The Fallout universe in 2024: from games to TV series

 

The release of the first part of the Fallout game took place on June 15, 1997, after a rather difficult period of development and a change of publishing studios.

 

The developers were inspired by science fiction classics like “The Passion of Leibowitz” and science fiction films – “Them”, “Brazil”, “City of Lost Children”, “Blade Runner”, “Mad Max”. We found echoes of “Batman”, “Ghost in the Shell”, “On the Beach” and even “Star Wars” in the game. It is also worth mentioning Roger Zelazny’s novel “The Prince of Light,” which influenced the game.

 

The plot of the Fallout games

 

The game takes place in the distant future, in the Wastelands that arose in the western part of the United States. Nuclear war between the United States and China occurred on October 23, 2077. After this, most of the world’s population died out. Some managed to escape in the Shelters, most of which accommodated 1,000 people. The first part of the game takes place in 2161-2162. Fallout takes place in Southern California.

 

The Fallout storyline is based on the adventures of the Vault Dweller. He receives the task of finding a water chip in order to save his native shelter from a water shortage. Vault 13 was supposed to open only 200 years after the nuclear war, but under the threat of imminent death, it was forced to send the Exiter on a search earlier.

 

The player has a huge range of actions, which dramatically increases the non-linearity of the game. You can search cabinets, tables, corpses of people and animals, open and close unlocked doors, try to steal from any character (not necessarily with a successful outcome). In certain places you can trade by selling, buying and exchanging items. Any creature can be attacked with bare hands or weapons, and a variety of objects can be used on anyone with different consequences.

 

 

Reverse statistics

 

The first Fallout was recognized by many publications as a cult computer game in 2007, 10 years after the game’s release. IGN listed Fallout as one of the 25 best PC games of all time.

 

In total, 4 parts of the game and 5 spin-offs and 3 additions were released. Since Fallout 3 in 2008, Bethesda has been developing and publishing it.

 

In general, the universe of Fallout games is considered a cult, but not as popular as some other games. The Fallout series from Prime Video, which was released in April 2024, changed everything.

 

On some platforms, the number of players in Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 has doubled, and the number of players in Fallout 3 has increased by 200%. On Steam, the maximum player count for Fallout 76 and Fallout 4 has doubled over the past week.

 

After the series was released, 83 thousand people played Fallout 4 simultaneously. Although back in early April, the maximum online gathering was only 15 thousand people.

 

At one time, the unsuccessful Fallout 76, thanks to the series and an 80% discount, updated its peak online. On April 14, 39 thousand people played it simultaneously, which is a record for Fallout 76.

 

 

Comparison of games and the Fallout series

 

The series turned out to be extremely attentive to the details of the game universe, but still in many moments it deviates from the canon of the franchise or makes significant changes to the lore. The differences from the games are not minor and in some places very significant. Here are the most striking and interesting differences between the games and the Fallout series:

 

1. The Pip-Boy bracelet in the series received new functions: the ability to wirelessly connect to devices and a goal tracker, which Lucy really helped.
2. The Fallout series retained most of the details about the vaults in the games, but also featured huge and never-before-seen vaults. Vaults 31, 32 and 33 were connected, which has never happened in the games.
3. In the series, ghouls (radiation survivors with long lifespans) are almost immortal and can heal wounds. To do this, they had to drink bottles of some kind of liquid so as not to go wild. In the Fallout games, you didn’t need to drink anything to stay normal, but in the later years they went wild due to high levels of radiation.
4. In the series, power armor also received a flight engine and a voice modulator. However, the main change was that you can’t even get out of the armor without a power core.
5. The games never gave much information about the causes of the Great War, other than the war for resources. The official gameplay explanation was that China and the United States fired missiles at each other. The series decided to voice one of the fan theories – the Vault-Tec company, which sells vaults, dropped nuclear bombs that destroyed the world. Allegedly, Vault-Tec dropped the bomb to ensure that their Fallout Vaults would be profitable and literally destroyed all competitors
6. The capital of NKR, Shady Sands, was not destroyed in the games, in particular in the chronology close to the series, Fallout: New Vegas. Overall, the destruction of Shady Sands and New Vegas in the series was a huge change from the games, and it leaves a lot of uncertainty for the entire franchise.

 

It is not surprising that after the huge success of the adaptation of The Last of Us, which, by the way, was also inspired by the authors of Fallout, for the second year in a row we are getting a reference transfer of the universe of the cult game into a mini-series format. Yes, there are shifted accents and fundamental differences in the narrative, but the Fallout series will still be interesting to fans of games and ordinary viewers. Note that in addition to these two game universes, The Witcher, Arcane, Halo, and Cyberpunk also received excellent film adaptations.