0:58 - As a life long Nebraskan two things about that “convincing facsimile of a pre-war Nebraska countryside.” 1: Nebraska isn’t nearly as vibrantly colorful and 2: NOWHERE in our state can you see mountains on the horizon. Now the drug fueled skinhead ruining a perfectly good picnic/shotgun wedding that IS fairly accurate. 😜

@krisspkriss

2 ай бұрын

Yeah, that picture makes me think of the foothills in northwest Kentucky or southern Indiana. Nebraska would have buffalo grass and hardy fescues, not a rich Kentucky bluegrass growing. On the other hand, I could drive point to countless vistas where the Laurentide Ice Sheet stopped and left flat land adjacent to beautiful foothills. I think they should do a Fallout game in that area, maybe Fort Knox, Ky.

@jmarquiso

2 ай бұрын

Reality wasn't the goal, idyllic was

@bradthebreadstick

2 ай бұрын

Nebraska in spirit

@SomebodywithaYouTubeaccount

2 ай бұрын

I wonder how many Nebraskans were on the production team and raised some concerns. They were probably brushed off by the heads, who did the whole "This thing is that thing; you can't tell me otherwise. Whatever either of those things are, that's what it is" routine

@LadyShinga

Ай бұрын

I mean part of the message of that is, I think, the romantization - of course it isn't that pretty in real life, it wasn't ABOUT real life, it is Plato's Allegory of the Nebraska

I think it says somthing when both I, someone who's never touched a fallout game, and my father, who is the type of fan who has an enormous fallout tattoo, both enjoy the show equally. Great show and great adaptation, what a concept

@danguillou713

2 ай бұрын

Your father have failed as a parent. Redeem him by downloading and playing rightaway!

@nefariousgremlin7554

Ай бұрын

That's why I like the fallout show so much, it is timeless. It communicates the ideas of fallout so effectively that it can stand on its own without any connection to the games. It feels like its own entity, not an appendage.

@louisvictor3473

Ай бұрын

So what you're saying is that the show is yet another example of how other people do Fallout much better than Bethesda?

@insertsomethingfuni2617

Ай бұрын

Can you people ever be happy or do you get dopamine from being negative all the time and never liking anything​@@louisvictor3473

@whoisanarnb

Ай бұрын

@@louisvictor3473 I mean the credits said Todd Howard was an executive producers

"Thinking eschatologically is a trap. If you act like the end is nigh, you stop preparing for the possibility that the world will go on." - Kyle Kallgreen

I loved the scene where the film projector is destroyed because it serves as a pretty good metaphor for the experiences of the duellers in Vault 33. As they became aware of the external threats posed by the outside world, their illusions of safety and order are quite literally shot and burned.

"If apocalypse is relative, if it's never the end, simply an end? If there is always another world? There's always another end of the world too." This is perfect! I love your analysis on this. You made me realize that the simple scene of telesonic projector broken, showing the distorted background isn't that simple, it's just amazing.

@JC_Cali

Ай бұрын

And as someone who's learned the horrors of indigenous genocide, it's that quote by the author that sums up both our lived reality and the show's presentation of its own so , so well!

"Cold war, sorry, Cold war 1" 🥶

"What is The End of the World?" It's a fantastic Skeeter Davis song, I can tell you that much.

@JevinJohnson-CloudShift

2 ай бұрын

Whats up with that name? _oh, who are you writing that poem for?_ *SKEETER*

@voxdraconia4035

2 ай бұрын

Well, its might be The End of the World, as we know, but I feel fine...

@drstrangelove307

Ай бұрын

@@voxdraconia4035I feel fiiiine!

@mattfetzer

Ай бұрын

​@@drstrangelove307Leonard Bernstein!!!

The entire point of Star Trek is that the nuclear end of the world (WWIII) happened, and humanity picked itself, up and made ourselves better with the discovery that we’re not alone. Edit: now I’m going to have to run the numbers on if humans finding other sapient life results in more hopeful stories/outlooks in sci-fi

@FloofMother

Ай бұрын

Yeah but given the state of the world in fallout I’m not surprised the Zetans tried to kill us and then tried to finish the job in Appalachia

@christophergreen6595

24 күн бұрын

The Great Filter/Fermi Paradox leaves me searching for meaning in the pebbles of thr creek.

Looking back, one of my favorite moments in the show was Lucy’s “Golden Rule, motherfucker,” moment. I’ve mostly played Fallout 4, but that moment for me captures the idea of the game that even in an apocalyptic wasteland, there are still people who want to do the right thing, simply because it’s the right thing to do, like Piper, the Minutemen, and the Railroad. They do some questionable things from time to time (nuking the ENTIRE Institute was probably a bit overkill) but they still ultimately try to help people who need it and foster a sense of community in a world that seems hostile and unforgiving.

As someone whose only contact with the games are video essays about the games (and now the series), i deeply value learning the things that "really happened" in the games, and understanding how the show adapted them.

I think it's interesting how Doomsday preppers, the real world version of vault-dwellers, could probably never see the parallel between zombie stories and the horrors of indigenous history, because it seems most of them follow an ideology of superiority, and fantasy. They believe in a romanticized 'zombie apocalypse' or 'nuclear aftermath' where *they* could finally be on top of the human foodchain. With their knowledge and skills. And so they never think about people actively experiencing apocalyptic conditions

@Stray7

2 ай бұрын

I liked World War Z (the book) because it has a LOT of this sort of thing. One of the big problems the army has reestablishing society is that in many towns, they come across people they call LMOEs (pronounced Lame-os), which stands for "Last Man On Earth"...preppers and survivors who think THEY are the final bastion of civilization, free to act without consequence. The Army people regard these LMOEs as unpredictable nuisances and often a worse problem than clearing out the zombies themselves.

@Gr1ngle

2 ай бұрын

Dude, I never made that connection before but that is so fucking right.

@FeintMotion

Ай бұрын

Having been in an out of EDC and weapon collecting communities it became clear that the Z word was a formalized allegory for us brown people getting out of line and needing to be outgunned and outlasted in order to restore Rule of Law.

@FieldMarshalFry

Ай бұрын

That is sort of addressed in 76 One of the background factions were an survivalist milita with strong anarchist leanings and strong ties to the local pre-war unions (they made the site of John Brown's last stand a major base for example), and while they do well at first (having prepared for a guerilla war against the pre-war US government they had a lot of supplies and shelters), and work with other sane factions in the region, such as the remnants of the local fire and ambulance services, and the still non culty Brotherhood, they eventually all get wiped out by an outside context problem created by The Enclave

@drog.ndtrax3023

Ай бұрын

What are you talking about? Those white people who are responsible for that tradition of fiction are the same people who inherit the colony and are already benefiting from it. The ghouls are sometimes used as a metaphor for racism (which is problematic and flawed), but they are not 'indigenous'.

I don't know if we can conclude from what we see in the show that the NCR has been completely destroyed. Sure, Shady Sands was nuked but even according to the show, Shady Sands wasn't the NCR's capital anymore. It could just be that NCR control in the area surrounding Shady Sands has crumbled, but the rest of California could still be under NCR rule. We'll have to see in the second season.

@IIxIxIv

2 ай бұрын

They show 2 places still flying NCR flags in the show (both spoilers), why do people think the NCR is gone?

@pepp418

2 ай бұрын

I mean by definition the NCR isn't destroyed. The "antagonist" of the show is a regional leader who is attempting to claim legitimacy as a continuation of the government. She is dead but her faction may live on, and even if it doesn't there will be others like her. The show has an almost reverence for the NCR, it depicts it as 2 and NV did but in its death its sins are forgotten. It is treated the same way pre-war patriots treated America. As this perfect place stolen from us by the bombs. I doubt the show will stop depicting people who wish to revive this state, they're too much of an interesting concept to ignore.

@pastlife960

2 ай бұрын

@@pepp418Exactly! The whole point of the NCR was to show that by trying to recreate the old US’ governing and economic systems exactly, whilst allowing for benefits such as democracy and a better quality of life, led to the same issues that plagued the old America: corruption, greedy capitalist barons, bureaucratic paralysis and an overly-powerful imperialist military-industrial complex. Is it any wonder it met the same fate as the original California. Old world blues created an animal tearing itself in two directions…

@MinesAGuinness

2 ай бұрын

@@pastlife960 The 'whole point' of the NCR as written by writers, at Bethesda, who were different to the writers who previously didn't emphasise these elements at all, but emphasised hope, co-operation, and regeneration - if that was the way that you wanted to play the first two games. And different to the writers of this TV show, who have written something with a different point to it. What is to say that writers in the future won't have a different take in mind when they write their contribution? I would certainly welcome that. Why would I want to experience a story perpetually frozen in a period of corruption and decay, when there are other things to imagine? Can you counter - without using the word 'lore'?

@DomR1997

2 ай бұрын

​@@pepp418Great, but it's also still a functioning, organized government and power, too. They straight up said in an interview that the NCR is widespread and other parts of it are alive and well.

I found your inclusion of Adventure Time clips especially relevant. The first thing that came to my mind when the destruction of shady sands was revealed is the Ooo 1000+ landscape that we see in the AT series finale (we well as in other episodes throughout the series). The landscape 1000 years after the series, save for superficial details, is the same post-post apocalypse caused by another large-scale conflict.

"oh the world will still be around, animals humping in the undergrowth the sun will set but you won't live to see it rise again" Adrian Tepes AKA Alucard

HE SAID IT HE SAID THE THING

@TheSorrel

2 ай бұрын

"Cold War 1"?

@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth

2 ай бұрын

@@TheSorrel"war never changes"

Never really got into the Fallout games or story despite its acclaim, but I’m thinking this show might be my entry point. It sounds great.

@thomasgolds4585

2 ай бұрын

Fallout 3 was a defining game for me when I was just starting to get into gaming

@BlackJacked

Ай бұрын

As someone who loves desert settings, New Vegas was my entry into the franchise. I definitely recommend it as a good fallout experience. But I also really like 3 and 4

@friendzky4136

Ай бұрын

i give you this , fallout og 1 & 2 , great great world building , fallout 3 and then new vegas then 4 , there is lore in 76 but it's only for nuking shady sands

@SAVarXX

Ай бұрын

​@@friendzky4136 your point about 76's lore isnt true at all. theres nothing in there about the nuking of shady sands, it takes place in Appalachia where the bombs didn't fall. 76 lore relates to the Appalachia wasteland and theres a fuckload of it. 76 is actually really dope now and more of you should play it. if you mean the twist at the end about Vault-Tec then theyve been hinting at this potential outcome for a long time. it was even the planned ending for the canned fallout movie from 1998 pre Fallout 2

@Broomer52

Ай бұрын

The NCR will never not be an interesting group and I don’t think they’re fully out. The NCR was built specifically on the idea of rebuilding America as it was. Obviously this is a moral thing to attempt but also unwise because what America was led to its destruction. What the goal should have been was to be better than it was. Because of this they made many enemies, plenty of those enemies were justified and many were not. Entire group and settlement absorbed by the NCR against their will or wiped out for resisting and the burgeoning government would often run them down. It was only a matter of time till they picked a fight with the wrong people. However the people of the NCR clearly still exist and I’m sure plenty still believe in that mission so it may reform itself and return, hopefully learning a lesson in the process

Incredible video essay. Thank you so much for this. You helped me to understand the show better

@PillarofGarbage

2 ай бұрын

Thank you! I’m glad you liked it :)

@hekatebleble4800

Ай бұрын

​@@PillarofGarbage this is exactly the type of content I was excited to see as the ep 8 credits rolled! Thank you. You actually exceeded those expectations. It really widened my perspective before rewatching the show with my mom. Btw, judging by comments I see online, so many people are watching with their parents, I wonder why that is.

I love how they developed Vault tecs business model. It mirrors real world inteshittification

Rhe destruction of Shady Sands also reaffirms the games most famous message: War. War Never Changes. And so the civilisation that sought to imitate the old world met with the same fate

It was mentioned in an interview with Tod Howard and Christopher Nolan that the NCR as a whole was gone, just lost its territory in LA and near shady sands.

@gwell2118

Ай бұрын

Correct. In fact I believe they also heavily implied it will play a bigger role in the upcoming season. Likely serving as the primary antagonist to the brotherhood of steel.

If they felt the wasteland was necessary, they could have just chosen some other part of the country that hasn’t developed yet. The U.S. is a big place, and we’ve barely seen any of it in the games. It would have been cool to explore more.

@minestar2247

2 ай бұрын

true, but there is also the fact that it's supposed to be *the* fallout show, and also, nuking the ncr is the karmic retrebution, in a more clear and less subtle way, of the ncr existing in the first place

I love this take on the show. Been listening to a lot of game purists talk about conspiracy theories about Bethesda and their plans for the games, or how this show "ruins" the lore. As a fan of both games and film, I thought it did a great job of adapting the feel of the games to the medium.

Fallout universe is great at mixing apocalyptic themes with fantasy themes in creating a whole new world. More fictional universes should follow its lead.

love me some Pillar of Garbage content.

i started watching this show thinking it will just be bc sound as i do my work because video game adaptations doesn’t have a good track record but the moment i saw cooper and his daughter on that horse running away from the nukes i was hooked

Ever since finishing New Vegas yetlars ago, I've been having the slowly growing feeling that the NCR was actually a pretty bleak idea. For so many people, the best option they could see was rebuilding the exact system that destroyed the world the first time. I think destroying Shady Sands was a really interesting move... I'm going to have to turn it around on my brain for a while.

“Some would say that all things must end, so that the next can come to pass. Perhaps this world is simply the Egg of the next kalpa?”

@PillarofGarbage

Ай бұрын

wtf Paarthurnax doing in my comment section

Babe wake up, Pillar Of Garbage has a new video

I was sure this was going to suck. The bar was on the floor for me. I love how wrong I was! They NAILED the tone. It would've been very easy to mess up, so it's impressive that they managed to get it right. The characters feel like actual characters from the game, yet are really compelling. Lucy being super naive, yet able to handle herself in a scrap, feels natural, and neatly avoids any accusations chuds might cast of her being a Mary Sue, ala Rey. The casting is spot-on, too. Okie dokie!

@chaserseven2886

2 ай бұрын

I think they still accused her of something

@Zoroasterisk

2 ай бұрын

​@@chaserseven2886 lol, of course they did. Haters gonna hate, I guess

@pastlife960

2 ай бұрын

Why were your expectations so low in the first place?

@MinesAGuinness

2 ай бұрын

I feel that we would be naive to imagine that there are not a good few thousand incels - no, I won't moderate my opinion of them - out there who have gleefully accused the TV show of being all sorts of things, with all sorts of 'agendas' which they feel offended by.... accompanied by a few ten thousand more 'fanatics' of the more modern games who have held aloft mighty tomes of 'the lore' and Hath Quoted Passages That Hast Been Contradicted, and cried 'Heresy!'

@user-kd4gb4vj2k

2 ай бұрын

“Nailed the tone” my ass. Last time I checked Fallout wasn’t Borderlands. They nailed the tone, alright, of Fallout 4.

With very minimal fallout exposure (friends spewing lore at me every now and again) loved the concept and the uncomfortable themes and binged this show tripping out my fucking mind and I loved it, watched it again sober and it was just as good, decent stuff

I loved the reset because it’s an adaptation. I think a lot of folks are assuming the show is canon, but until anyone involved says it otherwise it remains nothing more than a really good adaptation. Maybe we’ll get a title set in the alternate-alternate timeline the show created. But there’s no denying the one that existed before the show, should that occur.

14:15 in an recent interview wherever it actually got nuked will be revealed in season 2 possibly you should check out the recent interviews

Im ok with the shady sands thing as long as they explain themselves at some point. Its just more confusing to me trying to re understand the world a bit.

@mauirandall8176

2 ай бұрын

It was explained, the dad had access to the bombs since before the war He works for the brain in the jar. He was involved in setting them off to end society so that he and others like him could control the new society, society survived outside of his control in the valts so he set off another bomb, that He had set up before the war, That's why war, war never changes (dun duh DUH) Anyway that's the simplified version.

When I realised that the projector was malfunctioning in a way we know projectors do, with the film melting realistically, at the same time as identical-looking nuclear explosions filled the background of the LA scene... was probably the most satisfying film/video experience I've had in many, many years. A great juxtaposition with the people panicking madly in the foreground, in both scenes. Just *chefs kiss* perfect.

More to the show than your broader point which I enjoyed listening too. Tim Howard more or less said that we haven't heard the last of the NCR. Shady Sands got nuked, but the NCR is a lot of territory, and 100s of thousands of people, maybe maybe even over a million. There is a part of me that wants to see them put a boot of the Brotherhood's ass, again. Really though I'd like to see a stronger NCR that's maybe a bit more enlightened than I am with that sentiment. Great video, btw.

@MinesAGuinness

2 ай бұрын

Yes, this exactly. Quite apart from my personal desires, I think it is also time soon for the stories of Fallout to evolve into something new. The TV show is establishing a backdrop of the destruction of the old world, the chaos of the post-apocalyptic world amidst the rubble of the old world. At some point, that arc almost begs to lead towards the exploration of some effort to build a new, better world. Otherwise, quite frankly: what are the fictional survivors of the war doing, and why are we still playing or watching? Why bother to have characters survive at all, if all that is going to happen in the story is that every attempt to change things will end in failure and another 'expulsion from Eden'? I wouldn't want to live another single day in a fictional world controlled entirely by the rigid demands of never-changing 'lore!'

@DomR1997

2 ай бұрын

I don't know why anyone thought the NCR was destroyed just because shady sands, not even the capital at the time, was nuked. There's a million scenarios that would allow the NCR to survive.

@rtaraquin

2 ай бұрын

@@DomR1997 My opinion has softened since, but when the sheriff declared himself president because no one else was around to claim the title, that convinced me they had killed the entire NCR.

@voxdraconia4035

2 ай бұрын

My guess: The show will run for like 3 seasons - and end with Lucy and co making sure that the NCR or something similar will be established again, if even only in a smaller scale - and Fallout 5 will continue from that point onwards, where we are tasked as the main quest to help unite the California Wasteland, the remaining city states that got created after Shady Sands nuked, and stop the Enclave/BoS/Vault TEc from thwarting this unification again

Having played all the Fallout games, I was definitely worried about this show. Worried that it would suck but also worried that it might scare people away from playing the games. Thankfully, besides a few VERY questionable lore and faction issues I have with it, this show is just incredible. It's so incredible in fact that sales for the Fallout games have been skyrocketing and player numbers rising ever since the show dropped. The set design, acting performances, soundtrack, great writing, and faithfulness to the games in the franchise truly made it an incredible video game adaptation and phenomenal experience. I know New Vegas fan boys on Twitter hate this show because of the "lore" they "destroyed," but they're just a really loud minority because most people I know loved the show. Overall, seeing one of my favorite fictional universes get adapted so well on TV faithfully was a dream come true. I had my issues with it, but it was still really good. 8/10!

@iMasterchris

2 ай бұрын

I’m a huge New Vegas fan and I don’t really have any issues with the lore stuff in the show, Shady Sands being nuked doesn’t mean the NCR is gone, I would argue it may present a good time for them to regroup and try again. Maybe without the same overly expansionist philosophy they had before.

@Marvelousgamer7697

2 ай бұрын

@@iMasterchris Good Point. I'm cool with that if that's the case. I'm just worried that if the NCR did get completely destroyed, we weren't around to actually see it. We've been a part of the journey of the NCR since Fallout 1 before they were even a thing. I'd hate for us to miss their final chapter. I'm not even really frustrated about the destruction of Shady Sands or the possibility that the NCR was destroyed, but more of the fact that we missed both of the events ourselves. Since I was there at its conception and a part of its many pivotal moments in history through Fallout 2 and New Vegas, I just kind of hate the idea of missing its finale.

@iMasterchris

2 ай бұрын

@@Marvelousgamer7697 Well we can only speculate, but Todd has said in interviews over the past couple of days that this isn't the last of the NCR, and one of the showrunners has been a fan of the games since 1. So I have hope

@teamchaos5101

2 ай бұрын

​@iMasterchris, although the nuking took place during the year the battle of hoover dam was supposed to take place and Todd has said that the tv show is canon. So they basically retconned away New Vegas

@Yueff

2 ай бұрын

@@teamchaos5101Todd specified that “The Fall of Shady Sands” in 2277 and the nuke are two separate points in the timeline. The nuke happens shortly after New Vegas although he doesn’t specify how shortly after possibly because it will be important with Hank heading to New Vegas at the end of the show.

i really enjoyed this show. Big fan of Fallout 1, 2 and New Vegas.

@MinesAGuinness

2 ай бұрын

I see what you did there! Yes. :-)

The only bad thing I can say about the Fallout TV show is that I wish Prime Video released the episodes weekly instead of dropping all of season one for binging. One thing I like about Amazon original series is that they don't do the Netflix binge model. I remember reading an article stating that Fallout makes a good case for not doing the binge model. It's on Gizmodo. I just hope Amazon does not develop Netflix's bad habit of dropping whole seasons for viewers to binge.

@chaserseven2886

2 ай бұрын

the boys had its 1st season all at once but later seasons were made weekly

@PillarofGarbage

2 ай бұрын

yeah, this would have made a great weekly watch

@jacqueshardin4601

2 ай бұрын

​@@chaserseven2886 Oh, I guess I am worried over nothing then.

@BlazingOwnager

2 ай бұрын

Grass is greener. Everyone downvoted shows for the weekly release.

Nice video. Gives food for thought. And as a Fallout fan since I bought FO1 in the 90's I can say, What a lovely show! 🙂

What is interesting is that Fallout show twist has precedent with theme of second end in Fallout New Vegas with The Divide.

I don’t think the entire NCR is destroyed as it’s a large faction but it may be in chaos

Astute as always. Keep making them; we'll keep watching them. Cheers!

One town does not make a nation. NCR isnt dead, just Shady Sands. NCR is a big territory compromised of multiple towns and cities, streatching as far as Nevada.

More videos need to be made about the sheer scale of apocalypse the Native Americans endured from 1492 to 1619

@flux.aeterna

29 күн бұрын

Seriously!

I hope this video will give you the push to get over 100k subscribers! You certainly picked a show that seems like everybody is talking about right now. And like always I really enjoy your take on your chosen topics. Personally, I am not that familiar with the franchise, I mean I bought years ago New Vegas on steam, but I never found the time to play it. Thus what hooked me was that I felt Jonathan Nolan could explore some themes he already toyed with in Westworld, and Lucy felt like a successor to Dolores in many ways or me.

Loved this video essay! When you were getting to the end just before the credits talking about how every opportunity for a world also means every opportunity for the end of that world, I was half-expecting a callback to earlier in the vid in the vein of "If there is always another world, there's always another world-ending war. Because war... never changes."

amazing video, mate

well presented, well reasoned. subbed. 🤘

Excelent video, your analysis proved very sophisticated. I liked this show a lot as an expansion of the universe.

I can agree the show needed ruins but I would argue it didn’t need THOSE ruins. The show could easily be about any other region of the after-war US in any point in time: 200 years later or only 50 years later. There was no need to glass NCR to get those ruins. And even then you can write the distraction of NCR so much better. The whole region could mourn this state and how abruptly it ended but the show depicts LA even worse than F1’s locations. Filly is a cheap Junktown and even Junktown had a bar, a casino, a hotel, even the law enforcers. Filly, on the other hand, is a place for all kinds of madmen and raiders, even though those guys should be ex-NCR citizens. The whole setting for the show is just so barbaric, even though Fallout never depicted the Wastelands that badly. Except Bethesda, obviously.

@DomR1997

2 ай бұрын

The NCR has been gone for at least 20 years from that region. And Junktown isn't just raiders, did you not read any of the signs? It was a proper town that we saw for less than a half hour before it was devastated by Cooper.

4:48 "It's an apocalypse..." right on the scene from X-Men: Apocalypse. Clever in more ways than one

12:30 *looks at my New Vegas character, then back at yours* WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?

I do think it's kinda sad how a lot of people who really liked the originals and new vegas were annoyed with how Bethesda basically never addressed the NCR only for this show, clearly modelled after Bethesda's take on Fallout, to come out and say "NCR? They're nuked too." and y'know, it's not like that didn't happen or have the possibility to happen given in the New Vegas DLC they show there are still Nukes and they can be used on NCR/Legion/Disarmed given player choice. But it really feels gross to take an idea the whole series is built on and utterly destroy it, and even have the gall to say "It's canon." It feels if anything intentionally alienating to a massive chunk of the originals, or retroactive fanbase of the originals, just for the sake of a fully clean slate going forward. I do not hate what the creatives did, but I do not feel it is brave or bold just an effective reset to say "The old fallout doesn't matter anymore, everyone and everything from it is effectively dead and wiped away."

@MinesAGuinness

2 ай бұрын

It's a weakness that, sadly, greatly appeals to many fans. The problem is that a lot of people, executives at Bethesda included, who have slowly accepted the idea of 'canon' and 'lore' as immutable things, of which - like a holy text of a religion - there can be only One True Canon. In nearly every fandom, this has taken hold... and as an old Trekkie, I would like to wholeheartedly apologise for infecting you all! The irony is, that in the genre of gaming, this doesn't have to be the case at all - and in the case of Fallout, it wasn't for the first two games, which stood as an example of how narratives can be constructed differently. You want to build up the NCR? Ok. You want to crush the seeds of Shady Sands with a horde of raiders? Ok. You want to help the Master build a super-mutant society? ok. You want to aid the Enclave in restoring the old order? Ok. You like cosplaying as a roboknight with the Brotherhood? Ok. All of them possible. all of them your own 'canon' - with its own 'lore' determined by you and your narrative choices. Isn't storytelling in games supposed to be collaborative, interactive, and adaptive? If we had more of that applied to games, I think a lot of frustrations might be better satisfied than by complaining about a television show. I'll explain my thoughts on that. Whenever you are then faced with a story set in a different, non-interactive medium, such as television, we have to accept that we didn't make the narrative choices. We can wave our holy lore books and quote the canon all we like. Instead, can't we all just watch it, and accept that this is one possible narrative out of many? Within that acceptance, remains the free will to either enjoy or to dislike that narrative. We just can't change the choices of that particular show.

@TetchyEquation

2 ай бұрын

​@@MinesAGuinness essentially, the Black Isle Fallouts has always been big on player choice, but how do you make a sequel to a game that has that? Well, you pick one story, and you make a sequel to that. Both in 2 and New Vegas, they had to make assumptions about what you did previously, and that's completely fine. Coming out and blowing up the oldest faction in the franchise as world building your new/old setting, it's just lame as fuck

@MinesAGuinness

2 ай бұрын

@@TetchyEquation Oh, indeed: I felt tangible emotions when I realised that Shady Sands was no more. I am firmly in the camp of those who played those early games to build that new world. I've had to walk off from Fallouts 3 and 4 a few times (significantly, I never did in New Vegas!) because I was just too depressed stumbling around a wasteland which was obviously not going to get better whatever I did a a player. However, perhaps what I am saying is that I could indeed, of course, step back into the real world - or even go back and just play those original games and make the narrative that I wanted at that moment. I'm of the same mind with TV shows and films. Sometimes I like their narrative choices, sometimes I don't, but I have come to accept that they never were within my control, and I often watch them as 'alternative' narratives to whatever I am imagining... whilst trying to stay away from the fan-version of this of having to invent a theoretical multiverse for this to happen in. It's just another story, much like the many retellings of ancient myths and legends, all slightly varied from the last. With that mindset, I was able to watch those scenes, in particular, and try to be in the moment. What if I did discover that the place that I loved was no more? I took the devastating emotional resonance from it, whilst being able to happily imagine that my Shady Sands is still growing, building, improving in my mind... and hopefully a future game! I am also a big fan of A Song of Ice and Fire. Faced with the growing travesty on the small screen, I slowly came to accept the final seasons of A Game of Thrones as if they were some awful dream vision a character is having where everything goes horribly wrong... then they are going to wake up and the stories from the future books will happen! :-)

@TetchyEquation

2 ай бұрын

@@MinesAGuinness Whilst I really do appreciate learning to see the joy in feeling that pain of it being gone, it's not even just pain, I genuinely feel bored and completely checked out once I found out that the NCR had been seriously damaged (and if they come back in season 2 then that would just be ridiculous, adding a nuclear explosion onto an already irradiated wasteland would not be survivable for the NCR imo), it's a boring and feckless choice that doesn't add, only removes complexity and story opportunities turning an imperialist government who've managed to create infrastructure and a settled society into ANOTHER band of raiders but this time in NCR cosplay. What's even the fucking point of getting invested in the show or playing Fallout 5 now that we've set the precedent of blowing up whoever we want, whenever we want, and for any reason we want based on the story whoever's in charge of the franchise wants to tell. It's one thing for their to be cycles, for the franchise to document rises and falls, but they have to be earnt, not killed off screen for a lark by Vault Tec (who are ultimately just killing off their biggest source of customers)

@DomR1997

2 ай бұрын

​@@TetchyEquationthat's literally not what happened, though. It's one or two cities, not the whole damn NCR, which had spread to Vegas several years prior to the nukes dropping. The way people are acting would be like if Philadelphia and Chicago got nuked and then suddenly people acted like the entire United States was gone. It makes 0 logical sense.

You brought in Derrida, and you've become a favorite

War... war never changes... the old world is consumed in nuclear fire and ash... an new world struggles to be born from that ash like the phoenix... as those choose between repeating the mistakes of the past vs. creating something new and hopefully better

17:00 that’s such a beautiful riff and I’ve heard it on gameranx and I need it

@PillarofGarbage

Ай бұрын

the track that starts at 17:00 is El Secreto by Yung Logos

I enjoyed this video despite not having seen the show, as I always do with your videos. What the is the Derrida text where that quote on nuclear war from? Ive read a lot of Derrida but I either haven’t read that one or I forgot (is it Archive Fever or Echography? )

@PillarofGarbage

20 күн бұрын

It's 'No Apocalypse, Not Now' from the journal Diacritics' issue on 'Nuclear Criticism' - there's a link to a copy in the video description which is accessible with a free JSTOR account.

@scolclou

20 күн бұрын

@@PillarofGarbage Ah, thansk! I haven't read Diacritics since maybe beginning of grad school...but that sounds like an interesting issue. Derrida was my PhD advisor's mentor and later friend and colleague so we read A LOT of Derrida pre-prospectus era (In the US, you write a prospectus, which is a longer versus of a Master's thesis, that lays out your PhD project and you have to pass to proceed to PhD candidacy. It's after you take all your comps and have an MA, idkhow it works in the UK) ...but then the pandemic happened, my research shifts...so I still work with versions of Derrida as strained through the cheesecloth of other theorists (except some of the fringe stuff like (Jewish influences on him and Levinas and the Talmud and deconstruction, Echography of Television, the tech one) but I haven't really sat down and read him for fun outside checking citations. I probably won't read it until after I defend my doctorate this summer and wake up from a month old long but I am trying to make a list for then. (God I can't wait to enjoy reading again and I hope I do). Thanks again for the rec! And keep up the great content! P

Great Job!

Great show! We need more good adaptions.😍😍

Great! I was hoping you'd do a Fallout video!

I didn't completely understand while watching how they changed Shady Sands. I was like, this wasn't in the game, maybe this is another part of SS and it was way bigger? Thanks for explaining lol.

7:20 that was smooth xD

Had to wait and finish the show before I watch this one but it was very worth it!

the people in vaults arent responsible with the world outside.

holy shit what a fantastic video

good gods this show was so unbelievably good. im so happy that its good.

I felt so bad that your last video got demonotised when it low key blow up, it was really good too. I hope this will do just as well and u can keep the money. :)

@PillarofGarbage

2 ай бұрын

Thank you! Me too 😭

To answer the question from the video title based on what I learned on the video: That they're have been apocalypes throughout human history. So as long as the planet exists, prepare, survive, and adapt to them, because one's always coming - but if one happened, there's always room for growth.

Good essay.

Fallout has to be the first RPG I really played, and Shady Sands the first unmapped place I discovered. It was upseting to learn of what they did to it in the show, and I'm still not completely over it. But I also get why the show had to do it, and they had the good manners of doing it well too. So I'll stay upset like the survivors, and looking to the future. But at least this wasn't the stagnation of FO3/4 which has greatly soured my opinion of the franchise up until now.

Really glad you discuss Fallout as a satire

They nuked shady sands before in the game actually. In fallout 1.

honestly fallout's take on the end of the world is really interesting, can't wait to see what they do next

Maybe Fallout is telling us that there was a civilization before us we dont know about. Bethesda = Vault-tec

The show was so good. I'm thinking about re-downloading 76 because it has an active player base again

@sillyj7732

2 ай бұрын

I could bring my cannibal vampire out of retirement

Apocalypse is an awakening. Not an end. 😉👍

I agree with you when my ancestors were almost wiped out by Columbus it was there apocalypse, And Apocalypse It's relative to the people who are going through it and how they see it. There is a generalized Apocalypse which means everybody's going through something and then there's personal Apocalypse.

Oh, but won't someone think of the timeline?

@chaserseven2886

2 ай бұрын

Even Tim cain the creator of fallout kinda liked it

@Zoroasterisk

2 ай бұрын

​@@chaserseven2886He also cautioned everybody that was getting their jimmies rustled about the chalkboard thing to take a step back and to generally just remember that unreliable narrators are a thing

@pastlife960

2 ай бұрын

@@ZoroasteriskNOOOOOOO BUT THIS SPECIFIC TERMINAL ENTRY IN THIS SPECIFIC DLC FOR A GAME DECADES AGO CONTRADICTS THIS SPECIFIC DETAIL IN THEGCNKYWWFHJDUNDRDGUUC…

@user-kd4gb4vj2k

2 ай бұрын

@@Zoroasteriskunreliable narrators can’t explain how there are 4 new Vaults in LA near Master’s hideout. Or how 1 million nation of NCR reduced to crazy raiders over 15 years. Or how ghouls are immortal now. Or how Boneyard doesn’t exist anymore. And so on. It isn’t only the chalkboard, there are MANY other issues.

@TetchyEquation

2 ай бұрын

You say that like having consistency in your stories is a bad thing

I kind of disagree with the criticism of the Fallout games maintaining a certain status quo as being a negative (I mean I understand the criticism, but I just don't fully agree with it). Much like this tv show each game is presented as an introduction and stand alone for new players just as much as old players and you don't need to know anything about the previous games or the franchise in general to understand whatever the latest game may be. I don't see that type model going away, and truth be told it doesn't bother me in the least.

@chaserseven2886

2 ай бұрын

I agree

@MinesAGuinness

2 ай бұрын

Wouldn't it bother you (hypothetically of course) if you were a character written for the games? There you are, written in one game as finally, finally, uniting a few scrappy survivors behind a dream, and starting to plan a different better future in your small patch of the blighted world... only for the next game to begin with the statement: "Three years later, everybody died"... and then introduce yet another selection of characters, slowly dreaming of building a better world... I don't think it would require a lot to slightly tweak the established model of constant resets - and I think it actually lies squarely within Bethesda's own wheelhouse... and very much established in the way that the original two games were designed as part of the Fallout ethos. Have the option to play in ways where things get worse (at least, from our point of view); and have ways in which you can play so that things tangibly get better; and allow these decisions to persist for that player into the next iteration.

Spoilers: my favourite scene was the very last one in the before times, with the CEOs, for the set alone. It immediately evoked the war room from Dr Strangelove in a way that made that scene's culmination feel almost inevitable.

As someone who started with Fallout 3, with Ron Perlman flatly stating the theme that war never changes, I think the destruction of Shady Sands is kind of perfect. There are fundamental problems with the Fallout society, specifically because it's built on the ruins of the old world, both literally and figuratively. Every culture is clinging to a past that has already been demonstrated to lead to ruin. The problems that led to that first end of the world were never addressed, so it was all but inevitable. Most conflicts are about old world tech that would give one faction supremacy over another. Because of this arrested development of society, no matter how much they rebuild, war never changes because the people never fundamentally change. I'm not going to give Bethesda the credit for adequately communicating that idea in their games, because I think you're generally right about the lazy, juvenile, both-sides moralism. But in the show at least, this decision (intentional or not) has the potential to really drive home what I have always understood to be the main theme of the franchise.

(Spoilers for Mass Effect, Eternals, and… Hinduism, I guess?) The Mass Effect series plays with this a bit - each cycle the previous history is… gone. It might be rediscovered, and the universe being “unapocalypsed” by connecting to that past is a big part of the franchise. Obviously there were many, many cycles before the Protheans, but their apocalypse is complete. To Derrida’s point, true apocalypse cannot be directly referenced - if we knew that there was a world before, that apocalypse failed. Eternals has the same kind of narrative - Athena’s apocalypse failure in knowing there was a before is a big plot point. I kinda wonder if there’s some discussion of this in Hinduism, as Shiva’s destruction and recreation cycles mean there was a before that is… gone.

Cold war 1? are you saying we are now in cold war 2?

Derrida's ideas are very very limited. No total nuclear exchange scenario consists of the Southern Hemisphere being destroyed. As no country in the Southern Hemisphere is part of NATO or has nuclear weapons, it would possibly entirely spared. Some agricultural power houses like Brazil, Argentina and Australia would help feed the Northern hemisphere, although it's projected 5 billion would perish due to nuclear winter. True, nuclear winter would also reduce sunlight in the southern hemisphere, but most of the Southern Hemisphere population... Sydney, Melbourne, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, São Paulo, Johanesburg, Cape Town... are ALL below latitude 40. São Paulo, the most populated city in the southern hemisphere, with a metro pop of 20 million, is at a latitude of 23 degrees. What that means is that before applying sunlight reduction, you must consider the HIGHER amount of sunlight those cities get. Plus, the southern hemisphere will get less smoke and ashes than the northern. I guess Derrida doesn´t think there are huge libraries in the southern hemisphere, where knowledge will be preserved and ready to be sent back to the northern hemisphere when it starts recovering?

Nice video. Not sure if the Derrida quote added anything though. If I’d been the editor I might have said “Kill your babies, or at least make the point you wanna make in clearer language. Otherwise people might get the feeling that you only included Mr Deconstruct as a flex.”

i doubt the ncr is gone gone but more like gone as we know it for now and them still existing isn't gonna be a victory for ncr fans imagine how bad new reno and vault city are. i bet slavery has returned. vault city is probably gonna return in the show considering how much focus is on vault tec also the whole water chip thing

Wait is that title an incest joke? Damn you 😂

Interesting. But to be fair, people saying 'the end of the world' most often means 'end of the world as we know it'. Of course life would go on in some form. However it couldn't take the form of Fallout because there are too many people compared to fields, cattle, etc.

1:48 is that a persona Q reference?

@PillarofGarbage

2 ай бұрын

sadly i do not know what persona q is

@chaserseven2886

2 ай бұрын

@@PillarofGarbage ah its a spin off of the persona games the opening of that game has a very similar name

😑 youtube didn't notify me, even though I have the bell swt to 'all'

@PillarofGarbage

Ай бұрын

:( KZread moment

i think the shows props and sets are good but i hated the show overall, didnt feel anything like the games to me, apart from the plot elements that they copied from 3 and 4, the 2 games with the weakest stories

I cant take seriously any show where one of the main characters survives multiple nuclear blasts he can physically see on horseback. It takes minutes for a nuclear blast to reach our characters, that is fuck you levels of telling your audience that you think theyre idiots who dont know how a nuclear blast works Also people can pretend that its only a blackboard, but the show calcifies the west coast into being the exact same as the east, no civilizations, no society, no rebuilding, just death, and raiding, and shooting. Fallout is immature, it has never actually been able to stop itself chasing the feeling people got when they played the first one back in '97. Fallout 2 and New Vegas are both sequels to that game, expanding on the universe, changing the franchise in their own subtle way. But 3 and 4 are more then happy to create content wastelands for their players, with very little significance to their actions

@MinesAGuinness

2 ай бұрын

I rather think that filming a scene in which a cowboy rides a horse set against a backdrop of nuclear explosions is meant to be a metaphor for two conflicting visions of our modern culture. It's really not meant to be taken literally as a depiction of a nuclear war. We also don't still watch black-and-white TVs as if we're in the 50s, and we don't have floating robots of ghouls either. This is storytelling, not real life. For a compelling description of the true consequences of a nuclear detonation, I can heartily recommend John Richard Hersey's Hiroshima, in which he recounts the testimony of survivors, from their morning before the bomb dropped - for most within 1,500 metres of them - and then over the next year of their lives. It is truly heartbreaking. In that same vein of storytelling, I very much agree with your point about some of the more recent iterations of Fallout games wanting to maintain a perpetual chaos, to the detriment of telling a compelling story. It is time for stories set in this world to change, and for that world to change along with it, to maintain my personal investment, at least. I wholeheartedly agree that - in game terms - the original two games embraced that ethos and also implemented it effectively as an inherent component of the game experience. Sadly, I doubt that Bethesda thinks along these lines. I think that, if I wish to experience that kind of story for myself, I am going to find in in the world of table-top role-playing or writing my own stories, rather than a Fallout 5 from those who currently have the privilege to make it.

@TetchyEquation

2 ай бұрын

@@MinesAGuinness Personally I just don't think it worked, it looked goofy. It's just another thing that helps viewers disengage from the world of Fallout, because what's so scary about nukes that you can outrun?

@MinesAGuinness

2 ай бұрын

@@TetchyEquation I don't think that he did outrun them. I saw it rather as a deliberate representation of the futility of what his character represents - rugged individualism; commitment to family; a personal code of honour; a connection to nature; all in theory good qualities which made him an honourable man in our world - against the destructive power of nuclear war. This also appears to be why he has become a ghoul. Again, ghouls are a metaphor for the human consequences of atomic war. I'm sure that Tim Cain never intended to imply that atomic radiation can actually make you into such a creature. At this point, we also don't truly know whether his daughter survived. I kept expecting some reveal that she was related to another character, but this didn't happen... yet! Sadly, I think that she didn't make it.

@MinesAGuinness

2 ай бұрын

@@TetchyEquation I have to admit that, for me personally, I chuckle every time I see the Brotherhood of Steel in their 'power armour.' I cannot take it seriously. But, I get the idea they are trying to put across of people falling back upon a code of military ethics and honour as a way of coping with disaster, and suspend my disbelief. There will always be times in fiction when that is necessary - because it isn't possible to create a non-real world that feels perfectly real to people who live in a real world.

@TetchyEquation

2 ай бұрын

@@MinesAGuinness I can respect that, but, for me, I can't stand to see such a good universe go to waste. Maybe, someday, Bethesda will suprise me with a Fallout game I'm not expecting, but, until then? I guess it's over for me, personally

the thing is, nuking shady sands isnt even a problem, since thats a thing you can do in fallout nv...

It’s better than post Brexit Britain 🇬🇧 tbh

I really liked your decision to include indigeneity in the conversation here. I've been thinking about that recently a lot, given the tendecy for people groups to be read as 'primitive' when they really should be understood as living in the aftermath of apocalypses that forced particular separations or decisions to survive in the light of plague, genocide or imperialism (often all three). There is a lot of potential for drawing on both western imagination of potential apocalypses and indigenous experience and theorising of them. Lord knows, I'm not the best authority on this topic, but it is a very important reality and I'm glad to see it put into the conversation here.

im kinda on board but also it does feel like Bethesda is doing the bethesda thing and trying to erase a faction to set up their favorite one (the brotherhood) they've def overfocused on them and are making the same mistake as interplay

The show made central the phrase "war... War never changes". Even after the end of the world, there is another war, and it's the same. Everyone wants to fix the world, they Just desagree How.

Algorithm

I don’t agree that modern Fallput is locked on a centrist grey vs gray morality. In fact, Bethesda has been pretty piss poor at shaky morality, they’re generally poor storytellers in that regard. They’re locked onto the iconography of Fallout and refuse to progress, because they need that iconography to sell their games. They’re keeping the series in an endless loop of nukes to ensure the world is in stasis and unable to progress meaningfully, lest they have to change too. I don’t see the nuking of Shady Sands as any sort of commentary or big lore choice, I see it as them keeping the lore at ground zero, so to speak. Fallout 1, 2, and NV shows the progress of the world, a post post apocalypse. Shady Sands and the NCR had to go because if they exist the world must progress to match.

I agree that, being "THE FALLOUT SHOW", this series needed to introduce to new people that state of pure destruction that was the point of this world so that we can see how it reconstructs. But, if they wanted to do that, they could just make a story in the begginings of the apocalypse, maybe in the Fallout 1 time or even before, instead of destroying everything we constructed. Even the considered worst game, F76, avoid that. So I still don't consider that the changes they did were justified. That being said, good video 👍