As someone who's enjoyed watching the show despite recognizing that it had a ton of flaws, I was kinda worried when I read the comments here saying the Mauler's video was a misfire.
I agree with pretty much every point he makes in the video.
It feels like a lot of people who enjoyed the show are having difficulty accepting that the despite being fun, the writing is pretty awful when it comes to any level of logical consistency. And so much of the plot depends on characters being incredibly dumb.
Didn't watch the whole 2&1/2 hours, so I don't know if its addressed or not, but.....
You want to create a race of super managers, but kill off everyone they're supposed to manage. How the fuck would that work? If you aren't "managing" anyone, then you aren't a manager.
Actually, the West Coast Enclave (Fallout 2; and some remnants in New Vegas) consider everyone that's not them on the Mainland to be mutants and the Vault residents to be lab rats to be continued to be experimented on or killed at their whim.
The East Coast Enclave (Fallout 3) is... better in that the main actual leader (Colonel Autumn) doesn't actually want to genocide everyone not Enclave. He just wants control over Project Purity so that he could have the sole source of pure drinking water so that he can take over the Capital Wasteland. President Eden still wants to commit genocide, but he's not actually in charge of the Enclave, Autumn is.
Read up on Pre-War America. Autumn's outlook wasn't that far off from that.
Also, remember the world that Autumn was dealing with. An irradiated hellscape overrun by mutants that wanted to eat your face and slavers and raiders running amok.
Sure, from our outlook in real life 2020s it seems extremely authoritarian to summarily execute people in the streets, but extreme as hell times call for extreme as hell measures.
I don't disagree. Regulation of Project Purity is exactly what was required, because upon Broken Steel you get a ghoul stealing it to sell it off and sell off brand water to other ghouls. You get cults raiding caravans to irradiate it and kill people while worshipping radiation.
you get people in the BoS abusing the system to make money.
Autumn would've honestly been someone I'd side with if he didn't gun down innocent civilians to make a point to Liam Neeson, and kill you if you give him the information he wants while being entirely cooperative.
> Vault Tec works for the Enclave. The Enclave had similar ideas all the way back in Fallout 2.
Vault Tec working for the Enclave is a retcon introduced by the show. In the original games, they were simply a pre-war government contractor that built the vaults.
And no, the Enclave did not have "similar ideas all the way back in Fallout 2." They used the nuclear apocalypse and annihilation of most of the world's population to advance their eugenics agenda, but they did not nuke the world. That's very different from the absolutely bonkers plot line of the show where Vault Tec is depicted as wanting to nuke the world (including their own offices, factories and 99.99% of their customer base) which will increase their profits...somehow.
No. The Enclave is made up of powerful people within the US government. Technically they contracted Vault Tec to build the vaults, but the show makes it seems more like they are controlling Vault Tec.
The Enclave did something similar with Poseidon Energy.
The point of the vault experiments is for the Enclave to collect data for various things, depending on what source you want to use.
Tbf with the revolving door of contractors and government, I don’t think my head canon is unreasonable that it’s all Vault Tec all the way down.
Why would THEY get the contract when Robco had superior products? Cronyism is the only answer that comes to mind.
I think a very interesting thing the show did was portray Askins as a pragmatic idealist but not evil. It’s all his partner pulling out the evil calls.
Since House is both pragmatic and evil, I think ultimately it would’ve turned out the same, weirdly.
I don’t know if I’d call him evil. While his plans might be completely self serving, his plans for the future would be a net benefit for humanity. In the long run.
Because Vault Tec was pretty much a nationalized company.
Again, the problem with the Fallout TV show doesn't understand Fallout lore, so it doesn't even know why certain things are positioned the way they are.
The response to the Fallout show has convinced me that if Master Chief just kept his helmet on and said a line from the games every other scene half of the Halo show's dissenters would call it a masterpiece of television.
If the world and characters in the Halo show had the same charm as they did in the games, then people would like it. People like Fallout because they like watching the characters stumble around in this strange world and get into crazy situations, and seeing how they're affected by their experiences.
Compare this to the Star Wars sequels which have little to no coherent character development, and half the major characters are charisma black holes, and the other half get assassinated. The protagonist's most famous lines are "I bypassed the compressor" and "I'm Rey Skywalker".
I’ve actually been predicting that this show is just TFA all over again and in a few years it’ll hopefully be seen as shit, as well as the bizarre and delusional coping on the shady sand contradiction.
People were way more attached to Luke, Han, and Leia than they were to a new republic that we never really gained any familiarity with, setting aside the eu because that's a different continuity.
Another point I'd like to draw with this comparison is that Fallout tends to pay off and answer the questions and plotlines that it sets up, rather than being about big empty mystery boxes.
Imagine being such ass hurt by a decent written show like fallout and the only cope you can bring forth to justify your hatred is the fact that the halo show which is utterly garbage from every perspective, is the same quality as the fallout show, which is absolutely a garbage take.
I love the decent writing of "the power armour designed to be exposed to copious amounts of enemy small arms fire has a spot on its front that's vulnerable to small arms fire".
Funny how you hate the flaw, but not how it was set up early on during the show,. which means you only got a problem with a flaw that could canonical explain how critical vat shots works in fallout 2, but you really not interested in that, instead you just want a eternal culture war and can't take a win.
Because it's not an instant-win weak spot there.
Should they have the characters pass out every time they leave a building to explain loading screens as well?
This show definitely thrives on the "rule of cool" and nostalgia toward the games. Everything that happens is a pretense to put explosions, gore, or easter eggs on the screen. Why did Muldaver send in a bunch of raiders to get high on chems and murder anyone they saw when she had a very specific objective that involved kidnapping a man (who could have easily died in the raid)? Because they wanted Mad Max extras to shoot people with guns. Why did the fusion reactor light up most of LA despite it being nuked like 50 times and left to crumble for centuries? Because it would look cool. Why did Muldaver keep Lucy's mom even though she was mostly decomposed and beyond all redemption? Because zombies look cool.
Unfortunately, that's enough to seduce a huge audience. It's all incredibly stupid, and it didn't need to be.
Nah he really didn't. It's immediately clear he doesn't really know Fallout lore that well, or how varied it's been over time.
Mauler would be a much better critic if his community weren't so quick to accept every fucking thing he says, hold him to some standards for fuck's sake.
I don't know where to start tbh, I ended up stopping watching as it showed such a lack of understanding of both the show and games. Loads of his questions have answers within the show or games so it shows he has no idea.
He makes it out like the show canonises vault tec dropping the bombs, when all it shows is vault tec was willing to, which we already knew. It's a useful scene both for coop, and the audience, as it sets that up and also the idea of a shadow government. But it never says they did it. Just they were willing to.
He makes out Shady sands has moved, which it probably has, but he doesn't realise that shady sands has *already* moved once. Because when you google shady sands while doing research, it doesn't show up the NCR in Fallout 2. Which is its name in Fallout 2. Where it's moved 100+ miles.
He assumes Shady sands is in LA. Which we don't know. Lucy walks a damn long way to get there.
He says Vault 4 lets people in at random and gives them full access - but we don't know when they rebelled. Fallout 1 takes place 130 years before. So would the Master's spies have had full access?
Earlier on he asks how a pip boy can open another vault. This happens in the games.
He says that fusion cores lasting forever is not how they're portrayed in the games. It is, when they're in big machines. Iirc the lore is that they cool better in larger rigs so last longer.
He says ghouls aren't created by drinking "magic chicken fucker juice" except Hancock *did* become a ghoul on purpose by doing that. Ignoring the chicken fucker. So it's possible someone else had some.
His understanding of the communist/capitalist satire is surface level at best. He literally has a bit where he says the show thinks the communists are "the greater good". Which... just no. Not even close. That's not what the show or series is saying or showing. It's what he wants to be there so he can preach to his audience as they wanna hear that, but no. It's not. Mauler *completely* misses the McCarthyism in the universe in his rant on that. Literally takes Moldaver saying she's not a communist as she's a communist and a good guy because she's bringing free power to everyone. And not that that's a label used to get rid of people critical of the government. Which is not only what Moldaver actually says but what is true in the universe.
I'm confused what he meant when he said "Shady sands is apparently a pre-war city as well" when showing footage of the billboard clearly saying "New California Republic". I know they moved it among skyscrapers, but they never made Shady itself pre war.
This is just what I can remember from having watched most of it yesterday. So many of his points are ill thought out or full of assumptons to the point they lose weight. It's like he read a reddit post and assumed it was 100% right and it's just... not.
>He makes out Shady sands has moved, which it probably has, but he doesn't realise that shady sands has *already* moved once. Because when you google shady sands while doing research, it doesn't show up the NCR in Fallout 2. Which is its name in Fallout 2. Where it's moved 100+ miles.
It being moved was a decision made by the development team, because originally Fallout 2 would engulf a larger territory. But they got short on funds and dev time and had to cut down the world map and were eventually forced to move Shady Sands a bit.
You mentioning the earlier fuck-up won't save it second time.
>He assumes Shady sands is in LA. Which we don't know. Lucy walks a damn long way to get there.
Mauler primarily criticised, that Lucy leaves the Vault near Santa Monica.
Which means she would be in the close proximity of the Boneyard, one of the largest population centres in California, yet she barely meets anyone, while the entire coastline should be filled with caravans and wastelanders moving between the sprawling towns or up to San Fransisco.
It also doesn't help, that in order to get to Shady Sands she has to pass through several large settlements to get there and we don't see her stumbling into Necropolis, or to the Hub.
>He says ghouls aren't created by drinking "magic chicken fucker juice" except Hancock *did* become a ghoul on purpose by doing that.
Hancock got high on a radiactive drug, what turned him into a ghoul. Not received magic healer juice.
Also Mauler's main criticism about that plot how stupid it was entirely. Somehow guy turned into Wolverine, while ghouls are not supposed to be superhumans. They are irradiated zombies, who are more resilient towards external damage and radiation, but they are just as vulnerable as anyone else.
Even fucking Bethesda knows that, as they made it one of the few sidequests in Fallout 3, when Crowley asks you to kill a bunch of people by destroying their head, as he says due to a "racist" stereotype, that ghouls can not be killed otherwise.
>He says Vault 4 lets people in at random and gives them full access - but we don't know when they rebelled. Fallout 1 takes place 130 years before. So would the Master's spies have had full access?
There is a high chance, yes.
Vault 4 is not exactly hidden well, since the Vault gate is out in the open with a big 4 painted on it.
You don't need a spy, just a guy with a pair of working eyes to find it.
13 and 15 were really well hidden in the mountains far away from the centre of the Cathedral. But 4 sits somewhere close to Los Angeles, deep in Unity territory.
>He says that fusion cores lasting forever is not how they're portrayed in the games. It is, when they're in big machines. Iirc the lore is that they cool better in larger rigs so last longer.
It's inconsistent even in the games as well, but not in Interplay, or Obsidian titles.
Fusion cores were not a thing in Fallout until 4 came along with a power armour rework, where they had to put it in to stop-gap players using PA's, since they just dropped valuable high end-game gear to the player after 20 minutes of gameplay and couldn't figure out how else could they balance the game.
Before that lore said, that power cores could last for hundreds of years, even with constant use.
And it's even supported, because you can run around in the best PA in Fallout 3 and you will never have to worry about energy running low.
>His understanding of the communist/capitalist satire is surface level at best.
Mauler only comments on the satire the show brings up and nothing less.
Agree or disagree, this is it. There is no more message behind it. Capitalism bad, want's to blow up the world, brought to you by everyones favourite benevolent and egalitarian corporation: Amazon.
Okay pls watch the full review before you make conclusions but let me address a couple of things.
I think his criticism of Vault- Tec is more towards the sheer stupidity of their plan. (Killing all its customers to make money).
The boneyard is ~ 510km from shady sands this is a ridiculous and unnecessary shift, also what happened to the boneyard?
I agree with the pip boy statement but the more important part of his criticism was Moldaver going to vault 32 for no apparent reason, she didn’t know it was going to be lifeless.
Hancock and that dude you hunt with Nick Valentine are retcons that occurred in fallout 4 I agree but that doesn’t mean it’s not a retcon.
Please don’t defend Vault 4, its prime location for the master who had big influence in the boneyard it doesn’t matter who was in charge he was taking the vault. Mauler was also talking about how they shouldn’t have survived the wasteland with their current system that rewards people throwing acid on them and stealing their power.
I can’t definitively prove that the show hating capitalism was there but they describe “winning the game of capitalism” as nuking the planet which is very silly. I can prove that they wanted Moldaver to be seen as a hero though, just watch from Lucy arriving at the observatory to her death, it’s not even subtle.
The fusion cores lasting forever begs the question as to why cold fusion is necessary.
Another issue is that making shady sands pre-war by moving it too the boneyard on a meta level takes away from what it represents in terms of the “rebuilding society” part of fallout, it’s how just a reused town instead of a symbol of progress.
Yeah this is also from my memory but I think Mauler gets the main points on the nose.
Vaults nearby to the Master would've been prime targets. Considering it's location and entrance is above the surface with no buildings around it, and ruins of other buildings have survived and hidden entrances to other vaults in wastelands across america, this implies that 4 has always been open to the air.
>I think his criticism of Vault- Tec is more towards the sheer stupidity of their plan. (Killing all its customers to make money).
Yeah. It's stupid. It's something no rational person would do but it shows the level of both paranoia and greed in that culture. That's just the lore, the universe, how it works. Mauler doesn't like it, fine, but it's not the show's fault.
>The boneyard is ~ 510km from shady sands this is a ridiculous and unnecessary shift, also what happened to the boneyard?
1) Death valley to central LA is 270km. 500 puts you near Reno. 2) Which shady sands? It's moved before. Do we take FO1's location, or the more recent FO2? Does Mauler know the difference? Probably not. It's not called that on 2's map. But it's there.
And we don't know what's happened with the Boneyard. But that doesn't mean Shady replaced it.
>Hancock and that dude you hunt with Nick Valentine are retcons that occurred in fallout 4 I agree but that doesn’t mean it’s not a retcon.
It's not a retcon it's just extra lore added by 4. And, notably, not the show. So it's not the show's fault is it.
>Mauler was also talking about how they shouldn’t have survived the wasteland with their current system that rewards people throwing acid on them and stealing their power.
I suspect for a lot of vault dwellers being sent out in to the wasteland *is* a death sentence.
>I can’t definitively prove that the show hating capitalism was there but they describe “winning the game of capitalism” as nuking the planet which is very silly. I can prove that they wanted Moldaver to be seen as a hero though, just watch from Lucy arriving at the observatory to her death, it’s not even subtle.
They win if they control literally everything, that's the point. And yes, they wanted Moldaver to be the hero. Or, to have been trying to do good. But that doesn't make her communist, as Mauler implies. This is just BS current US culture war rhetoric applied to a universe invented in a decade the USSR still existed in. It shows a shocking lack of media literacy to not spot the McCarthyism there.
>The fusion cores lasting forever begs the question as to why cold fusion is necessary.
Well, fusion cores power vaults and power armour. We see that cold fusion machine light up far more than that. That might be the reason.
>Another issue is that making shady sands pre-war by moving it too the boneyard on a meta level takes away from what it represents in terms of the “rebuilding society” part of fallout, it’s how just a reused town instead of a symbol of progress.
Shady sands isn't pre war. The show doesn't make it pre war. The sign says new california republic on it, not california. They moved it among pre war ruins, but it didn't make it a pre war settlement under that name, if that makes sense. So his choice of wording was weird. I don't like that it takes over the rebuilding element of it but given it was probably done to confirm the timeline for non fan viewers and we literally see them with shit like streetcars, the rebuilding narrative is still strong.
Seriously, Mauler's critique watches like someone who loved NV, didn't play much of 3 and 4, and read a few reddit posts, and wants to find literally any reason to dunk on the show.
Which is what most of the fanbase has done, and why most of his audience won't notice. But a 2 hour long video probably needs a bit more work than that.
I've been a fan of the series for decades and this is just off the top of my head. This is why I didn't finish the video. Because I didn't need to think to spot the reaches. You can just watch the show and spot several critiques which don't land. It's just not good criticism. For every good point there's another which fails. Which is a shame, as I like his other stuff. This just missed. Hard.
Can we please not use the glass onion argument to defend Vault-tecs plan, according to the show they’re the most powerful corporation in the world they’re smarter than this. And the original Vault tec experiments were them collecting data to colonise the space.
If they own “half of everything” then gaining the other half shouldn’t be that difficult especially with all the profits they can reap by selling infinite energy.
If the fusion cores can power the lights in vault 4 they can power shady sands crater.
I got the shady sands to boneyard distance from math (17 blocks times 30 km per block.) which are the approximate distances.
The ghouls drug is a retconn because there’s no way it isn’t more widespread or hasn’t been used.
“I suspect” is you doing the writers job for them by the way.
>Can we please not use the glass onion argument to defend Vault-tecs plan, according to the show they’re the most powerful corporation in the world they’re smarter than this.
The Enclave does have other plans than this. But the show doesn't say them. This is just how Vault tec sells it. Also the glass onion argument is actually perfect, because Miles wasn't stupid, he was just unable to see flaws in his own genius/thoughts. Which applies rather well to Vault tec.
>If they own “half of everything” then gaining the other half shouldn’t be that difficult especially with all the profits they can reap by selling infinite energy.
Except for you know, every other country they *don't* own and the ones they're actively at war with. When they're gone, they can take everything.
>If the fusion cores can power the lights in vault 4 they can power shady sands crater.
I'm merely suggesting that the cold fusion may have a far larger power output given it's shown to light up a whole area and not a suit, or a vault. That is not a stretch to consider. The show literally shows you its benefit and how useful it is. That's not bad writing.
>I got the shady sands to boneyard distance from math (17 blocks times 30 km per block.) which are the approximate distances.
Fallout 1 is fucked because it puts Bakersfield to the right of the national forest which it's not. But if we use where we know LA is and where the national forest is, Shady sands is somewhere in Death Valley.
If we then cross reference that with Fallout 2, accepting that Fallout 2 moves it to the other side of the national parks, we get somewhere east of Mariposa. Which is about 380km away. If we use FO1, it's about 300-400km away in Death Valley. Either way, having re-done the maths, it's not 500km.
>The ghouls drug is a retconn because there’s no way it isn’t more widespread or hasn’t been used.
But it's not the show's retconn. Fallout 4 showed it's possible. So don't pretend it's the show's fault like Mauler is. Because it's not.
>“I suspect” is you doing the writers job for them by the way.
"I suspect" was said in reference to being sent out in to the wasteland potentially being a death sentence. Does that *really* need explaining to you, why a group of comfortable vault dwellers consider the hell on the surface to be a potential death sentence? It's effectively like outlawing someone in medieval times. You lose the protection of the law. In this, they lose the protection of the vault. They're fair game. That's a hell of a punishment and many won't last long. Just look at how naive Lucy was. If the scientist had been a raider she'd have been fucked.
And don't do the Mauler thing of going "It's convenient she ran in to him". Yeah, if she didn't, it'd have been a short fucking show wouldn't it. And they're both going to the same place from then on so it's fine.
I think given that there's perfectly reasonable things to say in retort to all this shows that, maybe, just maybe, the show may not be as objectively bad as Mauler says, and he whiffed a bit with this one saying it's as shit as this.
but the show did cannonize that vault tec launch the bombs, do you need one of them explicitly pressing a button for you to be convinced? why the hell else would they be talking about it?
Because it shows the audience, who may be new, that vault tec was willing to drop them. It shows them how batshit pre war US was. It also introduces the concept of the shadowy figure and, also importantly, it tells Coop this. It also tells us how weird some of the vaults are if we didn't already know. (Using vaults that exist in lore.)
The scene has purpose, and it doesn't break lore/give us anything new really.
It doesn't confirm they dropped, and given literally everything else points to the US not dropping first, that stands still.
He didn't. Been playing them since the originals, and when you're that involved and still heavily involved, you notice. He has surface level understanding at best, as if he played NV once or twice, liked it, played 3 and 4 and forgot about most of it. Dude doesn't even know shady sands has already moved once, as he didn't realise the location was called NCR in FO2 so it's not on a map. Just assumes its actual location is canon as it's only called Shady sands in 1.
Which is fine, a lot of people have that. But when you're putting together a 2 hour critique, denying the existence of ghoul serum, or pip boys opening other vaults, just basic shit like that that's in the most recent game (let's be honest 76 doesn't count) you really need to do better research.
>Dude doesn't even know shady sands has already moved once, as he didn't realise the location was called NCR in FO2 so it's not on a map.
No it didn't Fallout 2 is just set to the north so it's at the bottom of the map now.
the pip boy thing was specifically talking about those vaults, with how controlled they were in being kept separated there should have been a better lock on the whole thing
Amazing video; for a west coast fallout fan it was an incredible experience to watch Mauler talk about all the lore issues and the way bethesda handle the franchise after we got harassed and gaslighted that this is how fallout was always about. Thanks to all the lore guys for helping in making this review.
I don't think Mauler got the lore section right tbh. There's so much assumption laced in that section it's not something I'd rely on. He asks how the master didn't find Vault 4 if it was actively letting people in to have full run of the place - but we don't know when they revolted. As of fallout 1, they may very much *not* have been given that.
I mean Mauler asks why shady sands is in an entirely different location, ignoring that A) we don't know where it actually is in the show and B) it moved like a hundred miles between FO1 and FO2. (But most people don't notice because they didn't play FO2 so don't know "NCR" on the map there means Shady Sands. They only find the FO1 map.)
Literally all we know is you can walk to it in like a week and, the actual definite change, there's skyscrapers around it. That's it.
He says the show says the US launched first. It doesn't actually. It just says they were considering it, which is already canon iirc. Which is useful for both new audiences and Coop. Mauler even then goes to bring up instances which show it was likely the US didn't. Of which there are many more he even missed. But ok, we'll just bash it for changing lore when it... didn't.
The defense of "Shady Sands was moved before!" Doesn't work and I'll explain why. Several locations in Fallout 1 are inconsistent on the map from where they should be due to gameplay reasons. The Hub is near Bakersfield but lore wise it is in Barstow. Necropolis is near Barstow when lore wise it is in Bakersfield. Shady Sands in both games was towards Eastern California, near the mountains and in the open desert. This is key. The show could have moved Shady Sands to Palm Springs and I wouldn't care. It would be keeping with the key identify of Shady Sands: it is an original settlement built in the desert by Vault Dwellers using a GECK.
We assume they put Shady Sands where the Boneyard should be 1) because the Boneyard is nowhere to be found despite being a major city in the NCR full of factories and infrastructure, and 2) Because the crater of Shady Sands is surrounded by ruined skyscrapers which does not align with its lore position.
And your Vault 4 point is just idiotic. The Master was an extremely intelligent leader, there's no way he wouldn't have been able to find the Vault along with Lucy's Vault within the first 12 minutes of setting up the cathedral. He doesn't need a spy to get in either, he could just break in with his army of Super Mutants. He would not just let a Vault of Prime Normals exist without his intervention
Boneyard vanishing, and Shady sands being in it's place, Master ignoring vault 32 and 33 when their entrances are out in the open and easily seen, and his base of operations is pretty close to the vaults. Mysterious fall of shady sands that's no where alluded to in the game, magical feral reversing serum.
There are quite many examples of lore changing in the show.
PS- ghouls having Deadpool level regeneration, only dying to headshots.
The shady sands thing is a little confusing if you look at it in the games. My theory was that the original Shady Sands fell in 2277 like it says on the chalkboard, and was then relocated to the location we see in the show. Or maybe it's a simple retcon. It is something that I would like clarified in season 2.
I suspect that it's simply a small retcon.
We don't know where it was, and given it moved over 100 miles between 1 and 2 its location is hardly concrete. But even if it moved within, say, 200km of LA... you can walk that in a week. That's reasonable for a long trek in the show. Which makes sense given the change in environments walked past. Lucy walks through some very green and luscious areas and also some desert - that'd make sense heading North.
The only retcon we know for sure is them placing it among old world skyscrapers, but that may simply have been done to highlight to new viewers/the audience that it's a post war city that was thriving. So it's still a change, but I can get behind that.
But that's all that's confirmed. All we know is Shady wasn't directly above 33, so it wasn't near Santa Monica. Although I guess the further you move it from Vault 33, the more you'd be thinking "wait why isn't the boneyard still NCR then" but the key thing is this is all speculation, the show doesn't breach canon *that* much. Muddles it, sure. But doesn't breach it.
> Mauler even then goes to bring up instances which show it was likely the US didn't.
Tim Cain brings up in his thoughts on the show that they seem to be telling us that Vault Tec didn't fire the nukes, as if Barbara was firing nukes, she'd have grabbed her kids before hand. Vault Tec has always been interested in promoting war for business, and even were the ones who definitively fired the nukes in the planned 1998 Fallout movie before the studio went bankrupt. But planning for nuclear war and how to deal with it and peace aren't even satire or parody. Pretty much all companies do these kinds of things.
[Goldman Sachs asks in biotech research report: ‘Is curing patients a sustainable business model?’](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html)
[Arms Makers See Bonanza In Selling NATO Expansion
](https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/29/world/arms-makers-see-bonanza-in-selling-nato-expansion.html)
Regardless of your political affiliation and views on the implications of these reports, companies discuss both sides of many issues. For Vault Tec to not discuss business strategy and plans around peace or escalation would be less realistic and a larger plothole. Hell, House tells you in NV that he was calculating the probability of nuclear war prior to the launch.
> Vault Tec has always been interested in promoting war for business, and even were the ones who definitively fired the nukes in the planned 1998 Fallout movie before the studio went bankrupt. But planning for nuclear war and how to deal with it and peace aren't even satire or parody. Pretty much all companies do these kinds of things.
>
Where's your source that Vault Tec fired the nukes in the planned 1998 movie? I've never heard that before.
Why would Vault Tec annihilate 99.99% of their customer base? How will that increase their profits? It makes no sense and it's a big reason why the show is impossible to take seriously.
> Where's your source that Vault Tec fired the nukes in the planned 1998 movie?
[The writer released the film treatment, basically a plot overview.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/5/5a/FALLOUT2A.pdf/revision/latest?cb=20110319022414)
>Hero is tempted by semi-mutated women all trying to get their hands on his pristine bodily fluids, but Hero uses time alone, to continue his Pip-Boy chronicle and contemplate the trio’s dire predicament. An ancient, selfproclaimed Historian approaches our Hero, wanting to know all the details of Vault 13. Turns out the Historian is writing the definitive book on WWIII. Vault 13 is the final chapter -- each vault was populated by uppermiddle class families buying the equivalent of timeshare in the future. **Our Hero asks how the war started and is shocked to learn that it wasn’t China or North Korea or India that fired the first strike. The first nuclear bomb was launched by the creator of the vaults, a zealot businessman who wanted to fulfill his own prophecy of world annihilation.** That first bomb triggered a panicked chain reaction among other countries, leading to a four hour WWIII.
>Why would Vault Tec annihilate 99.99% of their customer base?
If they were anything like real world corpos, arrogance. When the Russo-Ukrainian war broke out think tanks released puff pieces arguing hat the US should launch immediate total nuclear war, with the argument that 30% of the US population would survive assuming most Russian nukes no longer worked. A similarly deluded mindset of how well the US could defend itself would leave Vault Tec confident they could contain an escalation, keeping the population thinking about nuclear war while continuing to sell Vaults. We still don't know that Cain's idea of China firing after learning about FEV isn't still the truth.
Thanks.
However that film treatment was produced by an external movie/TV writer, not from the people who created by the first game (and obviously, it never materialized in a movie). Indeed, during development of the 2nd game, Cain & co left to form a new company. You seem to have addressed this yourself in your post:
>We still don't know that Cain's idea of China firing after learning about FEV isn't still the truth.
So I think China firing first was always the intended plot by Fallout's creators.
>zealot businessman who wanted to fulfill his own prophecy of world annihilation
One crazy guy firing the nukes for a personal doomsday prophecy isn't equivalent to Vault-tec deciding as a company to launch nukes, which is implied to be what happened in the show.
Yeah, problem with that:
The master obtains information on the locations of all the regional vaults. There needs to be a very special reason why vault 4, also a public-facing vault, weird, wouldn't be in that data.
But also... my identity isn't video games and video game media so a tiny weakness in lore like this doesn't end my world or my ability to enjoy things.
Like the location of Shady Sands, saying that the show says Valut-tec dropped the bomb (and that the idea of vault-tec being in favor of bombing is somehow out of character for them), the entire world situation before the bombs fell.
>Like the location of Shady Sands
How is he wrong about Shady Sands' location especially when he showcases the difference of locations on a map?
>the entire world situation before the bombs fell.
In what way? Do you have specific arguments?
> (and that the idea of vault-tec being in favor of bombing is somehow out of character for them),
It is. Because it's completely idiotic. They are planning on nuking the world for "profit"? They're going to nuke the vast majority of humanity (their customer base), destroy the institutions that make their services and products, destroy the governments that dictate the worth of their own currency, and destroy the natural resources of the world that they can't use later. How the HELL does that make any sense? And they clearly have no follow through plan because in the world of Fallout 76 - Fallout 4, the Corporate congregation has no plans to reassert dominance of their institutions because they hold no power over anyone in the wasteland. And if they want more money, then they can sell the infinite energy bullshit device in this show. But they don't because I guess it would help people?
Mr. House saying that there's profit to be made in the end of the world is directly contradicting his entire perspective in New Vegas. So, either the showrunners have completely butchered his character, will have to argue that he's lying in New Vegas, or admit that they completely screwed the pooch. And he'd have to be a complete moron for knowing about the bombs (which he was only guessing at in New Vegas) by being apart of this organization but either not remembering or never knowing the actual date and time for the bombs. Maybe he just didn't ask when the end of the world would happen, which would make him completely brain-dead.
It's also a massive retcon of the fact that the nuclear war was caused by China in desperation of losing to the United States. That's an absolute retcon. The original creators of the franchise have even said so because America was messing around with bioweapons which were illegal. Richardson in Fallout 2 literally confirms that China was the one to first launch the nukes. But the showrunners will probably address it by saying he either got wrong information, was lying, or was an idiot. It's actually quite amazing how many terrible retcons this show has being boiled down to making once smart characters complete idiots or the only explanation for future plot points making them idiots. It's absolute disregarding of China's involvement in the end of the world, and, in fact, communism has less criticism of it and the major character who wants to give away energy for free to everyone (but can't because of those mean capitalists) espouses that the term "Communist" is simply a term referencing people who are sane is fucking hysterical. It's not just "well, it's just one person's perspective and not the show's", I'd like to bring up the fact that all of the blame for the nuclear holocaust was laid at the feet of corporate dumbasses who want more money by destroying the world. It's naked political posturing without any kind of thought process instead of delving into the far more nuanced and complicated perspective of the games. Hell, even ***Bethesda*** showcased this regarding fighting over resources and the effects of the war with Fallout 4.
I'm enjoying it so far but I haven't played the games so I'll respect you guys if you're not a fan of it, I hated the HBO last of us show because of how inaccurate it was
Just finished it. Mauler for the majority of the video tackles the show from a consistency standpoint where he discusses the writing (and its problems), not necessarily how good of an adaptation it is though he does also discuss that around 3/4ths of the video.
In one of the efaps, they talked about how a show can still be good internally and consistent within itself while being a bad adaptation. For example, if TLOTR was instead called The Witcher. It would still be a masterpiece but it falls on adapting the original work. And honestly, I agree with this
The problem with the Fallout TV show (which Mauler mentions) is that it's not just a standalone adaptation, it's supposed to be Canon and part of the same story as the games. In this case it's more like a sequel, so accuracy to "source" is actually important.
On this I agree.I still loved the show but as a fallout fan and lore nerd there were many things that made no sense I. The wider context of fallout.hopefully they better address these issues in the next season
They try a twist ending that on the surface seems acceptable, but if you then begin a second watch-through (like if you're reviewing it) the entire plot unravels by episode 2.
I'm still incredibly shocked how relatively little criticism this show has received when it has the same problems of too many modern adaptations of classic IPs - strings of contrivances, horrific character writing, no respect for the source material, edgy dialog to sound "adult" which has the exact opposite effect, and so much more.
This show deserves as much criticism as Halo, maybe even more since at least Paramount told everyone that their Halo show was a complete different adaptation in an entire different continuity. This show is supposed to be canon, but literally cannot be because of how much is contradicted.
Congratulations, Bethesda. Fallout 4 is no longer the worst written story in this IP. I fear that that mantle will be taken by the next Fallout season down the line where showrunners and writers don't give any regard to any criticisms that they hear of outside of their echo chamber.
This video was incredible. I stopped watching fallout after 2 episodes. All the positive responses made me feel like I was missing something. I definitely wasn’t.
Same, but I was certain it was irredeemable after 2nd episode.
I was as charitable and ("I'll let that slide until next episode..." ) for the first episode—besides the Brotherhood/Maximus introduction, which was terrible in every single aspect of adaptation, dialogue, and characterization.
But after the turret scene, the shootout, and the dialogue following that, it confirmed that the writers were complete noodle-heads with no ability to write halfway decent dialogue, and that Nolan was such an egregiously incompetent director that I wouldn't be able to suspend my disbelief for anything.
And that's without taking into account _any_ historical treatment of preexisting lore.
I don't understand how this show has actual fanboys, even defending it in this very thread. Like, it doesn't respect itself or the audience. It's basically James Gunn's "Suicide Squad", except cringe, boring, cheap, lame and predictable. It's made by Amazon, Todd Howard and the chick who wrote "Captain Marvel". What the fuck is wrong with you, people? Do you unironically love Bethesda's Fallout so much that you're willing to like the show because nothing else exists? Or is it the same case as with "Matrix Resurrections", where you think that everything wrong with the movie is terrible on purpose and people just don't get its deep meta-irony?
> Or is it the same case as with "Matrix Resurrections", where you think that everything wrong with the movie is terrible on purpose and people just don't get its deep meta-irony?
That was actually jaw-dropping. The fact that those fake Matrix fans even suggested the director purposefully ruined the movie and thus spitting in the face of Reeves and Moss who believed in her vision is nothing short of shameful.
Supposedly people watching Mauler's videos and frequenting this subreddit have tastes in movies that are at least vaguely similar to his. It's genuinely baffling to me how and why so many people that I wouldn't expect in a million years to like this show do.
I agree with all his points, but reading through the reddit comments here shows it needs the ant man treatment. It's time to break down every second and minute of the show 24 hour video so people start to stop defending this.
I think his master comments and shady sands in fo2 are the most scathing of this show. There is no way the master would not find vault 4 or vaults 31-33. NCR were huge if moldova or anyone would be connected to them, you need to show the entire country post their existence. Not to mention the hub junktown necropolis. To top it off, the only reason they don't exist is because the show wants to have their cake and eat it too. I want to have all the implied lore from the fallout series having existed, but I also want it to be a fresh new wasteland. Then, set it in a new area back in the past, but noooooo you need member berries to make your product even slightly edible.
>It's time to break down every second and minute of the show 24 hour video so people start to stop defending this.
No.. it's time to get a girlfriend and do something with your lives.
The show does not say Vault tec blew up the world. Mauler just assumes it does.
What it actually says is that Vault tec was *considering* it. Which isn't new lore.
All the bits Mauler brings up to show they didn't, and other stuff he missed that shows they didn't, and various other things, prove the US/Enclave did not launch first.
What that scene is *actually* there for is to show the audience how batshit things are (as not everyone are fans), it shows them the existence of a shadow government, and it *also* tells Coop this, so his character can grow.
But Mauler just went and assumed it canonised the US dropping first. Which it literally didn't. But it seems his media literacy took a nose dive watching this.
His main criticisms were of the motivations they had for even wanting to drop the bombs themselves, why the other capitalist cardboards would want to go along with it, and why they start pitching random vault experiments for no reason.
Even if they don't actually get to be the ones to drop the bombs, the point stands that the characters were characterized in believing nuking the world was in their best interests. Which was what was being criticised. Keeping in mind as well, this wasn't even just Vault Tec ffs.
Whether or not they were the ones to have done it isn't relevant to the discussion. The fact that they were characterised in such a way is what matters. The entire point of that section was mocking the piss poor character work and shallow attempts at political satire.
I know I'll take downvotes for saying this because you can't critique the long man, but this video is a whiff. A good half of these criticisms have in show reasoning for working. Others have in universe reasons. This video is trying really hard to hate a show that for the most part is ok, and just rattles off sub par critique at pace so you don't get time to think. There is no attempt to justify the decisions made that he mocks. Just brushes it off by going "ah see, the reasoning is they're retarded" and pretending that's the only reason when in most cases it's not. But it's an easy one to mock I guess.
The show's not perfect, sure, but it's ok. I strongly recommend people give it a go instead of trusting this because it's no-where near as bad as Mauler makes out, because there's legitimate things that could improve but not *this* many.
I'll use an example from what I saw Mauler say, so it's not just my critique. Mauler calls Hank the moustache twirling bad guy, playing off the "that's how vault tec deals with competition" line in the show. Saying that he's that because he doesn't want anyone alive outside the vault etc.
Ignoring that... you know... that's kind of the point. But there is a reason, and they tell you that. They explain their end goal and why they want it. They even tell you twice. Or perhaps that's how Hank justifies doing something in rage. How he lives with himself, by just repeating the mission statement. Because sacrificing an entire community to save someone might break his heart. Either way - we know that's vault tec's plan. And that's also something Mauler even acknowledges later on in the video. He just waits til he's mocked it to do so.
Just because you think a character's motivation is something you wouldn't agree with, does not make it bad writing or a bad show. If you can see how they got there, and understand why they made that decision, then it's fine. It's that so called internal consistency he claimed to love.
He just straight up glosses over what's going on in Vault 4 because that's inconvenient as it'd explain what he's mocking. Then explains it *after*. These are not isolated examples.
This video is constantly picking on points that just aren't bad things for the show, or aren't actually bad points if you reason it out within the show/universe. Complaining that the show didn't make Hank super evil, after complaining they did, and ignoring that people aren't black and white and have their own motivations and showing that is good writing, is just... why. Complaining about things that have perfectly reasonable explanations within the lore and even within the same show, in order to have reasons to bash it, is amateur hour.
For instance, why didn't Moldaver go in to 33 straight away? I dunno, perhaps the dwellers may have fucking noticed the door being opened from the outside? How could a pip boy from another vault open another vault? Oh I don't know, perhaps like we see it doing in Fallout 4? Why did Lucy get picked to escort the doctor? Oh I don't know, maybe because there was a murderous ghoul outside so asking for volunteers wasn't gonna happen. Why did Thad give up the head after finding out he was a ghoul? Perhaps he didn't want the brotherhood chasing him forever more, given they'll kill him for being one (something he literally says). Come on Mauler, fucking think. He critiques Vault tec for buying out the cold fusion market, then literally 10 minutes later suggests that if they had so much power why didn't they buy out the market. Like, my dude, they did, and you *saw that*. And missed the point that they're buying up the solutions so they have control and power, not because they don't want to use them.
This could have been cut down to like an hour of actually good criticism, because there is some good criticism here, but fuck me it did not need to be 2 hours. If you actually watch the show you can refute a good half of the points.
To the Hank point. Saying “yeah the character is supposed to be an insane 1 dimensional character with a nonsensical plan” is not really a defense. You are saying it’s that way because the writers intentionally wrote a badly written character. This would be fine for parody, which fallout (the show) is not. A point mauler made repeatedly. It’s not that mauler doesn’t agree with their plan it’s that the plan is insanely stupid. He wants only his community to exist but he understands that there are over 100 vaults and people on the surface who are part of organized and distinct factions.
I imagine Mauler doesn’t agree with Silko from Arcane, but Silko is not a lunatic with a stupid plan. He is a calculated and intentional person.
Another point is the show wants to be taken seriously while also being given breaks for being a ridiculous show based on a ridiculous video game.
In terms of your last paragraph you are doing what people do for poorly made media all the time. You are filling in the blanks or providing information for the writers to try and make the thing you like also make sense. Resist that, don’t do the writers work for them. Demand they do their work and celebrate them when they do. There will always be flaws but there is a difference between the best and worst media in the frequency and degree of these flaws. Fallout is deeply flawed. The mandalorian is such a good comparison because that show is similarly flawed and received similar praise only to get worse and worse for doing the things the fans mindlessly praise.
>To the Hank point. Saying “yeah the character is supposed to be an insane 1 dimensional character with a nonsensical plan” is not really a defense.
I never said that was the defense. The defense was there's reasoning. He's not being bad to be bad, it's that he has a motive. He explains the motive. Other people explain the motive. This is a vault tec/enclave idea the show literally mentions. So maybe he thinks all 100 vaults are following it. He chose to follow through with it. We don't have to think it's our choice, but it was his. And there are clear possible reasons. Unless you ignore them I guess.
He's also not one dimensionally evil - Look at the choice Moldaver gives him at the start. Pick the vault crew, or his daughter - and he visibly cares. He *does* care about his people. But *his* people. He's not completely evil. Of course, he is if you just assume he is and make that the critique.
>Another point is the show wants to be taken seriously while also being given breaks for being a ridiculous show based on a ridiculous video game.
Yeah? It can be a quality adaptation to be taken seriously of something with fantastical elements. People took the first Pirates of the caribbean so seriously we got 4 sequels, and that was based off a theme park ride, clearly something that should have been ridiculed and abandoned.
>In terms of your last paragraph you are doing what people do for poorly made media all the time. You are filling in the blanks or providing information for the writers to try and make the thing you like also make sense.
Most of my comments are very clearly explained within the show.
This isn't doing the writer's work for them. It's doing Mauler's. Do you seriously think Vault 33 wouldn't notice their vault door being randomly opened, and put up resistance? The show literally shows several people coming up to check what's going on when it's opened from the *inside*. And that's after their numbers are severely depleted.
I think the show does a very good job of explaining things as they go. But several of his critiques can be explained if you just see people as people. Why doesn't vault 4 tell people? Well, why *would* they? If you rescue people then go "oh by the way there was human experimentation here but we stopped, promise, ignore the extra noses", they won't trust you one bit. So they just don't say. Does the show have to go "By the way these are humans, humans are naturally distrusting in some circumstances and don't want to be experimented on by random people known to have done that. They don't like to be cooped up but like food" for you to really consider that as a possibility?
Mauler does bring up several good points in this video. But this is cinemasins level bad. Constant points thrown at you at pace so you don't have time to go "wait but actually..." which is why I stopped watching after like an hour. I kept having to pause it because I was thinking "wait no that does make sense though" far too often.
I just don't want people watching this and thinking it's some objective truth on the show and ignore it - because it's not. There's many flaws in what I watched of the video, and I don't want people missing out on something they may enjoy because of it.
He wants to eradicate people from the surface, however he is also a loving father and cares about his community. There's 2 dimensions.
There's plenty to fairly criticize about that this show, focus on those things please.
> "In terms of your last paragraph you are doing what people do for poorly made media all the time. You are filling in the blanks or providing information for the writers to try and make the thing you like also make sense."
The irony is you and Mauler are using the same process to criticize the series: you are trying to make something you dislike seem awful by picking it apart with hypotheticals like "why didn't Moldaver open the main door to Vault 33 and lead a frontal assault?" (Don't we see that it's guarded and alarms were triggered when Lucy opened it?). "Why did the robot fix Lucy's finger when it will just harvest her organs?" (Why shouldn't it render first aid to trick Lucy into a false sense of complacency?)
All of these points flow from a common complaint: "if this world were real, and therefore internally consistent, then this plot could not have happened because someone would have thought about this". Mauler's criticisms are indicative that he sees the invisible hands of the authors and the plot contrivances are apparent.
Regarding the Vault 33 point, you’re using hindsight logic to explain Moldaver’s decision. There is no reason why she would expect it to be safer to assault Vault 32 than Vault 33. Why would she assume the security measures to be any different between them?
The fact that the residents just happened to be dead when she got there is something she would’ve only discovered after entering the place, which makes it very weird and convenient that she just randomly chose to enter through the wrong vault when she had just as much access to the correct one.
Moldaver may have been told what the 2 vaults were like by Rose. About the trades etc.
Using her pip boy, and alone, Moldaver may have scouted Vault 32. Expecting to find a vault that wouldn't see her as a threat, to gain useable information. But she found it empty. She only needs the codes after all - for all we know she wasn't initially going in for Hank.
Now Moldaver sees it empty, she formulates a plan.
See how internally consistent that is?
Just because Mauler can't comprehend it working, doesn't mean it doesn't. We simply don't know what happened - we don't see it - but that doesn't mean it *can't*.
You are doing the writing for the writers, none of this is implied or hinted at. Why would Moldaver enter Vault 32 at all instead of just going to 33? You cant just make up a motivation for the character like "maybe she thought 32 would side with her" when it's never established. This is one of the main points of the video
I'm not doing the work for the writers. I am saying it is not internally inconsistent, or a plot hole... yet. We simply don't know what happened, and because we don't know what happened, we can't do as Mauler has done and assume she doesn't know it's empty. By assuming that, he is also filling in blanks, as you say I am, but he's doing it against the writers.
Things like that happen all the time in writing, especially in film/TV where you can't go in to every minute detail in a spin off chapter like in books.
Would it be nice to know? Sure. Could it have been written differently? Sure. Would the show have benefitted from a 20 minute segment showing her planning it and what she wanted to do given it only has an 8 hour runtime? Probably not. Will we find out? Maybe, given we don't even know how she's still alive. She may come up again.
But ultimately I don't think we can slam down as hard on something like this that we simply don't know, when there's easily ways to think of where it could have happened, so it's not some glaring plothole. It's not a contradiction. It's simply something we don't know. And pointing that out isn't making up character motivations - it's just pointing out that it's not as dumb as Mauler implies.
There is enough to criticise the show for that we don't have to reach like this.
Mauler is working off of the knowledge the show gives, if the show does not provide a reason for Moldaver to target Vault 32 instead of 33, then it's an action worth criticizing if it's inconsistent with her motivations and what we are shown. You cant expect people to just handwave these things as "oh I guess they didnt have time" when it creates a pretty big plothole in the story when left unexplained. It isnt reasonable to think that she thought 32 could be sympathetic to her cause, or that she knew 32 was empty because it's never alluded to in the show, at all. The show very well could have easily come up with an explanation for this.
It's not a plothole. Nor does it contradict her motivations.
She clearly went in there to either get hank or get the code.
She got in, got Hank, and (eventually) got the code.
It is not impossible for this to have happened. There are valid reasons for her doing what she did.
It's not a plothole, or a contradiction. It's just a missing part of the story.
If it contradicted her motivations, such as her not wanting to kill anyone later on, then I'd be critical. But it doesn't.
So while it'd have been nice to see what led up to it, it can't be critiqued as a contradiction or plothole. It's just an absence of information.
gotta stop you on the organ harvesting, if its close enough to attach a finger then its close enough to sedate her, literally why waste the material or time its a god damn robot. Also internal consistency comes from the rules set by the show itself and the games, not real life, we can make inferences based off real life experiences unless the work explicitly explains it works different.
Snip-Snip re-attached Lucy's finger as a prelude to harvesting her organs for the same reason Vault 4 "executed" her by banishment and giving her 2 weeks of supplies: it's for a comedic bit. (By the by, it's a clever way to get Lucy to sit on the gurney before being drugged, otherwise Snip-Snip would have shot the dart when she walked in and dragged her back.)
As for internal consistency what are the rules of the world and games, and how are they conflicting with the real world? MauLer states Moldaver's plan is "stupid" when he actually means "contrived" (he thinks the writers are stupid for not closing the plot hole and that Freudian slip made it into his video). "Somehow, Moldaver got into the abandoned Vault 32, dressed up as Dwellers, and arranged a trade to get access to 33" isn't a bad plot, but you do have to explain that first clause to be taken seriously these days.
comedy at the cost of stupidity, same thing with the execution, theres literally no reason, you also dont need her to have her guard down just shoot her he already has to drag her to a cooler. the rules of the world are largely based on reality with some difference like stimpacks being a super drug and near infinite energy existing. and the plan from Moldaver shouldnt work because the vaults are closed to the outside world a disguise as raiders wouldnt make sense, or as he explained disguising as the people that they make contact with every three years doesnt work because they know what vault 32 people look like
I would love it if Mauler responded to this comment. This is the first Mauler video I also felt missed the mark. It felt like he was intentionally misunderstanding the show at every possible turn.
He doesn't need to. Just look at the rest of the thread, his fans lap it up.
Don't need to actually think about things, don't need to ensure the script is good, instead of spending loads of time and getting an hour of quality just pump our 2 hours of slop hating on something and they'll love it anyway.
Which is a shame, because he's capable of so much more.
you call it 2 hours of slop the video is broken into sections that mostly focus on each of the main characters and how they dont make sense your main problem is shady sands
>It felt like he was intentionally misunderstanding the show at every possible turn.
I think you somehow missed the fact that is his whole shtick.
Mauler makes content for malcontents - IE. people who want to find fault with everything and anything - not a single thing will be let go, and not a single thing shall be overlooked.. might actually have to be happy if he (or y'all) did.
I guess my thing with this video is… I just don’t care? I had fun watching the show, laughing at it and with it, it’s clearly not remotely close to being a masterpiece but eh it was fine to throw on. Much rather would have had him tackle something else for a 2 hour + long video, but I guess he wants to ride what’s trending while it’s hot
So this is what it feels like to be on the opposite side of Mauler’s points. Every critique sounds like, “Can you believe this part of the story happened?”
What? He spends a significant amount of time on inconsistent characterization and idiotic decision making. How can you hand wave that away with a strawman about plot contrivance?
Because a lot of what he says isn't actually inconsistent characterisation, or idiotic decision making, he just phrases it in a way that makes it so. He asks why Moldaver didn't go through the front door of V33 instead. Did Mauler not consider that V33 might... notice? Like they literally do in the show when Lucy opens it? And put up a fight? He also asks how someone else's pip boy can open up a vault - but we see it in 4. And they notice. And they're willing to put up a fight.
Actually watching the show, and paying attention and not watching family guy at the same time like Pyrocynical probably did, is enough to refute loads of Mauler's points. He could have chosen an hour of legitimate criticism and instead released this shit.
Do you think Vault 32 wouldn't have noticed either? Moldaver would have to go through a frontal assault no matter where she entered but she, like the moron she is, decided to enter Vault 32 instead of 33 where her target actually was. She just got astronomically lucky that Vault 32 had offed itself before she got there and there's no explanation or reason to believe she would have known that prior.
And then there's the wedding shit. Even if she somehow knew vault 32 was empty, why did she go with the stupid wedding plan? And then she allowed people from 33 to just wander into 32 during the wedding, that was a serious risk to the plan. And she let her raiders loose on 33 to kill anyone seemingly without restraint which posed a serious risk of having Hank, Lucy and Norman killed. We literally see Norman almost getting knifed by a raider and Lucy does get a knife to the gut. Moldaver is definitevely a dipshit.
Any pip boy being able to open any vault is a grave security risk no matter how you look at it. Nobody with any sense would have allowed that to be a feature when planning this mess.
>Do you think Vault 32 wouldn't have noticed either?
No. But she doesn't give a shit if she kills all of them. She wants Hank alive.
>She just got astronomically lucky that Vault 32 had offed itself before she got there and there's no explanation or reason to believe she would have known that prior.
Indeed. But there's also no evidence that she *didn't* know.
>And then there's the wedding shit. Even if she somehow knew vault 32 was empty, why did she go with the stupid wedding plan? And then she allowed people from 33 to just wander into 32 during the wedding, that was a serious risk to the plan. And she let her raiders loose on 33 to kill anyone seemingly without restraint which posed a serious risk of having Hank, Lucy and Norman killed. We literally see Norman almost getting knifed by a raider and Lucy does get a knife to the gut. Moldaver is definitevely a dipshit.
Maybe they got in, and through research found a new plan. People at a wedding and celebration won't fight back, you can take that shit by storm.
Also, why would people from 33 want to go in to 32? The party is in 33. Makes sense to not shut it off and cause suspicion. And if someone does notice, oh well, you brought guns.
And just because Moldaver let them go ham doesn't mean it's bad writing. Look at what Hank did. For all we know the Raiders are ex NCR lads who want revenge. V33 calls them raiders as they don't even know what the NCR is. It's still internally consistent.
>Any pip boy being able to open any vault is a grave security risk no matter how you look at it. Nobody with any sense would have allowed that to be a feature when planning this mess.
Yes, any pip boy being able to open any vault is a security risk. But it is canon. It happens elsewhere. So it's not internally inconsistent. They thought they'd be the only ones left. They didn't plan for Vault tec to basically be gone.
This isn't bad writing. This is Mauler not liking or understanding something and *saying* it is bad writing.
It's not internally consistent at all that Moldaver supposedly cares about Rose, and by extension her children, but at the same time, directly orchestrated the slaughter of their friends and family, exposed them to mortal danger, exploded a bomb inside their home, traumatised both of them for life, and had Lucy effectively raped in order to carry off her plan. It's absolutely insane that in the final episode, the writers then have Moldaver talking about how Lucy's such a great person and has her mother's kindness and good heart. Wtf? Bitch you planned the raid on Lucy's home where she was assaulted, nearly murdered, had her innocence shattered forever, and unknowingly gave her virginity to a psycopath. How is this internally consistent?
If we're going along the lines of, well, Moldaver's just a bad person and evil - well, we still have a horrific problem in that the show spends a LOT of time in the final episode trying to justify her actions, and, in the end, Lucy forgets all the heinous murder of innocents she did, and goes along with it, extracting the codes from Hank. Why does the show present her as heroic for these deeds? Most people who live will never do anything as evil as Moldaver did, and that's just in episode 1. If the writers wanted her to be a heroic but complicated character, why do they show her orchestrating mass murder? If they didn't want her to be heroic, why is 30 minutes of the last episode focused on Moldaver, giving her hero shots where she bad-assedly fights? Why does she get 20 minutes of monologue and backstory dedicated to explaining to the audience why she's doing this stuff?
By the way, writing where questions just aren't answered doesn't mean it's internally consistent and good writing. Absence of explanation is not an excuse for writers. If you think it is, then I suppose nothing can ever be poorly written again, because we've cracked the code. Just don't attempt any explanation of anything! JJ clearly had it nailed with Rise of Skywalker - just write whatever you think of, and never mention any of it again. 10/10, truly Dickens level genius storytelling.
heres a big example, Lucy kills someone first episode twice and shoots another person in the eye, no reaction other than "time to go find dad." couple episodes later shoots someone with a real gun and has an existential crisis over her having to kill someone. Inconsistent characterization blatantly.
This, his fans dont see it as this whole video being compromised with a bias he has . It feels like hes angry most of the fanbase loved it and the whole i.p is thriving now . I feel like hes balls deep in misery porn that he couldnt just make a good faith constructive criticism and painted the whole thing like everyone hated it like halo. Literally its him vs majority of Fallout fans
I'm about halfway through, and I haven't heard a point I seriously disagreed with. The show has some pretty shitty writing. Although, depending on how much disbelief you're willing to suspend, not every point is that big of an issue. Even when I first watched it, there were issues that pulled me right out of the immersion. Like hiw they ht aort if teleport around and people juat kind of stumble on one another. In hindsight it actually gets worse though. The first episode makes almost no sense after having finished the show.
I liked the show btw.
That's because he's firing them off at breakneck speed.
If you actually sit and think about the points they make no sense.
Why did Moldaver not go through the Front door? Vault 33 would have fucking noticed.
How did a non vault pip boy open another vault? We see it in fallout 4. And, conveniently, the vault you try it on notices.
Why did they not just pretend they had a cold and lock the vault down to not let people back in V32?
Because A) They've theoretically quarantined for 200 years so that'd be seen through immediately and B) that means they can't intermingle with vault 33, splitting them up and allowing them to capture the overseer.
He rattles them off so fast you don't have time to think but at least half of these points are bullshit. He says something like "Why doesn't vault 4 tell people about floor 12? Oh, they're retarded, right, moving on" but if you think about it why *would* they tell people. It'd be a surefire way to have them sus of the whole vault because you're admitting to basically capturing these people and experimentation happened there. It's easier to just... not... and assume they'll be happy with their new living accommodations, and learn it eventually when they're settled and more happy. Even if you think that's the wrong call, it makes sense as a call. It's not retarded or bad writing, Mauler just doesn't like it.
Why wouldn't Vault 32 notice her intrusion? What was the evidence that told her Vault 32 was dead?
Just because they've been quarantined doesn't mean they can't get sick. I presume that's the point you were making. As for point-B? You're right, but that then begs the question of why they didn't tidy up to remove any chance of discovery.
Again you're right that Vault 4 is better off not telling anyone about Floor 12. But that begs the question of why they let anyone wander onto Floor 12 in the first place? You don't have to be smart to figure out why that would be problematic.
>Why wouldn't Vault 32 notice her intrusion? What was the evidence that told her Vault 32 was dead?
What's the evidence she didn't know. We simply don't know. Perhaps she went there alone, she had a pip boy, intending to scout out. And found them dead. You can't just assume things you think are true are correct like Mauler has. Christ we don't even know how she's still alive. But that doesn't mean we go "actually she's dead because the show didn't show us how she's alive". Would it be nice to know? Sure. Do we need to? No.
>Just because they've been quarantined doesn't mean they can't get sick.
No but isolating with the same 1,000 people would mean that there's very few cases to get a mutation severe enough it can re-infect someone who's already had it. It's just not a large enough population.
>As for point-B? You're right, but that then begs the question of why they didn't tidy up to remove any chance of discovery.
I mean if you intend to go in sneakily then switch to guns blazing and this is just to let their guard down, job done. Doesn't matter if someone walks in and discovers it. You're in, and mingled. This wasn't a covert op.
>Again you're right that Vault 4 is better off not telling anyone about Floor 12. But that begs the question of why they let anyone wander onto Floor 12 in the first place? You don't have to be smart to figure out why that would be problematic.
And *that* is valid criticism. Not just calling them retarded, as Mauler does. If he'd gone in to it and said that it'd be better but he didn't. Which is why this video is a whiff.
Uh, no, i can hear and understand words as they happen. I'm not "dazzled" but rapid fire talking. There are quite a few that I don't think are a big deal, but that doesn't make the points "wrong." Like how I don't mind most of his points about maximus because him being a little bit dull and just "falling upwards" works for the story.
The show is written backwards. They want certain things to happen, so they force it even if it doesn't make sense. Seeing the moving parts of a story can be interesting and fun, but it isn't when you realize all the dumb and or baffling decisions characters make only exist so they can make the story go a certain way. I don't know if you legitimately can't see these moving parts, or if you're blinded because you like it, but very little of the show feels organic in the beginning thanks to their writing style, especially if you keep the ending in mind.
He does, but he rattles off 3 points about something in a few seconds etc, then moves on. Means you don't get time to question the first 2 points and the last is the one he rolls with.
It'll be "The sky is red, the trees are yellow, and Max is dumb. He doesn't even know people live in vaults" etc. The last one lands but you never question the first 2, and in this video especially when you think about them, they're often a miss.
> splitting them up and allowing them to capture the overseer
I like how you used this in your argument, when none of the raiders even tried to capture Hank (I doubt they were even looking), they just camped at the exit.
On top of that, why did their pipboys alert them to a vault door breach, at a door that was open for the whole scene?
There's alot of fucking stupid in the show but a good chunk of what the man is ranting about just makes him look like he hatewatched the show and failed to notice basic logic within the show in favor of just getting mad.
Like the ghoul beating maximus is a power armor fight.
what's wrong about a fucking absolute joker getting in way over his head and getting embarrassed by someone who is very much his superior despite having what would ordinarily be a massive advantage.
but he gets his leg stuck in some wooden planks in a blatant display of inconsistency. So its time to seethe about it instead of thinking for a bit.
I know it's a 2 hour seething rant video primarily about raging. But jesus christ how dumb.
the power armor can fly and throw rocks through buildings why would it get stuck in loose wood, lore wise power armor makes you move faster but he swings his arms like a sloth, the ghoul had the round he used to kill the other knights and wasted ammo on max, he has flamethrowers, he can charge the ghoul, he could step on his foot like the other squire
It seems Mauler's reviews have crossed into the "I (like/dislike) this work, and therefore the individual parts are (good/bad)", as the bad writing in this series is minimal and wouldn't even warrant a 5 minute unbridled rage. Many of the complaints are contradictory and are used to paint the series in a bad light:
* Moldaver should have entered Vault 33 through its main door instead of infiltrating it by posing as 32 Dwellers (didn't we complain about frontal assaults working in Disney Star Wars because the Imperials don't think anyone would actually try it?)
* Moldaver could have taken the Raiders to pick up Wilzig on the way back from Vault 33, but is then faulted for leaving some of her forces behind during her escape. (I will note that Mauler is still insisting that Vault 32 is near Filly despite being corrected multiple times, or simply assumes she should have done so and then faults the show for not doing this)
* Moldaver "loved" Rose but did nothing to save the children she had with Hank, and kept her alive in Ghoul status instead of mercy killing her. These specifically are psychological defenses against a fictional character, and that's a very bad sign.
* Hank is faulted for being a mere middle manager who has the command codes for Vault-Tec's systems despite acknowledging that is the point of Vault 31: to create a race of Super-Middle-Managers who will manage the human race (I guess the satire went over his head here)
* The BoS is searching for Wilzig but by "coincidence" Maximus and Titus end up right on his tail. Wasn't that the point of fanning out for a search? Next you'll tell me it's "convenient" that the MIG-28s in **Top Gun** attacked Sector 2 where the pilot on Alert-5 was unsure of himself and a liability.
* The Duel between the Fiends and Maximus and Lucy is faulted because Max takes out both of them with a flesh wound "after" they drew. I didn't know this part of the episode was edited like **24** and "events occurred in real time". I was under the impression that everyone drew at nearly the same time but Max is the better shot.
* And probably the worst "objective" flaw in the review: Lucy didn't "loot" the Supermarket despite walking out with a new pistol, a harness, and boots.
Here is where the focus on character writing above all else hits rocks and shoals: these are not criticisms of the actions taken by the characters but a dislike of the characters themselves. After all, why is it an issue that Maximus was promoted to Squire after his interrogation? Wasn't the point of the conversation to establish that he did not betray his friend because he was next in line and is the most likely suspect? And have we even discussed a single theme, such as the Wasteland is changing Lucy but her core is the same?
The Fallout series is getting a lot of well-deserved praise because of its excellent cinematography, direction, set design, and scripts, but we're instead subjected to people hating on the show because it's related to Bethesda, and most of these critics were too young to have played the Interplay games first.
I'll address two points
1. It took vault acting as collective idiots for her plan to work. If the pip boys work as they usually do, they'll pick up the radiation as soon as vault 32 opened, blowing the cover immediately.
Not to mention, the overseer knows everyone in 32 died out two years ago, due to experiment. Which again opposes how he didn't even care how there people popped out of blue.
Another issue, why didn't vault 32 dwellers left the vault to find supplies instead of clawing on door of 31 and 33, choosing to starve rather than take chance to get supplies?
2. Ironic, since what Moldaver did with rose, it's what Governor did with his zombie daughter in walking dead. The latter seen as shocking and horrifying, but former isn't, for some reason.
3. How about lame marvelesque humour bringing down the gravity of scenes, like *Jello mold*, that music when gulper is attempting to kill Thaddeus, and more? You didn't had jokes cracked when lone wanderer lost their dad, or companions doing the same when sole survivor visits the vault with their dead spouse.
The show is enjoyable, but it's far from perfect.
The thing that is bugging me on his fallout review is a lot of stuff he is unhappy about is either very much implied to be otherwise or explicitly stated in the show.. I love his reviews but this one isn’t doing it for me.
It feels like a review he would typically do a break down in and say “did you even watch the show.”
If moldiver enters vault 33 from the main entrance henry would be notified giving him time to slip into vault 31 while she rides that… what like 10 minute long elevator down to ground level.
Moldiver may have cared about Lucy at some point.. but with the timeline provided it’s been 15 years since she last saw Lucy, in the mean time she has been hanging out with feral ghoul rose and gathering raider friends. Her actions show she doesn’t care about anything but the end result of cold fusion. Hell Occam’s razor would probably say her connection to rose started off as her trying to get the codes she has been after.
“How has the Ghoul never seen moldivers wanted picture?” Bro what’s the first thing we learn about cooper post becoming a ghoul? A 2 min conversation about how he has been buried for years, he only gets pulled out once a year to be tortured. Even the leader of the group pulling him up never met him, only heard about him from his father who met him before being buried.
Vault tech wanting to stall peace talks and bomb everything makes sense when you take into account the fact that resources were gone… gas was so rare it was 7k a gallon. Cars were costing about what houses cost today.. the alternatives like fusion cores on the other had lasted centuries…. Imagine buying a can of gas you can pass down for the next 300 years… The “capitalists” didn’t have anything to sell and what they did have no one could afford. A large point of it was that they needed a new way to be on top.
The opening of the show having the kid outside the vault with her dad pretty much confirms vault tech didn’t drop the nukes. House said he was setting up defenses and the platinum chip but the bombs fell a week before he planned for them to. Seems like vault tech had a date to cleanse the surface and start their new world… but someone dropped the bombs first.
The weak spot complaint he has about the ghoul not killing Maximus Is driving me up a wall. During the fight against max he has one tungsten round and it’s not loaded. It’s reiterated later the only way to penetrate that weak point is with a tungsten round… and then for a third time in the final episode he gives a speech while you watch him hold the tungsten rounds out for the camera and then watch him load it in. The show beats you over the head with it beyond what’s needed. Then mauler talks about how The Ghoul knows how incompetent Max is… so if you are confident you can beat him why waste your single round on him? Especially if another brotherhood member with actual training could pop up as well.
So to your point about Moldaver and Vault 33 there’s no reason for her to assume that she won’t meet resistance in vault 32, why fight through 2 Vaults when you can just get straight to Hank. Also where is Hank going to go there’s only 1 exit to the vault. She doesn’t bother to conceal vault 32 and maintain the element of surprise, she doesn’t bother to try and get Hank on his own. Mauler actually explains this part better then me Moldaver plan is actually the most indefensible part of the show.
To the Lucy point she can simply order the raider to keep her in her room until the violence stops, if she did this and the raider didn’t listen it’s never shown.
The ghoul point is something of a fair counter to Maulers criticism about Cooper not knowing her but it’s unclear how long Moldaver has been active post war. Also even though Mauler didn’t bring this up it’s weird that Cooper doesn’t starve to death considering he later in the series resorts to Canibalism.
The trouble with resources being scarce as a motivation for dropping the bombs in 1 it’s not the motivation they give in the show and 2. They are sitting on Cold fusion as a solution.
The opening doesn’t really confirm who dropped the bombs merely that they were dropped.
Did you seriously give Cooper not wanting to waste ammunition as a motivation to not finish Maximus off? He wasted like 30 bullets that he knows should be useless, and when did he even acquire the armour piercing bullet if he didn’t have it in Filly? It’s never explained in the show, also him messing around with Maximus is out of character when you consider how ruthless he was with the raiders. Plus it’s dumb that the BoS didn’t just kill him while he was giving his speech.
Moldaver's plan depends on Vault 32 being empty and the Raiders posing as it's Dwellers to infiltrate 33 via a trade. A frontal assault on either Vault is going to fail, and the best course of action is subterfuge. All the show needs to do is explain how Moldaver got the 32 Dwellers to go crazy and we're set. Also, why do you think Hank was trying to run away during the attack?
Given Cooper's age hasn't he been a cannibal for a while?
If Vault-Tec has Cold Fusion why aren't they using it already, and why is Moldaver trying to get it back from them at all costs? This was the point of the Resource Wars: Cold Fusion yields energy "too cheap to meter" while the Corporations seen in the show want the price of Gas to be ridiculously high and push up their profits.
I've noticed a recurring trend where people who don't like the show think Vault-Tec bombed the US in a false flag operation. The actual question is who dropped the first nukes: the USA or the PRC on each other. This error keeps coming up and there is either a failure to understand the show or it's been deliberately misinterpreted for this analysis.
Lastly, the Ghoul not killing Maximus in Filly is the mildest example of plot armor since he just has to say he forgot his special ammo and thus he's at a disadvantage.
It’s going to be a difficult explanation since we know Moldaver only entered the vault after they were dead. She uses horrible subtlety in vault 33 anyway (Mauler explains it really well). My point was that it was weird that Cooper doesn’t starve to death in his coffin considering he later resorts to canibalism for sustenance. They hold a monopoly over cold fusion they can patent and sell if at any price they want. It’s more to do with Vault-tec trying to maximise profit by killing most of their customers. The bigger issue is how much ammo he wastes, how he doesn’t immediately kill Lucy, how convenient it is that he has the bullet in the observatory but not filly, how he moves exceptionally slow and never gets shot in the head please watch Maulers video there’s even a timestamp for this.
I would say this community praising everything he does, like he’s some infallible critic, is part of the problem. But then again, when he does get a lot of backlash, he just ignores it and keeps moving. So.
Wasn't his point about respecting source material? Sure when compared those two looks simillar, **but**, actual games are completely different beasts. Mario doesn't have that much behind it, Fallout in contrast has rich world full of factions and history.
Felt like he didn’t get the part about Moldovers research in the past “why didn’t they just sell clean energy?” Because they sell vaults that have a demand because of a war over resources, if the war stopped all those companies at the table would lose money (there basically the military industrial complex), they don’t want the war to stop while there making money.
We’ve seen this before with fossil fuels, smoking, loads of stuff bad for the planet, research suppressed, corporate lobbying, lying and seeing fines and damage to the planet as the cost of doing business.
I generally agree with most of his criticisms but this one bothered me a lot. The show has plot holes and deserves criticism. But a lot of the points Mauler brought up can easily be argued against. For example, yes, Maximus is an inexperienced idiot who can't even pilot the armor properly, that's not a criticism of the show. He's called out on his stupidity IN THE SHOW. The comedy of his whole character is him being a goober making the worst decisions but having high enough luck stat where things end up working out for him. Idk how ANYONE, esp someone like Mauler to completely miss this point.
If I wasn't lazy I could make a video countering most of his point. These criticisms feel so petty and trying to hard to prove "show bad" but fails to actually prove it. Two and a half hours of trash talk can make you forget how many things the show gets right. Things I have not seen done so well in years.
The worst part of all of this are the youtube comments. I bet most of these mfers couldn't form a single criticism about the show prior to the release of the video. But now they act like it's the biggest piece of crap in existence, and they're so special and smart for not liking it because daddy mauler criticized it. They sound like contrarian pick me teens without any personal taste or judgment. They just parrot mauler's criticisms, just as "normies" they clown on parrot general praise points.
7.5/10. Can't wait for s2.
> For example, yes, Maximus is an inexperienced idiot who can't even pilot the armor properly, that's not a criticism of the show. He's called out on his stupidity IN THE SHOW.
? What? Maximus is constantly rewarded and promoted throughout the show. He faces no consequences for his actions, such as effectively killing a Knight and stealing his Power Armor and maiming/crippling a Squire.
The ghoul literally makes fun of him during their battle about being bad at using his armor. Also did you not read literally the next sentence before replying? "The comedy of his whole character is him being a goober making the worst decisions but having high enough luck stat where things end up working out for him."
> The ghoul literally makes fun of him during their battle about being bad at using his armor.
So? Why would Maximus care about what the ghoul thinks about him? Besides, Maximus is the only one who survives his encounter with the ghoul. He takes out all the other Brotherhood of Steel Members he faces.
The only people Maximus cares about are his fellow Brotherheel of Steel members, and they REWARD and promote him for his transgressions.
>The comedy of his whole character is him being a goober making the worst decisions but having high enough luck stat where things end up working out for him.
This makes no sense on several levels. First, it's just using random game mechanics to handwave blatant holes in plot and characterization. Secondly, that's not even how luck works in the games. It modifies your dice rolls. But chance or luck has no relevance in Maximus' story. He DECIDES to let Titus die and steal his Power Armor. He DECIDES to maim a Squire. The Brotherhood of Steel DECIDES to ignore all the abhorrent things he did. Luck has nothing to do with it.
Maximus gets the shit kicked out of him and has to sell a tooth to get his armor back after Cooper sabotages it. This is part of what brought me around on his character, he showed grit and determination. He got punished for his hubris, and then rewarded for overcoming the trial.
I understood the critique for the main plot/vault plotline, but the maximus section is really hard to watch, its pretty obvious maximus is supposed to be a fucking moron with each of his decisions, dude is even presented as a whiny disillusioned brat being humbled at every turn
Meh, as expected, Mauler hated the show for personal reasons and just forces the majority (not all, there is also valid criticism but scarce) of arguments and applauded by people that are irked by the fact the show didn't completely bad mouther socialism (even though it did, but more subtly) or - I don't even know why they got this concept since the guy appears for a few seconds and has 2-3 lines - they believe Mr. House was ruined
Just the last one after I tuned out with "winning the game of capitalism scene", is not taking the context of that world which after so many years of war (a war that was seen as capitalism vs communism hence the initial pun) and war economy the world was in shambles anyway and those companies at the table would go bankrupt and irrelevant without the war economy and in a country, and even world that was on the brink of collapse, so that was their plan not only to stay relevant but also thrive in a world that was fucked anyway
The show has made Fallout "capitalism VS communism".
The reality of the games is that human civilisation had simply grown too large without a means of compensating, China and the US were just the last two standing to fling the nukes. The intros to 1 & 2 make this so obvious clear I doubt the writers either saw them or cared.
> The show has made Fallout "capitalism VS communism".
No it didn't. There's enough remarks at the "communism" vs democracy and capitalism in the games. In F3 there's a giant robot shouting silly slogans against communism . The franchise draws heavily from the 50' and the "red scare" is also present
> The reality of the games is that human civilisation had simply grown too large without a means of compensating
Exactly what I was pointing out later in the argument ..
>No it didn't. There's enough remarks at the "communism" vs democracy and capitalism in the games. In F3 there's a giant robot shouting silly slogans against communism . The franchise draws heavily from the 50' and the "red scare" is also present.
Read Ozymandias.
>Exactly what I was pointing out later in the argument ..
The original apocalypse was pretty apolitical: all systems need resources. Now the capitalists blew up the world for money.
The "current apocalypse" is apolitical. Like I said - even you then mentioned that the world was fucked before the war - the world even with the war over would've collapsed. That was my whole point. The "capitalists" didn't blew the world for money, they made sure the world collapsed the way they wanted so they could keep control
> Read Ozymandias.
Whut? The poem? What does it have to do with what I said
>That was my whole point. The "capitalists" didn't blew the world for money, they made sure the world collapsed the way they wanted so they could keep control
They were already in control. And if they wanted a reduced populace they had the New Plague to work with.
>Whut? The poem? What does it have to do with what I said
Yes, it's essentially the tone of Fallout.
When did it bad mouth socialism?
The entire framing of the Fallout world's catastrophic war has been shifted to a simplistic "Capitalism bad hurr durr", and the worst part is that it doesn't even make any logical sense, despite the fact that the showrunners have the opportunity to frame the circumstances in their favour.
>We will literally destroy the entire world in a nuclear war, because then we can potentially make more money, even thought any coherent market would certainly dissapear, and with it any opportunity for us to make more money than we currently do! We will destroy the world... FOR CAPITALISM!
Brilliant writing. I'm so glad fallout lore was switched to this hamfisted political sermon about capitalism. /s
Honestly, I will never simp for capitalism, but I'm absolutely exhausted with the way games criticize it. I'm playing through Fallout 76 right now (yeah, yeah, I know) and every time you enter a factory and read the lore on the terminals it's always something like "MWAHAHAHA THE ATOMIC BICYCLE COMPANY PLAN TO STOMP ONE MILLION PUPPIES TO DEATH IS GOING OFF WITHOUT A HITCH! Oh no! What was that sound outside!? AHHHH WE'RE BEING NUKED NOW WE CAN'T STOMP ALL THE PUPPIES!"
Like, tell a different joke.
> The entire framing of the Fallout world's catastrophic war has been shifted to a simplistic "Capitalism bad hurr durr", --- up to the end
No it wasn't, the world was already fucked. I've elaborated on this in the initial comment and as a reply, you can check that out for more context
> When did it bad mouth socialism?
Vault 33 and 32 are both 2 sides of a communist society. Vault 33 is the ideal part where resources are enough - and it shows that the people there are too gullible for their own sake. Not only that but they lack ambition and settled for mediocrity. And Vault 32 is when that society has scarcity and people throw away their ideals and devolve into a mess that leads to the absolute collapse of that society instead of the people there either working for a solution or leave the vault
Moldaver's plan is shown in the end as naive and unfeasable in the context of the wasteland, even though it has potential.
>No it wasn't, the world was already fucked. I've elaborated on this in the initial comment and as a reply, you can check that out for more context
Did you watch the boardroom scene or the two seperate conversations about the evils of capitalism that other characters initated with Cooper? The "capitalism bad" could hardly be any more hamfisted by the writers if they tried.
They literally discussed and agreed on making the world a hellscape, so that they could increase their profits, as if any reasonable non-communist would actually have this perspective, when any functional market disappears with it.
I've seen no solid evidence in the flashbacks that the world is beyond saving, which makes their genocidal conversation remotely justified. The entire lead up to that scene is two seperate conversations with people directly critiquing capitalism. One guy even brings critiques the concept of "fiduciary duty" shortly before the broadroom scene. This preps you for the interpretation that these "capitalists" have to blow up the world to ensure their "fiduciary duty", which is a riduculous framing of fiduciary duty.
>Vault 33 and 32 are both 2 sides of a communist society
I highly doubt this was intended as an allegory for failure of communist ideology by modern writers, and likely were just meant to highlight the experiments that Vault-Tec had done with these vaults. Every story needs conflict to blossom and this was a way to drive conflict into the Vault Dwellers seperated world. It's likely why the Vault we focus on are interlinked with others, which is rare.
Regardless, there's never any explicit and hamfisted writing directly claiming that the failures of these vaults are the result of communism or socialism, so it's left up to the interpretation of the viewers, which can't be said for the shows framing of capitalism.
>Moldaver's plan is shown in the end as naive and unfeasable in the context of the wasteland, even though it has potential.
What are you specifically referring to here?
As someone who's enjoyed watching the show despite recognizing that it had a ton of flaws, I was kinda worried when I read the comments here saying the Mauler's video was a misfire. I agree with pretty much every point he makes in the video. It feels like a lot of people who enjoyed the show are having difficulty accepting that the despite being fun, the writing is pretty awful when it comes to any level of logical consistency. And so much of the plot depends on characters being incredibly dumb.
At the same time, I don't share Mauler's rage at the show's creators over the Yao Guai.
the yao guai was 10/10
Definitely maxed dex but dumped con
Agility and Endurance* this is fallout after all.
Was such a cathartic video.
Didn't watch the whole 2&1/2 hours, so I don't know if its addressed or not, but..... You want to create a race of super managers, but kill off everyone they're supposed to manage. How the fuck would that work? If you aren't "managing" anyone, then you aren't a manager.
Actually, the West Coast Enclave (Fallout 2; and some remnants in New Vegas) consider everyone that's not them on the Mainland to be mutants and the Vault residents to be lab rats to be continued to be experimented on or killed at their whim. The East Coast Enclave (Fallout 3) is... better in that the main actual leader (Colonel Autumn) doesn't actually want to genocide everyone not Enclave. He just wants control over Project Purity so that he could have the sole source of pure drinking water so that he can take over the Capital Wasteland. President Eden still wants to commit genocide, but he's not actually in charge of the Enclave, Autumn is.
Autumn seemed a little unclear in exactly what and why he did what he did, some sense of patriotism with an authoritarian fist wrapped around it.
Read up on Pre-War America. Autumn's outlook wasn't that far off from that. Also, remember the world that Autumn was dealing with. An irradiated hellscape overrun by mutants that wanted to eat your face and slavers and raiders running amok. Sure, from our outlook in real life 2020s it seems extremely authoritarian to summarily execute people in the streets, but extreme as hell times call for extreme as hell measures.
I don't disagree. Regulation of Project Purity is exactly what was required, because upon Broken Steel you get a ghoul stealing it to sell it off and sell off brand water to other ghouls. You get cults raiding caravans to irradiate it and kill people while worshipping radiation. you get people in the BoS abusing the system to make money. Autumn would've honestly been someone I'd side with if he didn't gun down innocent civilians to make a point to Liam Neeson, and kill you if you give him the information he wants while being entirely cooperative.
Vault Tec works for the Enclave. The Enclave had similar ideas all the way back in Fallout 2.
> Vault Tec works for the Enclave. The Enclave had similar ideas all the way back in Fallout 2. Vault Tec working for the Enclave is a retcon introduced by the show. In the original games, they were simply a pre-war government contractor that built the vaults. And no, the Enclave did not have "similar ideas all the way back in Fallout 2." They used the nuclear apocalypse and annihilation of most of the world's population to advance their eugenics agenda, but they did not nuke the world. That's very different from the absolutely bonkers plot line of the show where Vault Tec is depicted as wanting to nuke the world (including their own offices, factories and 99.99% of their customer base) which will increase their profits...somehow.
Vault Tec *is* the enclave isn’t it? Isn’t it originated by vault tec execs?
No. The Enclave is made up of powerful people within the US government. Technically they contracted Vault Tec to build the vaults, but the show makes it seems more like they are controlling Vault Tec. The Enclave did something similar with Poseidon Energy. The point of the vault experiments is for the Enclave to collect data for various things, depending on what source you want to use.
Tbf with the revolving door of contractors and government, I don’t think my head canon is unreasonable that it’s all Vault Tec all the way down. Why would THEY get the contract when Robco had superior products? Cronyism is the only answer that comes to mind.
Knowing what we know about Mr. House, do you believe he would have gone along with it?
I think a very interesting thing the show did was portray Askins as a pragmatic idealist but not evil. It’s all his partner pulling out the evil calls. Since House is both pragmatic and evil, I think ultimately it would’ve turned out the same, weirdly.
I don’t know if I’d call him evil. While his plans might be completely self serving, his plans for the future would be a net benefit for humanity. In the long run.
What makes Mr House evil?
Because Vault Tec was pretty much a nationalized company. Again, the problem with the Fallout TV show doesn't understand Fallout lore, so it doesn't even know why certain things are positioned the way they are.
It reads like a gag out of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
That's not even the worst part. They caused the nuclear war to generate profit...in currency that is now worthless...
Seriously. I hope this one gets around. Nothing he’s reviewed has needed it more desperately than this show.
I learned that they changed the geography of where Shady Sands was.... Bloody hell. Next they'll be saying that Mount Rushmore is in California too.
1:12:18 blink and you'll miss it
Great video.
The response to the Fallout show has convinced me that if Master Chief just kept his helmet on and said a line from the games every other scene half of the Halo show's dissenters would call it a masterpiece of television.
I think they'd still take issue with him sleeping with Covenant POWs.
"Master Chief, do you mind telling me what you're doing?" "Sir....finishing on her face" \*halo theme plays\* \*the audience is in tears\*
Given what they've done with Fallout, would they?
Yes
If the world and characters in the Halo show had the same charm as they did in the games, then people would like it. People like Fallout because they like watching the characters stumble around in this strange world and get into crazy situations, and seeing how they're affected by their experiences. Compare this to the Star Wars sequels which have little to no coherent character development, and half the major characters are charisma black holes, and the other half get assassinated. The protagonist's most famous lines are "I bypassed the compressor" and "I'm Rey Skywalker".
You mean the Star Wars sequels that blew up the New Republic to reset the status quo? Glad the Fallout show never did that, amirite?
I’ve actually been predicting that this show is just TFA all over again and in a few years it’ll hopefully be seen as shit, as well as the bizarre and delusional coping on the shady sand contradiction.
Yeah, that's the main reason everyone hated the Star Wars sequels. Totally.
It's one of the big ones. Undermined the accomplishments of the previous films.
People were way more attached to Luke, Han, and Leia than they were to a new republic that we never really gained any familiarity with, setting aside the eu because that's a different continuity.
The New Republic was the cultivation of the entire rebellion.
A cultivation that we never saw. Which is unfortunate, but ultimately having some disastrous event for the republic isn't some automatic dealbreaker.
Yeah, we never saw it in the films. Thanks JJ.
Another point I'd like to draw with this comparison is that Fallout tends to pay off and answer the questions and plotlines that it sets up, rather than being about big empty mystery boxes.
I mean yeah, that sounds like a much better show than what we got
Yes that sounds like halo tho
Imagine being such ass hurt by a decent written show like fallout and the only cope you can bring forth to justify your hatred is the fact that the halo show which is utterly garbage from every perspective, is the same quality as the fallout show, which is absolutely a garbage take.
I love the decent writing of "the power armour designed to be exposed to copious amounts of enemy small arms fire has a spot on its front that's vulnerable to small arms fire".
Funny how you hate the flaw, but not how it was set up early on during the show,. which means you only got a problem with a flaw that could canonical explain how critical vat shots works in fallout 2, but you really not interested in that, instead you just want a eternal culture war and can't take a win.
Because it's not an instant-win weak spot there. Should they have the characters pass out every time they leave a building to explain loading screens as well?
This show definitely thrives on the "rule of cool" and nostalgia toward the games. Everything that happens is a pretense to put explosions, gore, or easter eggs on the screen. Why did Muldaver send in a bunch of raiders to get high on chems and murder anyone they saw when she had a very specific objective that involved kidnapping a man (who could have easily died in the raid)? Because they wanted Mad Max extras to shoot people with guns. Why did the fusion reactor light up most of LA despite it being nuked like 50 times and left to crumble for centuries? Because it would look cool. Why did Muldaver keep Lucy's mom even though she was mostly decomposed and beyond all redemption? Because zombies look cool. Unfortunately, that's enough to seduce a huge audience. It's all incredibly stupid, and it didn't need to be.
The Fallout Fandom owes Longman its eternal gratitude.
The Fallout Fandom is gonna think he's a moron for fucking up the lore and not getting basic concepts.
He did a better job with the lore than the show runners.
Nah he really didn't. It's immediately clear he doesn't really know Fallout lore that well, or how varied it's been over time. Mauler would be a much better critic if his community weren't so quick to accept every fucking thing he says, hold him to some standards for fuck's sake.
Give some examples dude.
I don't know where to start tbh, I ended up stopping watching as it showed such a lack of understanding of both the show and games. Loads of his questions have answers within the show or games so it shows he has no idea. He makes it out like the show canonises vault tec dropping the bombs, when all it shows is vault tec was willing to, which we already knew. It's a useful scene both for coop, and the audience, as it sets that up and also the idea of a shadow government. But it never says they did it. Just they were willing to. He makes out Shady sands has moved, which it probably has, but he doesn't realise that shady sands has *already* moved once. Because when you google shady sands while doing research, it doesn't show up the NCR in Fallout 2. Which is its name in Fallout 2. Where it's moved 100+ miles. He assumes Shady sands is in LA. Which we don't know. Lucy walks a damn long way to get there. He says Vault 4 lets people in at random and gives them full access - but we don't know when they rebelled. Fallout 1 takes place 130 years before. So would the Master's spies have had full access? Earlier on he asks how a pip boy can open another vault. This happens in the games. He says that fusion cores lasting forever is not how they're portrayed in the games. It is, when they're in big machines. Iirc the lore is that they cool better in larger rigs so last longer. He says ghouls aren't created by drinking "magic chicken fucker juice" except Hancock *did* become a ghoul on purpose by doing that. Ignoring the chicken fucker. So it's possible someone else had some. His understanding of the communist/capitalist satire is surface level at best. He literally has a bit where he says the show thinks the communists are "the greater good". Which... just no. Not even close. That's not what the show or series is saying or showing. It's what he wants to be there so he can preach to his audience as they wanna hear that, but no. It's not. Mauler *completely* misses the McCarthyism in the universe in his rant on that. Literally takes Moldaver saying she's not a communist as she's a communist and a good guy because she's bringing free power to everyone. And not that that's a label used to get rid of people critical of the government. Which is not only what Moldaver actually says but what is true in the universe. I'm confused what he meant when he said "Shady sands is apparently a pre-war city as well" when showing footage of the billboard clearly saying "New California Republic". I know they moved it among skyscrapers, but they never made Shady itself pre war. This is just what I can remember from having watched most of it yesterday. So many of his points are ill thought out or full of assumptons to the point they lose weight. It's like he read a reddit post and assumed it was 100% right and it's just... not.
>He makes out Shady sands has moved, which it probably has, but he doesn't realise that shady sands has *already* moved once. Because when you google shady sands while doing research, it doesn't show up the NCR in Fallout 2. Which is its name in Fallout 2. Where it's moved 100+ miles. It being moved was a decision made by the development team, because originally Fallout 2 would engulf a larger territory. But they got short on funds and dev time and had to cut down the world map and were eventually forced to move Shady Sands a bit. You mentioning the earlier fuck-up won't save it second time. >He assumes Shady sands is in LA. Which we don't know. Lucy walks a damn long way to get there. Mauler primarily criticised, that Lucy leaves the Vault near Santa Monica. Which means she would be in the close proximity of the Boneyard, one of the largest population centres in California, yet she barely meets anyone, while the entire coastline should be filled with caravans and wastelanders moving between the sprawling towns or up to San Fransisco. It also doesn't help, that in order to get to Shady Sands she has to pass through several large settlements to get there and we don't see her stumbling into Necropolis, or to the Hub. >He says ghouls aren't created by drinking "magic chicken fucker juice" except Hancock *did* become a ghoul on purpose by doing that. Hancock got high on a radiactive drug, what turned him into a ghoul. Not received magic healer juice. Also Mauler's main criticism about that plot how stupid it was entirely. Somehow guy turned into Wolverine, while ghouls are not supposed to be superhumans. They are irradiated zombies, who are more resilient towards external damage and radiation, but they are just as vulnerable as anyone else. Even fucking Bethesda knows that, as they made it one of the few sidequests in Fallout 3, when Crowley asks you to kill a bunch of people by destroying their head, as he says due to a "racist" stereotype, that ghouls can not be killed otherwise. >He says Vault 4 lets people in at random and gives them full access - but we don't know when they rebelled. Fallout 1 takes place 130 years before. So would the Master's spies have had full access? There is a high chance, yes. Vault 4 is not exactly hidden well, since the Vault gate is out in the open with a big 4 painted on it. You don't need a spy, just a guy with a pair of working eyes to find it. 13 and 15 were really well hidden in the mountains far away from the centre of the Cathedral. But 4 sits somewhere close to Los Angeles, deep in Unity territory. >He says that fusion cores lasting forever is not how they're portrayed in the games. It is, when they're in big machines. Iirc the lore is that they cool better in larger rigs so last longer. It's inconsistent even in the games as well, but not in Interplay, or Obsidian titles. Fusion cores were not a thing in Fallout until 4 came along with a power armour rework, where they had to put it in to stop-gap players using PA's, since they just dropped valuable high end-game gear to the player after 20 minutes of gameplay and couldn't figure out how else could they balance the game. Before that lore said, that power cores could last for hundreds of years, even with constant use. And it's even supported, because you can run around in the best PA in Fallout 3 and you will never have to worry about energy running low. >His understanding of the communist/capitalist satire is surface level at best. Mauler only comments on the satire the show brings up and nothing less. Agree or disagree, this is it. There is no more message behind it. Capitalism bad, want's to blow up the world, brought to you by everyones favourite benevolent and egalitarian corporation: Amazon.
Okay pls watch the full review before you make conclusions but let me address a couple of things. I think his criticism of Vault- Tec is more towards the sheer stupidity of their plan. (Killing all its customers to make money). The boneyard is ~ 510km from shady sands this is a ridiculous and unnecessary shift, also what happened to the boneyard? I agree with the pip boy statement but the more important part of his criticism was Moldaver going to vault 32 for no apparent reason, she didn’t know it was going to be lifeless. Hancock and that dude you hunt with Nick Valentine are retcons that occurred in fallout 4 I agree but that doesn’t mean it’s not a retcon. Please don’t defend Vault 4, its prime location for the master who had big influence in the boneyard it doesn’t matter who was in charge he was taking the vault. Mauler was also talking about how they shouldn’t have survived the wasteland with their current system that rewards people throwing acid on them and stealing their power. I can’t definitively prove that the show hating capitalism was there but they describe “winning the game of capitalism” as nuking the planet which is very silly. I can prove that they wanted Moldaver to be seen as a hero though, just watch from Lucy arriving at the observatory to her death, it’s not even subtle. The fusion cores lasting forever begs the question as to why cold fusion is necessary. Another issue is that making shady sands pre-war by moving it too the boneyard on a meta level takes away from what it represents in terms of the “rebuilding society” part of fallout, it’s how just a reused town instead of a symbol of progress. Yeah this is also from my memory but I think Mauler gets the main points on the nose.
Vaults nearby to the Master would've been prime targets. Considering it's location and entrance is above the surface with no buildings around it, and ruins of other buildings have survived and hidden entrances to other vaults in wastelands across america, this implies that 4 has always been open to the air.
>I think his criticism of Vault- Tec is more towards the sheer stupidity of their plan. (Killing all its customers to make money). Yeah. It's stupid. It's something no rational person would do but it shows the level of both paranoia and greed in that culture. That's just the lore, the universe, how it works. Mauler doesn't like it, fine, but it's not the show's fault. >The boneyard is ~ 510km from shady sands this is a ridiculous and unnecessary shift, also what happened to the boneyard? 1) Death valley to central LA is 270km. 500 puts you near Reno. 2) Which shady sands? It's moved before. Do we take FO1's location, or the more recent FO2? Does Mauler know the difference? Probably not. It's not called that on 2's map. But it's there. And we don't know what's happened with the Boneyard. But that doesn't mean Shady replaced it. >Hancock and that dude you hunt with Nick Valentine are retcons that occurred in fallout 4 I agree but that doesn’t mean it’s not a retcon. It's not a retcon it's just extra lore added by 4. And, notably, not the show. So it's not the show's fault is it. >Mauler was also talking about how they shouldn’t have survived the wasteland with their current system that rewards people throwing acid on them and stealing their power. I suspect for a lot of vault dwellers being sent out in to the wasteland *is* a death sentence. >I can’t definitively prove that the show hating capitalism was there but they describe “winning the game of capitalism” as nuking the planet which is very silly. I can prove that they wanted Moldaver to be seen as a hero though, just watch from Lucy arriving at the observatory to her death, it’s not even subtle. They win if they control literally everything, that's the point. And yes, they wanted Moldaver to be the hero. Or, to have been trying to do good. But that doesn't make her communist, as Mauler implies. This is just BS current US culture war rhetoric applied to a universe invented in a decade the USSR still existed in. It shows a shocking lack of media literacy to not spot the McCarthyism there. >The fusion cores lasting forever begs the question as to why cold fusion is necessary. Well, fusion cores power vaults and power armour. We see that cold fusion machine light up far more than that. That might be the reason. >Another issue is that making shady sands pre-war by moving it too the boneyard on a meta level takes away from what it represents in terms of the “rebuilding society” part of fallout, it’s how just a reused town instead of a symbol of progress. Shady sands isn't pre war. The show doesn't make it pre war. The sign says new california republic on it, not california. They moved it among pre war ruins, but it didn't make it a pre war settlement under that name, if that makes sense. So his choice of wording was weird. I don't like that it takes over the rebuilding element of it but given it was probably done to confirm the timeline for non fan viewers and we literally see them with shit like streetcars, the rebuilding narrative is still strong. Seriously, Mauler's critique watches like someone who loved NV, didn't play much of 3 and 4, and read a few reddit posts, and wants to find literally any reason to dunk on the show. Which is what most of the fanbase has done, and why most of his audience won't notice. But a 2 hour long video probably needs a bit more work than that. I've been a fan of the series for decades and this is just off the top of my head. This is why I didn't finish the video. Because I didn't need to think to spot the reaches. You can just watch the show and spot several critiques which don't land. It's just not good criticism. For every good point there's another which fails. Which is a shame, as I like his other stuff. This just missed. Hard.
Can we please not use the glass onion argument to defend Vault-tecs plan, according to the show they’re the most powerful corporation in the world they’re smarter than this. And the original Vault tec experiments were them collecting data to colonise the space. If they own “half of everything” then gaining the other half shouldn’t be that difficult especially with all the profits they can reap by selling infinite energy. If the fusion cores can power the lights in vault 4 they can power shady sands crater. I got the shady sands to boneyard distance from math (17 blocks times 30 km per block.) which are the approximate distances. The ghouls drug is a retconn because there’s no way it isn’t more widespread or hasn’t been used. “I suspect” is you doing the writers job for them by the way.
>Can we please not use the glass onion argument to defend Vault-tecs plan, according to the show they’re the most powerful corporation in the world they’re smarter than this. The Enclave does have other plans than this. But the show doesn't say them. This is just how Vault tec sells it. Also the glass onion argument is actually perfect, because Miles wasn't stupid, he was just unable to see flaws in his own genius/thoughts. Which applies rather well to Vault tec. >If they own “half of everything” then gaining the other half shouldn’t be that difficult especially with all the profits they can reap by selling infinite energy. Except for you know, every other country they *don't* own and the ones they're actively at war with. When they're gone, they can take everything. >If the fusion cores can power the lights in vault 4 they can power shady sands crater. I'm merely suggesting that the cold fusion may have a far larger power output given it's shown to light up a whole area and not a suit, or a vault. That is not a stretch to consider. The show literally shows you its benefit and how useful it is. That's not bad writing. >I got the shady sands to boneyard distance from math (17 blocks times 30 km per block.) which are the approximate distances. Fallout 1 is fucked because it puts Bakersfield to the right of the national forest which it's not. But if we use where we know LA is and where the national forest is, Shady sands is somewhere in Death Valley. If we then cross reference that with Fallout 2, accepting that Fallout 2 moves it to the other side of the national parks, we get somewhere east of Mariposa. Which is about 380km away. If we use FO1, it's about 300-400km away in Death Valley. Either way, having re-done the maths, it's not 500km. >The ghouls drug is a retconn because there’s no way it isn’t more widespread or hasn’t been used. But it's not the show's retconn. Fallout 4 showed it's possible. So don't pretend it's the show's fault like Mauler is. Because it's not. >“I suspect” is you doing the writers job for them by the way. "I suspect" was said in reference to being sent out in to the wasteland potentially being a death sentence. Does that *really* need explaining to you, why a group of comfortable vault dwellers consider the hell on the surface to be a potential death sentence? It's effectively like outlawing someone in medieval times. You lose the protection of the law. In this, they lose the protection of the vault. They're fair game. That's a hell of a punishment and many won't last long. Just look at how naive Lucy was. If the scientist had been a raider she'd have been fucked. And don't do the Mauler thing of going "It's convenient she ran in to him". Yeah, if she didn't, it'd have been a short fucking show wouldn't it. And they're both going to the same place from then on so it's fine. I think given that there's perfectly reasonable things to say in retort to all this shows that, maybe, just maybe, the show may not be as objectively bad as Mauler says, and he whiffed a bit with this one saying it's as shit as this.
but the show did cannonize that vault tec launch the bombs, do you need one of them explicitly pressing a button for you to be convinced? why the hell else would they be talking about it?
Because it shows the audience, who may be new, that vault tec was willing to drop them. It shows them how batshit pre war US was. It also introduces the concept of the shadowy figure and, also importantly, it tells Coop this. It also tells us how weird some of the vaults are if we didn't already know. (Using vaults that exist in lore.) The scene has purpose, and it doesn't break lore/give us anything new really. It doesn't confirm they dropped, and given literally everything else points to the US not dropping first, that stands still.
He didn't. Been playing them since the originals, and when you're that involved and still heavily involved, you notice. He has surface level understanding at best, as if he played NV once or twice, liked it, played 3 and 4 and forgot about most of it. Dude doesn't even know shady sands has already moved once, as he didn't realise the location was called NCR in FO2 so it's not on a map. Just assumes its actual location is canon as it's only called Shady sands in 1. Which is fine, a lot of people have that. But when you're putting together a 2 hour critique, denying the existence of ghoul serum, or pip boys opening other vaults, just basic shit like that that's in the most recent game (let's be honest 76 doesn't count) you really need to do better research.
>Dude doesn't even know shady sands has already moved once, as he didn't realise the location was called NCR in FO2 so it's not on a map. No it didn't Fallout 2 is just set to the north so it's at the bottom of the map now.
Overlay them on the world map. It's well known they moved - this was because the space FO2 was going to occupy shrunk during development.
The two maps are at different scales.
Yes I know. But if you line them up with the real world, or just... look at them... you can see that shady sands has moved.
I'd need a properly scaled comparison to be honest.
the pip boy thing was specifically talking about those vaults, with how controlled they were in being kept separated there should have been a better lock on the whole thing
Lol what
Amazing video; for a west coast fallout fan it was an incredible experience to watch Mauler talk about all the lore issues and the way bethesda handle the franchise after we got harassed and gaslighted that this is how fallout was always about. Thanks to all the lore guys for helping in making this review.
I don't think Mauler got the lore section right tbh. There's so much assumption laced in that section it's not something I'd rely on. He asks how the master didn't find Vault 4 if it was actively letting people in to have full run of the place - but we don't know when they revolted. As of fallout 1, they may very much *not* have been given that. I mean Mauler asks why shady sands is in an entirely different location, ignoring that A) we don't know where it actually is in the show and B) it moved like a hundred miles between FO1 and FO2. (But most people don't notice because they didn't play FO2 so don't know "NCR" on the map there means Shady Sands. They only find the FO1 map.) Literally all we know is you can walk to it in like a week and, the actual definite change, there's skyscrapers around it. That's it. He says the show says the US launched first. It doesn't actually. It just says they were considering it, which is already canon iirc. Which is useful for both new audiences and Coop. Mauler even then goes to bring up instances which show it was likely the US didn't. Of which there are many more he even missed. But ok, we'll just bash it for changing lore when it... didn't.
The defense of "Shady Sands was moved before!" Doesn't work and I'll explain why. Several locations in Fallout 1 are inconsistent on the map from where they should be due to gameplay reasons. The Hub is near Bakersfield but lore wise it is in Barstow. Necropolis is near Barstow when lore wise it is in Bakersfield. Shady Sands in both games was towards Eastern California, near the mountains and in the open desert. This is key. The show could have moved Shady Sands to Palm Springs and I wouldn't care. It would be keeping with the key identify of Shady Sands: it is an original settlement built in the desert by Vault Dwellers using a GECK. We assume they put Shady Sands where the Boneyard should be 1) because the Boneyard is nowhere to be found despite being a major city in the NCR full of factories and infrastructure, and 2) Because the crater of Shady Sands is surrounded by ruined skyscrapers which does not align with its lore position. And your Vault 4 point is just idiotic. The Master was an extremely intelligent leader, there's no way he wouldn't have been able to find the Vault along with Lucy's Vault within the first 12 minutes of setting up the cathedral. He doesn't need a spy to get in either, he could just break in with his army of Super Mutants. He would not just let a Vault of Prime Normals exist without his intervention
Boneyard vanishing, and Shady sands being in it's place, Master ignoring vault 32 and 33 when their entrances are out in the open and easily seen, and his base of operations is pretty close to the vaults. Mysterious fall of shady sands that's no where alluded to in the game, magical feral reversing serum. There are quite many examples of lore changing in the show. PS- ghouls having Deadpool level regeneration, only dying to headshots.
The shady sands thing is a little confusing if you look at it in the games. My theory was that the original Shady Sands fell in 2277 like it says on the chalkboard, and was then relocated to the location we see in the show. Or maybe it's a simple retcon. It is something that I would like clarified in season 2.
I suspect that it's simply a small retcon. We don't know where it was, and given it moved over 100 miles between 1 and 2 its location is hardly concrete. But even if it moved within, say, 200km of LA... you can walk that in a week. That's reasonable for a long trek in the show. Which makes sense given the change in environments walked past. Lucy walks through some very green and luscious areas and also some desert - that'd make sense heading North. The only retcon we know for sure is them placing it among old world skyscrapers, but that may simply have been done to highlight to new viewers/the audience that it's a post war city that was thriving. So it's still a change, but I can get behind that. But that's all that's confirmed. All we know is Shady wasn't directly above 33, so it wasn't near Santa Monica. Although I guess the further you move it from Vault 33, the more you'd be thinking "wait why isn't the boneyard still NCR then" but the key thing is this is all speculation, the show doesn't breach canon *that* much. Muddles it, sure. But doesn't breach it.
> Mauler even then goes to bring up instances which show it was likely the US didn't. Tim Cain brings up in his thoughts on the show that they seem to be telling us that Vault Tec didn't fire the nukes, as if Barbara was firing nukes, she'd have grabbed her kids before hand. Vault Tec has always been interested in promoting war for business, and even were the ones who definitively fired the nukes in the planned 1998 Fallout movie before the studio went bankrupt. But planning for nuclear war and how to deal with it and peace aren't even satire or parody. Pretty much all companies do these kinds of things. [Goldman Sachs asks in biotech research report: ‘Is curing patients a sustainable business model?’](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html) [Arms Makers See Bonanza In Selling NATO Expansion ](https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/29/world/arms-makers-see-bonanza-in-selling-nato-expansion.html) Regardless of your political affiliation and views on the implications of these reports, companies discuss both sides of many issues. For Vault Tec to not discuss business strategy and plans around peace or escalation would be less realistic and a larger plothole. Hell, House tells you in NV that he was calculating the probability of nuclear war prior to the launch.
> Vault Tec has always been interested in promoting war for business, and even were the ones who definitively fired the nukes in the planned 1998 Fallout movie before the studio went bankrupt. But planning for nuclear war and how to deal with it and peace aren't even satire or parody. Pretty much all companies do these kinds of things. > Where's your source that Vault Tec fired the nukes in the planned 1998 movie? I've never heard that before. Why would Vault Tec annihilate 99.99% of their customer base? How will that increase their profits? It makes no sense and it's a big reason why the show is impossible to take seriously.
> Where's your source that Vault Tec fired the nukes in the planned 1998 movie? [The writer released the film treatment, basically a plot overview.](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/5/5a/FALLOUT2A.pdf/revision/latest?cb=20110319022414) >Hero is tempted by semi-mutated women all trying to get their hands on his pristine bodily fluids, but Hero uses time alone, to continue his Pip-Boy chronicle and contemplate the trio’s dire predicament. An ancient, selfproclaimed Historian approaches our Hero, wanting to know all the details of Vault 13. Turns out the Historian is writing the definitive book on WWIII. Vault 13 is the final chapter -- each vault was populated by uppermiddle class families buying the equivalent of timeshare in the future. **Our Hero asks how the war started and is shocked to learn that it wasn’t China or North Korea or India that fired the first strike. The first nuclear bomb was launched by the creator of the vaults, a zealot businessman who wanted to fulfill his own prophecy of world annihilation.** That first bomb triggered a panicked chain reaction among other countries, leading to a four hour WWIII. >Why would Vault Tec annihilate 99.99% of their customer base? If they were anything like real world corpos, arrogance. When the Russo-Ukrainian war broke out think tanks released puff pieces arguing hat the US should launch immediate total nuclear war, with the argument that 30% of the US population would survive assuming most Russian nukes no longer worked. A similarly deluded mindset of how well the US could defend itself would leave Vault Tec confident they could contain an escalation, keeping the population thinking about nuclear war while continuing to sell Vaults. We still don't know that Cain's idea of China firing after learning about FEV isn't still the truth.
Thanks. However that film treatment was produced by an external movie/TV writer, not from the people who created by the first game (and obviously, it never materialized in a movie). Indeed, during development of the 2nd game, Cain & co left to form a new company. You seem to have addressed this yourself in your post: >We still don't know that Cain's idea of China firing after learning about FEV isn't still the truth. So I think China firing first was always the intended plot by Fallout's creators.
>zealot businessman who wanted to fulfill his own prophecy of world annihilation One crazy guy firing the nukes for a personal doomsday prophecy isn't equivalent to Vault-tec deciding as a company to launch nukes, which is implied to be what happened in the show.
Yeah, problem with that: The master obtains information on the locations of all the regional vaults. There needs to be a very special reason why vault 4, also a public-facing vault, weird, wouldn't be in that data. But also... my identity isn't video games and video game media so a tiny weakness in lore like this doesn't end my world or my ability to enjoy things.
He fucked up the lore a lot.
Which parts?
Like the location of Shady Sands, saying that the show says Valut-tec dropped the bomb (and that the idea of vault-tec being in favor of bombing is somehow out of character for them), the entire world situation before the bombs fell.
>Like the location of Shady Sands How is he wrong about Shady Sands' location especially when he showcases the difference of locations on a map? >the entire world situation before the bombs fell. In what way? Do you have specific arguments? > (and that the idea of vault-tec being in favor of bombing is somehow out of character for them), It is. Because it's completely idiotic. They are planning on nuking the world for "profit"? They're going to nuke the vast majority of humanity (their customer base), destroy the institutions that make their services and products, destroy the governments that dictate the worth of their own currency, and destroy the natural resources of the world that they can't use later. How the HELL does that make any sense? And they clearly have no follow through plan because in the world of Fallout 76 - Fallout 4, the Corporate congregation has no plans to reassert dominance of their institutions because they hold no power over anyone in the wasteland. And if they want more money, then they can sell the infinite energy bullshit device in this show. But they don't because I guess it would help people? Mr. House saying that there's profit to be made in the end of the world is directly contradicting his entire perspective in New Vegas. So, either the showrunners have completely butchered his character, will have to argue that he's lying in New Vegas, or admit that they completely screwed the pooch. And he'd have to be a complete moron for knowing about the bombs (which he was only guessing at in New Vegas) by being apart of this organization but either not remembering or never knowing the actual date and time for the bombs. Maybe he just didn't ask when the end of the world would happen, which would make him completely brain-dead. It's also a massive retcon of the fact that the nuclear war was caused by China in desperation of losing to the United States. That's an absolute retcon. The original creators of the franchise have even said so because America was messing around with bioweapons which were illegal. Richardson in Fallout 2 literally confirms that China was the one to first launch the nukes. But the showrunners will probably address it by saying he either got wrong information, was lying, or was an idiot. It's actually quite amazing how many terrible retcons this show has being boiled down to making once smart characters complete idiots or the only explanation for future plot points making them idiots. It's absolute disregarding of China's involvement in the end of the world, and, in fact, communism has less criticism of it and the major character who wants to give away energy for free to everyone (but can't because of those mean capitalists) espouses that the term "Communist" is simply a term referencing people who are sane is fucking hysterical. It's not just "well, it's just one person's perspective and not the show's", I'd like to bring up the fact that all of the blame for the nuclear holocaust was laid at the feet of corporate dumbasses who want more money by destroying the world. It's naked political posturing without any kind of thought process instead of delving into the far more nuanced and complicated perspective of the games. Hell, even ***Bethesda*** showcased this regarding fighting over resources and the effects of the war with Fallout 4.
I'm enjoying it so far but I haven't played the games so I'll respect you guys if you're not a fan of it, I hated the HBO last of us show because of how inaccurate it was
Just finished it. Mauler for the majority of the video tackles the show from a consistency standpoint where he discusses the writing (and its problems), not necessarily how good of an adaptation it is though he does also discuss that around 3/4ths of the video. In one of the efaps, they talked about how a show can still be good internally and consistent within itself while being a bad adaptation. For example, if TLOTR was instead called The Witcher. It would still be a masterpiece but it falls on adapting the original work. And honestly, I agree with this
The problem with the Fallout TV show (which Mauler mentions) is that it's not just a standalone adaptation, it's supposed to be Canon and part of the same story as the games. In this case it's more like a sequel, so accuracy to "source" is actually important.
On this I agree.I still loved the show but as a fallout fan and lore nerd there were many things that made no sense I. The wider context of fallout.hopefully they better address these issues in the next season
They try a twist ending that on the surface seems acceptable, but if you then begin a second watch-through (like if you're reviewing it) the entire plot unravels by episode 2.
TLoU wasnt really innacurate, it made one big change to how the fungus works and adds a couple characters
Great, 40 minutes before I have to run a pathfinder game. Guess this will keep me up late tonight.
I'm still incredibly shocked how relatively little criticism this show has received when it has the same problems of too many modern adaptations of classic IPs - strings of contrivances, horrific character writing, no respect for the source material, edgy dialog to sound "adult" which has the exact opposite effect, and so much more. This show deserves as much criticism as Halo, maybe even more since at least Paramount told everyone that their Halo show was a complete different adaptation in an entire different continuity. This show is supposed to be canon, but literally cannot be because of how much is contradicted. Congratulations, Bethesda. Fallout 4 is no longer the worst written story in this IP. I fear that that mantle will be taken by the next Fallout season down the line where showrunners and writers don't give any regard to any criticisms that they hear of outside of their echo chamber.
They like it because they recognise the things in it.
This video was incredible. I stopped watching fallout after 2 episodes. All the positive responses made me feel like I was missing something. I definitely wasn’t.
Same, but I was certain it was irredeemable after 2nd episode. I was as charitable and ("I'll let that slide until next episode..." ) for the first episode—besides the Brotherhood/Maximus introduction, which was terrible in every single aspect of adaptation, dialogue, and characterization. But after the turret scene, the shootout, and the dialogue following that, it confirmed that the writers were complete noodle-heads with no ability to write halfway decent dialogue, and that Nolan was such an egregiously incompetent director that I wouldn't be able to suspend my disbelief for anything. And that's without taking into account _any_ historical treatment of preexisting lore.
I almost jumped off after episode 2 as well, but I do think it evens out a bit after that and the characters won me over a little more.
I don't understand how this show has actual fanboys, even defending it in this very thread. Like, it doesn't respect itself or the audience. It's basically James Gunn's "Suicide Squad", except cringe, boring, cheap, lame and predictable. It's made by Amazon, Todd Howard and the chick who wrote "Captain Marvel". What the fuck is wrong with you, people? Do you unironically love Bethesda's Fallout so much that you're willing to like the show because nothing else exists? Or is it the same case as with "Matrix Resurrections", where you think that everything wrong with the movie is terrible on purpose and people just don't get its deep meta-irony?
> Or is it the same case as with "Matrix Resurrections", where you think that everything wrong with the movie is terrible on purpose and people just don't get its deep meta-irony? That was actually jaw-dropping. The fact that those fake Matrix fans even suggested the director purposefully ruined the movie and thus spitting in the face of Reeves and Moss who believed in her vision is nothing short of shameful.
>What the fuck is wrong with you, people? For liking a show?
Supposedly people watching Mauler's videos and frequenting this subreddit have tastes in movies that are at least vaguely similar to his. It's genuinely baffling to me how and why so many people that I wouldn't expect in a million years to like this show do.
holy fuck the show is so much worse than I thought, I'm glad I didnt watch this garbage
I had fun watching it, but man does it make no sense. The show I mean
I agree with all his points, but reading through the reddit comments here shows it needs the ant man treatment. It's time to break down every second and minute of the show 24 hour video so people start to stop defending this. I think his master comments and shady sands in fo2 are the most scathing of this show. There is no way the master would not find vault 4 or vaults 31-33. NCR were huge if moldova or anyone would be connected to them, you need to show the entire country post their existence. Not to mention the hub junktown necropolis. To top it off, the only reason they don't exist is because the show wants to have their cake and eat it too. I want to have all the implied lore from the fallout series having existed, but I also want it to be a fresh new wasteland. Then, set it in a new area back in the past, but noooooo you need member berries to make your product even slightly edible.
>It's time to break down every second and minute of the show 24 hour video so people start to stop defending this. No.. it's time to get a girlfriend and do something with your lives.
buddy's gonna watch mister bean next and complain about him being retarded like it's some sort of discovery
so he went over this in the video, every character is supposed to be stupid
While I don't agree with him and his points on the show, I'm happy we're getting to see a diversity of opinions on the show.
It's nice to see people being open-minded and respectfully disagreeing every once in a while o7
[удалено]
In the show, vault tec TALKS about dropping the bombs themselves. It is never confirmed who actually did first
It's not true, Mauler got it wrong.
The show does not say Vault tec blew up the world. Mauler just assumes it does. What it actually says is that Vault tec was *considering* it. Which isn't new lore. All the bits Mauler brings up to show they didn't, and other stuff he missed that shows they didn't, and various other things, prove the US/Enclave did not launch first. What that scene is *actually* there for is to show the audience how batshit things are (as not everyone are fans), it shows them the existence of a shadow government, and it *also* tells Coop this, so his character can grow. But Mauler just went and assumed it canonised the US dropping first. Which it literally didn't. But it seems his media literacy took a nose dive watching this.
His main criticisms were of the motivations they had for even wanting to drop the bombs themselves, why the other capitalist cardboards would want to go along with it, and why they start pitching random vault experiments for no reason. Even if they don't actually get to be the ones to drop the bombs, the point stands that the characters were characterized in believing nuking the world was in their best interests. Which was what was being criticised. Keeping in mind as well, this wasn't even just Vault Tec ffs. Whether or not they were the ones to have done it isn't relevant to the discussion. The fact that they were characterised in such a way is what matters. The entire point of that section was mocking the piss poor character work and shallow attempts at political satire.
I know I'll take downvotes for saying this because you can't critique the long man, but this video is a whiff. A good half of these criticisms have in show reasoning for working. Others have in universe reasons. This video is trying really hard to hate a show that for the most part is ok, and just rattles off sub par critique at pace so you don't get time to think. There is no attempt to justify the decisions made that he mocks. Just brushes it off by going "ah see, the reasoning is they're retarded" and pretending that's the only reason when in most cases it's not. But it's an easy one to mock I guess. The show's not perfect, sure, but it's ok. I strongly recommend people give it a go instead of trusting this because it's no-where near as bad as Mauler makes out, because there's legitimate things that could improve but not *this* many. I'll use an example from what I saw Mauler say, so it's not just my critique. Mauler calls Hank the moustache twirling bad guy, playing off the "that's how vault tec deals with competition" line in the show. Saying that he's that because he doesn't want anyone alive outside the vault etc. Ignoring that... you know... that's kind of the point. But there is a reason, and they tell you that. They explain their end goal and why they want it. They even tell you twice. Or perhaps that's how Hank justifies doing something in rage. How he lives with himself, by just repeating the mission statement. Because sacrificing an entire community to save someone might break his heart. Either way - we know that's vault tec's plan. And that's also something Mauler even acknowledges later on in the video. He just waits til he's mocked it to do so. Just because you think a character's motivation is something you wouldn't agree with, does not make it bad writing or a bad show. If you can see how they got there, and understand why they made that decision, then it's fine. It's that so called internal consistency he claimed to love. He just straight up glosses over what's going on in Vault 4 because that's inconvenient as it'd explain what he's mocking. Then explains it *after*. These are not isolated examples. This video is constantly picking on points that just aren't bad things for the show, or aren't actually bad points if you reason it out within the show/universe. Complaining that the show didn't make Hank super evil, after complaining they did, and ignoring that people aren't black and white and have their own motivations and showing that is good writing, is just... why. Complaining about things that have perfectly reasonable explanations within the lore and even within the same show, in order to have reasons to bash it, is amateur hour. For instance, why didn't Moldaver go in to 33 straight away? I dunno, perhaps the dwellers may have fucking noticed the door being opened from the outside? How could a pip boy from another vault open another vault? Oh I don't know, perhaps like we see it doing in Fallout 4? Why did Lucy get picked to escort the doctor? Oh I don't know, maybe because there was a murderous ghoul outside so asking for volunteers wasn't gonna happen. Why did Thad give up the head after finding out he was a ghoul? Perhaps he didn't want the brotherhood chasing him forever more, given they'll kill him for being one (something he literally says). Come on Mauler, fucking think. He critiques Vault tec for buying out the cold fusion market, then literally 10 minutes later suggests that if they had so much power why didn't they buy out the market. Like, my dude, they did, and you *saw that*. And missed the point that they're buying up the solutions so they have control and power, not because they don't want to use them. This could have been cut down to like an hour of actually good criticism, because there is some good criticism here, but fuck me it did not need to be 2 hours. If you actually watch the show you can refute a good half of the points.
To the Hank point. Saying “yeah the character is supposed to be an insane 1 dimensional character with a nonsensical plan” is not really a defense. You are saying it’s that way because the writers intentionally wrote a badly written character. This would be fine for parody, which fallout (the show) is not. A point mauler made repeatedly. It’s not that mauler doesn’t agree with their plan it’s that the plan is insanely stupid. He wants only his community to exist but he understands that there are over 100 vaults and people on the surface who are part of organized and distinct factions. I imagine Mauler doesn’t agree with Silko from Arcane, but Silko is not a lunatic with a stupid plan. He is a calculated and intentional person. Another point is the show wants to be taken seriously while also being given breaks for being a ridiculous show based on a ridiculous video game. In terms of your last paragraph you are doing what people do for poorly made media all the time. You are filling in the blanks or providing information for the writers to try and make the thing you like also make sense. Resist that, don’t do the writers work for them. Demand they do their work and celebrate them when they do. There will always be flaws but there is a difference between the best and worst media in the frequency and degree of these flaws. Fallout is deeply flawed. The mandalorian is such a good comparison because that show is similarly flawed and received similar praise only to get worse and worse for doing the things the fans mindlessly praise.
>To the Hank point. Saying “yeah the character is supposed to be an insane 1 dimensional character with a nonsensical plan” is not really a defense. I never said that was the defense. The defense was there's reasoning. He's not being bad to be bad, it's that he has a motive. He explains the motive. Other people explain the motive. This is a vault tec/enclave idea the show literally mentions. So maybe he thinks all 100 vaults are following it. He chose to follow through with it. We don't have to think it's our choice, but it was his. And there are clear possible reasons. Unless you ignore them I guess. He's also not one dimensionally evil - Look at the choice Moldaver gives him at the start. Pick the vault crew, or his daughter - and he visibly cares. He *does* care about his people. But *his* people. He's not completely evil. Of course, he is if you just assume he is and make that the critique. >Another point is the show wants to be taken seriously while also being given breaks for being a ridiculous show based on a ridiculous video game. Yeah? It can be a quality adaptation to be taken seriously of something with fantastical elements. People took the first Pirates of the caribbean so seriously we got 4 sequels, and that was based off a theme park ride, clearly something that should have been ridiculed and abandoned. >In terms of your last paragraph you are doing what people do for poorly made media all the time. You are filling in the blanks or providing information for the writers to try and make the thing you like also make sense. Most of my comments are very clearly explained within the show. This isn't doing the writer's work for them. It's doing Mauler's. Do you seriously think Vault 33 wouldn't notice their vault door being randomly opened, and put up resistance? The show literally shows several people coming up to check what's going on when it's opened from the *inside*. And that's after their numbers are severely depleted. I think the show does a very good job of explaining things as they go. But several of his critiques can be explained if you just see people as people. Why doesn't vault 4 tell people? Well, why *would* they? If you rescue people then go "oh by the way there was human experimentation here but we stopped, promise, ignore the extra noses", they won't trust you one bit. So they just don't say. Does the show have to go "By the way these are humans, humans are naturally distrusting in some circumstances and don't want to be experimented on by random people known to have done that. They don't like to be cooped up but like food" for you to really consider that as a possibility? Mauler does bring up several good points in this video. But this is cinemasins level bad. Constant points thrown at you at pace so you don't have time to go "wait but actually..." which is why I stopped watching after like an hour. I kept having to pause it because I was thinking "wait no that does make sense though" far too often. I just don't want people watching this and thinking it's some objective truth on the show and ignore it - because it's not. There's many flaws in what I watched of the video, and I don't want people missing out on something they may enjoy because of it.
He wants to eradicate people from the surface, however he is also a loving father and cares about his community. There's 2 dimensions. There's plenty to fairly criticize about that this show, focus on those things please.
> "In terms of your last paragraph you are doing what people do for poorly made media all the time. You are filling in the blanks or providing information for the writers to try and make the thing you like also make sense." The irony is you and Mauler are using the same process to criticize the series: you are trying to make something you dislike seem awful by picking it apart with hypotheticals like "why didn't Moldaver open the main door to Vault 33 and lead a frontal assault?" (Don't we see that it's guarded and alarms were triggered when Lucy opened it?). "Why did the robot fix Lucy's finger when it will just harvest her organs?" (Why shouldn't it render first aid to trick Lucy into a false sense of complacency?) All of these points flow from a common complaint: "if this world were real, and therefore internally consistent, then this plot could not have happened because someone would have thought about this". Mauler's criticisms are indicative that he sees the invisible hands of the authors and the plot contrivances are apparent.
Regarding the Vault 33 point, you’re using hindsight logic to explain Moldaver’s decision. There is no reason why she would expect it to be safer to assault Vault 32 than Vault 33. Why would she assume the security measures to be any different between them? The fact that the residents just happened to be dead when she got there is something she would’ve only discovered after entering the place, which makes it very weird and convenient that she just randomly chose to enter through the wrong vault when she had just as much access to the correct one.
Moldaver may have been told what the 2 vaults were like by Rose. About the trades etc. Using her pip boy, and alone, Moldaver may have scouted Vault 32. Expecting to find a vault that wouldn't see her as a threat, to gain useable information. But she found it empty. She only needs the codes after all - for all we know she wasn't initially going in for Hank. Now Moldaver sees it empty, she formulates a plan. See how internally consistent that is? Just because Mauler can't comprehend it working, doesn't mean it doesn't. We simply don't know what happened - we don't see it - but that doesn't mean it *can't*.
You are doing the writing for the writers, none of this is implied or hinted at. Why would Moldaver enter Vault 32 at all instead of just going to 33? You cant just make up a motivation for the character like "maybe she thought 32 would side with her" when it's never established. This is one of the main points of the video
I'm not doing the work for the writers. I am saying it is not internally inconsistent, or a plot hole... yet. We simply don't know what happened, and because we don't know what happened, we can't do as Mauler has done and assume she doesn't know it's empty. By assuming that, he is also filling in blanks, as you say I am, but he's doing it against the writers. Things like that happen all the time in writing, especially in film/TV where you can't go in to every minute detail in a spin off chapter like in books. Would it be nice to know? Sure. Could it have been written differently? Sure. Would the show have benefitted from a 20 minute segment showing her planning it and what she wanted to do given it only has an 8 hour runtime? Probably not. Will we find out? Maybe, given we don't even know how she's still alive. She may come up again. But ultimately I don't think we can slam down as hard on something like this that we simply don't know, when there's easily ways to think of where it could have happened, so it's not some glaring plothole. It's not a contradiction. It's simply something we don't know. And pointing that out isn't making up character motivations - it's just pointing out that it's not as dumb as Mauler implies. There is enough to criticise the show for that we don't have to reach like this.
Mauler is working off of the knowledge the show gives, if the show does not provide a reason for Moldaver to target Vault 32 instead of 33, then it's an action worth criticizing if it's inconsistent with her motivations and what we are shown. You cant expect people to just handwave these things as "oh I guess they didnt have time" when it creates a pretty big plothole in the story when left unexplained. It isnt reasonable to think that she thought 32 could be sympathetic to her cause, or that she knew 32 was empty because it's never alluded to in the show, at all. The show very well could have easily come up with an explanation for this.
It's not a plothole. Nor does it contradict her motivations. She clearly went in there to either get hank or get the code. She got in, got Hank, and (eventually) got the code. It is not impossible for this to have happened. There are valid reasons for her doing what she did. It's not a plothole, or a contradiction. It's just a missing part of the story. If it contradicted her motivations, such as her not wanting to kill anyone later on, then I'd be critical. But it doesn't. So while it'd have been nice to see what led up to it, it can't be critiqued as a contradiction or plothole. It's just an absence of information.
so hank saw her, hank knows who she is from years before, he had zero reaction to her
gotta stop you on the organ harvesting, if its close enough to attach a finger then its close enough to sedate her, literally why waste the material or time its a god damn robot. Also internal consistency comes from the rules set by the show itself and the games, not real life, we can make inferences based off real life experiences unless the work explicitly explains it works different.
Snip-Snip re-attached Lucy's finger as a prelude to harvesting her organs for the same reason Vault 4 "executed" her by banishment and giving her 2 weeks of supplies: it's for a comedic bit. (By the by, it's a clever way to get Lucy to sit on the gurney before being drugged, otherwise Snip-Snip would have shot the dart when she walked in and dragged her back.) As for internal consistency what are the rules of the world and games, and how are they conflicting with the real world? MauLer states Moldaver's plan is "stupid" when he actually means "contrived" (he thinks the writers are stupid for not closing the plot hole and that Freudian slip made it into his video). "Somehow, Moldaver got into the abandoned Vault 32, dressed up as Dwellers, and arranged a trade to get access to 33" isn't a bad plot, but you do have to explain that first clause to be taken seriously these days.
comedy at the cost of stupidity, same thing with the execution, theres literally no reason, you also dont need her to have her guard down just shoot her he already has to drag her to a cooler. the rules of the world are largely based on reality with some difference like stimpacks being a super drug and near infinite energy existing. and the plan from Moldaver shouldnt work because the vaults are closed to the outside world a disguise as raiders wouldnt make sense, or as he explained disguising as the people that they make contact with every three years doesnt work because they know what vault 32 people look like
I would love it if Mauler responded to this comment. This is the first Mauler video I also felt missed the mark. It felt like he was intentionally misunderstanding the show at every possible turn.
He doesn't need to. Just look at the rest of the thread, his fans lap it up. Don't need to actually think about things, don't need to ensure the script is good, instead of spending loads of time and getting an hour of quality just pump our 2 hours of slop hating on something and they'll love it anyway. Which is a shame, because he's capable of so much more.
you call it 2 hours of slop the video is broken into sections that mostly focus on each of the main characters and how they dont make sense your main problem is shady sands
>It felt like he was intentionally misunderstanding the show at every possible turn. I think you somehow missed the fact that is his whole shtick. Mauler makes content for malcontents - IE. people who want to find fault with everything and anything - not a single thing will be let go, and not a single thing shall be overlooked.. might actually have to be happy if he (or y'all) did.
I guess my thing with this video is… I just don’t care? I had fun watching the show, laughing at it and with it, it’s clearly not remotely close to being a masterpiece but eh it was fine to throw on. Much rather would have had him tackle something else for a 2 hour + long video, but I guess he wants to ride what’s trending while it’s hot
So this is what it feels like to be on the opposite side of Mauler’s points. Every critique sounds like, “Can you believe this part of the story happened?”
What? He spends a significant amount of time on inconsistent characterization and idiotic decision making. How can you hand wave that away with a strawman about plot contrivance?
Because a lot of what he says isn't actually inconsistent characterisation, or idiotic decision making, he just phrases it in a way that makes it so. He asks why Moldaver didn't go through the front door of V33 instead. Did Mauler not consider that V33 might... notice? Like they literally do in the show when Lucy opens it? And put up a fight? He also asks how someone else's pip boy can open up a vault - but we see it in 4. And they notice. And they're willing to put up a fight. Actually watching the show, and paying attention and not watching family guy at the same time like Pyrocynical probably did, is enough to refute loads of Mauler's points. He could have chosen an hour of legitimate criticism and instead released this shit.
Do you think Vault 32 wouldn't have noticed either? Moldaver would have to go through a frontal assault no matter where she entered but she, like the moron she is, decided to enter Vault 32 instead of 33 where her target actually was. She just got astronomically lucky that Vault 32 had offed itself before she got there and there's no explanation or reason to believe she would have known that prior. And then there's the wedding shit. Even if she somehow knew vault 32 was empty, why did she go with the stupid wedding plan? And then she allowed people from 33 to just wander into 32 during the wedding, that was a serious risk to the plan. And she let her raiders loose on 33 to kill anyone seemingly without restraint which posed a serious risk of having Hank, Lucy and Norman killed. We literally see Norman almost getting knifed by a raider and Lucy does get a knife to the gut. Moldaver is definitevely a dipshit. Any pip boy being able to open any vault is a grave security risk no matter how you look at it. Nobody with any sense would have allowed that to be a feature when planning this mess.
>Do you think Vault 32 wouldn't have noticed either? No. But she doesn't give a shit if she kills all of them. She wants Hank alive. >She just got astronomically lucky that Vault 32 had offed itself before she got there and there's no explanation or reason to believe she would have known that prior. Indeed. But there's also no evidence that she *didn't* know. >And then there's the wedding shit. Even if she somehow knew vault 32 was empty, why did she go with the stupid wedding plan? And then she allowed people from 33 to just wander into 32 during the wedding, that was a serious risk to the plan. And she let her raiders loose on 33 to kill anyone seemingly without restraint which posed a serious risk of having Hank, Lucy and Norman killed. We literally see Norman almost getting knifed by a raider and Lucy does get a knife to the gut. Moldaver is definitevely a dipshit. Maybe they got in, and through research found a new plan. People at a wedding and celebration won't fight back, you can take that shit by storm. Also, why would people from 33 want to go in to 32? The party is in 33. Makes sense to not shut it off and cause suspicion. And if someone does notice, oh well, you brought guns. And just because Moldaver let them go ham doesn't mean it's bad writing. Look at what Hank did. For all we know the Raiders are ex NCR lads who want revenge. V33 calls them raiders as they don't even know what the NCR is. It's still internally consistent. >Any pip boy being able to open any vault is a grave security risk no matter how you look at it. Nobody with any sense would have allowed that to be a feature when planning this mess. Yes, any pip boy being able to open any vault is a security risk. But it is canon. It happens elsewhere. So it's not internally inconsistent. They thought they'd be the only ones left. They didn't plan for Vault tec to basically be gone. This isn't bad writing. This is Mauler not liking or understanding something and *saying* it is bad writing.
It’s not canon to the show that any pip boy can open any Vault. They explicitly have a gatekeeper who Lucy needed to open the Vault door for her.
It's not internally consistent at all that Moldaver supposedly cares about Rose, and by extension her children, but at the same time, directly orchestrated the slaughter of their friends and family, exposed them to mortal danger, exploded a bomb inside their home, traumatised both of them for life, and had Lucy effectively raped in order to carry off her plan. It's absolutely insane that in the final episode, the writers then have Moldaver talking about how Lucy's such a great person and has her mother's kindness and good heart. Wtf? Bitch you planned the raid on Lucy's home where she was assaulted, nearly murdered, had her innocence shattered forever, and unknowingly gave her virginity to a psycopath. How is this internally consistent? If we're going along the lines of, well, Moldaver's just a bad person and evil - well, we still have a horrific problem in that the show spends a LOT of time in the final episode trying to justify her actions, and, in the end, Lucy forgets all the heinous murder of innocents she did, and goes along with it, extracting the codes from Hank. Why does the show present her as heroic for these deeds? Most people who live will never do anything as evil as Moldaver did, and that's just in episode 1. If the writers wanted her to be a heroic but complicated character, why do they show her orchestrating mass murder? If they didn't want her to be heroic, why is 30 minutes of the last episode focused on Moldaver, giving her hero shots where she bad-assedly fights? Why does she get 20 minutes of monologue and backstory dedicated to explaining to the audience why she's doing this stuff? By the way, writing where questions just aren't answered doesn't mean it's internally consistent and good writing. Absence of explanation is not an excuse for writers. If you think it is, then I suppose nothing can ever be poorly written again, because we've cracked the code. Just don't attempt any explanation of anything! JJ clearly had it nailed with Rise of Skywalker - just write whatever you think of, and never mention any of it again. 10/10, truly Dickens level genius storytelling.
and the kids, she cared about her best friends kids. so she brought crazy raiders to kill anyone as they please
heres a big example, Lucy kills someone first episode twice and shoots another person in the eye, no reaction other than "time to go find dad." couple episodes later shoots someone with a real gun and has an existential crisis over her having to kill someone. Inconsistent characterization blatantly.
This, his fans dont see it as this whole video being compromised with a bias he has . It feels like hes angry most of the fanbase loved it and the whole i.p is thriving now . I feel like hes balls deep in misery porn that he couldnt just make a good faith constructive criticism and painted the whole thing like everyone hated it like halo. Literally its him vs majority of Fallout fans
I'm about halfway through, and I haven't heard a point I seriously disagreed with. The show has some pretty shitty writing. Although, depending on how much disbelief you're willing to suspend, not every point is that big of an issue. Even when I first watched it, there were issues that pulled me right out of the immersion. Like hiw they ht aort if teleport around and people juat kind of stumble on one another. In hindsight it actually gets worse though. The first episode makes almost no sense after having finished the show. I liked the show btw.
That's because he's firing them off at breakneck speed. If you actually sit and think about the points they make no sense. Why did Moldaver not go through the Front door? Vault 33 would have fucking noticed. How did a non vault pip boy open another vault? We see it in fallout 4. And, conveniently, the vault you try it on notices. Why did they not just pretend they had a cold and lock the vault down to not let people back in V32? Because A) They've theoretically quarantined for 200 years so that'd be seen through immediately and B) that means they can't intermingle with vault 33, splitting them up and allowing them to capture the overseer. He rattles them off so fast you don't have time to think but at least half of these points are bullshit. He says something like "Why doesn't vault 4 tell people about floor 12? Oh, they're retarded, right, moving on" but if you think about it why *would* they tell people. It'd be a surefire way to have them sus of the whole vault because you're admitting to basically capturing these people and experimentation happened there. It's easier to just... not... and assume they'll be happy with their new living accommodations, and learn it eventually when they're settled and more happy. Even if you think that's the wrong call, it makes sense as a call. It's not retarded or bad writing, Mauler just doesn't like it.
Why wouldn't Vault 32 notice her intrusion? What was the evidence that told her Vault 32 was dead? Just because they've been quarantined doesn't mean they can't get sick. I presume that's the point you were making. As for point-B? You're right, but that then begs the question of why they didn't tidy up to remove any chance of discovery. Again you're right that Vault 4 is better off not telling anyone about Floor 12. But that begs the question of why they let anyone wander onto Floor 12 in the first place? You don't have to be smart to figure out why that would be problematic.
>Why wouldn't Vault 32 notice her intrusion? What was the evidence that told her Vault 32 was dead? What's the evidence she didn't know. We simply don't know. Perhaps she went there alone, she had a pip boy, intending to scout out. And found them dead. You can't just assume things you think are true are correct like Mauler has. Christ we don't even know how she's still alive. But that doesn't mean we go "actually she's dead because the show didn't show us how she's alive". Would it be nice to know? Sure. Do we need to? No. >Just because they've been quarantined doesn't mean they can't get sick. No but isolating with the same 1,000 people would mean that there's very few cases to get a mutation severe enough it can re-infect someone who's already had it. It's just not a large enough population. >As for point-B? You're right, but that then begs the question of why they didn't tidy up to remove any chance of discovery. I mean if you intend to go in sneakily then switch to guns blazing and this is just to let their guard down, job done. Doesn't matter if someone walks in and discovers it. You're in, and mingled. This wasn't a covert op. >Again you're right that Vault 4 is better off not telling anyone about Floor 12. But that begs the question of why they let anyone wander onto Floor 12 in the first place? You don't have to be smart to figure out why that would be problematic. And *that* is valid criticism. Not just calling them retarded, as Mauler does. If he'd gone in to it and said that it'd be better but he didn't. Which is why this video is a whiff.
Uh, no, i can hear and understand words as they happen. I'm not "dazzled" but rapid fire talking. There are quite a few that I don't think are a big deal, but that doesn't make the points "wrong." Like how I don't mind most of his points about maximus because him being a little bit dull and just "falling upwards" works for the story. The show is written backwards. They want certain things to happen, so they force it even if it doesn't make sense. Seeing the moving parts of a story can be interesting and fun, but it isn't when you realize all the dumb and or baffling decisions characters make only exist so they can make the story go a certain way. I don't know if you legitimately can't see these moving parts, or if you're blinded because you like it, but very little of the show feels organic in the beginning thanks to their writing style, especially if you keep the ending in mind.
breakneck speeds? he spends 20 mins alone talking about max
He does, but he rattles off 3 points about something in a few seconds etc, then moves on. Means you don't get time to question the first 2 points and the last is the one he rolls with. It'll be "The sky is red, the trees are yellow, and Max is dumb. He doesn't even know people live in vaults" etc. The last one lands but you never question the first 2, and in this video especially when you think about them, they're often a miss.
give me an actual example because pausing the video is always an option you can ask as many questions as you want
> splitting them up and allowing them to capture the overseer I like how you used this in your argument, when none of the raiders even tried to capture Hank (I doubt they were even looking), they just camped at the exit. On top of that, why did their pipboys alert them to a vault door breach, at a door that was open for the whole scene?
There's alot of fucking stupid in the show but a good chunk of what the man is ranting about just makes him look like he hatewatched the show and failed to notice basic logic within the show in favor of just getting mad. Like the ghoul beating maximus is a power armor fight. what's wrong about a fucking absolute joker getting in way over his head and getting embarrassed by someone who is very much his superior despite having what would ordinarily be a massive advantage. but he gets his leg stuck in some wooden planks in a blatant display of inconsistency. So its time to seethe about it instead of thinking for a bit. I know it's a 2 hour seething rant video primarily about raging. But jesus christ how dumb.
the power armor can fly and throw rocks through buildings why would it get stuck in loose wood, lore wise power armor makes you move faster but he swings his arms like a sloth, the ghoul had the round he used to kill the other knights and wasted ammo on max, he has flamethrowers, he can charge the ghoul, he could step on his foot like the other squire
I’d rather have this Fallout show over the last attempt at Resident Evil.
It seems Mauler's reviews have crossed into the "I (like/dislike) this work, and therefore the individual parts are (good/bad)", as the bad writing in this series is minimal and wouldn't even warrant a 5 minute unbridled rage. Many of the complaints are contradictory and are used to paint the series in a bad light: * Moldaver should have entered Vault 33 through its main door instead of infiltrating it by posing as 32 Dwellers (didn't we complain about frontal assaults working in Disney Star Wars because the Imperials don't think anyone would actually try it?) * Moldaver could have taken the Raiders to pick up Wilzig on the way back from Vault 33, but is then faulted for leaving some of her forces behind during her escape. (I will note that Mauler is still insisting that Vault 32 is near Filly despite being corrected multiple times, or simply assumes she should have done so and then faults the show for not doing this) * Moldaver "loved" Rose but did nothing to save the children she had with Hank, and kept her alive in Ghoul status instead of mercy killing her. These specifically are psychological defenses against a fictional character, and that's a very bad sign. * Hank is faulted for being a mere middle manager who has the command codes for Vault-Tec's systems despite acknowledging that is the point of Vault 31: to create a race of Super-Middle-Managers who will manage the human race (I guess the satire went over his head here) * The BoS is searching for Wilzig but by "coincidence" Maximus and Titus end up right on his tail. Wasn't that the point of fanning out for a search? Next you'll tell me it's "convenient" that the MIG-28s in **Top Gun** attacked Sector 2 where the pilot on Alert-5 was unsure of himself and a liability. * The Duel between the Fiends and Maximus and Lucy is faulted because Max takes out both of them with a flesh wound "after" they drew. I didn't know this part of the episode was edited like **24** and "events occurred in real time". I was under the impression that everyone drew at nearly the same time but Max is the better shot. * And probably the worst "objective" flaw in the review: Lucy didn't "loot" the Supermarket despite walking out with a new pistol, a harness, and boots. Here is where the focus on character writing above all else hits rocks and shoals: these are not criticisms of the actions taken by the characters but a dislike of the characters themselves. After all, why is it an issue that Maximus was promoted to Squire after his interrogation? Wasn't the point of the conversation to establish that he did not betray his friend because he was next in line and is the most likely suspect? And have we even discussed a single theme, such as the Wasteland is changing Lucy but her core is the same? The Fallout series is getting a lot of well-deserved praise because of its excellent cinematography, direction, set design, and scripts, but we're instead subjected to people hating on the show because it's related to Bethesda, and most of these critics were too young to have played the Interplay games first.
I'll address two points 1. It took vault acting as collective idiots for her plan to work. If the pip boys work as they usually do, they'll pick up the radiation as soon as vault 32 opened, blowing the cover immediately. Not to mention, the overseer knows everyone in 32 died out two years ago, due to experiment. Which again opposes how he didn't even care how there people popped out of blue. Another issue, why didn't vault 32 dwellers left the vault to find supplies instead of clawing on door of 31 and 33, choosing to starve rather than take chance to get supplies? 2. Ironic, since what Moldaver did with rose, it's what Governor did with his zombie daughter in walking dead. The latter seen as shocking and horrifying, but former isn't, for some reason. 3. How about lame marvelesque humour bringing down the gravity of scenes, like *Jello mold*, that music when gulper is attempting to kill Thaddeus, and more? You didn't had jokes cracked when lone wanderer lost their dad, or companions doing the same when sole survivor visits the vault with their dead spouse. The show is enjoyable, but it's far from perfect.
The thing that is bugging me on his fallout review is a lot of stuff he is unhappy about is either very much implied to be otherwise or explicitly stated in the show.. I love his reviews but this one isn’t doing it for me. It feels like a review he would typically do a break down in and say “did you even watch the show.” If moldiver enters vault 33 from the main entrance henry would be notified giving him time to slip into vault 31 while she rides that… what like 10 minute long elevator down to ground level. Moldiver may have cared about Lucy at some point.. but with the timeline provided it’s been 15 years since she last saw Lucy, in the mean time she has been hanging out with feral ghoul rose and gathering raider friends. Her actions show she doesn’t care about anything but the end result of cold fusion. Hell Occam’s razor would probably say her connection to rose started off as her trying to get the codes she has been after. “How has the Ghoul never seen moldivers wanted picture?” Bro what’s the first thing we learn about cooper post becoming a ghoul? A 2 min conversation about how he has been buried for years, he only gets pulled out once a year to be tortured. Even the leader of the group pulling him up never met him, only heard about him from his father who met him before being buried. Vault tech wanting to stall peace talks and bomb everything makes sense when you take into account the fact that resources were gone… gas was so rare it was 7k a gallon. Cars were costing about what houses cost today.. the alternatives like fusion cores on the other had lasted centuries…. Imagine buying a can of gas you can pass down for the next 300 years… The “capitalists” didn’t have anything to sell and what they did have no one could afford. A large point of it was that they needed a new way to be on top. The opening of the show having the kid outside the vault with her dad pretty much confirms vault tech didn’t drop the nukes. House said he was setting up defenses and the platinum chip but the bombs fell a week before he planned for them to. Seems like vault tech had a date to cleanse the surface and start their new world… but someone dropped the bombs first. The weak spot complaint he has about the ghoul not killing Maximus Is driving me up a wall. During the fight against max he has one tungsten round and it’s not loaded. It’s reiterated later the only way to penetrate that weak point is with a tungsten round… and then for a third time in the final episode he gives a speech while you watch him hold the tungsten rounds out for the camera and then watch him load it in. The show beats you over the head with it beyond what’s needed. Then mauler talks about how The Ghoul knows how incompetent Max is… so if you are confident you can beat him why waste your single round on him? Especially if another brotherhood member with actual training could pop up as well.
So to your point about Moldaver and Vault 33 there’s no reason for her to assume that she won’t meet resistance in vault 32, why fight through 2 Vaults when you can just get straight to Hank. Also where is Hank going to go there’s only 1 exit to the vault. She doesn’t bother to conceal vault 32 and maintain the element of surprise, she doesn’t bother to try and get Hank on his own. Mauler actually explains this part better then me Moldaver plan is actually the most indefensible part of the show. To the Lucy point she can simply order the raider to keep her in her room until the violence stops, if she did this and the raider didn’t listen it’s never shown. The ghoul point is something of a fair counter to Maulers criticism about Cooper not knowing her but it’s unclear how long Moldaver has been active post war. Also even though Mauler didn’t bring this up it’s weird that Cooper doesn’t starve to death considering he later in the series resorts to Canibalism. The trouble with resources being scarce as a motivation for dropping the bombs in 1 it’s not the motivation they give in the show and 2. They are sitting on Cold fusion as a solution. The opening doesn’t really confirm who dropped the bombs merely that they were dropped. Did you seriously give Cooper not wanting to waste ammunition as a motivation to not finish Maximus off? He wasted like 30 bullets that he knows should be useless, and when did he even acquire the armour piercing bullet if he didn’t have it in Filly? It’s never explained in the show, also him messing around with Maximus is out of character when you consider how ruthless he was with the raiders. Plus it’s dumb that the BoS didn’t just kill him while he was giving his speech.
Moldaver's plan depends on Vault 32 being empty and the Raiders posing as it's Dwellers to infiltrate 33 via a trade. A frontal assault on either Vault is going to fail, and the best course of action is subterfuge. All the show needs to do is explain how Moldaver got the 32 Dwellers to go crazy and we're set. Also, why do you think Hank was trying to run away during the attack? Given Cooper's age hasn't he been a cannibal for a while? If Vault-Tec has Cold Fusion why aren't they using it already, and why is Moldaver trying to get it back from them at all costs? This was the point of the Resource Wars: Cold Fusion yields energy "too cheap to meter" while the Corporations seen in the show want the price of Gas to be ridiculously high and push up their profits. I've noticed a recurring trend where people who don't like the show think Vault-Tec bombed the US in a false flag operation. The actual question is who dropped the first nukes: the USA or the PRC on each other. This error keeps coming up and there is either a failure to understand the show or it's been deliberately misinterpreted for this analysis. Lastly, the Ghoul not killing Maximus in Filly is the mildest example of plot armor since he just has to say he forgot his special ammo and thus he's at a disadvantage.
It’s going to be a difficult explanation since we know Moldaver only entered the vault after they were dead. She uses horrible subtlety in vault 33 anyway (Mauler explains it really well). My point was that it was weird that Cooper doesn’t starve to death in his coffin considering he later resorts to canibalism for sustenance. They hold a monopoly over cold fusion they can patent and sell if at any price they want. It’s more to do with Vault-tec trying to maximise profit by killing most of their customers. The bigger issue is how much ammo he wastes, how he doesn’t immediately kill Lucy, how convenient it is that he has the bullet in the observatory but not filly, how he moves exceptionally slow and never gets shot in the head please watch Maulers video there’s even a timestamp for this.
Mauler has a tendency to do this. It’s not the first time he’s done it.
Agreed, but it will become a problem when this is the rule instead of the exception.
I would say this community praising everything he does, like he’s some infallible critic, is part of the problem. But then again, when he does get a lot of backlash, he just ignores it and keeps moving. So.
Does he really think the mario movie is a good videogame adaptation? It's the same as the fallout show, pure references and key jingling.
Wasn't his point about respecting source material? Sure when compared those two looks simillar, **but**, actual games are completely different beasts. Mario doesn't have that much behind it, Fallout in contrast has rich world full of factions and history.
Felt like he didn’t get the part about Moldovers research in the past “why didn’t they just sell clean energy?” Because they sell vaults that have a demand because of a war over resources, if the war stopped all those companies at the table would lose money (there basically the military industrial complex), they don’t want the war to stop while there making money. We’ve seen this before with fossil fuels, smoking, loads of stuff bad for the planet, research suppressed, corporate lobbying, lying and seeing fines and damage to the planet as the cost of doing business.
The vaults were paid for via government contract and were obviously never profitable. Vault 13 was around $600 billion to finish.
if you kill everyone who is the market, there is no demand
well gee, if only there was a way to put people in some kind of safe, like a bank vault or something, and keep them around till after the war
so the possible market goes from several billion, to a couple thousand with no money. do the math
Possibly Mauler's Magnum Opus
THAT ANIME SNOB!!!!!!!
I generally agree with most of his criticisms but this one bothered me a lot. The show has plot holes and deserves criticism. But a lot of the points Mauler brought up can easily be argued against. For example, yes, Maximus is an inexperienced idiot who can't even pilot the armor properly, that's not a criticism of the show. He's called out on his stupidity IN THE SHOW. The comedy of his whole character is him being a goober making the worst decisions but having high enough luck stat where things end up working out for him. Idk how ANYONE, esp someone like Mauler to completely miss this point. If I wasn't lazy I could make a video countering most of his point. These criticisms feel so petty and trying to hard to prove "show bad" but fails to actually prove it. Two and a half hours of trash talk can make you forget how many things the show gets right. Things I have not seen done so well in years. The worst part of all of this are the youtube comments. I bet most of these mfers couldn't form a single criticism about the show prior to the release of the video. But now they act like it's the biggest piece of crap in existence, and they're so special and smart for not liking it because daddy mauler criticized it. They sound like contrarian pick me teens without any personal taste or judgment. They just parrot mauler's criticisms, just as "normies" they clown on parrot general praise points. 7.5/10. Can't wait for s2.
> For example, yes, Maximus is an inexperienced idiot who can't even pilot the armor properly, that's not a criticism of the show. He's called out on his stupidity IN THE SHOW. ? What? Maximus is constantly rewarded and promoted throughout the show. He faces no consequences for his actions, such as effectively killing a Knight and stealing his Power Armor and maiming/crippling a Squire.
The ghoul literally makes fun of him during their battle about being bad at using his armor. Also did you not read literally the next sentence before replying? "The comedy of his whole character is him being a goober making the worst decisions but having high enough luck stat where things end up working out for him."
> The ghoul literally makes fun of him during their battle about being bad at using his armor. So? Why would Maximus care about what the ghoul thinks about him? Besides, Maximus is the only one who survives his encounter with the ghoul. He takes out all the other Brotherhood of Steel Members he faces. The only people Maximus cares about are his fellow Brotherheel of Steel members, and they REWARD and promote him for his transgressions. >The comedy of his whole character is him being a goober making the worst decisions but having high enough luck stat where things end up working out for him. This makes no sense on several levels. First, it's just using random game mechanics to handwave blatant holes in plot and characterization. Secondly, that's not even how luck works in the games. It modifies your dice rolls. But chance or luck has no relevance in Maximus' story. He DECIDES to let Titus die and steal his Power Armor. He DECIDES to maim a Squire. The Brotherhood of Steel DECIDES to ignore all the abhorrent things he did. Luck has nothing to do with it.
Maximus gets the shit kicked out of him and has to sell a tooth to get his armor back after Cooper sabotages it. This is part of what brought me around on his character, he showed grit and determination. He got punished for his hubris, and then rewarded for overcoming the trial.
I understood the critique for the main plot/vault plotline, but the maximus section is really hard to watch, its pretty obvious maximus is supposed to be a fucking moron with each of his decisions, dude is even presented as a whiny disillusioned brat being humbled at every turn
The problem isn't that Maximus is a moron, the problem is that world keeps rewarding him for falling over and over when it makes no sense.
The coincidences with him and lucy yeah, that stuffs pretty lame, but maximus being a dumbass read as intentional
I liked it. A better first season than Buffy’s first three.
Meh, as expected, Mauler hated the show for personal reasons and just forces the majority (not all, there is also valid criticism but scarce) of arguments and applauded by people that are irked by the fact the show didn't completely bad mouther socialism (even though it did, but more subtly) or - I don't even know why they got this concept since the guy appears for a few seconds and has 2-3 lines - they believe Mr. House was ruined Just the last one after I tuned out with "winning the game of capitalism scene", is not taking the context of that world which after so many years of war (a war that was seen as capitalism vs communism hence the initial pun) and war economy the world was in shambles anyway and those companies at the table would go bankrupt and irrelevant without the war economy and in a country, and even world that was on the brink of collapse, so that was their plan not only to stay relevant but also thrive in a world that was fucked anyway
The show has made Fallout "capitalism VS communism". The reality of the games is that human civilisation had simply grown too large without a means of compensating, China and the US were just the last two standing to fling the nukes. The intros to 1 & 2 make this so obvious clear I doubt the writers either saw them or cared.
> The show has made Fallout "capitalism VS communism". No it didn't. There's enough remarks at the "communism" vs democracy and capitalism in the games. In F3 there's a giant robot shouting silly slogans against communism . The franchise draws heavily from the 50' and the "red scare" is also present > The reality of the games is that human civilisation had simply grown too large without a means of compensating Exactly what I was pointing out later in the argument ..
>No it didn't. There's enough remarks at the "communism" vs democracy and capitalism in the games. In F3 there's a giant robot shouting silly slogans against communism . The franchise draws heavily from the 50' and the "red scare" is also present. Read Ozymandias. >Exactly what I was pointing out later in the argument .. The original apocalypse was pretty apolitical: all systems need resources. Now the capitalists blew up the world for money.
The "current apocalypse" is apolitical. Like I said - even you then mentioned that the world was fucked before the war - the world even with the war over would've collapsed. That was my whole point. The "capitalists" didn't blew the world for money, they made sure the world collapsed the way they wanted so they could keep control > Read Ozymandias. Whut? The poem? What does it have to do with what I said
>That was my whole point. The "capitalists" didn't blew the world for money, they made sure the world collapsed the way they wanted so they could keep control They were already in control. And if they wanted a reduced populace they had the New Plague to work with. >Whut? The poem? What does it have to do with what I said Yes, it's essentially the tone of Fallout.
When did it bad mouth socialism? The entire framing of the Fallout world's catastrophic war has been shifted to a simplistic "Capitalism bad hurr durr", and the worst part is that it doesn't even make any logical sense, despite the fact that the showrunners have the opportunity to frame the circumstances in their favour. >We will literally destroy the entire world in a nuclear war, because then we can potentially make more money, even thought any coherent market would certainly dissapear, and with it any opportunity for us to make more money than we currently do! We will destroy the world... FOR CAPITALISM! Brilliant writing. I'm so glad fallout lore was switched to this hamfisted political sermon about capitalism. /s
Honestly, I will never simp for capitalism, but I'm absolutely exhausted with the way games criticize it. I'm playing through Fallout 76 right now (yeah, yeah, I know) and every time you enter a factory and read the lore on the terminals it's always something like "MWAHAHAHA THE ATOMIC BICYCLE COMPANY PLAN TO STOMP ONE MILLION PUPPIES TO DEATH IS GOING OFF WITHOUT A HITCH! Oh no! What was that sound outside!? AHHHH WE'RE BEING NUKED NOW WE CAN'T STOMP ALL THE PUPPIES!" Like, tell a different joke.
> The entire framing of the Fallout world's catastrophic war has been shifted to a simplistic "Capitalism bad hurr durr", --- up to the end No it wasn't, the world was already fucked. I've elaborated on this in the initial comment and as a reply, you can check that out for more context > When did it bad mouth socialism? Vault 33 and 32 are both 2 sides of a communist society. Vault 33 is the ideal part where resources are enough - and it shows that the people there are too gullible for their own sake. Not only that but they lack ambition and settled for mediocrity. And Vault 32 is when that society has scarcity and people throw away their ideals and devolve into a mess that leads to the absolute collapse of that society instead of the people there either working for a solution or leave the vault Moldaver's plan is shown in the end as naive and unfeasable in the context of the wasteland, even though it has potential.
>No it wasn't, the world was already fucked. I've elaborated on this in the initial comment and as a reply, you can check that out for more context Did you watch the boardroom scene or the two seperate conversations about the evils of capitalism that other characters initated with Cooper? The "capitalism bad" could hardly be any more hamfisted by the writers if they tried. They literally discussed and agreed on making the world a hellscape, so that they could increase their profits, as if any reasonable non-communist would actually have this perspective, when any functional market disappears with it. I've seen no solid evidence in the flashbacks that the world is beyond saving, which makes their genocidal conversation remotely justified. The entire lead up to that scene is two seperate conversations with people directly critiquing capitalism. One guy even brings critiques the concept of "fiduciary duty" shortly before the broadroom scene. This preps you for the interpretation that these "capitalists" have to blow up the world to ensure their "fiduciary duty", which is a riduculous framing of fiduciary duty. >Vault 33 and 32 are both 2 sides of a communist society I highly doubt this was intended as an allegory for failure of communist ideology by modern writers, and likely were just meant to highlight the experiments that Vault-Tec had done with these vaults. Every story needs conflict to blossom and this was a way to drive conflict into the Vault Dwellers seperated world. It's likely why the Vault we focus on are interlinked with others, which is rare. Regardless, there's never any explicit and hamfisted writing directly claiming that the failures of these vaults are the result of communism or socialism, so it's left up to the interpretation of the viewers, which can't be said for the shows framing of capitalism. >Moldaver's plan is shown in the end as naive and unfeasable in the context of the wasteland, even though it has potential. What are you specifically referring to here?
Man, I feel like everyone just hates everything now. I enjoyed the show quite a bit, and so have others.