Fallout Show Proves Original Stories Within A Beloved World Is A Successful Adaptation Formula

Live-action videogame adaptations are finally getting their big break in Hollywood, thanks to the home runs supplied by HBO’s The Last of Us and, more recently, Amazon’s Fallout series. Prior to Naughty Dog and Bethesda’s success on the small screen, the misaligned Assassin’s Creed movie and throwaway blockbusters, such as Ramage and Pixels, were perfect examples of half-baked cash grabs helmed by writers without an understanding of the source material.

Luckily, stellar animated depictions of popular videogame IPs were executed alongside the silver screen’s garbage in the League of Legends original Arcane and the four-season Castlevania season that recently spawned a Nocturne spin-off. Netflix is home to both animated triumphs, with the former’s second season due to premiere this year and more rumored chapters in the pipeline for the latter horror. Even The Super Mario Bros. Movie managed to outrun the adaptation curse thanks to its vibrant, fast-paced adventure and passable comedy.

There’s a formula present in these adaptation wins, and future variants should take note of the recipe.

Expand The Universe, Don’t Repeat The Same Story

Except for HBO’s nine-episode The Last of Us series – which delivered a relatively faithful account of the 2013 game – Arcane, Castlevania, and Fallout all embarked on original stories with fresh characters to carve a unique narrative within a pre-established world. Black Isle Studios and then Bethesda spent over two decades detailing the tone, charisma, and aesthetic of the Wasteland, and gamers fell in love with its tongue-in-cheek humor, its Vault Dwellers and Ghouls, Dogmeat, and the atomicpunk design accompanied by a nostalgic, old-timey soundtrack.

The same approach was applied to (yet another) Netflix animation in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which took the lore and neo-futuristic style from the titular tabletop roleplaying game and CD Projekt Red’s 2020 action-RPG, Cyberpunk 2077. Speaking in Edge Magazine, Strange Scaffold studio head, Xalavier Nelson Jr, pointed out Edgerunners’ ingenuity, by identifying ‘what players actually like about its source material: the vibe, and the world.’ The animation’s drive to create new character narratives and world lore ended up being honored in the best way. The game’s DLC Phantom Liberty included Edgerunners’ ‘Cyberpsychosis’ idea, which is a testament to the creativity of the animation’s writers and their understanding of the IP.

Within the same space, the managing director of Ubisoft Film & TV Paris, Hélène Juguet, applauded Edgerunners’ idea that was eventually implemented in the game, aspiring ‘The dream is to make something that’s so cool and so good that they want to use it inside the game…that’s the end game in all of this, for me.’ Juguet also discussed the birth of ‘world architects’ who will act as ‘showrunners’ of the videogames industry: ‘…where you don’t write just a novel of a videogame, but you architect a world with rules that can be expressed in many different ways.’ This overview was the very thing lacking in the Assassin’s Creed film’s original take.

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Arcane And Castlevania Are Prime Examples Of A Working Formula

Amazon’s ‘Vaultie’ Lucy, the Brotherhood of Steel’s Maximus, and Walter Goggins’ laser-focused Cooper ‘The Ghoul’ Howard from Fallout, brought an extra layer of personality, lore, and morals to the brilliantly bleak, Nuka Cola-fuelled franchise. It built upon the game’s beloved foundation and expanded the universe instead of trying to warp the Mysterious Stranger’s story into a realistic version from the get-go (he may still appear in season 2) and annoying a lot of fans in the process. Fallout: New Vegas fans certainly had a go at the series for allegedly retconning the spin-off title, but this approach was in favor of changing minor details to support the telling of Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet’s unique interpretation for television.

Those unfamiliar with the existence of the online battle arena, League of Legends, would generally be unaware that Arcane belonged to that property. Its premise is expertly crafted, brimming with interesting, complex characters and only peppered with lore from the game – something to keep fans and newcomers happy. Castlevania’s voice cast was cherry-picked to perfection, and again, loosely based on Konami’s Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse and the Belmont family tree. But it retained the gothic, seductive nature of the source material without trying to produce a western-animated carbon copy of Trevor’s fight against Count Dracula.

Instead of trying to restructure an existing premise into something translatable for film or television, using the industry’s talented ocean of writers and gamers alike to bring something exclusive to life is certainly the method that’s put the aforementioned projects on a pedestal above all others. The Last of Us’ second season will likely follow Naughty Dog’s harrowing successor with loyalty and will surely nail the landing once again. It’s a welcome fluke in the system, but future adaptations would do well to stick to the successful blueprint for Fallout’s acclaim.

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