The adaptation of fallout with Ella Purnell as the heroine is available on Prime Video. But it doesn’t literally adapt a story from one of the games.
After The Last of Us in 2023, it is the adaptation event in 2024: fallout has just been added to the Amazon Prime Video catalog. The eight episodes have been online since April 10. The series is taken from the eponymous video games, a saga started in 1997 in a genre straddling post-apo, atompunk and uchrony.
Produced by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy (Westworld, Person of Interest, The Peripheral), the adaptation of fallout takes up its codes: a world devastated by nuclear war and humanity forced to live in bunkers, under penalty, on the surface, of being confronted with monsters and other joys of a ravaged America. So the codes are there. But how well does the series adapt the games?
“Your version of Fallout may be very different from mine”
The heroine played by Ella Purnell, Lucy, must leave one of these bunkers (Vault 33) to venture to the surface and find her father (Kyle MacLachlan). And then there is also Norm, Lucy’s brother (Moisés Arias). These characters and their personal stories almost start from a blank page. They do not exist in the — many — video games of the franchise.
This choice of the creators of the series, Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, is explained in an interview by Jonathan Nolan, the producer: “(…) Some video games are like movies with playable parts. They are on track. This is not the case with these games [Fallout]. (…) Your version of Fallout 3 may be very different from mine. You can play it as a bad guy, a good guy, or somewhere in between, you can join a different faction. »
The saga fallout is essentially based on action RPG – role-playing game. The different opuses have a narrative context which allows you to be involved in a story, but what happens throughout the game depends on you: you have to create your character, join a specific faction, develop skills and attributes. It is very different from The Last of Uswhich tells a story in which you must survive by passing each level.
For Nolan, there was therefore no way to adapt the story of one of the games “ without invalidating your version of the game or over-validating mine “. Result, ” for us, an original story was the best way to honor the atmosphere and universe of the games “.
Fallout mythology adapted to perfection
Despite everything, the adaptation on Prime Video adapts the entire “mythology” of the saga. For example, we find the company Vault-Tec, which built the fallout shelters (with the famous Vault Boy logo, where a boy raises his thumb in the air with a happy look: the iconography is exactly the same in the series). We also find the Brotherhood of Steel and their equipment. The historical, or rather uchronic, events of the series are the same as in the game. Everything takes place in the exact same universe.
Not to mention the (colossal) number of winks. It starts from the beginning, when Lucy introduces herself: she then sets out her skills, her abilities, as if she were an RPG character. It’s hard for fans not to think about the “SPECIAL” system, in the game, which allows you to personalize the character (strength, endurance, intelligence, agility, luck, etc.).
The famous moment of “dazzle” when you come out of the bunker, present in every game falloutis also integrated into the series as a spectacular moment.
The medicinal boxes, when Lucy needs to heal, are placed on the walls as in the game. The same for the mutant creatures: the series shows a Yao guai, as in Fallout 3.
The creators of the series seem to have found the trick to adapt a video game whose story cannot really be relied on to create a serial work in its own right. And with success, both the critics and the public are rave.
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