As a life-long video game fan, I've learnt to be apprehensive about big or small-screen adaptations of big titles, and so I was pleasantly surprised when Fallout ended up being... not terrible.
Fallout is my favorite gaming franchise, and I've enjoyed everything from the best-selling main-series games to the old-school top-down strategy spin-off Fallout Tactics and even the divisive online Fallout 76. I've even got the board game!
I thought the TV series was just fine, but I'm really hoping the first season acts as a warm-up to much better seasons to come. In the fantasy I've created in my head, season 1 was a way for the creators to find their footing in the world before more faithfully reproducing the tone, increasing the production quality and adding some real drama in Fallout season 2. Oh, and if they could stop needlessly trying to set up parts of the games that didn't need setting up, that would be wonderful.
But talking about what the upcoming second season takes from the games, there's one background storyline that spans multiple titles that I'd love to see introduced in the show. It's not a major part of the video game series, and I think game fans might first want to see major introductions like Super Mutants, the Institute or Caeser's Legion before this small aspect of the games.
However people like me, who've spent thousands of hours in the games franchise, might already know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Dunwich.
Dunwich Building and Dunwich Borers
If you've watched the Fallout TV show but not played the games, or have only played certain titles from the series, you'll probably have no idea what Dunwich is.
It began in Fallout 3; hidden at the side of the map was an abandoned building you could explore called the Dunwich Building. It was much creepier than other abandoned buildings and was filled with zombie-like ghouls...
... until you got further in where you could see strange visions of cult worship from the pre-war days, all while following the audio logs of a strangely-posessed man and hearing bizarre whisperings. It bears mentioning that no other location in the game had this strange occult tone.
The Dunwich Building showed a new side to Fallout, of strange cults and creatures, all obviously inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The add-on expansion pack for the game called Point Lookout doubled down on this with some extra information about the building and its ties to occultism but Fallout 4 expanded this hidden side to the games in a new way.
In the game, there's an old quarry called Dunwich Borers. The name is the first clue of its link to the previous building but it was also owned by the same in-universe company: Dunwich Borers LLC. Initially this quarry was repurposed as an outpost for raiders but when you explore it you're once again subjected to visions and attacks.
It transpires that the quarry ends with a deep-buried statue of a strange figure, in a ritual chamber that's seen heavy use, and you find a weird knife on an altar. Spooky!
The implication in both locations is of a corporation whose identity is tied to a mysterious cult, worshipping an ancient figure. Worse, some kind of mystic or magical power, and dangers for the fictional world, are alluded to. There are other hints and clues as to these powers and threats through the games, but the two ones mentioned are the most prominent. Online YouTubers have spent countless hours going through the mystery in more detail.
Why Dunwich should come to the Fallout TV series
What makes the Dunwich Building and Dunwich Borers elements of the Fallout games is that it's not the main focus of the games. Both are creepy locations you can visit, which hint at more going on in the world, which are more prescient for their juxtaposition to the rest of the story going on. They're one-and-done bites, in other words.
That would work perfectly in a TV show. Fallout's first season was pretty lazer-focused on the quests of its three main characters, and so there wasn't much time to set up parts of the games which didn't directly tie in to, or inform, these stories. We learn about the Vaults and the Brotherhood of Steel because that's important for the narrative but factions like the Institute or Legion would take too much setting up for their minimal impact on the story.
That wouldn't be the case for Dunwich; it wouldn't need much setting up at all. The characters could stumble into a creepy building, endure some horror tropes for the course of an episode and then escape. It'd be a fun way to add some genre elements, and inform us more about the pre-war corporations (Fallout season 1 included loads of set-up for this element of the universe, for some reason) as a single-episode pause from the main narrative.
The first season of Fallout actually came close to this; the sixth episode, 'The Trap' sees Lucy and Maximus pause their quest as they get stuck in a new vault. They spend the episode slowly learning more about it before eventually escaping and continuing their quest, and it even has some cult-like elements like the Dunwich Borers story (although it's a cult around one of the show's characters, not some mysterious and ancient being). So there's precedent here for a 'monster of the week' style episode about Dunwich. Setting an episode in an abandoned haunted house would be a nice break from endless scenes of an underground vault or CGI landscapes too!
There's one other reason it'd be great: the fans. Despite the Dunwich mystery being a really tiny aspect of the video games, online YouTubers have spent ages on multi-hour-runtime video essays exploring every single reference to the mystery, the company and the cult in all the games. It's a huge area of fascination for gamers and a reference in the TV show could help introduce the mystery to more fans, while giving us some more hints around it.
Why it won't happen
Despite how great it would be for the show, I don't imagine Fallout season 2 (or future seasons) will make any mention of Dunwich.
For starters, most references to it suggest that the company is based on the east coast of America, while the show takes place on the west coast. It wouldn't make sense story-wise. But there's more than that.
Over its many games, the Fallout TV show has varied in tone between dark comedy and... well, just 'dark'. A few companies have developed games in the franchise over its several-decades run.
The Fallout TV series cleaned up this tonal discrepency, removing lots of the darker elements but also the dry humor, presumably in an attempt to appeal to general audiences. And Dunwich definitely doesn't fit in with the current tone with the show.
The Dunwich locations show human sacrifice, occult powers and ancient creatures, things which are both too dark and too fantastical to fit in with the series as it stands.
There are also loads of more iconic elements of the Fallout franchise that would need to be added to the series before the Dunwich mystery; not just factions but easter eggs too. Crashed alien space ships have shown up more times throughout the series than the Dunwich cult references.
So for now, I'm not going to expect Fallout season 2 to introduce the Dunwich mystery, but maybe if Amazon continues it through many seasons or makes spin-offs, it's something they could look at.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
