The second season of Amazon’s Fallout series has concluded, so it’s a good time to comment on what was done well and what could have been better.
All eight episodes of the second season of Fallout have been broadcast, which means that with minimal spoilers I can comment on the current highest quality TV series in terms of games. That’s it, I immediately fired something controversial, but I think that’s easy to say when there are currently no other video game series, and the previous ones either disappointed in the second season (like The Last of Us) or were completely canceled (like Halo).
Amazon’s Fallout viewership is reportedly on the decline, but this may have been caused by the decision to split the second season over a period of almost two months. I don’t think it was the smartest decision because Fallout is not a very uncertain series. It tries to keep some tension there, for example some episodes end just when the plot gets interesting. However, I’ve never gotten that anxious anticipation of what’s going to happen next from the Fallout series. I would actually rather forget what happened in the previous episode.
The fact that it resembles the game too much does not help the series, in the sense that it is obvious which characters are important to the flow of the story and it is clear that they will not be harmed when they find themselves in danger. It also uses Bethesda’s approach where everything has to be presented as part of an amusement park. Locations, monsters, characters – these are all attractions that are constantly presented to the viewer as something new. Look: we have Vegas, and this faction, and that! Because of all this, Fallout is the type of series that doesn’t require any reading of subtlety – what you see is what you get.
Fallout is the type of series that doesn’t require any reading of subtlety – what you see is what you get.
I could break the series down into simple factors, but I want to emphasize that it’s not all that bad. As much as the series lacks real tension, during the second season I didn’t feel that the series tired me or killed me with boredom. It’s cool how many easter eggs they managed to throw in from the games. I also liked the blunt humor. The music selection is excellent. I didn’t expect that the series would cover drug addiction and I think they did a good job of how the post-apocalyptic world changes a person through Lucy. Ghoul is no longer as intriguing a character as in the first season, but it can be seen that they will build the big finale for the series through him. And the hint of that finale in the second season sounds interesting.
I have mixed feelings about how the series fits into the canon of the Fallout universe itself. On the one hand, I know that the screenwriters of the series have the thankless task of continuing a story that could have ended in many ways in Fallout: New Vegas. They did this by referencing the existence of the Courier / player and his moves in New Vegas, which is nice to see. However, on the other hand I got the impression that the series was undoing what happened in the games, setting the stage for it to happen again. Regardless of the fact that the action of the series takes place years after the great battle for the Hoover Dam, everything that was concluded by that event now leads again to the same conflict.
I have mixed feelings about how the series fits into the canon of the Fallout universe itself.
Another thing I didn’t like about the series was the use of the Enclave. In the second season, that group was introduced as a mysterious villain, but they shouldn’t be that mysterious since they already appeared in the first season. In the context of the history from the Fallout games, it also doesn’t add up to me that the FEV virus is an arcane term. After the events of Fallout 1 and 2, I would expect all of America to know about the Enclave and FEV, not that they are shrouded in secrecy.
If I’m going to compare the series with the games, there are a lot of things that don’t hold water for me. For example, Fallout is a series in which at least a third of the action takes place on the go – the characters walk from one place to another, literally walking across the wasteland. And this after Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics have already confirmed that functional vehicles exist in the world of Fallout. But no – if Bethesda’s games don’t have vehicles due to their limited engine, there shouldn’t be any in the series either! But, there is an attraction of a big robot, so let’s throw that in to make it more interesting…
If anything, I find that approach easier to accept in the series than in the game. After all, where else will I see a detailed and realistic Deathclaw than in the series? Not that we’re getting a new Fallout game anytime soon… When the series’ story is the only Fallout story I can consume right now, I’ll take it as long as it’s digestible. And I think that in the second season she was just like that – digestible. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the series to everyone, I definitely don’t think it’s worthy of any awards, but in the context of video games it’s not a total meltdown and disappointment for me.
Some segments of the story in this season have been completed, and some have just begun. I don’t see that the series has much more action ahead of it, but there are enough interesting questions that I hope will be answered in the next season.