Everything you need to know about Amazon’s Fallout ahead of release: we talked to the creators – Fallout (Amazon)

If you’re a fan of recent film and TV adaptations of video game hits like The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the Castlevania and Tekken series on Netflix, or The Last of Us on HBO Max, you definitely don’t want to miss Fallout, which premieres April 11 on Prime Video.

Yes, you read correctly. Fallout is advancing its premiere on Amazon’s streaming platform by one day (the first trailer announced it for April 12), and is doing so by releasing all episodes simultaneously. The production company is very proud of the work of both the cast and crew, and yesterday we attended a presentation behind closed doors where we were able to ask questions of director and executive producer Jonathan Nolan, showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, stars of the show Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten, and producer and director of the game series Todd Howard as they unveiled the new gameplay trailer, which you can see below.

The main driving force behind Fallout as a TV series was Jonathan Nolan, who has been a self-proclaimed fan of the game franchise since playing the third volume in 2008, and that the first step to making the series on Amazon came five years ago, when he was able to meet Todd Howard in person. “At the time, I was a young aspiring writer. It almost derailed my entire career. It’s so ridiculously playable and fun. No, seriously, the games were great.”

“It’s such a rare and incredible thing, and I’ve done it twice in my career, to take something you love and have the opportunity to play in that universe, to create your own version of that universe. The first time was with Batman, and this time with Fallout, a series of games I love.”

In recent statements, both Nolan and Howard have said that the series can be considered Fallout 5, even though it is a completely original story set in the same universe. As you’ll see when we talk about the details of what was seen in the trailer, there are many details related to the entire game series, including the early Black Isle and Interplay titles before Bethesda took over the IP. Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner talked about this as well:

“It’s set in the world of Fallout, but it’s a new story set more or less after the events we’ve seen. The series is based on 25 years of creativity, thinking and building. And we thought it was best to continue with that, rather than renew it. Because that’s what has worked with Fallout over the years. It’s changed hands, it’s changed and it’s a living thing. And yes, we felt like we needed to try to put a new piece on top of that.”

Whether this transition from video game to TV format works depends on the production’s attention to detail, and Nolan took the opportunity to share with us the moment he was sure would work: “We talked a lot about the Power Armor. The tone was another important thing. I think the tone was maybe the most difficult and intimidating thing for me. But working with Geneva and Graham, I knew we were going to be in a good place with an incredibly ambitious story. On a technical level, the scale of the world and Power Armor in particular, it was one of those things where you wonder, how on earth are we going to do that? But we did it.”

Such a story could not work without a cast of actors who know how to handle it. It was at this point that Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten entered the conversation, telling us something about their roles and the contrast their characters, Lucy and Max, provide to span the entire Fallout universe.

“Lucy is a resident of the Haven,” Purnell said. Ella began: “And what excited me most about playing her was that she’s so innocent and naive and obviously very privileged as well, as you said. It was exciting for me to start in that place. You know, she’s essentially a newborn baby. She has no real life experience. All she knows is what she has learned and what she has read in the books she has in the vault. She is limited. And then you put her in the wilderness, and, you know, what happens? What happens with that? I find that really exciting to begin with.”

“I play Maximus. He’s part of the Brotherhood of Steel,” continued Aaron. “(…) a person who has lived his whole life in the wilderness, and he has to, you know, have a certain kind of moral ambiguity imposed on him, I think, living in the world he lives in, and where you go from there. How you hold on to what your unique, pure self is, and how that changes, and how you figure out what you want.”

We were also able to see a video with a special greeting from Walton Goggins, who was unable to attend the event, in which he talked about what it was like to play the Ghoul (whose Ghoul name was not revealed), the complexity of his character, and how he bridges the pre-war world with the post-apocalyptic Wasteland we will see in the series, nearly 200 years later. “The Ghoul is, in a sense, the poet Virgil in Dante’s Inferno. He is, as it were, the guide of the group and the viewer through this post-apocalyptic paradise.”

The best details and secrets not to miss from the Fallout trailer

If you’ve been a fan of the games from 1998 to the present, you’ve probably noticed some of the details that make the production design of the Fallout series so detailed, but perhaps there are others you’ve missed. For example, Lucy walks past the Shady Sands sign, a location that has been an important part of the Fallout games since the beginning. Shady Sands is where the Dweller of Vault 13 arrives in the original Fallout while searching for the water chip, and that settlement would eventually become the capital of the New California Republic, one of the main factions in Fallout New Vegas.

While probably not the same place (mainly because of the geography of the United States itself), the settlement where the Ghoul has a firefight has many similarities to Megaton, the first settlement we visited right after leaving Vault 101 in Fallout 3. The Fallout series is set on the West Coast, while Megaton is near the ruins of Capital Wasteland (Washington D.C.), but the design of the setting is undoubtedly heavily influenced by it.

The Vertibirds that appear are straight from the designs of modern releases, with side doors for Power Armor implementation. Also, the starting area looks similar to the Hidden Valley -area in New Vegas’ Mojave Wasteland, which could make sense as a hidden base for the Brotherhood of Steel operating in Los Angeles.

In one of the display cases Lucy walks past, we see a Stimpak with the same design as in the games. In addition, there is a Vault Boy bobblehead with the same Bethesda design.