Well we saw clean running water, a prosperous looking city that looked almost pre-war, we saw plenty of military marching around. We didn’t get a complete breakdown of their society, but I think they did a good job of showing “this guys got their shit together and are actually making progress in fixing things”. Which is not bad in a single scene.
So, this is an easy fix. You’re simply just going to have to play all of the games or at least a few of them and fill in the gaps with careful research into backstory on the others 
.
Now, I’m afraid you’re going to have to put your medical practice/patients on hold for at least a couple of weeks. Also, ideally you’d want to cut back on interactions with friends and and family - maybe 1 hour a day with the wife rationed out over mealtimes?
Speaking of meals, you should concentrate primarily on snack foods during this period, particularly those high in sugar, sodium, caffeine and carbohydrates. This is very important to set that post-apocalyptic mood. Are you a fan of Mountain Dew and Cheetohs? If so that could cover most of your diet right there!
Also remember this is all about efficient lore-gathering gaming. So you need to minimize other unnecessary distractions. Things like reading, exercise and especially more than few hours of fitful sleep are impediments to your goal. Avoid them!
Enjoy!
One bit of fanservice I’d like to see is for them to show us a baseball game in 2077, and have it be exactly like Moe Cronin’s description of the game in Fallout 4 - a bloodsport where the opposing teams use their bats to beat each other to death and the pitcher aims his ball to crack players’ skulls open before signing the ball and giving it to that player’s newly-orphaned children.
With what they’ve shown us of pre-War America in the show, it seems like it’d fit right in.
…..Not really though. They are standard canon now. They are the subject of an entire DLC in Fallout 3, you can encounter one in Fallout 4, Fallout 76 they are a regular appearance constantly invading Applachia *(*the nature of that game is up for debate–I subscribe to the “simulation theory” so Zetans showing up in 76 means to me that whoever is running the simulation knows they exist outside the vault).
I have Fallout 76 but I only played it for a few hours and lost interest. The whole “no human NPCs” thing was a major turn-off. I understand the game has gotten better since release and there’s actually a real plot now instead of just “wander around and read a bunch of logs about how everyone died”, but I’ve yet to get around to trying it again.
Watched Ep 1. Sensational.
I was looking out for that and totally missed it. I guess that I was distracted by the declaration of independence.
Episode 3 thoughts;
- Looks like the recently-ghoulified Thaddeus has found himself a job! Prying open pre-war soda bottles for caps doesn’t seem like it would be a viable way to make money this long after the War, but I guess it’s canon in the games that there are just utter shitloads of unconsumed pre-War food still out there. “MOST KIDS ARE DEAD BY THIS AGE!” is a hell of a motto. I don’t think we’ve ever seen child ghouls before - I wonder if they still age into adults or if they’re stuck in prepubescent bodies forever like Claudia in Interview With the Vampire? I digress.
- Macaulay Macaulay Culkin Culkin (yes, he legally changed his middle name to “Macaulay Culkin” a few years back) himself is the new Legate! Somehow this feels like a natural progression for a kid who spent his formative years terrorizing inept burglars with homemade death traps. I love the way they had him take off the helmet and turn around for the dramatic face reveal.
- I love Lucy’s attempts to mansplain Roman culture to the Legionaries, followed up by her indignantly declaring that she’s not a virgin “not even counting all the cousin stuff I did”.
- So the original Caesar is dead and two factions have been fighting for years over whose name he wrote down in the note he stuck in his pocket. That’s a somewhat more undignified death than I always gave the man born Edward Sallow in my playthroughs. I at least gave him the honor of barging into his tent, shooting him in the leg, and letting him get a shot in at me before I slaughtered him and his bodyguards before fighting my way out of the Fort. (It was never quite as satisfying as Fus Ro Dah’ing Ulfric Stormcloak to death, but now I’m mixing up my Bethesda deuterantagonists.) Seems like the factions have a Korean DMZ thing going.
- Cooper cutting the infected flesh out of his own thigh was brutal. Probably not the first time he’s had to do that, either. Dogmeat is a good boy.
- Back in the “meanwhile in the past” segments, the VFW function authentically looks like a few that I got dragged to as a kid with my grandpa who was a Corpsman in Korea. The award recipient telling the story about Cooper was actually pretty heartfelt. I wonder if Cooper and the MC of Fallout 4 crossed paths during the Anchorage campaign?
- So Mr. House smearing Cooper as a Commie is gonna be what results in him getting blacklisted and resorting to doing kid’s birthday parties? They’re REALLY turning him into an unlikeable bastard in this version, and I never even agreed with his ideals in the game where he’s arguably the best shot New Vegas has at restarting the Industrial Revolution.
- Quintus retelling the origin of the Brotherhood as a holy rebellion in the name of God is interesting. The Yosemite elder coldly telling him she doesn’t go for religious stuff, even more so. Xander Harkness (which is kind of a weird name for someone so visibly Indian) is clearly a true believer in Arthur Maxson’s fascist secular vision for the Brotherhood, and he’s trying to groom Max into taking his side in whatever fight is coming between the east and west coast Brotherhoods.
- When Boone tracked found himself alone staring down the Legion through a sniper scope while they had his wife prisoner, he shot her to spare her from what they’d do to her instead of trying to fight them all himself. Cooper clearly is a LOT ballsier than Boone was.
- Dogmeat is a good boy.
- Camp Golf is apparently still intact, if abandoned. EXCEPT FOR VICTOR! That’s not a character I was expecting to see pop up in the show. I like the implication that he and Cooper have a history at this point.
- They’re really playing fast and loose with geography here, even more so than in season 1 where they were jumping all around LA. Victor mentions rangers up in the hills near Camp Golf, which is on the shore of Lake Mead, then we cut to Cooper within eyesight of Primm, halfway across southern Nevada. Gotta squeeze as much fanservice into eight episodes as we possibly can, I guess.
- Of course Cooper also has a history with the desert rangers. I guess he’s had run-ins with EVERY faction in the American southwest over the last 220 years. I guess these rangers are the equivalent of the Japanese holdouts who refused to stop fighting WWII long after Hirohito surrendered.
- Xander charging into battle with a securitron, armed with a super sledge, to the tune of the Star-Spangled Banner, is one of the most beautifully grotesque satires of Americana that I’ve ever seen.
- And OF COURSE Cooper just strolls right into Caesar’s tent, because he’s got a history with them too. Selling out the desert rangers to buy Lucy’s freedom is cold, but I guess that’s the kind of calculus you need to survive for two centuries in the wasteland. On a D&D alignment chart, I guess that would make Cooper Neutral Evil, compared to the Legion and Mr. House being Lawful Evil, the NCR being Lawful Neutral, and Lucy being Neutral Good. Dogmeat’s alignment doesn’t matter, because he is a good boy.
- Cooper still has the lighter his old pal from the Corps gave him before the War. He is a softie at heart, isn’t he?
- …And it turns out Max and Xander were raiding Thaddeus’ soda factory. I was REALLY hoping Max would do the right thing and not let Xander slaughter the ghoul kids. I’m glad he did.
Things are finally starting to happen., but we STILL haven’t made it to the fireworks factory.
I am pretty sure the Kaiser/Caeser stuff was a reference to a real world fan debate I remember seeing online about the game.
It’s pretty accurate to the game. “Seezer” is how it’s pronounced in modern spoken Latin which is largely derived from Church Latin, and that’s what the non-Legion Nevadans call him in-game, but Edward Sallow learned the classical pronunciation from his textbooks when he was a Follower of the Apocalypse, and insisted on “Kai-sar”. Which is also why the Legionaries pronounce “ave” as “ah-way” instead of “ah-vey”.
On another note, I saw people pointing out on Reddit that “Harkness” was the name of the fugitive synth that the Institute is trying to track down in Rivet City in Fallout 3. Could that be a hint that Kumail Nanjiani’s character was a synth the Institute sent west to infiltrate the Brotherhood? Presumably the Brotherhood is gonna want to salvage his power armor, since AFAIK they don’t have the ability to actually build new ones - it’ll be interesting if they’re taking it apart next week and accidentally rip his head off and find out he’s made of metal on the inside.
….Gen 3 Synths arent made of metal….thats a huge part of the story of FO4. They are 3d printed with bone, muscle meat, etc. Completely identical to humans except the tiny synth component located in their head.
I doubt they are going that way…but if they take off the helmet…maybe they could find it poking out of the skull, but they wouldnt know what it was.
I honestly think thst might be the last we really see/hear of the Commonwealth until the end of the season.
The production values of this show are off the charts wonderful. I am in awe of how faithful they are to the look, feel, and mood of the games, while still telling a coherent and enjoyable story. Not in my wildest dreams did I expect it to be this good.
Replicating the games have been one of this show’s strengths. The vaults are perfect. The robots. Everything. You can tell the crew are long time fans.
As the real Julius Caesar maybe said: “Wenny, Widdi, Wiki”
I recently watched someone do playthroughs of Fallout 1 and 2 (in bits), and anyone who has watched this series could understand and recognize just about anything from those playthroughs with zero experience with the video games. That’s how faithful this show is.
I think they made some great strides in “no-nose” special effects in Season 2; I find Cooper’s missing nose much less distracting now.
Meanwhile, the ghoul kids were distracting to me. But yeah, Cooper seems really natural.
There are some scenes where it’s quite obvious that they’re filming in front of a giant green screen (Hank in Vault-Tec HQ, and Xander standing in the hangar door at Area 51, to name the ones that jumped out at me), and being able to see it is a little offputting, but other than that the effects and production values have been great.
200+ years into the future I’m pretty sure Xander’s family hasn’t recently immigrated from India (or Pakistan, which is where the actor is from). His name shouldn’t be any “weirder” than a character with obviously African ancestry being named “Maximus”.
This is exactly how companies need to be using IP. Steal the setting and the world, write your own story. It almost totally shuts down purist complaints when there is no plot to mess with.