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Showing posts sorted by relevance for query "The Brotherhood of Steel". Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query "The Brotherhood of Steel". Sort by date Show all posts

Saturday, May 11, 2024

Fallout |1x01 "The End"| SERIES PREMIERE

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BEYOND The Walking Dead Universe we go (again), as we discuss the pilot of Amazon Prime's Fallout! The most notable takeaways are how the Fallout universe was on the verge of becoming The Jetsons until the nukes went off and it's evident by way of the most informationally dense first 15 minutes we've ever consumed in a television series. We're extremely lucky to have - talent artist and resident console gamer - Carinae Davey along for the ride to give us a gamer's perspective throughout our discussions!
🎎A word of advice: tip us on Ko-fi or, for as little as $1 /month, join a membership tier on either Ko-fi or Patreon to receive future unedited episode recordings in advance. We had the raw and unfiltered version of this episode available for your streaming pleasure days ago, but unforeseen personal matters have taken precedence and has caused a lag between recording and public release and it will continue that way for the next few recordings. As we also mentioned near the end of this episode, we could really use your support from here on in. So if you enjoy what we're doing and want to see what we're made of, be a part of something big and show your support!

Carinae Davey:
David Cameo:
Rachael Burt:
Sherrandy Swift:
Bridget Mason-Gray:

An Announcement Before We Proceed

As content creators, it's really difficult to gauge how much people enjoy or appreciate something we've created without receiving actual feedback (verbally, visually, or via text). Outside of that, the most we're able to observe are view counts, thumbs-ups, and episode retention (how long people are watching) at best. Especially on the blog, the most comments we've ever really received was on the full text of Michonne's Multi-Community Charter of Rights and Freedoms: these were perhaps the only real comments we've ever actually received, outside the extremely infrequent (once every few years) SPAM bot.

That being said, several blog posts back, we said we'd be leveraging A.I. to assist with the creation of these blogs, but it didn't really take: we were still writing every single word more than we were modifying them. We still included tons of reference materials, embedded video/audio, images (publications/screencaps), and GIFs. They were taking almost as long to crank out with no tangible time-savings: to be absolutely fair, old habits didn't really die and we trended towards wanting to give you more for your patronage (more insights, more images, more GIFs, and ... much more than that).

Going back to the first paragraph, though, each blog takes approximately half a day to complete (literally 12 hours) and this entire podcast endeavor derives no income whatsoever while eating into our personal lives. With absolutely no real feedback to inform us on whether you are enjoying these posts - in their present format - we're relegated to having to leverage A.I. much more heavily to write up a simple summary while filling in the rest with reference materials we provided during our discussions, where applicable. If you do not like these changes, please speak up in the comments or DM us on Social Media. Tell us immediately! If what we're already doing is working for you, why would we change it? Our big problem right now is an age old one: if a blog post falls in a forest and nobody is around to read it, should it really exist?

To those of you who have enjoyed these posts (in their prior format) but were too skittish to speak up about how much you enjoyed them: firstly, thank you, but secondly, sorry-not-sorry. The big take-away this podcast has endeavored to impart to our audience is the simple understanding that (a) we're going to die, someday, and, (b) because of that, we ought to live life to the fullest. It is supremely exhausting to sink a whole lot of time and energy - especially as a small creator - into something people ought to enjoy only to discover that, for all intents and purposes, it feels like it was all for nothing. It doesn't mean that the blog goes away: it simply means that it must be scaled back. It would be completely foolish not to.

In closing, I will leave you with the following advice: small creators need your feedback more than larger ones. There is absolutely no way we can survive without it: we need to know when you love something. Large creators won't respond to your feedback (period, but if they do) in the same manner a small creator, like us, will. You have incredible influence on a small creator's trajectory in ways that you will never achieve with larger creators. You have the opportunity to forever stake your claim on a small creator's journey that is cemented in its history. And if that small creator does make gains, like ours undoubtedly has, they will never forget your contributions to their success (long after you've already forgotten). Your input means a lot more than you can possibly understand.

Thank You For Reading. Onto The Post!

  • Carinae has a soft spot for Bethesda Game Studios and the Fallout series of games.
  • Though it's called Bethesda Jank for a reason, due to glitches and quirks, they have their own charm.
    Ahhh Good Old Bethesda Jank
    byu/OkGuide2802 ingaming
  • The lore of the games, which you receive in bits and pieces of text and dialogue, gradually immerse the players in the universe.
  • Carinae ranks the games highly (4/5) and enjoys the role-playing aspect of the games. The Fallout universe is characterized by retro-futuristic technology and aesthetics due to the absence of the microprocessor.

  • You get an idea of Lucy's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. by way of her inter-vault marriage application: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck.
    First of a series I'm doing: Lucy
    byu/chauncaaa inFallout
  • The Great War - which, in this universe, only three hours - took place in 2077. Using the blackboard, the 219 Years Later title card after the opening scene, and the wedding dress, we extrapolated that we're currently in the year 2296. It seems as though this series was on track to become what would've resembled The Jetsons had the nukes not dropped.

  • The specter of (what resembles our version of) the Cold War looms throughout the show, with American-made products littered throughout Vault 33 and cultural aphorisms that persist in the vault 219 years later!
  • To Lee Moldaver's point (played by that girl, Sarita Choudhury), the vaults dwellers may have experienced physical and mental deterioration due to their prolonged isolation. They're lucky to have had at least two interconnected vaults to avoid some birth complications.

  • The storylines of Lucy MacLean, Maximus, and Cooper Howard (AKA The Ghoul) occur simultaneously, dispelling the notion of multiple, disparate timelines. Vaults in the Fallout gaming universe are typically singular and not interconnected, making the interconnected vaults in the show a pleasant surprise.
  • Original storytelling in video game adaptations is not required, but very much welcome (if you can pull it off): they are a fresh take on the material fans of the games know and love and is an opportunity to bring new audiences into a world that hasn't been recycled to death. The end result is something new and fresh that everyone has the potential to appreciate.

  • The presence of pseudo-socialist slogans in the vault, in the form of signs, suggests a different societal structure and values in the post-apocalyptic world, which differs heavily from the extremely crony-capitalistic one, pre-apocalypse.

  • The absence of chickens in the Fallout games and the use of a chicken in the show is a creative addition to potentially identify feral ghouls.
  • The introduction of cannibalism, by way of Moldaver's raiders, adds a dark and intriguing element to the story that sharply contrasts with the dwellers of Vault 33. Speaking of, the actors cast as vault dwellers seemed to have been curated to look slightly off or weird, similar to the characters in the video game.

  • The use of anamorphic widescreen (2.35x1), which was used in much older cinema, adds to the visual experience of the show.
  • Even more gaming easter eggs in the show: the syringer and junk jet.

  • Certain actors, like Walton Goggins, bring charisma and attractiveness to their roles, making them stand out: and that's not entirely a good thing when you are meant to look hideous (as evidenced by a highly vocal fanbase of, largely, women who find The Ghoul irresistible.

  • The attention to detail and faithfulness to the game in the TV show's production really shows in the form of nostalgic elements from the real world, such as the Please Stand By loading screen that appears when the Telesonic 3D Projector breaks down, which hails back to a time when broadcast television actually signed off for the night and showed a stand-by screen until programming resumed in the morning.

  • Along with the destruction of the Telesonic 3D Projector symbolizing the destruction of Lucy's world (like the nukes in the opening scene), another callback is what Cooper says to his daughter at the beginning is repeated by The Ghoul version of himself, 219 years later, to Don Pedro's last man at the end, [Cowboys] take it as it comes. And speaking of his daughter, the method he teachers her of when to run from a nuclear blast (judging the size/distance by using your thumb) is exactly where we derive the expression rule of thumb.

  • Aaron Clifton Moten, who plays Maximus, is an expressive actor who, to us, resembles Denzel Washington, John Boyega, and Cuba Gooding Jr.

  • Why did the cleric of The Brotherhood of Steel choose Maximus to take Dane's place as squire, ultimately, considering his lack of knowledge (on circuitry and other pre-war technology)? If we had to take a guess, The Brotherhood of Steel values commitment and loyalty above all other values. Maximus' intense interrogation scene is a standout moment of the episode.
  • Enjoyment ensues when speaking about one of The Brotherhood's aspirants, played by Johnny Pemberton, whom most of us know as Bo Derek Thompson (husband of Cheyenne, father of Harmonica) from the television series, Superstore.

  • The Enclave is the ultimate big bad in the Fallout gaming universe (at least), whom seek to remake America in their own image. It kind of puts a darker sheen on The Walking Dead Universe's Civic Republic Military.
  • The Brotherhood hoards and utilizes (pre-war) technology to control and protect the wasteland, taking out of circulation to prevent people from harming themselves with it.

  • Michael Emerson, most known for his role as Benjamin Linus in the television series, Lost, plays a character who escapes The Enclave.

  • The series includes Easter eggs from the Fallout games, such as the broken water chip from the original Fallout game and the imagery Lucy recreates of leaving the vault from Fallout 3. The imagery of a figure in The Brotherhood of Steel's power armor emerging in a ruined city in Maximus childhood flashback is a huge visual callback fans of the games who first witnessed it in their gameplay.


  • The three main characters in the series - Lucy, Maximus, and The Ghoul - represent different play styles in the Fallout games, allowing viewers to relate to different moralities and decision-making approaches.

  • Companions play an important role in the latter Fallout games, and the inclusion of companion characters in the TV series will add depth and complexity to the story... not to mention endear audiences (and gamers) to the show even more than they may already are.

  • The series includes Easter eggs and references to the Fallout games (massive spoilers), such as Nuka Cola (ads, pre and post apocalypse), Vault Boy bobbleheads, and comic books, which add an extra layer of enjoyment for fans of the games (although frustrating for Carinae, as no one takes any of them to level-up).


  • ðŸĪŦWHISPERERS Tier Member Lois Martin was curious as to why Amazon Prime decided to release the entire season at once, since it is a little out of the norm for them. It may have been a strategic move to generate buzz and attract a generation of viewers who aren't accustomed to waiting week-by-week for a series to drop episodes.
  • Overall, the hosts have a positive impression of the series and recommend it to both fans of the games and newcomers to the Fallout universe.


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Wednesday, June 12, 2024

Fallout |1x05 "The Past"

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Maximus and Lucy MacLean learn to trust one another, while Betty Pearson (Cooper Howard's long-lost wife?) becomes Vault 33's overseer (obviously planned?). We explore Shady Sands' / New California Republic's lore, as well as Vault 4's, as it pertains to the games and how the TV series has expanded the Fallout Universe.
🎎A word of advice: tip us on Ko-fi or, for as little as $1 /month, join a membership tier on either Ko-fi or Patreon to receive the unedited episode recordings in advance of these releases. We had the raw and unfiltered version of this episode available for your streaming pleasure weeks ago, but unforeseen personal matters have taken precedence and we've lagged behind. It will most likely continue that way for our foreseeable recordings. As we also mentioned near the end of this episode, we could really use your support from here on in, so if you enjoy what we're doing and want to see what we're made of, be a part of something big by showing us some love!

David Cameo:
Rachael Burt:
Sherrandy Swift:

SPECIAL GUEST

Carinae Davey:

  • Speaking of The Past, Maximus' own flashback post the destruction of Shady Sands is a pivotal event in his origin story. Fallout may have started in 2077 but those who don't learn from history...

  • The New California Republic (NCR) and its capital, Shady Sands, were established by the residents of Vault 15 using a GECK (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) in 2198. It was the largest city created from scratch using no pre-apocalypse tech. It had a population of 3,000 in 2241 that grew, rapidly, to 35,000 by 2281. NCR reflects much of our American founding, both in ideal and early desires of expansionism (like all founding nations).

  • Lucy MacLean tells Maximus that The United States was established 320 years ago. If the year is presently 2296, that would pin America's founding in 1976; however, if Lucy is saying 320 years prior to the bombs dropping in 2077, that would place American independence in the year 1757. This is roughly during the time of the Seven Years/French Indian War and the siege of Fort William Henry. Maybe if George Washington had made better decisions, calling back to our coverage of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, American history could've been fundamentally altered (then again, we would've ended up in the Fallout Universe, so sometimes mistakes are a good thing).
  • We ponder why societies tend to repeat the same patterns (as we did in our coverage of The Last of Us) and question whether the vaults were (experiments) engineered by corporations to create a captive consumer audience.
  • We take a break to show off Sherrandy's (mom's) latest crochet creation: a Vault-Boy. If you want your own (or any other character that comes to mind), start a commission! You can check out a few of her creations on @therealcrochetwitch (Instagram).

  • Different people have different ideas on how to save the world, leading to disagreements and conflicts. Expanding on the purpose of the vaults, The Enclave's purpose might've been an attempt at disrupting humanity's tendency to tilt towards liberty and self-determination. Also, enclave implies more than one entity, so we may be dealing with a concerted effort of multiple corporations besides Vault-Tec. This same effort might've nudged the world into what became the Fallout universe, using their endless Cold War cum Nuclear War as a smokescreen.
  • Shady Sands' devastation is larger than a mini-nuke but not as powerful as a full-scale nuclear campaign. On the note of mini-nukes, the weapon that uses mini-nukes as ammunition in the games is called The Fat Man, which is the same name given to the hydrogen bomb that fell on Hiroshima (Little Boy was the name of bomb that fell on Nagasaki).

  • Selective Memory: We touched on Maximus' recurring memory, emerging from the milk-bottle refrigerator and being saved by a knight of The Brotherhood of Steel, but we wanted go a little further on Lucy's own memory of her mother, Rose MacLean, and how she could've sworn she was with her on the surface (even though she logically knows that it must've been the Telesonic 3-D Projector making her feel as though she was). Still, could she have been outside with her mother and is she actually dead? Did they disappear her just like guests on The Truman Show?

  • The lack of a strong grieving response from the dwellers of Vault 33 after they were decimated by Lee Moldaver's raiders raises questions: is their docile nature might be a result of selective breeding/genetic manipulation? With the reveal that all the overseers of Vault 33 were transplants from Vault 31, along with the evidence of Vault 32's devastation being perhaps a result of its residents being exterminated for trying to break into Vault 31, it seems as though Vault 31 contains the answers to many of the series key mysteries! This fundamentally changes the way we previously perceived of Stephanie Harper (aka Fork-Eye Pregnant-Belly).

  • The significance of the two-headed Humboldt Honey bear on the New California Republic flag: Dave had recently listened to an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience (tapping this link will take you straight to this particular conversation, featuring Former Congresswoman and 2020 Presidential Candidate Tulsi Gabbard) in which they discuss how, in celebration of marijuana being removed from a the Drug Enforcement Agency's Schedule I Controlled Substances list, a controversy emerged after an organization of veterans gifted an American Flag made out of hemp to Congress. How this relates to our discussion is having also read an article whereby someone somehow donated the NCR flag, which looks extremely close to the actual California State Flag, to the California State Legislature. It was only later that the legislature found out about it.
    SDCC13 - New California Republic Flag
    Editor's Note: after trying really, really hard to find this news article - regarding the New California Republic flag gifted to the California State Legislature - and failing, the closest I could come to actually finding it again was this article talking about a group that wanted to California to secede from United States to form its own country, and even wanting to call it The New California Republic.
  • The humor in Fallout (and perhaps our own podcast episode) reaches its apex with the extremely subtle reference Norm MacLean and Chet drop - a way of concealing their Vault 32 sleuthing - by checking on the tatos, which is a reference to a hybrid potato and tomato plant in the games.

  • This episode gave us an opportunity to revisit whether we, as hosts/viewers, felt claustrophobia after Maximus was trapped in his Power Armor.

  • The possibility of Vault 31 being a cryovault: if all the overseers from Vault 32 & 33 came from Vault 31, then it's possible that these were people that were in suspended animation from before or right at the point of fallout who wanted to make sure the experiments in this cluster of vaults went according to plan.
  • The planned nature of overseer elections and the role of Betty Pearson: Betty Pearson is played by Leslie Uggams. Photos from the early days of Ms. Uggams career resemble Barbara Howard (Cooper Howard's wife). Seeing as though she was previously an overseer (of either Vault 31 or 32) and originally came from Vault 31 - like Stephanie - we can't help but perceive her suspiciously (whereas, before, we really liked her). If she actually is Cooper's wife, she definitely has an even larger role in the Fallout Universe.

  • Rachael appreciates both Maximus' and Squire Thaddeus' respective reactions: Thaddeus' desire to flee Maximus after hearing he killed Knight Titus and Maximus' readiness to kill Thaddeus after opening up to him - even though their mutual bond was predicated on Maximus impersonating Titus (especially after branding him). Maximus may have panicked and failed (a bunch of persuasion checks, due to lack of rizz) to explain the situation to Thaddeus, leading to their confrontation.

  • Maximus' lack of childhood memories prior to being picked up by The Brotherhood of Steel (after the explosion of Shady Sands) may have clouded his perceptions to their actual purpose in the wasteland. It's also established that their power armor is pre-war technology which (we officially discover in this episode) the Brotherhood uses to obtain more pre-war technology.

  • The existence of cannibals - called Fiends on the show - in the Fallout games and the symbolism behind Rink's resemblance to Lucy. Carinae thought Rink resembled a chem-addicted Raider (what fiends really are, not cannibals) in the games named Cricket.

  • It's quite possible that Maximus' knowledge on the wasteland is incomplete and The Brotherhood really doesn't know the original reason of why it does what it does. This brings us back to speaking about why societies tend to revert to imperfect systems that largely worked because, as Thomas Sowell once said, unintended consequences can arise from overregulation (whether immediately or down the line), and sometimes it's best to leave things the way they are rather than creating more complexity.
  • Vault 4 in the games, at least, is portrayed as a legendary vault that is rumored among wastelanders as a paradise, but turns out to be a dangerous hell infested with giant tarantula hawks/hornets called Cazadors. This is where Lucy & Maximus end up by the end of this episode. Are Lucy & Maximus safe, since someone obviously made Vault 4 the paradise it was believed to be, but had to be lured into it via a trap?

  • The presence of a cryolator (like a blowtorch, but ice) in Vault 32 suggests that their residents may have been bred differently than those in Vault 33. We also see yet another toaster (the same toaster, only fixed). The damaged overseer terminal in Vault 32, which was undamaged in the last episode (how Norm was able to determine that his mother's pip boy was used to access the outer vault door) indicates that Vault 31 intentionally covered up the origin of this vault's devastation and have been monitoring both vaults 31 & 32.


  • In addition to this, Rachael revisits her thoughts on how the residents of Vault 32 were actually killed. Dave suggests that, like all lab rats, they had to be put down but, like all cover-ups, they had to do it in such a way that it appeared as though they did it to themselves (by perhaps introducing a psychotic). Carinae compares this to the Reavers from the Firefly movie, Serenity, where the population of the planet Miranda were introduced to a drug that was meant to make them docile in an attempt to subjugate them. Most became so docile that they laid down and died, but a small fraction of the population, instead, became so aggressive and violent that they became the number one adversary in the series.
  • As always, we appreciate the impressive music, especially the 3 different renditions of Battle Hymn of the Republic, and end credit animations that seem to tease the next episode. This one seems to tease a textbook in a Shady Sands Elementary locker called The New California Republic with various check-out dates that end in Nov 2276 (just before Shady Sands' destruction). There's also a comic book poster of a pistol-toting, red-leather-jacket wearing hero that may be another Cooper Howard role.



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