Review MCA Wades in to the Wake of the Fallout TV Show

[Lemming42]

He refers to the Elvis impersonation school as a "religious institution" and implies that he doesn't know who Elvis is, which is the part that sticks in my craw. If they were just a gang co-opting some bit of pop culture hauntology and repurposing it as a new thing (eg the Blades in Fo1 naming themselves after a faded billboard) then it wouldn't be so weird, but The King's dialogue seems to imply there's some kind of misinterpretation going on on his end - the building is thought to be religious in nature, they believe "The King" himself built it, and apparently they have so little information that they don't even know Elvis' name. But The King somehow also knows enough about him to mimic his accent and dialect, and namedrop several of his songs.

The whole thing is based on them not knowing who Elvis is and inadvertently viewing him as a quasi-religious figure, but simultaneously knowing enough about him to become a group of crap Elvis impersonators, and all this time there's someone in eyeshot of their door who could tell them outright who Elvis Presley is. And then Mr New Vegas keeps referring to Dean Martin and Bing Crosby in ways that imply that those figures are common knowledge to listeners, which makes it even more insane that Elvis, of all people, apparently has no surviving documentation. EDIT: I read the dialogue just now on the wiki and see that they initially had holotapes of Elvis' music, that then went missing when Obsidian couldn't fork over the budget for Elvis songs

I'm kind of getting in too deep here because I don't actually have any strong feelings on The Kings, they just always seemed kind of flimsily-justified, the result of one of the writers just coming up with the thought "building of elvis impersonators" and working backwards from there.

 

[Butter]

The Kings are a Bethesda-tier idea. When you see morons on Reddit saying "Why was there no Oceans Eleven-style heist on the Strip?", it's basically the same kind of brain rot. Someone made a list of well known "Las Vegasy" things, and then put one of them in the game. You can do anything after the end of the world. You're not beholden to real world pop culture or Old World history.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

And then Mr New Vegas keeps referring to Dean Martin and Bing Crosby in ways that imply that those figures are common knowledge to listeners

To be honest, the radio stations in nu-Fallout have always bugged the shit out of me. There's absolutely no logical sense that the only music remaining from before the bombs fell would be music produced pre-1960. Maybe it happens once because of some odd turn of events, but in every single location? I understand why they picked those old songs, considering they can be licensed fairly cheap, but it's the Ian Malcolm thing of, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should."

 

[Roguey]

The King's dialogue seems to imply there's some kind of misinterpretation going on on his end

Oh, I know it says school out front, but everything in here seems to be related to the worship of some guy from back in the day.

If this was a school, what was taught here?

As far as we can tell, the guy that built this place was considered the coolest of the cool, and taught other people how to be more like him.

People would come from all around to learn how to sing, dance, dress, and even speak the way he did.

He's not misinterpreting anything. It's just his culturally-removed take on the past.

 

[Lemming42]

One line before that "school" one, he refers to the building as a "religious institution". Again I know he doesn't literally think Elvis was a deity or that there was a religion centred around him, but the whole concept as presented feels forced; it relies on the Kings not having knowledge that should logically be easily accessible to them. They don't understand who Elvis was or his cultural impact, but at the same time they have to be very familiar with him so they can all do bad impressions and sing his songs, and all this happens while there's several people standing around nearby who would obviously know who Elvis is, and there's a radio station blasting out far more obscure artists from the same era.

I can't really understand why the writers include the line about religion/worship, or the conceit about how they don't know Elvis' name and can only glean that he was "The King", since the concept would work almost exactly the same if they were just a bunch of jackasses who knew full well who Elvis was and formed a gang based off his persona.

Again I'm kind of arguing a point I'm not totally invested in, The Kings just sort of wash over me every time I play the game.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Chris Avellone starts to touch on this, but he doesn't seem to flesh it out. Cold fusion being some dramatic things makes no sense, nor does the resource war anymore, since Bethesda made every single car fusion powered in Fallout 3 and 4. Judging by the amount of nuclear bomb cars in Fallout 3, fusion tech was pretty damned wide spread during the resource war(which also makes the vertibirds needing an oil refinery as a refueling base make even less sense if they were pre-war). To add to the "wide spread" feeling, Fusion Cores are all over Fallout 4. In just the Nuka-World expansion alone, there's 19 of them to be obtained and that doesn't count the vendors that sell ammo having up to five Fuson Cores for sale at any given reset of their inventory. There's also 14 more in Far Harbor, that little fishing village. This is over 200 years since the Great War, no less. There's so many in the main game, there's no way I'm going to add all those up.

Just to compare and contrast since I did decide to finally add them up, not counting the ones you can buy in shops in Fallout 4, there's 80 Fusion Cores in the wild around the Commonwealth 200 years after the Great War. There's 19 more in Nuka-World and 14 more in Far Harbor. So, that's 113 fusion cores that you can find in Fallout 4's world just lying around if you have all the DLC. That's just Fusion Cores, not MicroFusion Cells(Fusion Cells in Fallout 4 and there's 75 Fusion Cells in Fallout 4's world just laying around).

In Fallout, there's 5 MicroFusion Cells in the game world. You can get them from Supermutants and Brotherhood of Steel Paladins, and you can occasionally find them for sale at the Gunrunners. Fallout is 80 years after the Great War, and there's only five of them just laying around. In other words, fusion items were very, VERY rare.

In Fallout 2, there's 20 MicroFusion Cells in the world, and most of these are in Navarro, the Oil Rig, in the Brotherhood of Steel bunkers, and places like that. In fact, 12 of the 20 MicroFusion Cells are in Enclave owned locations and 4 of 20 MicroFusion Cells are in the Brotherhood bunkers. That means there's only 6 out of 20 MicroFusion Cells that aren't owned by a high tech faction. You can buy these occationally in Shady Sands and San Francisco. They're also dropped by Supermutants that are carrying energy weapons. About the only thing that doesn't make much sense with this in the context of the setting is that the Supermutants still have these 80 years after the Master was at the height of his power.

It's kind of hard to justify things like the Great War being over resources when you have that many fusion cores and cells just laying around in your game world that takes place two centuries afterwards, let alone the entire "cold fusion" plotline in the TV series. This is why you do design docs as opposed to Bethesda's mantra of "The Rule of Cool."

 

[Roguey]

One line before that "school" one, he refers to the building as a "religious institution". Again I know he doesn't literally think Elvis was a deity or that there was a religion centred around him, but the whole concept as presented feels forced; it relies on the Kings not having knowledge that should logically be easily accessible to them. They don't understand who Elvis was or his cultural impact, but at the same time they have to be very familiar with him so they can all do bad impressions and sing his songs, and all this happens while there's several people standing around nearby who would obviously know who Elvis is, and there's a radio station blasting out far more obscure artists from the same era.

I can't really understand why the writers include the line about religion/worship, or the conceit about how they don't know Elvis' name and can only glean that he was "The King", since the concept would work almost exactly the same if they were just a bunch of jackasses who knew full well who Elvis was and formed a gang based off his persona.

Again I'm kind of arguing a point I'm not totally invested in, The Kings just sort of wash over me every time I play the game.

According to Gael Sweeney, Elvis impersonation offers a spectacle of the grotesque, the display of the fetishized Elvis body by impersonators who use a combination of Christian and New Age imagery and language to describe their devotion to The King. 'True' impersonators believe that they are 'chosen' by The King to continue His work and judge themselves and each other by their 'Authenticity' and ability to 'Channel' Elvis' true essence. True impersonators don't 'do Elvis' for monetary gain, but as missionaries to spread the message of The King. Especially interesting are those who do not perform, per se, that is, they don't do an Elvis act, they just 'live Elvis,' dressing as The King and spreading His Word by their example."

As for his name

Although Elvis Presley died in 1977, his name and likeness have been trademarked by Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE). EPE earns millions of dollars each year through a licensing program that grants licensees the right to manufacture and sell Elvis Presley merchandise worldwide.

Obsidian/Beth would have had to pay a small fortune even just to use his name. They got away with "the king" because they didn't actually identify who it is. His name simply disappeared from history (like Elvis's songs in day to day life because they also charge a massive fortune to license his songs).

 

[ArchAngel]

Chris Avellone starts to touch on this, but he doesn't seem to flesh it out. Cold fusion being some dramatic things makes no sense, nor does the resource war anymore, since Bethesda made every single car fusion powered in Fallout 3 and 4. Judging by the amount of nuclear bomb cars in Fallout 3, fusion tech was pretty damned wide spread during the resource war(which also makes the vertibirds needing an oil refinery as a refueling base make even less sense if they were pre-war). To add to the "wide spread" feeling, Fusion Cores are all over Fallout 4. In just the Nuka-World expansion alone, there's 19 of them to be obtained and that doesn't count the vendors that sell ammo having up to five Fuson Cores for sale at any given reset of their inventory. There's also 14 more in Far Harbor, that little fishing village. This is over 200 years since the Great War, no less. There's so many in the main game, there's no way I'm going to add all those up.

Just to compare and contrast since I did decide to finally add them up, not counting the ones you can buy in shops in Fallout 4, there's 80 Fusion Cores in the wild around the Commonwealth 200 years after the Great War. There's 19 more in Nuka-World and 14 more in Far Harbor. So, that's 113 fusion cores that you can find in Fallout 4's world just lying around if you have all the DLC. That's just Fusion Cores, not MicroFusion Cells(Fusion Cells in Fallout 4 and there's 75 Fusion Cells in Fallout 4's world just laying around).

In Fallout, there's 5 MicroFusion Cells in the game world. You can get them from Supermutants and Brotherhood of Steel Paladins, and you can occasionally find them for sale at the Gunrunners. Fallout is 80 years after the Great War, and there's only five of them just laying around. In other words, fusion items were very, VERY rare.

In Fallout 2, there's 20 MicroFusion Cells in the world, and most of these are in Navarro, the Oil Rig, in the Brotherhood of Steel bunkers, and places like that. In fact, 12 of the 20 MicroFusion Cells are in Enclave owned locations and 4 of 20 MicroFusion Cells are in the Brotherhood bunkers. That means there's only 6 out of 20 MicroFusion Cells that aren't owned by a high tech faction. You can buy these occationally in Shady Sands and San Francisco. They're also dropped by Supermutants that are carrying energy weapons. About the only thing that doesn't make much sense with this in the context of the setting is that the Supermutants still have these 80 years after the Master was at the height of his power.

It's kind of hard to justify things like the Great War being over resources when you have that many fusion cores and cells just laying around in your game world that takes place two centuries afterwards, let alone the entire "cold fusion" plotline in the TV series. This is why you do design docs as opposed to Bethesda's mantra of "The Rule of Cool."

USA has enough oil to last decades or more but it is still more than happy to attack middle east to take their oil or force them to sell it cheap. Just because it seems something is plentiful, it does not mean you will not fight wars over even more resources.

Also pre war world was huge, just because 200 fusion cores survived 200 years later it does not mean there were plenty extra ones when they had to power much more than 100 vaults and tens of thousands instead of 100+ power suits

 

[Butter]

USA has enough oil to last decades or more but it is still more than happy to attack middle east to take their oil or force them to sell it cheap.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Just because it seems something is plentiful, it does not mean you will not fight wars over even more resources.

Except in Fallout 2, they make it pretty clear that the Poseidon Oil Rig was the last oil rig pumping oil.

Also pre war world was huge, just because 200 fusion cores survived 200 years later it does not mean there were plenty extra ones when they had to power much more than 100 vaults and tens of thousands instead of 100+ power suits

There's 113 fusion cores, not counting the ones in the shops, the Brotherhood power armors, raider power armors(which are pretty dumb), etc., in just Boston alone. The fact that you can find that many, 200 years after scavengers have been all over the place, makes it seem like there were quite a few of them laying around. Now factor in all the cars that explode in to little mushroom clouds when you damage them.

 

[ArchAngel]

Just because it seems something is plentiful, it does not mean you will not fight wars over even more resources.

Except in Fallout 2, they make it pretty clear that the Poseidon Oil Rig was the last oil rig pumping oil.

Also pre war world was huge, just because 200 fusion cores survived 200 years later it does not mean there were plenty extra ones when they had to power much more than 100 vaults and tens of thousands instead of 100+ power suits

There's 113 fusion cores, not counting the ones in the shops, the Brotherhood power armors, raider power armors(which are pretty dumb), etc., in just Boston alone. The fact that you can find that many, 200 years after scavengers have been all over the place, makes it seem like there were quite a few of them laying around. Now factor in all the cars that explode in to little mushroom clouds when you damage them.

But you forgot that 1 Fusion Core in Power Armor lasts maybe few days of ingame use. It is wonder there are any at all :D

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

But you forgot that 1 Fusion Core in Power Armor lasts maybe few days of ingame use. It is wonder there are any at all :D

Oh no. Fallout 4 was the first game where I never wore Power Armor beyond the initial thing with the Deathclaw, and the Fusion Core stuff is why.

The crazy thing is that you can build a settlement with a fusion generator, have laser turrets out the yin-yang, lights everywhere, the best water supply, and so on - and that fusion core will last for weeks. In fact, I don't think I've ever replaced one in the time I had that tech level and when Preston Garvey and the raid mechanics just pissed me off to where I quit playing. It makes no sense that the Fusion Cores power a Power Armor for so little time, but can power an entire settlement practically indefinitely.

 

[Luzur]

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I like that guy's vitriol. There's a reason why I sat through all 16 hours of their reactions to things while watching the show. Sure, someone it is confirmation bias, but they caught a few things I didn't catch. The fact the show fucks up when the bombs fell, which is something Bethesda came up with in the first place in Fallout 3, is something I missed. Fallout 3 says that the bombing started just before 10AM on the East Coast, but the Ghoul is attending a birthday party for children in Los Angeles when the bomb goes off there. There's even people talking about being worried there would be a nuclear attack soon on a live TV broadcast in LA, when those bombs would have started hours before that. Bethesda can't even keep their own shit straight.

 

[Decado]

The show was okay. Walton Goggins is the main reason to check it out, he steals the entire show. The vault dweller chick is fine and, to the show's credit, they manage to avoid girlbossing; she really is just a naïve, sheltered dummy getting by on her positive attitude and her charisma. If anything, be thankful they cast a moderately attractive woman in the role instead of forcing us to watch an ugly goofball'd-face trainwreck like they did for The Last of Us. That poor girl's mug looks like soft-boiled potatoes squeezed into a lumpy woolen sock.

Maximus is a dumb retard of a character and their characterization of the BoS is just a lazy, shitlib metaphor for Christianity that they can feel free to make fun of. Every post-apocalyptic show or movie has to have this now, and everyone thinks they are edgy for doing it. It also has all the dumb, modern, progressive tropes that are on-message (interracial family! comments about the environment! communists saying Correct Things about Capitalism!).

The ending -- where a bunch of "tycoons" are sitting around debating whether ending the world is good for business -- is just more anti-Capitalist shit-libbery, propagated by writers too stupid to understand that nobody would ever talk this way. Also, I don't think they are actually going to go with this, as a plot point. I think they are going to keep it ambiguous for the entire show, and we will never know who actually dropped the bombs, because muh media literacy. Also, I don't think it would make much sense since Walton's character is out with his kid when the bombs drop and if his wife really was a big-wig at Vault-Tec, why would she allow that?

Anyway, watch it for the Ghoul's one-liners, that's pretty much it.

 

[Decado]

This guy's Canadian accent is off the fucking charts, unlistenable. Holy fucking shit.

 

[Luzur]

This guy's Canadian accent is off the fucking charts, unlistenable. Holy fucking shit.

he sounds gay abit but got good points

 

[SharkClub]

I watched the video. His voice is definitely some lispy nerd faggotry but he's 100% right on pretty much everything he says in the video. The show is filled to the brim with retarded retcons and Todd and the consoomers are spamming copium all over the internet about how it didn't when there are countless mutually exclusive facts that could not coexist in the same setting between the TV show and the west coast Fallout games.

 

[Decado]

I'm sore-y, what are you talking aboot?

 

[9ted6]

However, Fallout 2 and what followed — the console game Brotherhood of Steel — weren’t as good. I’d argue they hurt the franchise more than people “blame” Fallout 3, 4, and 76 for doing.

He's being too easy on the show but this right here is much truer than people would like to think. It's always been the ironic thing about grogs like No Mutants Allowed where they blame 3 for the franchise becoming a self parodying nonsensical meme when 2 and BoS did that years before Bethesda got the license.

No one likes BoS but 2 gets called the best Fallout game ever until you bring up all the stupid shit and retcons in it, then they starting huffing copium.

 

[Barbarian]

What does MCA do for a living these days anyway? Is he vicariously living off the cash he won in those false rape accusation lawsuits?

 

[Melcar]

What does MCA do for a living these days anyway? Is he vicariously living off the cash he won in those false rape accusation lawsuits?

Did he even get paid? The ruling was a bit vague and he refused to go into details explaining last I read. Bitch was also (allegedly) broke.

 

[Barbarian]

I remember reading something about a "7 figures settlement" but I don't know if those two second-rate "gamer" hoes could fork out that kind of cash.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Also, I don't think it would make much sense since Walton's character is out with his kid when the bombs drop and if his wife really was a big-wig at Vault-Tec, why would she allow that?

This is one of the things I brought up a long time ago. I could understand her nuking her husband if she somehow found out he was on to her, but that's never shown in the show and it would be super stupid to make this part of season 2. It makes no sense why she'd nuke her kid, and it would make no sense for anyone else nuking her kid given who she is given the "master plan". It also makes very little sense that the world gets nuked, and him to have no idea where his family is. He might have lost the kid in the 200+ years, assuming she survived somehow, but he should damned well know where his wife is considering he heard the plan.

Shit like this is why the show is poorly written. There's no subtle clues about the kid at all other than the Ghoul saying, "Where's my family?"

The show is filled to the brim with retarded retcons and Todd and the consoomers are spamming copium all over the internet about how it didn't when there are countless mutually exclusive facts that could not coexist in the same setting between the TV show and the west coast Fallout games.

He's spot on about that timeline. Everything in the show clearly shows that Shady Sands was nuked in 2277. They just fucked up. The big drop on this in the show is Lucy saying her mom died in 2277 which was followed shortly by us finding out her dad nuked Shady Sands with her mom in it. It makes zero sense that her mom escapes the vault in 2277, goes to Shady Sands, Hank goes and finds her and gets her kids, Shady Sands falls in 2277, Hank tells Lucy her mom died in 2277, and Hank leaving five years later to nuke Shady Sands without her mom going to get her kids back in those five years. Per the show, Shady Sands was obviously supposed to have been nuked in 2277.

It's always been the ironic thing about grogs like No Mutants Allowed where they blame 3 for the franchise becoming a self parodying nonsensical meme when 2 and BoS did that years before Bethesda got the license.

Fallout 3 is worse than Fallout 2. You remember why there's supermutants on the East Coast? Because one of the designers at Bethesda had the government give Vault-Tec some of the FEV. Why? Who knows. And how did they manage to recreate the work of Richard Grey? Who knows. It took Grey doing a lot of experimentation with the FEV in order to get supermutants. Centaurs and floaters were his early experiments before he "perfected" his process.

It makes no sense why the government would give their biggest secret to a government contractor that has absolutely nothing to do with the supersoldier program. It's said numerous times that the FEV was the biggest secret the government had before the war. Yet, this was the beginnings of silly shit Bethesda has done with Vault-Tec right up to the TV show.

 

[SharkClub]

Because one of the designers at Bethesda had the government give Vault-Tec some of the FEV. Why? Who knows.

Because Bethesda were so inept at handling the existing Fallout lore beyond "NUKA COLA", "BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL" and "MUTANTS AND GHOULS" that they didn't realize that West Tek and Vault-Tec were not the same entity. That's what happens when your lead writer and world designer is a fat retarded ginger who refuses to use design documents (and is proud of that fact for some reason).