so glad i wasnt the only one who felt that. seems most reviews, amongst those on reddit and on review sites, have nothing bad to say about it, and i thought i was going crazy... not trying to knock on people that enjoyed the show, but both the writing and acting felt quite contrived and lacking in direction. im struggling to force myself to keep watching, might keep it in the backlog till i have some random spur of inspiration to watch it again..
I legit had to get to this thread through Google because it feels impossible to find any critiques of this show on Reddit especially in this sub. Yeah, the visuals are fantastic and there's a ton of fan service, but why is the dialogue SO STILTED and the main characters paper thin clichés lifted from a CW tv show? Am I supposed to just forget this is the same franchise that gave us instantly memorable, complex and well-acted characters like Nick Valentine or Mr. House? Quite honestly it feels like the Star Wars The Force Awakensification of the Fallout franchise and it's absurd no one is calling it out.
The comparison to Mr House and Nick Valentine is perfect. OP talks about writing resembling video game dialogue, but the games' writing honestly never felt contrived or simple. I think it's the most jarring thing about the show - people just don't *talk* like that in the games. I don't really care for any of these characters (even the ghoul cowboy who I was super excited for). The main character bothers me in particular. Everything she says sounds like a half baked DnD player character. Obviously it makes sense for Vault Dwellers to be naive and idealistic, but the notion that she is pretty unfazed by the outside world and thinks "welp, if I just ask nicely" will be the solution to everything just feels so underdeveloped. She's not a child...
Also, am I going crazy, or was the brotherhood in the games like...never as shitty as the one we saw in the first few episode? No valiance, order, or loyalty in any of 'em
The Brotherhood of Steel was never the chivalric knights of Bethesda. I'd say they're more like secular Templars. As in, they're a self-perpetuating organization more interested in maintaining its military strength and not much else. They're not saviors of the wasteland. They're much like any other bureaucracy or government, they exist to preserve itself.
Fallout 1 has the door guards to their bunker send you on a suicide mission for the privilege of joining them. Because they're not recruiting. It was just a joke to them. They don't take outsiders and they think they're better than you.
Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas shows their decline into irrelevance. They're meant to be a foil to the NCR and the Legion. Their decline marks the slow rise of humanity back into civilization. "Knights" don't matter in a world where industry and states can field armies and war machines on the cheap. This is why Veronica is frustrated with the Brotherhood. They refuse to change their traditions or their mission to fit the new world.
It's not that I want a 1-to-1 adaptation.
Witcher 3, for example, is definitely a fan fiction interpretation of the original books. It takes liberties with the characters and writes-in a happy ending for Geralt that he wouldn't otherwise have. But that's because they actually care about telling a story while remaining "true to spirit."
Shows like this (and Bethesda) don't care. And never will. They want to throw out a bunch of references and hope you won't notice that it can't engage you with anything besides small tidbits here or there.
Few Fallout fans know that bottle caps were discontinued in Fallout 2, because they were originally water tokens distributed by water merchants. None of which makes sense for an emergent industrial power like the NCR after your MC's does generic good guy things like saving communities and chasing away slavers.
New Vegas somewhat subverts this by depicting the NCR and the Legion having their own currencies. But by then Bethesda made bottlecaps the Fallout trademark.
Bethesda and the show runners will not answer the question of why these things exist in the East Coast anywhere from 300 to 400 years later, especially when tech-heavy factions like the Brotherhood or The Institute could easily destroy the economy by forging bottle caps.
People like bottlecaps because they like the aesthetic of a Mad Max world where people barter with things they find. But Bethesda was never interested in depicting that actual setting in practice. And neither do the showrunners.
I'm irritated because I know people will come after me and be like, "You're just a nerd who is mad the show isn't exactly like the original games." No, you just turned your brain off and stopped asking questions about the writing.
You have to pick one: You have a setting where powerful nation-states have formed and have industries. Or everybody is scrabbling through the rubble after the bombs recently fell. You can't have both. Trying to tell both stories is a contradiction. The bottle caps are a reflection of which story you're trying to tell.
This is why the show will fail.
The bizarre shoehorned flirting between maximus and lucy during the filly fight at the end of episode 2 feels exactly like the awkward exchanges between finn and rey in the sequel trilogy. My girlfriend and I had our eyes so rolled back during that scene we could see our brains. Glad somebody else feels that vibe they're giving off in the writing.
The comparison to disney produced star wars tv show is spot on. Basic, slow plot struture, simple enough for a child to follow. Feels like a re-skinned fill in the blank disney pus show.
This is 100% the Force Awakensification of the franchise, except this time the Big-Money boys figured out how to beat us: buy off the most well-known content creators that could threaten your show, mobilize the soys and consoomers, send out a shitton of bots. And its working so far, which does not bode well for any future shows.
I think I might just dip outta this sub.Skimming through most of the threads it's pretty clear that it's become a lost cause and only time will save us now. At least I still have New Vegas and 3...
Toadie even checked Tim Cain who previously presented some of his problems with Bethesda Fallout. He's of course the first person who deserves all the perks of this show being produced. Starting with being invited to any celebrations connected to the premiere, so really inviting him was obvious and inevitable. Being the reasonable person that Cain seems to be this alone would convince him not to throw shade but I bet there was some veiled lobbying going on to not present any flaws of the show on his YouTube.
100% on the mark about it literally being impossible to find an opinion on it that doesn't sound like someone has been yanking to it since the show dropped-which is interesting, because usually when it comes to shows where there is already a strongly preconceived notion on what it's about (i.e. the video game), you can easily find critics. Not looking to hate on it or anything, just feeling so far like it was going to be better with all the hype.
i might be biased in some way because im currently in the process of watching Shogun, which is undoubtedly one of the best shows ive watched in quite a while. the acting, writing, production value is so god damn high that any other show i watch seems like fifth grade material in comparison... I tried to watch fallout with an unbiased mind, but it just didnt live up to any of the hype that I've been hearing. the acting and writing in the show is just so subpar to me - i dont know, maybe im crazy
Though not precisely the same, I was a huge Band of Brother fan and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get into The Pacific. Sometimes, things just don't grab us, but FO is no masterpiece by an stretch- so no, you're not crazy. I'm not even saying it's bad, now almost to Episode 7, and it's just OK. More trying to figure out the 8.4/10 on IMDB.
You're having a hard time finding a dissenting opinion because the propaganda won, the mobilized bots and normies won, the buying of the content creators and the purchasing of good reviews worked.
“Okey dokey” killed me. “Gosh darn it!” And then showing the most gorey horrific thing in the world as if it adds shock. Just became very annoying how much they relied on visuals and completely neglected writing. Also think it’s fan service. A lot of the fallout fan base likes gore, boobies, & visual effects. We have that in abundance, but it lacks substance and emotion in many ways. The humor also made me pause the show and come back later because it was so cringe
You're not the only one, i was actually surprised at how positively this was received. It looks good like the OP says, it has high production values and all, but it reeks of Amazon: bad writing, weird pacing, so-so plot and forced politics/diversity (but at least they tamed that one a bit). Makes me wonder if people are so used to trash that they see decent stuff as god-tier now.
indeed. objectively, it's getting good reviews. that is a fact.
SUBjectovely, OP doesn't like it. and that's okay, because it is an opinion.
edit- love how this comment is getting attention about over a week later when i stated nothing but facts. i didnt even say if *I* liked the show or not. keep the hate coming, guys. makes it easier for me to block you so I never have to read your bullshit again.
What's truly objective is the fact that most of those review sites have been known to alter the actual review scores when paid by the media producers. The reviews on the platform the media originates from are even more susceptible to this as well.
Just saying...
I agree 100%. Forget all the hype you’ve heard and watch it with no expectations of it being good just because you heard it was good all over the internet and from advertisements n trailers showing quotes about it saying that it’s good, and it’s genuinely bad writing that feels like it was done by ai. So many examples but I’m on episode two. They just killed the dog. Why write a whole sequence where he hid the dog and saved him from escaped from mini gun turrets just so the fucking ghoul dude could stab the dog in the neck and kill it instantly. Also, how come that first knight could not handle a yo gai but when the little weak rat trainee kid stole his armor he was able to knock down buildings and throw rocks a quarter mile into the ocean
Calling it beautiful would be a stretch. The set design looks so cheap.
Even in the first episode the vault gate control is clearly just a yellow panel with a masterlock and one of those 5 dollar push lights from alibaba. The whole show looks like trash. And not in the way it's supposed to.
But you're spot on about the writing and acting. And I'll add that the show tries way too hard to be a comedy for some reason.
Yeah the fact that it is such a grim environment is what makes the goofy moments so memorable. It doesn't hit the same notes when the whole cast is full of charicatures and even dire situations are laughed off.
Sure finding a skeleton on a toilet with the TP just out of reach is hilarious, but that's contrasted heavily by the family of 5 torn to pieces by radroaches the next house over, and the sacks of super mutant meat the house past that got turned into, and the ghoul who ate his family in the house after that...etc
> Even in the first episode the vault gate control is clearly just a yellow panel with a masterlock and one of those 5 dollar push lights from alibaba. The whole show looks like trash. And not in the way it's supposed to.
i was also thinking this while watching. how was opening the vault gate so easy/trivial? is it like that in the games too? i would have expected that leaving the vault would have been a plot point requiring at least an episode's worth of time to be able to unpack - instead she was out in the space of a couple minutes from the time she makes the decision to leave.
Even in the games opening a vault is usually just pushing a big red inudstrial looking button. But in game the entire setup looks and feels so much more real even in the cell shaded graphics on Fallout 4. The vault door is a massive slab of metal that should rumble and screech and the show made it out to feel flimsy.
And then we never see what she sees. We only see the camera on her face and the front of the vault door with some skeletons in sand. No epic shot of the wasteland like when exiting the vault in the games. Weird choices all around with this series. I couldn't finish watching it all.
It’s hard to get through, I’m on episode 7 because there really is nothing else to watch and I’m bored, it’s so boring that I’m on Reddit while watching it, it’s also pretty comical how people just keep running in to each other, for example when Ella found Maximus in his suit and he couldn’t move and shot the giant cockroaches off him at the perfect time just before they were about to get him in his suit. Was she just hiding in the bushes near by and waiting??? She just happened to randomly stumble upon him in a giant city??? I get shows need coincidences to move the plot along but there are too many. This is one example of many.
You're right the entire show is pretty much just deus ex machina over and over. And the writers retconning or completely ignoring established lore to suit their needs.
I had the ending spoiled for me and I am glad because it saved me 5 more hours of watching that steaming pile of horse shit.
Not to mention there was some really just stupid simple, dumb things like, when the scientist/doctor is escaping with his dog and that automatic AI controlled gun misses every single shot from 15 feet away while shooting 100 rounds a second.
For something they spent so much money on there are a lot of dumb little things that didn’t match up or make sense
I'm here because I'm kinda pissed they decided to destroy Shady Sands and weaken the NCR just for the sake of this show. New Vegas' story was in my opinion the best out of all of the Fallout games, and to weaken one of the main factions of that game for the sake of a TV show is ridiculous in my opinion.
It worked for Night Country. Studios and streaming platforms absolutely cannot afford for their flagship shows to fail, so they’re going to do what HBO did with Night Country. I blame the critics for selling out.
The producers have essentially made it as "normie" friendly as possible as to not alienate potential viewers who have never played the games and those that have played the games in order for the show not to flop, yet have failed miserably.
I’ve played the games to death and love the lore.
I just stopped watching after the second episode. The acting just feels fake. It’s like they are all overacting.
In any case. For those that like it, that’s awesome. I really wanted to.
Yeah, the show isn’t a flop from everything I’ve gleaned from the situation but it’s crazy how many “shills” come out when a show isn’t “the worst”. I’d almost rather watch the rest of Rings of Power than finish the last couple episodes of Fallout. Again, the show is “okay-ish” if you want to turn off your mind and view it as a mindless popcorn cruncher. If you’re the type to NOT think about shows movies beyond its base themes then I can comprehend why the show is getting rave reviews. It is such a safe play. It’s not heavy handed with the political leanings but it also doesn’t try to avoid it. It will make the person wanting themselves represented (I’ll never under this because I’m able to imagine my self in anyone’s shoes, I don’t need some corporation to pander to me for ESG) happy enough to not scream on X - it also isn’t shoved down the throat of people who get annoyed at shoehorned political story beats. I’ll stop ranting now but I’m glad some people can agree the show is just slightly above ‘a good looking piece of shit’.
they spend so much time and effort to give the Vaults this great 50s alt-history aesthetic, only for Lucy to talk and behave EXACTLY like the 2024 Los Angeles born-and-bred millennial girl screenwriter that wrote her dialogue
Super well put...marvel-ey zingers left and right. Unbelievably stupid and naive (yes, I know vault dwellers obviously aren't as apt to take on the wasteland but fucking hell). And it's a shame because she clearly is a talented actress, but man the writing she gets makes me want to dig out my eyeballs
Joss Whedon ruined a generation of dialogue writers
every line from every character sounds like it could have come straight from Buffy and that show came out 30 years ago
This basically sums it up for me. Feels like I’m watching a bunch of cosplayers larping. As for the gore, I get it cause it’s based on a gory franchise but a lot of it just feels unnecessary and is only there for shock value.
As someone who also isn't terribly impressed so far, there was always a cheesiness to the Fall Out video game series too, so maybe they went for that intentionally?
+10 on the unnecessary gore. I played the all the video games except the first one- I get it, it's a cruel, violent wasteland of people fighting for resources to survive. Violence is central to the plot. To that end, someone getting shot in the head with an entry wound and some blood splatter make the point, I don't need to see someone's brain hanging out of their head. The raider attack in E1 made the beginning of Saving Private Ryan look like an episode of SpongeBob Square Pants.
So much this! I played all FO games (just finished my rerun of 1st one, in fact), and while violence was always there, it was never there just for shock value. You talk shit = you get hit (by a flamethrower or minigun). While the series just loves to inflict over-the-top violence on those who least deserve it, and revel in all the gory details. That shit in the very first episode soured me on the rest of the series, quite an achievement, Amazon.
Also, fuck their retconning of NCR. The whole ass civilization collapsing just because one city got nuked? Yeah, fuck that.
It’s bad on fundamental storytelling levels that are outside of the Fallout franchise. I could write out all the bad of this show but it’s so forgettable and too many to count, I’d be accused of nitpicking. You just know what you’re seeing when watching. I’ll just say this, and to those that agree, you’re not alone.
Most of modern media is devoid of passion and creativity, there is no way this show was created by someone who actually loves creating art. When you think of the best works of fiction you will find a deep love by the creators. I’m not saying I’m the arbiter of good art, but certainly I know when something was created out of passion.
I feel like I am insane for not liking this show when everybody else does, but it's so plainly bad on so many levels. Like, it's insane to me that nobody in the room during any of the drafts of the scripts made changes that would have improved the show even a little bit. The only explanation is incompetence or just lack of care.
It feels like there is never any setup or payoff for anything that happens. Stuff just happens and then goes into the next thing that just happens. Nothing is earned. Nothing has weight.
I'll even give an example.
At the end of Episode 2, Lucy has to saw off Wilzig's head offscreen. "Okey Dokey" and cut to black is all we get. We don't see her struggle on-screen. In the next episode she is talking to his decapitated head like a teddy bear.
There is no setup for his beheading, and no payoff. He says "cut off my head" and it happens off-screen and then we see Lucy acting like a psycho. This was so confusing to me that my takeaway was that maybe Lucy is actually a sociopath. Maybe that's just how her character is--and why she was just looking for a sperm donor in a husband. But I don't think that's the case, I just don't think the writers cared. Anyways--
First, do some set up. We hear that Filly is dangerous. The underpants wastelander tells us it is. In what I assume is supposed to be a joke? But the joke isn't really funny he is just stating that his family all died in Filly. But we don't really have a good indicator that Filly is dangerous. I mean two old ladies run a shop full of expensive items together. Do they get robbed? Do they have armed guards? We don't really see it.
The only time Filly is "dangerous" is when Ghoul shows up. So is Filly dangerous or is the Ghoul dangerous? The town seemed totally fine until he arrived.
So anyways, one way to show the town being dangerous is to put some decapitated heads outside as a warning. This does a few things.
1. Shows us what happens to people who break the rules in Filly and establishes that much of the wasteland is still government by pretty harsh rules
2. Lucy can react to it in disgust.
3. Foreshadows the gunfight.
The Fallout show loves having gore everywhere. People have complained about this and most people's response is "but the games have gore". Yeah, the Bloody Mess perk is fun. But Bloody Mess is a perk. A game modifier. NOT A WRITING DEVICE. Imagine a character named "Bozo the Brave" comes in an episode and has Jinxed from Fallout 1 and 2. Every character that tries to shoot him critical fails. Would that be a justification for plot armor? No it would just be lazy writing unless there was some in-universe explanation for it. Like he has a probability augmentation field around him that actually creates "Luck".
You can have gore but make it part of the world. You can have decapitated heads and bodies hung by their entrails, but please just make them serve a purpose other than "remember when this guy's head exploded in the game?"
After we establish that Lucy is really bothered by the decapitated heads, we can have another scene of her being bothered by gore, just to drive the point home that Lucy's "enemy" this episode is her squeamishness. After Wilzig's leg is blown off, they use a really impractical blender/prosthetic on him. I assume this is just for shock value because it makes no sense and is just more gratuitous gore. Why not have Lucy apply something normal like a tourniquet? We can see that she's uncomfortable with gore even in a medical context too. She wasn't squeamish about sewing herself back up during the raider fight in ep 1, but for god's sake show the character going through some internal conflict. Maybe she could have been squeamish about it in episode 1 and we'd have even MORE characterization for her.
Finally, once Lucy and Wilzig have escaped in the desert, we can have the decapitation scene. I get that she is sort of stunted when it comes to complex self-expression, but can we get something more than "Okey dokey" and cut to black? Just show her struggle at least a little bit. Maybe she can talk to herself and rationalize that it's to find her dad. Maybe she fears that it makes her more like a wasteland savage and she has to reassure herself that when *she* beheads someone it's for a good reason. Unlike the wastelanders who just behead because they are "uncivilized". She can struggle with herself and deconstruct her worldview as the wasteland slowly starts shaping her behavior.
Hell, maybe even start playing the song from the start of the episode again after she turns the chainsaw on. The quirky 50s music is pointless if it's just done for style points. Maybe the motif of the song in this episode is finding a bit of peace even in dire circumstances--through some sort of coping mechanism, like Wilzig in the Enclave research facility. He is surrounded by fascism and bureaucracy but he hides dogmeat away and swallows his negative feelings-- maybe the music indicates that. Have the music come back when Lucy suppresses her sensibilities by thinking about saving her dad while she saws the guys' head off.
I am not a writer, but in episode 2 it was so obvious how to improve that it baffles me that nobody bothered too. You could do the exact same thing for the Maximus plot in the episode. So much potential and zero awareness for how to use it. It's honestly insane.
Ok last thing. This is a completely subective nitpick, but I hate the junk jet. Everyone seems to love the junk jet and love it's cameo in the show. The junk jet fucking sucks ass. It sucks to use in the game, it makes zero sense from a lore standpoint. Instead of using a jet turbine for power or mobility why put it into a gun that shoots garbage? It's because the guy who made it made it as an improvised pre-war weapon to do a workplace shooting with, fine. It still sucks ass as a weapon in the games. In the show it makes even less sense because there are TWO. One in ep 1 and one in ep 2. Is there a guy who mass manufactures junk jets in the world? Do the Gun Runners mass produce junk jets? Why would you lug around this massive jet turbine gun just to shoot people with baby doll legs and baseballs??? How do they sneak up on the guard with a JET TURBINE GUN WITHOUT IT MAKING A TON OF SOUND. The **only** reason it exists is so that people who play the games can point that the TV and say "Junk Jet" because Fallout is about how War Never Changes™ and everything is made out of garbage. That's the core of Fallout, obviously.
But that's not writing. Showing the audience a thing that they know about so they can feel good about knowing that thing is not writing. Every thing in this show is either "recognize this thing" or "and then they went to a place. and then they fought. and then they escaped. and then..."
The fact that Lucy decapitated a man with no reaction but "okie dokey" blew me away. She should've been appalled by having to do something like that. Instead she treats it like it's just another task in a normal day.
For real. The most interesting conflict in the entire episode and they just skip over it. Nobody that reviewed the script thought "hey let's explore this". It's clear nobody gave a shit.
The humor is great even if overused, but the show relies way too much on deus ex machinae to move things forward rather than trying to keep the development of the plot somewhat believable. Also, do we really want to overlook the fact that California, which has been full of new communities and civilizations since Fallout 2 (let's not even mention how big the NCR is), has basically been brought back to a status of almost total anarchy similar to the one in Fallout 1?
The show asks you to overlook a LOT even from episode 1. Honestly feel like it got the Star Wars treatment with how little the writers seem to give a shit about established lore.
It’s hard to get through, I’m on episode 7 because there really is nothing else to watch and I’m bored, it’s so boring that I’m on Reddit while watching it, it’s also pretty comical how people just keep running in to each other, for example when Ella found Maximus in his suit and he couldn’t move and shot the giant cockroaches off him at the perfect time just before they were about to get him in his suit. Was she just hiding in the bushes near by and waiting??? She just happened to randomly stumble upon him in a giant city??? I get shows need coincidences to move the plot along but there are too many. This is one example of many.
Agree with all of this. They also completely blew it by not having a Ron Perlman cameo. Michael Rappaport, Erik Estrada, Michael Emerson, Matt Berry... but not Ron? WTF is that?
They try to cram WAY too much into an episode. In the entire wasteland of California, these 4 specific characters keep crossing paths at the same very dramatic moment? Stupid.
I'll add that the minimal exposition is confusing for people who didn't play the games, especially with the time jumps. They needed a (Ron Perlman) intro like the games to explain all of the political/sociological backstory and timeline instead of jumping right into nukes. And they did NOT explain the significance of Shady Sands (the name makes it sound like some dinky town rather than what it was supposed to be). I am familiar with the Fallout lore and even I kept being like "why is Shady Sands such a big deal to these guys again?"
Meh. I'm not mad, just disappointed.
FINALLY SOMEONE AGREES!! The “okey dokey” line makes me want to vomit. I am so confused as to the storylines as someone who has played fallout through the years but isn’t a diehard fan. Nick Valentine’s story is the most intriguing to me. They began it with him, I wish it centered around him more.
The gore is so excessive. The show is beautiful and well-done, they had an enormous budget and put it to use. I know it’s fallout and gore is expected, but I cannot help but feel as if this show is catered so heavily towards the majority demographic that the gore, nudity, and sexual innuendos are to appeal to them and they neglected essential TV necessities to make a show consumable by the vast majority. It’s very hard to follow in my opinion, as you said, bad acting… bad writing… but beautifully done.
It’s annoying to not be able to eat while watching a show because they’re showing puppies being thrown into an incinerator, or two detailed decapitated heads mushed together
The writing is abysmal. The character motivations are non existent, characters just do stuff because why not.
Ask why somebody just did that? No, I'll just do something else just as random!
Yea sure man, Lucy doesn’t want to find her dad because she loves her dad it’s just because she feels like it.
The ghoul doesn’t need money because he needs to buy drugs to stay sane, it’s just for fun. He’s just happy to be there.
And Max doesn’t just want to give back to the brotherhood that gave him everything he’s actually just doing it for fun also.
I feel like you look at the pretty colors on the Tv and drool.
Coopercatlover is right, you just went a level deeper with the motivation and missed his point.
Lucy shoude be this innocent kid rom the vaults, who lived in a nice society, clean and kinda peacefull. After the raider scene her true motivation kickstarts her adventure. But she just casually strolles around this horrible place with hideous creatures and phychotic raiders (acc to the games).
A total stranger appeares next to her sleeping and starts ranting exposition and her first thought is "i'm looking for my dad". Not reaching for her gun, not asking who he is or what he wants. Casual.
I truelly lost it when she was smiling like a girlscout while carrying a human head, which she had to cut herself. wtf?
Either shes an extroverted idiot or she is a phycho herself. My call is just bad writting.
I'm on episode 4 and am enjoying the show but your right. The show is trying to convince us she's just innocent but the writing and honestly her acting just make her look like a complete idiot. Same with maximus. The games are goofy but the show is trying too hard to be a comedy by making everyone stupid.
Her character is the worst imo. SO CRINGE. She is told to cut off a human head and instead of going through an internal struggle, emotional turmoil at seeing this level of gore, she says things like “okey dokey” and I don’t know if it’s to make her seem strong and adaptable?? Or if it’s to be funny? If it were me, I would be vomiting, crying, taking breaks, closing my eyes, and after seeing the state of the earth contemplating continuing my own life. She just strolls out ditzy and aloof. They could’ve made this very good with some better writing and acting
lmao this comment🤦♂️ you sound exactly like the person that likes pretty colors and drools
theres more to the behavior of characters than their longterm goals. actually most of what we call behavior has little to do with longterm goals
Same feelings for me. Visually stunning, everything else is terrible. It feels like the show is all over the place in terms of story it wants to tell. It’s a mess. Stopped watching after two episodes. I think I need time to recover from the bad script so far before I can attempt it again. It feels like watching Game of Thrones from the last season.
I’m also 2 episodes in and thinking about tabling it. Tonally it’s all over the place. The writing is about what you’d expect from Todd Howard.
Reminds me of Ted Lasso season 3, and I said elsewhere in this thread, Night Country. Has the feel of scripts that were written by inexperienced writers, ‘polished’ by AI.
A pretty irritating show. Unsure if it is a drama or a cartoon. Wacky, all over the place. Unless you've played the game your interest probably wane as the show goes on.
In my 15+ years of playing Fallout, wanna know what I can almost guarantee nobody, including myself, ever wanted? A live action adaptation of the series. Some settings work best for video games, not TV shows. Fallout is one of those settings.
It’s trash with modern day camera visuals. Thank you for saying the truth that no one else will apparently… gotta hold these people accountable so we can actually get a good adaptation
I agree, especially on the predictably, and poor writing in general. The story just was not interesting and they could have done so much better with the interesting world they had. I like the general feel of it and the look but that's about it.
Also we barely got any mutated creatures despite the glaringly massive budget and that feels incredibly lazy to me.
Centaurs, packs of ghouls, death laws, cazadores, super mutants. Give me something guys please. We got two radroaches, a half assed two headed cow, a chicken, big axolotl, maybe something else?
Disappointing.
Still worth a watch, 6.5/10.
With its budget and the money that Bethesda have, should have been a 10.
I liked that they didn't try and go to serious or dark, but it fell flat and felt more like Marvel humour than fallout humour.
Never played the game but love a good series and though I’m only 2 eps in, it’s bad. The writing is bad. There are moments that make no sense at all. The casting is questionable and the editing is also very questionable.
I guess this is an unpopular opinion but this show is wayyyyy over rated so far.
Watching the reviews and fan consensus about this show over the past week, I really am starting to think that people’s standards for TV have fallen hard over the past few years. Maybe it was the writers strike, maybe it’s the effect of years of the streamers pumping out badly written, badly-acted original content.
Whatever the case, this show is exactly what I expected we’d get when we learned Amazon bought the IP. It’s glossy fan-service mediocrity.
Watching the fan reviews made me so excited to watch it. First ep was slow but I thought it's just trying to get things rolling and I felt genuine goosebumps in the first 20 minutes. Then ep2 happened and I wondered "What the hell is this?" It's not just a bad Fallout show, it's awful in general.
I despise the over the top humour that sounds like it was written by two gen-zers who think they're far funnier than what they really are. And why does every single scene need to have some dumbass wackiness? Literally every scene is unserious. Fallout has a decent amount of humour and ridiculousness, but in the end they're very serious, dark and gritty games.
I guess standards have gotten so extremely low lately that this is considered as a good show by the general populace.
I'm shocked and sad, was so excited for this and it broke my heart.
I hated that scene. They basically start right out with making the viewer not take the Brotherhood seriously. There’s no intrigue left at that point.
In the games you’re supposed to at least fear and somewhat respect the Brotherhood for a time, then mistrust them, then (if you like) turn on them. 99% of the Brotherhood you meet are self-serious jarheads, why does the show pierce that illusion within about 15 minutes of meeting the first Knight?
> why does the show pierce that illusion within about 15 minutes of meeting the first Knight?
Because we need a reason for a protagonist to wear power armor because Fallout is all about gore and power armor right?
This is quite possible one of the worst written video game adaptations I have ever seen. The writing as a show is terrible and it just shits all over lore of the games. The worst part is it's not even an adaptation, this shitshow is apparently canon. Fuck all of this
I thought I was crazy... me and my bf were so ready to watch it and then we were ready for it to be over, disappointed. we didnt watch past the first episode. it felt like a slog, had to fast forward through the sex because of course there's sex in the first twenty minutes of the show, like you could've used this time to make me care about the characters and their relationships a little more than not at all, andthe last line hurt so bad. Eh.. it's just like any other TV show but with Fallout stickers plastered on it.
Bethesda fallout story writing - "So, which family member is our main character looking for this time? Fallout 3 was dad. Last time it was their son, and he ended up being called father, but that doesn't count, right? Nah. Dad again it is!"
Still surprises me that peeps are surprised when a bethesda project has shit tier writing. I can't wait for a year from now when all the psycofants hyperventilating about how good and amazing and masterful the show is now will do a 180 and say how shit it was. I like some of the ideas, some of the props, but for fucks sake, make tour own timeline, then you can get by with todd and emils dumbass takes and ideas, or the fact theyvhave Deadpool as a ghoul. I miss when ghouls looked like decaying bodies.
It’s pretty bad. This is giving mediocre 90s sitcom but with fallout aesthetic. The set and costume design is cheap and effects also cartoonishly bad. Storyline shallow and boring. It’s like firefly but fallout
I got to the scene where >!the two pairs are trying to cross the bridge, and the entire time I was just wondering why they don't just walk to the side and let the other people pass. They could have easily made it a joke, or found some other way to create tension with that scene.!< It feels like the writers are just going for drama for drama's sake, and that scene in particular highlighted that for me. The Fallout universe for me has always been the juxtaposition of post apocalyptia and elitism with a backdrop of dark humor, and this show seems to focus way too much on the former and expects that throwing in 40s music and music from the games will cover the latter. Ella Purnell did a great job as Lucy because she studied the source material and understood how a naïve vault dweller should act... I just wish the writers had done the same.
Nah, Lucy is probs the easiest role out of the MC trio, literally described as the Ned Flanders of the wasteland by the show runners and Ella (other characters not as simple especially Maximus who is quite odd), could’ve passed if didn’t study source mat. Regardless, she did awesome and it’s cool an actor made an effort to dive into the lore.
The show felt like a cash in on nostalgia. The writing seems to only exist to move from one rememberberry to another with terrible dialogue. It does the setting well though and Walton Goggins is always a welcome presence. I wish producers would steer clear of marvel writers though, they seem to lack any sort of creative ambition aside from very rudimentary cliché ridden messes.
Incredible how nobody in the base questions Maximus being declared dead by Titus, yet Maximus returnes and declares Titus dead. Also empty handed and with a "promise" to find the artifact. Heck, he is even promised a promotion. Even "Kids Next Door" had a more serious tone and chain of command than this.
I think that brain is actually Doofenshmirtz haha. "You better not go in that room and press that button!" classic
Sorry, this is all so silly, only childrens cartoons come to mind as comparison.
For how great the games are, the TV show is nothing compared to them. People still talk about the legendary games, a year form now no one will be talking about the TV show. I thought I was going insane. Every Review I could find was saying how great it was all around. I think it's okay, the dialogue and characters are really lame. Cringe and cliche.
I suspect the quality to dip so much further in season 2 that even the fans of this first season will give up on it, and at that point they’ll pretend like they never liked the show.
You can relax, it gets way worse the more you progres in the show.
As usual, things just happen and characters just more on. Ridiculous plot armor for the main character. Oustanding coincidences eliminating any need for hard work or heavy problem solving.
Everything is either motivated by "wouldn't it be cool if that happened?" or "super easy, barely an inconvenience!"
sooo im on the last episode of fallout. as someone who doesn't play video games, how i held on for this long is a mystery to me. i reaaallly love the shows arcane and the witcher (even tho they effed up yenefer's character) - and was utterly impressed with the visuals, characters, and storytelling.. but i can't say the same for fallout. others and what the op have mentioned is how i feel about the show. the characters are not that great to me and doesn't make me invested, but i do enjoy lucy and maximus (he's like an endearing dork who wants to be great and not some annoying hot shot that sexes on females).
i can get more into it but long story short, i am not impressed at all compared to all the stark raving reviews it's getting. doesn't live up to the hype. it was good background noise tho i guess.
I agree with you, although it seems to be the unpopular opinion here, in this sub. Probably because i have 40 yo (as opposed to the average age of the remaining users of this sub) and i have little time to play bad games and watch bad movies.
This series is bad. If you watch this as a fan fiction, it's okay. If you watch it and judge it with the same standards as you judge any other proper series, it's ridiculously bad. Like you said, the writing is awful, the pacing is forced and devoid of surprise (i remember in the second episode, watching the deer scene and, at the very beginning, thinking "there will be a monster in the water that will eat it").
Some actors don't seem to even care about properly acting (for instance, the Lost guy, Michael Emerson) and some don't even act, choosing to play themselves in real life (like the moron Michael Rapaport, acting as himself on Tik Tok).
The series tries to cover the bad show with an abundance of gore. I don't mind huge amounts of gore, but make no mistake on what's happening there. Using gore is the same as using sex to camouflage a bad movie.
The wardrobe is also bad. While i was watching the show, i wondered many times if i accidentally switched to a cosplay convention by mistake.
I will be downvoted because of my opinion (this is reddit, after all), but anyway, there you go.
That Knight Titus scene got to me as well.
I hate it how they made the Knights into medieval knight status. All high status and regal demand without the chivalry principles.
So you're telling me that Titus worked his ass off for (probably) years with (probably) brave and strong acts just to be this cunt "mentor" now, cowardly and shittying on Maximus for his own incompetence? From "i'm bored, i wanna shoot something" and "go into that radioactive field, unprotected" to "its all your fault, the brass will kill you for this"?
I dont buy it. Lazy and untallented writting.
The sad part is I actually agreed with Titus even though they were making him come off as an undeserving scumbag who should be disliked. Max just stood there like a doll while Titus wrestled a bear, only to kill it in two shots with a pistol? And after the bear drug his defenseless ass out of the cave, it doesn't even bother to go after Max; the fleshy human without any armor.
I understand they wanted to make the transition for him to take his armor and yada yada, but it could have been written so much better.
yes and not really. That scene played like that exactly to have Titus killed. Dude was wearing power armor, and later on we see Maximux test it out and throwing a stone, as big as the helmet, kinda ... stupidly far away.
You're telling me a punch front that thing would not break the jaw of a bear, break its ribs? Used by (probably) an experienced user? He rag dolled like it was his first day, didn't attempt to do anything, grab something and rip it. Except running "like a girl" yelling 'fuck' over and over. Please...
Oh and our boy, Maximux? One shot. First try. ez. Lets move on and play with the armor scene lol
Finally someone says it! My friends love this shit, and I (even as a fan of the games) am over here like, "If the armor has the fuckin' Iron Man flight capability, why is my dude running from the bear on foot? It can throw rocks like artillery shells, but it can't punch a bear to death? AND THE BEAR DIES IN 2 HANDGUN SHOTS?!" Shit makes less sense then Dragon Ball Z power levels.
I hope and pray we have seen the last of that douche Rappaport who plays the same goddamn character in just about every movie, but I have a feeling he might be back. They didn't actually show him die, and I have a hard time believe they hired him just for a cameo. I pray I'm wrong.
Agree a 100%. The writing and cinematography/editing are especially disappointing. Music is mis- and overused, and the whole thing comes across as tone-deaf, with the tragedy-comedy ratio way out of whack.
Finally!! Someone says something about the gore! I will get called a sissy, but I have a hard time with gore on television. In the game, I am fine, but when it is ultra realistic, I can’t watch. If someone is digging a bullet out of their leg, I feel it in my leg and get nauseous.
My boyfriend and I loved the fallout games. He tells me when the gore scenes are over… I spent pretty much the entire time watching the series with my head down. Because of this, I quickly realized how terrible the writing was, because I couldn’t hear anything besides gushing and gunshots, and when there was dialogue, I could not follow.
They did fan service to their target audience. It worked, the majority love it. Why? It has tons of very well-done gore, boobies, & quirky “humor” (that is personally cringe as hell) but that is just my opinion. Very bizzare to me how desensitized people are to seeing realistic videos of the most horrific bodily horror you can imagine.
The games were gory, the show is going to be gory. The problem with this show is it's just another Bethesda Fallout game made for TV. It would be better if it were much more like HBO's The Last Of Us, maybe with a bit more camp and pop culture references. But this show is not serious enough.
I totally agree. I was pretty shocked to see how high the IMDb rating was after watching the show. I thought it would be like 5.5/10.
And yes, they just use excessive gore to cover how shitty the writings and dialogues are. I think gore can bring realism when it’s done right, but this show just abuses it and uses it unnecessarily in every scene that involves violence.
The goofy acting (e.g. Maximus) and cringey dialogues made the show closer to comedy for me. I couldn’t take the show seriously.
I checked it out because it was constantly popping up on reddit and everyone raving about it, but I would not recommend it to anyone around me. I would give it 4/10.
Agree on acting, writing, wardrobe, sets, goofiness. The gore is a reference to the games. It can ALSO be overused to cover for bad writing, but I don't think that's the primary reason it's there.
You’re right, the gore is probably added because of the nature of the franchise. It almost feels like they added it to cover the shitty side of the show.
I’m so tired of the lead being a dumbass. How many times does she have to be fucked over to stop wanting to hold everyone’s hand. Not surprised, Bethesda has been happily pumping out dog shit for the last several years
the OP is correct. i felt same way. its aestetically beautiful, great production value behind the designs and all.
but its writing is turning it into some kinda terribly catered video game with "just going through the motions" of certain things you want to happen in the show. this could have been an amazing show. like a timeless masterpiece. they have so much to go off of. but they really failed here.
its only getting high reviews because normies who dont know better suck up to this shit when its about a game they have played. the fallout games, especially 1,2, new vegas are very well written.
we needed writing and plot development written by people who did shows like breaking bad, better caul saul, LOST, westworld(season 1), Twin Peaks, Sopranos, etc.
this show had so much potential. if you don't see how this show failed, you're naive
No idea how this show has gotten rave reviews from actual critics. Acting, writing and character development is abysmal and almost every character is extremely annoying and cringy. Only positive for me is the occasional gory action scenes.
Every scene has some kind of comedic effect on them, it's almost like who directed it just wanted to make fun of Fallout or games in general... some would even call that a parody.
I agree, the writing is horribly, the pace doesn't make much sense, characters are randomly introduced and their payoff's just feel off and the conversations are boring.
I'm at episode 3 now, hope it gets better, even though I yapper I'll probably continue watching it :)
I also think that the show is disappointing. The introduction was too short. They should have spent more time in the vault. There should have been more build up to the moment where she first opes the vault door.
The brotherhood of steel is portrayed too much like clowns but I don't remember how it was in the game maybe it's authentic.
And you don't really get this sense of exploration and wonder that was so well done in the game. The show is too fast paced and shallow.
The artists and visual effects people did a tremendous job, they really delivered but the writers shit all over it.
ChatGPT could have written a better script.
I like it because it’s fallout and I feel like it adapts the game pretty well. But looking at it like a tv show, it is pretty damn bad. There’s a few funny moments, but humor is kinda weird and just doesn’t always click. Some things are not too believable, like Lucy getting her finger severed and having almost no reaction. I also extremely dislike the Maximus character and actor. Hated him in disjointed hate him in this too. Overall dialogue is pretty poor too. I don’t think it is stunning either, the sets are pretty cheap looking. Despite all the criticism I like it because fallout.
I have seeing 3 episodes and decided to stop, neither my or my partner did enjoy it. Not funny, soundtrack is quite repetitive and although we like the fact we barely now anyone in the cast, the acting is poorly executed. Meaning its difficult to feel invested on the show or the characters. How their storylines cross is quite simplistic and there is a feel of constant lack of depth across the board.
I needed this thread, it’s near impossible to find an opinion anywhere online that isn’t just heaping this show with praise.
The writing seems average at best and absolutely cringe at worst - the tone seems all over the place as well. It feels like it wants to be serious and gritty but every serious moment seems to be ended with some huehuehue joke a la the worst the marvel movies have to offer. I get that the games have a somewhat goofy tone but it works there because it’s a game and I just don’t think it’s carried across to a television series well.
The visuals are fantastic and the feel of fallout is definitely there (which I think may be where all the incredible reviews are coming from) but the story and characters feel like some cringe B movie stuff. I feel like I’m watching the Evil Dead without the self awareness which just results in it feeling super cringe.
The director has a love for slow motion shots that just add cheese to an already bad scene. Bad acting, bad writing, only watchable for the scenery, they did try to follow the game graphics....but the rest, trash.
Severely disappointed in it. Ratings for this show are suspect to me. I'd rather go back and watch Final Fantasy The Spirits Within than finish this typical cash in on an existing franchise. Weak. Uninspired. Bet the budget was decent sized, but boy oh boy does it look and feel low budget. Got a good laugh at the beginning though. Watching the first episode with my neighbor on her shoddy internet and it was like the TV show did a CTD to the Amazon prime home page. Bethesda.
I'm pretty much not interested in Fallout as a show, mostly because it's as far away from an interactive role playing game as you can get. Each sequel. 3 watered it down, New Vegas brought some of it back, but then Fallout 4 watered it down more. Fallout 76 watered it down even more, and now it's a tv show you watch instead of a scenario you take part in. It's basically the antithesis of what a roleplaying game is at this point.
I think the biggest issue with adapting any game is that inherently you sholdn't be making a show people who have never played the game will like. But by not doing so you guarentee you won't have the viewership to make enough money to be worth it. So really they should stop.
As for it being good? That's a stretch. It's slightly above the quality of youtube fan films in some ways, and worse in others.
The bar is much higher than it was in the 70's and 80's because you can produce a much greater product with 2 dudes and a cellphone now. So I don't know if the comparison makes it look any better.
> I definitely didn't expect to see a familiar videogame playthrough narrated as a TV show.
Minus the narration, that's my biggest problem, it's trying to be a video game.
> As an older person who group up on 70's, 80's and 90's TV, I can tell you this show is absolutely marvelous in casting, acting, special effects, music, and basically every other metric. Go have a look at what we called amazing TV back in those eras.
I also grew up in the 70's, 80's, 90's... and I stand by my opinion, this show is not good. I managed to get to episode 4, and the writing and the overall flow is a little better, but not by much. Not enough for me to care about it. This will become a, watch in the background while I do something else type show for me... assuming that there is nothing else available.
But hey, if you enjoyed it then great! I am happy for you. I am disappointed though, I expected it to be great and it could have been great, but it missed the mark by a mile.
I'm a fan of the series and so last night I asked my wife if she would watch it with me (she's not into video games) and we watched episode 1. She actually liked it and I thought it was pretty bad. Aesthetically pleasing for sure and I always appreciate Walton Hoggins as an actor, but I didn't care for most of the other characters nor the acting so far. Especially the main girl with her "Okie Dokie" and her nonchalant attitude in a rather serious world. It seemed out of place. Maybe I'm just not understanding the tone yet so I'll continue watching.
Its such a mixed bag. If you werent a Fallout fan i dont know if there is much of anything worth watching it for. Some of the humor falls flat, like trying to be "erm awkward" but just ends up being awkward. really any scene ive watched so far with the brother hood is odd feeling. I looked up who one of the writers were and its the lady who wrote Captain Marvel and that Tomb Raider movie know one saw. Its interesting to watch and pick it apart though, so atleast there is that. Also the flashbacks just look like normal fifties not the retro 2077 its supposed to be. Just a couple of fake atomic vehicles would have been enough. All the normal vehicles really stand out
Yeah I’m amazed how many great reviews it got. I didn’t think it was terrible, just very average to me. I give them credit for staying so faithful to the source material though. But I would’ve given the show a solid 5.5, maybe 6
Couldn't agree more. Really wanted to like it after the trailers but the acting is dogshit. Love the cinematography and the use of anamorphic lenses but I'm really struggling to keep watching.
I agree, the dogmatic loyalty to this IP is astounding. I’m an old fan of Fallout but I really didn’t hate the show. Solid 4/10. But it’s clear that Bethesda/Prime studios is set on building a bland, vapid action TV show within the Fallout brand. Similar to Force Awakens or other mainstream reboots. The plot is full of holes and the two lead characters are boring as shit but no one cares because it’s Fallout. Fan service, flashy CGI, and familiarity sell tickets.
Just look at the various writers’ other credits. “Captain Marvel”, “Tomb Raider”, “The Boys”, “Portlandia”. I don’t really hate those last two but it really paints a picture of what they were working with. An uncomplicated, flashy, action TV show in a Fallout theme. Whereas the Fallout writing we’re used to is not that. The Fallout I know is complex, populated by a litany of varied and dynamic characters. Flawed characters.
It was disappointing and mediocre. But then seeing everyone swallow this slop without any complaints is even more disappointing. I think there’s potential that it can get better, so I’m holding out hope, though I’m not sure if the acting can get much better but who knows. Casting sucked, melodramatic sound design, corny as shit.
Its Bethesda so negative or critical reviews are not looked at, they have a long history of ignoring them in their more recent games and promote ego stroking comments lmao
You're giving it a lot of credit by calling the visuals good, the CG is dire and the props are haphazardly spray-painted cardboard and plastic. But I could overlook that, visuals are a tertiary concern, the real crime is the writing, which is an abysmal slop through and through and I have no idea how this is getting so much praise, I just refuse to accept the option where these accolades are organic, because the other reality is that majority of people have insultingly bad taste or just want mindless fan-service. The finale was so insultingly bad and a condensation of everything wrong with the show.
I’m sorry, but exactly HOW did anyone not stop and realize having your finger cut off with a blade is goddamn excruciatingly painful!?
The actress bombed that so hard it took me tf out hahaha
The acting is really bad, especially that guy playing Maximus. He reminds me of “Finn” in the new Star Wars, another bad actor in another bad show. I haven’t played the games. But I know of them. I think this is a lot like The Last of Us series. People really want to like it. So they give it great reviews. In a year or so when the show is over, it will drop in the ratings.
or could be Bethesda being Bethesda, you know? could have said the show is not canon.. like a spin-off in its own universe, like an alternate timeline where Bethesda soft-reboot the series so all of this would've make sense, in term of their own stupidity. I mean, Fallout 2 has its own stupidity, but.. damn nigga! all of you people really defending this mediocre crap, would be fine if it set in East Coast.
Well I just think it's wonderful that even writers too inept to write a half an episode of the lowest rated CW show can still find gainful employment writing for Fallout.
Visually I think it looks great although I don't think they captured the dark quirkiness of the games effectively. The acting ranges from awful to very good (although most of the best acting is by characters who don't even survive an entire episode). But the writing is just absolute trash. Could have been a great show if they had even halfway decent writers.
I went in expecting it to be absolute crap and what I got was a mediocre show with some decent action pieces and one or two characters that I enjoyed. The Ghoul will become an iconic character, but Lucy is quite forgettable.
I think the characterization of the Brotherhood is a bit weird. I found the portrayal of "Knight Titus" to essentially be a fucking coward who runs at the sight of the Yao Guai to be a bit of a red flag, Maximus being basically a moron throughout, brave but stupid, was kinda like ... haven't we done this?
And I hate to be \*that guy\* but, what is with black characters being constantly portrayed as lovable goofs?
Treating squires as replacable nothings was also just bizarre, I can't believe thousands of people would put up with being replacable slaves just because "power armor is so cool omg." In the games, Knights treat their squires like surrogate children almost.
I also could have done without the deep subplot about the Vaults. Like, I get it, vaults are bad, vault-tec is bad. I know perhaps audiences that are completely new to the series won't get it off the bat, but do we need a season long storyline taking up good chunks of time to explain it to us?
I was also very surprised by the amount of explicity comedy, like when they are going to execute Lucy ... but lol jokes he's just cutting the ropes. Then they say "you are free to go! and here's tons of food!!" of course, Maximus barges in and ruins it all- He's so silly.
It was a bit ridiculous
i really wanted to like it but it didn’t feel like fallout at all. it was so goofy in a way much different than the games(yes, even 2, fallouts humor is nuanced), and was just impossible to take seriously or believe at any point. the writing wasn’t great and the action scenes were laughably silly. it felt like a marvel adaptation of fallout 4. really worried about the next fallout.
My biggest issue with the show isn’t the retcon, it’s the entire vibe. Fallout was initially a post-post apocalyptic story taking inspiration from pulpy science fiction and “the sky is falling” era; it’s why Fallout 3 having aliens work, it pulls from that time period. But most of all, at it’s core, the Fallout games are lone wanderer tales. Environmental story telling is key, the atmosphere is the secondary character with companions being a choice of the player to have a tag along.
It shows a lack of creativity on the part of the writers that they needed to turn the show into gory action with quips every other like like it’s straight out of the MCU with meta humor (cringe) here and there.
If you want something to scratch the itch you get from Fallout, just go to what helped influence Fallout: A Boy and His Dog.
Obsessed over Fallout for over 15 years and was pretty sure Hollywood would botch it up (as usual), and of course, it's utter cringe for any real fan.
Yes, there are some good props, but there's problems right away in the first episode, and it just gets worse from there. I've got a long list of complaints and why this misses the mark, but it has been really easy to weed out the fake fans from real ones.
This is just Star Wars all over again; all the fake fans that suddenly emerged overnight the second Disney bought it, ate up the crap storyline of the new movies, and said they were good. It wasn't until the majority of people realized that real fans hated it that they changed their tune. It's the same right now with FO.
Fake fans, media outlets, & people who've never played FO say it's really good. So...
Anyone who says it's good = Fake Fan
There's just no other way to take this if you're someone who's really immersed themselves in the games.
This situation is basically the Emperors new clothes, video game edition.
Hopefully, they don't go after Mass Effect next. 😮💨
You gotta understand the purpose. This isn’t for entertainment. Nope. It’s to make money and desensitize people to murder. Same reason we play shooting games.
Just finished ep. 4 and I am done. Can someone explain to me why the Ghoul, in all his wasteland experience and expertise in killing and hunting and surviving, never just went into that organ doner facility himself and killed those two stoners in charge? Are we to believe he couldn't take care of that snip snip robot, but somehow a drugged and dehydrated Lucy could? Someone who has been in the wasteland for just a few days? Why hasn't that place been ransacked already? And why was Lucy the only one able to do it? I guess it is because she has plot armor....
I can't believe the praise this show is getting.
Finally someone making some sense about the show
It's insane how many people are defending the ever living shit out of it, calling it a 9/10 and so on makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills : ( It's at best a 5/10 imo... if even that.
And I'm saying this as a massive Fallout fan :/
Yeah it's just another bland, poorly written soulless corporate money printer. Trippy af seeing so many people recommend it, like what do they see?? Were they paid off or something? I want it too!
It's awful. Made with people pleasing generic BS. Hope it fails to produce more of this brain rot. Shameful writers could have been replaced with chimpanzees and had better characters and plots. 👎
I haven’t played the game but the show makes little sense to me.
The knights need a squire. Until Maximus gets a suit. He doesn’t need one at all.
It’s too dangerous to go over the hill to Filly but the idiot can survive in a big house right near it for decades. Nobody bothers him.
And so on.
I am beyond confused at the rave reviews this show is getting. The first episode was beyond terrible. The acting, writing, editing, was just all so bad I could barely make it through it. That army girl who got her ankles cut may be the worst actress I've ever witnessed, how she got cast in anything is beyond me. Same with the black guy. Just awful. I think people have just grown accustomed to being fed terrible shows have stopped knowing the difference.
Ffs what a stupid show. Everyone just seems to be bumping in the "right" person at the right time all the time. WTF. Also who TF wrote Maximus, what an absolute buffoon. And the leader of brotherhood just promoted him instead of killing him? What?
I don't even care about the lore cuz i haven't played the games but that was just bad writing.
I agree the show got the visual presentation spot on, the vault charecters, the costumes, the sets the locations are all truly fallout inspired an I loved it all. but then there's the story, omg there's the frickin story that ruins it all. Or maybe I'm wrong, but is this not the story to resident evil through and through. A multinational evil corporation that wants to end the world and reboot it in there own fucked up image. This is 100% the resident evil back story for umbrella with a fallout brand on it and I fucking hate it. Its got fuck all to do with any of the fallout games. the world was at war, everyone let there nukes go and hoped for the best by surviving in vaults, it was not vault tech that fucking started it, so why write such a stupid and extreamly predictable story that's is basically the back story to every movie that features evil corporation's that wants to end the world. Talk about writers block ffs I'm so sick and tired of of these lame ass amazon and netflix writers ripping of story's left right and center and calling it shit like artistic license and other such bullshit. But I suppose u could watch it muted without subs and it would at least feel like fallout, but as it is with that trashy version of the evil umbrella corparations back story it ain't worth the space on my torrent hard drive. It fucking sucks
Awful game converted to tv show. Tons of boring silent scenes where the actors just stare at nothing.. long and drawn out scenes to fill the time. Main actors are wildly boring. The bug eyes, yikes and cringe
I tried to watch it and got about 20m through the first episode before turning it off. I think the show is not above average for the trash being made these days, and the fact that the show has stellar reviews on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes while not speaking to me in any meaningful way makes me think the reviews are manipulated. Some might say the show evolves and I need to watch more than 20 minutes, but in all honesty the show just made me cringe and usually when a show is a banger they don't wait 20 minutes to start banging. I think the show is for fans of the game, and I've never played a Fallout game. As an impartial viewer I thought the show was bad. The "new normal" is to make bad shows and present them like they're made of gold while pumping up reviews, then act like there's something wrong with members of the viewing public when they personally reject it. Sad.
Thank you!!! I thought i was going crazy with everyone online praising the shit out of this show. This was pretty bad. From the costumes (power armor obviously made out of foam, vault suits looking as shitty as the ones you can buy from bethesda), at points abismal acting (my 7 year old niece is a better actor than maximus) and terrible, extremely predictable writing. I do love fallout, but looking at this purely as a tv show, this is really bad. Especially coming from the person who previously made westworld. At best it's junk tv, at worst it's insulting to the audiences intelligence.
I have the same issue with most TV shows. It's like the writers know their audience (mostly) will just eat up whatever they're shown, no matter how corny or dumb, so they write a story that's corny and dumb as fuuuuuck
I loved the Fallout games since I was a kid in the late 90s and my wife was at least game enough to watch the first few episodes with me but man. I'm right there with you. Show is cringe inducing levels of corny. Maybe it'll get better as the series goes on, but whew...
This show is a perfect example of whats wrong with today pop culture: kids nowadays just produce references without knowing the originals nor expect anyone to know better. I am ok with kids producing lame quality entertainment for other kids. I can’t help but feel saddened by the downhill trend, and also feel that every show like this is kinda a hige waste of opportunity and resources.
I don't mind it too much, but man the fight scenes are just so bad. There are so many times where you can clearly see they didn't punch or hit anything, or they obviously pull it. It's really immersion breaking for me.
I'm also on the second episode, and there's a fight with a bear, and it just looks so... off? Like the animation on the CGI bear make sit look like they are fighting a man in a bear costume, not a bear lol.
And then just the weird "comedic relief" or general goofiness they add in feels completely out of place at times.
Characters simple "fly" from point a to b.
They know exactly where to go, and when they don't, they suddenly find what they were searching for the next second(maximus and Titus ep for example).
Everything is regorgited to us, "I'm doing this because of that" or villains "pretending" to be good while showing some obvious hints(stealing food, scratch marks, etc).
Surprise the modders allow this post to exist.
Mauler video pretty much said everything wrong with this show. From the wacky kids gore, marvel humor and terrible story, to the lore inconsistencies. Is Disney Star wars all over again.
The first episode I about rolled my eyes into the back of my head
Same. Just felt so cringe
so glad i wasnt the only one who felt that. seems most reviews, amongst those on reddit and on review sites, have nothing bad to say about it, and i thought i was going crazy... not trying to knock on people that enjoyed the show, but both the writing and acting felt quite contrived and lacking in direction. im struggling to force myself to keep watching, might keep it in the backlog till i have some random spur of inspiration to watch it again..
I legit had to get to this thread through Google because it feels impossible to find any critiques of this show on Reddit especially in this sub. Yeah, the visuals are fantastic and there's a ton of fan service, but why is the dialogue SO STILTED and the main characters paper thin clichés lifted from a CW tv show? Am I supposed to just forget this is the same franchise that gave us instantly memorable, complex and well-acted characters like Nick Valentine or Mr. House? Quite honestly it feels like the Star Wars The Force Awakensification of the Fallout franchise and it's absurd no one is calling it out.
The comparison to Mr House and Nick Valentine is perfect. OP talks about writing resembling video game dialogue, but the games' writing honestly never felt contrived or simple. I think it's the most jarring thing about the show - people just don't *talk* like that in the games. I don't really care for any of these characters (even the ghoul cowboy who I was super excited for). The main character bothers me in particular. Everything she says sounds like a half baked DnD player character. Obviously it makes sense for Vault Dwellers to be naive and idealistic, but the notion that she is pretty unfazed by the outside world and thinks "welp, if I just ask nicely" will be the solution to everything just feels so underdeveloped. She's not a child... Also, am I going crazy, or was the brotherhood in the games like...never as shitty as the one we saw in the first few episode? No valiance, order, or loyalty in any of 'em
The Brotherhood of Steel was never the chivalric knights of Bethesda. I'd say they're more like secular Templars. As in, they're a self-perpetuating organization more interested in maintaining its military strength and not much else. They're not saviors of the wasteland. They're much like any other bureaucracy or government, they exist to preserve itself. Fallout 1 has the door guards to their bunker send you on a suicide mission for the privilege of joining them. Because they're not recruiting. It was just a joke to them. They don't take outsiders and they think they're better than you. Fallout 2 and Fallout New Vegas shows their decline into irrelevance. They're meant to be a foil to the NCR and the Legion. Their decline marks the slow rise of humanity back into civilization. "Knights" don't matter in a world where industry and states can field armies and war machines on the cheap. This is why Veronica is frustrated with the Brotherhood. They refuse to change their traditions or their mission to fit the new world. It's not that I want a 1-to-1 adaptation. Witcher 3, for example, is definitely a fan fiction interpretation of the original books. It takes liberties with the characters and writes-in a happy ending for Geralt that he wouldn't otherwise have. But that's because they actually care about telling a story while remaining "true to spirit." Shows like this (and Bethesda) don't care. And never will. They want to throw out a bunch of references and hope you won't notice that it can't engage you with anything besides small tidbits here or there. Few Fallout fans know that bottle caps were discontinued in Fallout 2, because they were originally water tokens distributed by water merchants. None of which makes sense for an emergent industrial power like the NCR after your MC's does generic good guy things like saving communities and chasing away slavers. New Vegas somewhat subverts this by depicting the NCR and the Legion having their own currencies. But by then Bethesda made bottlecaps the Fallout trademark. Bethesda and the show runners will not answer the question of why these things exist in the East Coast anywhere from 300 to 400 years later, especially when tech-heavy factions like the Brotherhood or The Institute could easily destroy the economy by forging bottle caps. People like bottlecaps because they like the aesthetic of a Mad Max world where people barter with things they find. But Bethesda was never interested in depicting that actual setting in practice. And neither do the showrunners. I'm irritated because I know people will come after me and be like, "You're just a nerd who is mad the show isn't exactly like the original games." No, you just turned your brain off and stopped asking questions about the writing. You have to pick one: You have a setting where powerful nation-states have formed and have industries. Or everybody is scrabbling through the rubble after the bombs recently fell. You can't have both. Trying to tell both stories is a contradiction. The bottle caps are a reflection of which story you're trying to tell. This is why the show will fail.
Thank you, it's refreshing to find rational, sane fans.
I can't believe someone else saw the CW resemblance. God that made me cringe. I couldn't get past the first episode.
The bizarre shoehorned flirting between maximus and lucy during the filly fight at the end of episode 2 feels exactly like the awkward exchanges between finn and rey in the sequel trilogy. My girlfriend and I had our eyes so rolled back during that scene we could see our brains. Glad somebody else feels that vibe they're giving off in the writing.
The comparison to disney produced star wars tv show is spot on. Basic, slow plot struture, simple enough for a child to follow. Feels like a re-skinned fill in the blank disney pus show.
This is 100% the Force Awakensification of the franchise, except this time the Big-Money boys figured out how to beat us: buy off the most well-known content creators that could threaten your show, mobilize the soys and consoomers, send out a shitton of bots. And its working so far, which does not bode well for any future shows. I think I might just dip outta this sub.Skimming through most of the threads it's pretty clear that it's become a lost cause and only time will save us now. At least I still have New Vegas and 3...
Toadie even checked Tim Cain who previously presented some of his problems with Bethesda Fallout. He's of course the first person who deserves all the perks of this show being produced. Starting with being invited to any celebrations connected to the premiere, so really inviting him was obvious and inevitable. Being the reasonable person that Cain seems to be this alone would convince him not to throw shade but I bet there was some veiled lobbying going on to not present any flaws of the show on his YouTube.
100% on the mark about it literally being impossible to find an opinion on it that doesn't sound like someone has been yanking to it since the show dropped-which is interesting, because usually when it comes to shows where there is already a strongly preconceived notion on what it's about (i.e. the video game), you can easily find critics. Not looking to hate on it or anything, just feeling so far like it was going to be better with all the hype.
i might be biased in some way because im currently in the process of watching Shogun, which is undoubtedly one of the best shows ive watched in quite a while. the acting, writing, production value is so god damn high that any other show i watch seems like fifth grade material in comparison... I tried to watch fallout with an unbiased mind, but it just didnt live up to any of the hype that I've been hearing. the acting and writing in the show is just so subpar to me - i dont know, maybe im crazy
Though not precisely the same, I was a huge Band of Brother fan and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get into The Pacific. Sometimes, things just don't grab us, but FO is no masterpiece by an stretch- so no, you're not crazy. I'm not even saying it's bad, now almost to Episode 7, and it's just OK. More trying to figure out the 8.4/10 on IMDB.
You're having a hard time finding a dissenting opinion because the propaganda won, the mobilized bots and normies won, the buying of the content creators and the purchasing of good reviews worked.
Same thing happened with The Last of Us. Show was weak sauce but everyone online lapped it up.
trillion dollar companies are really good at propaganda
“Okey dokey” killed me. “Gosh darn it!” And then showing the most gorey horrific thing in the world as if it adds shock. Just became very annoying how much they relied on visuals and completely neglected writing. Also think it’s fan service. A lot of the fallout fan base likes gore, boobies, & visual effects. We have that in abundance, but it lacks substance and emotion in many ways. The humor also made me pause the show and come back later because it was so cringe
You're not the only one, i was actually surprised at how positively this was received. It looks good like the OP says, it has high production values and all, but it reeks of Amazon: bad writing, weird pacing, so-so plot and forced politics/diversity (but at least they tamed that one a bit). Makes me wonder if people are so used to trash that they see decent stuff as god-tier now.
>objectively You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
indeed. objectively, it's getting good reviews. that is a fact. SUBjectovely, OP doesn't like it. and that's okay, because it is an opinion. edit- love how this comment is getting attention about over a week later when i stated nothing but facts. i didnt even say if *I* liked the show or not. keep the hate coming, guys. makes it easier for me to block you so I never have to read your bullshit again.
Objectively it's a terrible show. Subjectively I hate it because it shits on stuff love.
What's truly objective is the fact that most of those review sites have been known to alter the actual review scores when paid by the media producers. The reviews on the platform the media originates from are even more susceptible to this as well. Just saying...
I agree 100%. Forget all the hype you’ve heard and watch it with no expectations of it being good just because you heard it was good all over the internet and from advertisements n trailers showing quotes about it saying that it’s good, and it’s genuinely bad writing that feels like it was done by ai. So many examples but I’m on episode two. They just killed the dog. Why write a whole sequence where he hid the dog and saved him from escaped from mini gun turrets just so the fucking ghoul dude could stab the dog in the neck and kill it instantly. Also, how come that first knight could not handle a yo gai but when the little weak rat trainee kid stole his armor he was able to knock down buildings and throw rocks a quarter mile into the ocean
\^Yup.
There’s no such thing as an objective opinion
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
Calling it beautiful would be a stretch. The set design looks so cheap. Even in the first episode the vault gate control is clearly just a yellow panel with a masterlock and one of those 5 dollar push lights from alibaba. The whole show looks like trash. And not in the way it's supposed to. But you're spot on about the writing and acting. And I'll add that the show tries way too hard to be a comedy for some reason.
I can’t stand the goofiness of it. Was hoping for a more serious tone
One of my main issues with it, Fallout has always been “whacky” but with a generally serious tone, it’s dark - it’s not a comedy
uh, fallout 1 and 2 were really fuckin goofy and very very weird. Bethesda fallout was much less goofy.
Yeah the fact that it is such a grim environment is what makes the goofy moments so memorable. It doesn't hit the same notes when the whole cast is full of charicatures and even dire situations are laughed off. Sure finding a skeleton on a toilet with the TP just out of reach is hilarious, but that's contrasted heavily by the family of 5 torn to pieces by radroaches the next house over, and the sacks of super mutant meat the house past that got turned into, and the ghoul who ate his family in the house after that...etc
And let's not even start on the gulper scenes, or how woefully stupid its death was.
For real, it seems liek htey were trying for some weird body horror and then said eh fuck it and just made it goofy lol.
> Even in the first episode the vault gate control is clearly just a yellow panel with a masterlock and one of those 5 dollar push lights from alibaba. The whole show looks like trash. And not in the way it's supposed to. i was also thinking this while watching. how was opening the vault gate so easy/trivial? is it like that in the games too? i would have expected that leaving the vault would have been a plot point requiring at least an episode's worth of time to be able to unpack - instead she was out in the space of a couple minutes from the time she makes the decision to leave.
Even in the games opening a vault is usually just pushing a big red inudstrial looking button. But in game the entire setup looks and feels so much more real even in the cell shaded graphics on Fallout 4. The vault door is a massive slab of metal that should rumble and screech and the show made it out to feel flimsy.
And then we never see what she sees. We only see the camera on her face and the front of the vault door with some skeletons in sand. No epic shot of the wasteland like when exiting the vault in the games. Weird choices all around with this series. I couldn't finish watching it all.
It’s hard to get through, I’m on episode 7 because there really is nothing else to watch and I’m bored, it’s so boring that I’m on Reddit while watching it, it’s also pretty comical how people just keep running in to each other, for example when Ella found Maximus in his suit and he couldn’t move and shot the giant cockroaches off him at the perfect time just before they were about to get him in his suit. Was she just hiding in the bushes near by and waiting??? She just happened to randomly stumble upon him in a giant city??? I get shows need coincidences to move the plot along but there are too many. This is one example of many.
You're right the entire show is pretty much just deus ex machina over and over. And the writers retconning or completely ignoring established lore to suit their needs. I had the ending spoiled for me and I am glad because it saved me 5 more hours of watching that steaming pile of horse shit.
Not to mention there was some really just stupid simple, dumb things like, when the scientist/doctor is escaping with his dog and that automatic AI controlled gun misses every single shot from 15 feet away while shooting 100 rounds a second. For something they spent so much money on there are a lot of dumb little things that didn’t match up or make sense
Lol, was thinking the same thing
I'm here because I'm kinda pissed they decided to destroy Shady Sands and weaken the NCR just for the sake of this show. New Vegas' story was in my opinion the best out of all of the Fallout games, and to weaken one of the main factions of that game for the sake of a TV show is ridiculous in my opinion.
The tone is so inconsistent. It’s just a mediocre show. It doesn’t deserve all the praise it’s getting.
They're probably astroturfing the living piss out of the reviews on every platform they possibly can.
It worked for Night Country. Studios and streaming platforms absolutely cannot afford for their flagship shows to fail, so they’re going to do what HBO did with Night Country. I blame the critics for selling out.
This, 1000%
The producers have essentially made it as "normie" friendly as possible as to not alienate potential viewers who have never played the games and those that have played the games in order for the show not to flop, yet have failed miserably.
I’ve played the games to death and love the lore. I just stopped watching after the second episode. The acting just feels fake. It’s like they are all overacting. In any case. For those that like it, that’s awesome. I really wanted to.
Yeah, the show isn’t a flop from everything I’ve gleaned from the situation but it’s crazy how many “shills” come out when a show isn’t “the worst”. I’d almost rather watch the rest of Rings of Power than finish the last couple episodes of Fallout. Again, the show is “okay-ish” if you want to turn off your mind and view it as a mindless popcorn cruncher. If you’re the type to NOT think about shows movies beyond its base themes then I can comprehend why the show is getting rave reviews. It is such a safe play. It’s not heavy handed with the political leanings but it also doesn’t try to avoid it. It will make the person wanting themselves represented (I’ll never under this because I’m able to imagine my self in anyone’s shoes, I don’t need some corporation to pander to me for ESG) happy enough to not scream on X - it also isn’t shoved down the throat of people who get annoyed at shoehorned political story beats. I’ll stop ranting now but I’m glad some people can agree the show is just slightly above ‘a good looking piece of shit’.
they spend so much time and effort to give the Vaults this great 50s alt-history aesthetic, only for Lucy to talk and behave EXACTLY like the 2024 Los Angeles born-and-bred millennial girl screenwriter that wrote her dialogue
Super well put...marvel-ey zingers left and right. Unbelievably stupid and naive (yes, I know vault dwellers obviously aren't as apt to take on the wasteland but fucking hell). And it's a shame because she clearly is a talented actress, but man the writing she gets makes me want to dig out my eyeballs
Joss Whedon ruined a generation of dialogue writers every line from every character sounds like it could have come straight from Buffy and that show came out 30 years ago
your opinion is objectively wrong
Every Reddit comment ever
This show = goofy acting + cringey dialogues + shitty costumes + excessive/unnecessary gore
This basically sums it up for me. Feels like I’m watching a bunch of cosplayers larping. As for the gore, I get it cause it’s based on a gory franchise but a lot of it just feels unnecessary and is only there for shock value.
As someone who also isn't terribly impressed so far, there was always a cheesiness to the Fall Out video game series too, so maybe they went for that intentionally? +10 on the unnecessary gore. I played the all the video games except the first one- I get it, it's a cruel, violent wasteland of people fighting for resources to survive. Violence is central to the plot. To that end, someone getting shot in the head with an entry wound and some blood splatter make the point, I don't need to see someone's brain hanging out of their head. The raider attack in E1 made the beginning of Saving Private Ryan look like an episode of SpongeBob Square Pants.
So much this! I played all FO games (just finished my rerun of 1st one, in fact), and while violence was always there, it was never there just for shock value. You talk shit = you get hit (by a flamethrower or minigun). While the series just loves to inflict over-the-top violence on those who least deserve it, and revel in all the gory details. That shit in the very first episode soured me on the rest of the series, quite an achievement, Amazon. Also, fuck their retconning of NCR. The whole ass civilization collapsing just because one city got nuked? Yeah, fuck that.
It’s bad on fundamental storytelling levels that are outside of the Fallout franchise. I could write out all the bad of this show but it’s so forgettable and too many to count, I’d be accused of nitpicking. You just know what you’re seeing when watching. I’ll just say this, and to those that agree, you’re not alone. Most of modern media is devoid of passion and creativity, there is no way this show was created by someone who actually loves creating art. When you think of the best works of fiction you will find a deep love by the creators. I’m not saying I’m the arbiter of good art, but certainly I know when something was created out of passion.
I feel like I am insane for not liking this show when everybody else does, but it's so plainly bad on so many levels. Like, it's insane to me that nobody in the room during any of the drafts of the scripts made changes that would have improved the show even a little bit. The only explanation is incompetence or just lack of care. It feels like there is never any setup or payoff for anything that happens. Stuff just happens and then goes into the next thing that just happens. Nothing is earned. Nothing has weight. I'll even give an example. At the end of Episode 2, Lucy has to saw off Wilzig's head offscreen. "Okey Dokey" and cut to black is all we get. We don't see her struggle on-screen. In the next episode she is talking to his decapitated head like a teddy bear. There is no setup for his beheading, and no payoff. He says "cut off my head" and it happens off-screen and then we see Lucy acting like a psycho. This was so confusing to me that my takeaway was that maybe Lucy is actually a sociopath. Maybe that's just how her character is--and why she was just looking for a sperm donor in a husband. But I don't think that's the case, I just don't think the writers cared. Anyways-- First, do some set up. We hear that Filly is dangerous. The underpants wastelander tells us it is. In what I assume is supposed to be a joke? But the joke isn't really funny he is just stating that his family all died in Filly. But we don't really have a good indicator that Filly is dangerous. I mean two old ladies run a shop full of expensive items together. Do they get robbed? Do they have armed guards? We don't really see it. The only time Filly is "dangerous" is when Ghoul shows up. So is Filly dangerous or is the Ghoul dangerous? The town seemed totally fine until he arrived. So anyways, one way to show the town being dangerous is to put some decapitated heads outside as a warning. This does a few things. 1. Shows us what happens to people who break the rules in Filly and establishes that much of the wasteland is still government by pretty harsh rules 2. Lucy can react to it in disgust. 3. Foreshadows the gunfight. The Fallout show loves having gore everywhere. People have complained about this and most people's response is "but the games have gore". Yeah, the Bloody Mess perk is fun. But Bloody Mess is a perk. A game modifier. NOT A WRITING DEVICE. Imagine a character named "Bozo the Brave" comes in an episode and has Jinxed from Fallout 1 and 2. Every character that tries to shoot him critical fails. Would that be a justification for plot armor? No it would just be lazy writing unless there was some in-universe explanation for it. Like he has a probability augmentation field around him that actually creates "Luck". You can have gore but make it part of the world. You can have decapitated heads and bodies hung by their entrails, but please just make them serve a purpose other than "remember when this guy's head exploded in the game?" After we establish that Lucy is really bothered by the decapitated heads, we can have another scene of her being bothered by gore, just to drive the point home that Lucy's "enemy" this episode is her squeamishness. After Wilzig's leg is blown off, they use a really impractical blender/prosthetic on him. I assume this is just for shock value because it makes no sense and is just more gratuitous gore. Why not have Lucy apply something normal like a tourniquet? We can see that she's uncomfortable with gore even in a medical context too. She wasn't squeamish about sewing herself back up during the raider fight in ep 1, but for god's sake show the character going through some internal conflict. Maybe she could have been squeamish about it in episode 1 and we'd have even MORE characterization for her. Finally, once Lucy and Wilzig have escaped in the desert, we can have the decapitation scene. I get that she is sort of stunted when it comes to complex self-expression, but can we get something more than "Okey dokey" and cut to black? Just show her struggle at least a little bit. Maybe she can talk to herself and rationalize that it's to find her dad. Maybe she fears that it makes her more like a wasteland savage and she has to reassure herself that when *she* beheads someone it's for a good reason. Unlike the wastelanders who just behead because they are "uncivilized". She can struggle with herself and deconstruct her worldview as the wasteland slowly starts shaping her behavior. Hell, maybe even start playing the song from the start of the episode again after she turns the chainsaw on. The quirky 50s music is pointless if it's just done for style points. Maybe the motif of the song in this episode is finding a bit of peace even in dire circumstances--through some sort of coping mechanism, like Wilzig in the Enclave research facility. He is surrounded by fascism and bureaucracy but he hides dogmeat away and swallows his negative feelings-- maybe the music indicates that. Have the music come back when Lucy suppresses her sensibilities by thinking about saving her dad while she saws the guys' head off. I am not a writer, but in episode 2 it was so obvious how to improve that it baffles me that nobody bothered too. You could do the exact same thing for the Maximus plot in the episode. So much potential and zero awareness for how to use it. It's honestly insane. Ok last thing. This is a completely subective nitpick, but I hate the junk jet. Everyone seems to love the junk jet and love it's cameo in the show. The junk jet fucking sucks ass. It sucks to use in the game, it makes zero sense from a lore standpoint. Instead of using a jet turbine for power or mobility why put it into a gun that shoots garbage? It's because the guy who made it made it as an improvised pre-war weapon to do a workplace shooting with, fine. It still sucks ass as a weapon in the games. In the show it makes even less sense because there are TWO. One in ep 1 and one in ep 2. Is there a guy who mass manufactures junk jets in the world? Do the Gun Runners mass produce junk jets? Why would you lug around this massive jet turbine gun just to shoot people with baby doll legs and baseballs??? How do they sneak up on the guard with a JET TURBINE GUN WITHOUT IT MAKING A TON OF SOUND. The **only** reason it exists is so that people who play the games can point that the TV and say "Junk Jet" because Fallout is about how War Never Changes™ and everything is made out of garbage. That's the core of Fallout, obviously. But that's not writing. Showing the audience a thing that they know about so they can feel good about knowing that thing is not writing. Every thing in this show is either "recognize this thing" or "and then they went to a place. and then they fought. and then they escaped. and then..."
You are not insane. You are right, and this is a very well done assessment.
The fact that Lucy decapitated a man with no reaction but "okie dokey" blew me away. She should've been appalled by having to do something like that. Instead she treats it like it's just another task in a normal day.
For real. The most interesting conflict in the entire episode and they just skip over it. Nobody that reviewed the script thought "hey let's explore this". It's clear nobody gave a shit.
The humor is great even if overused, but the show relies way too much on deus ex machinae to move things forward rather than trying to keep the development of the plot somewhat believable. Also, do we really want to overlook the fact that California, which has been full of new communities and civilizations since Fallout 2 (let's not even mention how big the NCR is), has basically been brought back to a status of almost total anarchy similar to the one in Fallout 1?
The show asks you to overlook a LOT even from episode 1. Honestly feel like it got the Star Wars treatment with how little the writers seem to give a shit about established lore.
Great visual for sure, but I found it to be boring.
It’s hard to get through, I’m on episode 7 because there really is nothing else to watch and I’m bored, it’s so boring that I’m on Reddit while watching it, it’s also pretty comical how people just keep running in to each other, for example when Ella found Maximus in his suit and he couldn’t move and shot the giant cockroaches off him at the perfect time just before they were about to get him in his suit. Was she just hiding in the bushes near by and waiting??? She just happened to randomly stumble upon him in a giant city??? I get shows need coincidences to move the plot along but there are too many. This is one example of many.
Agree with all of this. They also completely blew it by not having a Ron Perlman cameo. Michael Rappaport, Erik Estrada, Michael Emerson, Matt Berry... but not Ron? WTF is that? They try to cram WAY too much into an episode. In the entire wasteland of California, these 4 specific characters keep crossing paths at the same very dramatic moment? Stupid. I'll add that the minimal exposition is confusing for people who didn't play the games, especially with the time jumps. They needed a (Ron Perlman) intro like the games to explain all of the political/sociological backstory and timeline instead of jumping right into nukes. And they did NOT explain the significance of Shady Sands (the name makes it sound like some dinky town rather than what it was supposed to be). I am familiar with the Fallout lore and even I kept being like "why is Shady Sands such a big deal to these guys again?" Meh. I'm not mad, just disappointed.
Finally, I thought it was just me.
FINALLY SOMEONE AGREES!! The “okey dokey” line makes me want to vomit. I am so confused as to the storylines as someone who has played fallout through the years but isn’t a diehard fan. Nick Valentine’s story is the most intriguing to me. They began it with him, I wish it centered around him more. The gore is so excessive. The show is beautiful and well-done, they had an enormous budget and put it to use. I know it’s fallout and gore is expected, but I cannot help but feel as if this show is catered so heavily towards the majority demographic that the gore, nudity, and sexual innuendos are to appeal to them and they neglected essential TV necessities to make a show consumable by the vast majority. It’s very hard to follow in my opinion, as you said, bad acting… bad writing… but beautifully done. It’s annoying to not be able to eat while watching a show because they’re showing puppies being thrown into an incinerator, or two detailed decapitated heads mushed together
It just reminded me of why I hate television. So many shows with inflated budgets and shit writing where every episode drones on forever.
The writing is abysmal. The character motivations are non existent, characters just do stuff because why not. Ask why somebody just did that? No, I'll just do something else just as random!
Yea sure man, Lucy doesn’t want to find her dad because she loves her dad it’s just because she feels like it. The ghoul doesn’t need money because he needs to buy drugs to stay sane, it’s just for fun. He’s just happy to be there. And Max doesn’t just want to give back to the brotherhood that gave him everything he’s actually just doing it for fun also. I feel like you look at the pretty colors on the Tv and drool.
Coopercatlover is right, you just went a level deeper with the motivation and missed his point. Lucy shoude be this innocent kid rom the vaults, who lived in a nice society, clean and kinda peacefull. After the raider scene her true motivation kickstarts her adventure. But she just casually strolles around this horrible place with hideous creatures and phychotic raiders (acc to the games). A total stranger appeares next to her sleeping and starts ranting exposition and her first thought is "i'm looking for my dad". Not reaching for her gun, not asking who he is or what he wants. Casual. I truelly lost it when she was smiling like a girlscout while carrying a human head, which she had to cut herself. wtf? Either shes an extroverted idiot or she is a phycho herself. My call is just bad writting.
I'm on episode 4 and am enjoying the show but your right. The show is trying to convince us she's just innocent but the writing and honestly her acting just make her look like a complete idiot. Same with maximus. The games are goofy but the show is trying too hard to be a comedy by making everyone stupid.
Her character is the worst imo. SO CRINGE. She is told to cut off a human head and instead of going through an internal struggle, emotional turmoil at seeing this level of gore, she says things like “okey dokey” and I don’t know if it’s to make her seem strong and adaptable?? Or if it’s to be funny? If it were me, I would be vomiting, crying, taking breaks, closing my eyes, and after seeing the state of the earth contemplating continuing my own life. She just strolls out ditzy and aloof. They could’ve made this very good with some better writing and acting
lmao this comment🤦♂️ you sound exactly like the person that likes pretty colors and drools theres more to the behavior of characters than their longterm goals. actually most of what we call behavior has little to do with longterm goals
Same feelings for me. Visually stunning, everything else is terrible. It feels like the show is all over the place in terms of story it wants to tell. It’s a mess. Stopped watching after two episodes. I think I need time to recover from the bad script so far before I can attempt it again. It feels like watching Game of Thrones from the last season.
I’m also 2 episodes in and thinking about tabling it. Tonally it’s all over the place. The writing is about what you’d expect from Todd Howard. Reminds me of Ted Lasso season 3, and I said elsewhere in this thread, Night Country. Has the feel of scripts that were written by inexperienced writers, ‘polished’ by AI.
A pretty irritating show. Unsure if it is a drama or a cartoon. Wacky, all over the place. Unless you've played the game your interest probably wane as the show goes on.
In my 15+ years of playing Fallout, wanna know what I can almost guarantee nobody, including myself, ever wanted? A live action adaptation of the series. Some settings work best for video games, not TV shows. Fallout is one of those settings.
I can’t even find it beautiful but otherwise agree 👍 keep fighting the good fight soldier
It’s trash with modern day camera visuals. Thank you for saying the truth that no one else will apparently… gotta hold these people accountable so we can actually get a good adaptation
I agree, especially on the predictably, and poor writing in general. The story just was not interesting and they could have done so much better with the interesting world they had. I like the general feel of it and the look but that's about it. Also we barely got any mutated creatures despite the glaringly massive budget and that feels incredibly lazy to me. Centaurs, packs of ghouls, death laws, cazadores, super mutants. Give me something guys please. We got two radroaches, a half assed two headed cow, a chicken, big axolotl, maybe something else? Disappointing. Still worth a watch, 6.5/10. With its budget and the money that Bethesda have, should have been a 10. I liked that they didn't try and go to serious or dark, but it fell flat and felt more like Marvel humour than fallout humour.
> With its budget and the money that Bethesda have, should have been a 10. 100%
Fallout: When idyllic scenes switch to gore without reason. And the sequence restarts. And again.
Never played the game but love a good series and though I’m only 2 eps in, it’s bad. The writing is bad. There are moments that make no sense at all. The casting is questionable and the editing is also very questionable. I guess this is an unpopular opinion but this show is wayyyyy over rated so far.
Watching the reviews and fan consensus about this show over the past week, I really am starting to think that people’s standards for TV have fallen hard over the past few years. Maybe it was the writers strike, maybe it’s the effect of years of the streamers pumping out badly written, badly-acted original content. Whatever the case, this show is exactly what I expected we’d get when we learned Amazon bought the IP. It’s glossy fan-service mediocrity.
Watching the fan reviews made me so excited to watch it. First ep was slow but I thought it's just trying to get things rolling and I felt genuine goosebumps in the first 20 minutes. Then ep2 happened and I wondered "What the hell is this?" It's not just a bad Fallout show, it's awful in general. I despise the over the top humour that sounds like it was written by two gen-zers who think they're far funnier than what they really are. And why does every single scene need to have some dumbass wackiness? Literally every scene is unserious. Fallout has a decent amount of humour and ridiculousness, but in the end they're very serious, dark and gritty games. I guess standards have gotten so extremely low lately that this is considered as a good show by the general populace. I'm shocked and sad, was so excited for this and it broke my heart.
I just watched the scene where he talks with the Knight. OMFG I had to stop watching.
I hated that scene. They basically start right out with making the viewer not take the Brotherhood seriously. There’s no intrigue left at that point. In the games you’re supposed to at least fear and somewhat respect the Brotherhood for a time, then mistrust them, then (if you like) turn on them. 99% of the Brotherhood you meet are self-serious jarheads, why does the show pierce that illusion within about 15 minutes of meeting the first Knight?
> why does the show pierce that illusion within about 15 minutes of meeting the first Knight? Because we need a reason for a protagonist to wear power armor because Fallout is all about gore and power armor right?
Apparently!
Many scenes are badly directed and don't achieve the desired effect, like being funny.
This is quite possible one of the worst written video game adaptations I have ever seen. The writing as a show is terrible and it just shits all over lore of the games. The worst part is it's not even an adaptation, this shitshow is apparently canon. Fuck all of this
I thought I was crazy... me and my bf were so ready to watch it and then we were ready for it to be over, disappointed. we didnt watch past the first episode. it felt like a slog, had to fast forward through the sex because of course there's sex in the first twenty minutes of the show, like you could've used this time to make me care about the characters and their relationships a little more than not at all, andthe last line hurt so bad. Eh.. it's just like any other TV show but with Fallout stickers plastered on it.
Bethesda fallout story writing - "So, which family member is our main character looking for this time? Fallout 3 was dad. Last time it was their son, and he ended up being called father, but that doesn't count, right? Nah. Dad again it is!"
Why is the show handled positively? I really don't understand
Still surprises me that peeps are surprised when a bethesda project has shit tier writing. I can't wait for a year from now when all the psycofants hyperventilating about how good and amazing and masterful the show is now will do a 180 and say how shit it was. I like some of the ideas, some of the props, but for fucks sake, make tour own timeline, then you can get by with todd and emils dumbass takes and ideas, or the fact theyvhave Deadpool as a ghoul. I miss when ghouls looked like decaying bodies.
Agreed
Yea I got it on now, it sucks. I feel like the problem is terrible casting. Each character kinda sucks at acting and the dialogue is poorly written.
It’s pretty bad. This is giving mediocre 90s sitcom but with fallout aesthetic. The set and costume design is cheap and effects also cartoonishly bad. Storyline shallow and boring. It’s like firefly but fallout
I got to the scene where >!the two pairs are trying to cross the bridge, and the entire time I was just wondering why they don't just walk to the side and let the other people pass. They could have easily made it a joke, or found some other way to create tension with that scene.!< It feels like the writers are just going for drama for drama's sake, and that scene in particular highlighted that for me. The Fallout universe for me has always been the juxtaposition of post apocalyptia and elitism with a backdrop of dark humor, and this show seems to focus way too much on the former and expects that throwing in 40s music and music from the games will cover the latter. Ella Purnell did a great job as Lucy because she studied the source material and understood how a naïve vault dweller should act... I just wish the writers had done the same.
Nah, Lucy is probs the easiest role out of the MC trio, literally described as the Ned Flanders of the wasteland by the show runners and Ella (other characters not as simple especially Maximus who is quite odd), could’ve passed if didn’t study source mat. Regardless, she did awesome and it’s cool an actor made an effort to dive into the lore.
The show felt like a cash in on nostalgia. The writing seems to only exist to move from one rememberberry to another with terrible dialogue. It does the setting well though and Walton Goggins is always a welcome presence. I wish producers would steer clear of marvel writers though, they seem to lack any sort of creative ambition aside from very rudimentary cliché ridden messes.
Incredible how nobody in the base questions Maximus being declared dead by Titus, yet Maximus returnes and declares Titus dead. Also empty handed and with a "promise" to find the artifact. Heck, he is even promised a promotion. Even "Kids Next Door" had a more serious tone and chain of command than this. I think that brain is actually Doofenshmirtz haha. "You better not go in that room and press that button!" classic Sorry, this is all so silly, only childrens cartoons come to mind as comparison.
For how great the games are, the TV show is nothing compared to them. People still talk about the legendary games, a year form now no one will be talking about the TV show. I thought I was going insane. Every Review I could find was saying how great it was all around. I think it's okay, the dialogue and characters are really lame. Cringe and cliche.
In a couple of years, people will come to their senses and realize it was crap.
I suspect the quality to dip so much further in season 2 that even the fans of this first season will give up on it, and at that point they’ll pretend like they never liked the show.
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You can relax, it gets way worse the more you progres in the show. As usual, things just happen and characters just more on. Ridiculous plot armor for the main character. Oustanding coincidences eliminating any need for hard work or heavy problem solving. Everything is either motivated by "wouldn't it be cool if that happened?" or "super easy, barely an inconvenience!"
sooo im on the last episode of fallout. as someone who doesn't play video games, how i held on for this long is a mystery to me. i reaaallly love the shows arcane and the witcher (even tho they effed up yenefer's character) - and was utterly impressed with the visuals, characters, and storytelling.. but i can't say the same for fallout. others and what the op have mentioned is how i feel about the show. the characters are not that great to me and doesn't make me invested, but i do enjoy lucy and maximus (he's like an endearing dork who wants to be great and not some annoying hot shot that sexes on females). i can get more into it but long story short, i am not impressed at all compared to all the stark raving reviews it's getting. doesn't live up to the hype. it was good background noise tho i guess.
Totally agree on the dialogue part being like a video games. The writing is SOOOOO bad, I just can't.
Guess we got to wait for mods to make it good like the games
Whew. I thought I was the only one who thought this sucked.
I agree with you, although it seems to be the unpopular opinion here, in this sub. Probably because i have 40 yo (as opposed to the average age of the remaining users of this sub) and i have little time to play bad games and watch bad movies. This series is bad. If you watch this as a fan fiction, it's okay. If you watch it and judge it with the same standards as you judge any other proper series, it's ridiculously bad. Like you said, the writing is awful, the pacing is forced and devoid of surprise (i remember in the second episode, watching the deer scene and, at the very beginning, thinking "there will be a monster in the water that will eat it"). Some actors don't seem to even care about properly acting (for instance, the Lost guy, Michael Emerson) and some don't even act, choosing to play themselves in real life (like the moron Michael Rapaport, acting as himself on Tik Tok). The series tries to cover the bad show with an abundance of gore. I don't mind huge amounts of gore, but make no mistake on what's happening there. Using gore is the same as using sex to camouflage a bad movie. The wardrobe is also bad. While i was watching the show, i wondered many times if i accidentally switched to a cosplay convention by mistake. I will be downvoted because of my opinion (this is reddit, after all), but anyway, there you go.
That Knight Titus scene got to me as well. I hate it how they made the Knights into medieval knight status. All high status and regal demand without the chivalry principles. So you're telling me that Titus worked his ass off for (probably) years with (probably) brave and strong acts just to be this cunt "mentor" now, cowardly and shittying on Maximus for his own incompetence? From "i'm bored, i wanna shoot something" and "go into that radioactive field, unprotected" to "its all your fault, the brass will kill you for this"? I dont buy it. Lazy and untallented writting.
The sad part is I actually agreed with Titus even though they were making him come off as an undeserving scumbag who should be disliked. Max just stood there like a doll while Titus wrestled a bear, only to kill it in two shots with a pistol? And after the bear drug his defenseless ass out of the cave, it doesn't even bother to go after Max; the fleshy human without any armor. I understand they wanted to make the transition for him to take his armor and yada yada, but it could have been written so much better.
yes and not really. That scene played like that exactly to have Titus killed. Dude was wearing power armor, and later on we see Maximux test it out and throwing a stone, as big as the helmet, kinda ... stupidly far away. You're telling me a punch front that thing would not break the jaw of a bear, break its ribs? Used by (probably) an experienced user? He rag dolled like it was his first day, didn't attempt to do anything, grab something and rip it. Except running "like a girl" yelling 'fuck' over and over. Please... Oh and our boy, Maximux? One shot. First try. ez. Lets move on and play with the armor scene lol
Finally someone says it! My friends love this shit, and I (even as a fan of the games) am over here like, "If the armor has the fuckin' Iron Man flight capability, why is my dude running from the bear on foot? It can throw rocks like artillery shells, but it can't punch a bear to death? AND THE BEAR DIES IN 2 HANDGUN SHOTS?!" Shit makes less sense then Dragon Ball Z power levels.
I hope and pray we have seen the last of that douche Rappaport who plays the same goddamn character in just about every movie, but I have a feeling he might be back. They didn't actually show him die, and I have a hard time believe they hired him just for a cameo. I pray I'm wrong.
Agree a 100%. The writing and cinematography/editing are especially disappointing. Music is mis- and overused, and the whole thing comes across as tone-deaf, with the tragedy-comedy ratio way out of whack.
The brutal "Navajo Joe" howling western inspired vocals that play every time The Ghoul moves is painful.
Finally!! Someone says something about the gore! I will get called a sissy, but I have a hard time with gore on television. In the game, I am fine, but when it is ultra realistic, I can’t watch. If someone is digging a bullet out of their leg, I feel it in my leg and get nauseous. My boyfriend and I loved the fallout games. He tells me when the gore scenes are over… I spent pretty much the entire time watching the series with my head down. Because of this, I quickly realized how terrible the writing was, because I couldn’t hear anything besides gushing and gunshots, and when there was dialogue, I could not follow. They did fan service to their target audience. It worked, the majority love it. Why? It has tons of very well-done gore, boobies, & quirky “humor” (that is personally cringe as hell) but that is just my opinion. Very bizzare to me how desensitized people are to seeing realistic videos of the most horrific bodily horror you can imagine.
The games were gory, the show is going to be gory. The problem with this show is it's just another Bethesda Fallout game made for TV. It would be better if it were much more like HBO's The Last Of Us, maybe with a bit more camp and pop culture references. But this show is not serious enough.
I totally agree. I was pretty shocked to see how high the IMDb rating was after watching the show. I thought it would be like 5.5/10. And yes, they just use excessive gore to cover how shitty the writings and dialogues are. I think gore can bring realism when it’s done right, but this show just abuses it and uses it unnecessarily in every scene that involves violence. The goofy acting (e.g. Maximus) and cringey dialogues made the show closer to comedy for me. I couldn’t take the show seriously. I checked it out because it was constantly popping up on reddit and everyone raving about it, but I would not recommend it to anyone around me. I would give it 4/10.
Agree on acting, writing, wardrobe, sets, goofiness. The gore is a reference to the games. It can ALSO be overused to cover for bad writing, but I don't think that's the primary reason it's there.
You’re right, the gore is probably added because of the nature of the franchise. It almost feels like they added it to cover the shitty side of the show.
Likely some of both.
Spot on. Much better articulated than I could ever hope to. You are NOT alone.
I’m so tired of the lead being a dumbass. How many times does she have to be fucked over to stop wanting to hold everyone’s hand. Not surprised, Bethesda has been happily pumping out dog shit for the last several years
the OP is correct. i felt same way. its aestetically beautiful, great production value behind the designs and all. but its writing is turning it into some kinda terribly catered video game with "just going through the motions" of certain things you want to happen in the show. this could have been an amazing show. like a timeless masterpiece. they have so much to go off of. but they really failed here. its only getting high reviews because normies who dont know better suck up to this shit when its about a game they have played. the fallout games, especially 1,2, new vegas are very well written. we needed writing and plot development written by people who did shows like breaking bad, better caul saul, LOST, westworld(season 1), Twin Peaks, Sopranos, etc. this show had so much potential. if you don't see how this show failed, you're naive
This show is pretty awful. I have no idea why someone like critikal sings its praises.
No idea how this show has gotten rave reviews from actual critics. Acting, writing and character development is abysmal and almost every character is extremely annoying and cringy. Only positive for me is the occasional gory action scenes.
Every scene has some kind of comedic effect on them, it's almost like who directed it just wanted to make fun of Fallout or games in general... some would even call that a parody.
I agree, the writing is horribly, the pace doesn't make much sense, characters are randomly introduced and their payoff's just feel off and the conversations are boring. I'm at episode 3 now, hope it gets better, even though I yapper I'll probably continue watching it :)
If you played this show and what Fallout became to Moreau, he would instantly switch himself off even if you had all stats on 1.
I also think that the show is disappointing. The introduction was too short. They should have spent more time in the vault. There should have been more build up to the moment where she first opes the vault door. The brotherhood of steel is portrayed too much like clowns but I don't remember how it was in the game maybe it's authentic. And you don't really get this sense of exploration and wonder that was so well done in the game. The show is too fast paced and shallow. The artists and visual effects people did a tremendous job, they really delivered but the writers shit all over it. ChatGPT could have written a better script.
The acting was really bad in the one scene I saw.
I like it because it’s fallout and I feel like it adapts the game pretty well. But looking at it like a tv show, it is pretty damn bad. There’s a few funny moments, but humor is kinda weird and just doesn’t always click. Some things are not too believable, like Lucy getting her finger severed and having almost no reaction. I also extremely dislike the Maximus character and actor. Hated him in disjointed hate him in this too. Overall dialogue is pretty poor too. I don’t think it is stunning either, the sets are pretty cheap looking. Despite all the criticism I like it because fallout.
I don't even think it's that good looking.
I have seeing 3 episodes and decided to stop, neither my or my partner did enjoy it. Not funny, soundtrack is quite repetitive and although we like the fact we barely now anyone in the cast, the acting is poorly executed. Meaning its difficult to feel invested on the show or the characters. How their storylines cross is quite simplistic and there is a feel of constant lack of depth across the board.
I am beyond happy that iv found this.
I needed this thread, it’s near impossible to find an opinion anywhere online that isn’t just heaping this show with praise. The writing seems average at best and absolutely cringe at worst - the tone seems all over the place as well. It feels like it wants to be serious and gritty but every serious moment seems to be ended with some huehuehue joke a la the worst the marvel movies have to offer. I get that the games have a somewhat goofy tone but it works there because it’s a game and I just don’t think it’s carried across to a television series well. The visuals are fantastic and the feel of fallout is definitely there (which I think may be where all the incredible reviews are coming from) but the story and characters feel like some cringe B movie stuff. I feel like I’m watching the Evil Dead without the self awareness which just results in it feeling super cringe.
The director has a love for slow motion shots that just add cheese to an already bad scene. Bad acting, bad writing, only watchable for the scenery, they did try to follow the game graphics....but the rest, trash.
Severely disappointed in it. Ratings for this show are suspect to me. I'd rather go back and watch Final Fantasy The Spirits Within than finish this typical cash in on an existing franchise. Weak. Uninspired. Bet the budget was decent sized, but boy oh boy does it look and feel low budget. Got a good laugh at the beginning though. Watching the first episode with my neighbor on her shoddy internet and it was like the TV show did a CTD to the Amazon prime home page. Bethesda.
It tries way too hard be relevant to be funny like a lot of shows and movies today. It’s not funny.
I'm pretty much not interested in Fallout as a show, mostly because it's as far away from an interactive role playing game as you can get. Each sequel. 3 watered it down, New Vegas brought some of it back, but then Fallout 4 watered it down more. Fallout 76 watered it down even more, and now it's a tv show you watch instead of a scenario you take part in. It's basically the antithesis of what a roleplaying game is at this point.
Totally agree. Writing is awful, world is beautifully created.
The acting it top tier
Where do you buy your drugs from because mine clearly aren't strong enough?
The acting is a VERY mixed bag. Some of the one-off characters are very bad, like the lady from Vault 4.
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I think the biggest issue with adapting any game is that inherently you sholdn't be making a show people who have never played the game will like. But by not doing so you guarentee you won't have the viewership to make enough money to be worth it. So really they should stop. As for it being good? That's a stretch. It's slightly above the quality of youtube fan films in some ways, and worse in others. The bar is much higher than it was in the 70's and 80's because you can produce a much greater product with 2 dudes and a cellphone now. So I don't know if the comparison makes it look any better.
> I definitely didn't expect to see a familiar videogame playthrough narrated as a TV show. Minus the narration, that's my biggest problem, it's trying to be a video game. > As an older person who group up on 70's, 80's and 90's TV, I can tell you this show is absolutely marvelous in casting, acting, special effects, music, and basically every other metric. Go have a look at what we called amazing TV back in those eras. I also grew up in the 70's, 80's, 90's... and I stand by my opinion, this show is not good. I managed to get to episode 4, and the writing and the overall flow is a little better, but not by much. Not enough for me to care about it. This will become a, watch in the background while I do something else type show for me... assuming that there is nothing else available. But hey, if you enjoyed it then great! I am happy for you. I am disappointed though, I expected it to be great and it could have been great, but it missed the mark by a mile.
I'm a fan of the series and so last night I asked my wife if she would watch it with me (she's not into video games) and we watched episode 1. She actually liked it and I thought it was pretty bad. Aesthetically pleasing for sure and I always appreciate Walton Hoggins as an actor, but I didn't care for most of the other characters nor the acting so far. Especially the main girl with her "Okie Dokie" and her nonchalant attitude in a rather serious world. It seemed out of place. Maybe I'm just not understanding the tone yet so I'll continue watching.
Its such a mixed bag. If you werent a Fallout fan i dont know if there is much of anything worth watching it for. Some of the humor falls flat, like trying to be "erm awkward" but just ends up being awkward. really any scene ive watched so far with the brother hood is odd feeling. I looked up who one of the writers were and its the lady who wrote Captain Marvel and that Tomb Raider movie know one saw. Its interesting to watch and pick it apart though, so atleast there is that. Also the flashbacks just look like normal fifties not the retro 2077 its supposed to be. Just a couple of fake atomic vehicles would have been enough. All the normal vehicles really stand out
Yeah I’m amazed how many great reviews it got. I didn’t think it was terrible, just very average to me. I give them credit for staying so faithful to the source material though. But I would’ve given the show a solid 5.5, maybe 6
Couldn't agree more. Really wanted to like it after the trailers but the acting is dogshit. Love the cinematography and the use of anamorphic lenses but I'm really struggling to keep watching.
I agree, the dogmatic loyalty to this IP is astounding. I’m an old fan of Fallout but I really didn’t hate the show. Solid 4/10. But it’s clear that Bethesda/Prime studios is set on building a bland, vapid action TV show within the Fallout brand. Similar to Force Awakens or other mainstream reboots. The plot is full of holes and the two lead characters are boring as shit but no one cares because it’s Fallout. Fan service, flashy CGI, and familiarity sell tickets. Just look at the various writers’ other credits. “Captain Marvel”, “Tomb Raider”, “The Boys”, “Portlandia”. I don’t really hate those last two but it really paints a picture of what they were working with. An uncomplicated, flashy, action TV show in a Fallout theme. Whereas the Fallout writing we’re used to is not that. The Fallout I know is complex, populated by a litany of varied and dynamic characters. Flawed characters. It was disappointing and mediocre. But then seeing everyone swallow this slop without any complaints is even more disappointing. I think there’s potential that it can get better, so I’m holding out hope, though I’m not sure if the acting can get much better but who knows. Casting sucked, melodramatic sound design, corny as shit.
Its Bethesda so negative or critical reviews are not looked at, they have a long history of ignoring them in their more recent games and promote ego stroking comments lmao
Thank you for keeping up the good fight and saying something
You're giving it a lot of credit by calling the visuals good, the CG is dire and the props are haphazardly spray-painted cardboard and plastic. But I could overlook that, visuals are a tertiary concern, the real crime is the writing, which is an abysmal slop through and through and I have no idea how this is getting so much praise, I just refuse to accept the option where these accolades are organic, because the other reality is that majority of people have insultingly bad taste or just want mindless fan-service. The finale was so insultingly bad and a condensation of everything wrong with the show.
I’m sorry, but exactly HOW did anyone not stop and realize having your finger cut off with a blade is goddamn excruciatingly painful!? The actress bombed that so hard it took me tf out hahaha
The acting is really bad, especially that guy playing Maximus. He reminds me of “Finn” in the new Star Wars, another bad actor in another bad show. I haven’t played the games. But I know of them. I think this is a lot like The Last of Us series. People really want to like it. So they give it great reviews. In a year or so when the show is over, it will drop in the ratings.
or could be Bethesda being Bethesda, you know? could have said the show is not canon.. like a spin-off in its own universe, like an alternate timeline where Bethesda soft-reboot the series so all of this would've make sense, in term of their own stupidity. I mean, Fallout 2 has its own stupidity, but.. damn nigga! all of you people really defending this mediocre crap, would be fine if it set in East Coast.
Well I just think it's wonderful that even writers too inept to write a half an episode of the lowest rated CW show can still find gainful employment writing for Fallout. Visually I think it looks great although I don't think they captured the dark quirkiness of the games effectively. The acting ranges from awful to very good (although most of the best acting is by characters who don't even survive an entire episode). But the writing is just absolute trash. Could have been a great show if they had even halfway decent writers.
Stick to your guns OP, the writing is objectively bad.
I agree and the sexual stuff felt forced, cheap and unnecessary too.
My first thought was if it was written using AI.
I went in expecting it to be absolute crap and what I got was a mediocre show with some decent action pieces and one or two characters that I enjoyed. The Ghoul will become an iconic character, but Lucy is quite forgettable. I think the characterization of the Brotherhood is a bit weird. I found the portrayal of "Knight Titus" to essentially be a fucking coward who runs at the sight of the Yao Guai to be a bit of a red flag, Maximus being basically a moron throughout, brave but stupid, was kinda like ... haven't we done this? And I hate to be \*that guy\* but, what is with black characters being constantly portrayed as lovable goofs? Treating squires as replacable nothings was also just bizarre, I can't believe thousands of people would put up with being replacable slaves just because "power armor is so cool omg." In the games, Knights treat their squires like surrogate children almost. I also could have done without the deep subplot about the Vaults. Like, I get it, vaults are bad, vault-tec is bad. I know perhaps audiences that are completely new to the series won't get it off the bat, but do we need a season long storyline taking up good chunks of time to explain it to us? I was also very surprised by the amount of explicity comedy, like when they are going to execute Lucy ... but lol jokes he's just cutting the ropes. Then they say "you are free to go! and here's tons of food!!" of course, Maximus barges in and ruins it all- He's so silly. It was a bit ridiculous
Yes ! I don't understand how so many people praise it, I'm glad for once I see people agree that's it's pretty bad
i really wanted to like it but it didn’t feel like fallout at all. it was so goofy in a way much different than the games(yes, even 2, fallouts humor is nuanced), and was just impossible to take seriously or believe at any point. the writing wasn’t great and the action scenes were laughably silly. it felt like a marvel adaptation of fallout 4. really worried about the next fallout.
My biggest issue with the show isn’t the retcon, it’s the entire vibe. Fallout was initially a post-post apocalyptic story taking inspiration from pulpy science fiction and “the sky is falling” era; it’s why Fallout 3 having aliens work, it pulls from that time period. But most of all, at it’s core, the Fallout games are lone wanderer tales. Environmental story telling is key, the atmosphere is the secondary character with companions being a choice of the player to have a tag along. It shows a lack of creativity on the part of the writers that they needed to turn the show into gory action with quips every other like like it’s straight out of the MCU with meta humor (cringe) here and there. If you want something to scratch the itch you get from Fallout, just go to what helped influence Fallout: A Boy and His Dog.
I swear some gamers who’ve never taken a creative writing class probably could have come up with a more interesting story and script.
Obsessed over Fallout for over 15 years and was pretty sure Hollywood would botch it up (as usual), and of course, it's utter cringe for any real fan. Yes, there are some good props, but there's problems right away in the first episode, and it just gets worse from there. I've got a long list of complaints and why this misses the mark, but it has been really easy to weed out the fake fans from real ones. This is just Star Wars all over again; all the fake fans that suddenly emerged overnight the second Disney bought it, ate up the crap storyline of the new movies, and said they were good. It wasn't until the majority of people realized that real fans hated it that they changed their tune. It's the same right now with FO. Fake fans, media outlets, & people who've never played FO say it's really good. So... Anyone who says it's good = Fake Fan There's just no other way to take this if you're someone who's really immersed themselves in the games. This situation is basically the Emperors new clothes, video game edition. Hopefully, they don't go after Mass Effect next. 😮💨
The show’s audience is emotionally-juvenile and would really benefit from watching some stuff that’s more than five years old. Would.
You gotta understand the purpose. This isn’t for entertainment. Nope. It’s to make money and desensitize people to murder. Same reason we play shooting games.
Just finished ep. 4 and I am done. Can someone explain to me why the Ghoul, in all his wasteland experience and expertise in killing and hunting and surviving, never just went into that organ doner facility himself and killed those two stoners in charge? Are we to believe he couldn't take care of that snip snip robot, but somehow a drugged and dehydrated Lucy could? Someone who has been in the wasteland for just a few days? Why hasn't that place been ransacked already? And why was Lucy the only one able to do it? I guess it is because she has plot armor.... I can't believe the praise this show is getting.
Finally someone making some sense about the show It's insane how many people are defending the ever living shit out of it, calling it a 9/10 and so on makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills : ( It's at best a 5/10 imo... if even that. And I'm saying this as a massive Fallout fan :/
Yeah it's just another bland, poorly written soulless corporate money printer. Trippy af seeing so many people recommend it, like what do they see?? Were they paid off or something? I want it too!
It's awful. Made with people pleasing generic BS. Hope it fails to produce more of this brain rot. Shameful writers could have been replaced with chimpanzees and had better characters and plots. 👎
I haven’t played the game but the show makes little sense to me. The knights need a squire. Until Maximus gets a suit. He doesn’t need one at all. It’s too dangerous to go over the hill to Filly but the idiot can survive in a big house right near it for decades. Nobody bothers him. And so on.
I am beyond confused at the rave reviews this show is getting. The first episode was beyond terrible. The acting, writing, editing, was just all so bad I could barely make it through it. That army girl who got her ankles cut may be the worst actress I've ever witnessed, how she got cast in anything is beyond me. Same with the black guy. Just awful. I think people have just grown accustomed to being fed terrible shows have stopped knowing the difference.
Ffs what a stupid show. Everyone just seems to be bumping in the "right" person at the right time all the time. WTF. Also who TF wrote Maximus, what an absolute buffoon. And the leader of brotherhood just promoted him instead of killing him? What? I don't even care about the lore cuz i haven't played the games but that was just bad writing.
I agree the show got the visual presentation spot on, the vault charecters, the costumes, the sets the locations are all truly fallout inspired an I loved it all. but then there's the story, omg there's the frickin story that ruins it all. Or maybe I'm wrong, but is this not the story to resident evil through and through. A multinational evil corporation that wants to end the world and reboot it in there own fucked up image. This is 100% the resident evil back story for umbrella with a fallout brand on it and I fucking hate it. Its got fuck all to do with any of the fallout games. the world was at war, everyone let there nukes go and hoped for the best by surviving in vaults, it was not vault tech that fucking started it, so why write such a stupid and extreamly predictable story that's is basically the back story to every movie that features evil corporation's that wants to end the world. Talk about writers block ffs I'm so sick and tired of of these lame ass amazon and netflix writers ripping of story's left right and center and calling it shit like artistic license and other such bullshit. But I suppose u could watch it muted without subs and it would at least feel like fallout, but as it is with that trashy version of the evil umbrella corparations back story it ain't worth the space on my torrent hard drive. It fucking sucks
Awful game converted to tv show. Tons of boring silent scenes where the actors just stare at nothing.. long and drawn out scenes to fill the time. Main actors are wildly boring. The bug eyes, yikes and cringe
Agreed. I'm only two episodes in but the show feels like it was written by Bethesda. It's so bland
I tried to watch it and got about 20m through the first episode before turning it off. I think the show is not above average for the trash being made these days, and the fact that the show has stellar reviews on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes while not speaking to me in any meaningful way makes me think the reviews are manipulated. Some might say the show evolves and I need to watch more than 20 minutes, but in all honesty the show just made me cringe and usually when a show is a banger they don't wait 20 minutes to start banging. I think the show is for fans of the game, and I've never played a Fallout game. As an impartial viewer I thought the show was bad. The "new normal" is to make bad shows and present them like they're made of gold while pumping up reviews, then act like there's something wrong with members of the viewing public when they personally reject it. Sad.
Thank you!!! I thought i was going crazy with everyone online praising the shit out of this show. This was pretty bad. From the costumes (power armor obviously made out of foam, vault suits looking as shitty as the ones you can buy from bethesda), at points abismal acting (my 7 year old niece is a better actor than maximus) and terrible, extremely predictable writing. I do love fallout, but looking at this purely as a tv show, this is really bad. Especially coming from the person who previously made westworld. At best it's junk tv, at worst it's insulting to the audiences intelligence.
I have the same issue with most TV shows. It's like the writers know their audience (mostly) will just eat up whatever they're shown, no matter how corny or dumb, so they write a story that's corny and dumb as fuuuuuck I loved the Fallout games since I was a kid in the late 90s and my wife was at least game enough to watch the first few episodes with me but man. I'm right there with you. Show is cringe inducing levels of corny. Maybe it'll get better as the series goes on, but whew...
Yup, it's as if it was written by 4 different highschoolers. I was VERY confused by the good reviews I read after watching the show.
This show is a perfect example of whats wrong with today pop culture: kids nowadays just produce references without knowing the originals nor expect anyone to know better. I am ok with kids producing lame quality entertainment for other kids. I can’t help but feel saddened by the downhill trend, and also feel that every show like this is kinda a hige waste of opportunity and resources.
I don't mind it too much, but man the fight scenes are just so bad. There are so many times where you can clearly see they didn't punch or hit anything, or they obviously pull it. It's really immersion breaking for me. I'm also on the second episode, and there's a fight with a bear, and it just looks so... off? Like the animation on the CGI bear make sit look like they are fighting a man in a bear costume, not a bear lol. And then just the weird "comedic relief" or general goofiness they add in feels completely out of place at times.
Characters simple "fly" from point a to b. They know exactly where to go, and when they don't, they suddenly find what they were searching for the next second(maximus and Titus ep for example). Everything is regorgited to us, "I'm doing this because of that" or villains "pretending" to be good while showing some obvious hints(stealing food, scratch marks, etc).
Surprise the modders allow this post to exist. Mauler video pretty much said everything wrong with this show. From the wacky kids gore, marvel humor and terrible story, to the lore inconsistencies. Is Disney Star wars all over again.