Fallout S2: Getting the Hang of The Game

By John Kirk

Rating: A

Video gamers will vibe with this: there’s a part in a game when a player gets the flow of handling their character. Switching weapons to better fit an encounter, healing fast, modding your character’s attributes for better effect. It’s usually after a lot of hours playing and makes for a whole load of fun.

Welcome to Season Two of Fallout.

The season picks up in the middle of a common event during gameplay: the supply raid. If there’s anything a character in this game needs, it’s consumables like food, ammunition and caps, the standard unit of currency in the irradiated and retro-futuristic wasteland. Whether that takes one into combat or a puzzle, the gameplay in Fallout never disappoints.

It’s clear that spirit has been imported into the storyline of the second season. Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) and her travelling companion, the Ghoul (Walton Goggins) find themselves in a situation where they can ambush a group of desert raiders for their stash.

Yet Lucy, in her naïve Vault Dweller’s mentality, has an attack of conscience, knowing that they can completely wipe out their prey, gives them the chance to do the nice thing. Especially since she’s said please.

It's a perfect gaming moment, seeing as characters’ choices in the game are options based on a range of morale quandaries. Lucy holds true to her character roots and gives the raiders mercy, and the chance to do the right thing.

Of course, as this is in the trailer, there are no spoilers here, but it serves as an excellent example of the gameplay-style thinking that has been incorporated into the show’s storyline. Guaranteed to appeal to players, it also gives non-gamers the chance to experience the essence of one of the greatest video game franchises.

There are still plenty unfinished main and side quests to select as TV plotlines that can be completed in this season. Think of the first season as an introduction to the world of Fallout.

This apocalyptic future is a retro-future, the type of future that could have been imagined in the late 1950’s: driving atomic-powered cars with rocket fins, listening to the crooning tones of the Rat Pack and a swingin’ lifestyle that could only have been foreseen by writers wearing cardigans, horn-rimmed glasses and drinking highballs from their radium-infused glasses.

The Communist Chinese were the enemy present in their version of the Cold War which ignited an actual nuclear war, sending the likes of Lucy’s ancestors into steel vaults deep underground to survive and reclaim America over 200 years later. Super-mutants, ghouls, monstrous animals who have survived the nuclear holocaust and adapted to radiated environment have become deadly threats to the remnants of humanity.

But these remnants have also adapted, forming new factions like the Brotherhood of Steel, the scavenging wasteland raiders, Caesar’s Legion and those of the New California Republic. As we saw Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) storm off in a stolen suit of power armour in the climactic final episode of last season, he was standing before the ruins of Las Vegas or otherwise known in the game as New Vegas. Of course, there will be some wonderful stories to wrap up here.

Just like in game terms, it’s the anticipation of a new adventure that captivates fans’ attentions. But the real challenge for the showrunners will be which quest will be chosen for the basis of the next plotline?

Television based on an interactive game with such rich background and detail is not a novel concept, but this has to be the best one on the small screen right now as the showrunners and cast have presented in extremely fine degree both the lore and the same experience that fans of the game are so fond of playing.

Why? Because the show has found its pacing. There’s an easy balance in switching back and forth from the adventures of Lucy and the Ghoul to Knight Maximus (Aaron Moten) of the Brotherhood of Steel and Lucy’s wayward father, Hank, that doesn’t seem forced or awkwardly out of character.

The precision in presenting this season is completely perfect in every way. Characters, backgrounds, even new details like flea soup are exactly within expectations. This show is absolutely what hardcore fans of the game will expect and new fans will love.

Most importantly, the commitment to the roles is admirable. This is such a strange concept for any story; it truly is a new genre of post-apocalyptic fiction. To have such a dynamic cast ready to fully immerse themselves in the role takes incredible preparation. Clearly, they are having fun.

But at the end of the day, that’s the expectation of any game: to have fun; television audience and game-players alike.

Fallout Season Two. Showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner. Starring Ella Purnell, Walton Goggins, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, Moisés Arias and Frances Turner. Streaming on Prime Video December 16.