We bought our first take a look at the Fallout TV collection final week with a trailer on Saturday preceded by a behind-the-scenes report from Self-importance Honest, which included appears on the present’s most important characters and surprisingly shiny and colourful post-nuclear world, and naturally some phrases from Bethesda govt producer Todd Howard. The report additionally included a small and admittedly baffling element for followers to sit up for: Vault Boy, the real-world mascot of the collection and in-game avatar of fictional megacorp Vault-Tec, goes to get his very personal origin story.
Particulars weren’t shared, naturally, however Howard appears to assume it is a good suggestion: “That was one thing that they got here up with that is simply actually good,” he stated within the Self-importance Honest article.
Origin tales are a staple of cinematic retellings—what number of instances have we borne witness to the radioactive spider chunk, the homicide of the Wayne of us, or the child from Krypton?—however… Vault Boy? Actually? It feels not solely totally pointless to me, but additionally painfully apparent: Vault-Tec wanted a enjoyable, family-friendly mascot to assist promote its in any other case apocalyptic merchandise to the general public at giant, so it rounded up a number of underpaid advert guys (or possibly employed an exterior consulting agency) and caught them in a convention room to kick round concepts till they got here up with one thing.
Making the entire thing even stranger is its redundancy, as a result of the TV collection origin story will virtually inevitably mirror how the precise Vault Boy got here into being: Folks workshopping concepts for a memorable character to assist them promote a product. In line with the Fallout Wiki, unique Fallout artwork director Leonard Boyarsky sketched what he known as “Talent Man” to assist illustrate some concepts he was making an attempt to elucidate; it then went to artist George Almond, who refined the idea on the primary few in-game stat photographs, after which Tramell Ray Isaac took over, finalizing the look.
Fallout producer Tim Cain shared a extra compact model of the creation of Vault Boy in a 2002 interview with Duck and Cowl: “All I keep in mind is Leonard telling T. Ray Isaac to attract one thing like Mr. Moneybags in Monopoly.”
I am going to admit, it will be a pleasant little Easter egg if the Vault Boy origin story within the Fallout TV collection noticed a Vault-Tec advertising vice chairman named Leonard telling advert reps George and T. Ray that they have till the tip of the day to mash out one thing the corporate can placed on tv to juice gross sales. And it would go over effectively with individuals who aren’t hip to the deep Fallout lore, which is to say, nearly everybody. However as an necessary, and even simply barely noteworthy, a part of the story? I actually do not see it.
The Fallout TV collection is about to air on Prime Video on April 12.
