I do want to make it abundantly clear that I hold no ill will towards any of the actors, or most of the creators. I say this because people tend to get really angry and weird about things like this.
I also know that some spazzy video game fans will complain about the lore, the story, and whatever else they can come up with. I don’t want to bore you with lore dumps or go on and on about power armor. I’m here to talk about themes, story telling, story arcs, and post-apocalyptic writing in general.
What is Fallout About?
Fallout 1 is about picking through the ruins of civilization to save your vault and, eventually, the wasteland.
In Fallout 2, civilization is coming back. It's flawed and shitty, but you, the player, have to work to save it all from extermination.
In Fallout 3, you are a plucky vault dweller who leaves their vault to travel through the ruins of civilization to find a close family member and eventually save the wasteland.
In Fallout New Vegas, civilization is back, baby. The frontier created by the apocalypse is closing fast, and people better get with the program or get to steppin. Three societies duke it over the Hoover Dam, and one Courier holds the fate of the Mojave in their hands.
In Fallout 4 you are a plucky vault dweller who leaves the vault to travel through the ruins of civilization to find a close family member and eventually save the wasteland.
In the Fallout TV show, a plucky vault dweller leaves the vault to travel through the ruins of civilization to find a close family member and eventually save the wasteland.
Do you notice something?
Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas weren't made by Bethesda, the current owners of the IP and co-creators of the TV show. The first two were made by Black Isle, the original creators, and New Vegas was made by Obsidian as a spin-off. People like to joke that Bethesda is mad about New Vegas.
Fallout New Vegas is considered one of the best games in the series, a true sequel to the Black Isle games, and a great RPG experience to boot.
Bethesda’s Fallout games weren't that well received or were considered major missteps. Their most recent outing, Fallout 76, a multiplayer game, was a disaster. (For more information and an entertaining watch about the topic, click here.)
We didn't really know how mad Bethesda was until the TV show came out.
They literally blew it all up.
In Episode 5, The Past, Maximus and Lucy stumble across the ruins of Shady Sands, the capital of the New California Republic, a post-apocalypse nation-state. The NCR is a major plot element in 1, 2 and NV with the NCR being one of the major factions fighting over the Hoover Dam.
Shady Sands was blown up by a nuke and the survivors all fled to Vault 4.
It could've been spun as "War Never Changes," the cycles of apocalyptic violence continue, we repeat our old sins till we finally learn our lessons.
NOPE. I won't spoil it, but that's not the reason why. The reason is, to be frank, fucking retarded.
People barely remember the NCR. Its capital got blown to hell 15 years ago. A nation spanning from Reno to Vegas to the coast plus the bureaucracy to maintain it all, gone in 15 years. The only survivors do weird religious shit in a vault.
All that remains is raiders, shithole towns, organized raiders, and a random holdout at an observatory.
Bullshit.
It reads more like Bethesda wrecking any sort of narrative continuity so they can keep telling the same story, over and over again. A plucky vault dweller emerges; they meet the Brotherhood of Steel, fight some raiders, and save the wasteland; also, capitalism sucks. I love being lectured by a megacorporation worth almost $2 Trillion that capitalism sucks.
Wrecking something they didn't make to make space for something they did, like a petulant toddler.
Fallout 1, 2 and NV are all about the steps after apocalypse, civilization comes back, we can rebuild after destruction. The NCR of New Vegas resembles the United States. A barbarous faction of slavers who wear football pads and wield machetes keep paperwork for their purchase of slaves. The wasteland isn’t a wasteland anymore.
Lucy literally remarks on this. If society already came back without the vaults, what’s the point? What's the point of saving the wasteland if It's not only been saved but eradicated and replaced with civilized land?
Bethesda can't do that. They'd have to write a new kind of story.
What doesn't help is the writer's constant recycling of plot elements and story beats from previous games. The characters are somewhat original, but almost Every Single Plot Point is recycled from a previous Fallout game.
A raider by surface dwellers wrecks a vault and one of the dwellers goes to the surface to find their dad? Literally the start of Fallout 3.
Actually, the Vault isn't a bomb shelter, but a place for beyond-fucked-up social experiments to occur. Welcome to every vault written by Bethesda, ever. There are no normal ones like in 1,2 or New Vegas.
The water chip breaks, that's the inciting incident in Fallout 1. Water purification shows up again in Fallout 3.
The Enclave (a remnant of the US government that was destroyed in Fallout 2 but brought back in 3) is being evil and the Brotherhood of Steel is being dicks. That’s part of 1, 2, 3, New Vegas, and 4.
There’s a dog. I’m fucking shocked it's not called Dogmeat, like in 1, 2 and 4.
The entire overarching conflict is just a remixed version of Fallout 3.
The only special plot elements the show works with is Walter Goggins’ (whose amazing) character being alive before the bombs dropped.
Why Should you Care, Why am I Writing About This?
In most post apocalypse stories, there is an element of hope. Society can move on and rebuild after a catastrophic event. The end isn't necessarily the end. Humanity prevails. In all of New Vegas’ post-launch content there’s a major theme of letting go of the past, it’s all gone and only the future remains.
In Bethesda's Fallout, it is perpetually in one spot, stuck in the past. Society never moves on, never rebuilds, and never changes. The protagonist and the setting are stuck in that first stage of picking up the pieces and trying to create some semblance of civilization. In Fallout 3, it's clean water; on the TV show, it's energy.
If that is the case, what's the point? What's the point of the plucky vault dweller saving the wasteland if it's still a wasteland?
I know why Bethesda is doing this. I'm not hiding in Todd Howard's office walls, spying on every stupid decision he makes, but I don't have to be.
The vaults, the vault suits, the pip-boy, and the Americana are all extremely marketable. The story of the plucky vault dweller is extremely easy to rewrite and rehash. Writing something new and interesting is hard, so why do that? The show literally comments on this, with Matt Berry's character talking about how the future is in products and merchandise.
This wouldn't be gruesome if it didn't dive headfirst into nihilism. The world that comes after the apocalypse isn't hopeful. It's a perpetual land of misery and the worst humanity has to offer. The only thing that keeps it from getting worse is the occasional intervention of a social experiment victim, who just returns things to the same dog-shit status quo.
War never changes? Bullshit, Bethesda's wasteland never changes.
You make me feel lucky I came in with no knowledge of the Games, I could enjoy it a lot (not knowing the plot wad recycled). With that in mind it was so much fun and the music is amazing. Ghoul is obviously the best part. I may watch it again with mom because she isn't a gamer but could appreciate it in this form. I appreciate your explanation into the issues though. Makes me understand why my brother doesn't like it as much
They could have it both ways, by telling the origin stories of reemergence in parallel, focusing on different regions in different entries in the series. That's what I thought they were trying to do with Fallout 3. It stood to reason that the east coast would take longer to reemerge than the west, so the advancing timeline wasn't an obvious red flag.
But it's Bethesda, and in spite of reputation, epic narratives are not really what they do. Not to mention they're mostly skinsuited at this point, Howard himself notwithstanding, and as such have lost whatever talent made the early Elder Scrolls games compelling and Fallout 3 a promising start.
It would take a grand vision beyond "making money reselling reskins of our janky sandbox game engine" to develop and coordinate an overarching theme. Easier to just re-re-rerelease Skyrim in Spaaaace! or whatever.