Emmy-Nominated ‘Fallout: Vault 33′ Restores Interactivity to the Post-Apocalyptic Series’ Underground Bunker
“Fallout: Vault 33,” the Emmy-nominated promotional site for Prime Video’s post-apocalyptic “Fallout” series, reintroduces a sense of interactivity that got lost in the adaptation of the popular video game. For director Jonathan Nolan, who collaborated with showrunners Graham Wagner and Robertson-Dworet, it was important to reinforce the game.
“Usually when you’re adapting something, you’re adding to it: the images, the actors, the score, all the wonderful things that a book can’t do,” Nolan told IndieWire. “But when you’re adapting a game to a series, you’re taking away that interactivity. So the opportunity with our partners at Amazon — and the rest of the people that helped us build on these experiences [including Bethesda Game Studios, Addison Interactive, AKQA, BOND] — was to restore some of that interactivity.”
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One of the aspects that Nolan enjoyed most about the game, where people live in fallout bunkers called Vaults following the nuclear war of 2077, was the ability “to walk through these vast environments and pick up any rock and look underneath it.
“And that feeling of a fully developed, beautifully realized world was why we wanted to adapt these games in the first place,” added Nolan, who worked with supervising producer Noreen O’Toole. “And so some of the most fun we had in building the world of the show was here.
“I also think this [interactive experience] is the first time that we were introducing a lot of new fans who haven’t played ‘Fallout’ before,” he said. “And so how do you convey this unique tone of a post-apocalyptic show without giving anything away before it aired?”
The answer was to provide an interactive tour through parts of Vault 33, the underground bunker in Santa Monica, where Lucy (Ella Purnell) ventures out 200 years later into the devastated wasteland. We are shown the Residence Room, Hallway, and Door leading out to the wasteland and Filly shantytown, home to Ma June’s Sundries store. Clicking on various items brings up interactive text boxes or videos, such as the Radiation King TV, which unlocks “Welcome to Vault 33.”
“This is a red carpet for the audience to begin articulating the world to them and go well beyond, in some cases, what you can do on screen with traditional narrative,” Nolan added. “You can really allow the audience to peer in all the corners. I think [this interactive experience] has reached an apotheosis with ‘Fallout.’
The series’ retro-future vibe from production designer Howard Cummings conveys a kitschy mid-century nostalgia that is especially evident in “Vault 33.” “An interesting point is the cheeky tone,” Nolan said. “I think we took the opportunity with some of the immersive marketing materials to even comment on the corporate culture of all tech. The tone of it really supports this. That, weirdly, underneath all of that darkness and all of that destruction, there is a sense of hope that permeates the games, the series, and all of the beautiful media created around the series.”
Nolan even acknowledged the weird timing of “Fallout” coinciding with brother Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer.” “I don’t know what it is with the last eight or nine years,” said Nolan, “but it’s certainly gotten us in a somewhat apocalyptic mood. I think, tragically, we’re kind of back to where it all started, back in the Cold War, back in this moment of existential panic, the fear that any given moment, someone presses the wrong button and we’re all gone.
“And what does that world look like after that? I’ve always felt that movies and television were ways of mass, public therapy. We’re working through our worst nightmares together, trying to imagine the worst-case scenario. And maybe this helps us steer away from it a little bit. I think our timing was good.”
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