Here we are finally at the end. There isn’t much to say about episode 7 since it went full retard on the Marvel writing. If there was any attempt to slow down the “comedy” nature of the script, they quickly abandoned that idea as shown in this episode. It’s like every modern writer has graduated from the Joss Whedon school of writing. It’s insufferable. I can tolerate maybe one or two witty jokes occasionally, but having every scene end this way is extremely grating. It might actually turn your brain into sludge if exposed to too many movies written in this way. I might be repeating myself, but this show allows for zero tension. It’s like the creator of the show is scared of having the audience perceive any kind of feeling except childlike joy in its overabundance of nostalgia.
The big unmasking
The show ends with everything getting revealed, aka, the big vault conspiracy and what the scientist’s skull was carrying and the whole thing is so extremely dumb. The show continues to retcon a huge part of the franchise, especially the important and only true Fallout parts. With that I mean, Fallout 1 & 2, New Vegas, and Fallout Tactics. In Bethesda’s eternal wisdom, they decided to change who started the war since we apparently can’t blame commies on that anymore. So now, instead it’s Vault-Tec themselves that released the nukes, the actual builder and creator of the vaults. The reason why they started the nuclear war was because of capitalism. Jesus H.
What is a better way to get rid of the competition than nuking them and outliving them all? Well, to me the problem here is pretty clear. What profit is there to be made when the whole world is reduced to ashes? There was also talk about starting fresh – to create a new civilization with their idea of man’s future as a blueprint, but I found that to ring pretty hollow. All I heard was CEOs screaming about how much money they could make through monopolizing the market. The apocalyptic wasteland market, I assume. Not sure about that purchasing power here, but what do I know? The show even managed to drag Mr. House into this mess. Everything about him that was told in New Vegas was seemingly wrong, as with him, just like the other big company kahunas, it all comes down to money. What happened to the aspect of him making predictions on the nuclear war? And what happened with him preparing himself for the inevitable, especially now when he is directly involved in the destruction, even told so to his face? It ruins the mystery of the character and makes him out to be a regular doofus, instead of the mastermind genius he was in the game. Anyone can predict the nuclear holocaust when you are told it will happen. And he still gets it wrong in the game now, somehow!
I can’t help to find it ironic considering Amazon made this show. A mega-company that has been in the news many times because of its treatment of employees and other shady corporate things. Virtue signaling is a hell of a drug. I found it funny that the story is entirely based on corporate ownership of ideas and products. It all comes down to who owns the rights to “cold-fusion”, with the former owner of the company that invented cold-fusion wanting revenge because she got bought out by evil Vault-Tec. Now, 200 years later she wants to give free unlimited energy to the wasteland people, and for some reason, the vault dwellers involved in the Vault-Tec conspiracy don’t want that for some reason. So NCR ends up being wiped out.
Somehow still, she ends up as the NCR remnant leader. All 50 of them that are left. It’s not clear how she survived, but I assume she was cryofreezed from before the war. Even so, the final battle eliminates the remains of NCR with Brotherhood of Steel standing as the winners. However, before she dies, she makes the defiant move of turning the power on and granting the wasteland unlimited power. There are two highly amusing things about this. When she turns it on, you can see how buildings all around the wasteland light up. You can see windows in skyscrapers turn yellow and the streetlights of the winding roads through the wasteland being illuminated. First off, how is the electrical grid still operational? And secondly, that must be some very good light bulbs, considering they are over 200 years old and still plugged in!
Now my question here is, why wouldn’t BoS just turn it off? They won after all and exterminated their opposition. I don’t see how this is viewed as a win for her. BoS is the only winner in this tale. NCR is dead for good, and they have infinite energy now thanks to her. Overall, I find the motivation for all factions questionable. One example is Enclave. The incredibly cold fusion tech comes from them by having a scientist go rogue and run off with the technology. You would think Enclave would be a bit concerned about this, but we never see them again. I guess unlimited energy wasn’t that interesting, compared to screwing around with the FEV virus.
What is up with the factions?
BoS comes off as the winners in the end, however, they are not exactly portrayed in the best light. They seem to be in decline, ideology-wise, with their leader having a crisis and wanting to create a new better Brotherhood. Why? He is the leader. He should be able to turn it around if he believes they are losing their way. And why is he going to split off now that they have an infinite energy source? They don’t seem to be that bad off either overall, considering they are still the best-equipped force by large and have multiple functioning vertibirds that can reach anywhere in the wastes. Not to forget the massive zeppelin at their disposal. The factions come off as confusing, and most things are just handwaved. Morale is low, if we go by the regular grunt, but the faction seems as awesome as ever.
If we go with what the show wants us to think, NCR was in a bad state before getting nuked. Yet, as usual, nothing is shown, we are just told. Anyone who played New Vegas knows how large that faction was, consisting of hundreds of thousands of citizens. Now all gone with about 50 people remaining (that also end up dead). We know things were not hunky-dory with NCR in New Vegas, but if we go by the “good” ending, NCR gets Hoover Dam, takes over The Strip, and defeats Caesar’s legion. Wouldn’t that be a huge boost for the faction, in both morale and resources? It appears not since they were in steep decline in the show. Sure, Bethesda and the scriptwriters can pick whatever canon they want from New Vegas, however, picking a shitty ending would just make playing the game pointless. And we are not told what canon they picked. Also, I find Bethesda going hard on New Vegas still being canon on the whole, reaffirming that the timeline still works out is a major cope. In the show, they never mention that NCR was in decline socially. When they mention “the fall” of NCR, they always talk about it in reference to the damn nuke that destroyed Shady Sands. I don’t believe the fall of Sandy Sands means anything else than it was nuked. Bethesda just got lucky they can go back on it, thanks to how it was presented in the TV show.
In closure
There is much more that I can talk about, but what would the point be? It’s pretty clear to me that Bethesda does not care about making a show accurate to the lore since the number of retcons should be proof of that enough. I wouldn’t care if this show wasn’t canon, but it is. The world of Fallout has now once again been wiped clean. If they only screwed up their own brand of Fallout lore on the East Coast it wouldn’t be so bad, because who cares about that? The Bethesda games might have fun gameplay, but their stories make no sense since everything is just copypasted stuff from the West Coast. Same factions, same enemies but somehow impossibly transported across the nation with the flavor of the 50s gone way overboard. However, they had to mess with things they didn’t create, and that makes the whole thing suck.
That is of course not the only thing that irks me. I have complained about the quirky Marvel writing more than once already, so I won’t do it again. All in all, it’s just disappointing. Because I think a show based on let’s say New Vegas would have been great, if they kept stuff as it is, and went on from that. That will never happen now. What truly gets me about this whole thing though is how many find the show the best thing ever since sliced bread. It feels like we are beginning to enter the timeline of Idiocracy – when absolute drek like the Fallout show is regarded as some kind of masterpiece. I do find it a bit odd too, seeing how panned the Halo show is. Yet for some reason Fallout makes the cut, and is considered good. Oh well. Let’s see how the next abomination turns out. I think Warhammer 40k will be the next show based on something gaming-related. And wouldn’t you know it, it will also be an Amazon production. Oh boy!
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Vault 