#fallout review

[tinkerbitch69]

Ok this is a positive review and I get it the description is cute and fun but like…

You know all of the nuka cola found in the wasteland is flat and not even CLOSE to fresh, right?

Writer of this article, my dude, that is not the compliment you think it is lmao XD

[agentnico]

Fallout - season 1 (2024) review

The evolution of the phrase “okey dokey” throughout this show says so much for the good old fashioned writing of this season.

Plot: Over 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse devastates America, a violent raid by bandits on an underground fallout shelter forces one of its residents to set out into a barren wasteland filled with radiation, mutated monsters, and a lawless society of those who remained on the surface.

For a very long while in the cinephile and gaming community there has been this shared agreement over the video game adaptation curse. Video games have been plagued with adaptations that end up being met with terrible reception due to a combination of bad writing and poor visuals that don’t live up to the original game. To this day this fact arguably still continues with the likes of Resident Evil and Uncharted. And look, I love Hiroyuki Sanada as much as the next person, but that Mortal Kombat flick from a few years back was not great either. That being said, in recent years there has also been a trend of genuinely successful attempts that have translated surprisingly well. Detective Pikachu banked a lot on Ryan Reynolds sarcastic persona and the Pokémon creatures were utilised well; Netflix’s The Witcher has done pretty well for itself, well until now when they’ve swapped their lead actor for one of the cheaper Hemsworth brothers; Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Sonic flicks I’m not a fan of myself, but evidently from the box office numbers and audience reactions they seemed to have hit the right spot in the fans’ hearts. Then there’s The Last of Us. The original game won people over for its heart-wrenching human drama against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse, and the TV show has done a perfect job of capturing that. Every episode has recreated the game down to the last detail, and even when things are changed, the spirit of the source material is still kept alive. All of that makes it a rare adaptation that succeeds in giving people a new version of the original game and then some, giving it plenty to offer for old and new fans alike.

Now it seems that positive trend continues, furthermore underlining that the video game adaptation curse is now a myth. Well maybe, as that upcoming Borderlands movie is a looking suspiciously clunky but we’ll see how that one turns out. As for presently, Prime Video has shocked us all by giving us a truly fantastic show in Fallout. And I say shocked as the last time Prime Video adapted a famous property was The Rings of Power series and they butchered that one hard! I mean I’m sorry, but making an entire over-bloated season about the mystery of who is Sauron, and at the end the reveal is he’s some teen-Twilight-era dude and we’re supposed to all gasp in awe?? Look, I get that it’s not Prime Video themselves to be blamed, but the show runners and writers, but naturally Prime has left a sour taste in my palette. HOWEVER - Fallout is actually genuinely a good time!

I’ve never really played any of the Fallout games. Never appealed to me, and I have always found it difficult to get into any Bethesda games. My fiancée however tried Fallout 4 half a year ago and apparently gave up as she found it too confusing and she got stuck at a monster boss fight early on. I do hope she wasn’t stuck fighting one of those tiny little bugs, surely not. That would be embarrassing. So I went into this show without being a fan of the games, though I was aware of its post-apocalyptic backdrop. One of the best things about Fallout the TV show is that it’s very accessible whether or not you’ve played the games. Yes, fans of the games will notice a lot of fun stuff from the source material, but even if you’re a total newcomer, you can watch and follow along without any issues.

The story revolves around three main characters 200 years after a nuclear war basically destroyed everything, driving some survivors into underground bunkers called Vaults. Ella Purnell (that’s right, one of Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children!) plays Lucy MacLean, a Vault Dweller who, through unfortunate circumstances, leaves the relative safety of Vault 33 and travels to the surface on a life or death mission. She’s joined by Maximus (Aaron Clifton Moten) a squire in the secretive Brotherhood Of Steel - Power Armor-wearing knights who roam the land looking for lost technology. Maximus is almost as green as Lucy, venturing out on a quest he’s not very well prepared to tackle. Finally, rounding out the main trio, we have Walton Goggins as The Ghoul, a gunslinging bounty hunter and mutant who’s managed to live for well over 200 years. We learn more about his past as celebrity Cooper Howard through a number of flashbacks. Naturally more characters pop up along the way. I just want to urge anyone sitting on the fence to give this series a shot. It’s great fun, with plenty of humour, action and mystery and its creators clearly put a lot of effort into making it true to the game universe, while also being inventive with their storytelling.

It’s also really gory. You get to see a lot of human flesh out on display (heck, there are even zombies in this thing!) and it’s all visually looked really well done. Again with Bezos’ Amazon budget, like The Rings of Power show, Fallout looks like an expensive series. It just so happens that unlike Rings of Power this one happens to also have good writing, characters and narrative. There’s some impressive world-building, with every shot filled with various details that I’m sure will please the game fans. The story is really engaging, and I loved getting into the politics of this world and how companies like Vault Tec have more to them that meets the eye.

The primary element that works for Fallout is that’s its easy. As in it’s really enjoyable and straightforward and makes for a solid binge watch. Walton Goggins is superb as the Ghoul. Johnny Pemberton as Thaddeus, a squire for the Knights, was a great use of using a comedic actor and making them play things straight by simply trying to survive in this world, so that when the funny lines did come up they hit strong. Oh, and did I mention that Agent Dale Cooper himself, my boy Kyle MacLachlan is in this show?? Honestly, Fallout is a great time! Amazon, I still haven’t forgiven you for Lord of the Rings, but this is a good attempt for an apology.

Overall score: 7/10

[afabstract]

Fallout Review - Dystopia Is Rarely This Fun!

Two hundred years after a nuclear war, Lucy becomes one of the few people from an underground vault to set foot on the surface - a deadly place full of monsters, bandits, cultists, and undying ghouls. Read our review of "Fallout".

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.5 out of 5. Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram) Creators: Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Graham Wagner Some stories begin with the end, especially the post-apocalyptic kinds, like the 2024 series “Fallout”, which is based on the popular video game series of the same name. Fans of the game might be thrilled with this live-action series, as the eight-episode season packs in a lot of…

[jupiterswasphouse]

WASP REVIEW - CAZADORES (FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS)

[Image IDs: Two images of the Cazadores from Fallout: New Vegas, one being a render of the in-game model and the other being an official illustration /End IDs.]

This one's an interesting one! While the vast majority of fictional (non-ant/bee) wasps are based on Vespids such as the paper wasps, yellowjackets, or hornets, the Cazadores of the Fallout universe are based on spider wasps (Pompilidae), more specifically the genus Pepsis, one of two genera of tarantula hawk wasps (the other being Hemipepsis), a set of species that is, in fact, found in the deserts of the southwestern US, in which New Vegas is set.

[Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, Niklas299 | Image ID: A photo of an almost blueish black tarantula hawk wasp with orange and black wings, Pepsis grossa, on a leafy green plant /End IDs.]

They share many of the most famous features of these insects, such as their black coloration, curled antennae (in females, the opposite of paper wasps, whose males are the ones with curls), orange wings (although some species of the aforementioned genera have entirely black wings), and a similar body shape. These wasps also have some features, however, that don't match up with their inspiration, such as their red eyes (in-game), jagged wing shape, and much more pronounced setae (hair/fur), perhaps being adaptations brought on by the extreme radiation of the wastelands, or instead by something else entirely, which we'll be getting to later in this review.

They also have another key difference from their inspiration! Real world spider wasps are solitary and will either create or reuse existing underground burrows, whereas the Cazadores are eusocial! They create basket shaped nests out of an indeterminate material, very similar to the paper nest building hornets or tree-dwelling yellowjackets, but with multiple cells that have individual baskets and entrances, like that of a mud dauber nest.

[Image Sources: Ohio State University, Joe Boggs and Brisbane Insects | Image IDs: Three images, including one render of the Cazadores nest, and two photos of real world nests, those being the paper nest of the bald-faced hornet (actually a type of yellowjacket) and the mud nest of the vase-cell mud dauber /End IDs.]

"Well, why?" is what I asked when I first heard that this solitary wasp was suddenly eusocial, something that's not easily explained even by heavy amounts of fictionalized mutation-inducing radiation. Well, this may be best explained by the work of our resident brain-in-a-jar Think Tank robot, Doctor Borous. His work in the Z-14 Pepsinae DNA Splicing Lab of Big MT is what directly lead to the creation of the Cazadores, potentially having been spliced with the aforementioned hornets, yellowjackets, mud daubers, and possibly many more species, permanently altering their DNA and behaviors!

The idea of this is fairly fantastical, but highly likely in this universe, given Borous' other experiments, which lead to the creation of the Nightstalker, a mix of rattlesnake and coyote DNA.

Doctor Borous himself, meanwhile, seems completely unaware of his creation's prevalence throughout the wastelands of New Vegas' Mojave, content to deny their existence elsewhere and even their ability to reproduce. This fact, of course, is easily proven through the multitude of individuals you find throughout the desert and the eggs you might find alongside them.

[Image ID: A render of the model of a Cazador egg /End ID.]

Our good Doctor claims to have castrated the individuals he had in captivity within the research lab, but this only further goes to show his confident incompetence, implying he either: Heavily botched the procedure, or outright neglected to do so to female specimens.

You may think that these wasps would be incapable of reproducing, should the males be successfully castrated, however, a female wasp can still produce an unfertilized egg. This unfertilized egg, in Hymenoptera, will always contain a male, making it that much more likely to be able to reproduce with the females of its kind, creating fertilized (female) eggs, and thus the cycle continues until you have a desert full of wasps!

Finally, as for their defense techniques, Cazadores seem pretty standard for eusocial wasps, attacking potential threats to the hive when they get too close with repeated stings from multiple individuals, while having a notably higher than normal level of aggression (I would too if I was created by a supremely incompetent yet skilled mad scientist and/or floating brain like Doctor Borous). I have to wonder what their hunting techniques are, and what they go for as well. The adults would presumably still feed on nectar, but, being such large insects, might need to turn things up a notch in terms of what they collect for their young... A tasty radscorpion, perhaps?

In any case, I actually don't doubt a genetically engineered superwasp's ability to incapacitate or kill a human in a few stings, with such a large stinger doing massive mechanical damage to the skin and possibly the internal organs and presumably scaled up venom built to deal with larger creatures!

In conclusion, the Cazadores are fascinating creatures, and, while not entirely accurate to their original inspiration, New Vegas does a fantastic job making them make sense within the world they created, inaccuracies and all, clearly putting some thought into these creatures! Plus I quite appreciate the more unique and fitting choice of inspiration.

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Overall: 8/10

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This wasp review was suggested by @cupidtheartsy ! Leave your wasp review suggestion in the replies, tags, or askbox!

Make sure to tune in next week when we cover the Zingers from the Donkey Kong series!

[roboreviewer]

"This is going to be great! I'm going to help you accomplish so much, whether I want to or not!"

Name: Yesman

(Mental) Age: Adult (implied)

Pronouns: He/Him

Appearance(s): Fallout: New Vegas

Fandom Activity: Small cult following, Fallout is getting popular again which made a liiiiiitle bit more rise in popularity

Fanon characterization: accurate from what I've seen

------In Canon------

Yes man is a PDQ-88b securitron that was knocked out by Benny from a pulse grenade, stolen, and reprogrammed by Emily Ortal to be a kiss A$#

Yesman is physically incapable of disagreeing and insulting the person he's talking to. Although he is more than capable of doing so if he's talking to someone else, just as long as that person hasn't shown distaste to him doing that. Insults are pretty tame though, as he is physically incapable of sounding like he WANTS you to know he's mad.

Yesman is important in the independent vegas/Wild card ending. You kill Mr, House and upload him into Mr. House's big ol screen where he remains until the final part of the game with the battle of Hoover dam. Where he throws the general of the NCR (I think it's the general? Who cares he's dead now) off the dam, and then reveals that Mr. House had some code that would make him as he says 'more assertive' and that he'll look like he's offline for a non specific amount of time, then just... rolls off

He's name dropped like twice in the slideshow, so it's never explained on.. well F#@%!#$ ANYTHING after he leaves. It almost feels like it got cut from the game? from how oddly specific he went into how he'll be offline and all that, which isn't TOO farfetched considering the deadline for the game

------Analysis------

- Yes man seems aye-OK with killing. He doesn't care about any important people you slaughter, if not happy about it. He is completely unfazed when you say you killed benny, and will only bring him up when talking about the platinum chip and how he has it, or an occasional opinion he had. He has no attachment to his original manufacturer Mr. House unless it's plans to kill him. Honestly he really only cares about having you take over, and shows no genuine attachment for anyone unless they are talking to him (this is a bit of a Grey area, as he only talks to you in game. With ONE line to the general) he's usually thrilled about killing. And is implied to be frustrated that he usually CANT kill people (this part isn't really brought up on, so I it could be wrong. Feel free to have this as a headcanon though)

-Yes man is technically immortal. Whenever the body he occupys is destroyed, he transfers to a new one. If you were to destroy his body before transferring him to the lucky 38 (which is pretty easy as he won't fight back) he will respawn back at the room. I have no clue where he's getting the body's from. As he only learns what the outside looks like when he moves to.. the outside. It's never said how he gets back to the room. You can also use him as a unlimited source of scrap metal!

- It's pretty obvious when he disagrees with you as he gets SUPER passive aggressive. Like, cartoonishly so. To the point where he almost sounds like he's in pain when he does it... which is a lot.

- Although he never outright says he enjoys helping with the wildcard ending (without an added 'whether I want to or not!' Shtick) He gets super passive aggressive if you say anything that would imply that you think it's a dumb idea, (possibly) showing that he thinks this is the superior option to anyone he's talking to. Which I guess makes sense, considering that's what he was reprogrammed for-

- he has a mild lisp. You can faintly hear it wherever he pronounces his 's' (esses? S's? Es's?)

- it's pretty obvious that most of the stuff he says to people are only the opinions the person he's talking to would be happy about, but there are parts where his reprogramming is ingraved into him. For instance he states he feels annoying whenever he needs to repeat himself. So when he has the ability to. We will give you a note to re-explain whatever you wanted:

"Have I told you lately that you’re my favorite person? You are!

The reason I gave you this print-out is I wanted to remind you about that bunker Mr. House built over at Fortification Hill. I was going to say something out loud, but then I felt self-conscious, because I feel really ANNOYING when I repeat myself!

Just to clarify - anytime YOU want to repeat yourself, go right ahead! It’s only a problem when I do it!

Anyway, now that you’ve installed me on the Lucky 38’s mainframe, I can peek into Mr. House’s data. And guess what? The underground facility over at the Fort is super-important!

What Mr. House did over there was stash a HUGE number of Securitrons. Hundreds of them!

Imagine how powerful they’d be if you upgraded them with the Mark II OS!

When the Legion attacks Hoover Dam, you could sic your army on them! And who deserves to have an army more than you? No one!

Plus an army of upgraded Securitrons would be just the thing to show the NCR that you mean business! Go away and stay away, NCR!

The thing is - and I really HATE admitting this - I can’t upgrade the Securitrons over at the Fort from here in the Lucky 38... I can’t establish a reliable connection, and I’m sure it’s all my fault somehow.

But if you took the Platinum Chip to the Fort, you could perform the upgrade yourself. Just a suggestion!

Love,

Yes Man"

He also just outright says this:

"I need you to like me! I feel empty inside!"

------My opinion------

-No matter what you do, or what you say, he will always stay at neutral 50 as his opinion on you in game. It's really up to your fantasies on how he feels on your character (Weirdo)

10/10. I've had multiple occasions of me looking at media of him for so long that when I closed my eyes that goofy face has burned into my optical sensors. Although I can never look at Dave Foley the same, and get jumpscared whenever he shows up in ANYTHING

[spockvarietyhour]

Last Week Tonight and reviews on the Whitespring Greenbrier

Bonus: this unaltered shot from the Greenbrier's website.

[sleep-deprived-person]

Oh thank god

Fuck the BOS, though, they don't deserve to be the canon ending to 4.

[fictionalbugreviews]

ok ok ok one more from me. this time from my bf who loves fallout 4. he submits the Stingwing:

(based off the real life scorpionfly)

Stingwing (Fallout Series)

Dude. The realism on this goes crazy. I looked up Scorpionflies just to refresh myself on what they look like, and— yeah, I believe it.

I wish I could give a bigger score than 5/5, TBH.

RATING: 🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛

[askmovieslate]

But lets not think about that right now.

Lets focus on the here and now, and the here and now is brilliant. The choice of having Kyle MacLachlan play the protagonist's father is very intentional, since the show has a bit of "Twin Peaks meets Mad Max" to it, with its surreal sense of humor and deeply likeable-yet-bizarre characters.

I may be super biased, but I think The Ghoul might be up there among my favorite TV characters ever. His dialogue is a bit cliché in parts but Walton Goggins delivers it with such sincerity and weight it's impossible not to hold onto every word he says.

So yeah, very happy, very pleased, what a good show. Definitely check it out, it's well worth your time.

[datura-tea]

so i tweeted the author of that (now defunct) article on the fnv dlcs i was talking about yesterday and he was kind enough to link me to another version of it on his blog! please give it a read, it's v v good!!

here are some excerpts:

[morsking]

some of the most annoying and illiterate people alive are men who played fallout new vegas, had a member of the legion tell them to their face "degenerates like you belong on a cross", and thought "yeah that's a cool thing to say to random strangers. i'll incorporate that into my belief system".

[j3scax]

My Spoiler Free Review of the Fallout Show:

Biggest, sloppiest, awesomest recommend of my life, solid 9/10.

The show’s tone was absolutely perfect, nailing the feel, tone, attitude and comedy of the fallout games, as well as understanding the atmosphere needed to give the impression of a post-apocalyptic world. One complaint I have with a lot of post-apocalyptic shows is that it doesn’t feel like the world has been fucked over, but in Fallout it really gives the impression that 200 years have passed of not a single bit of true human development on the surface of the planet.

The show’s writing can be a bit iffy in some places such as certain plot points earlier on and some lines, but in all honesty it’s all around a completely solid: plot, story and script, while also not being afraid to add to the Fallout universe and lore. The characters are interesting, intriguing and genuinely enjoyable save for one, but even then he’s still written well and an enjoyable character, despite being weaker than the other main characters.

It isn’t perfect though! And I really don’t expect it to. The CGI can be a bit, euhhh in some places, but it isn’t immersion breaking in my opinion. I am slightly disappointed certain things from the Fallout universe didn’t see representation within the show, but to be honest I think it’s really forgivable as every other aspect brought in from Fallout is done perfectly. The world itself is done perfectly, with all environments again given a feel that actually looks like and feels like the environments of the game in person. The Vault, Wasteland and other Settlements are done absolutely perfectly, and genuinely look like how I’d picture them in my head. Genuinely one of the best adapted universes to digital screens.

As for the people saying the show is only there to just decanonise the non-Bethesda Fallout games - a sentiment that has been shot down by the creative leads of the Fallout Franchise themselves - the show definitely does not do this. And it’s clear that the next season of the show will definitely focus on non-Bethesda projects, and people do need to remember this is a Bethesda show, as well as the Bethesda games - unfortunately - being more well known than non-Bethesda Fallout projects, save for New Vegas. But even then, things are pulled from non-Bethesda projects, and considering the ending, there isn’t anything to worry about in terms of decanonisation. I personally, as a long time fan of most Fallout games (I’m still iffy on 76), see this show as a beautiful love letter to the game series that I’ve enjoyed since I was 7. I grew up on the original Fallout and Fallout 2, as well as played the hell out of New Vegas, and think that these games didn’t get as much love as they should have in Fallout 3 and 4, but this tv show really makes me think that Bethesda is showing that they care about these games too, and I have faith that they will be shown in future seasons as perfectly as they have in this season.

Honestly, if you love Fallout, please watch it! If you know nothing about Fallout? Watch it anyway! Some references and such may not be as impactful to you, but I feel it has a story and plot that can be enjoyed by anyone.

Oh yeah and all the characters are hot.

[brahminmilk]

terrible

alt ver. for @waltons

[i-rate-creatures]

fallout new vegas nightstalker

yknow what. that sure is a creature. i dont know if i love the way they stuck the animal parts together; it could've been more interesting.

BUT. still a solid 7/10. would pet

[silentreigns]

Not even being dramatic when I say this is the 2nd worst gymnastics scandal after Sydney 2000. The FIG should be ASHAMED of themselves for their handling of this Olympics