The Besties - Falling in to the Fallout TV Show

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Duck and cover! This week, The Besties discuss the first two episodes of the excellent Fallout TV series. Then, they talk through the ways the Fallout approach could alter the trajectory of video game adaptations. Plus: a bunch of great listener recommendations! Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

In my fridge there's there's some ice cubes I guess my freezer there are ice cubes that pre day cove it are those of any value or can I get rid of them. They will have a smell there is a smell I am freezing isn't free there's gonna be a smell of those ice cubes but I'm wondering like more from like a like a curing the world standpoint is there anything that could be locked in there from the days before cuttlefish? Like your suggestion is that all water has been radiated in some way with COVID air. Impact, I don't wanna say radiated, just impacted in some way. Sure, sure, sure. And that the only water that might remain valuable is like the polar ice caps,

whatever like woolly mammoths are kept in, in your ice cubes. Why are we so worried about the ice caps, whatever like wooly mammoths are kept in, in your ice cubes. Why are we so worried about the ice caps when everybody owns an ice maker? Like we have the technology. Just pour them out. Just pour them out. And you put an ice maker up there

and it just like sort of rattles them out onto the iceberg. Do you have Al Gore's phone number? In these ice cubes, do you see a mosquito frozen in any of them? Oh, I haven't looked. Something in there? That's a good question. I would love to wake a mosquito up from that circumstance.

Like, imagine taking a mosquito out of Russ's fridge, and you melt it, and the mosquito's like, what in the fuck? And the mosquito looks at you like, what the fuck happened? And you're like, well, OJ died. Actually, you missed that. You missed out on OJ. That's about it.

Everything else was pretty, you know what I mean. No other news. My name is Justin McCarron and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game. The rads have gotten to. Of the week. Oh no, my name is Ross Froshton and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest

in home interactive entertainment. Except for this week. Nothing interactive about this week. There's nothing interactive. You can start it, and if you're got better willpower than me, you can stop it. Yes.

Cause you're in China, son. This is a Fallout series on Amazon Prime. Prime Video? What were they called? Fallout series on Amazon Prime. Prime Video? Yes, that's right. Prime Video. I don't think I'm super worried about what they prefer. Yeah, me too. It's a high concern for me. Chris Play, what is Fallout?

What is Fallout? Parenthetical 2024 TV adaptation. Fallout TV is based off of a popular video game series currently and most recently produced by Bethesda. It's an open world RPG set in the post-apocalypse of the United States of America. Unless you're playing a fan-made expansion coming out in London sometime, I don't know, in the next month or two.

And we'll talk about that on a different episode. But the TV show set in the same universe and in beautiful, sunny, irradiated California. Uh, it is produced by, uh, Jonathan Nolan, the other half of the Nolan brothers and Lisa Joy, his, uh, wife and producing partner, but in a twist written by other people, which we'll talk about why that makes it better

than Westworld. We're also gonna mention before we take a break, I wanna mention that we're only gonna be talking about the first two episodes of the show. So if you- But we will be talking about all the events of those first two episodes of the show. Yes. Yes.

So if you're worried about spoilers and haven't seen the first two episodes, you should probably stop listening to this episode and watch those two episodes. They are very good. They're good television. So we'll talk about that and so much more right after this. So the show opens like most Fallout video games. Well, damn, that's not even true. Really, that's not true. Only Fallout 4 begins the way the show begins. Okay, you talk about the opening of it, Fresh. You're like the number one Fallout fan, I think, of this group.

I am. I've been a Fallout fan since the originals, the isometric RPG, so I've pretty much played them all. And this game, the closest comparison from the beginning is Fallout 4. Both in Fallout 4 and the show, it starts before the bombs have dropped. And the setting is, if you're not familiar with Fallout, the setting is like kinda Jetsons-y. It's like 50s futuristic, but not true future.

It's like that weird, you know, laser rays, robots, Jetsons kind of future. But it's not an imagined history. I mean, it is like, it is the actual 1950s. It's just the... everything has changed a little bit. Like, it's not completely fantastical. It's like, there's some connection to our history. I believe it's like if the 1950s happened,

and then the world stayed on that trajectory that it had predicted, and then it kept going for, for like more time to come. No, because in the 1950s, which is when the bomb effectively... Oh wait, I'm sorry. That's actually a good point. Because I think the bombs drop according to the fallout timeline. Wow, you're going to beat me on my knowledge. Somebody look it up because it's like the equivalent of like 1990.

I'm pretty sure I'm right. The Great War was a global thermal nuclear war, thank you fandom, that took place on Saturday, October 23rd, 2077. Okay, interesting. Yes. Okay, so yeah, you're right. So 1950s happens in America as we know it, but all of the things they imagined in storytelling or whatever it was, they ended up producing.

So the culture was built around like these magic, like not magic, but like robots and fission cars and flying jet packs and shit like that. So that's sort of the mentality to be in. So when the nukes go off in, as Plant said, 2077, that's the society they're living in, which is like this very fanciful, kind of almost silly society. But obviously the beginning of this show is very dark,

because it's essentially like the apocalypse happening in Los Angeles, which is fucking intense. I will say this, they don't spend a ton of time on it. And they don't- Wisely. Yeah, it's like it's so dark It's dark and it's very distressing. They don't spend a ton of time on it, but they do establish like the the stakes It's much more about it happening. They don't show a ton of like Human cost early. It's like it's much more about like table setting like they're getting it implied human cost because you did see entire cities getting

They're not trying they're not trying to bring you through the full emotional weight of what is happening, right? It is not like, they're just trying to get, kind of get through it. I do want to call out one specific line in this introduction, which was just like, fucking right into the gut. Because our main character,

or at least one of the main characters, Walton Goggins, is in this scene. This is before he gets nuked and will later become a ghoul, and he's with his daughter. And they keep talking about the fact that he has this like symbol, this, I guess, you know, move that he does. He gives a thumbs up because he used to be this very famous cowboy actor, whatever it was. a thumbs up because he used to be this very famous cowboy actor or whatever it was and he refuses to do it at one point for a photo op and his daughter asks him why he doesn't want to

do it and he's like oh it's adult stuff and she presses him on it and he's like oh well when we were in the army they trained us if you put your thumb up and the explosion is smaller than your thumb you should run away as fast as possible and she's like what happens if it is smaller than your thumb, you should run away as fast as possible. And she's like, what happens if it's bigger than your thumb? And he's like, you don't have to bother running away. And then later on, the daughter's like, is it your thumb or my thumb, as she's seeing the fucking explosion going off?

And that was like, ugh. Yeah, it's hugely, it's hugely, it's bad. It feels bad, it's bad to watch. Which is why it's good that after five minutes, it like does a major tonal shift. And like, I was like, okay, I can actually watch this show now. Cause before that I was like,

I can make it five minutes and no more. So we're in the vault, vault 33? Two, 33. 33. And this is after a 250 some odd year time jump. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's a long time. But we jump into the future and we are in Vault 33. And it's, like you said, it's a big tonal shift.

Everything has worked out. You know, like, it's really like, it's okay, everybody. We figured it out. We got a whole new thing going, it's great. But Kyle McLaughlin is the overseer, well, not Kyle McLaughlin the person, but he's an actor playing the role. It would be ridiculous if the alternative was true,

but he is the overseer, his daughter, Lucy, and his, what is his name? I have no idea. I have no idea, but he's the overseer. I think they just call him Dad or the overseer. So anyway, he is running this particular vault. And this is a different kind of vault where, and I didn't know that this, maybe this has been established previously, but there are three vaults interconnected, like in a sort of triumvirate, right?

So these vaults trade, I guess, in a very limited sense back and forth wait wait wait wait wait I think there's just two unless this is something that happens later in the show So something that's different about these vaults, and I didn't know if this was a thing But at least two of these vaults are connected 32 and 33 are connected And we find out the first episode that they are about to do, I guess it's a tri-annual trade, but it's a regular trade, but they're trading like biology. They're basically intermingling the gene pool so it doesn't get too-

It's a semen trade. Yeah, it's a semen trade. So they're trading that for- Grain. Grain and like supplies. Yeah, they've experienced a famine is what we know. Right, right. So what you find out to speed this up

because it does not take this long. The people that come over from Vault 32, 33, no, people come over Vault 33, one of the two vaults, are not actually from the vault, but they're actually raiders. They sort of like- 33 is the nice vault. Yeah, and then the fake 32 people

who are actually raiders come over and they sort of lay waste to the vault. They kidnap, led by a woman named Moldaver, they kidnap the overseer and take him with them. They kill some of the people in the vault. And without much like consultation, Lucy flees to go chase after her dad. I mean, and it's very, if you told me it was the plot

of the new Fallout game, it would like, it feels right in line with like a Fallout. It feels very much like a Fallout setup. So you have the moment where she like emerges from the vault and the light floods in. Yeah, what's also funny is if you, if what you just described is like a pretty dark, fucked up experience. So for anyone that is, hasn't seen it or isn't familiar with Fallout, you probably won't expect that there's like humor throughout that entire extremely dark,

fucked up period. Uh, for example, at one point, the like entire vault is getting marauded and they're rolling in like a jello mold and they're like, no, no, no, what are you doing with that jello mold? It's that sort of like, and this is very true to fall out. It's this contrast between like an extremely fucked up reality and like this between like an extremely fucked up reality and like this otherworldly, like not realistic but like heightened almost satire. It's this idea, I think it plays with the idea

of like what after collapse, I think the humor of fallout in short is like, after a collapse, what do we rush to rebuild? Yeah. You know what I mean? And there's like, there's things that some of the people in the wasteland are rushing to rebuild faster than other people. And you see the things that people cling to rather than just sort of,

like you know they're not essential, but the human stuff that people are doing beyond surviving in this new reality, I think is what makes it funny. Yes, I think this show in particular was really interested in the B-movie humor, which I think that is what it funny. Yes, I think this show in particular was really interested in the B-movie humor, which I think that is like what you're talking about, Fresh, like the like, kind of like winky, cheeky.

Sorry, do you mean, sorry, wait, stop everything. Yeah, we need to clarify. You need to clarify. When you say B-movie. When you say B-movie. Oh, no, no, no, no. Okay. I was going into it.

I said, you know, it's this winky, cheeky, like. Right, like Jerry Seinfeld's movie. You know, like people in a plastic costume, and not, and I see why you're confused, not Jerry Seinfeld as a bee. Okay, thank you. Oh. That's all I asked. Okay, yeah, that's a good question.

Although that would be funny in the show if it happened, I would be not. Well, we're only talking about the first two episodes. That's true, it may happen. I don't wanna talk about what happens in episode three. No spoilers. Well, we're only talking about the first two episodes. That's true. It may happen. I don't want to talk about what happens in episode 3. So, yes, anyway, very, very cool, sweet, cheeky stuff. And then there is the hoops to kind of go further on what you're talking about.

The how do you maintain reality in society for 200 years and how does it get perverted? And that is like how they talk about sex in this show is like both like childish and extremely vulgar. So it's like, oh, you know, like you can only like fuck your cousin so many times before you have to go. I would say it's a matter of fact. I mean, I guess we hit it. We hear it as vulgar. I see what you're saying. Like, but it's like, it's matter of fact that I mean I guess we hit it we we hear it as vulgar I see what you're saying like but it like but it's very like Businesslike this is the this is the main thing this is what you do. Why yeah sex does it is it weird? I feel like anymore because it's like oh no, no, no, no, we have to do this like this is we can't be weird about this

well I don't think it says more about Lucy as a character than it's because her cousin, Chet or whatever his name is, is like genuinely in love with her. And Lucy is like, this is a math problem that we need to solve where we're running out of human beings. So the only way to do that is to have sex.

And like, so it, you know, I think it just depends on the person and how they... Yeah, she talks about after 10 years of cousin stuff. Yeah. Yeah. She's terrific. She's so good. Like, that's a really tough role to run because you're really balancing a lot and she's just like incredibly emotive and really steals the show in a pretty great way.

So that's half the show. Then there's the other half, which doesn't work as well for me early on but I get why they're doing it Yeah, I'm actually really glad that we watched two episodes because yes with the other half of the show that we're gonna be talking about and there probably are other chunks that we haven't even seen yet in These first two episodes is the whole Brotherhood of Steel thing specifically Maximus who's a character in the Brotherhood of Steel he's like a cadet if you will, and he is raised up in this militaristic organization. The Brotherhood of Steel has existed in the Fallout mythos really since the beginning.

If you've ever seen Power Armor on any of the box arts for the game, they usually have the Power Armor. Their whole ethos is they want to roam the wasteland and sort of horde any technology that they find and Kind of keep it for themselves and rule there have been different approaches to the Brotherhood of Steel and fallout 3 for example The Brotherhood of Steel is like almost entirely altruistic in kind of a boring way I think this version that we're seeing in the show is probably a little more true to most of the Brotherhood of Steel Which is they portray themselves as like this high and mighty organization that's saving the wasteland But really they tend to be selfish assholes that like don't really give a fuck apart from like having a lot of power

I mean, yeah, tell me if this is a is a right read of most most factions in fallout is a right read of most most factions in Fallout. They portray themselves as something we're familiar with like a church or a military or government. And then the reality is they're a cult. Almost every time it's like these things are actually cults. And if I think that there's a message of the series intentional or not, it's like, hey, what is the metaphor of this apocalyptic wasteland isn't so far off from the world that you live in? Yeah, I mean, I would I would levy that at like, any like company or organization that has a structure to it eventually ladders up to one person. And in a way, you could make that feel like a cult. I don't like they have like prayer elements if that's the connection that you're making to it

and there's like a kind of holier-than-now aspect to it. Well it's also like a cult that so often these these systems and whether they're like management or political or religious are intentionally obfuscating the actual intention, and the actual intention is nefarious. Well, and that's actually a good segue because I don't wanna go into this because I don't know if the show reveals this later on, but the true purpose of the vaults at large

is very much in line with that. There's a reason why those vaults existed and what their purpose was beyond just keeping everyone alive, which has been like core throughout the entire series of Fallout. So yeah, I would completely agree. Obfuscation and like hiding true purpose is the entire theme. You haven't even only watched two episodes, right? Correct, as was the assignment.

I will say this is not a spoiler by any means. As was the assignment. As was the assignment. Why would we not watch more? Because the people at home haven't seen more, is my point. For fans of the game who want to know more about that, the show is very clearly very interested in the question of the vaults.

And I think that is what is so cool about it. Like it is the very format of the show allows it to go deeper into some stuff that I feel like the games don't have as much. We can just let me just real quick get to the rest of the plot stuff. So basically there is a MacGuffin. It is of course, you've probably already guessed it, the head of Michael Emerson. Sure.

Uh, it is always a delight to see on television. Definitely. I first noticed him as so many when he played Benjamin Linus in Lost, but he was also in, oh my God, what was the frigging, he did like a hundred years of a show with Jim Caviezel. Person of interest. Yes, person of interest.

Jonathan Nolan, right? I'm pretty sure that's him. Oh, I didn't know that. There was definitely a Nolan involved with that. That makes perfect sense. And Kyle McLaughlin, mayor of Portland, mayor of the vault, and one of the co-writers of this series was one of the main writers of Portlandia.

Interesting. That's interesting. So you mentioned basically the ghoul who is Coop. He was in the explosion. We see him in the future, roaming the wasteland. He's also hunting for this bounty of Michael Emerson's character, Dr. Leapzig? Leapzig, yes.

Siggy something. He's put something mysterious into his head. Something is in his head. Yeah. And he has to escape. He also has a dog. Yes, he has a dog and something is in his head. And basically, Maximus the, did we talk about Maximus?

We talked about this deal. No, no, yeah. Before we get into Maximus, I do wanna call out one thing about Michael Emerson. One of the first times you see him, not the very first time, but very early on, he's sitting at a fire with Lucy, Lucy is like sleeping in a fire and he's just sitting there and you see the fire reflected in his glasses.

And it was the most like Ben Linus lost shot where he's just like being creepy in the fire light. Oh, brought back so many memories. Maximus anyway. Uh, yeah. Maximus is basically he's a low level wannabe squire in the Brotherhood of Steel. He gets the call up to, uh, to serve and basically

after maybe hijacking his fellow cadet. Yeah, probably. Yeah, exactly. Probably, uh, and gets the call to serve and basically finds it, figures out that his knight is an asshole. And as played by Michael Rappaport and maybe the best fucking cameo I've seen in recent... If you need to quickly communicate the information that is being communicated, you have to make this dude so hateable that basically after this attack,

he takes off his helmet and he needs to stem pack or he's gonna die and the dude watches him die. You have to find someone who can establish that in a minute and when you need that, you call Michael Rappaport. You get him on the phone. You're the only one who can fill this armor and make the audience be like, yeah, I understand why you'd watch the light burn out of his eyes as he begged you for help.

It's not only that, it also really serves to fix the Brotherhood of Steel problem that I think the first episode had. Right, I get what they were doing. They were doing this setup where you think it's this like very serious, straightforward, obvious force of good. And then they do this curve

where Michael Rapoport's character gets attacked by the, I think it's called a Yao-Wai in the Fallout universe. It's basically a radiated bear. And while it's being attacked, you think he's gonna like duke it out, like in a fist fight. And then at one point he just like bolts. He fucking runs away from the bear and is like,

no, no, fuck, fuck, fuck. And that like shows you, oh, this whole thing is a fucking, is bullshit. Like none of these people are shit. Thank goodness that they made that narrow decision while they're in the writer's room. Because the thing that I don't know if they could have accounted for is Brotherhood of the Steel looks really stupid on TV. These suits do not translate

Yeah, the medium of television. When you see a bunch of them together I think he makes it work on his own when you see the solo shots of like what they're supposed to represent I mean, they look like power armor. I don't know. It's goofy. It doesn't look like of what they're supposed to represent. I mean, they look like power armor. I don't notice it. It's goofy. It doesn't look like power armor. I think it looks like cosplay,

because everybody moves so fast in it. It looks like really uncomfortable cosplay. They're also kind of tied, because... And this is something we haven't mentioned, but, like, everything looks like fault. Like, it looks so much like fault. Incredibly. There's, like, props.

A lot of props that are rendered, like, can of cram is like rendered one for one. I mean, it looks exactly like everything in the aesthetically, which exactly fall out. Except I actually thought it was gonna be a fault, it was gonna be a problem, but I actually think it ends up, because it's so consistent, it ends up being of a real benefit.

I think it raises the question of, what would it be like to play a Fallout game where the people look good? Can you imagine? I mean, yeah, imagine that. And now we have an answer. It would be incredible. I think this is just me, but personally, I think that the Maximus stuff doesn't work very well because I don't feel like the actor playing him is very... doesn't really work for me.

That performance doesn't really land for me at all. It's kind of all over the place, and a lot of the times, I'm looking at him and I have no idea what he is supposed to be communicating. Okay, I thought this at first, and I've come around to thinking that the performance... But in episode six, you wait. No, no, no, no, no no I'm not gonna get any spoilers I've come around to think that the performance is is quite solid But that this character is a wild character to make as a co-main character because he sucks

He is he's an asshole. He's a coward. He's he's both like active, but the ways he's active we don't often see. He's inactive in a lot of really annoying ways. He makes worse people around him seem better, which is a very strange choice. So I feel like he is often left to... It's a thankless job as an actor to be this central and also be this unlikable on a script level. And maybe what you're talking about is they needed somebody that is likable to try to at least complicate it.

I don't know if maybe later in the season I was supposed to realize, oh, this guy is a coward. Or if that's his arc that he's going to change, but man, he, it's a- It's an interesting choice, at least, to have a character that is- It's Chow spending time with that character. What, okay.

So what, here's where I think the, there is like a 10 minutes where this show really clicked for me. And it is in the second episode when you see, basically Michael Emerson has wandered into a town. You see Lucy come into a town called Philly, which is confusingly not Philadelphia, but it's rather a landfill.

Oh, I didn't get the joke on landfill. Yeah, it's a gigantic landfill. Philly is, yeah, it's good. So you basically learn that like people up top thought all the vault dwellers were dead and think that vault dwellers are a fucking joke. And there is a real great conversation about like- Well, they know that they're not all dead.

As a joke, I mean, no, it's like they're not a, she jokes, the first thing she says is, I thought you all were all dead. So you could see where I'd be misled because one of the characters said exactly that. That's true. But I love your read on it though. I only mentioned that because they,

there's specifically Pip Boys being sold in the store. So she's clearly like, has seen at least, or I guess they could have been rated. Everybody on the surface has a Pip Boy. No, no. Michael Emerson had one. Well, not everyone though. It seems like an upper class.

Yeah, but anyway, they have a really interesting conversation about like the privilege of being in the vaults. And it's like, oh, that's the kind of conversation that's an interesting conversation to be having, right? Because there's some really interesting parallels they're drawing there. And then there is a moment where Walton Goggins ends up in the same town, the ghoul ends up in the same town, and he levels the place.

I mean, he's like, he's a force of nature, right? He's unkillable. He's so charismatic that it's like impossible to look at anything else on screen, even with 100 pounds of makeup. He's amazing. And he like kills all these people and he's like threatening everyone and like there's no one that's gonna stand up for him. And this is right after you had this conversation

about like privilege and what it means and stuff. And you see her look at a vault boy and she's like, fuck, okay, I gotta do the right thing. And that, that moment there is so interesting because it's a video game moment. It's not a moment that you logically I don't feel like you would see that in a lot of like TV script writing or movie script writing because I think that you're told that characters need to be a lot more complex, a lot more multi-layered, there has to be a lot more grays,

and it's actually really refreshing in a show that is so dark, to have a character that establishes upfront, like, she's gonna try to do the right thing. And it is what you would do in a, that is the approach that you would take in the video game, is it doesn't matter that he's better than you and everybody else is dead,

and it's, because you're the fucking main character in the video game, go out there and shoot that guy. And that moment of her, you can tell it twists something for the other people too. They're like, okay, maybe we'll give it one chance. And that really, really brought it home for me as getting the spirit of what this thing is and being really inherent to it

without trying to make it feel like something it's not. And it actually dives into specifically the tenets of what her vault was built around, because each of the vaults sort of have their own ethos and way of like doing things. And the fact that her vault, the like thing was, this is a meritocracy, everyone like does the right thing

for the greater good of everyone else. And so the fact that you're tying that into like how she was raised and how that defines her and showing that, and again, like they could have been way more on the nose and obvious about it, but I think just the one shot of the bobblehead nodding was enough to really hammer that home of like,

she's only got one choice. She knows she can't do anything, but be true to the place she was grown up in. But the show is not necessarily a Pollyanna about it. There's a great line where Ma June, who's running the shop there, and she's kind of the unofficial mayor of the town, it feels like. She says, so what was the purpose of the vaults?

And you hear Lucy say, a little bit embarrassed, we're going to save America. And Majin says, looks around and says, when were you planning on saving America? It's like, it feels very contemporary for a show that, yeah. It also, without ever saying it, is such a, oh, this is what it's like for the NPCs in a video game when I come through.

Because this character is so optimistic and so flat, and in a good way of like, singularly motivated, everybody seems like kind of confused. Like the rest of this world was existing before they ever showed up. Right. And will continue to exist when they leave. And is like so puzzled by this force that comes

in and is like, I'm not, I don't know any of your rules, I don't know any of your logic. I'm just here on my mission. I have my Pip boy. It has a little mark on it. I need to go there and I'm going to do this. Um, I'm going to try to help you along the way. And watching everyone be so confounded by this character

is such a, like, you feel it of like, oh yeah, this is definitely how I must annoy every NPC I meet in every game. She's like an alien that like dropped in from nowhere, basically. The biggest shock about Fallout, the show, for me, to this point has been my, okay, Travis, never played Fallout, watched all of it.

My in-laws, like Sydney's parents, were like, we're watching this show, you guys have got to check it out, Fallout. I'm like, what? They watch a lot of TV, but like they've never played it. My brother, Law Taylor, says to Sydney, I know this isn't the They watch a lot of TV, but like they've never played it. My brother, Law Taylor says to Sydney, I know this isn't the kind of show you normally watch, but you've got to see Fallout.

Like- That is shocking. And Taylor has never played, Taylor has never played Fallout either. So there's like, I really feel, it's really interesting to me that by committing to a world and deciding that they are not going to stop to me that by committing to a world

and deciding that they are not going to stop and explain every single fucking thing that happens, they're not gonna hang a lantern on it where like, Walton Goggins at one point eats some cherry tomatoes. It's amazing, of course, we're all loving it. That's so good. He says he's hungry and he gets a big handful of cherry tomatoes, like a fucking maniac,

and starts eating them and spitting the pits out. And then he drops a handful of something, and he says, for the tomatoes. And it looks like bottle caps. And a few other times people say caps. At no point is anyone like, Oh yeah, these days, bottle caps, their money. Like it doesn't, it doesn't have like, but I think by having the trust in that

world and just having an expansive world there, even if you don't know it, like you feel it, you feel that it's a real place, like it feels lived in and thought out. Even that I, as you're saying this this is he eating it or is he? Because I don't know if ghouls can eat normal food I guess the question I had like has anyone ever spit out the seeds in a cherry tomato Yeah, I think he's spitting the food out because he can't because remember there's another ghoul who well I don't know. I don't know what episode of Sansa never mind. I don't know any other ghouls. I

Mean, oh, yeah surprise. There are ghouls. I mean, oh yeah, surprise, there are ghouls in the Fallout TV show. Chris Plank cannot help himself. Well, he is referred to with the definitive article. Are you kidding me? He's referred to with the definitive article of the ghoul. The ghoul. So clearly there's only one.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He meets the ghoul, he meets the Gaba ghoul. I do have a question though, for the room. And here's what's surprising to me, is Justin says all of the people that have come to him and recommended the show and liked the show, even if they don't like the, or haven't played the game. The thing that surprised me, perhaps most of all,

is that they are incredibly true to specifically the violence of the game. Okay, that's, yes, I think that that's one, I think that's a problem. I think that in that second episode, when you do, which is I think where it's like the war, where you see him- I mean, the first episode has some

pretty fucking gnarly shit. For sure, for sure. But there's like, there's heinous stuff in both of them, for sure. And I kinda chuckled when I watched it, and I looked over at Sydney and she was horrified. Like, it was like, whoa, what was this? And I don't think, I think that ifified. Like it was like, whoa, what was this?

And I don't think, I think that if you're watching it, you get it eventually, but I think that if I hadn't been there with Sydney to be like, this is kind of a thing, like it's kind of a thing, she might've gotten iced out of it. I think there are three audiences. There is the people who play the video games and they know what this is and they're gonna get on board

relatively quickly. There are the people who play the video games and they know what this is and they're gonna get on board relatively quickly there are the people like Sydney my my dad bounced off the show after one episode because he was like What is it like the violence is like really upset him and he didn't understand that it was like it's joke But then there's the third group who has not played fallout But loves the boys right Amazon Prime and I think that is how they sold this show. Like it is doing so much of the same stuff as the boys in terms of violence and to some degree,

like potty mouth humor, despite being a very, very, very different show. Like I much prefer this, but I think that is why it's there. I think it is a selling point for Amazon. I think they want, like, this is the thing that they're like, this is what our audience loves. They love extreme funny violence. Yeah, I think if The Boys was not the success that it is,

there's no way this show has the level of violence that it does. I think Amazon would have pulled the plug on that. I do agree with Justin. I don't know that we need it for the show to succeed and I do think it will scare people away. I think there are plenty of opportunities in the Fallout universe to like lean on the jokes

and the hilarity without having like an SMG shoved through a guy's skull and having that guy shoot two other people while the gun is in his head. That's my read of it. I mean, I like it because it's whatever true to the game, but I also do worry. Like, I don't think, I would want my mom to watch this

and that is a reason why she probably won't like it. You are probably alien. Maybe they're alien anymore people than they're getting with that. It's hard to say. I can say. I will just say that the level, I think it's that the level of gore

is just a little bit past like funny to where it's like, jeez, like I can't even. Oh, things that are funny when you see them happen to computer characters, like are not as funny. You see that in real people. Yeah, the leg, him getting his leg, like that whole situation. Oh, God.

Yeah, it was a lot getting his leg like that whole situation. Oh, God. Yeah, it was a lot. I tend to agree. I'm not like a mega violence person in my media, but they do have a target audience. I think what is like surprising about the show is it's so good that the instinct is to be like, yeah, my mom should watch it. When in reality, when they made this, they're like, what the hell are you talking about? Not for moms.

We never thought that that would even be an option. Yeah. Like they, I'm sure that their, their, their goal was so much smaller than probably what they're going to actually have an opportunity to get. I think it's going to be a big, I feel like when I have that many different, like separate points of people coming to me organically, I feel like it's gonna be big. Yeah. We should take a break, because there's a lot of kind of, what does this mean for TV and games and all that, that I want to talk about on the back half. One thing before we move on from Fallout, I do have a little bit of a wish, and it's

probably a naive wish and again, i've only seen the first two episodes, so I don't know where it goes but Having seen what i've seen There is a part of me that wishes this is more this becomes an anthology show and not a We're only following this story and these people Because I think the strength of fallout and these people. Because I think the strength of Fallout, and really all storytelling, is like,

it's really fucking hard to do an overarching story with the same characters for many, many seasons at a time. And I think there's a lot of really interesting things about Fallout that come out when you're like, oh, this is how the West Coast is handling the apocalypse. How are they doing it in Boston? Or how are they doing it in West Virginia or whatever? Russ, I think that Amazon, should this show be successful,

will be more than happy. Oh, they're gonna do like CSI Miami? To make as many different fallout things as you want. There's already a boys' spinoff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. They would be thrilled to let you watch Gray Ghost, the series. Yeah, from a marketability standpoint, I do appreciate that anthology shows are harder

because you're starting from scratch each time you reboot the cast and things. You're right. It wouldn't surprise me to see them just do spin-offs. Before the show, Hoops, you were hinting at why this of changes what our expectations can be for video game adaptations or the possibilities. Right. Well, it's more like seeing the problems that they solved by taking it seriously and adapting.

I think to me, the number one thing that I kind of realized watching this is that if you're going to adapt a video game, specifically an open world sprawling thing, it should be a TV show. It shouldn't be a movie. It should be a TV show. Because if you think about how much is happening in Fallout and how much they are able to bring in, right?

To make it feel like Fallout. If you were trying to get this into two hours, you would lose everything about the world that makes it worth doing, right? You wouldn't have any sense of being in the world because what you forget is the special sauce of video game adaptation is almost never the story. Like the special sauce is not like in Fallout,

I don't know any of these people. I don't know any of these characters. I know this game, this world super well. I don't know any of these characters. But if you try to make a movie where I have to get like action hero excited about one of these people, it's gonna be 10 minutes of in the vaults,

you know, trying to truck through that and then trying to get out in the wasteland. If you have a story that takes 80 hours to tell in a video game, like at least spreading it out to eight makes it feel a lot more authentic, I think to the experience of, and like lets you use the things from it

that are good and useful and let you not get into the, like it just lets you use the good stuff in it and like do your own storytelling within the world. Yeah, I think the comparison was that, I know for years they were trying to make the Bioshock movie and for a variety of reasons it didn't happen, not the least of which was budget, but also like, that's exactly what you're talking about.

Like Rapture is the star of that, it's not necessarily like the twist or the specific characters, and you really would have to sprint. Whereas I think it's very clear to me now, and I think there is one in production, that a Bioshock TV show would work in the way that this show works. I, okay. and I think there is one in production, that a Bioshock TV show would work in the

way that this show works. I... okay. So I think... You don't agree? Well, kind of. I agree and disagree. I think that this show reveals what games are ripe for adaptations, and that is anthology games, effectively.

Games that have really rich worlds, they have different stories every time but they have a familiar structure and lots of interesting like side quest, right? I think Assassin's Creed we weirdly coming off this. I'm like, I can see that, you know, what every Assassin's Creed is But if you start a TV series with a different character in a different location I'm honestly more excited about it because I'm like, I can't wait to see this part of history with some new character and how they're going to go about it. I don't like dying to see Ezio. On the other hand, Halo, that's really tough because it's like, well, each game is different,

but it's all Master Chief and the lore is super complex and I never get a reset. That's tough. BioShock, I think, is an interesting example because BioShock started to do this. BioShock, BioShock Infinite, they were getting at same kind of story template but in different locations, different heroes. And when I think of what would make a great BioShock TV series, it would be doing that. A new location, a new character, but the same, that same structure. And that would be really exciting and get me like really curious to watch it rather than constraining them to like do what worked well on a video game, which is a really thankless job.

So I, yeah, but I would say like, I think what did well in Bioshock mostly is, like, that world that they created. Like, that's what succeeds. Right. But I'm saying, like, if you created a new world, I would still be very excited. Oh, yeah. I don't have, like, a desire to see more Rapture. I have a desire to see, like, the next Rapture.

Oh, you're crazy. That would be awesome. Like, imagine a Rapture... You think? A Bioshock series that's set during the fall of Rapture with like sort of a gilded, like era of murder mystery, whatever, I don't care. I would be happy to watch anything Rapture.

This is perhaps too deep of a dive into whether or not we would watch a Rapture TV show. I think that's good. Which should be called Rapture instead of Bioshock. You're welcome. Much better. Enjoy. That's also just, I mean, that also just a good but different template, right?

Which is like, how do we set up our games? I think what's cool about that, what you're talking about, now we're just using, we're going deep on Bioshock here. I tried to stop it. You refused. That accomplishes something else, which is, I think it's great when adaptations do what the original medium couldn't. And you know what the games would have been poor at

since they're all about shooting people and using special powers? The fall of Rapture, because there's like a lot of like political and social stuff. And you get all that stuff in the game, but it's all through like audio logs. And I should I should also say, I think that my takeaway, the more I think about it, is less that every video game should be a TV show rather than a movie, and more that you need to, like, being considerate about what the best template for it is. Like, Mortal Kombat, the video game, is a martial arts movie.

You are going person to person and fighting them, and then you fight the worst one. Like, that is a martial arts movie.. Like that is a martial arts movie. So making that as a martial arts movie makes perfect fucking sense. Yeah, it's already that. Super Mario, what is the Super Mario game? Well, in that, he runs around and jumps on things,

and eventually he kills the lizard. Well, that's good. We can do that in a movie. That's two hours. What's Fallout? Well, for eight hours, you wander around an expansive wasteland and have all these different interwoven stories,

like, 90 minutes? Can we do it in 90? Like, no, probably not. I don't think so. There is a universal characteristic to everything you've described. And that is when they transfer over to either a movie or TV show, they bring the, like, outlandishness of that franchise. And really, the only time that that hasn't happened and it's been successful is the last of us TV show Because every other instance whenever they do like a straight ultra serious version of the video game

Assassin's Creed jumps to mind it tends to be pretty miserable and I wonder whether Like like I don't know what that fucking Zelda movieda movie would be I think I think that's you know knowing what? It's fun about your game both for the game creator and the adaptation creator right and like Last of us is constantly fighting itself about how silly it is that you are just like a like deranged murderer, you know roaming the wast, slaughtering the blood of innocent. I mean, that's the thesis of the game is that. But how the silliness of that in the game is it definitely wants you to.

The Nathan Drake problem, right? Is he a swashbuckler or is he a fucking mass murderer? Assassin's Creed is like you fight the pope and maybe they think they're making a serious game and maybe the movie thinks of making a serious movie. But nobody playing Assassin's Creed, everyone was like, this is serious shit. They're thinking like this is silly,

ass, funny shit, and I'm having a great time. And I put the movie version of that needs to be the. Exactly, the movie needs to bring over the like, you are weirdo space aliens fighting the Pope. I was watching the TV show and at least two different times I had this thought, I wish I was playing this. Yeah. I wish I was playing this, this looks really fun.

This looks like a lot more fun than when they when they when she sees the the little vault boy statue I I real bad Gonna grab it Speech right there Yeah, this show rocks, I'm really excited to watch more of it Yeah, I uh It's really really good. I'm really excited to watch more of it. Yeah. It's really, really good. I'm really excited.

I hope more TV shows get this kind of... Maybe in a few weeks, we should talk about the whole thing, spoiler-y. It doesn't need to be like an A-segment. I don't think it'll be a few weeks, probably a couple months. I wanna give people the time. Yeah.

It's very good. But we'll make good on it. We did our infinite wealth. That's right. We'll do it. We have some reader mail. Yeah, what are people talking about? So a lot of people commenting on the,

some of the great games that have come out, specifically we, y'all did the rainy day games last week. This comes from Cameron Swingle. Hey besties, I just wanted to mention how crazy of a release month April has been and continues to be for indie games, big updates and big mods. Inkbound hit 1.0 this week and has devoured myself

and all my road bike friends. Did you play that, Justin? It's from the monster train. I played it really early. I need to return to it. I played it before it was really ready for prime time. We also have, Noita got its first huge update in three years.

I was reading about that, that game rules. The Planet Crafter hit 1.0, fantastic survival craft game with no combat and terraforming a planet, that sounds dope. System Shock Remake got its big 1.2 update and console release next month. RimWorld got a huge 1.5 update, anomaly expansion. Botany Manor is crushing it. Nexus 5X comes out in a week.

Fallout London comes out in a week. Plant mentioned that earlier. I don't know what that is, but that sounds cool. It doesn't come out in a week, but we should talk about that in a second. OK. Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode releases in beta this week. The list goes on.

Yeah, wow, that has been fucking crazy So have you not heard about fallout London? Do you know about this? Holy shit. Okay, so these um, I mean just game designers it's silly to call them just moderates here have made a Colossal expansion slash spin-off of fallout Colossal expansion slash spin off of fallout for that is set in London. That is kind of its own thing and they've been working on it for years. It looks unbelievable. Here's the problem. It was going to come out next week.

Uh, Microsoft is releasing the next gen update. Yeah. They have to wait for that update to come out, test against it, and then they can release after that. So maybe that takes like a day for them to like adjust. What is the next gen update? So there is so Bethesda and Microsoft are releasing a next gen update to fallout four, which will allow it to run at 60 FPS on console, specifically PS five and Xbox Series X. It'll also be verified on Steam Deck for the first time.

And I don't know what other tweaks they're doing. But basically- Will it be made more fun? Will it be made more pleasurable too? That's actually a good segue. I'll mention it now. So for Resty's this coming Tuesday, Chris Plant and I are playing through Fallout New Vegas,

which arguably is the best 3d fallout game ever made So join us on that adventure the game I don't think the sale is still going on but the game costs like 10 bucks on Steam if you want to like Get it. It runs great on Steam Deck and fucking rules. I love yeah, no Vegas. I guess 5 250 on sale. It's ridiculous. Yeah right now. It's on sale, but I think the sale will be done by the time This episode goes live Also great DLC you can get the DLC on for the cheap as well Okay, another letter. This comes from Jeff Nelson great episode everyone needs to check out door

Romantic did I get that right? Yeah As the perfect rainy day and vibes game, it is a tile laying, a cozy puzzle game. Wait, we've all played Dorfromantic, right? I don't think I played it. For real? Yeah, I don't think I played it. We definitely, yeah, we did an episode on it.

You lay like- Maybe not an episode, but we totally played it. It's one of those like puzzle games that's hard to describe and easy to play. Yeah. Uh, it looks very cute and pretty. I don't think I've played this game. Oh my gosh. Y'all y'all.

You're going to love this game so much. I could have sworn that I made us all play this. Um, couple more letters. Uh, this comes from Elias. Hey guys, wanted to see if y'all had recommendations for board games that, uh, and the like. My girlfriend and I have been playing Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion and Emerge lately. Emerge particularly stands out as a game that I love and is great for two players.

Recommended to anyone who's curious. Love what you do. Any board games? I don't really play a lot of board games. Juice? Anything two player maybe? What's it called? Fugitive. Any board games? I don't really play a lot of board games. Juice? Anything to play or maybe? What's it called? Fugitive is a really good small game for two players

where one is a fugitive on the run and one is a marshal. And basically the, without getting into mechanics, the fugitive is laying face down cards that are basically their bases and there's numbered bases. And the Marshal doesn't know which, the refugee has to lay them out in sequence, but the Marshal doesn't know which cards they've laid down. So basically it's the Marshal, and you can only make certain small jumps between bases. So the Marshall is trying to hunt down the fugitive by guessing their bases and they

start ruling out possible locations that they could be. The Marshall has a little like dry erase board that they're updating their search on. But the refugee escapee rather can it has a strategy to it too. But the two of them are kind of facing off against each other. You play in like 15 minutes. It's really good. I bring it on the road with me. It's just a small box.

I played a ton. I played Ticket to Ride at a bachelor party a couple weeks ago. Sounds like a heck of a bachelor party. It was great. I won. So it's always better when you win. That and the crystal meth really made it a rager. It was wild.

Last letter coming in from Ian. Along the lines of you must build a boat, I would like to share my favorite rainy day airplane meditation game, Duet by Cumboeus, is how I'm going to say that, is one of the best flow state games I've ever played. And ever since I found state games I've ever played and ever since I found it, I played it on every flight.

It's great putting on headphones and totally zoning in. Oh, this game. We played this game. Is this like a period where I'm like, we've played this and then it turns out I was playing. Turns out I don't play any of the games on besties is what we've revealed. I don't know.

Well, it came out like 2015. Oh, okay. So, you know, we've been doing this for't know. Well, it came out in 2015. Oh, OK. So we've been doing this for a while. You know what? Honestly, maybe I played this when we were doing the show like once a year. So it's all blurring together. Good recommendation, though.

Has anybody else played anything good? I've been playing New Vegas, but we are going to talk about that on Resty's, so I'll save all my deep-seated thoughts on New Vegas, but we are going to talk about that on resties. So I'll save all my deep sea on New Vegas. I saw, I saw a movie that I want to recommend. Okay. I saw the first Omen. Do you know?

And it was good. Yeah. It's like the prequel to the Omen and I had no interest in seeing it. I couldn't even bother to watch a trailer for this movie. And then suddenly, but surely people were like, okay, go check out that first element? That movie's pretty good. And then people like, you gotta go check out the first element. That movie was great. And then finally, I was like, hey, I've got an afternoon. I've got some childcare. I can go zone out. And damn, it was it was like, really, really well made. Shockingly. It's one of those movies where

somebody's like, you know what, I might only get one shot to make a movie, so I'm gonna make the best possible one, and hopefully it's gonna get me a lot of opportunities afterwards. And I hope that this director, that she gets countless opportunities, because hot damn, also has two shots in it that I cannot believe a major studio would include

in a movie in the year 2024. Like, honestly, shots that if I had seen it in a movie in the 70s, I would have been like, Yowza, I am distressed. Wow. Um, yeah. High praise. High praise indeed. Yeah. Um, I have two movies. Monkey Man, I saw in the theater. It kicks ass.

If you like action movies that have a lot to say politically and are really, really excitingly shot and acted, Death of a Tell is like, it's ridiculous. This is its first directorial film and it is so confident and self-assured and cool and fun and it rules. It's great. The other movie I watched was called Late Night with the Devil. This is, you guys ever heard of Ghost Watch? Ghost Watch was a BBC movie that it was a,

I guess you'd call it a mockumentary. It was, even though it was in a comedy, it was like a fake documentary where they were going inside a house looking for ghosts that aired on the BBC and scared the crap out of people. Cause I thought it was, some people thought it was like live. Like it was really happening. Late Night with the Devil is sort of inspired by Ghostwatch.

It is a talk show, like cheesy talk show where the host is always second fiddle to Johnny Carson. His ratings are down and as kind of a rating stunt, he has a girl who is supposedly possessed on the show with her, the doctor that's been studying with her. And what you watch is with some like archival footage, intersplice of like behind the scenes stuff, you basically watch the episode of the show and Sydney and I watched it in a dark theater at like 9 PM, which was the perfect vibe for it.

But really watching this show unravel and watching a TV show kind of collapse around the horror of what's happening is, is it's awesome. It's really, really good. If you like scares, they aren't going to leave you with a lot of like, I don, it's awesome. It's really, really good. If you like scares that aren't gonna leave you with a lot of like, I don't know, distress, it's really fun and exciting and great. It's so tense. It's like I'm trying to find myself like really clenched up. There's something about watching a TV show

and people trying to keep a TV show going while things are happening that are very dark that is like a really good tension. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I think we did it. Plant.

I guess we didn't talk about that many games, but what did we talk about? We talked about the Fallout TV show and then we got a whole bunch of games recommended to us from Re-Listener Mail, which are all going to be in the newsletter at besties.fan. Cool. Cool. I want to thank the following people for being patrons of the Patreon. It's at patreon.com slash the besties.

We have Aya Barbacane, Jay Bird, Dr. Hellbenders, and Craziest Calico. Thank you for being backers and supporting everything. The next backer only episode is the Resties, which comes out on Tuesday. We're talking about Fallout New Vegas and some other stuff, which is exciting. We also have the, this would be the May episode

of our Bracket Battles episode, which y'all have been voting on, very exciting. So stay tuned for that. That's coming in early May. And yeah, more fun stuff to come. We really appreciate y'all. Thanks so much. Thanks for being with us.

Next week, Stellar Blade, is that right? That is- Stellar Blade. Right. I won't be here for that, but I'm sure it'll be. Are you and Griffin both bailing on us for this episode? Humdinger.

We have a very special guest joining us next week. Thank goodness. We're gonna be in Chicago, actually, Bailing on us for this episode. Humdinger, we have a very special guest joining us next week. Thank goodness. We're going to be in Chicago, actually on the 25th. If you're in Chicago, you can come see Taz, if you'd like to see. The Bear with My Brother, Maybe show is sold out, but we're also going to be at C2E2, if you want to come out and say hi. I think it's a really elaborate way of not getting canceled by talking about Stellar

Blade. I think you put a lot of effort into it and I admire that. And for all of my friends here, be sure to join us again next week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!