The Ringer-Verse - ‘Fallout’ Season 2, Episode 4 Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Viva New Vegas! Ben Lindbergh and Daniel Chin climb into their T-45 armor to analyze the fourth episode of the second season of 'Fallout,' "The Demon in the Snow." After sharing their overall takes on the episode, they check in on the Vault dwellers, Maximus and the Brotherhood, and Coop/the Ghoul and Lucy and examine how the show's core characters and factions are reacting to the stress of wasteland life. They also reflect on the Brotherhood's lax security, the deathclaw design, and 'Fallout' lore revelations before discussing what they'd like to see in the second half of the season. Finally, Ben talks to Joe Sanabria, the lead artist for 'Fallout: New Vegas,' about bringing the game's look to life, how the Strip translated to TV, and how 'New Vegas' would be different if it were made (or remade) today.Intro (0:00)‘Fallout’ Season 2, Episode 4 reactions (2:55)Vault dwellers recap (5:27)Maximus and the Brotherhood (19:45)Coop/the Ghoul and Lucy (33:58)Interview with Joe Sanabria (1:01:11)Outro (1:29:42)Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Daniel Chin and Joe SanabriaProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up? It's Todd McShay, host of the McShay Show at The Ringer and Spotify. We're building this thing up and I couldn't be more excited to be back, talking college football and everything NFL draft with the most informed audience out there. That's you. My co-host, Steve Mention, I will be with you three times a week throughout the football season with all the latest news, analysis, and scouting intel from around the league. For even more insight, subscribe to my newsletter, the McShay report to access my mickey. drafts, big boards, tape breakdowns, and other exclusive scouting content, you can't get anywhere else. It's going to be a great season. And I hope you'll be with us at the McShea Show every step

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Everyone knows winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need weather tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy. about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. What's up, big boys? Welcome into the ringer. Your nexus feed for all things fandom. You know what they say. Wherever you end up, it's where you belong. So clearly, you belong with button mesh.

and with me, your host, Ben Lindbergh, someone else who belongs with me, my co-host for this episode, a man who does not have to apologize for not killing someone. Ring our staff writer, Daniel Chin, welcome back, D.C. Hello, hello, good to be back. Missed you last week. You and Van have sort of an alternating episode set up going this season. It's sort of like Fallout itself. We check in with certain characters some weeks.

We skip over others. We return to them. So now we will get your thoughts on the season as a whole. And unlike Maximus, we do have a plan this week. We will be covering fallout season two, episode four, The Demon in the Snow, directed by Stephen Williams, and written by Jane Espinson, a prolific creator of nerd culture TV.

Check out the IMDB, writing credits ranging from Deep Space Nine to Firefly, to Buffy, to Battlestar, to Thrones, to Jessica Jones, to Foundation. So we'll give our big picture thoughts on this episode. We'll go beat by beat through the three major six. settings and character groupings, and we'll close with a few questions for the second half of the season. And then I'll have a quick conversation with the man who designed the original New Vegas, Josinabria, the lead artist for Fallout New Vegas, and the art director of its DLCs. So, a lot of Fallout episodes come full circle. Last week, we started and ended with Thaddeus

in the Sasparilla bottling plant. This week, we start and end with a death claw, and someone saying, Oki-Doki, what else is new? And this installment marks a major milestone. We have hit the halfway point of the season. And our heroes or anti-heroes have finally reached New Vegas. They've at last come face-to-face with living death clause. So, momentous episode, what did you think of episode four? I enjoyed it overall.

Like, I'm really having a lot of fun with this season. I will say there's so much happening. I know. There's really so much happening at all times. And like, I watched this. like sometime end of last week and I just rewatched it again today with the screeners and

I like forgot some of the things that were happening. It's just like trying to remember week to week. It's been really interesting to see how much of a difference it's made from having the binge structure from last season to going week to week for this season. Yes. Much more conducive to weekly coverage on the Ringverse, which is good for us.

But yeah, I like this episode too. It was definitely jam-packed, but it felt a little less scattered and lore heavy and world-buildy than last week, which was kind of my complaint about that episode, that there was just so much thrown at us in terms of exposition and some long monologues about characters and factions, and that stuff sort of paid off to some extent this week, or at least it felt more connected to our characters

and to our main plot line as opposed to we're just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall. So there is a lot to keep track of. But I feel a little more grounded in this world. Maybe it's just because the first few episodes have set things up. And now we kind of know who the players are and we're not getting new factions. Well, we kind of get one new faction introduced briefly and dispatched just as quickly. We'll get to that. But it felt a little more controlled to me.

Just all those moving parts sort of marshaled in service of a story that is heading somewhere as opposed to just sort of treading water. And it's about time, I guess, because we've waited a while to actually get to New Vegas in season two and to see a death claw. So it's about time. Yeah, I definitely agree with all that. I think the only thing that, at least in regards to how many plates

they're spinning at once when it comes to this episode, was Norm's section being like two minutes. Yeah. That scene when I rewatched it, I actually counted. It was like two minutes and 15 seconds. Yes. And it's like there's a lot of entry going on. And like, I'm really excited to see where the storyline goes.

But it is, it's tough when you don't see characters or stories progressing that much from week to week. And then when it does happen, you get two minutes. Yeah, definitely giving some characters, some plotlines short shrift. Some characters were absent entirely from this episode or multiple episodes in a row. We'll talk about it at the end of the episode that we're doing. And I guess that's a good place to start. So we have the vault dwellers and we have multiple vaults involved here. We also have Maximus and the Brotherhood and everything happening there.

And we have Coup slash the ghoul and Lucy in the past, in the presence. So those are the three main plotlines, character groupings in this episode. And those will be our three main sections for this podcast. And maybe we can go in ascending order of intrigue or relevance or screen time. And we'll start underground with the vault dwellers. So we have one vault where Reg and. and his nice jugs are a big draw at the products of inbreeding support group, which is flourishing because Betty has put rationing in place, but the snack budget is baked into the charter,

and somehow the overseer's rationing does not supersede the charter's snack budget apportionment. I guess her approval rating is suffering as it is. So if she tries to crack down on the snack budget at the inbreeding support group, that could be the last draw. So how do you think this fits into what we're seeing this season, this sort of side plot with Reg and his power grab here and the inbreeding support group? Does this feel a little out of place to you? Because it kind of did for me in the season premiere and still does to some extent. I assume there's some reason why we are keeping up with our old pal Reg. That's definitely the way I felt about it and leading up to this episode.

And now it seems like this is when they're starting to piece of the time. together and making it into more of a conflict. Like, I think the dynamic and the emerging conflict between Betty and Steph is pretty compelling, especially just seeing how screwed Fall 33 is. All of it is going towards the snack budget right now. There is not clearly enough thought being into figuring out how they're going to survive and just have drinkable water. But this whole thing that's coming up with Steph in that secret meeting that they had

between her and Betty that I was about to call him Dylan, but that's his character in severance. I'm having that problem too. When I see I see Zach Cherry here, it's like severance and silo and fallout, I'll just kind of blend together in my head because there's like subterranean mysteries and it doesn't help that Zach Cherry

is in a couple of them and is like trying to find out what is happening and his character's kind of in the dark underground. It's just, yeah, there's a lot of, It's almost like his iny and his Audi are on these two shows or something. I think Dylan would have been much better equipped for this situation than Woody is. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

But yeah, I mean, Woody is just the way that Woody responds to this is exactly showing like how well this experiment is working out in terms of reading this group of vault dwellers to be so compliant that he's reporting the overseer to the overseer. But I like that they're actually starting to show where this is starting to go at least in terms of. of the mention of keepsake box and the fact that the cat's kind of out of the box. The cat's out of the bag right now in terms. So it's kind of vault against vault now. Could be a cat in the box. We don't know what's in the box. It's a mystery.

The snack budget, it does remind me of the classic drill tweet that's like food, $200, data, $150, rent, $800, candles, $3,600, utility, $150, someone who is good at the economy. Please help me budget this. My family is dying. It feels a little bit like that the candles budget in Dries tweet is kind of the snack budget in Reg's support group here. So I don't know if this is like kind of a coup via cookies and extra water or what this is shaping up to be. But yes, I do find the Betty slash Steph Showdown kind of compelling. We get this overseer conference.

Betty confirms that Bud Askins is dead, which I wasn't sure about. I thought that maybe he was just incapacitated, just upside down or something. But no, evidently not. Norm ruthless, pulled the plug. Bud is no more. And Norm carried out his own coup and installed himself as the head of Vault 31. And, you know, you have the rank and file. Our pal Davey still mixing up his lefts and rights as is Woody.

And I like that Davey said, you know, especially these days. He's mixing up his right and left, suggests that he has done it before, too. We do get some intrigue here. There is this power showdown, which is kind of a theme of this episode and of this season and of this series as a whole. But everyone in this episode is grasping for power more or less violently. Betty wants help with the water supply. Steph won't give it to her unless she delivers the keepsake box, which Steph says contains something personal. Do you have any theories, any speculation?

Why would something personal to Steph be in Hank's keepsake box? Any idea what is happening here? I think it's possible. Well, the fact that Chet found her temporary Canadian ID, whatever that was, that seems like possible that maybe her and Hank just weren't who the Vault Tech people thought they were. I don't know if they're involved with like the enclave or some other organization like that.

Or the other thing, which I'm sure we'll get into in a second two, is related to what was happening with norms part of the story. And the mention of, I think Varney is but-Bud Askin's assistance name, mentioned the future enterprise ventures, which seems like the stand-in for FV from the Fallout Games.

Yeah, I'm wondering about that. I think it could be potentially linked to that. I don't know. What did you take away from it? Yeah. So Chet stumbles across this ID, which seems to be hidden in a pretty conspicuous spot. He didn't have to do a lot of digging. I don't know whether she wants to be found out or whether that was just a mistake.

But yes, she is Canadian or at least from the U.S. annexed territory of Canada. Donald Trump would approve of this timeline. It says she was born in 2045. and she says to Betty, you're from solving. You have no idea how bad things can get. So that's a town in California. She's from this future Canada. And in this timeline, at least Canada, is the harder place to be,

which is a bit of an inversion of, say, Handmaid's Tale or other things where Canada is the less apocalyptic place. Hard conditions. So she's come up through that crucible. And also her history is different from Betty in that Betty was thought a long time before Steph was, right? So presumably, I mean, they might be the same age, right, before the apocalypse, before they're cryogenically frozen, but Betty has been out in the world for a while. And she says, I woke up 40 years ago and I've learned a lot in that time,

what matters, what doesn't matter. The company we work for isn't coming to save us, this community and how we conduct ourselves in it. That's all we have. So maybe she's still more committed Steph, that is, to the mission of Voltaic, given that she's more recently thought. But then again, at the end of that conversation, it seems like she's kind of in it nakedly for her own power and survival. She justifies it by saying, I have to think about my baby now. It's all that matters. So she still will not gender the baby, which is around Chet's neck. So clearly not actually motivated by the baby. So that is a question, what motivates Steph? Is it purely just naked? in power? Is there anything selfless about her quest for survival here and wanting to ensure

that Valt 32 survives? What does that have to do with the keepsake, the mystery secret keepsake, the eternal question, what's in the box? We will find out. But I like this because we're seeing factions develop within Valtek, which I think sort of exposes how nonsensical or misguided the Valtek plan is. I mean, these are a bunch of zealots, essentially, and part of Hank's vision for the future is that we will wipe out all factions by just essentially exterminating everyone who disagrees with us. And then we will have our version of Utopia. But of course, that's never a viable plan because even if they could do that, then they would just splinter themselves, right? Like they would just develop their own internal factions, much like the Brotherhood

of Steel has. And we see that happening right here, even though the overseers are supposed to be in cahoots and supporting each other. That is not what is happening. It's just every fault for itself and everyone's turning on each other. So I kind of like that dynamic. I don't know exactly where it's leading. I wonder whether there is some personal relationship with Hank and Steph that we haven't seen or suspected yet. But yes, the FV, that stood out to me too, because in Norm's two minutes in the sun, we get this mention from Ronnie, who is the personal assistant of Bud, according to him, at least. And this is a... is yet another faction developing or power grab, right?

Because Norm establishes control, but Ronnie McCurtry, who's Bud's PA, he says he knows about the plan for vaults 32 and 33. Phase two was very important to the experiment, very cryptic. So Norm is facing a loss of his power and also now a knowledge imbalance because yet again, he's in the dark compared to Ronnie who knows something about this plan and mentions future enterprise ventures. And you're right, I made that connection too with FEV in the fallout lore. Do you want to explain what that signifies? Yeah, I mean, at the least, as far as I know, you might be a better expert on this kind of stuff when it comes to the fallout lore.

At least as far as, as I know it, West Tech was, which is what the company that Bud was at before Baltic in the timeline of the TV show, I think he mentions that at some point in season one. But West Tech, one of the things that they did with the Department of Defense was create FV, which stands for the forced evolutionary virus. And it sounds exactly like it sounds where you're forcing the next step of evolution, which is the super mutants that come up that play a big part in really it seems like a lot of the fallout games. And I thought that this definitely came to mind to you with the phrasing of in season one

when Norm is talking to Bud Askins about creating a class of the super managers. So I don't know if there's anything big for FV that I'm missing here. Yeah, no, I think that's basically it. It plays a different part in various fallout games. Not so much New Vegas, which is interesting, but many of the others. And yeah, it can be just kind of a virus that is tailored to infect certain individuals and not others and to do different things to them and create super mutants. And so it does kind of fit in,

with the nefarious plans that we have seen Voltaic pursue here with the mind control and everything else and wanting to wipe out certain people, remake the world in their image. So I do wonder whether future enterprise ventures is just some kind of code, essentially, for something along those lines. But we don't know, and neither does norm. And so he's letting Ronnie take the lead for now, I guess, and just sort of acting as if he is aware of what Ronnie is doing and he'll let him lead for now and see what happens basically. And we'll see whether Ronnie, as the jumped up personal assistant, sort of the successor to Bud,

tries to seize a greater control from Norm when they get to whatever phase two is. But meanwhile, they're just enjoying their uncooked pasta, which evidently has excellent mouse feel. I would disagree. I mean, I get it. It's kind of crunchy. but I prefer my pasta cooked. They always really have great, like, side chatter and just banter with characters, like, whether it's that or, like, they were talking about the uncle-a-a-unt relations

at the down-in-the-walls. Yes, yeah, sometimes it's helpful if you're watching just to put the closed captioning or the subtitles on because sometimes those are like throwaway lines that are just kind of, you know, down in the mix in the background, but often some of the funniest lines. So Steph says that she will. escalate Woody's report to the overseer, who happens to be her, how convenient. It is a little like we are facing these days where, you know, there's various types of corruption and the people in charge of overseeing the corruption may or may not be the people perpetrating the corruption.

So what do you do? But you're right. It does sort of emphasize just how rigid everything is here. But I wonder whether, you know, Chet seems to have had his suspicions reactivated now. He knows too much because he was in on the... investigation with Norm last season. He knows that all is not what it was supposed to be in the other vaults. And he just kind of quieted those suspicions. He's been cowed by Steph and he's just sort of fallen into line. But now that he has discovered that ID and now that Woody knows that something is up,

one would imagine, you know, and especially given that Steph is not the nicest to Chet, that perhaps he will rise up and revolt and maybe. he and Woody can be kind of co-conspirators here and perhaps work to undermine stuff and maybe even in concert with Betty, who knows. So it all feels sometimes a little ancillary or a little disconnected from our main characters, but I assume that this is all going to knit together at some point. And, you know, we will see how Norm and what he's uncovering and everyone else's uncovering plays into what Hank, who is unseen this weekend last week, is working on wherever he is. So we'll have to trust that it's all heading somewhere.

I guess we can talk about Maximus and the Brotherhood, because things do all kind of come to a head this week for them. So we pick up where we left off last week back at the Sunset-Sperilla Bottling Plan, where Xander Harkness is indeed dead. it turns out that a blow from a super sledge to the skull is not survivable. So we get quite a unceremonious exit here for Kumail, who just shows up for a couple episodes and parachutes in, makes it look like he's going to be a big character and a mover and a shaker. And I guess in a way he was because his death precipitates some action.

But I kind of appreciate that, you know, they have a well-known name, recognizable face come in for a guest spot and just dispatch him without even really giving us a look at the corpse. You know, it's just the power armor lying here. It seems the same thing with McCulley Culkin's character too. I mean, maybe he comes back. I hope he comes back, but it's just like one and done for both. Might be one and done. Yeah, I think so, right.

I mean, it helps get guests like that. You know, you can book bigger stars if it's not a big commitment. And they're just kind of coming in and making more or less a cameo. But I kind of like it because you see someone like that, you figure, oh, this is going be a significant character. And then, nope, just, you know, almost without warning and without any premeditation and almost as an accident, he's just gone. That's it.

So series wrap on Xander Harkness, I guess. We hardly knew him. The whole Brotherhood storyline this season, I've just, every step of the way I just, like, don't really know where it's going, which I think is probably a good thing. Very much mirrors the experience of Maximus, who says it much. But I really thought that Zander was about to be one of the best. key characters of this whole season. So yeah, do you think?

Nope. I mean, he was pivotal. He was instrumental, but because he died. So there is pressure here because the Brotherhood, it turns out, tracked Maximus and Zander. So now Maximus and Thaddeus have to scramble for a solution before the Brotherhood shows up and finishes the job, kills the Gould kids like Zander was poised to do.

And so Thaddeus decides to don the armor. I've got to say, like, power armor. identity theft is just a real problem for the Brotherhood here. It's just like they have no recourse for seeing who is inside the suit, essentially. They have to have some sort of screening process here because this is how Maximus ended up being who he is, you know, being briefly knight Titus and just taken over the suit and posing as a knight for a while. And now we're seeing the same thing happened here with Thadius. Like there should be either maybe a like a no power armor indoors on the base policy.

You know, you have to lower the visor and check in when you go past the checkpoint or maybe some sort of biometric sensors. I know we're not working with like pre-apocalypse technology here, but, you know, it just seems a little too easy to infiltrate the ranks here. I just love how it really just checks out that nobody knows to. Like, Dane can clock it immediately. Only Dane, yeah. But everybody else, like they don't even notice that like Darius is just like talking to himself

the entire way. and don't think like, ah, this is a red flag here. Maybe they just do things differently in the Commonwealth, but. Yeah, there's got to be a setting in the power armor to like not broadcast your internal monologue to everyone in earshot, presumably. But clearly, Thaddeus is not a natural in that armor, which I appreciate, you know, like there's a learning curve here. Obviously, you have to be a cadet.

You know, you graduate tonight. You learn how to move through a door without banging into it. And he has not learned those things. but Dane, who I guess knows that he sees through the ruse. Meanwhile, he's sort of fooling everyone else. But then again, they don't know the paladin. They don't know Xander anymore than we do, really, because he just showed up.

So for all they know, he does go around just giving himself a pep talk. But, you know, I guess they're kind of conditioned not to question things, much like Woody in the vault. So, you know, just following orders, I guess. There's a rigid hierarchy here. So we got a real mess in the mess in Area 51. As the various elders from the other Brotherhood Splinter groups try to cut a deal with who they believe to be an emissary from the Commonwealth, the Coronado elder shows up, offers to kill Quintus for 300 fusion cores. The Yosemite elder says she'll do it for free, McCray.

And she says all we hope is that Elder Maxon will remember us better in the future. So that's, I think, a little interesting lower drop for the Fallout heads out there because last week, We heard the Quintus monologue and exposition about the Brotherhood founder Roger Maxon. And the fact that McCrae is suggesting that there's still a Maxon around suggests that Arthur Maxon, who is the last living descendant of Roger Maxon, is still alive, which is kind of interesting because his fate is somewhat uncertain after Fall Out 4, but maybe he is still out there on the East Coast running the show at the Commonwealth. Anyway, the Grand Canyon Elder then discovers that the cold fusion relic is gone because Dane,

who has hidden the cadets, while Maximus is trying to kill Quintus and has to get in line because everyone is plotting to kill Quintus at the same time. And Dane sort of borrows a Maximus move here from when Maximus steals the fusion Corps from Vault 4 in season one. And then he does give it back nicely enough. but Dane takes the cold fusion from Area 51, the so-called relic. Everyone suspects everyone else of having made away with this thing. And that essentially starts a civil war when the Grand Canyon elder discovers that this relic is missing.

McCrae makes good on her threats to stab the Coronado elder in the mouth. And then he gets headshotted for good measure and it's just off to the races. So everything falls apart pretty quickly here. Yeah, I mean, I really, I enjoyed this part of the episode a lot. And I think a lot of it's just, I really like Maximus as a character. We know we talked about it a lot the last time I was on the pod. I just find him so fascinating because you just don't know what's going through his mind at all times. And I think he's just like such a realistic character in this world where he had some,

I can't remember what the exact line was, but he's just like, I'd have no plans. Like you have plans. Yeah, I got there. There was no plan. I don't have a plan. You have plans, but out there, you can't. I don't choose to do the things I have to do. They just keep happening, which is, I mean, it's relatable if you've played a fallout game

because things can go very wrong like that. So he needs to start saves scumming like I do when I play Fallout, which is, you know, when things go wrong, reload, just quick save before you face like a pivotal dialogue choice or something. You're on a quest. And then if everything goes to hell, then you can just reload from, right before that, but I guess he doesn't have that option. Yeah, but I mean, like, it's, I think that flashback sequence that they had at the beginning

of episode two, I think it was when they showed Shady Sands. I think that was just so effective in building his character because you see the foundation of goodness that's just taught it, that's just built into him by his parents, by the community of Shady Sands. He's always trying to do right, but in this world, it's just so hard to figure out what your moral compass is and what the right moral compass is to have in this world. and he's just constantly trying to figure it out. Maybe it's not the right thing to save the ghouls,

but it seems like the right thing. So he just did it. Yeah, and I like how conflicted he is in that showdown with Quintas. That's probably my favorite scene in this section of the episode. Because, you know, Maximus is not impossible to read from moment to moment. He might be unpredictable, but in any given moment, he will sometimes just wear his motions on his face. So he shows up at Quintus's headquarters

and Quintus kind of intuits what he's there for. And he sort of starts bargaining or he starts in with the father figure act. And we talked about this after episode two, also just him as sort of this surrogate father. We saw his actual biological father in the flashback. And Quintas is posing as that figure for him, but doesn't seem to have Maximus's concerns at heart, really. So he starts in with my son, my son, and he's father and confessor. And maybe that's, you know, there's a shred of sincerity there. We learned that he was the one seemingly who saved Maximus from Shady Sands personally.

He was the one who saved him and spared him. And now he says he regrets it. But when Maximus does confess what he actually did with the ghoul children, then Quintus turns on him, starts ranting and raving about heretics and abominations. And he uses that as a cover to grab a gun and blast away. And then we get a little laser pistol action, a little laser pistol shootout, which was fun. So this is the end of their sort of uneasy stalemate and mentorship, though not the end for Quintus, because Maximus says he couldn't bring himself to do it. Dane excuses him for not pulling the trigger.

So he just locks Quintus in that room. And, you know, meanwhile, we see that the whole base is kind of crashing and burning, but presumably this is not the last that we will see of Quintus and that he will emerge from this situation to maybe have some other showdown with Maximus. But I like that scene because of how conflicted Maximus is. There's even a moment where you know, Quintus says something like this is against the codex. Like this is the first rule of the brotherhood. You know, you got to kill ghouls. They're abominations. That's our mission. And there's sort of an agonized line delivery for Maximus where he's just like, I know, you know, but he feels bad about it. But this is how he's structured his life. Like this is, you know,

all of these characters, whether it's Lucy or Maximus, they're just trying to fumble forward in this post-apocalypse, and they were brought up by people who maybe didn't actually have, you know, goodness in their heart and the best interests of the world or have some skewed sense of what the best interest of the world is, whether that's Hank or Quintus. And so their whole moral framework is falling apart, and they sort of have to rebuild that scaffold for how to live their lives.

Yeah, I mean, it's really just, It's so interesting to see because he clearly was just so lost after everything that happened in Shady Sands. And he's found by this organization that is definitely just not good for him. And he's still looking for that father figure. And you can just see how when Quintzis starts calling him my son again, he's kind of so manipulative. But he starts calling him to my son. It's like it immediately starts working on him. He's just so susceptible to being convinced what to do so quickly because he's still so lost.

But he still has this moral compass that I think is right. That was taught by his parents. And he gets out of there. Yeah. There's such an interesting tone on this show because there will be some of these serious themes and this, you know, moral quandaries and actual agonized decisions. But then there's a lot of slapstick. And there's just like Thaddeus running into walls.

And there's, you know, someone getting stabbed through the mouth and someone else saying, that was cool. So, you know, there's this kind of like gratuitous violence. And I guess, like, you could say that it undercuts the drama at times. But I don't know. I kind of like that it tends not to get too heavy. It's a dromity, ultimately, you know? It's not like a serious prestige drama.

It's not exactly aspiring to that. It's just kind of a mix of tones and approaches, which I think mostly melds pretty well. Definitely. And I think it just captures something that's like the quickiness of the Fallout games, too, and just like the... Yeah. There's that setting in New Vegas where you can lean into the,

I think like the wacky wasteland or whatever it is. Just lean into the weirdness of it all. And I feel like this show just really captures that tone perfectly. Yeah. Maximus, such an interesting character. He's not very smart, right?

Like he has survival skills clearly and he's like climbed the ladder really rapidly here. So he has some survival instinct and he has some street smarts, but he does, He's not great at planning ahead by his own admission and just doesn't really know what he's doing. And he's just ping ponging from one crisis to the next. And that makes him a pretty compelling character. So I just, yeah, it's hard to read him. And at the start of the season, it seemed as if he was a little more self-assured.

But as we discussed, it was really just sort of a facade, a part he was playing. And now he is his more authentic self. And at the end of this section with these characters, he and Thaddeus run into. to the wasteland as the Brotherhood just goes up in flames behind them. And as Thaddeus said early on, he's great at running away. He gets to put that skill to use here. And presumably they have the cold fusion relic with them. And I guess the question is, where are they going? Maybe they're just running aimlessly. That would be kind of in character for Maximus. But do they have a goal? I hope that this will lead to a reunion with Lucy one way or another, that our characters can come together, that we can at least start to, you know, in the back.

half of the season, bring these plot threads and core characters together. But do you have any idea where he might be headed or what his next hastily assembled play might be. This is one that I was trying to think about. I have no idea where they could be going right now. And I think that's what's so fun about it too. But yeah, speaking of not planning ahead, like he doesn't even grab another gun. That's what I was lingering on is he's still running away with the single laser pistol.

He's at the brotherhood. He can't like level up a little bit on the way out. have another, you know, maybe there's another power armor. You just stop by the NCR camp and loot one of those crates, get some shotguns. Yeah. I don't know. Well, that's a good segue, I guess, to our final section, maybe the biggest and most median momentous here, and that's Coop slash the ghoul and Lucy.

And that's where we start in a flashback, not for the first time. And this is a deep flashback, a far flashback. We are transported back to the Alaska. front where Coop and Charlie are fighting the Chinese in the Sino-American conflict that started about a decade before the bombs dropped and ultimately precipitated the apocalypse. So this is when China invaded Alaska for its oil reserves. Imagine seizing control of another country for its oil, not something we real-life Americans would know anything about in this timeline. But this scene might bring back memories for anyone who played the Operation Anchorage add-on.

for Fallout 3. So this has kind of been covered in the games, though we see some new lore here. First of all, we see the callback to last season, as you alluded to, Bud Askins talked about how he was at West Tech and he was helping promote and market the T-45 power armor,

the predecessor to the kind that the Brotherhood is using now, and that does not endear him to Coop, who talks about how prone they were to malfunctions. And here we see that in action or in action. So we see some sparking and the suits are on the fritz and Charlie has to turn back. Buds or Coop lies in order to be the hero and keep going forward and follow his orders to kind

of go solo. And he runs right into a patrol of the red Chinese invaders. And he is bailed out just in the nick of time by, of all things, a death cloth. That is no rancor or horned demon from Diablo, though there may be a resemblance. That is a death claw, as anyone who has played a fallout game knows. And quickly, the Chinese troops also encounter the death claw. So they're no longer laughing at that broken power armor when they get shredded to bits by the death claw. Now, the death claw gives coop sort of a close inspection.

Yeah, yeah. And a once over here, sort of an alien style Ripley, you know, close up xenomorph inspection, but ultimately leaves him alone. Do you think that it spares him just because he's in the armor, tough not to crack, or because it was distracted or because he was on its side in theory because he's American? If it knows him somehow, then maybe that has implications for the present day. I don't know that it's the same death claw that we're seeing centuries later, but maybe if there's some death claw programming to recognize the good guys, you know, the Americans, then perhaps that might be a solution to the showdown that is set up by the last.

I didn't think about that last possibility. I think that's actually pretty interesting. I thought it was probably like the first thing you were saying in terms of like not recognizing it with the armor. Yeah. Because it did feel like at least at the time that like one of those just convenient like the hero's getting spared kind of thing. But the element of them, there being something innate in the death claw is an interesting thing. Yeah, pure speculation, haven't watched ahead.

But there is some sentience to some death claw communities in the games that are not just a pure id. And what we learn here, so this might be sort of confusing to some, because if you see this giant mutated beast, you might think that that seems like a post-nuclear apocalypse. kind of creature, right? And so what is it doing here in the pre-apocalyptic timeline? That is consistent with the game lore because we know that the Americans actually did develop the death clause by genetically engineering reptiles, maybe with the aid of the enclave. And then after the apocalypse, they broke containment and became the biggest, baddest monster in the wasteland where there's lots of nasty stuff, but there's always a bigger fish or a bigger reptile. And you can imagine how that might play into Coop's disillusionment with the government he served. But what I think was not

known or shown previously is that evidently the death cause were also actually deployed on the side of the American soldiers in combat in this massive conflict. So I think that's a new tidbit. That's a new development. And that seems to turn the tide here. And Coop gets the message on his radio. Congratulations. Soldiers, you did it. He says, we didn't. It wasn't us. It was something else. and we know what it was now. And I got to say that the death clause, you know, lots of build up, lots of anticipation were a season and a half into the show before they finally really gave us kind of the iconic enemy of fallout. So I'd say it lived up to the hype and the billing just in terms of the visuals.

I think production design always a strength of this show. It has that Mandalorian lived in look, plenty of practical effects to go with some CG and that applied to the death claw. It looked good. It looks suitably fearsome and convincing in mind. I agree. It looks really good, but I really just like the setup and the way that they bookended the episode with the death clause, you mentioned. And also just the way that they're tying back this with the flashback and the story that Charlie delivered in his speech in the last episode and just seeing how Coop has built up a lot of his status and his fame off of this lie too. But also just the moment in which he's said.

I just think, you know, you go on ahead. He, like, lies to Charlie about them getting the order to keep going. So you see that goodness in him, too. And you see his attempt to do the right thing. So I thought just as like an opening to the episode, this was a really, really nice way to set everything up and to circle back to the death claw again. It's a really great way to tee up the next episode.

Yeah. And if you have played a follow-out game, then you have probably suffered at the cause of a death claw. If you have visited the death claw infested quarry junction, in Fallout New Vegas, then you know that this is a big threat. If you have not played the games, then I think the fact that it's this 12-foot-tall horned monster

that makes monster sounds is probably sufficient for conveying the threat. But also, Walton Goggins sells it, I think, as something new and uniquely intimidating, both in the flashback and then when he encounters another death claw at the very end. Because we don't usually see the ghoul or coop, for that matter, really getting phased, getting unnerved. And, you know, as the goal, he's obviously seen some shit and he's survived for centuries and he's the apex predator in the wasteland seemingly. And yet he has more than met his match here.

Like, he seems legitimately afraid. It's so much. That's true. Yeah, I guess. I guess, right. Yeah. She's just like, oh, oh, shit, okay. Right.

Yeah, you could go cold turkey and suffer withdrawal for a few days or you could take more drugs or you could just feel. face a deathlaw, and that'll sober you up quite quickly. So that takes us to the present. Lucy wakes up in the NCR camp. As Van mentioned last week, the NCR survivor known as Biff, the one who seems to be in denial or not to know about the fate that befell shady sands. That is our pal, Uncle Rico, from Napoleon Dynamite, played by John Gris, aka Greg from the White Lotus. Nice to see him show up here. I'm imagining a, a. White Lotus season set in the wasteland. And Greg is still on the run from the law after Tanya's death. If so, this seems like a pretty good hideout for him. And, you know, Lucy wakes up.

She's feeling much better, at least for now. It turns out there is a catch to her recovery. So at the start here before the effects of the drug and the withdrawal set in, she's, you know, still saying fudging, right? Like she still seems sort of like the nice Lucy. But there has been a change here. she says she can enlist with the NCR because she's looking for someone. And the NCR soldier Rodriguez asks someone you care about or someone you hate, which stops Lucy in her tracks for a second. And the ghoul kind of, you know, incites her. Ooh, what a great question.

What say you, Ms. McLean? Why can't it be both, right? She could hate and care. Hating is a form of caring, I guess. But she reiterates that she plans to bring Hank to justice. Rodriguez says the NCR was meant to be about bringing justice to the wasteland. We almost did, she says. And this re-raises the old question about just who delivers justice in this fallen world.

What does it mean? Like, what is going to happen when Lucy eventually finds herself face-to-face with Hank again? What is her goal here? Does she still feel some affection or has she been so betrayed that it's just going to be, you know, upsolping the earth here? what do you glean from her clear, you know, kind of confusion and she's just unsure of how she feels about her father. At least what I glean from it is that she still is processing all of it. And I think that's been what's been really interesting to watch.

I know at least the last time when we were on, we were talking about how there's just been kind of a lack of growth and a lack of development that's been a little bit frustrating to watch. And this episode was a really funny development, Justin, that. we get a lot of this growth, but mainly because she's addicted to buffout. And you see her start shooting, shooting ghouls, shooting the kings, actually. Yeah. So you see her starting to change a little bit by the wasteland, but it's hard to say how much right now is because of the buffout. Yeah.

But I think even before all that kicks in, it's like you see that these experiences are changing her. Being put up on a cross, being crucified. We'll probably do that to you, I guess. A little running with Cesar's Legion will do that. to you. Yeah, you'd think. Yeah, and there is some sign of growth here, I think, because not only does she resist the entreaty to enlist with the NCR, and clearly she feels some conflict here, but also some of the lines here, after they leave the camp, she says to the ghoul, all I saw in there was more matching jackets. And that's kind of a callback to the season premiere when the ghoul called the cons matching

jacket motherfuckers. So she's sort of adopting his language a little bit, I think. She also describes the NCR as nice, which is what she said about herself when she was captured by the Legion a couple episodes ago, I am nice. So now she is not aligning herself with the nice folks. She's rejecting the nice faction. So it's sort of a hint that maybe it's no more Miss Nice Girl for Lucy, perhaps. And then, of course, when she's on the road, she begins to feel the effects of the buffout that she has been on. And this is, you know, in-universe steroids, essentially and can be addictive in the games as well. Two days on a steady drip of Buffout will do that to a body. And some great line deliveries by both of them here, you know, where he's just like, you ain't dying.

You know, you're on drugs, basically. And then she declares, I hereby quit drugs, there. And then she finds out that it didn't take. no, she is still addicted to drugs. The ghoul actually seems sort of delighted by this. And I guess it's like, you know, he says he's very familiar with what she's feeling. I don't know if he's alluding to his essentially addiction to vials, right? I don't know if he gets pleasure out of the vials or just relief, but he needs to inhale them to survive.

So it's sort of a substance addiction or dependency of sorts. or whether he just likes the effects that the drugs are having on Lucy here. I'd like to think that over these 200 years, he's probably been addicted to everything too. Probably, yeah, why not? Try everything at some point. Just feel something.

But their chemistry is just so good. This was my favorite part of the episode. It's just, I feel like every episode of Fall Out will have a few like Lapp Out Lab moments for me. But this is just the line deliveries that you were saying, like, it's just so good between the two of them. El Pranel is so good in this episode.

And it's just so funny to see it play out and just seeing how the moment it all switches when she goes like full like Rambo mode. When she gets her little taste of action. Yes. And when her attempt at an instant cold turkey detox fails and the ghoul recommends doing more drugs as an alternative to spending several days that they don't have just in the throes of withdrawal, she then agrees to his idea, which is just do more drugs. I like that she rationalizes it as the utilitarian approach, which I guess, you know, maybe someone who's addicted might do, but also it's sort of trying to stay true to her character, arguing that this actually is the utilitarian. This is like following the golden rule for her to keep getting high because she would want others to do whatever they could do to stop her dad from doing greater

harm. And so she has to get high for the good of the world, really, not just because she needs a fix. And speaking of fixes, there is an item in Fallout, in Fallout New Vegas called Fixer, which cures you of all addictions. So I don't know whether the NCR was just fresh out of that or the ghoul just likes Lucy addicted and reckless because there was an option three, maybe, you know, cold turkey and doing more drugs or finding some fixer and just being instantly cured. But yeah, that's not on the menu, I guess. Anyway, we then do get. to New Vegas, finally. And I've read a lot lately about the real life decline of Las Vegas as a tourist destination, but it's doing better in our timeline than this version of Vegas seems to be. Something

is seriously off at New Vegas, which like the Legion and the NCR has seen better days. And by the way, in the credits, we get a glimpse of Campa Cairn, which is sort of the headquarters of the NCR in the Mojave, and it seems to be overrun by. the Legion. So yet another indication that the NCR is essentially disbanded. No welcoming committee. The securitrons are trashed. And the kings, the gang of Elvis impersonators, you mentioned earlier, have become feral ghouls. So this world just seems to be falling apart. And I guess, you know, I kind of appreciate that even though they are invoking all of these touchpoints from New Vegas, everything has changed significantly in the past 15 years.

And I guess that's sort of one of the mysteries, just what happened here, you know? Not that things are going great at the end of New Vegas, but clearly everyone has fallen on even harder times. Yeah, and this is, I don't know, we talked about this last time I was on. I know you and Van talked about it last week. One of the things that I've been at least struggling with watching the show, especially as I'm playing New Vegas, is just how quickly they're introducing and seemingly just like throwing away. these factions one by one. Yeah.

Like, that seems like this is probably the end of the Kings. Mm-hmm. Like, they do become more like Easter eggs. And there's just so much compelling material that they can work with here. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I'm kind of torn about that too, because, yeah, the show does keep introducing a faction from the game,

only to kind of play it for laughs largely and then dispatch it quickly. And on the one hand, sometimes in a world, a fictional universe, one thing you can do to make the world feel like a real place is to just sort of allude to things and not really dwell on them. I mean, so much of the lore in Star Wars, for instance, is just kind of like tossed off lines of dialogue or just quick references that, you know, at the time didn't really mean anything. And they were just thrown in there, but it made it seem like this grand universe. And then, you know, people can explore those things in other properties. Or you can go play fall out New Vegas if you want to know who these people are. I sort of see the value of it because when they do kind of go deep and it's like all this stuff

about the brotherhood and the commonwealth, it feels like it doesn't totally fit into the show and the narrative that's already been established. So it's kind of a fine balance. I can see why big fans of the game who just sort of want to see the game and the world that they love represented in this adaptation would probably feel frustrated because, you know, we're just like setting them up, knocking them down. And there's so much more to the Legion or the the kings or the cons or whoever else, and they just kind of appear as a, you know, one episode adversary, and then they're done, essentially.

So it feels sort of like squandering the potential of that lore, but then I don't know that I want this show to go that deep into it, because if you really do want to go deep, they don't want to fallout games out there for you. Yeah, that's very fair. And I think especially when it comes to like the Kings, even if you haven't played the games, it's just being like Las Vegas, you probably wouldn't even think about it

because there's just, it's just an Elvis impersonator. But when it comes to something like Caesar's Legion, that's where it was like I really felt like they were building it up. And we haven't seen episodes ahead. Maybe they do come back because they did introduce them more than they did the great cons in the first episode and definitely way more than the Kings here. So maybe we'll come back to them again too. Yeah, I'd be curious if anyone wants to write in if you're just watching the show knowing nothing about Fallout Out lore, not having played New Vegas, whether this is off putting to you to see all these little strands and glimpses of things and know that there's more two. them or not. I think for the most part, yeah, it's Easter eggs, it's callbacks, its references, but hopefully it's not too exclusionary for people who aren't familiar with those things.

And it's just kind of part of the fabric of the wasteland. As you said, with the Kings, it's Vegas. You can kind of put two and two together here probably. So maybe it's just a fun little diversion. Speaking of diversions, the ghoul wants to divert, wants to go through the east side of town, Freeside, which is sort of the slums of New Vegas. And they do kind of seemingly tinker with the geography of the city here as it appears in New Vegas and not just because it's so decrepit and broke it down. But just, you know, when you go through kind of that gate, you enter right into the strip in the show, which is not really the case in the game. And some of the casinos and hotels seem to have been moved around a bit. But what I appreciate is that the ghoul wants to go the long way.

And Lucy says, I am done with all of the sidetracks and the detour. I say we just run on through, who fudgeon cares? Shosi still can't bring herself to curse quite. But this spoke to me as a run and gun guy in games, mostly. Just like forget the side quests and the stealth approach. Just let's go in Leroy Jenkins, you know, guns blazing. And as the ghoul says, that's the drugs talking. Truth be told, I like what they're saying.

So I guess that's the question, how much is it the drugs and how much is it, this is Lucy now? And how much is that almost like a meta commentary? Because we are halfway through the season and it's taken quite a while for us to get to New Vegas. So it might have been frustrating if it were like, oh, we're here, we're on the outskirts, we can see it.

But we have to go around to the other side of town and now you're not really going to see New Vegas until the next episode or something. So they're finally like, look, we're just going to give you what we've been teasing and showing on the horizon all season long. Yeah, I picked up on that too. Because when you was saying it was like half a day away,

I was like half a day, it's press one button. And you're right through that gate. You're already in freestyle. We're talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, she likes the field of that gun in her hands.

And at first, she's up to her old sort of non-lethal shots. You know, she's taken off feet and shoulders and such. But then she's good for headshots. She just kind of pops the guy who's in the car. And she says, they're just ghouls, right? Little insensitive, considering her current company. And actually, I appreciated that the ghoul actually, even though he likes this new Lucy seemingly, when he sees her in action, just blasting away at ghoul kind, he seems slightly taken aback by her rampage, right? There's a look here, even though he's goaded her into it.

He kind of feels like, you know, did I just make her into a monster or something? So this is another example of the characters converging a little bit. You know, Lucy's unlocking her dark side. the ghoul's going good relative to what we've seen this season. I just love the cutaways to dog meat in between all of us too. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. You go from Bloodthirsty Lucy to just baffled to ghoul and then just dog meat like smiling and panting. Yeah. And then this firefight is capped off literally with that

slow-mo headshot, very Fallout New Vegas, very that's the Volt-Tech assisted targeting system inspired cinematography here. If you've played the game, you can target ahead. It will give you a percentage chance of hitting it. And that is what happens here to put the last ghoul down. And then they are free to proceed into New Vegas proper.

They enter the strip. And we see all of the landmarks. We see the Tops Casino, the Lucky 38, the Ultra Lux, Vault 21, Gamora. And some lights are still on, but they're flickering like, the lights in Hawkins when a demigorgon draws near. And there is a hellish beast lurking here as well. Fittingly enough, inside Gamora, the most debached and decadent of New Vegas establishments. And even though we've been talking about how Lucy does seem to be growing and learning a little bit in this episode belatedly, she is still disabled Lucy when, you know, she stumbles across

the egg, she thinks it's a chicken. She's overconfident as usual, right? She says, Whatever it is, I think we can take it. Oh, yeah, we got this. In fact, I think it'll be easy, much like she did when she was talking about the conflict resolution between the factions of the Legion. And so here you're wondering, is that the drugs talking, making her overconfidence?

Or is that just her usual overconfidence? And as she still really not learned, that not everything is actually simple in this world. I think it's a little bit of both. And that's why I think it is really interesting to see because I do, again, like at the beginning of this episode, where you see that she's kind of just processing everything that's happened, you do start to see some sides of growth.

And I think that we've desperately needed to see that from this character. But with adding the addiction to the mix of all of it, I think is actually a really compelling way to kind of keep this going and suspending this development a little bit further. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we're just seeing everything splinter in this world. And that's been a running theme in several conversations, just like, it can get worse out there.

How can it get worse? Believe me, it can get worse. And so every faction, every just repository of power here seems to be splintering, whether it's the Brotherhood, which is sort of, you know, fighting, warring with itself, or the Legion, or the Vault dwellers, you know, everyone is kind of at each other's throats. And now we will see how Lucy and the ghoul fare against the Death Claw. and at the end we get a song from Fallout 4, he's a demon, he's a devil, he's a doll,

and that plays over the credits. So, I guess a couple closing questions here. Do you wish that these episodes were longer than they are? Because this was on the shorter side. This was 49 minutes, including the credits and previously on and everything. The season premiere was more than an hour. The series premiere was almost an hour of 15.

And I'm wondering, you know, if the episodes were longer, in theory, we could include every character. We could check in with everyone every week instead of going weeks without seeing some of our most important people here. So do you like the brisker pace and not outstaying its welcome the 45-ish minute episodes? Or do you like the long ones that give us a little chance to kind of familiarize ourselves with everything that's happening in this world? I think with how much that is happening, I think there is. there could be using more time in these episodes, like going back to the Norm scene being like two minutes long. Yeah.

Especially with the entry that comes with FV, like if you haven't played the games, you're not familiar with that. That's probably something you wouldn't have picked up on. Watching the screener the first time, since it doesn't have the closed captioning, I actually didn't even catch that. So when I watched the episode the first time,

I was just like, I can't believe that it's been like, what, two weeks since we've seen Norm and that was it. so it's and it's been a few weeks since we've seen Hank now I do think like van brought this up on the last episode like while it's true there are a lot of moving parts like on the flip side of that I feel like every part is interesting so even when we don't see things happening for a while

it is replacing something that is compelling to see and especially now that we're having a lot more progress with some of these maybe too fast with with Brotherhood in my opinion because this is just we we just learned about these conflicts between all the different factions within the brotherhood, the different sex within them,

and now it's already like a full-on war. So I think it would help, especially now that it's gone to a weekly structure to have a little bit more time to really sit in longer character moments, like in that norm scene again, you had a little exchange with him and Claudia that I thought was really nice,

where Claudia is just like looking at the bridge And they talk about how, like, a week ago, she, like, was driving down that to interview for her job at Voltaic. Like, stuff like that is really great to build up characters. But, yeah, she hasn't really had time to drink the Kool-Aid. She's just, she signed up, you know, this is her first week. She's just like orientation at Voltaic, we're going to cryogenically freeze you for a couple centuries. Don't worry about it. So, yeah, really.

Yeah, I feel the same way. I mean, it's nice to have a digestible 50, 45 minute episode just as a viewer, but I do feel the absence of some of the characters that we haven't seen in a while. And I wonder why we have stayed away from Hank for a few episodes here just because he does seem so central to this season. And, you know, maybe they just can't give away anything yet about his next step or his true aims or maybe they want to devote a whole episode or half an episode to him, you know, in one of these coming. weeks or or maybe they just don't want to show us, you know, him mass murdering mice for another 15 minutes, like how many skulls can explode of rodents or Voltaic premium subscribers before that tends to be a bit monotonous. So I don't know, maybe he just has a lot of experimentation to do. And it would be tedious to tune into that. But I am quite curious to see what's happening with him.

And House too, you know, we don't get a look at House this week. We still haven't had a had the reveal of, you know, house being a body double or the real house or whatever. We just got that one bathroom conversation between house and coupe. So I guess they're just sort of saving all of that for the second half of this season, which I guess leads me into my last question for you, which is, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you are hoping or expecting to see in the final four episodes? Well, at least in terms of like what I'm looking forward to and like what I am hoping

to see is just how everything connects to each other. Because I think that's, it is a good problem to have where you want to see more of what's happening with certain characters or a certain storyline. There are a lot of interesting things that are happening at once. But I am really curious to see how they actually tie everything together. Because like for Norm, for example, I initially thought that this was going to tie back into defaults and like the conflict that was emerging between Vault 32 and 33. Now it kind of seems like they're heading elsewhere.

So this could be converging with Hank's storyline. I don't know where they're going. But how this comes together now that Maximus and Faddeus are on the own, I'm like just looking forward to seeing all these different storylines starting to hopefully converge sooner rather than the finale. Yes, me too. I meant to mention this last week too, but Howard Hughes, the reclusive, eccentric, genius billionaire businessman, mustachioed, much like House, who's one of the models for that character, I would say. He famously used body doubles in real life as well. So there's some precedence for that. I would like to see just how we got to this state of affairs in the present timeline, where everything is just destroyed seemingly,

even New Vegas. How did this happen? How does this tie into the possible endings of the game? And also just how Kup became the ghoul, right? And what happens when he presumably goes to Vegas and meets with House and has this mission to kill him as he talked into that? Is he talked out of it? Is he thwarted somehow? Just his descent into the guy who became the ghoul. That would be interesting, I think,

and also just the world's descent over the 15 years since fallout, New Vegas, into this really just smoking ruin of a wasteland that we are seeing in this episode. And yeah, like you, you know, in addition to all the little questions about what's happening with the vault and the FEV and the keepsake box, just I'd like to see these characters come together.

And I imagine that they will, as they did in season one. It just felt a little more unified in season one because they were all joined by their quest. Yeah. And they were all going after the head. And, you know, they were actually linking up or at least kind of pursuing the same aim in parallel. And here they've been scattered across the world

and they're doing different things. And that will change, presumably. But I am looking forward to when we can actually gram every character into a single episode, possibly by the end, whether that means longer running times or just characters physically coming together so that it's not as hard to check in with everyone. I would welcome that as much as I am enjoying these episodes.

So we can check in in just a second with one of the architects of the original New Vegas. But Daniel, I will let you go now. Don't have a panic attack because you belong here. You are loved. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me on, Ben. And I'll be back in just a moment with Joe Sinabria, the lead artist for Fallout New Vegas. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business, Fast, Reliable,

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but only if it survives. Dutton Ranch starring Colehouser, Kelly Riley, Annette Benning and Ed Harris, now streaming on Paramount Plus. Well, from Sunset Sasparilla's headquarters to the glimpses we get in the background of the roller coaster in Prim, to the New Vegas strip itself.

This episode has the hallmarks of Fallout New Vegas all over it, and my next guest left his fingerprints all over that game. Joe Sinabria was the lead artist for Fallout New Vegas and the art director of its DLCs, and he joins us now. Hello, Joe. Hello, Ben. Hello, everyone.

So you had not been watching Fallout, the adaptation, but you did be a favor. You tuned in for the final few minutes of episode four. Look how they massacred your city. is this the New Vegas you remember building? Yes, actually. Yeah. I don't think they budgeted it, to be fair.

No, it's seen better days, but the actual translation of it, I think, is quite faithful and impressive, but I'm curious about your impressions. Oh, yeah, definitely. So I don't think I got anything new out of the clip that I saw in the latest episode that came out

to preface that. I just fast forward to that segment that you gave me the time. timestamp for. I didn't listen to any of the audio. I didn't want to spoil it for myself because I want to watch it. I just haven't had a chance yet. But I did see some of the spoilers that were shared online, still shots. Some people had found the location of the set and had done some guerrilla documentation. Hard to hide a set that size. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I was very surprised and happy to see that. I know with a lot of adaptations, they're

they struggle with that and I didn't have high expectations, but I was really surprised and yeah, proud that they did that. Also, I wasn't sure based on the first season if they were going to include New Vegas in the storyline and visit that. So to see that make it to season two is definitely really cool from my point of view. Yeah, they didn't just include it. It's a centerpiece and they've definitely drawn heavily on your work. So as you're watching that scene, are you saying, I remember that. Is that bringing back memories? Yes, for sure. And in fact, it was kind of cool in a way. I think myself, like many artists, we do something and we just kind of move on to the next thing.

And it's been 12 years easily since I've looked at any of the work that I did. It's a little difficult as an artist because I feel like I've grown a lot in that time. And these were some of my first attempts of doing concept art. So you're looking back and thinking, oh, amateur work. I could be better today. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But it was cool to look at some of that work that I did.

I also had to brush up on the names because I had forgotten the names of the casinos. Yeah. But yeah, it's great. I mean, in all honesty, at the time when I was working on this stuff, never would I ever imagined that it would continue being discussed and revisited and certainly not in this way. So, yeah, I'm very humble. and very fortunate to have taken a part of that. Yeah, I was wondering how you might feel about that

because some game adaptations are made in collaboration with the original creators, but most are not. And so you make something, you put it out there in the world and millions of people play it and enjoy it. And then if someone decides to come along and translate it to the screen and a movie or TV show, that's your baby that you labored over, even if it was a while ago.

you put a lot of sweat into that, and now it's kind of out of your control and out of your hand. So is that exciting? Is that scary? Is there some trepidation? Or is it purely, well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? I suppose a bit of everything. And I do have to also acknowledge that a lot of people took part of the creation of the game.

Even with something specific as the strip, I have to give shout out to Brian Menzzi. he was a concept artist. He did a lot of the character work, but also helped quite a bit in the environments. And Jason Sereno, he was the graphic artist, but he took on all the branding of the casinos. And so I jumped in where there was gaps,

and one of the big parts was with the architecture of the buildings themselves. But there's also about a couple dozen artists, well, technically about 50 artists and designers who made it all happen. So kudos to all them, because if it weren't for them, I wouldn't look as good today.

Yeah, takes a village to make a video game. It's a miracle, whatever it actually happens. And the production of Fallout New Vegas, even though it produced a best-selling and beloved game, was famously or infamously accelerated, right? You didn't have a ton of time to have that game come together. So tell me about that from your perspective, and the perspective of your team designing the look of this game in a compressed timeline.

Sure. Yeah. So I can't remember exactly the whole timeline, but it was, from my recollection, it was about a year and a half, including the DLCs. For those who are downloadable content, DLCs is how we refer to them, are essentially additional chapters within the game that are published later on after the main release. The way it started is kind of funny because, It started with tragedy and then quickly turned into shock.

And then it was just run, run, run. So I had been working on our team, I should say, over at a obsidian. We're working on the Aliens RPG game. And that got canceled. And a good portion of the team got laid off. I survived that layoff. But we didn't have a project. At least I didn't know of what was in the future.

And so I had been called to the CEO's office. Fergus. And I thought that was basically my exit interview. And so I went in there really stressed out. And he said, yeah, we're working on fall. And you want to be the lead on that? And I was just like, okay. Yeah, I mean, it's better than being fired.

Yeah, exactly. So it was a hard pivot. It's like going from like, I'm about to get fired to, oh. And he's like, okay, yeah, so this is what we're going to be doing. We've been talking to him, but it's going to be an accelerated schedule. and the director of development, a VP of development from Bethesda is going to be here in a couple days. And so we needed to come up with what your game plan is for it. So I had two days to kind of try and think about what is it we're going to be doing.

Yeah. The first few months were just trying to get a handle of GEC. That's the engine, the software that we used to make the game. And so it was mostly focused on just how do things work? How do we make it? How do we add one of our own characters? How do we start building things? What do we need to do?

And then once we got a handle on the pipelines, essentially the way things go from Photoshop or Maya, the 3D software package, into the game itself and where we can test it and play it. From that point, then we started thinking about, okay, how can we flush it out? How can we make it more unique? Maybe about halfway, about six months into it or so.

A lot of the focus was on everywhere, other than the strip. And that's because the strip had been carved out. Josh Sawyer knew that he had a bunch of stuff that he wanted to do to build the wastelands up. A lot of it had been from the work that he and some of the other team members had done previously when they were back at Black Isle. They had been working on a version of Falla that had been canceled. So they've rekindled some of those storylines, some of those characters.

And so he had a bunch of work already that was in his books, in his journals, that he was now resuscitating and bring it to life in the wasteland. And one day he came and he said, hey, look, I'm just so inundated with what's going on. I don't really have the bandwidth to go into the strip. So I'm going to let you take a stab at it and see what you can do. But for the most part, I'm going to concentrate on everything else. And I need you to concentrate on the strip. So for me, that was a blessing because we were relying a lot on existing assets, existing work to help prop up and get things going right away, test our gameplay.

And so this was the major part of the game where we could put our stamp onto it and distinguish it from fallout because we were very aware that while the timeline was very truncated, the expectations weren't. Gameplayers were going to want to see. a whole new version, not just a DLC, essentially, new characters in the same world. So we wanted a new location, but the same universe, and I just try to do my best. Most of the work that I did in designing these buildings were done late at night, because during the daytime was meetings, reviewing designs, and just plugging away at the rest

of the wasteland. And so I had those quiet evenings to myself, I would lock my office, this door and I would just crank out as many of these rough sketches as I could with the idea to present as many ideas to see what would float to the top. And some of those I spent quite a bit. Others were just, okay, I have an afternoon. This is what I can come up with. So when I look back, you know, it's it's weird to see these. And I'm thankful that they still resonate. But there is still also a bit of like, if I would have had more time, if I would have known that 15 years later, they're going to be making these into TV sets,

I would have maybe spent another evening on it. Yeah. You know, you never know. I'm sure no one who has ever made a game has thought, yeah, we had the perfect amount of time to do that, and we did everything we wanted to do. There's always something else. And yeah, there's pressure, the established brand of Fallout,

and you're playing in someone else's sandbox. Literally, there's a lot of sand in this. game. And so there's pre-established lore and rules about the look of the universe, but you're also putting your own stamp on it and carving out some new territory. So was there any kind of coherent, cohesive design philosophy for the world of Fallout New Vegas that wherever you were in that world, you wanted it to adhere to a certain look or evoke a certain emotion? Sure. So I mentioned that meaning that I had with the VP just a few days. afterwards. And he wanted the sales, the elevator sales pitch. How is this different from

fallout three? And to him, the way I described it was it's going to be in the lighting and the atmosphere. I haven't grown up in upstate New York and now living in Southern California, I talked about how part of the reason why the Hollywood industry established itself here in Southern California was because of the lighting and the atmosphere. And Vegas is similar to that. It's close enough to where we are, where it's clear skies, it's very sunny. It's a very different atmospheric tone to that of the East Coast. So it wasn't a artistic direction that was embraced by the team as a whole.

But one thing I wanted to be very obvious with any screenshot is that that's New Vegas, not Fallout 3. It's not D.C. wasteland. It's the Mojave Wasteland. And then to piggyback on that, anywhere you were in the map, I wanted there to be some color grading, some tinting, so that you knew if you're more towards the west or more towards the east. So towards the east is where you're starting to get more towards Caesar's territory. So there was that aspect of it. If there was an area that was very heavily contaminated. emanated with radiation that would take on a different tent too. So those are easy ways that I could art direct a project in a way that would have low impact on the resources, meaning rendering or frames per second for the in-consumer or a lot of manned hours for the producers. So I had to look for ways where I could pick low-hanging fruit that would make a big impact visually and help maintain cohesiveness.

The other part of it was pretty easy because it was, obviously, we had a lot of assets to work with. So sometimes we're just adding new textures to it. Sometimes we're adding new geometry. And so when it came down to doing the buildings, we wanted to make sure that we kept that in the same look. And because of Vegas having its first boom in the 50s, it's sitting in that same visual language as the Voltaic world.

So that made it very easy to figure out what should be in and what should not be in. So a lot of that design in terms of the architecture and that visual language is all derived from the Googie movement, the 50s sci-fi Jetson-esque aesthetic. And that all harmonizes very well with Voltaic. Yeah, that's really interesting. I read an article in PC Gamer just this week with the art director for Falap 4, who was saying that they took a real-life field trip to the DC area and it was late fall and the grass was brown and all the leaves were down and the trees were barren and they said, this is what we want

this game to look like. And so there's often sort of that real-life animating principle that you try to pour into the game and have that be kind of a consistent aesthetic, even though you're going from one area to the next and they might look very different in some respects. So for Vegas, Were you looking at the actual current present-day architecture and sort of extrapolating from there? Or was the idea, let's not model it on any actual casinos, but sort of take the look of them and imagine what this might look like in the future? No, quite contrary. A lot of times that was the part that I needed a gatekeep was avoiding any kind of present-day influence in terms of visual language. So all the casinos, all the buildings in new structures and props that we created were all heavily influenced by 50s era designs.

So the Lucky 38, that's an adaptation of the landmark hotel, which was almost like a flying saucer kind of design. So I know people mistakenly think that it's a take on the stratosphere, but it wasn't. It just happens to be a coincidence in that regard. Is there a favorite area of yours that you designed or helped design, not necessarily in the strip, but anywhere in the world of Fallout New Vegas? Because as you'll see, if and when you watch this season, they really did pull liberally from the entire map and creation. I think it's a tie-up.

Most of the time, it's lucky 38 because we really were able to put a lot more resources into flushing out not only the exterior but the interior. it's also where the intro video starts and it pulls out and it reveals. So I think it's an area I got to put a lot effort into it, not only in its execution and its design, but also in its reveal. Over the years, I've worked on games, and you might have an area that you worked on.

And then in the end, it gets shuffled around, and it's maybe like three quarters of the way through the game. So you know that maybe only a quarter of the people who play are actually going to have our experience. experience that. There's another part of it, and that is, I think it's the tops. It was a nod to my upbringing in upstate New York. There's an Albany. There's a performance center. It's called the egg. Folks from that area will know it. And so I incorporated my influence of that building for the tops hotel. So there's a roundish structure with a bias cut on the top. And that's essentially what

that is. So it's a little bit of a nod that I added for that. We're halfway through the season, so it took a while to get to New Vegas. And it takes a while to get to New Vegas in the game, depending on how you progress through it. But so much of your time is spent wandering around the wasteland. And it's more barren and isolated. And you go to these small little towns. And, you know, if there's just tumbleweeds blowing by, right? So is there a lower profile place in the game that stands out to you as sort of helping set the tone for most of the math? I would have to say the tavern. Yeah, and I love that when they have fallout day, that's where they go meet up. This is a real-life location. People who are familiar with the area may have gone there. Yeah, it's another place where we're able to give a little bit of our stamp on it, and it's where the player starts or in the very near vicinity of it.

And yeah, for that reason, I think that's a good place. It kind of brings you into the world. And we did spend a lot of time harving the areas around it so that when that first reveal appears, you exit the tavern, you can see things that have been kind of curated to help lead the players through the map. A lot of people love the game,

look back on it fondly, or are playing it now, and I'm sure that this season of TV will drive many people to play it. There is a 15th anniversary bundle being released this year. There's a lot of clamoring for a remake, a remaster, some sort of more modern-looking take on the game. Is that something you'd like to see? Do you think it holds up well? Again, I don't know if you've revisited recently, but would you like

to see the world of New Vegas with sort of a fresh coat of paint? Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the shameful things of games is that until recently, it was really hard to play old games. Unlike film or TV shows, you could pop in a DVD or screen now, especially, a movie from 100 years ago. That's really difficult to do with a game that was developed, like, say, 40 years ago. A lot of that hardware doesn't exist anymore. And so without emulators and without remastered or retooled games, it's harder to keep that IP circulating and available to folks who are new to it. I imagine if a game like Thawlet, New Vegas, were built from scratch today.

It would take a lot more than 18 months because games don't get made that quickly anymore, at least games like this. How do you think if this were being made today, as opposed to when it was actually being made, this game would look different or how might you have designed it with today's technology and your current skills? And would that be better or worse? I think that's a great question. Gosh, I would think probably the areas that we would see the most significant improvement would be in the materials and lighting. Back then, you know, you had one light that was real time actually influencing things. And a lot of it is baked. So it's static. Now, years later, we have the ability to support many more lights in real time. We have materials that are realistic that can behave in all sorts of different ways. So I think right off the bat, that would hugely change the visual fidelity that people would experience. And then maybe things like the characters, you know, we have, especially like if you were to port it or start in Unreal, you'd have characters that are a lot more believable, a lot more lifelike. And are there any lessons you learned from working on that game that you have applied to your subsequent work?

Yes. I think what was most revealing was that prior to that I had the mindset that you needed a concept of something out, completely really flushed out, how you want it to be built out, and then bring on folks to start assembling in and essentially followed the blueprint. And what I found out, especially with the DLCs, is that if you allow people to play in a sandbox and play with the Legos, you can come up with some really unique and creative things. yet still art directed by coming in afterwards and doing paintovers and maybe also embedding yourself with that team so that you can at certain points inject your feedback, but for the most part, allow others to be more collaborative,

whereas especially in certain medium, like say commercials or film, you have a very top-down approach. This was very organic and kind of circular fashion where some feedback came out from the team and sometimes they would come down from the leads. Well, it must be a blur because you made it so quickly and it's been a while, but it clearly resonates with people and has for all these years.

And I imagine it must be gratifying to see it all represented on screen this way. So the work has endured clearly. So something about what you all did made something that has stood the test of time. Maybe it looks at its age in certain. respects because that's what happens to video games, but there is something timeless, and that's a credit to the writing and the quests and the choice and everything. But I think it's also

the look and feel of the game, because there is a very distinct visual sensibility and a vibe when you're in that world. You feel like you're in that world, and I think the show has done a decent job of making you feel like you're in that world when watching this adapted version. Yeah, completely agree. And I'm very humbled. and thankful for the opportunity I got. It's really gratifying to see when I'm online, I'm seeing articles about the game still. I'm seeing references like Elon Musk making comments about Fallout

and tweets here and there and just how it kind of has woven itself into pop culture in various aspects. So, yeah, it's really gratifying to be able to have been partisan things like that and have it still exist. I think for me, though, is getting emails from folks like this one guy who grew up in the 40s and having been living in a place that reminded him of Sierra Madre. So when he played that DLC, it really brought him back to his childhood.

And to get someone to get emotional and get that response to him, that's, I think, a true achievement in art form is when you do that. So it things like that, that really make those long evenings all the worth of a while. Yes, agreed. And hopefully you don't have to spend quite as many long evenings working on games these days. Conditions have changed slightly, but I know it's still difficult to get a game out the door. And Elon Musk, big fan of one of my favorite games, DASX as well,

which doesn't necessarily make me feel better about liking that game personally. I'm not sure he and I interpret that game the same way, but at least it shines a light on it. leads to a little more publicity. I could probably talk to you about this game for a lot longer, but I can't because you're busy making another game. You are working on Ashes of Creation and MMO from Intrepid Studios, which came out in early access just last month. So you've been busy and probably will be, but people can check out your handiwork there. Joe, thanks so much for coming on and thanks for your work all those years ago on New Vegas, which is still paying dividends. Thank you so much. A lot to have been here. And yeah, it's a great time. So I hope you guys enjoy the show. And if you get a chance, check out the game.

All right. We'll hear more later in this run from people involved in the making of Fallout New Vegas and hopefully Fallout Season 2. And we'd love to hear more from you. Email us at Ringaverse Gaming at gmail.com. If you have questions about this season or comments, ideas, theories, you write them, we'll read them. And our discussion of episode five will once again drop first thing next Thursday. Thank you to Devin Rinaldo for producing this episode and to Arjuna Ramgapal for his senior podcast management. All right, heretics, as Maximus says, sometimes running away is the best thing you can do. Sometimes it's not. It is time for us to flee right now, but we'll be back next week. Until then, we're survivors. We'll survive.

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