If last year was the year when game adaptations broke the spell, "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" and the American drama "The Last of Us" set a new chapter in game adaptation in both film and TV series.
Then in 2024, the one that can carry the banner of game adaptation may be "Fallout", which has just been launched.
This popular drama series adapted from the game of the same name was moved from the original April 12 to premiered on April 10, as an old fan of B Society, naturally this TV series cannot be left behind.
After releasing all 8 episodes of the first season, the series now has nearly 10,000 people scoring a high score of 8.7 on the IMDB platform, which is at the same level as last year's "The Last of Us" series, which is also a post-apocalyptic theme. The play, including the acting skills of the actors, the excellent character creation in the plot, and the wonderful visual effects that vividly reproduce the post-world setting, have all been praised by foreign netizens.
In the comments of Chinese and foreign audiences, whether they are original players or not, they all gave good reviews to the series.
But even Todd was a little surprised by the popularity of the Fallout series, and was confused when he learned that IGN gave the show a 9;
Interestingly, the popularity of live-action dramas has also led to a resurgence in the popularity of the Fallout series. According to data from the game statistics website SteamDB, the current number of simultaneous players in "Fallout 4" developed by Company B currently exceeds 53,000. While it's still a long way from the all-time peak of 472,000 when the game was first released, it's a significant increase from the average number of online users of less than 20,000 over the past few years.
Other Fallout franchises have shown a similar pattern, such as Fallout 76, which originally had around 10,000 online players, but now grows to 26,000; Fallout 3, released in 2008, jumped from an average of 500 online to 3,600; Even Fallout: New Vegas, the ancestor of the Fallout franchise developed by Obsidian Entertainment, now has more than 11,000 players.
Going back to the "Fallout" episode, following the setting of the original work, the earth has become a wasteland due to a nuclear explosion, radiation is everywhere, and life begins to mutate. In the first scene of the play, the big scene on the day of the nuclear explosion was made.
Shortly after the disaster, some humans went into shelters. During these 200 years, some shelter dwellers left their shelters shortly after the disaster, and some ventured out after generations. Some of the shelters have been destroyed, while others are still closed and isolated...
And in Vault 32 after 219, a girl named Lucy is applying for marriage in front of three judges. She's healthy, positive, and has done a lot for the community, and her dad is the Shelter Boss....
But the marriage in the shelter is a bit special, it is said to be a marriage, but it is actually an intermarriage with the shelter, and even the groom is a stranger who can only meet for the first time on the day of the wedding.
In order to better reproduce offspring, Lucy's shelter opened the road of marriage with No. 32 next door, so that all the other party could be stationed in his own shelter. Lucy's wedding took place as scheduled, and her father doted on her and used a 3D projector to set up an idyllic wedding for her. At the wedding scene, the old father was a little in tears, and the audience cheered, but they didn't know that a danger was approaching.
Halfway through the banquet, the bride pulled the groom to visit the wedding room, but the young man was not enough to be straightforward, and he was all stripped naked as soon as he came in. Lucy was startled when she turned her face, but now that the two of them are legally married, they can do whatever they have to do.
As for the scale, I'm sorry, it's too windy, I can't hear clearly.
However, the next-door neighbors on No. 32 are all impersonated. These people came from the ground and lived by raiding "marauders".
It was found that Lucy and the groom had started a rematch, the kind of fist to the flesh. The man stabbed Lucy in the stomach with a knife, and Lucy picked up the vase next to her and stabbed the glass into the man's neck.
The two of them fought in the marriage room, and the residents of the shelter who ate the feast beat outside.
The wedding scene turned into a massacre scene, and because of the disparity in force value, Vault 33 suffered heavy casualties. Eventually, the marauders took the father and a bomb blew the shelter's valves.
And in order to get her father back, Lucy decides to go to the ground to see the real world...
Like director Jonathan Nolan's other American drama "Westworld", "Fallout" is as yellow and violent as ever. This also happens to be very consistent with the original dark humor and violent style of the original Fallout series of games, at least after watching the first episode, it will not give the original players a look and feel that they can't stand it.
In addition to the main line of Lucy, there are two other story lines that are also worth mentioning:
One concerns "ghouls". In the game world of Fallout, there are thousands of ghouls, a race of humans who survived a nuclear explosion but were severely mutated by residual radiation. Walton Goggins plays the ghoul who was Hollywood actor Cooper Howard before the nuclear explosion, and he and his daughter witnessed the outbreak of a nuclear war that would destroy the planet.
He mutated into a ghoul after the nuclear explosion, survived for more than two centuries, and is now a murderous bounty hunter. But despite being a "zombie" in nature, his speech and thinking are more human-like.
He killed dogs to save dogs, killed all sides in the town, made ghoul acquaintances into jerky, cut off the heroine's fingers, and used the heroine to fish for newts... He is selfish, tangled, and has the ruthlessness to live at all costs, but only such a "person" can live tenaciously in the last days. It is precisely the existence of such people that can make this post-apocalyptic survival story more real and not fall into clichés.
The other black brother belongs to the "Brotherhood of Steel", which in the original game was originally intended to survive in the wasteland, then became a research organization, and then became a paramilitary group with occult religious overtones, fighting the main wasteland forces on the West Coast.
The black guy named Maximus in the play was originally a candidate of the Brotherhood of Steel. Because he was rescued once by a brotherhood soldier wearing a power armor T-60 in his childhood, he has been determined to become a power armor pilot ever since. But after he worked hard to get the apprenticeship to become a mecha pilot, he realized that these people were not the same kind of people as the "knights" he imagined...
The three protagonists of Fallout, depicting the wasteland world from the perspective of the Vault dwellers, the military, and the ghouls, is indeed a more advanced way, which avoids the monotony of a single narrative and presents the huge structure of the world of Fallout in a short period of time. So much so that in one or two episodes, "Fallout" showed a chaotic and dark enough apocalypse, and it was full of convincing.
However, if that's all there is, then the show will never get a high score.
As a game adaptation, in fact, from the first episode of the series, you can find that it has collected many key elements of the game. Examples include classic shelters, power mechs, ruined towns in the wasteland, and atompunk-like airships...... This series of content is easy to evoke the memories of players.
In fact, as early as November last year, in order to highlight the restoration of the game by the live-action drama "Fallout", foreign media Gamespot released a set of comparison charts. From the characters, the atmosphere of the scene, and the classic elements of various games, there is an almost replica experience. And Amazon's sophistication in serving the Tao also gives players more confidence in this game adaptation.
Power armor T-60
airship
Even the stump dialogue is quite quintessential, and Todd still can't forget the old tradition.
Of course, it doesn't hurt to be too close to the details of the game. Obviously, this drama is not very friendly to the pure passer-by, and if there are viewers who have never played a single "Fallout", they are likely to be confused. What Brotherhood of Steel, Enclave, NCR, who is who.
Secondly, under the rave reviews of the series, there is no shortage of voices that many fans of the original work have resisted. The controversy over the sequel of the series and the frequent overturning of "game reform" works in recent years have intensified the criticism of "adaptation and destruction of IP". Especially after the series released the full first eight episodes, discussions such as "setting crazy books" have never stopped. Indeed, it is not easy to adapt a preconceived masterpiece to the satisfaction of new and old audiences, and the difficulty and balance point are by no means easy.
However, although "Fallout" seems to be a more traditional post-apocalyptic survival American drama, and the main line with the most length is a bit similar to the story of "Fallout 76", both of which tell the story of a shelter-born resident who goes out to build a wasteland decades after the nuclear explosion and deals with many good and evil forces, but "Fallout" What is good is that it is not only faithful to the original worldview of the original book but also does not copy the existing works, and examines the post-disaster wasteland from three different perspectives, especially the ghoul line provides a unique perspective, which is very different from the general apocalyptic survival.
The performance of several leading actors is also remarkable, and the casting of the heroine is controversial, which is not eye-catching, but a pair of big eyes does make people have a memory; And the role of the ghoul brother is special, whether it is a rare zombie character in the TV series, or a chaotic temperament that is difficult to distinguish between good and evil, it gives him a charm, there are no special face-painted characters in the whole play, and everyone's behavior trajectory is for survival...
Judging from the current content, it can be said that it has won the affirmation of a considerable number of gamers and general audiences. As a veteran player, I also hope that he can maintain this quality, and be able to honestly respect the original book and then adapt it, which is the greatest respect for players.
In fact, having said that, there have been many new works in recent years based on live-action dramas adapted from games, with Netflix, Paramount, HBO, and Amazon entering the market one after another to adapt and release games of different styles. For example, "The Witcher", "Halo", and "The Last of Us" live-action dramas have attracted widespread attention from fans.
As the success of "The Last of Us" and "Fallout" proves, film and television dramas adapted from video game IP actually have great potential for development. All genres and popular franchises are poised to take off, whether it's the large-scale battles of real-time strategy games, the narrative of visual novels, or even some enduring game IPs in the industry, such as Warhammer, with its sci-fi worldview or epic historical setting, are actually very suitable for the big screen.