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Ok, make sure you’re sitting down. One of the key people behind the Fallout TV show that’s set to drop on Amazon Prime Video next month has said that trying to just please fans of the games with it would be “a fool’s errand”.
Have you chilled out a bit? Good, now let me tell you why I think, while it’s been expressed in a manner that’s a little bit crap, what he’s said is actually pretty sensible. To be totally clear, though, I’m not about to chew on some corporate shoe and go as far as telling you that all the stuff they’ve said about it basically being Fallout 5 – like if you were to drop some blue slush into a bottle, chuck a light bulb in there, and call it Nuka Cola Quantum – isn’t dumb.
First of all, here’s what was said by director Jonathan Nolan to T3. Just trying to appease fans of the games with the show – that’s what he’s likened to “a fool’s errand”. To be fair, he then clarified: “I think you have to come into this trying to make the show that you want to make and trusting that, as fans of the game [ourselves], we would find the pieces that were essential to us and try to do the best version.”
So, they’re Fallout fans just trying to do a good Fallout thing that they themselves, as Fallout fans, might like. Now, the reason I think that’s probably the right approach, with one caveat, is that fans of a thing – proper hardcores – rarely ever actually know what we want from the things we like, or, more importantly for big mainstream stuff like this, what might get other people interested in this thing we like.
For example, personally, my favourite Fallout game is Fallout New Vegas, mainly because I’m a pretentious white guy. Some of my favourite bits of that game are the Dead Money and Lonesome Road DLCs, which see the game kind of stop just being a Fallout game and morph into being a bit of a survival horror game and a blind dating simulator with nukes respectively.
If you’d asked me if either of those things were what I wanted from Fallout before I played them, I’d have said no, because I’m just one of the many Fallout fans that, deep down, doesn’t actually know what they want from Fallout. So, trying to match the infinite whims of a pretty confused bunch probably isn’t a good idea for the Fallout TV Show.
That said, as mentioned earlier, the show’s creators have declared themselves to be fans of the series, so they probably aren’t sure what they actually want from Fallout either.
If you’re now confused as to how you should feel about the show and this comment from Nolan, welcome to the club.
It’s ok, though, maybe watching this clip of Walton Goggins recently talking about not having a nose and showing off a fresh clip from the show on one of those mind-numbing US late night shows might help us stop thinking too hard.
Or, you can check out the show’s latest trailer again. Ahhhhhh, that’s better, isn’t it?