Top 10 Best Moments from Fallout

Until “Fallout 4”, we’d never seen the Great War with our own eyes – but that game opened with the bombs falling on Boston as people descended into Vault 111. To bring everybody up to speed, the TV show also opened with the war itself. As the rich gather to watch television, Janey Howard notices a mushroom cloud blossoming in the distance. Cooper briefly thinks it’s a fire, before the penny drops. Everybody runs for their lives as atomic fire strikes Los Angeles, with bombs erupting in every direction, dosing Cooper with enough radiation to turn him into a ghoul. The war lasted for only two hours, destroying the Old World in less than a day.

Our three leads meet early on as they all arrive in Filly, a small town somewhere in California. Max wants Wilzig because the Brotherhood does; the Ghoul wants Wilzig because there’s a huge bounty on his head; while Lucy just wants to find her dad – which involves delivering Wilzig into the arms of Moldaver. The Ghoul cements his status as a new, iconic “Fallout” character by triggering a huge shootout, with everybody trying to claim the bounty on Wilzig’s head. He even holds his own against Max when he arrives in Titus’s stolen power armor, which is certainly impressive.

Lucy still has an idealistic view of the vaults, while back in Vault 33, Norm is slowly unravelling the truth about Vault-Tec. Fans of the games will already know that nothing is as it seems where Vault-Tec is concerned, but Lucy learns this along with the franchise’s newcomers. The first clues that something is wrong in Vault 4 are the strange mutations the inhabitants have – a human cyclops and people with extra ears and noses aren’t the standard mutations people in the Wasteland get, and she begins to investigate. It's one of the show’s funniest moments, and it’s no wonder we saw a bunch of Vault 4 scenes in the trailers.

After seeing Cooper ride his horse through LA as the bombs fall, we don’t see him again until the end of the first episode, when he rises from the grave. This is the first real introduction to mutants we have in the series – though, other notable mutant races, like the Super Mutants, don’t appear – as the Ghoul is awakened. It’s a classic western moment as they try to bargain with him, and Cooper, now extremely jaded and cynical after two hundred years roaming the wastes, delivers one-liner after one-liner. “Fallout’s” West Coast games have always taken inspiration from westerns, and the Ghoul’s entire character is an homage to that.

The Wasteland is a dangerous place, and there are plenty of groups who want to break into the vaults to make use of their safety and the luxuries they provide. This is what initially appears to have happened in the first episode – though, we won’t spoil what’s actually going on. Vault 33 is part of a trio of vaults, and they’re exchanging dwellers with Vault 32 to maintain genetic diversity – one of these dwellers is destined to marry Lucy. It's not until much later, though, after they’ve tied the knot, that she realizes that he’s a raider, after her Geiger counter reads him as being radioactive. A gruesome fight breaks out between the dwellers and the raiders.

We see Vault-Tec information reels and branding throughout the games, with “Fallout 2” opening with a Vault-Tec video explaining what life on the surface will be like. But it was fascinating to finally see some Vault-Tec propaganda in live action, as Cooper becomes the company’s public face because of his wife’s job as an executive. He takes us through Vault 4 and introduces us to a group of scientists who will be in charge of the vault. Of course, we later find out that this doesn’t go well for them, which is hardly surprising. We also learn that even before the war, many people were suspicious of Vault-Tec.

In exchange for the mysterious, yellow liquid Cooper needs so that he doesn’t turn feral, he decides to sell Lucy to a group of organ dealers living in an abandoned Super Duper Mart. Initially, she thinks she’s there to receive medical treatment, and is greeted by a surprisingly friendly Mr Handy robot named Snip-Snip, voiced by Matt Berry. Though he repairs her hand with a new finger, he then announces that she’s going to serve an entirely different purpose. Lucy is able to defeat Snip-Snip and then uses a syringer – a gun you can craft in “Fallout 4” – full of Abraxo drain cleaner to bargain her way to freedom.

In the final episode, we learn the truth of how the Great War started. According to the show’s interpretation, it was begun by America’s large corporations, summoned to a sinister meeting by Vault-Tec’s executives. They met with the heads of other recognizable companies in the “Fallout” world – West-Tek, RobCo, REPCONN, and Big Mountain – to decide that actually, total, nuclear annihilation is going to be more profitable for them than allowing peace negotiations to go through. Vault-Tec also distributes control of its vaults among these companies to conduct their twisted experiments. Gamers will recognize Mr House as the face of RobCo, but also Frederick Sinclair representing Big MT – a deep cut from “New Vegas’s” DLCs.

Our first taste of “Fallout’s” notorious, mutant fauna was when the Yao Guai attacked Titus and Maximus. But a more interesting mutant appears later, the Gulper. Gulpers appeared as enemies for the first time in “Fallout 4’s” “Far Habor” DLC, but here, they’re much more formidable. This mutant axolotl initially appears when it attacks Lucy and steals Wilzig’s head, which leads to the Ghoul using her as bait to lure it out. They don’t manage to retrieve the head at this point, with Max and Thaddeus arriving soon after to track the same thing. It attacks them and they manage to defeat it, though another Gulper later appears in Vault 4.

The final battle is between the Brotherhood of Steel and LA’s remnants of the New California Republic, as Lucy simultaneously tries to deal with the leader, Moldaver, in exchange for her father’s life. The charge is led by Maximus, who’s been forgiven by the Brotherhood for Titus’s death. We’ve had plenty of vintage needle-drops throughout the series, borrowing licensed tracks from the in-game radios, but this one hits different. The Brotherhood outmatch their enemies with advanced armor and weaponry and battle in slow-motion, and we finally get to see what the knights are capable of in large numbers, setting the stage for season 2.

Let us know in the comments which “Fallout” character is your favourite!