One reader praised Amazon’s adaptation of Fallout, noting its different approach to storytelling from other video games.
What was interesting to me about the TV show The Last Of Us was that many people, myself included, thought it was much better than the game, especially when it came to dialogue and acting. That’s despite the fact that The Last Of Us games are acclaimed as one of the best story-based titles of all time. Still, when you stand next to a high-end TV show (one produced by the same staff), the difference is very noticeable.
No matter how hard a game tries, it seems like it can never match the quality of traditional live-action productions. I think one of the issues is the length of the match. The length of the movie is his two hours, but video game writers have to create scripts that are much longer than that. The Last Of Us Part 2 is about 30 hours long. So obviously it’s much harder to maintain quality and have a story that justifies that length.
Another problem is the actors. Sometimes it feels like there are only 6 of them in the game. When you look at the credits of Troy Baker and Jennifer Hale, it seems hard to find a game where they aren’t in it. It’s not that they’re necessarily villains, but they’re not top-notch either. Publishers often hire famous Hollywood actors, but they usually only request them over the phone. For them, video games are just a quick job in between real roles, and they know the scripts aren’t great (and they’re very expensive, so that’s a big problem when it comes to the overall budget).
The Last Of Us is so good that the difference between the show and the game isn’t that big and won’t make you stop playing the game, but you’ll see the same differences as the Fallout TV show. Also, because some Fallout games are terrible. The story is suddenly like night and day.
Fallout is a great show that anyone can enjoy, even if they don’t have any gaming knowledge. But the game is… well, it’s a Bethesda game. That means a cool open world, lots of customization and interactivity, a great he mod, and a story that absolutely no one cares about. I still don’t understand what the story of Fallout 4 is, and I spent 150 hours on that game, but the same goes for Oblivion and Skyrim, and I think a lot of other people do too. I think.
In Bethesda’s case, the script actually seems to get worse as it progresses. The Starfield characters are so completely forgettable that I never know their names. Except maybe the main female character might be Sarah? Fallout 4 has a better character, but that’s just a comparison, and she’s a sexy French girl who gets a female human body and instantly falls in love with her. Many of the characters, like the robots, are dull and some are downright embarrassing.
I’m not going to pretend I didn’t enjoy Curie’s mission, but can you imagine something like that being played straight on a show? The difference between the game and the childish one is pretty drastic, and I think every Fallout fan is now wishing the game had been as smart and funny as the show.
The closest one so far is Fallout: New Vegas, which is the only modern game not made by Bethesda. So based on Starfield, I don’t know if we’ll ever get there.
The irony here is that for decades Hollywood felt that video games were too good to be true, treating them as low-effort moneymakers, without realizing that they were kind of right. I can’t go in. But now that the storytelling in games has improved, it’s clear how far behind the game still is, and that it may never be able to close that gap.
Written by Reader Cranston
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