Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout series recently debuted, and it is winning hearts all over. It must have been a challenge for Jonathan Nolan to put all this together. After all, unlike Westworld, Fallout’s popularity is pretty widespread. Gamers everywhere had their eyes set on this series, wondering if their favorite post-apocalyptic world would get justice here.
It did, and how? It’s a very well-made TV series that is an adequate mix of humor and grittiness. It is pretty obvious that the creators took extra care in learning everything about this world and then going about creating this series. But besides everything the Fallout series does, game director Todd Howard has one more thing to add to its list of achievements.
Todd Howard suggests the Fallout series does something that even games failed to do!
Ever since its inception in 1997, the Fallout series has developed a massive fanbase. This fanbase only increased when, in 2008, Bethesda released the first-ever open-world 3D rendition of this franchise.
Turning this series into a truly 3D open-world RPG experience was a bold step. A very focused role-playing game needs no distraction, yet Fallout 3 made it work. It gave players distractions, numerous landmarks to explore, and a comprehensive story to experience.
But still, after all the effort one had put into that game, something lacked. Game director Todd Howard notices that they have to always keep in mind that these games are mostly set in a post-apocalyptic future. After the great war, after everything was destroyed.
This meant they could not show what came before. In normal times, the times when civilization was thriving, all these things were just left out of the picture. They tried to show that at the beginning of Fallout 4, but not too much. This is where the series succeeds.
“The other thing I wanted to do in the show that we do a little bit in Fallout 4 and some other places is show the past. Because one of the best things about Fallout is the world before the bombs fell. It’s really unique—this post-nuclear future that we wanted to have, and then it all goes wrong. And the show has the ability to show the past in a way the games never did.”
This makes sense too in many ways; for one, many gamers would not understand. After all, they are paying the money to experience a wasteland, not see the world before that. Glimpses of that world can be dropped here and there, but focusing a sizeable part of a game on such sequences would not do them any good.
On the other hand, a TV series is required to give fans a lot of exposition. As everyone knows, it’s not just the fans who are watching a series; a bunch of newcomers watch it too. Hence, they have to show a lot of the older world and explain to people how it all happened.
There’s a reason Todd Howard never wanted an adaptation of The Elder Scrolls
Todd Howard has made it pretty clear that he never rushes into making an adaptation of his games. He suggests that Fallout series creators just clicked with him; hence, it was made in the end.
This is why he would continue waiting for the next best thing for the Elder Scrolls. He suggests that he does not know how it will happen in the future, but currently, nothing is going on. On the other hand, Elder Scrolls 6 would probably hit the console near you in the future, as they have already announced it.
