Opinion: The new trailer for Amazon’s Fallout series shows something that has usually been neglected in the games

We only have to wait a little over a month. In April, the Amazon Prime Vault opens and we can finally see the Fallout series, which was announced back in the summer of 2020.

Even before its release, the show is causing a huge amount of anticipation among many fans – including me. The freshly released trailer now gives me hope that the series could tell something that has always had to be neglected in the games so far.

The price of freedom

Playful freedom has always been a major hallmark of Fallout. The newer games in particular, Fallout 3, 4 and New Vegas, are known for offering an incredible amount of things to do

In the open worlds, I can go wherever I want and do whatever I want right from the start. They are virtual playgrounds that invite you to explore and try things out.

This brings with it a problem: My actually inexperienced character, who has just emerged from the Vault, must therefore be more or less competent right from the start, even if she initially only has a Vault suit, a few stimpaks and perhaps a pistol.

Although the developers make an effort to convey a kind of culture shock via dialog when I enter a completely unknown and hostile world as a Vault inhabitant, this can’t work very well in the game. After fifteen minutes, I’m already happily beating up raiders with a baseball bat to the uplifting music from the wasteland radio

A nasty culture shock

In the games, I’m happy to put up with this for maximum fun. Fallout doesn’t want to be a hardcore survival simulator, it wants to awaken my desire for the dark world. Nevertheless, I sometimes miss the fact that my newly defrosted pre-war family man also has his difficulties with the new world

The Fallout series is finally taking this step! The main female character is visibly struggling with the new environment and its inhabitants in the new trailer:

From the regulated everyday life of the Vault (which is probably interrupted quite brutally), Lucy (Ella Purnell) is thrown into a world in which violence is the predominant language.

The young Vault inhabitant is then allowed to stumble. Even the first trailer briefly showed Lucy getting spooked by a tumbleweed, one of those bushes rolling through deserts. An excellent example of how new everything on the surface is for the main character of the series.

Much of the post-apocalyptic wasteland is, of course, much more unfriendly and dangerous than a bush. Lucy encounters insane robots, mutated animals and violent gangsters. And at first she seems quite overwhelmed and shocked, as almost anyone would be.

Not only is this a believable reaction for such a character, it’s also an entertaining narrative for me. I actually always enjoy seeing characters thrown into worlds that are completely alien to them. I’m curious to see how they react to the unknown, what funny situations arise from their cluelessness.

In essence, it’s almost the same thing that excites me about open-world games: exploring new worlds that surprise me and present me with challenges. And I’m really looking forward to discovering the world of Fallout in a whole new way

Are you feeling the same way? Or are you really looking forward to the series for another reason? Then let me know in the comments