Comment on Mass Effect 1 is still my favourite sci-fi game of all time
FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 3 days agoI mean, obviously from ME. Fallout has been by far the best video game adaptation so far. It wasn’t really an adaptation though because it is its own story. They seemed to really respect the source material. The lead actor played the game so she could do justice to the franchise. Both shows are made by Amazon, so I have somewhat high hopes.
VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
The acting was great, but no, I don’t think the writers respect the source material. They respect the feel of the source material, for sure. I love the way most of it’s shot, and I really love how the vaults are shown to be much more massive. Leaning into the cultish aspect of the Brotherhood of Steel was an awesome move and I think totally fits the path of their organization.
But, as I said in my last comment, there were a few key points about the Fallout world that they changed without much to give a new story a familiar setting. And I think that’s just inherently disrespectful in a world where large swaths of land haven’t been touched by the franchise.
It’d be just as easy to set it in Texas, or Illinois, or somewhere without a ton of solidified lore. But they set the show in a location with >135 years of post-war history and post-war development, that was under control of a nation so large it was manufacturing concrete and colonizing new lands. Then they kinda… just said their capital got nuked and they’re communist now???
Also worth noting that East Coast Fallout and West Coast Fallout are very different thematically, with East Coast focusing on rebuilding and West Coast focusing on humanity repeating the same mistakes that led to the Great War (War Never Changes…).
The show wears Fallout’s skin, for sure. There’s also many dialogue exchanges that feel like nods to how the world works in-game, and I love that. But that doesn’t make it a great adaptation, because the Bethesda Fallout games also look like Fallout. And they really shirk exploring the franchise themes in favor of making a zany wasteland to explore.
I’m no hater of those East Coast games, I love Fallout 3 and I’ve put a lot of time into Fallout 4. But they do really feel like a totally separate take on the same world. With the show, the lens of that take is applied to the world of the original franchise and they definitely misrepresented how realistically ideology works in this world.
All that said, they left enough open-ended for me to want to watch Season 2. But I really hope they delve more into the actual ideologies at play. Because Fallout is not about a wasteland, it’s about people, what we believe, and how we repeat our mistakes. They’re already halfway there with how the main characters interact, I’m just hoping they apply that writing to the factions.