Amazon’s Fallout Series: 4 Things It Needs, 2 Things To Cut

There’s no official word on whether or not Ron Perlman will have anything to do with the Amazon Fallout series, but if the studio doesn’t at least try to recruit the Sons of Anarchy star, it will be the first big step in alienating longtime fans.

Perlman has been the narrator for all of the main games — starting with 1997’s Fallout: A Post-Nuclear Role-Playing Game — as well as 2001’s Fallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel, 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas, and the MMORPG Fallout 76. As long as Perlman is around and willing to do it, it’s unthinkable to have anyone else utter the line, “war never changes.”

It also wouldn’t be a bad idea to give the Hellboy star a screen role. It doesn’t have to be anything huge. A vendor, a raider, some random obnoxious Brotherhood of Steel jerk–something.

With exceptions like the Fallout 3 DLC Mothership Zeta, visiting aliens have been a canonical but minor part of the game series. I don’t think Amazon should completely swear off the little green men from their Fallout show, but they should probably wait at least a season or two to incorporate them, if at all.

The studio is no doubt hoping to capture views from both newbs and invested fans. While us veterans to the Wasteland won’t have trouble being quickly delivered the lore of all the raiders, cannibals, mutants, vault dwellers, etc. of Fallout, newcomers may need a bit more time to process all the post-apocalyptic insanity before being hit with “oh and there are aliens.”

I’ve never encountered a video game series that has more fun with cannibalism than Fallout, and Amazon’s Fallout show would do well to learn from the source material’s example.

I’m not talking about the random dudes who wander the Wasteland hunting people for food, or even something like the guys looking to cook Stu and Mike in Peacock’s Twisted Metal.

Throughout the series there are cannibals who turn their culinary interests into something more of a cult-like group activity. Fallout 3 offers some of the best examples. One side quest introduces us to The Family, a collection of cannibals who have convinced themselves they’re vampires. There’s also the small town of Andale, which comes off as the most cheerful little community until you discover where they carve up their guests.

Upon first playing Fallout 3, one of the funniest and most pleasant surprises I found was the conflict between the Mechanist and the AntAgonizer. If at any point you wander into Canterbury Commons, the first thing you will be greeted with is a man with robot companions facing off against a woman who has learned to command some of the giant mutated insects of the Wasteland.

After a brief fight with each other, the two leave, and the townspeople–tired of the pair messing up the place–task you with either killing one or both of them or otherwise persuading them to drop their pointless rivalry. The side quest proved fun enough that a new version of the Mechanist was made the chief antagonist of the Automatron DLC for Fallout 4.

Amazon’s Fallout needs at least one of these obsessed and hilarious comic book hopefuls, but not the same ones. The show unfolds over two centuries before the events of Fallout 3— and it will take place in Los Angeles while Fallout 3 and 4 are both set on the East Coast–so it shouldn’t be the Mechanist and/or the AntAgonizer. But we’re sure the creatives can come up with some equally ridiculous post-nuclear super personas for the show.

One of the few solid details we know about the Amazon Fallout show is that Season 1 will be set 210 years before the events of Fallout 4, and it will exist within the same continuity as the games. So, it wouldn’t even be possible for the leader of the Commonwealth’s Minutemen to make an appearance (at least not right away). But I, and plenty of other players, were traumatized enough by Garvey to still insist that neither he nor anyone like him appear in the TV show unless it is for them to be killed in a horrific fashion.

In Fallout 4, Preston Garvey is initially the NPC head of the Minutemen, a potential companion, a potential romantic partner, and in most likelihood, the very first friendly human you will run into after the bombs drop. Regardless, what he is remembered best for is pestering the Sole Survivor endlessly with what becomes a dreaded phrase: “There’s a settlement that needs your help, I’ll mark it on your map.”

Play Fallout 4 long enough, and you’ll start hearing, “There’s a settlement that needs your help, I’ll mark it on your map” in your dreams. If the guy pops up out of nowhere to hit you with “There’s a settlement that needs your help, I’ll mark it on your map,” while you’re later playing Skyrim, God of War, or Super Mario Kart, you won’t be surprised.

One of my favorite things about the Fallout games are the wild ideas the creators come up with for different factions and communities. Cannibals pretending to be vampires, cultists who believe irradiation is a gift from God, and–my absolute favorite of them all–The Kings, a faction full of nothing but Elvis Presley impersonators introduced in Fallout: New Vegas.

The good news is I think there’s a decent chance we could see these Elvis worshippers in the upcoming Amazon show. The show will take place in Los Angeles, which is not too far from Las Vegas. Walton Goggins’s hero will no doubt need to do some traveling; who’s to say he won’t make a stop in Sin City?