With superhero movies losing steam in popular culture, video game movies are the following big thing on the horizon. In recent years, movies and tv shows based on interactive entertainment have steadily gained traction, including “Sonic the Hedgehog,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “The Last of Us.”
Hollywood's relationship with the younger art form has evolved from a way to make a fast buck to an inviting conversation about tips on how to translate the experience of playing a video game into watching it. Some projects do it with computer graphics (“Sonic”), others with animation (“Mario”). However, other video game franchises have it easier because they’re inherently cinematic (“The Last of Us”).
The best success story – and probably the most fascinating – is the interpretation of the creators Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet “Stand out.” What sets this eight-part Prime Video series other than other efforts is the way in which the source material is structured. In Bethesda Game Studios titles, players create their very own protagonist, the Vault Dweller, who’s banished to the wasteland to explore. Players have free will and the flexibility to drastically change the world.
Players meet the bizarre residents, form alliances with factions and, in some cases, determine who lives or dies. In crazier cases, players may even blow up a whole settlement. This can really make you unpopular. It's different from an easy platformer like Mario or a narrative blockbuster like The Last of Us.
How do you make a show with such an open premise? The creators use greater than 25 years of history and the splendidly strange tone of video games. The original 2D games lampoon American culture, politics, and capitalism, while the later games add a darker tone, a touch of paranoia, and an anything-goes mentality. (There's sophisticated alien sagas in “Fallout 3” and beyond.)
The TV show captures a fraction of that, but offers newcomers and longtime fans a tantalizing treat: a fresh storyline with characters and situations which can be just as memorable as anything within the video games. For those recent to the Fallout world, it's a dark and comedic tackle the post-apocalyptic world. The retro-future world of this alternate reality is each familiar and anachronistically strange. They consider Lucy, Maximus and The Ghoul, also often called Cooper Howard, as protagonists with different experiences within the wasteland.
Meanwhile, video game veterans will enjoyment of the references to the franchise. Everything is totally perfect, from the distinctive Vault-tec font to the way in which computer hacking is completed. In some ways, the Fallout show appears like it might have been a scenario written for a video game. Wagner and Robertson-Dworet have done an exceptional job making the world and story feel accessible to Fallout newcomers, but authentic to those that have spent a whole bunch of hours within the video games.
It's a difficult balancing act that the creators master skillfully while keeping secrets hidden within the interwoven narrative. Figuring out how all of the pieces fit together is a journey that just about appears like a video game quest.
Additionally, the plot that unfolds across the eight episodes is important as a part of the franchise's lore. This is essential because, unlike other media, video games allow curious people to go to the worlds they see on television and explore them as often as they need. They can watch the Prime Video show and if the world of Fallout piques their interest enough, they’ll enterprise into the wasteland themselves.
And that’s what “Fallout” fans recent and old have done. According to Steam data, “Fallout 76,” “Fallout 3,” “Fallout 4,” and “Fallout New Vegas” saw a rise in players jumping into the games. The titles rank in the highest 20 on the gaming service's top sellers list. A streaming show hasn't had this big of an impact on a video game since “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners” sparked renewed interest in “Cyberpunk 2077” after its vicious launch.
For fans, the tide is popping with video game movies and tv shows. The collaboration between Hollywood and video games creates high-quality, symbiotic projects because the two determine tips on how to present worlds that usually are not only enticing to explore with a controller, but in addition intriguing enough to maintain viewers from watching to captivate the tv.
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