Fallout and the secret of the perfect video game adaptation

Описание: The second season of Fallout - Prime Video's mega-hit based on the popular video game series - has landed.
Set in a post-apocalyptic future where Earth has been ravaged by nuclear war, the first series was a commercial and critical hit, impressing long-time fans and viewers who'd never played before.
Its surprising success had a huge impact on Bethesda Softworks, the developer of its source material, bringing back lapsed players and creating new ones along the way.
Key creatives from the company have told BBC Newsbeat about working with the show's producers, and what the success of the programme means for the future of the games.
The first season of Fallout arrived at a turning point for Hollywood video game adaptations.
Often far-removed from their source material, and often just a bit rubbish, they'd gained a reputation as low-quality cash grabs.
Then The Last of Us came along.
The 2023 adaptation of the PlayStation blockbuster, released ten years earlier, was a smash hit.
It impressed fans of the games, as well as winning over critics and viewers who'd never picked up a controller.
But there were those who argued the show's creators were running on easy mode.
Because the post-apocalyptic story of bounty hunter Joel and his adoptive daughter Ellie drew heavy influences from prestige TV shows, there was an obvious road map for bringing it to the screen.
The drama's story closely followed the game's, with a few deviations, and fans pointed out shot-for-shot comparisons where sequences were almost identical to their pixelated inspiration.
While The Last of Us was wowing audiences, the producers of Fallout were putting the finishing touches to the first season of their adaptation, one which took a different approach to its source material.
Unlike The Last of Us, which guides the player through a linear story experience, the Fallout games drop them into a more freeform world.
The branching narratives, full of side quests and incidental characters, offer plenty of material to draw from, but deciding what to bring to the screen is a mammoth task.
Todd Howard, director of developer Bethesda Game Studios, tells Newsbeat he was first approached about a filmed version of the game in 2009.
He was agreeable to the idea, he says, but didn't push ahead until meeting executive producer Jonathan Nolan.
Todd says he was a fan of the Briton's work on HBO's Westworld, and impressed by his co-writer credits on films such as The Dark Knight and Interstellar directed by his brother, Christopher Nolan.
"It turned out he was a huge fan of Fallout," says Todd.
He says the two have become "very close friends" while working on the show together, and he believes it's helped to create trust between the TV and gaming side.
"Everyone involved is on the same page with how they want to treat it with authenticity," he says.
One of the people in charge of keeping the TV show authentic was studio design director Emil Pagliarulo, a Bethesda veteran who's been closely involved with the Fallout series since its breakout third instalment, released in 2008.
He tells Newsbeat there was an early decision to keep the TV show "canon" - that would become a guiding principle.
That meant "everything that happens in the show happened in the games, or will happen in the games," says Emil.
Fallout, first launched in 1997, has a deep well of established lore the series' biggest fans know well and feel protective of.
Emil admits there was some "back-and-forth" between the TV and gaming sides, especially earlier on.
"It's difficult because TV's an entirely different medium," he says.
"It's really about getting the tone right, but they were very respectful of where we wanted to take it."
He says the strict adherence to the video games' timeline did result in the "occasional late-night text" from the TV show's set.
"Hey, we're filming tomorrow, we had this question," recalls Emil.
"It was always a back-and-forth. It's really fun."
For all the thrill of seeing world you dreamed up