Fallout first look: This is how the world ends—With a smiling thumbs-up

When a crisis forces Lucy to venture above on a rescue mission

Quick, break out the Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 crib-notes we're going on a rescue/fetch-quest!

Like HBO’s hit The Last of Us, which was also adapted from a blockbuster video game, the end of the world offers a rich opportunity to comment on the real one.

But there is a gigantic difference here. TLOU is a single, confined story about two people raging against a dying/dead/fungi world. Fallout has always been about the decisions of the player and the effects that leaves on the world once you've moved on (Sans 3 & 4 which are endless monotomy simulators)

Nolan and Joy’s determination to maintain that mordant comedy was the key to making the world work as a series, says game-maker Todd Howard, the director of 2008’s Fallout 3 and 2015’s Fallout 4 and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, which developed the franchise.

Of which it was scaled back and corporatised in both 3 and 4. 1, 2 and New Vegas has endlessly funny dialogue and remarks that your character and others make throughout the wasteland. 3 always gave me uncanny valley humour levels and 4 felt "HAHA, ISN'T THAT WEIRD!" - Get the guys who wrote the characters and environmental storytelling in, they'll take you on a dark humoured journey happily.

Fallout’s world is filled by a sprawling ensemble, including Kyle MacLachlan as Lucy’s father, the “overseer” of Vault 33, which essentially makes him the mayor of their hometown, while Homeland's Sarita Choudhury is a different kind of leader in this world, willing to sacrifice anything for her band of people. Moisés Arias (who as a child played Rico on Hannah Montana) costars as Lucy’s inquisitive brother. Michael Emerson, who starred in Nolan’s Person of Interest and is best known as hatch-inhabitant Benjamin Linus on Lost, stays aboveground this time, playing an enigmatic researcher named Wilzig. Most of the disparate parties are “chasing an artifact that has the potential to radically change the power dynamic in this world,” as Nolan puts it.

So we've got the daughter-parent dynamic of the Vault from Fallout 3. We've got the overseer being more like the lass from Fallout 4 who is pragmatic are trades with the wasteland where they can and is super communal about the folks in the vault... and an artifact that can change the world, like the GECK maybe, From Fallout 2?

So, What's new? All the images are the stock-standard Brotherhood of Steel wankfest that Bethesda Fallout games have been since 3. I'm sure they'll hamfist them in as Fallout's Ultramarine-types happily again. Oh there's a ghoul! Who doesn't look like a ghoul? Just looks like someone with his nose removed.

It looks really well done (though the BoS power armour looks weird and I can't fathom why), but that storyline seems like they don't know how to tell a compelling story without falling back on tropes already explored and done in the gaming series. Yeah, I know it'll be a "TO BRING MORE PEOPLE TO THE SHOW!" type stuff. But honestly? Give people a compelling story in a really well written environment and they'll love it? This feels like they've played it safe so they have some fan-service AND 'new and improved' stuff.

TLOU worked really well because Pedro & Bella sold their characters as the linchpin to understanding a world that no-one dared describe ("There's worse out west, Raiders and Slavers!"). I can't help but feel like everything is going to be hamfisted, default, corporatised and mundane in a world that is filled with absolutely bonkers and fantastic storytelling.

You know what would have been truly awesome? Tell the story of someone caught up in the BoS/NCR/Legion first battle for Hoover Dam. That would have been incredible to watch if it's done well. You could have had NCR captives talking to Legion Decanus/Centurions arguing about the morals of autocracy / democracy like you do with Caesar. You could have competent, interesting and frankly brutal dialogue between both sides of a 'mythical' conflict. How about Joshua Graham trying to reconcile his religious beliefs with what he's doing like many soldiers of religious creed go through once they hit first combat).

Instead, we're going to get Fallout3.5:The Bastard Child, I guarantee it.