The series to Fallout finally takes the characters to the iconic gambling metropolis New Vegas in the 2nd season. If it were up to the writers, the first season would have taken place there. However, there was opposition from Bethesda.
If you ask Fallout players about their favorite installment, you often hear: Fallout New Vegas.
The part that was not developed by Bethesda itself, but by Obsidian Entertainment, remains very popular to this day. This is partly due to an important location, namely the city of New Vegas, which is located in the Mojave Desert.
There, the mysterious Mr. House rules, and there are many peculiar stories and characters to meet. Season 1 of the Amazon series ended with a panoramic shot of New Vegas and served as a teaser for the continuation.
Many fans must have been pleased that a significant part of the 2nd season actually took place in the gambling metropolis. However, the writers behind the series had wanted to move the story there much earlier.
There was opposition from the developer Bethesda Game Studios and its head Todd Howard.
“It’s a tricky matter”
Why was Todd Howard against New Vegas? In a video interview with Kinda Funny Games on YouTube, the studio head talks about the early work on the Amazon series. According to him, the writing team had already toyed with the idea of having the story set in New Vegas for season 1.
Howard had concerns:
I said: “I would hold that back. That’s such a typical feature of Fallout – let’s establish the base first, then we can go to New Vegas.
The reason for the hesitation was partly due to the reputation that New Vegas enjoys as a game and location. Howard requested that the city be shown only in season 2. Ultimately, he was satisfied with the result and implementation in season 2:
I think they did really well because it’s a tricky matter. You have a cult place, a popular game, certain storylines that end differently, very strong characters … and there are countless ways to mess that up. So that can be quite a minefield, right? And I think they did great.
Indeed, New Vegas appears very faithful in the series and must have evoked fond memories of players’ adventures in the city. However, Howard and his team wanted to ensure that the events of the series and the game did not contradict each other:
We spent a lot of time saying we don’t want to contradict anything that happened in the games, but want to see if there are areas that the writers really want to focus on.
Especially how Mr. House is used in the series would have excited Howard – just like his actor Justin Theroux.
Narratively, it was worth saving this highlight to first establish the foundations and build great expectations with the end of season 1. Were you impressed by New Vegas in the series? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. A creative mind behind the underlying game has mixed feelings: New Vegas is the setting of Fallout Season 2, but the author of the game sees a problem
