Fallout New Vegas director Josh Sawyer has praised the ongoing Amazon Prime TV show adaptation, calling it one of the best” adaptations of a video game yet.
Originally released in 2024, the ongoing series is currently in production on its third season. Season 2 of the show took fans to New Vegas, building on the game while attempting to not make any of the game’s ending canon.
After adapting the world of Fallout New Vegas, the game’s director has commented on the quality of the ongoing series. Speaking on The 41st Precinct’s Human Can Opener podcast, Sawyer praised the show and how it adapts the Fallout universe into a TV format.
“I think it’s an amazing adaptation,” Sawyer said when asked about the show. “Honestly, I know the bar is not always very high for TV or film adaptations of video games, but I think it’s one of the best that I’ve seen, certainly.”
New Vegas has been praised alongside season one of The Last of Us as the peak of video game adaptations. I mean, coming decades after the horrendous Uwe Boll video game adaptations or Paul W.S. Anderson’s better-but-still-atrocious flicks, Fallout’s quality is nothing short of a miracle. (We still have horrible adaptations. Borderlands, anyone?)
While Sawyer does thoroughly enjoy the TV version of Fallout, he does say he doesn’t agree with every decision the show made. As the creator of many of these factions and characters, he would’ve gone in a different direction.
“I would say that there are sort of critiques or, like, personal things where I would say, ‘I don’t know if I would have taken the plot in that direction or I don’t know if I would have done that with that character’,” he said. “But that’s, like, any writer is going to look at something and be like, “I don’t know if I’d do that’. I don’t think they’re real criticisms.”
One of the major worries of Fallout Season 2 was its handling of Mr House, and Sawyer says actor “Justin Theroux did an amazing job”. Sawyer said: “I just love him in everything, and I think he was a great Mr. House, personally. I mean, René Auberjonois is sort of, like, I think he did an amazing job as the original voice actor. Rest in peace. I just remember growing up, I’d see him on Benson, like a sitcom from way long ago and then Odo in Deep Space 9. So, having him be Mr. House was amazing.”
Of course, not everything is perfect in the Fallout TV show. There are minor inconsistencies and some areas look a little different. One example Sawyer gives is the rotation of Dinky the T-Rex, which faces the wrong way in the show so that Lucy can provide covering fire.
“I understand why they did it,” he says. “I wasn’t personally really bent out of shape about it. Maybe people will say I’m a traitor to Fallout now or something. But I don’t know, like, I thought it was a very good representation of a lot of the iconic stuff that you see it in. I am very interested in where it’s going to do. I don’t have any insight into the future of it, but no, like, I think it’s probably one of the best adaptations of a video game franchise I’ve seen to TV or film. And [I’m] looking forward to the next season!”
Fallout Season 3, as far as we can tell, is going to focus heavily on the plot of the cancelled Van Buren game with Cooper’s ongoing storyline. Additionally, the series will seemingly have more scenes set in New Vegas while the Brotherhood of Steel storyline appears to be bringing in part of the Commonwealth. It’s, well, a lot, but hopefully it’ll all come together well.
As for the future of Fallout games, there are currently years of updates for Fallout 76 in development. Additionally, remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are reportedly in development as Microsoft pushes for faster sequels. However, as designer Bruce Nesmith tells us, that could result in disappointment.
