I’ve only played Fallout Shelter, but I think I own all the games somewhere in my steam library of discounted games I’ll likely never play. The show seems to capture the atmosphere of it all quite well.

It’s a dark comedy adventure that reminds me of a cross between Westworld, The 100, and Pleasantville.

My instinct was to draw comparisons to The Last of Us. But despite the post-apocalyptic backdrop, these are very different kinds of shows. One is a drama and relatable characters, the other a dark comedy with little to no drama and characters are mostly products of their setting. So, they’re almost incomparable.

Finished.

It was awesome, I loved it, it ranks up there as one of my favourite videogame adaptations alongside The Last of Us and Arcane. The tone, the aesthetics, the set design, the music, it all captured Fallout perfectly and showed genuine care by the creatives in charge, it had a good amount of humour, it was a lot more violent than I expected (in a good way) and the finale was amazing, it had great twists and turns.

Ella Purnell was perfect as Lucy, she set the whole tone so well and perfectly captured a naïve vault dweller, slowly transitioning into a surface badass. Brilliant actress, I'd be shocked if she hasn't played any of the games because she did so well in the role. Walton Goggins as The Ghoul too...The Ghoul was fucking amazing, a bit of a dick (Lol) but can't help loving his character, he steals the scenes he is in and turns everything up to 11. The cast overall was very strong, I was interested in what was happening with the minor cast members even.

Matt Berry as Mister Handy, Lmao. Matt Berry needs to be Mister Handy in the games, sorry, his voice is just perfect in everything.

Can't wait for Season 2.

I watched The Boys up until I felt it was getting kind of slow and preachy in season 2.  Also, Amazon's X-ray commentary started talking about Homelander's "white male privilege" which was absolutely ridiculous and took me right out of the show.  I tried Gen V but quit halfway through the first episode because all the characters talked about was social media.  I might try Good Omens but I've been putting it off because I loved the book and it seems quite a bit different.

He seemed pretty honest with his impressions, I thought.  My guess is that he knows it's just a video game IP, not some kind of immutable sacred cow that people should be harassing others over decades later.  But, that aside, if people would rather be eternally bitter instead of playing some really fun games, more power to them.

EPISODE 1 SPOILERS (kind of, I guess) ---

The stand-off with the Overseer and the Raiders made zero sense and is probably the worst written sequence I've encountered after watching four episodes.  I eventually realized that the Raiders were just there to capture the Overseer, which is why I assume they didn't try to slaughter everyone and take over the vault, but the part with the hostages had me completely puzzled.  An actual raider would have killed them as soon as he surrendered--actually, why was that even necessary to begin with?  He was an old man, they could have simply taken him without a problem.  

The bomb, though, was to block the tunnel so they couldn't be followed, which I didn't even get until much later and they did a poor job of explaining at the time.

I don't like Maximus.  He seems very slow-witted and he makes a lot of dumb decisions.  On the other hand, Lucy's brother ends up being an interesting character.  There is definitely more going on in the Vaults, which of course would make sense given Vault-Tech's track record.

The Ghoul kind of reminds me of “The Man in Black” from Westworld mixed with Red Skull from Captain America. While Lucy reminds me a lot of Delores from Westworld mixed with the people of Pleasantville.

I’m familiar with Lucy’s actress, Ella Purnell, who is part of the ensemble for Yellowjackets - which is a fantastic show (another dark comedy; although, more dramatic/not dry). Also in the Yellowjackets ensemble are Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, and Juliette Lewis. It involves cults, cannibalism, and coverups… that involve more murders.

Lucy's brother is great, I was ready for him to become the annoying character but I really like him. It's hilarious when he stands next to Lucy's cousin too, that height difference is crazy.

I also really love Thaddeus, Lol.

Well, after watching all episodes, I still stand by what I said already - this is Bethesda's (mis)interpretation of Fallout, not original vision of it.

It's not, per se, a bad show actually (especially if you're coming straight from something like that dreck that is "3 Body Problem"), but it's not that great either.

My only fear really is Nolan tends to get a bit carried away with trying to make everything too clever, Westworld started so strong with an incredible cast but by some point I didn't really know what the fuck was going on anymore, it got so confusing and the endings were weak. Nolan makes good shows but he needs someone to rein him in. Might not be a problem though, Nolan isn't the writer or showrunner of the show, he only directed a few episodes and Fallout is more straightforward than Westworld.

Yeah, I’ve heard most people stopped liking Westworld during the second season - and IMO, that’s where the worst part happened (the Samurai stuff) which was just a really long way of saying “there’s more stuff here, and we reuse a lot of story.” as it didn’t really go anywhere else. Otherwise, I’m in that niche minority that enjoyed it (with a few exceptions) all the way through. Westworld did change shape each season, and grew in scope - and some of those changes weren’t popular; most people prefer consistency between seasons. I think most people agree on the greatness of the first season, though.

That said, just based on the fact that Fallout is a far lighter series than westworld, I’d say the story is going to be simplistic. It’s multi-threaded, but the storytelling is very basic/formulaic so far - and I don’t mean that as a criticism, as a lot of good shows and films have highly formulaic plots. I think complex storytelling works a lot better in books and videogames.

I still watched all of Westworld and in some parts, I still really enjoyed it. Season 1 was amazing, I thought Season 2 was a stepdown but still a great show, it was Season 3 for me where I started getting confused and unsure what the hell was going on, Lol. Season 4 was a mixed bag and while it showed signs of greatness still, I hated the ending of Season 4, I also didn't like the ending of Season 3.

The casting, set design, production values were fantastic though and there's plenty of great ideas, I just feel he needs someone to hone him in a little. Fallout shares a great cast, a brilliant set design, it definitely has the care and attention to detail behind it and like you said, it's not a criticism, Fallout is a more simplistic series than Westworld so it'll be harder for him to go too complex again.

Plus he's only a producer on the show, occasionally a director.

The show has two showrunners, one of them played Fallout 1-2 and the other played Fallout 3-4 + New Vegas.

I loved season 3 of Westworld - it was my favourite part of the show on my recent rewatch; but yeah, that one and season 4 were exceedingly unpopular with the audience. To put Season 3 into an overall nutshell: After Paris was destroyed by a nuclear bomb, a powerful business man (from Paris) uses AI to simulate and predict the destiny of the world so that he can prevent such chaos from occurring; unfortunately, there are many outliers that prevent the model from being as predictable as he needs it to be, so he sees them sabotaged or assassinated. Meanwhile, Delores, who was a slave to this sort of control in Westworld, wants to free the world from the yoke of corporate control.

And while I did talk some trash about parts of season 2, I will say this about it: my two favourite single episodes were from that season.