Patient Gamers

The words I'd use would be 'Space Opera' as it's bombastically big in scope and stakes. Even if the game wasn't as goshdarn good as it was for the time, the fact that they told one giant contiguous story that actually made sense (looking at you Ubisoft) keeps me coming back to it like an old friend.

Look up game mechanics and progression to see what style of char you want. 3rd person cover shooter w classes, squad mechanics, and RPG elements.

Avoid story and character spoilers as best you can.

Your save files carry over through the three games which was unique at the time and really ties the games together in a meaningful way.

I picked up the legendary edition trilogy and loved it.

My advise. Take your time. And don't worry about your choices. They don't matter. Just do what you feel is right and it will all work out.

Except for one thing. Whatever Jacob says. Do the opposite. His advise is always, at best, redundant, and at worst, catastrophic.

Ha, yeah I actually also haven’t purchased legendary edition, for that exact same reason. But it seems we are in the minority in boycotting EA play, so I usually don’t let it stop me from recommending this particular series.

For disclosure, I played all of them on xbox 360 back when they came out, and loved them. I also have friends who bought the LE and had a great experience, I watched them play a bit too and everything seemed to hold up very well

I just sort of ignored it initially thinking it will definitely flop after seeing a trailer or two. But I played it recently after a legendary edition replay and it's an ok game. The story and characters are pretty uninspired, there's no escaping that, but the gameplay, the combat, the exploration vibe all click. It also looks great. And the new mako is brilliant.

What I'm saying is it doesn't matter what some other adaptation has done, they need to focus on representing ME in a way that preserves its themes and story, what anyone else has done be damned.

As for Fallout, the acting was great, but no, I don't think the writers respect the source material. They respect the feel of the source material, for sure. I love the way most of it's shot, and I really love how the vaults are shown to be much more massive. Leaning into the cultish aspect of the Brotherhood of Steel was an awesome move and I think totally fits the path of their organization.

But, as I said in my last comment, there were a few key points about the Fallout world that they changed without much reason other than to give a new story a familiar setting. And I think that's just inherently disrespectful in a world where large swaths of land haven't been touched by the franchise.

It'd be just as easy to set it in Texas, or Illinois, or somewhere without a ton of solidified lore. But they set the show in a location with >135 years of post-war history and post-war development, that was under control of a nation so large it was manufacturing concrete and colonizing new lands. Then they kinda... just said their capital got nuked and they disappeared and the 12 survivors are communist now???

Also worth noting that East Coast Fallout and West Coast Fallout are very different thematically, with East Coast focusing on rebuilding and West Coast focusing on humanity repeating the same mistakes that led to the Great War (War Never Changes...).

The show wears Fallout's skin, for sure. There's also many dialogue exchanges that feel like nods to how the world works in-game, and I love that. But that doesn't make it a great adaptation, because the Bethesda Fallout games also look like Fallout. And they really shirk exploring the franchise themes in favor of making a zany wasteland to explore.

I'm no hater of those East Coast games, I love Fallout 3 and I've put a lot of time into Fallout 4. But they do really feel like a totally separate take on the same world. With the show, the lens of that take is applied to the world of the original franchise and they definitely misrepresented how realistically ideology works in this world.

All that said, they left enough open-ended for me to want to watch Season 2. But I really hope they delve more into the actual ideologies at play. Because Fallout is not about a wasteland, it's about people, what we believe, and how we repeat our mistakes. They're already halfway there with how the main characters interact, I'm just hoping they apply that writing to the factions.

Longer rant over. Can you tell I'm into Fallout? 😅