A reader praises Amazon’s adaptation of Fallout and looks at the differences in approach to storytelling between it and other video games.

What was interesting to me about The Last Of Us TV show is that many people, including myself, thought that it was a lot better than the game, especially when it came to the dialogue and acting. That’s despite the fact that The Last Of Us game is acclaimed as one of the best story-based titles ever. And yet when stood next to a high-end TV show – one that even had some of the same people working on it – the difference is very noticeable.

It seems no matter how hard a game tries it can never match the quality of a traditional live action production. I think the length of games is one problem. A movie is two hours long, but video game writers have got to make their scripts stretch over much longer than that. The Last Of Us Part 2 is something like 30 hours! So, obviously, it’s much harder to maintain quality and also to have a story that justifies being that long.

The other problem is the actors. Sometimes it feels like gaming only has half a dozen of them. Just look at the credits for Troy Baker or Jennifer Hale and it seems like it’d be harder to find a game they haven’t been in. Not that they’re necessarily bad actors but they’re not top tier, and yet when publishers do get in well-known Hollywood actors, they usually just phone it in, because to them video games are just a quick and easy job between real roles and they realise the script isn’t great (also they’re really expensive, which is a big problem when it comes to overall budget).

Because The Last Of Us is so good the difference between the show and the games isn’t that massive, and doesn’t put you off the games, but you see the same differences with the Fallout TV show and because the Fallout games have terrible storytelling suddenly the difference is like night and day.
Fallout is a great show, that anyone can enjoy without having any knowledge of the games. But the games… well, they’re Bethesda games. Which means a cool open world, lots of customisation and interactivity, great mods, and a story that absolutely nobody cares about. I still don’t know what the plot is in Fallout 4 and I’ve put in 150 hours into that game, and I’m sure many others have too since you could say the same thing about Oblivion and Skyrim.

With Bethesda it seems like they’re actually getting worse with their scripts as they go along, as Starfield’s characters are so completely forgettable I don’t know a single on of their names. Except maybe the main woman might be Sarah? Fallout 4 has better characters but only by comparison, with a lot of them being dull and some flat-out embarrassing, like the sexy French robot that gets a female human body and immediately falls in love with you.

I’m not going to pretend I didn’t enjoy Curie’s missions, but can you imagine something like that being played straight in the show? The difference between what is ‘good enough’ in video games and what seems embarrassing and childish in live action is pretty wild and I’m sure every Fallout fan is now wishing that the games were as smart and funny as the show.

The closest they’ve ever got is Fallout: New Vegas, which is the only modern game that wasn’t made by Bethesda, so, based on Starfield I’m not sure we’ll ever get there.

I can’t help realising the irony here is that for decades Hollywood has felt it was too good for video games and treated them as low effort cash-ins, and yet they were kind of right. Now that games have got better at storytelling though, it’s obvious how far behind they still are and how they may never bridge the gap.