Summary
Season 1 of Amazon Prime Video’sFalloutleft little uncertainty regarding its upcoming foray into the Mojave Desert. With Obsidian’sNew VegasRPG set to play a major role in the upcoming season currently in production, fans can’t wait to see whether the streaming project will do justice to their cult-coveted world.
If Amazon Prime Video is to do right by its coreFalloutfan base, there is a host of essential storylines that the series can’t afford to botch next season. Of those, a few are particularly ripe for episodic exploration.
Fallout New Vegas Ultra Luxe Hotel
‘Beyond The Beef’is an engrossing side quest inFallout New Vegas. It’s stomach-turning as soon as the player enters the shiny, glimmering luxury of the cleanest, most posh hotel on the New Vegas strip. Something’s immediately off from the initial viewing of the ritzy hotel, even as the Mojave Desert is a wasteland, and the Strip is an oasis of flush civilization. The Ultra Luxe Hotel is an embarrassment of riches amidst a cataclysm of poverty. The hotel’s mere existence is a red flag on many levels, but the deepest level is red with blood.
Bear in mind, the amenities up to this point forNew Vegasplayers have been limited to dumpster dive bars and fluid-stained beds. The Ultra Luxe, in comparison, houses an elaborate lobby with wait staff in white gloves, an Equinox-style pool, and an exclusively-priced restaurant called The Gourmand.
New Vegasplayers are aware of the horrors that lay wait in the kitchens of The Gourmand, and readers up to this point can likely guess what the twist is here. Still, the unsavory practices of Ultra Luxe are no less fascinating after knowing about them, as exploring the layered history of the hotel and its fiendish operators is where all the fun is found.
The Chairmen of New Vegas
It’s impossible to think of Obsidian’sFallout New Vegasand not be reminded of Benny The King and his Chairmen in the Freeside District, ashe’s the man who shoots the protagonist in the head at the start of the game. Freeside is modeled after the real-life Fremont Street attraction in Las Vegas. Fremont Street and its surrounding area are reminiscent of the original Sin City experience, acting as a time capsule of sorts featuring retro casinos in Old Vegas.
This old-school vibe is a perfect setting forNew Vegas’s Elvis Presley-themed gang called the The Kings. One of the more popular quotes from the fallout universe is top man Benny The King’s explanation of the tribute band of Freeside overseers:
The Kings are about an idea, you see? Where every man is free to follow his own path, do his own thing. Where every man is a king in his own right.
Benny presumably speaks from the heart here. Players find that the Kings, despite their oddball fanaticism, are actually just a bunch of cool guys in a dreadfully hot desert who want to maintain the coolness of their town. The Kings, while technically a gang, are more effectively a police force of sorts in Freeside, dedicated to keeping the peace and maintaining order throughout their drug-addled streets. Civilization is only an idea in the Mojave Wasteland, and while many friendly faces found there are just the Devil in disguise, players can’t help falling in love with the well-meaning servitude of The Kings of Freeside.
The Super Mutants Of Jacobstown
There’s a debate to be had aboutwhether Deathclaws or Super Mutants are the more anticipated Wasteland abominationsto introduce in Season 2. Deathclaws are probably the coolest in a monster-of-the-week sort of way. Their hulking devil character design is fantastic and their sheer ferocity, while dated, still holds up in the game. It will be fascinating to see how they’re portrayed in live-action.
Assuming both factions are on tap for the upcoming episodes, Deathclaws would be best used as they are in the game — as a looming threat. They could have a dedicated episode towards the back half of the season, but as far as game-originated storylines, the Super Mutants are clear winners with rounded personalities and a fantastic outing in the high hills of the Wasteland.
In an easy-to-miss quest connected to The Kings of Freeside,Fallout New Vegasplayers are encouraged to visit Jacobstown, an out-of-the-way map marker way up in the distant snowcapped hills. There, they discover a Super Mutant named Marcus, a formerFallout 2companion who’s eloquent and kind. These are opposite qualities to most other Mutants the player has likely met up to this point. Super Mutants are usually savage and murderous, similar to Deathclaws, except Mutants boast more cognitive function and can use tools.
It would be quite a twist for newcomers, andeven manyNew Vegasveterans alike, to witness a well-adjusted commune of intelligent Super Mutants to contrast the barbarism that usually accompanies such encounters. More importantly, Jacobstown reveals the story of the Nightkin. The Nightkin are socially-averse Super Mutants that suffer schizophrenia due to their overuse of invisibility-granting Stealth Boys. Like many stories inFallout New Vegas, Jacobstown offers a wealth of rich themes and characters for the show’s reeling protagonists to explore.
