I remember doing a post discussing season 1, and ALL the issues with it. Now that this season is over and we're very likely to get a season 3, wanted to share my thoughts as this is Amazon and Bethesda's main pull right now so much that Bethesda keeps adding free creation mods relating to the show for Fallout 4....while not fixing the ISSUES of Fallout 4...I digress so spoilers from now on just read TLDR at the bottom if you don't want them.
The issue with the first season was these main points:
-
Vault-Tec now the big enemy dropping the bomb and somehow roping in figures like Mr House to be part of the experimental vault design
-
NCR obliterated now shattered remnants and a group little better than raiders that end up getting wiped out by BoS
-
BoS being religious to the point of parody
-
Only one of the main characters was worth watching
-
Over use of mcguffin
So how did season 2 address this? Well for one, the House we saw season 1 was a stand in, a body double for the real Mr house and he is now back in play.
The cold fusion mcguffin it seems has now stopped being used as the plot driver as it was used to bring back Mr House. The focus seems to be the Enclave who will be the big bad and the ones who started the Great War.
The NCR are back in enough numbers and firepower to be relevant, taking over freeside if not the strip. This as Legion remnants quit infighting and move on New Vegas.
The character problem is still an issue, Lucy is STILL as naive as ever, only now getting suitable punishment for it from crucifixion to almost mind controlled, both times rescued by the Ghoul. Maximus is a bit better, having seperated from the Brotherhood and doing his thing following the Ghoul then fighting the deathclaws in NCR power armour.
Cooper got the most backstory again showing how because he got suckered into 'the right thing', he gave the president, the secret leader of the Enclave Cold fusion actually leading to the bombs dropping. Norm is unfortunately under played though he may have single handly ended the experiment in his vault. The BoS were shown to be several chapters that don't all act religious, commonwealth seems the most powerful even though all they sent was a representative to the West coast and now the teaser is that West Coast BoS after some infighting at Area 51 might be building a Liberty Prime...
Now does this satisfy me as a gamer who knows the lore? No as I am tired of the Enclave being used as the 'can't think of anything, er, Enclave is back!' solution. Not to mention how pominent fractions are wiped out as a footnote like The Kings. But it was competent enough to keep the more Normie crowd invested so didn't fall into a Witcher or Rings of Power pit. I also found it interesting there were no girl bosses in this season as Lucy ALWAYS needed saving in the end, the vault overseers were run circles around by a inbred support group and the most passive guy ever and Cooper's wife we thought was the big bad, turns out her divorce and decisions were by Cooper's direction and just playing along to protect their daughter from the still secret at the time Enclave which is interesting.
TLDR: season 2 competent enough to keep normies enganged and not directly piss off gamers.
The answer was no from announcement. I don’t watch the show and I know it’s trash, making the man character female lets me know it’s trash. Have the female character say “Hurr durr wanna fuck” let’s me know it’s mega trash
I just wish they'd use the attention on the franchise to fix their game again.
They ended up breaking it again with an anniversary edition/update....lots of dlc I owned for a decade suddenly not working..
The answer is always no. Modern TV shows always make a fun first season to hook you and then make every subsequent season rubbish. Stop biting the hook.
Was the first season fun? I only watched the 1st episode and didn't really care for the female lead.
I've seen the pattern enough times that I don't even bother with first seasons of new western shows anymore.
She's not a brown. White people can tan you know. Not everyone is alabaster shaded.
Too late, it was good enough for normies and didn't displease them like the other adaptations by streaming services like Witcher and Lord of the Rings.
We are the minority and only way to sway opinion to our side is just showing how cool the lore is like with operation sunburst than moaning about it as they hear that from the left already.
Not a fallout guy (going to finally play new Vegas this year though) but from watch synthetic man and reaper's reviews season 2 seems like fucking aids
It's essentially Fallout 4 in writing quality:
A lot of spectacle, little to no substance.
The subverting the legion and brotherhood to make them look like retarded losers is what stood out to me. The main girl character seems awful as usual, seems overall to not respect the lore. Just seems like typical modern slop
Main girl character looked obnoxious as fuck in whatever previews or clips I ever saw. The quirky female lead thing gets old very fast. Was hoping for some stoic male lead, but that was asking for way too much in modern shows from these platforms.
I'm so fucking tired of the "quirky adorkable" female character trope, the type of women who act like that in real life are insufferable and they ruin every show/movie they're in
Same. They are bad enough as side characters, but to put them as the main? Fuck that
The Legion one I KINDA can forgive as Graham said it himself, once Cesar dies, the Legion as it is in NV dies with him so this is just the remnants larping the glory years.
BoS they seemed to try to do a course correct basically saying the West coast BoS chapters are backwater compared to East coast which is why they're scared of the East Coast getting involved (and makes no sense when they ALL have airship and virtibirds), I think they're poorly written as unfortunately they have the best equipment to do spectacle (e.g. airship crashing to the ground)
Synthetic Man called it womanslop. No streaming shows are made for men.
I'm really using this to tell how fucked a future Warhammer series might be really..
“The surface is the experiment” - thought that was a cool line, wonder where they’re gunna take it. In the OG Fallout, apparently the “reason” (according to the co-creator) for all the vault experiments was so Vault-Tec could eventually use that knowledge to help them colonize space
There is something which I don't think they'll utilise in season 3:
In the lore, the location they hint the Enclave is in Colorado is the same location Vault 0 is meant to be with the AI to control all vaults. That would add to that statement.
Apparently - and I forget where I saw this, maybe a YouTube short or something - in Fallout Tactics they show this Colorado vault complex (not sure, maybe it was an enclave base in game too, I never played it), and it looks just like the Enclave base in the show. Plus one of the BoS chapters from the civil war plotline was based in Colorado. Which is all to say, maybe they are taking it in that direction
I would LIKE that to happen, unfortunately one of the things that hampers that is a pattern in modern writing where in order to make a threat look bigger, they'll erase previous fractions either as a footnote or as a small skirmish to make their current characters look a bigger threat.
That's happened A LOT in the Fallout show:
"Remember the Kings? Here's them as ghouls wiped out by a drugged up Lucy! Remember the Familes on the Strip? Too bad they got wiped out by Deathclaws that have apparently been let in by the Enclave. Remember camp Mccarran the massive NCR base? Here's credit picture showing they got wiped out by the Legion who died there also...."
It's bad writing if you suddenly have a previously notable faction just wiped out or reduced so they don't inconvenience you focusing on your main characters. It's why I don't think the Midwestern BoS will be a thing in season 3 in any degree.
Yeah, I wish they had acknowledged the Courier and the game somehow. We know the Yes Man ending happened, but beyond that we got nothing really directly tied to the game, and like you say, a lot of things shown which kind of ignore the game entirely or atleast gloss over it so hard we have no idea what actually was supposed to have “happened” in the interim
The finale was really bad. The whole season was built around the finale and it fell flat. And it's really silly how many characters were around before the bombs.
Plus side, a lot of them died like the trash they were....
...by literal roaches lol