Yea, like BoS destroying a perfectly fine automobile with working reactor using a minigun, instead of confiscating it. Or making sure factions behave the way they do in the lore. Very much attentive to the details indeed.
To be fair, a car they could claim and study with much ease vs the base of a faction that’s creating synthetic people en masse to infiltrate all the wasteland groups is quite a different scenario.
Right but they could just kick the raiders out of the corvega factory and start producing these cars if they wanted to. It’s 200 year old tech, the brotherhood has seen a car before. The stuff at the institute is unprecedented and new. If nothing else it would have made a damn good base of operations in the Commonwealth.
That’s a good interpretation! It would definitely be interesting to see a BoS that came to fear technology more than preserve it.
I wish they had set that up a little more, though. Ideologies developing is a big part of Fallout, and to me it feels like they’re presenting factions that are drastically different to what we’ve been shown before, without showing the before and at least part of the history that got them here.
I completely agree more set up would have been beneficial. I think the show runners were stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to fit everything into the number of episodes ordered. It seems they generally chose to omit things like this that only prior fans would need, where most of the audience would just accept it as how things are. I’d be interested to see what was originally in the season’s story that had to be cut.
I’m not sure they ever planned to tackle it. The showrunners seem proud to have not played the games.
There’s also quite a few things that are really weird without a lot of explanation, so if they knew they were limited in time why did they change so much that requires explanation?
To me it seemed like the showrunners were far better aquatinted with the games than most writers are with their source material. A lot of things get changed in writers rooms for practical reasons, like moving Shady Sands next to the Boneyard so the protagonists don’t have to travel over a hundred miles over mountains to visit it, or changing Novac to fit with the filming location and action sequence. For the most part, these retcons don’t absolutely break the stories of the past, while providing enough benefit to the current story to be worth it.
This isn’t to say that everything works, but what doesn’t work for me has less to do with lore and more to do elements just not working. My biggest problems with this season stem from the writing not being as tight as the first. I’m also worried that Nolan and Joy will make the mistakes they made in Westworld where they didn’t have a narratively compelling long term plan.
At the same time, none of what they’ve done with the factions surprise or disappoint me. The Brotherhood are jackasses who only had benevolent leadership in 3, the Legion were doomed without Caesar, and House was an eccentric weirdo who thought he was more important and capable than he really was.
Most controversially, the direction of the NCR makes way more sense than some fans want to admit. The NCR has reflected American liberal democracy in every game in which it prominently features. In Fallout 2, it’s a promising force with cracks in its ideals, mirroring the perception Americans had in the late 90s. In New Vegas it’s stuck in an imperial quagmire while wealth inequality weakens the country from the inside, mirroring the war in Afghanistan and the neoliberal post recession “recovery.” Finally in 2024, on the eve of America’s collapse at the hands of oligarchs, liberals who refused to change, and fascists who took advantage, the NCR has collapsed at the hands of Vault-Tec, the NCR’s established problems, and the Legion and Brotherhood (who fuck it all up because they’re fascists).
Honestly, them going in this direction is more compelling, better commentary on our current politics, and more in line with the best that Fallout has to offer. I think a lot of people were too attached to their favorite factions to see the bigger picture, and the writers not doing the same has made the show better.
I really appreciate the throroughness of your comment! It feels like so many of the conversations I have with this show are killed by my long-windedness. I’m glad to see somebody responding with their in-depth thoughts.
I feel like there was a bit of miscommunication, though. I don’t hate the direction these factions have gone, I think the steps they’ve taken to get where they are don’t feel realistic to the world. I’m going to go through and respond to the different parts of what you’re saying. Please don’t take this as nitpicking, you’ve just said a lot of things that I could clarify my thoughts on.
moving Shady Sands next to the Boneyard so the protagonists don’t have to travel over a hundred miles over mountains to visit it.
They could have just had it be The Boneyard if they wanted to do LA. If the goal is to have the show appeal to old and new fans, then just acknowledging it as The Boneyard changes nothing. The old fans know Shady Sands is far away, and the new fans won’t recognize either name.
So, would it have been too far to walk to the actual location of Shady Sands? Yes. Did the ruins they come across need to be Shady Sands for the purpose of the story? My opinion is no. I’m not going to use this comment to write fanfic, but I do have a couple ideas on how to communicate the destruction Shady Sands without moving it so the protagonists could find the “Welcome To” sign.
changing Novac to fit with the filming location and action sequence.
This is the type of stuff I’m talking about. That exact scene could have been done outside Novac (sans pool) to no confusion. Would have been a little reference to One For My Baby, too. The differences in filming location would also be negated because they wouldn’t be showing the different layout and pool from the outside.
My biggest problems with this season stem from the writing not being as tight as the first.
Not my biggest problem, because I clearly have issues with S1’s writing, but I gotta say I appreciated how everything tied together in S1. This season so far feels like a bunch of random events that they might try to spin into a plot by the end.
The Brotherhood are jackasses who only had benevolent leadership in 3
Yes. They’re jackasses whose ideology led to them being all but destroyed in that region. Which is why it’s weird for me to see them as the biggest military force in this show.
the Legion were doomed without Caesar
This is my biggest problem in S2. Why are they still around? They were thrown into a civil war after the death of Caesar (who clearly died a while ago in the show). This is the same Legion that beats each other to death when leadership calls for it. It does not make sense to have the warlike faction become a bunch of wimps after their leader dies. Macaulay Culkin just killed a woman in front of us, why is he whining about getting shot at?
Legion used to run in with spears against guns, now they’re at war with themselves and somehow their attitude on violence and allegiance has changed, as only one side wants to know what Caesar said, and nobody has overtaken the other.
Also, I get sometimes things have to be moved closer for the purposes of a show, but warring enemy camps that literally touch each other is a bit fantastical in a series where real military tactics very much matter to its history.
House was an eccentric weirdo who thought he was more important and capable than he really was.
House could be dead or alive, that doesn’t matter. His whole plan for Vegas dominance in New Vegas was really just a gamble. Don’t think I just want everything to be as it was in my precious game. I just want the followup story to be consistent with what we’ve been shown so far.
Most controversially, the direction of the NCR makes way more sense than some fans want to admit.
I have not seen many people saying that the NCR should be thriving, just people saying it doesn’t make sense to nuke one city and they’re gone. Myself being one of those people.
You’re right. The NCR is liberal American democracy. Which is why I think that it was a foolish idea to have them all but destroyed, instead of showing their slow fall due to internal issues. Now, all this is communicated in the lore, but what does the show communicate?
That Shady Sands was nuked into oblivion because Hank didn’t want his wife leaving. That removes a lot of the potential political commentary. The NCR could have failed for several reasons, but the prominent 2 that stick out as already established in the lore are: inflation and imperialism. They had a failing currency and were engaging in too many wars. Sound familiar?
But they weren’t taken down by their ideology, they weren’t taken down by a competing ideology, they were taken down after only one of their cities was destroyed by a guy with a personal vendetta. American democracy will not be destroyed by a personal grudge, and I don’t see how it’s strengthening the commentary to bypass the many factors at play leading to the downfall of NCR society.
I’m not attached to the factions. I’m attached to the history. If we want to talk about being attached to factions, why is the BoS shoehorned into this plot? Why do they need Vault-Tec and the BoS to tell a story in the wasteland?
Or, hell, just a thought, maybe the rise of the Brotherhood from recluses into a fascist empire (as they seem to now be) could have been what destroyed the NCR. That’s not bad commentary, but as it stands I think the commentary is a bit muddled.
To me, all of the possible relevant commentary happened offscreen while the NCR’s liberal democracy was dying, and instead of showing the death of that democracy, they just come in after the fact and have Cooper go like, “NCR? Might wanna drop the ‘New’.”
Kinda feels like all the education about WWII. Where instead of studying the societal factors behind something like the Nazi Party coming to power, we just say, “they got voted in and it was really bad after that.”
Anyway, with that rant concluded, I must say I agree that people need liberty when making adaptations because you can’t transfer everything to screen 1:1. I just think there are a lot of moments where, instead of retconning, the writing could have done the work for them. They put a lot of effort into showing the connection between the Pre-War and 200 years later, why couldn’t they have shown a bit more of the connection between 15 years ago and today?
I’m sure I’m coming across as a bit pedantic, but please understand that I would actually love to have a valid reason for all my complaints being unfounded, so I could just sit and enjoy this show. I just haven’t gotten there yet.
At the crux of why there is more connection to prewar than postwar is just how much the show needs to introduce to a new audience. It’s not easy to build up a setting in such a short amount of time without compromising the characters’ stories. The audience might know 1950s America, the cold war, and nuclear armageddon as familiar shorthand, but they do not know a constitutional Republic with a 2 headed bear on its flag or how advanced robots powered by nuclear technology work together with it. That shit takes time to set up, and that lore can never be the backbone of a show; any show.
Lore cannot be dumped upon the audience because it isn’t what people engage with stories for. The lore needs actual characters who you actually care about to get you invested in lore in the first place. Stories that don’t put characters first not only don’t sell as well, but also aren’t very good. Games can cheat a bit by having you be the narrative thrust and everyone else be minor characters, but any non interactive medium does not have that luxury.
What I mean:
The story of the NCR or the Legion or House is not built on how interesting their factions were in the game, but how interesting the stories you experience because of them were. A young woman you save who then goes on to build a nation. A charismatic Howard Hughes type and the people trying to make it out on top in his orbit. A psycho wearing an animal head and the man who conquered dozens of tribes into a brutal empire despite not being the smartest or most traditionally charismatic. Hell, the reason the Brotherhood is so much less interesting is how often it doesn’t have as compelling characters.
All this is to say that it’s a miracle the lore comes out as well as it does. Most of the places where it was compromised was so it wouldn’t take up more time in the relatively short 8 episode runtime. Directly showing Shady Sands destroyed conveys the fall of the NCR far more quickly and more effectively than anything else. Having a deeper reference to One For My Baby than Cooper misremembering Carla’s name and how long ago she was there wouldn’t have been worth it for people who didn’t play New Vegas. Them not making these changes would’ve hurt the story they were telling, and that is never a good idea.
Another problem that isn't actually a big problem
is people wondering how the former NCR areas are in such bad shape. I think people missed just how empty and desolate most of the NCR was, even at the best state they were directly shown. 700,000 people in the Area of California is not that densely populated, as California right now is huge and surprisingly rural in many areas. The distances you travel in Fallout 2, as someone who grew up in California, are no joke. Not seeing as many signs of it being rebuilt in the show makes sense if most people lived in smaller population centers for safety and many of them fell along with Shady Sands.
A similar problem comes from New Vegas, with the state it was shown in game being deceptive. House built up the facade of the Strip like a decade before the start of the game, with the perception of rebuilt civilization existing so House to demonstrate power he doesn’t have. New Vegas also led fans to believe things were more rebuilt than they were, but even in lore it was deceptive. Factoring in the way space gets warped in the 3D games, the west coast was far closer to post apocalypse than post-post apocalypse.
Or am I under the wrong impression that sniper lookouts should look out?
Sorry, that’s a little snarky. Plus it was built Pre-War. It was just built and used differently than seen there. I don’t hold any malice for anyone who enjoys the show. I would like to know what little details you mean, though, because I think that’s one of the areas where the show is least successful.
The scenery, the items, the vibe. All of these feel like they’re straight out of the game. The vaults and boxes of sugar bombs etc are absolutely perfect. Just because they didn’t get everything right doesn’t mean they didn’t get anything right. They stuff they did get right they knocked right out of the park.
I agree with you hardcore on the props and the vaults. The vaults especially are finally realized to a proper scale, and I absolutely adore the manufactured community they have going on!
But I wouldn’t call the way things look a little detail in a TV show. The way things look is like, at least half of the show. That’s why they hire prop designers and cinematographers.
When I say little details, I mean stuff like how they treated previously established locations and lore. In my opinion, the little details are the ones that, when they get wrong and someone points it out, everyone says “that doesn’t matter.” Which has been a large part of the discourse I’ve observed for this show.
For instance, the Great Khans. By the end of New Vegas, they are either genocided by Courier Six, forcibly relocated north by the NCR, genocided and wiped from history by Caesar, integrated into The Legion, willingly relocated to Wyoming and allied with The Followers, or dead in battle at Hoover Dam.
In the show, 15 years later, they’ve taken over Novac. Which is also on the side opposite of Black Mountain from where their claimed territory sat 15 years ago.
Not that borders can’t change, but I would like to see some of the history of that!
Here’s a big detail:
At the same time that Shady Sands fell in the show, the NCR controlled almost all of California, had Pre-War spec gun manufacturing, had a currency, healthcare, the largest military in the world, concrete manufacturing, working railroads, five STATES, over 700,000 citizens, and were expanding into Vegas where they all but destroyed the local BoS.
For all intents and purposes, we should be seeing mass amounts of refugees and new settlements. Plus, Shady Sands isn’t located in LA. There was almost no remnant of NCR society other than mention, a junk town, and a few refugees. The ruins of LA are kinda implied to be the Pre-War ruins, so I was just kinda wondering where the evidence of the modern nation in that area from 15 years ago was.
Could they explain all this away? Probably. But they haven’t so far… and I’m getting worried that they think the regional history isn’t important for a series with major themes of humans repeating history.
I could continue to rant and rave, but I’m not here to oppose you on the things you like about the show. If you enjoy the show, I’m happy for you! It does capture the feel of the Bethesda Fallout games pretty darn well, and I’ve enjoyed Lucy and Cooper’s plotlines thus far.
But as a fan of and nerd for (obviously) the story they told in the West Coast up to that point, it’s hard for me to enjoy the show, as they seem to just be ignoring a lot of the history to present the world in a way that feels more similar to the characterization of the world and factions in the East Coast.
It’s amazing how many small details they absolutely nailed
Yea, like BoS destroying a perfectly fine automobile with working reactor using a minigun, instead of confiscating it. Or making sure factions behave the way they do in the lore. Very much attentive to the details indeed.
Yeah, they’d never destroy useful working technology. It’s not like they blew up the entire fucking institute or anything.
To be fair, a car they could claim and study with much ease vs the base of a faction that’s creating synthetic people en masse to infiltrate all the wasteland groups is quite a different scenario.
Right but they could just kick the raiders out of the corvega factory and start producing these cars if they wanted to. It’s 200 year old tech, the brotherhood has seen a car before. The stuff at the institute is unprecedented and new. If nothing else it would have made a damn good base of operations in the Commonwealth.
Guess they’re both a little half-baked.
I took the shooting up the car as a demonstration of that chapter’s deterioration and splintering preceding the “plot”.
That’s a good interpretation! It would definitely be interesting to see a BoS that came to fear technology more than preserve it.
I wish they had set that up a little more, though. Ideologies developing is a big part of Fallout, and to me it feels like they’re presenting factions that are drastically different to what we’ve been shown before, without showing the before and at least part of the history that got them here.
I completely agree more set up would have been beneficial. I think the show runners were stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to fit everything into the number of episodes ordered. It seems they generally chose to omit things like this that only prior fans would need, where most of the audience would just accept it as how things are. I’d be interested to see what was originally in the season’s story that had to be cut.
I’m not sure they ever planned to tackle it. The showrunners seem proud to have not played the games.
There’s also quite a few things that are really weird without a lot of explanation, so if they knew they were limited in time why did they change so much that requires explanation?
To me it seemed like the showrunners were far better aquatinted with the games than most writers are with their source material. A lot of things get changed in writers rooms for practical reasons, like moving Shady Sands next to the Boneyard so the protagonists don’t have to travel over a hundred miles over mountains to visit it, or changing Novac to fit with the filming location and action sequence. For the most part, these retcons don’t absolutely break the stories of the past, while providing enough benefit to the current story to be worth it.
This isn’t to say that everything works, but what doesn’t work for me has less to do with lore and more to do elements just not working. My biggest problems with this season stem from the writing not being as tight as the first. I’m also worried that Nolan and Joy will make the mistakes they made in Westworld where they didn’t have a narratively compelling long term plan.
At the same time, none of what they’ve done with the factions surprise or disappoint me. The Brotherhood are jackasses who only had benevolent leadership in 3, the Legion were doomed without Caesar, and House was an eccentric weirdo who thought he was more important and capable than he really was.
Most controversially, the direction of the NCR makes way more sense than some fans want to admit. The NCR has reflected American liberal democracy in every game in which it prominently features. In Fallout 2, it’s a promising force with cracks in its ideals, mirroring the perception Americans had in the late 90s. In New Vegas it’s stuck in an imperial quagmire while wealth inequality weakens the country from the inside, mirroring the war in Afghanistan and the neoliberal post recession “recovery.” Finally in 2024, on the eve of America’s collapse at the hands of oligarchs, liberals who refused to change, and fascists who took advantage, the NCR has collapsed at the hands of Vault-Tec, the NCR’s established problems, and the Legion and Brotherhood (who fuck it all up because they’re fascists).
Honestly, them going in this direction is more compelling, better commentary on our current politics, and more in line with the best that Fallout has to offer. I think a lot of people were too attached to their favorite factions to see the bigger picture, and the writers not doing the same has made the show better.
I really appreciate the throroughness of your comment! It feels like so many of the conversations I have with this show are killed by my long-windedness. I’m glad to see somebody responding with their in-depth thoughts.
I feel like there was a bit of miscommunication, though. I don’t hate the direction these factions have gone, I think the steps they’ve taken to get where they are don’t feel realistic to the world. I’m going to go through and respond to the different parts of what you’re saying. Please don’t take this as nitpicking, you’ve just said a lot of things that I could clarify my thoughts on.
They could have just had it be The Boneyard if they wanted to do LA. If the goal is to have the show appeal to old and new fans, then just acknowledging it as The Boneyard changes nothing. The old fans know Shady Sands is far away, and the new fans won’t recognize either name.
So, would it have been too far to walk to the actual location of Shady Sands? Yes. Did the ruins they come across need to be Shady Sands for the purpose of the story? My opinion is no. I’m not going to use this comment to write fanfic, but I do have a couple ideas on how to communicate the destruction Shady Sands without moving it so the protagonists could find the “Welcome To” sign.
This is the type of stuff I’m talking about. That exact scene could have been done outside Novac (sans pool) to no confusion. Would have been a little reference to One For My Baby, too. The differences in filming location would also be negated because they wouldn’t be showing the different layout and pool from the outside.
Not my biggest problem, because I clearly have issues with S1’s writing, but I gotta say I appreciated how everything tied together in S1. This season so far feels like a bunch of random events that they might try to spin into a plot by the end.
Yes. They’re jackasses whose ideology led to them being all but destroyed in that region. Which is why it’s weird for me to see them as the biggest military force in this show.
This is my biggest problem in S2. Why are they still around? They were thrown into a civil war after the death of Caesar (who clearly died a while ago in the show). This is the same Legion that beats each other to death when leadership calls for it. It does not make sense to have the warlike faction become a bunch of wimps after their leader dies. Macaulay Culkin just killed a woman in front of us, why is he whining about getting shot at?
Legion used to run in with spears against guns, now they’re at war with themselves and somehow their attitude on violence and allegiance has changed, as only one side wants to know what Caesar said, and nobody has overtaken the other.
Also, I get sometimes things have to be moved closer for the purposes of a show, but warring enemy camps that literally touch each other is a bit fantastical in a series where real military tactics very much matter to its history.
House could be dead or alive, that doesn’t matter. His whole plan for Vegas dominance in New Vegas was really just a gamble. Don’t think I just want everything to be as it was in my precious game. I just want the followup story to be consistent with what we’ve been shown so far.
I have not seen many people saying that the NCR should be thriving, just people saying it doesn’t make sense to nuke one city and they’re gone. Myself being one of those people.
You’re right. The NCR is liberal American democracy. Which is why I think that it was a foolish idea to have them all but destroyed, instead of showing their slow fall due to internal issues. Now, all this is communicated in the lore, but what does the show communicate?
That Shady Sands was nuked into oblivion because Hank didn’t want his wife leaving. That removes a lot of the potential political commentary. The NCR could have failed for several reasons, but the prominent 2 that stick out as already established in the lore are: inflation and imperialism. They had a failing currency and were engaging in too many wars. Sound familiar?
But they weren’t taken down by their ideology, they weren’t taken down by a competing ideology, they were taken down after only one of their cities was destroyed by a guy with a personal vendetta. American democracy will not be destroyed by a personal grudge, and I don’t see how it’s strengthening the commentary to bypass the many factors at play leading to the downfall of NCR society.
I’m not attached to the factions. I’m attached to the history. If we want to talk about being attached to factions, why is the BoS shoehorned into this plot? Why do they need Vault-Tec and the BoS to tell a story in the wasteland?
Or, hell, just a thought, maybe the rise of the Brotherhood from recluses into a fascist empire (as they seem to now be) could have been what destroyed the NCR. That’s not bad commentary, but as it stands I think the commentary is a bit muddled.
To me, all of the possible relevant commentary happened offscreen while the NCR’s liberal democracy was dying, and instead of showing the death of that democracy, they just come in after the fact and have Cooper go like, “NCR? Might wanna drop the ‘New’.”
Kinda feels like all the education about WWII. Where instead of studying the societal factors behind something like the Nazi Party coming to power, we just say, “they got voted in and it was really bad after that.”
Anyway, with that rant concluded, I must say I agree that people need liberty when making adaptations because you can’t transfer everything to screen 1:1. I just think there are a lot of moments where, instead of retconning, the writing could have done the work for them. They put a lot of effort into showing the connection between the Pre-War and 200 years later, why couldn’t they have shown a bit more of the connection between 15 years ago and today?
I’m sure I’m coming across as a bit pedantic, but please understand that I would actually love to have a valid reason for all my complaints being unfounded, so I could just sit and enjoy this show. I just haven’t gotten there yet.
At the crux of why there is more connection to prewar than postwar is just how much the show needs to introduce to a new audience. It’s not easy to build up a setting in such a short amount of time without compromising the characters’ stories. The audience might know 1950s America, the cold war, and nuclear armageddon as familiar shorthand, but they do not know a constitutional Republic with a 2 headed bear on its flag or how advanced robots powered by nuclear technology work together with it. That shit takes time to set up, and that lore can never be the backbone of a show; any show.
Lore cannot be dumped upon the audience because it isn’t what people engage with stories for. The lore needs actual characters who you actually care about to get you invested in lore in the first place. Stories that don’t put characters first not only don’t sell as well, but also aren’t very good. Games can cheat a bit by having you be the narrative thrust and everyone else be minor characters, but any non interactive medium does not have that luxury.
What I mean:
The story of the NCR or the Legion or House is not built on how interesting their factions were in the game, but how interesting the stories you experience because of them were. A young woman you save who then goes on to build a nation. A charismatic Howard Hughes type and the people trying to make it out on top in his orbit. A psycho wearing an animal head and the man who conquered dozens of tribes into a brutal empire despite not being the smartest or most traditionally charismatic. Hell, the reason the Brotherhood is so much less interesting is how often it doesn’t have as compelling characters.
All this is to say that it’s a miracle the lore comes out as well as it does. Most of the places where it was compromised was so it wouldn’t take up more time in the relatively short 8 episode runtime. Directly showing Shady Sands destroyed conveys the fall of the NCR far more quickly and more effectively than anything else. Having a deeper reference to One For My Baby than Cooper misremembering Carla’s name and how long ago she was there wouldn’t have been worth it for people who didn’t play New Vegas. Them not making these changes would’ve hurt the story they were telling, and that is never a good idea.
Another problem that isn't actually a big problem
is people wondering how the former NCR areas are in such bad shape. I think people missed just how empty and desolate most of the NCR was, even at the best state they were directly shown. 700,000 people in the Area of California is not that densely populated, as California right now is huge and surprisingly rural in many areas. The distances you travel in Fallout 2, as someone who grew up in California, are no joke. Not seeing as many signs of it being rebuilt in the show makes sense if most people lived in smaller population centers for safety and many of them fell along with Shady Sands.
A similar problem comes from New Vegas, with the state it was shown in game being deceptive. House built up the facade of the Strip like a decade before the start of the game, with the perception of rebuilt civilization existing so House to demonstrate power he doesn’t have. New Vegas also led fans to believe things were more rebuilt than they were, but even in lore it was deceptive. Factoring in the way space gets warped in the 3D games, the west coast was far closer to post apocalypse than post-post apocalypse.
Like how they faced Dinky the Dino backwards?
Or am I under the wrong impression that sniper lookouts should look out?
Sorry, that’s a little snarky. Plus it was built Pre-War. It was just built and used differently than seen there. I don’t hold any malice for anyone who enjoys the show. I would like to know what little details you mean, though, because I think that’s one of the areas where the show is least successful.
The scenery, the items, the vibe. All of these feel like they’re straight out of the game. The vaults and boxes of sugar bombs etc are absolutely perfect. Just because they didn’t get everything right doesn’t mean they didn’t get anything right. They stuff they did get right they knocked right out of the park.
Hey, I never said they didn’t get anything right!
I agree with you hardcore on the props and the vaults. The vaults especially are finally realized to a proper scale, and I absolutely adore the manufactured community they have going on!
But I wouldn’t call the way things look a little detail in a TV show. The way things look is like, at least half of the show. That’s why they hire prop designers and cinematographers.
When I say little details, I mean stuff like how they treated previously established locations and lore. In my opinion, the little details are the ones that, when they get wrong and someone points it out, everyone says “that doesn’t matter.” Which has been a large part of the discourse I’ve observed for this show.
For instance, the Great Khans. By the end of New Vegas, they are either genocided by Courier Six, forcibly relocated north by the NCR, genocided and wiped from history by Caesar, integrated into The Legion, willingly relocated to Wyoming and allied with The Followers, or dead in battle at Hoover Dam.
In the show, 15 years later, they’ve taken over Novac. Which is also on the side opposite of Black Mountain from where their claimed territory sat 15 years ago.
Not that borders can’t change, but I would like to see some of the history of that!
Here’s a big detail:
At the same time that Shady Sands fell in the show, the NCR controlled almost all of California, had Pre-War spec gun manufacturing, had a currency, healthcare, the largest military in the world, concrete manufacturing, working railroads, five STATES, over 700,000 citizens, and were expanding into Vegas where they all but destroyed the local BoS.
For all intents and purposes, we should be seeing mass amounts of refugees and new settlements. Plus, Shady Sands isn’t located in LA. There was almost no remnant of NCR society other than mention, a junk town, and a few refugees. The ruins of LA are kinda implied to be the Pre-War ruins, so I was just kinda wondering where the evidence of the modern nation in that area from 15 years ago was.
Could they explain all this away? Probably. But they haven’t so far… and I’m getting worried that they think the regional history isn’t important for a series with major themes of humans repeating history.
I could continue to rant and rave, but I’m not here to oppose you on the things you like about the show. If you enjoy the show, I’m happy for you! It does capture the feel of the Bethesda Fallout games pretty darn well, and I’ve enjoyed Lucy and Cooper’s plotlines thus far.
But as a fan of and nerd for (obviously) the story they told in the West Coast up to that point, it’s hard for me to enjoy the show, as they seem to just be ignoring a lot of the history to present the world in a way that feels more similar to the characterization of the world and factions in the East Coast.