Prime Video’s Fallout TV series is coming to the streaming service on April 12, and from what we’ve seen in the trailers, the show looks pretty cool. If you’re new to Fallout, the story–which started as a video game franchise–mixes elements of science-fiction, westerns, and dystopian fiction into a unique setting.
If you’re one of those people who doesn’t know what Fallout is and wants to know more about what the heck is going on with this world, hi. We’re here to give you a primer covering everything you should know about Fallout before sitting down to watch it because Fallout is more than a TV show or a few video games. It’s a world steeped in lore that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before. As mentioned, it really is an amalgamation of varied types of storytelling and filled with naive people stuck in vaults sealed off from the outside world, horrific monsters, mean people who want to kill you, and regular, irradiated people in small shanty towns.
But that’s just looking at it on a macro level. Let’s zoom in a bit and get down to the nitty gritty of what newbies to the franchise should know before stepping into the world.
1. What is Fallout about?
Here’s a very brief synopsis of Fallout, with various details coming later. There was a war between China and the United States that went nuclear, and Earth was decimated by nuclear fallout. Some people survived the bombings above ground (though most people died), there were human and animal mutations, and the world above ground became a no-holds-barred wasteland filled with raiders, evil people, and some great people over the course of the two centuries. Also, a militant group formed, that’s mostly friendly but also a bit like a religious cult, called The Brotherhood of Steel.
However, there was also a group of people that lived underground in vaults that were created to keep people safe during the war. In most of the games, you started as a person leaving one of these vaults, traversing the wastelands for the first time in your life.
You can find out a few more specific details about the show and its world here.
2. It’s based on the popular Fallout video game series
If Fallout already seems like a very detailed series filled with well-developed lore from the looks of the trailer, that’s because the show is based on a video game series that’s been around since 1997. The series consists of four main games and plenty of secondary games, tabletop games, and books.
The Fallout series started with an open-world role-playing game (RPG) originally developed by Interplay Productions. It was an isometric role-playing game in its first two entries, looking down on your character and the location they were in. You create a character (or select a premade one in some instances), leave the Vault you live in, and head out into the wasteland to take on various tasks from characters you encounter.
Fallout really gained traction when Bethesda took over with Fallout 3. The game became a shooter-/action-focused game that allowed you to alternate between first- and third-person points of view, while retaining its RPG core, allowing you to level up your character, complete quests to further the story, and use items to affect your character. The character’s abilities and skills are based on the SPECIAL system: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck.
The series itself leveled up from a great franchise of games to one of the most popular ongoing franchises in all of gaming.
3. Video games in the Fallout series
Ignoring the books and tabletop board games–which are considered canon–here are all the games in the Fallout series, and what system you can play them on.
Fallout (1997): Windows, MacFallout 2 (1998): Windows, MacFallout Tactics: Brotherhood of Steel (2001): WindowsFallout: Brotherhood of Steel (2004): PS2, XboxFallout 3 (2008): Windows, PS3, Xbox 360Fallout: New Vegas (2010): Windows, PS3, Xbox 360Fallout 4 (2015) Windows, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X|SFallout Shelter (2015): Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, iOS, AndroidFallout Pinball (2016): iOS, AndroidFallout 76 (2018): Windows, PS4, Xbox One
Fallout 5 has been announced but the release date is unknown.
4. The setting
The world that Fallout takes place in is one of the most important and interesting things about the game. There’s a Great War between China and the United States in 2077, which results in a global thermonuclear war. The games take place about 100-200 years after that, with the main characters leaving vaults they lived in during the fallout, not knowing what’s going on in the post-apocalyptic world outside of their cushy vaults (more on that later).
However, what separates this post-apocalyptic world from every other one you’ve seen in any piece of media is that Fallout takes place in a world where American Exceptionalism of the 1950s was the height of culture and just kept going. The music, the technology, the language, what people thought the future would be like, etc. never ended, even after the world was destroyed. The look and feel of the world of Fallout feels like the TV show Leave It To Beaver never ended. Fallout has an aesthetic that is unlike anything else. Do you like what people in the 1950s thought the future was going to be like? If so, you’ll love Fallout.
5. The dangers
There is one obvious thing about the world of Fallout people need to worry about: radiation. Yes, in this wasteland of a world, there is still the danger of radiation killing you or making you sick. That’s one aspect of making exploring the world interesting. You have to find roundabout ways to get from point A to point B if there’s a radiated zone in between. It’s an adventure!
There are the monsters. Cockroaches are giant and annoying and always attacking you. Mutated bears will pop up and attack. There are feral ghouls (more on that so, so soon) that will pop up in packs. And that’s just part of the problem. There are massive monsters that will shake you to your core.
6. Ghouls
As previously mentioned, there are ghouls. Ghouls are humans who survived the nuclear fallout and radiation mutated them, causing them to look a bit like zombies, with most of them having lost their noses. There are animals that this happened to as well, but we’re focusing on humans.
There are feral ghouls, which are more like aggro beasts who try to kill you. Then there are the ghouls that hold on to their humanity and function as normal people in society. There are various types of ghouls between the two, but for the sake of this piece, we’re just talking about the two main camps.
What’s interesting is that ghouls have a long lifespan: at least 200 years or more. The vast majority of these ghouls come from the bombs blowing up during the Great War. They live much longer than normal humans.
There’s also discrimination between humans and all ghouls. That’s a pretty big theme in Fallout lore. Even though some ghouls can integrate into society perfectly, they’re still treated like the feral ones in the wild.
7. Raiders
Outside of all the monsters and radiation trying to kill you in Fallout, there is also one other thing to look out for: raiders. Like most post-apocalyptic stories, there are roving small groups of people that don’t want to integrate into the current society or obey laws, so they decide to go out on their own. What that means is they want to kill you and take your stuff, so they can live on. In the Fallout games, you’ll come across raiders a lot, and there are very few of them that are nice at all.
8. The Brotherhood of Steel
There are plenty of factions in the world of Fallout, some of which are important to the building of the world and others that are not. The most notable group is The Brotherhood of Steel (BoS). One of the main characters of the Fallout TV series is a member of this group.
The Brotherhood of Steel has been a part of every game in the Fallout series. While there are various chapters and subsets of this group, let’s focus on the faction as a whole. They are a group that preserves technology and is militant within the world of Fallout. It’s a group that everyone will come in contact with if they play the games. At times, you can befriend the group and join them, and at other times, you can fight them. They can come off as zealots, depending on which clan you meet, so they can’t always be trusted out there in the wasteland.
9. What are vaults?
One of the important aspects of the world of Fallout are vaults, and it’s something that will be featured in the upcoming TV show.
Prior to the Great War, vaults were created to safely harbor people (specifically, those with money) in case of a nuclear war. These vaults were self-sustainable, where residents could live peacefully, eat, drink, and settle for years after the world above became a wasteland and everyone there was presumed dead. Much like the rest of the Fallout aesthetic, the vaults are a part of American Exceptionalism and feature the future tech people in the 1950s dreamed of.
As the years went on, people had children, and generations of humans had spent their entire lives living inside these vaults. Many stories within the games revolve around a character leaving their vault and exploring the wasteland for some reason or another.
In Fallout lore, there are at least 118 vaults that we know about. But not everything in these vaults was hunky-dory. Some vaults had riots. Some vaults got raided. And a few vaults had scientists perform horrifying experiments. As a player, you’ll receive quests that have you explore some of these vaults, and, again, not every vault was a place of peace and unity like the one you came from.
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