have flubbed the timeline.

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So Shady Sands was definitively destroyed AFTER the events of New Vegas.

Reading through the article, I saw no assertion that the show messed up. Merely “All I can say is we’re threading it tighter there, but the bombs fall just after the events of New Vegas.”

Did I miss the point where they said they flubbed it? Or was that in the actual interview and not in the written article?

[Phobia]

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I think they just thought people would understand that writing a date and then having an arrow after that and then a bomb depiction would indicate a passage of time.

[Rynjin]

Reading through the article, I saw no assertion that the show messed up. Merely “All I can say is we’re threading it tighter there, but the bombs fall just after the events of New Vegas.”

Did I miss the point where they said they flubbed it? Or was that in the actual interview and not in the written article?

The show indicates that said event happens in 2277, which is the same year as Fallout 3, and 4 years before New Vegas. The clarification is that the event happens sometime after New Vegas (i.e. after 2281).

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I think they just thought people would understand that writing a date and then having an arrow after that and then a bomb depiction would indicate a passage of time.

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The issue is that Shady Sands could not have fallen before 2281, elsewise none of the events of New Vegas make sense. "The Fall of Shady Sands" is listed as 2277 on the chalkboard.

[MammonAzrael]

The show indicates that said event happens in 2277, which is the same year as Fallout 3, and 4 years before New Vegas. The clarification is that the event happens sometime after New Vegas (i.e. after 2281).

Ahh, I see. You aren't happy because they took ownership of a mistake. You're happy because they explicitly confirmed that NV is still canon. Thank you for the clairification!

[dancrilis]

I solidly enjoyed the show - I went in with no real positive expectations (anything after Fallout 2 has been something of a let down - to put it mildly) and it turned out to be very good in my view.

[Rodin]

I’ve been playing Fallout 2 again, and it has only made me more annoyed with this particular plot point.

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The NCR is supposed to cover most of California. In Fallout 2, prior to the 40 years of growth it gets before New Vegas, the NCR is supposed to have a population of 700K+. This is before they canonically take over places like Vault City and Redding. It doesn’t account for them taking over San Francisco (though that may have been nuked by the Enclave depending on which version of canon you pick).

How the hell did Shady Sands only have 22K people? How did nuking it matter at all to the survival of the NCR? The place is flipping HUGE. It is hundreds of miles of more or less civilized territory that wouldn’t have been scratched by the size crater we see in the show.

It would have been far better if they had set the show concurrently with Fallout 1. Set it somewhere just far enough off the beaten path to not upset canon and make up a new settlement to get nuked. Or he’ll, set it BEFORE Fallout 1 and use The Glow as your nuked location. It would be a retcon, but at least it wouldn’t be pants on head stupid. Or just do what other adaptations have done and call it an AU.

Though I’ll reiterate, I still found the show a lot of fun, despite its issues.

[Rynjin]

Spoiler: Rodin

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Shady Sands had 34k from what I recall, and TBH I don't think it's too far-fetched that a country with a population of 700k has a capital with a population of 34k. Eg. the US has a population of 333 million, DC has a population of just under 700k.

And losing the seat of all your bureaucracy at once would definitely be a helluva blow to your coherency as a nation. That said, some remnants should still exist and I hope they go into that as splinter governments have popped up elsewhere.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

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Remnants did exist. Moldaver is even in charge of one. I hope Bethesda isn't going with "the NCR was completely wiped off the wasteland" but, as you opined, just scattered and disorganized. As I recall, they were already showing signs of decline and corruption in New Vegas, so it wouldn't be entirely off base for them to splinter into smaller factions in the wake of the capital falling.

[t209]

So I was wondering about Vault 31, 32, and 33. Because it reminded me of a novel called Wool.

Spoiler: Wool and Fallout spoiler

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Like Fallout, Wool had Silos that acted as last vestige of human civilization.
Also part of experiment and controlled by single vault/silo via Vault 31 resident/IT department.
Plus Vault 32 might have suffered like one Silo who overthrew their IT department…except it was chemical gas with only one survivor (but judging by the corpses, most corpses in Vault 32 didn’t have choking posture or “died where they stood”, so not that case).

[dancrilis]

I’ve been playing Fallout 2 again, and it has only made me more annoyed with this particular plot point.

I don't remember much of playing computer games over the years but I do remember some of by first playthough of Fallout back in 1997 (maybe 1998) - I didn't find the water chip as I missed the area of a map in the Necropolis that linked to the needed map, and Shady Sands was essentially destroyed as I got into a fight with Ian and everyone decided to help him are two pieces that I do remember.

So as far as I am concerned everything related to the NCR is dubious anyway so it is hard to be annoyed at any choices that are made regarding it.

[Rodin]

Spoiler: Rodin

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Shady Sands had 34k from what I recall, and TBH I don't think it's too far-fetched that a country with a population of 700k has a capital with a population of 34k. Eg. the US has a population of 333 million, DC has a population of just under 700k.

And losing the seat of all your bureaucracy at once would definitely be a helluva blow to your coherency as a nation. That said, some remnants should still exist and I hope they go into that as splinter governments have popped up elsewhere.

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I think we saw the “splinter government”. It was those 3 guys in NCR uniforms, two of whom are now dead.

My point is that the NCR is BIG. Size of California big. It doesn’t have the population of modern California, but it’s still got a lot of ground under its remit. What we are shown in the show is The Wasteland as it exists in Fallout 3. No central power anywhere, and nobody trying to make one. But that doesn’t track with the entire region having been settled and recivilized for the past 50 years, with only Shady Sands going bye-bye 20 years ago. The entire region would be under the control of somebody, and the remnants of the NCR wouldn’t be a camp full of barbarian raiders (remember how Moldavers forces acted in episode 1), there would be full city states and after 20 years probably full countries springing up to fill the power vacuum.

We aren’t getting a functioning country as a breakaway successor to the NCR. Or even several less functioning ones. To Bethesda, Fallout will always exist in the “day after the bombs hit” with nobody but radroaches and super mutants living in the ruins. Post-post apocalypse isn’t the story they want to tell, and I think that’s kinda sad because there’s lots more interesting stories that will never be explored.

[Maelstrom]

Spoiler: Rodin

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Shady Sands had 34k from what I recall, and TBH I don't think it's too far-fetched that a country with a population of 700k has a capital with a population of 34k. Eg. the US has a population of 333 million, DC has a population of just under 700k.

And losing the seat of all your bureaucracy at once would definitely be a helluva blow to your coherency as a nation. That said, some remnants should still exist and I hope they go into that as splinter governments have popped up elsewhere.

Spoiler: reply to rygin

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And more to the point, modern day California has a population of around 39 million, while the capital, Sacramento has a population just over 500k, or around 1.3 percent of the total population. In game, shady sands has nearly 5% of the population, so a relatively believable number

[gbaji]

Accidentally put my response in the wrong thread, so I'll put my comments here.

Generally, I enjoyed the series. Yeah. It did have a few "why did that happen?" bits. Some of them were the classic idiot ball bits (but honestly, could be explained by the two main characters basically being super naive about the world they were traveling in, so not so bad).

I only actually played through Fallout 1 and 2 myself, but had a number of friends play (and talk about) the later games, so I guess I didn't have the same kinda dogmatic connection to various setting elements that others maybe did (NCR specifically). I felt that the elements that were there were sufficient for telling the story they were telling, and felt sufficiently "Fallouty" to me.

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I wasn't as bothered by the whole Vault 32 bits. It felt to me like this was specifically left as a mystery to perhaps be explained at a later date. It did seem odd to me that, upon realizing that their entire valut existence was about an experiment in control that they'd go nuts and kill eachother. That seemed... extreme. Honestly, given the environment they lived in and grew up in, I'd expect the response to discovering that Vault 31 was made up of frozen managers who were there to take control and run the other two Vaults should have been "Oh. Well that makes sense". We're literally talking about people who are a dozen generations of folks living in Vaults and are pretty darn indoctrinated into "follow the rules" mentalities anyway. That felt less like some horrific experiment as a pretty standard command structure one might set up for something like this. When the only "Horrific truth" is that the leaders aren't just born into Vaults like everone else, but were selected from frozen managers specifically there to guide and run the vaults, but otherwise seemed to actually be trying to run the vaults with the exact objectives and methods that everyone living there already know about, there really isn't a whole lot to be upset about. Cerrtainly not something that would drive a population of (let's be honest "sheeple") into suicidal violence.

Also assume that more stuff about The Ghoul will be revealed in season 2. Glaringly missing is how he became a ghoul, and what happened between the events in the final flashback and the scene at the very begining whe he and his daughter are doing the birthday party.

Ditto about Moldaver. We see that she's running around in the past, harping about technolog being horded/blocked by Vault-Tec, and running some sort of resistence organization. But other than an almost flyby flashback sequence, we don't know anything else about that. It's just enough to set up the whole "fusion power tech" bit, but nothing else. How she survived this long. Where she was. Why she's doing what she's doing. All missing. I will say that the whole "turned on the power source and all the lights come back on" was silly (why can't they hire people who can write for TV/Film who also have a basic grounding in science/reality?), but given the setting itself bothered me a lot less than when the same thing happened in the Revolution TV series (which wasn't supposed to already be a parody of 50s science gone wrong).

And yeah, lots of stuff about the Enclave that is just missing. That's honestly the one bit I could see someone who's never played the games being completely confused by in the series, since I don't recall them ever saying what it was, how it came to exist, what its purpose was, etc. It's just there. Has folks doing science stuf. And the one science guy escapes (with his dog), and has the fusion thingie, but how they came to be there, what their purpose is, and how they fit into other groups/places is just never even addressed at all. It's one thing for someone coming from the Vaults thinking nothing is left on the surface to find the dregs floating around, and even the Brotherhood makes a bit of sense (and there's enough time spent on that due to Maximus), but the Enclave? No backstory or explanation is given for it.

The series could have done with maybe even one character serving as narrator to the audience (and done via dialogue with Lucy) to explain how the Enclave, Vaults, BoS, and the various towns/states/whatever (and the NCR) fit together (even if it's just how that narrator thinks they fit together). Dr. Wilzig would have been the perfect character for this, but wasn't used (possibly because they wanted to hold some stuff/mystery back to points after when he dies). So unfortunately, everything was in dribs and drabs, and there isn't really a complete picture.

Still. I felt that there was enough there for the story they told to work. But yeah, it definitely felt like season 1 of a 2 season story arc. Nothing is really resolved at the end. What we did get was reveals about people and events, which fits more into a mid-act spot in a full story.

Also not explained is the drug that the ghouls use to keep themselves human(ish). Where does it come from? How did The Ghoul apparently have access to this the whole time? And yeah, I expect that those are more details to come in season 2 (and presuambly will come with more explanation of the Enclave and how it fits in with the events leading up to the first war). Someone clearly was operating on the surface the whole time and capable of using tech, and doing science (likely involving experiments in human survival in a radioactive environment, leading to the ghouls in the first place). My assumption is that in the process of explaining this, and The Ghoul, they'll also explain more about the Enclave (and New Vegas) as well. And that's slated for season 2.

All in all though, it was a fun romp. I had no issues with some of the more absurd bits, because it's supposed to have a bit of that. People don't always behave how they should. They behave like they're in a "future as envisioned in the 1950s gone horribly wrong". Which is exactly right IMO.

[Tyndmyr]

I've gotten a few episodes further. I have additional complaints.

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So, it's definitely three vaults, cool. It still...doesn't answer my question about how the dad let this disaster happen. He's the overseer, clearly the overseers are communicating, it's as if they are distinctly trying to make this all as incoherent as possible. If they did all kill themselves in the one vault because they learned the truth, uh, why? This is weird. Some sort of SCP like knowledge that kills, cool, I'm down for that as a plot element, but this appears to be just some "oh, we were lied to, and they were actually evil" which doesn't really justify mass suicide. That's...not the logical next step here.

The ghoul's motivations remain sort of incoherent. He goes from being willing to do literally anything for drugs to literally just dropping them on the ground because he saw an old tv show of himself. Cool, I guess. It doesn't even make sense why he has to shovel them from the box to his hat. Why not just take the box of them? Was it just important to show him dropping them on the ground, I guess?

Maximus still remains kind of unsympathetic. As a schemer, he isn't amazing. He's slowly getting a little development, but mostly it just extends the lack of sympathy to most of his faction. If everyone in a group is evil and incompetent, why would I care about them? I just kind of want them to get offed.

It is really weird for them to focus on making stimpacks basically magic solutions to everything. Especially when your plot hinges around a guy getting an unfixable slow wound, which requires a horrific limb addition, which is basically terrible and he has to die anyways. Seriously, one stimpack would fix this, apparently, but everyone forgot this, despite this guy literally being deus ex expositiona the rest of the time. It feels like a strange element to fixate on in any case. It's a game mechanic, not an essential setting bit. Tons of games have instant heals for gameplay purposes, but aren't a big factor in the narrative.

I am relatively sure that the drug that keeps ghouls human is a new invention. It's not terrible, but it sort of is at odds with prior depictions of ghouls. 3, in particular, had large factions of both fairly human and feral ghouls, and drug usage wasn't connected to this. I am also going to deduct at least 500 Batman V Superman points for the "My name is Martha" bit.

It seems pretty clear already that we're foreshadowing a Vault Tec is actually evil reveal. This should surprise basically nobody who has paid attention to prior games. However, in the games, there's already kind of a narrative about why the bombs drop, why the vaults exist and are experiment chambers, etc. Essentially, it all boils down to the aliens. The aliens exist, and various factions are aware of them. The vaults seem designed to test problems with interstellar travel, and the whole experiment basically designed to force humanity into preparing to go deal with the aliens...albeit in ways that predictably go wholly wrong, of course. I do not expect the show to remain consistent with this, since aliens haven't really been mentioned at all.

The raiders form kind of a weird plot point. The naivety felt...over the top. Yes, vault tec advertisement is cheery to the point of ridiculousness, but vault dwellers in general have not been portrayed as insanely gullible. Time capsuled and sort of out of touch? Absolutely. But the acceptance of the raiders is deeply at odds with their fear of what is outside the vault. The latter makes sense, and the former should provoke at least a little of the latter.

I don't hate the show. It's really good with music and setting. It's just...plot and character keeps getting jumbled.

[gbaji]

I've gotten a few episodes further. I have additional complaints.

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So, it's definitely three vaults, cool. It still...doesn't answer my question about how the dad let this disaster happen. He's the overseer, clearly the overseers are communicating, it's as if they are distinctly trying to make this all as incoherent as possible. If they did all kill themselves in the one vault because they learned the truth, uh, why? This is weird. Some sort of SCP like knowledge that kills, cool, I'm down for that as a plot element, but this appears to be just some "oh, we were lied to, and they were actually evil" which doesn't really justify mass suicide. That's...not the logical next step here.

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Yeah. It is strange and makes no sense for that to be their reaction. What does make sense is if, in resopnse to them discovering "the truth", the overseers (or brain in Vault 31) decided to pump in some kind of "make everyone suicidal and crazy" gas into Vault 32, wipe them out, and then clean up, repopulate from Vault 31, and move on, with the secret/experiment intact.

What doesn't make sense is the timing of this (appears to have happened some time ago), no one seeming to have realized that they all died off and enacted any plan to deal with it, and then the raiders showing up (and them all just happening to be dead when they get there). I'm still holding out the possibility that this may be explained in season 2 though. There must have also been some reason why Moldaver used Rose's pipboy to enter Vault 32 instead of going directly to Vault 33. Heck. Why did her pipboy open Vault 32 in the first place? Rose was from Vault 33. She was married to the overseer of Vault 33. She escaped with her children from Valut 33. As far as we know (again, unless the history is even more faked then we were told), she never once stepped foot into Vault 32. We also know that the vaults are all sealed off from each other, requiring someone from "inside" each vault to allow someone to enter from a different one. One would expect/assume that the front doors, leading to outside, would be even better defended/blocked than the ones between the three vaults.

So yeah. Either a much bigger plot hole is present *or* there's some additional information about both the deaths of the folks in Vault 32 *and* Moldaver's entry to said Vault. I'm going to be optimistic and hope that gap is filled at some point.

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The ghoul's motivations remain sort of incoherent. He goes from being willing to do literally anything for drugs to literally just dropping them on the ground because he saw an old tv show of himself. Cool, I guess. It doesn't even make sense why he has to shovel them from the box to his hat. Why not just take the box of them? Was it just important to show him dropping them on the ground, I guess?

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Eh... I just chalk this up to the standard film/tv "dramatic representation of scarce things", where the super scarce thing, which the character should be ultra careful with, will instead be treated very uncarefully instead, to highlight the fact that it is scarce. We see this in every scene where the character is drinking from a canteen/waterskin and is short on water (and in the middle of a desert). Real people would carefully make sure to not lose a single drop. TV/Film characters will hold the container above their heads, tip them over, and spill the water all over/down their chins.

Yes. It's annoying. Yes. It makes me scream at the TV "why the heck are you doing that!", but... that's just the way they do things. The reality is that the effect of "lack of water" or "lack of ghoul drug" will be whatever the script says it will be, regardless of how the character is portrayed as handling it.

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And actually, on that subject, one of the bits that annoyed me more than a little, was the characters seeming lack of care about scarce things all the way though. Including weapons and ammunition. You'd think someone realizing they are in a post appocalyptic worlds with minimal and dwindling supplies of... well... everything, would be super careful and cautions with everything. Yet, despite a large number of bad guys killed along the way, most of them armed in some way, no one ever seems to pick up their weapons so they can use them. There are several points where this happens. Heck. Right off the bat, when Titus dies to the bear, he drops his big honking gun when the bear first attacks him. Ok. But then, after he dies, and Maximus takes the armor, Maximus.... leaves the gun? Why? That would certainly have come in super useful later on.

This happens so frequently in the series that it becomes laughable. And flies in the face of what any actual person playing the game would have done. You pick up *everything*, and you keep everything you can physically carry. The only time they kinda played this, was when Lucy leaves the super mart place (can't remember the name now), and she's clearly taken some items. But IMO, not nearly as much as she could have. She's still way under equipped for having an entire huge store full of stuff she could have taken with her. It felt like they wanted the characters to have specific conflicts and specific levels of difficulty in each, so they ensured that the characters had only the weapons/equipment that would make that next conflict work and nothing more. Even if it made zero sense.

Again though, I can overlook most of the oddities as being reflective of the setting itself being kind warped/crazy to start with. No one behaves quite like we might think people should, so that's just the way things are. Some of them were a bit over the top. But most? I can look past them.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

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And actually, on that subject, one of the bits that annoyed me more than a little, was the characters seeming lack of care about scarce things all the way though. Including weapons and ammunition. You'd think someone realizing they are in a post appocalyptic worlds with minimal and dwindling supplies of... well... everything, would be super careful and cautions with everything. Yet, despite a large number of bad guys killed along the way, most of them armed in some way, no one ever seems to pick up their weapons so they can use them. There are several points where this happens. Heck. Right off the bat, when Titus dies to the bear, he drops his big honking gun when the bear first attacks him. Ok. But then, after he dies, and Maximus takes the armor, Maximus.... leaves the gun? Why? That would certainly have come in super useful later on.

This happens so frequently in the series that it becomes laughable. And flies in the face of what any actual person playing the game would have done. You pick up *everything*, and you keep everything you can physically carry. The only time they kinda played this, was when Lucy leaves the super mart place (can't remember the name now), and she's clearly taken some items. But IMO, not nearly as much as she could have. She's still way under equipped for having an entire huge store full of stuff she could have taken with her. It felt like they wanted the characters to have specific conflicts and specific levels of difficulty in each, so they ensured that the characters had only the weapons/equipment that would make that next conflict work and nothing more. Even if it made zero sense.

Again though, I can overlook most of the oddities as being reflective of the setting itself being kind warped/crazy to start with. No one behaves quite like we might think people should, so that's just the way things are. Some of them were a bit over the top. But most? I can look past them.

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No real defense for anything else - characters do leave materials behind far too often - but wasn't the rifle crushed by the bear right at the start of the fight? I distinctly remember that being the reason Titus goes from "mildly panicked" to "eff this I'm out of here."

[JadedDM]

The ghoul drug was an invention of the show, as far as I know (I haven't played the Bethesda versions, so maybe it was introduced there, but I haven't heard of it). My guess is it was just introduced as a shorthand for the audience. Why do some ghouls go feral and others don't? In the game cannon, the answer is, "Nobody really knows." Maybe they felt TV audiences wouldn't accept that.

It also provided Cooper with a need, which can help offer motivations for some of the things the writers want him to do.

[Errorname]

I don't mind the idea that after 200 years someone figured out how to stave off the feral process. That's a pretty logical progression for the setting.

[ecarden]

I don't mind the idea that after 200 years someone figured out how to stave off the feral process. That's a pretty logical progression for the setting.

I don't either, but I believe it's intended to be older than that, as I believe it's the same drug that was running down to our boy's coffin to keep him non-feral while buried alive.

[Pax1138]

I like the speculation that the serum was something developed by the NCR to help their ghoul citizens out. NCR was always depicted as accepting of ghouls and super mutants, so it makes sense for them, with their stable and (relatively) technologically advanced society to work on the problem of some of their citizens occassionally losing their minds and turning into ravening cannibals.

But my preferred option is that it's some snake oil (not to be confused with the goods offered by the completely reputable Snake Oil Salesman), that's actually just an addictive drug someone convinced ghouls to take, and the feelings they get when they're low aren't necessarily going feral, but instead just a nasty withdrawl.

[Tyndmyr]

Eh... I just chalk this up to the standard film/tv "dramatic representation of scarce things", where the super scarce thing, which the character should be ultra careful with, will instead be treated very uncarefully instead, to highlight the fact that it is scarce. We see this in every scene where the character is drinking from a canteen/waterskin and is short on water (and in the middle of a desert). Real people would carefully make sure to not lose a single drop. TV/Film characters will hold the container above their heads, tip them over, and spill the water all over/down their chins.

Yes. It's annoying. Yes. It makes me scream at the TV "why the heck are you doing that!", but... that's just the way they do things. The reality is that the effect of "lack of water" or "lack of ghoul drug" will be whatever the script says it will be, regardless of how the character is portrayed as handling it.

Yeah, this trope with water has always annoyed me. It's in so very many films, but it absolutely takes me out of the moment with how dumb it is. Greedily drinking water? Sure. Spilling it everywhere shouldn't be a thing that people do intentionally. Accidentally, because you're portraying a person so dehydrated that their fingers aren't working right or the like? Okay, sure. But that's not usually how it's portrayed. Ah, well.

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And actually, on that subject, one of the bits that annoyed me more than a little, was the characters seeming lack of care about scarce things all the way though. Including weapons and ammunition. You'd think someone realizing they are in a post appocalyptic worlds with minimal and dwindling supplies of... well... everything, would be super careful and cautions with everything. Yet, despite a large number of bad guys killed along the way, most of them armed in some way, no one ever seems to pick up their weapons so they can use them. There are several points where this happens. Heck. Right off the bat, when Titus dies to the bear, he drops his big honking gun when the bear first attacks him. Ok. But then, after he dies, and Maximus takes the armor, Maximus.... leaves the gun? Why? That would certainly have come in super useful later on.

This happens so frequently in the series that it becomes laughable. And flies in the face of what any actual person playing the game would have done. You pick up *everything*, and you keep everything you can physically carry. The only time they kinda played this, was when Lucy leaves the super mart place (can't remember the name now), and she's clearly taken some items. But IMO, not nearly as much as she could have. She's still way under equipped for having an entire huge store full of stuff she could have taken with her. It felt like they wanted the characters to have specific conflicts and specific levels of difficulty in each, so they ensured that the characters had only the weapons/equipment that would make that next conflict work and nothing more. Even if it made zero sense.

Again though, I can overlook most of the oddities as being reflective of the setting itself being kind warped/crazy to start with. No one behaves quite like we might think people should, so that's just the way things are. Some of them were a bit over the top. But most? I can look past them.

This also does annoy me sometimes. I don't mind the guns blazing trope because, well, Fallout has always kind of treated ammo as somehow plentiful, so I'll kind of give that a pass. But relentlessly looting everything available is also absolutely a Fallout thing. If you're gonna get fixated on video game lore, characters should absolutely pick up weapons, gear, etc if convenient and it is obviously helpful. Maybe even when it isn't.

I don't mind the idea that after 200 years someone figured out how to stave off the feral process. That's a pretty logical progression for the setting.

Given the portrayal, withdrawal happens in a matter of days, and as he is The Ghoul, who clearly has existed in roughly the same state for those entire 200 years, the drug'd basically need to be there when the bombs drop.

That could be a thing, I guess. Just...it implies a lot more intentionality to the setting than is normally the case. Ghouls are generally portrayed as a not particularly desired consequence of radiation, not as part of some grand plan.

Also, another aside:

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Why is the dude surprised by there being a party, AND its at his house, and he doesn't know its happening until that very moment, when they are leaving to go to the party.

But then at the party, he is complaining that only one of the people he invited showed up. How exactly did he go about inviting all these people and when? This feels like a weird and pointless sort of incongruity. Maybe editing or reshoots happened, I dunno, but there's a lot of little nuggets that don't quite make sense.

[LibraryOgre]

I don't mind the idea that after 200 years someone figured out how to stave off the feral process. That's a pretty logical progression for the setting.

Doctor Barrows was working on something like that in Fallout 3. He was trying to reverse it, but "keeps you from going feral" would be a big step forward.

The Spoose and I watched the first episode yesterday. I had to stop for a bit during Cooper Howard's opening... I played Fallout 4 with my then-newborn firstborn on my lap, and watching that opening with my 7 year old playing in the next room was pretty hard. But once I got past that, I really liked it; there was a lot of Fallout in there, and I also liked how they played up the religious aspect of the Brotherhood.

[Talakeal]

I thought Coop was intentionally spilling the water to mock Lucy.

[Tyndmyr]

I thought Coop was intentionally spilling the water to mock Lucy.

In that example, yeah, probably, but the earlier example with the random wastelander that chugs Lucy's water, it doesn't fit. His stated goal is to drink all the water, tossing it over his face is not particularly reasonable.

[MammonAzrael]

In that example, yeah, probably, but the earlier example with the random wastelander that chugs Lucy's water, it doesn't fit. His stated goal is to drink all the water, tossing it over his face is not particularly reasonable.

Additionally, deliberately wasting a precious resource to mock someone has always read as an unhinged move to me. It can be appropriate for a given character, but it paints any character that does it as short sighted, reckless, deranged, or otherwise not someone focused on their own survival and making sane choices to accomplish that. It's an action that almost always pulls me out of of a story and see it as a lazy trope, rather than a deliberate bit of characterization.

[Trafalgar]

Additionally, deliberately wasting a precious resource to mock someone has always read as an unhinged move to me. It can be appropriate for a given character, but it paints any character that does it as short sighted, reckless, deranged, or otherwise not someone focused on their own survival and making sane choices to accomplish that. It's an action that almost always pulls me out of of a story and see it as a lazy trope, rather than a deliberate bit of characterization.

I thought it was a reference to this scene:

Lip Balm?

[ecarden]

Additionally, deliberately wasting a precious resource to mock someone has always read as an unhinged move to me. It can be appropriate for a given character, but it paints any character that does it as short sighted, reckless, deranged, or otherwise not someone focused on their own survival and making sane choices to accomplish that. It's an action that almost always pulls me out of of a story and see it as a lazy trope, rather than a deliberate bit of characterization.

Except the point is that there is water available. It's irradiated, but its present. He can drink it without harm (ghoul), she can't. He is in no danger of dehydration.