Available to stream on Amazon Prime since April 9th, and directed by Jonathon Nolan, staring Ella Purnell (Lucy), Aaron Moten (Maximus), and Walton Goggins (The Ghoul/Cooper Howard), Fallout is honestly so much better than I was expecting. Sure there are many faults, but it’s REALLY good. Walton Goggins killed his role, Aaron Moten took some warming up to but was great, and Ella Purnell, well she wasn’t bad by any means, but wasn’t exceptional either.

There’s not a whole lot I can say without spoilers, but I’ll do my best. The series takes place around 2296, in the Los Angeles area, and is currently the farthest along timeline-wise of any Fallout IP. The first thing I want to address, is the rumor I kept hearing about vault experiments being inaccurate or things from previous titles being retconned… As far as I could tell between watching the show and digging through lore online, nothing has actually been retconned, and the vault experiments we did get to see weren’t abnormal. Some people have mentioned how power armor basically lasts forever in the show but not in the games, though to be fair lore wise their fusion cores really do last a ridiculously long time, they’re semi-short lived in the games for balance, just like how Superman can get hurt by pretty much anything when you’re playing as him in a videogame despite being nigh-invulnerable without the assistance of kryptonite when it comes to established canon.

Now there are several times that left me saying, “Why on the hell on God’s brown wasteland would they make that choice?” One particular moment stands out to me, where our main ghoul (Goggins) finds himself with an easily transportable box (about the size of a small jewelry box) full of medicine vials, and instead of closing it, and taking it with him he removes his Stetson and moves all the vials from the box to his turned over hat. The passage of time is also very rarely shown, and even rarer mentioned, as a result it feels like this show takes place over the course of a few days even though it is several weeks. My last main gripe, is that the wasteland feels so very empty. I mean yeah, it’s a wasteland, but generally speaking see very very few actual bugs, animals, and monsters. Perhaps it was a budget thing, perhaps in this particular area a lot less of the wildlife survived, maybe they just couldn’t figure out a golden ratio populating the wasteland we did see & experience, while still making sure to be generally devoid and wastelandy.

I will be rewatching the show at least once more soon and can easily see myself rewatching again as time goes on, it has reminded me of my love for the Fallout franchise and has me redownloading Fallout: New Vegas & Fallout 4 to play through, and have heard, that much like the Last of Us show it has brought in a new audience to play the games. All that considered, I give this 9 out of 10 stars. Go watch it, even if you didn’t play the games, even if you weren’t a fan of the games.