[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for Fallout season 1.]
When the credit roll on Fallout season 1’s finale, dangerous dad Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) is trudging towards a metropolis on the Wasteland horizon. It’s not simply any metropolis, both. It’s New Vegas — an iconic locale from the Prime Video present’s online game supply materials (primarily the aptly named Fallout: New Vegas). So it seems like post-apocalyptic casinos and Hoover Dam firefights are coming our manner in Fallout season 2.
Each are value getting hyped over — as are the various different superficial delights of the New Vegas setting. But there’s one other, deeper cause to get enthusiastic about Fallout hitting the Strip for its subsequent batch of episodes. If the video games are any information, shifting the present’s focus to New Vegas also needs to open up its underlying ethical framework. Certainly, New Vegas’ vivid neon lights might provide the shades of grey the live-action Fallout is at present lacking.
Don’t get me fallacious: Fallout season 1 has loads of ethical ambiguity — simply on a person degree. Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), Maximus (Aaron Moten), and even The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) are repeatedly compelled to decide on between what’s proper, what’s straightforward, and what feels good in an uncaring world that seemingly has no choice. The identical doesn’t actually apply to how season 1 treats Fallout’s numerous factions, although.
Positive, the Brotherhood of Metal is a little bit of a combined bag, and Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury) and her New California Republic remnant’s strategies early on are… excessive. However, typically talking, Fallout season 1 is pretty clear on who its goodies and baddies are. Vault-Tec? Unhealthy. The NCR? Good. And if we might eliminate the previous and get behind the latter, the Wasteland might be a Shady Sands-esque utopia, full with cold-fusion-powered avenue lamps and trams.
For Fallout season 1’s functions, this binary worldview works. It’s not even that a lot of a departure from a few of the faction-centric storytelling within the likes of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. However it’s not precisely nuanced, both — even in a world with 200-year-old mutant gunslingers. Selecting a aspect is black and white; except you’re breaking out by yourself, it’s NCR or bust.
However the New Vegas milieu calls bullshit on that. True, the NCR is a higher outfit than most, however its report isn’t precisely spotless. It’s a bit land-grabby and has at least one Mojave Wasteland bloodbath in its closet. In the meantime, New Vegas’ different large faction, ruthless Roman Empire cosplayers Caesar’s Legion — who should certainly present up in Fallout season 2 — engages in slavery. On the identical time, it additionally has a surprisingly well-articulated ethos rooted in serving the larger good, and takes some well-aimed jabs at the NCR’s shortcomings.
And within the center, there’s Mr. Home: the man who runs New Vegas itself, and who (as you may anticipate from a lord of Vegas) retains his playing cards near his chest. He’s a self-described autocrat but in addition has a daring, progressive imaginative and prescient for New Vegas’ future. As such, realizing who to aspect with in Fallout: New Vegas is hard (apart from the slavers; you by no means aspect with slavers). Fallout season 2 will hopefully comply with swimsuit.
No matter what New Vegas’ established order is within the present’s 2296 setting — the video games don’t provide a canonical reply on whether or not the NCR, the Legion, or Home is at present calling the photographs — our protagonists are about to enter a world the place choosing groups has very actual trade-offs. It’s not so simple as taking down Vault-Tec and waving the NCR flag when you set foot in New Vegas. There are drawbacks to Lucy and firm aligning with any faction. Perhaps there aren’t any good factions, interval.
It’s a sobering situation — but in addition one that would take Fallout’s storytelling to a complete new degree in season 2. So what else is there to say, besides “Viva New Vegas”?
Fallout season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.
