Viva New Vegas! Following last season’s post-credits hint, Lucy and The Ghoul make their way to the setting of probably the most beloved Fallout game to track down her father. Except that’s not quite what her ghoulish companion has in mind…

It’s fair to say that season 1 was lauded for its accuracy in recreating the look and vibe of at least some of the games. Much of it would be entirely lost on the non-gamer audience but without making it obvious they were missing anything – if you must do references do it in such a way that the nonplussed don’t know they’re nonplussed. That job was largely done successfully.

This time around though things have changed. Whereas this had been a story set in the general world of the games this season acts very much as a sequel to one specific game, 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas. This creates a problem, as the producers are very much of a mind that this series fits into the established lore and is as much a part of the overall franchise as any of the games. The problem is that your Fallout: New Vegas isn’t necessarily my Fallout: New Vegas. Depending on what you do and who you support, the game can end any number of ways. Want to work with Mr House so he rules over a little empire? Okie Dokey. Want to betray him and smash his brains in with a golf club? Congrats, here’s an Xbox trophy for you (really). Similarly you can be a law abiding citizen and work for the NCR, the closest faction to being the “good guys” or if you can handle not sleeping at night join the Legion and enslave the Mojave. And on it goes. This is a problem.

The show wants to sit comfortably after any possible ending but it struggles to do so, and the storytelling I think is hampered as a result. The vast majority of the audience have never played that specific game and likely never will, at least until the long rumoured remaster drops, and yet are served something which rather relies on that familiarity. It’s hard for me to judge, being familiar with much of it, but there seems to be an awful lot here which goes more or less unexplained to the “not we”. What’s the deal with Canada? (The US annexed it in the 2070s for its natural resources and they went to war.) Who were The Kings and did it matter when an off-her-head Lucy wiped out their last remaining members? (Elvis impersonators and yes, it was heartbreaking.) What’s the deal with the FEV? (turns people into Supermutants). What are the various factions of the Brotherhood of Steel and why are they at each other’s throats? (God knows and it’s beyond me, I’m not that much of a nerd). And so on.

The culmination of this is in the depiction of the Strip itself. Dating from a design decision from two generations of console back, the strip was one of the few disappointments in the original, a small cluster of casinos grouped around a central square surrounded by inaccessible walls. The tech just wasn’t there to even begin to replicate the scale of the real Las Vegas, but we forgave it because we understood and it didn’t impact the gameplay. Here that tiny little area is replicated brick for brick and frankly looks ridiculous. The show’s insistence on recreating the original works against it. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t, we all know how fandoms can be once they hit the comments section, but really isn’t the audience at large more important than the relatively small slice who’d be angry about it? (Having said that, season one’s possible boo-boo/retcon over the date of the destruction of Shady Sands had a certain type of fan having conniptions, so there’s that.)

Let’s accentuate the positive though, because at one point in this season Mr Frank told us we should and he’s not a man to be argued with. The music is still fab and it’s still your (grand)dad’s records, although missing a few favourites from the game presumably for licensing reasons, so no Johnny Guitar or Heartache by the Number, sadly.

After the brief hint of a skull at the end of last season we finally get some Deathclaw action, and they’re very well realised albeit rather squishier than their game equivalents (let’s assume that Maximus and Thaddeus have levelled up a lot since last time and put the requisite perk points into melee and sniping – good luck running into them at level 5…)

On top of that we get our first proper encounter with a Super Mutant, and in a neat touch he’s played by the narrator of most of the games, Ron Perlman. Fingers crossed for much more Supermutant action next time.

There’s a nice surprise involving Mr House, who appeared briefly last time and, so we assumed, had been recast for his larger role here. I enjoyed this Howard Hughes-inspired sleight of hand and both actors are fun to watch.

The main cast continues to shine, with Aaron Moten’s Maximus coming to the fore a little more this time – his pairing with Thaddeus, as opposed to his mopey-boyfriend role last year, brings us some of the show’s best moments. Ella Purnell’s Lucy is still sweetly naive and wide eyed but is developing a harder edge as the world, and her dad, continues to let her down (although most of us would kill for her plot-armour, especially against Macauley Culkin and the Legion).

It’s Walter Goggins as Cooper/The Ghoul who continues to steal the show and it’s at his best when he’s on screen. The flashbacks here are filling in the details nicely, and the parallels with modern-day US corporate politics are not lost, although there’s still questions to be answered (is Mrs Cooper really secretly one of the good guys? I’m not so sure). It is a bit of a problem when your series’ flashbacks are often more interesting than its main narrative though (see also “a mirrorverse where everyone is evil but also hot” so beloved of some Star Trek for a similar issue) – something to watch out for next time.

Also for next time – please dump the whole series at once again (they won’t because subs=money and Jeff Bezos has a Melania-sized overdraft to pay off). It really benefited from being able to sit there for eight hours, or two chunks of four if you’re a lightweight/have a life, in order to soak up the world they so meticulously (re)built. I banked a few of these and it definitely helps, especially as there are any number of spinning plates to keep up with – I haven’t even mentioned Frank and his lab rats, literal or otherwise, or Steph and her terrible secrets, or Norm and his subterfuge among the revived lower management.

Verdict: After the huge success of the first season this of course has “difficult 2nd album” vibes which to some extent can be forgiven but should have spent a bit more time explaining things to the uninitiated. It looks like season 3 is headed for parts unknown (aka Colorado) so hopefully will be unshackled from too much game-specific lore. 7/10

Andy Smith