Hello my friends and the occasional relative!

These have been the weeks of late arrival in the blogosphere for me. I’ve put something out every Tuesday for a year and more now.

Small potatoes for some. An achievement for others.

As you all know, I have a Vast Global Reach™ (VGR), and I take that very seriously.

So this week I’m going to talk about a TV show on streaming. Versus my experience with another TV show on streaming. And what it means in terms of telling a story. To me. When only part way through the show I’m currently watching and comparing it to the show I’ve watched all episodes of so far.

Totally makes sense, right? Let’s begin.

I’m watching Fallout, because I had to sign up for Prime in order to watch something else on my TV downstairs. First world problem.

Fallout, like Halo which I have ranted about before, is a somewhat famous series of games. If you’re a gamer. Just like Halo, I saw all the adverts back in the day and ignored them. I have never played any iteration or version of the game. I just played Baldur’s  Gate. A lot. And AVP 2. And Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption – the ancient year 2000 one with the awful graphics and dodgy combat but awesome atmosphere. (To me, at the time. I still say “how ya doin’” like the gun seller to myself in an appallingly bad desktop computer version of a New York accent. I do not do this in public.) The graphics sucked in comparison to Blade of Darkness which was insanely advanced in 2001. I still play that game. It is not so advanced now. I still love it.

Anyway, Fallout.

So far it is very mystery boxy, just like Halo, but unlike Halo, I’m prepared to give it a pass so far. Remember, I gave Halo two seasons before giving up. However, the mystery box nature here is baked into the milieu, for at least one character, which I why I’m prepared to let it go.

*Spoilers from now*

The show starts from Lucy’s perspective – she is our guide into the world. Her world is underground, and the intro feels slow by today’s standards.  I was lying there downstairs on my sectional in the cold basement wondering why they didn’t get on with everyone in the vault dying already because it was so effing obvious that that was the way it was going to go, and as a result there was no tension. But I remained interested, and the character studies were sketched in nicely. I had a sense of who may or may not play a part later (aside from Lucy) and it was fun to see who would live or not. Spoiler – all the interesting ones live, but I didn’t assume they would. I understood immediately this was the inciting incident to get our heroine upstairs into the crazy alt-earth irradiated above ground. (As indicated in the prologue, which was excellent.) Eventually we got there.

Next was Maximus, and the Brotherhood of Steel who have old and new military tech but don’t control the world because reasons. He got beat up. His friend got brutally sabotaged, (razor blades in a boot? How do you not notice those until you take them off? Maybe I missed something) but it wasn’t by him. Supposedly. By episode three it still wasn’t him, but I don’t trust that it wasn’t, not fully, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’s okay, but unlike Lucy he hasn’t really done anything to win me over to his perspective. His squire saying sorry for bullying Maxiumus because he (the squire) was the previous victim of bullies in the camp, and needed to divert attention away from him onto Maximus in episode three I think was a nice touch, and made their relationship deeper, but some element of that needed to hit sooner. Could have been hinted at in the byplay between bullying assholes in ep one etc. Whatevs. The armor is cool, and I think that is the point.

Then we get the ghoul, and he is played by the most known to me actor who really knows his stuff and mixes past and future very well. This is a huge mystery box – how did he get from where he was to here and now? Some answers are alluded to in the IV bags into a grave, but the technicalities are left for another day, along with the serum he inhales that gets destroyed in ep three. I’m hoping we will get some sort of detailed explanation of his noseless ghoul existence in the remaining episodes. I’m a sucker for details. In my own books I have deliberately left some details out so far, but it is not because I don’t know them, or have no intention of revealing them, it is just that the time is not yet right for those reveals. Should I be hoist on my own mystery box petard? I don’t think so – but you, my friends, are the judges there.

Anyway, this is why I like Fallout better, so far, than Halo. Halo felt like forced mystery box from the first episode. Every character, every situation promised to be explained later, or had a destiny, or special power that they didn’t understand. And two seasons later many of those initial set ups are either unresolved or ignored.

Fallout does better because our initial character, Lucy, also knows nothing about the world above. We are invited to be as bewildered as she is, change and understand as she does, piece by piece. That simple structural choice, to spend a lot of what felt like slow time with her and her background at the start pays off because she is our guide to the world, and we understand it as little as she does. Maximus so far is less fully realized than either Lucy, and needs some help. I hope it arrives. His relationship to his former bully (remember I’ve only seen to ep 3) is a useful way to deepen our relationship to him, and I think the actor is doing great with all those close up reaction shots he’s forced to mak3e because he is hiding in his armor. In a sense he too is an innocent abroad, so he, like Lucy, gives us another approach into the world.

The ghoul is the world’s viewpoint, harsh and unforgiving. He does this job admirably, but knowing he was once human gives us a reason to care about him, and wonder why and what made him become who he is now, compared to who he was before. Not just physically, but morally – when he was captain wholesome in the pre nuclear age. Again, that is a nice contrast built in with a minimum of fuss in the story. No neon signs or straining.  

This story is just better written. Yes it is a dystopia. Yes there is body horror and unashamed gross out gore like an early Peter Jackson movie, and I’m guessing that is in keeping with the game. I loved it because I am in touch with my inner 14 year old.  YMMV.

The reason it is better written is because as a newbie to the game universe, I am given a reason to be interested in all the main characters, and some of the side characters too. The mysteries of their backgrounds are organic to the setting and their circumstances. In Halo it just felt like a series of gotchas/isn’t this cool and mysterious for no known in universe reason. Fallout has so far in my viewing kept the mysteries more closely tied to the mechanics of the universe and the direction of the plot. I think if Maxiumus had been given Lucy’s initial time he would be more sympathetic, they just missed a beat or two, but the overall story arc, and the actor, have won me round.

We still have the wonder glowing implant that can change the world, and injections that can cure internal wounds, but I rolled with the latter as a game convention: other games I’ve played have had stim and healing packs that fix the impossible. The player has to get back to health 100 somehow after eating that Gatling gun burst. It just is a thing in games, and watching this show, I was prepared to give that stuff grace.  I did the same in Halo with the armor taking hits and absorbing energy and then being depleted, but not broken. Then they spent ages out of armor, beating enemies it initially seemed they needed armor to kill, in nothing but a futuristic T shirt. That stretched my credulity. I had a hard time relating that to my imagining of the game, but there are always levels when you get striped of your sexy gear and have to earn it back. Did it have to be almost all of season two?

Whoo . This went long. It appears I’m still salty, as the kids say, about Halo. I hope I don’t end up the same way about Fallout. If the game fans hate the show for messing with the lore I won’t be surprised, but this does feel more coherent to me than either Halo, or Witcher, two other series I’ve watched that I felt were okay, but later found out were not exactly true to their origins.

You tell me, my friends, is Fallout more lore friendly than other shows?