While many video gamers are enjoying the “renaissance” that we’re going through currently via the high-quality TV shows and movie adaptations of video game properties, there’s still some hesitation when a new one is announced. After all, we’ve all seen just how quickly things can go from “good intentions” to “bad product,” and gamers are tired of seeing that with beloved franchises of the gaming space. To that end, the Fallout TV Series is about to hit Amazon Prime Video, and many can’t wait to see what the team came up with. Given the large scale of the Wasteland and its inhabitants, one might wonder how they tried to get “everything in there” for a single season.
That’s where they irony is. In a chat with ComicBook.com, writer Graham Wagner revealed that while the team did all they could to help bring the universe of the games to their show, they couldn’t get all of it in there in one shot:
“I think it was the great filter go getting 25 years of games, and if you’re a completionist, it can be 1,000 hours per game,” Wagner noted. “It’s story in every terminal, in every filing cabinet, just an amazing abundance of story and then we have eight hours of a season. And the moment it dawns on you just how little you can actually get in and get in effectively. We had a great group of writers, an amazing story team on set. Every nook and cranny of the frame is filled with stuff. But we still feel like we barely scratched the surface of the Fallout world in this first season. But we hope it’s a memorable scratch.”
That’s fair to note for many reasons. First, as he said, these games aren’t meant to be small. Just the last two mainline entries can take as long as you want, thanks to side quests. Second, each game isn’t directly connected outside of the world they exist in, as every game takes place in a different location. That’s why the Fallout TV Series isn’t a “direct adaptation” of the game’s world, as it’s their interpretation of another area that the games haven’t touched yet. There are plenty of references to the other games, like the Vault Dwellers, the Brotherhood of Steel, the Ghoul, and so on, but it’s their own thing.
But the tease of references and Easter Eggs will be enough to excite fans to watch the eight episodes and see what happens within them.