As much as it may be to the purists, it is no coincidence that two of the most radical, daring, visually striking and quality series of recent times are based on video games. If
The Last of Us
last year confirmed the narrative solidity displayed by some of the best written games, this year
Fallout
(Amazon Prime Video) perfectly exemplifies the attractiveness of some of the best interactive worlds, ready to be exploited by scriptwriters eager for good foreign scenarios in which to set their plots once the well of comics seems to dry up.
With a superb production design that makes good the maxim of avoiding digital and betting on conventional special effects when it comes to achieving visual packaging, the atmosphere of the game is finished off with that bucolic music from the fifties that was already present in the game. game, amalgamating a
collage
that, despite being ambitious and eclectic, works like a Swiss clock. The performances (special mention to Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins), the main plot, the not too serious tone... everything works, everything seems in balance in the series by Todd Howard and Jonathan Nolan. The visual identity deserves a separate point: it is so refined and so overwhelming that it makes the viewer unable to believe that it was cheaper than, for example,
The Three-Body Problem
.
The series is great, yes, and yet, there is one thing more important than the series itself. And when books, comics or biographies are adapted to audiovisual media, it is done almost unanimously respecting the story on which they are based. That is precisely what
The Last of Us
did , faithfully reproducing the characters, the conflicts between them, and even tracing plans from the original game.
Fallout
, however, inaugurates another type of adaptive form for real action. Following in the wake of animated productions such as
Arcane
or
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
,
Fallout
does not transfer a specific story from a specific game, but rather uses the atmosphere of the game as a setting to plant new characters and new plots. He does not adapt a work, but his world. And it is the best option, because the stories of the
Fallout
games are not their strong point, while their setting is unbeatable. Let's not kid ourselves: it's not hard to imagine the writers rubbing their hands when they enter the writing room to see how to play (pun intended) with a world in which the game developers have been working for more than 25 years; a crazy scenario in which cowboys, mutants, templars, nuclear armor, killer robots, cannibal thieves, giant insects, radioactive zombies, aliens - in some secondary missions - and practically anything that has occurred to any science fiction writer coexist. pulp
from
the last century.
Fidelity to the story makes watching
The Last of Us
more like playing
The Last of Us
than watching
Fallout
feels like playing
Fallout
. Which does not make one better than the other, but it shows that this double way of adapting to series or films the two halves that make up a video game, story and world, (technically we would talk about embedded narrative and emergent narrative, but it is not a question of giving a class of hermeneutics of video games), guarantees us that in the coming years we will have many stories, characters or scenarios to feed the transmedia ecosystem in which popular culture lives immersed. Because, as they say in the series, war never changes. But the adaptations, apparently, yes.
_