Fallout Season 2 Ep 1 Review
Christmas came early this year, my fellow Vault Dwellers. I was wholly expecting to have to wait another day for the season premiere of Fallout, but we got it a night early. Thanks to that, I had to spend the whole day avoiding spoilers as best as I could. I couldn’t, but I was able to forget what I learned, and it’s a good thing I did. This premiere was chaos! And I’m not just saying that because that’s how things normally are in the Wasteland. Nor am I saying it because chaos can be the biggest monkey wrench in those who want total control. I’m saying it because this premiere was trying to juggle a lot of plot threads at once, and it didn’t always step up to handle them all. But to be fair, there’s a lot that the show is going to have to do this season. But sometimes, chaos is what the world needs to change.
Like this!
House is Just as Bad as Everyone Else. What Else is New?
Since this premiere is juggling so many things at once, I’m going to have to cover them in rapid fire and potentially out of order.
So, remember how I was saying that Robert House may be the best chance the Wasteland has for a brighter future? I’m starting to reconsider that, because while Mr. House is the smartest man alive, he’s just as unethical as the rest of the people running America before the bombs dropped. I already knew that part, but this episode cements that fact in the flashback portions of the episode. As it turns out, House developed some chips that, when implanted in a person’s neck, forces them to obey the orders of whoever’s controlling said chip. In other words, he made something capable of creating an army of brainwashed slaves. And it comes with the risk of making their heads explode.
I didn’t even need to see Hank MacLean working on the chips at the end of the episode to know what those things could do, or why House made them. That kind of invention could let someone enslave everyone living above ground, or kill them outright. And as we see at the end of the episode, Hank is already in the process of experimenting with the tech at a hidden location. Lucy and the Ghoul even see one of his guinea pigs leave a message telling her to go home, something that disgusts them both.
That, and the Vault they find it in (which was cut from the New Vegas game) was about brainwashing Americans into becoming Communists. Vault-Tec really is the worst.
Did House Really Start the War?
What’s more concerning, though, is this piece of information we learn in the flashbacks about House. Before, we thought that House had nothing to do with Vault-Tec’s idea of starting the Great War on purpose. However, as the Ghoul, in his past life, learns, that may not be the case. Moldaver thought that system he built to protect Vegas was also meant to start dropping the bombs.
As much as I want to say that that’s not the case, I wouldn’t put it past House to do something that crazy. Yes, he did save Vegas, but only out of his own self-interest. Plus, Lucy asks a very important question that I never considered: why didn’t House build the same defenses across America. It was well within his power to do so. Then again, America was a lost cause at that point. I reserve judgement until the rest of the episodes come out.
What I won’t reserve judgement on is how Lucy’s little brother handles his predicament back home: it’s awesome.
Embrace the Chaos
When we last left Norm Maclean, he had learned that Vault 31, the place where all the Overseers came from, was a giant cryo-storage facility with pre-War Vault-Tec employees. All released to ensure everything followed the company’s plans. And he was held hostage by a brain in a jar riding a rhoomba. He could either die of thirst or starvation, or he could go into cryostasis himself.
Norm chose neither. Instead, he chose chaos.
The thing that Vault-Tec never understood is that humankind is made of equal parts order and chaos. We want a sense of structure, but we also want freedom to choose our paths. And when people trample on that freedom with order, we choose chaos. In Norm’s case, he derails Bud Askin’s plans by choosing to wake everyone up at once.
This Was Hilarious
Because I was watching the episode with family, I had to resist the urge to laugh at what Norm did. I’ve been harping since last year that almost everything that Vault-Tec does is going to be proven wrong, and I was so glad to be right about that. Vault-Tec can try and control things all they want, but chaos will eventually seep its way in. Even if he hadn’t done that, cracks are already starting to form in the other two Vaults. Their water chip is broken, and their limited population means inbreeding will eventually become an issue. With this, Norm can force everyone to leave the Vaults and embrace the surface. Chaos wins!
Chaos Can be a Good Thing, You Know
I know the surface is bad, but as history has shown, Vault-Dwellers are good at surviving on the surface. I just hope that the rest of the season will have us see more of Vault-Tec’s plans unravel. In the meantime, I’m already enjoying the fanservice, like the giant T-Rex in Novac. There’s so much fan service and references that fans of the game are going to have to watch this several times to recognize everything. It looks like I’m going to be rather busy this winter, but I’m ready to embrace the chaos!
Also, full disclosure: when Norm was at risk of starving to death, for a moment, I thought that he was going to consider opening up Bud’s brain jar and eating him. Cannibalism is a thing in the games…and Bud kind of deserves it.
