The Good Doctor

For me it’s more the hope that Microsoft or Bethesda one day outsources another game to someone else like with New Vegas and Fallout Shelter. Hopefully more like New Vegas than Fallout Shelter. Or that pigs fly and Bethesda hires a competent writer or two and at least one person who knows what "RPG" means.

I can only ever say "fair" to someone who doesn’t care. Guess I still do, despite all the crap we’ve gotten over the years. I still assume the date of "the fall" must’ve been a typo, since it was still the capital in 2281. But I think that the rest of that assumption makes sense with what we’ve been shown.

Hell yeah! I knew you would.

If by extreme events you mean like Shady Sands getting destroyed and the NCR falling, then I think it does and should befit both. The main difference is that the biggest example of something like this happening in TES (Red Year) was handled really well, with good writing to back it up, and the world reacting to it and growing from it in organic and believable ways. That could’ve been the case with the NCR. Fallout fans just weren’t so lucky.

And?? Fuck Fallout. What’s your impression so far? Use spoilers.

In the show’s own lore, Shady Sands doesn’t appear to have been the seat of the NCR’s federal government anymore by the time it got nuked. The sign said it was "The first capital of the NCR", suggesting that it had relocated, likely as a result of whatever "the fall" is. But even as the capital, Shady Sands was just one state of many, and arguably not even the most powerful or important. In Lonesome Road, you can argue to Ulysses that all the missiles in the Divide wouldn’t be enough to destroy the NCR, and he acknowledges this as true. That’s why his plan is to nuke a stretch of the Long 15 instead. Cut the NCR off from the Mojave, guarantee the Legion takes Vegas, and position Caesar to invade California like barbarians sacking Rome and do what a few bombs couldn’t. Which sucks, doesn’t it? Three games of worldbuilding out the window. And even if it must be destroyed, New Vegas set up several compelling ways to do it, and instead Bethesda went with the only one that had a good explanation for why it wouldn’t work.

Like I said, I really don’t care what other people think or feel, just like I don’t expect them to care what I think or feel. Bethesda could go a step further and turn Fallout into a full-blown slapstick comedy with fart jokes, Family Guy cutaways, and no coherent storyline to speak of, and there’d probably still be millions who’d lap it up based on the brand alone. That wouldn’t get me to pretend I think it’s good.

To be clear, I do not dispute this at all. Fallout has always and should always have some degree of humor in it. That is not mutually exclusive from telling stories that are serious or good. Even Bethesda has tried in the past to balance the two, they just suck at it.

You won’t hear this often, but Fallout 76 did it better. Most characters in that game were born prewar, still remember civilization, and thus behave like relatively normal people who’ve just been forced to adapt to a shitty world. They didn’t instantly devolve into crazy wastelanders and primitive tribals; that’s implied to be the fate of future generations. The exception were the raider gangs. But they had been trapped in the mountains with limited resources and forced to survive on murder and cannibalism until the passes cleared up, which is a far more reasonable explanation for rapid degeneration than simply losing one city in the middle of a developed nation.

That sounds like an halfway interesting story. I wish they’d told it. Although I don’t see how things could’ve gotten so bad in so little time. It feels like the place got nuked a century ago and that the NCR is all but forgotten (except by those weird NCR cultists in the vault… which only enhances the point), not a recent event that we’re watching survivors pick up the pieces from.

Then it’s not the NCR. It’s a fractured bunch of independent mini-states. I’d call it a failure of the show that it never gave any reason to believe such things exist. But I’ll take Todd’s word for it. But Todd also confirmed that Shady Sands got nuked very shortly after the events of New Vegas, so that excuse shouldn’t work unless we’re to believe that the nation immediately collapsed and divided itself right after it happened. Which would be pretty weird considering that a willingness to protect its citizens (even at the expense of others) is one of the few positive traits that the NCR is actually consistently shown to possess. It’s the entire purpose of the Rangers and groups like those missionaries who started a mini war in Freeside over a small group of Kings bullying their citizens.

If this is true, it is only because Bethesda themselves don’t take it seriously and treat the setting like a quirky playground where anything can happen. Fans of the West Coast games tend to take the lore very seriously and always have.

I disagree, pretty fundamentally in fact. But we can save it for a Discord call or something because I don’t have the time or energy for texting an argument right now.

So basically "The NCR is very big, but we’re not talking about them except in this one location". Fair enough. But if they’re still alive and well outside of L.A., then why does Maximus say they’re gone, why are Moldaver’s remnants getting no support, and why weren’t the citizens who survived relocated to other states?

That said, if Bethesda were to give Sawyer permission to make an isometric Fallout spinoff using the Deadfire engine, I would be stoked. Regardless of perspective, Obsidian are good enough at their job that they retroactively improved certain elements about Fallout 3, so if anyone could make repairs to the setting after the damage done by the show, it would be them. Doubt it ever happens, though, considering the alleged jealousy at Bethesda over New Vegas being the fan favorite.

Nah, Pete would’ve told the diehards to grow up or go play Pong if they want to live in the past. I don’t think Emil was trying to insult anyone; it just comes across that way because he’s a bad writer. As much as I would love to see more isometric, the Fallout series works well enough in 1st/3rd person. Gameplay perspective is the least of my issues with Bethesda’s handling of the IP.

Someone on Reddit found proof that the airship in the TV show is actually the Prydwen. Meaning the promo where they gave it a different name was either a mistake or intentional misdirection. I honestly prefer this, because the BoS building a second one-of-a-kind airship out of a limited supply of scavenged Enclave parts was one of the things that bothered me. Also means that either the BoS or Minutemen ending is canon and the Institute is destroyed. Was a fair bet anyway, considering the current power of the BoS, but this pretty well confirms it. Maxson’s most likely still alive, then.

I haven’t watched Joe in years, but even when I did, I learned to ignore his movie and TV reviews after a while. He is a solid example of "stay in your lane", because while he’s great at reviewing video games, I recall his coverage of other media being pretty awful.

I actually do have one retraction from my earlier complaints about the show. I thought it was really egregious that Maximus gets enraged towards Hank at the end over nuking the NCR literally seconds after he just finished helping wipe out the NCR remnants. But in hindsight, Lucy probably would’ve told him about this particular group being the ones who massacred her vault. He’s loyal to her, so I can believe that maybe he’d be okay with stomping them out. Though I will say that this conversation should’ve been in the show at some point, not something for us to infer happened off-screen. And I still think the scene would’ve improved by showing some recognition that he is killing the very people he wants to avenge, even though I now buy that this is something he’d ultimately go through with. I still consider Maximus one of the weaker and less coherently-written characters throughout the show, but this scene isn’t as bad for him as I originally accused.

Indeed. And to the show’s credit, those are the areas where the show shined most. At least with the two characters who got the most screen time. Anyone who’s watched much of Drinker could’ve called from a mile away that Lucy would be his favorite. He often gets called a sexist for calling out how lazy and pervasive the "Mary Sue/Girlboss" trope is in modern media. Lucy having a decent arc while subverting those tropes probably makes him feel pretty vindicated. It’s one more example he can point at to disprove the idiots.

Just a reminder of why New Vegas has the best, most compelling dialogue in the Fallout series, with many layers of thematic meaning and depth: "Down at the end of the hall is BALL storage. For jocks who like BALLS, like RICHIE MARCUS. Do you hear me, Betsy? RICHIE. LIKES. BALLS." -Doctor Borous, 2281

I saw that. Rare time I disagree with a Drinker take, though not the only. He’s definitely a "fun > quality" guy, which I can relate to when it’s not a setting I particularly care about and want better from.

I hadn’t thought about the consequences this show would have on the Followers of the Apocalypse. They were primarily based out of L.A. and it’s where their university was headquartered. That’s sad.

That’s still how I use them. Which is why I’d give it a 3/10.