How Prime Video’s Fallout Recreates One of the Games’ Best Features

The following article contains spoilers for Amazon Prime Video’s
Fallout
series.

Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout series has taken the cake as one of the best live-action video game adaptations in recent memory, and it’s only in its first season. With a convincing cast of memorable characters, a series-accurate representation of the Wasteland, and plenty of violence the franchise is known for, Fallout is a faithful adaptation that can be enjoyed by fans and newcomers alike. As expected, included in the show are plenty of Easter eggs for longtime Fallout fans to spot, and that includes one of the series’ most notable features.

There are plenty of things to love about the Fallout video game series, just as there are about Prime Video’s adaptation. However, one feature from the video games stands out as a signature of the series that has even gone on to influence other features like it — specifically, the franchise’s iconic V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) feature introduced in Fallout 3. For Prime Video’s Fallout series to be considered a faithful adaptation, it would need to include this signature feature in some way. Fortunately, it does, and it does so in one of the first season’s most action-packed (and gruesome) scenes.

How Prime Video’s Fallout Recreates the Game Series’ Iconic V.A.T.S. Feature

V.A.T.S. Is an Iconic and Trademark Feature of the Fallout Games

Fallout‘s V.A.T.S. was first introduced in Fallout 3 as a way to help players disarm, disable, and defeat their enemies. Apart from Fallout 76, which had to change the system due to the game being always online, V.A.T.S. allows players to pause time and select their opponents’ highlighted limbs for a more precise attack that inflicts injuries. Firing at an enemy in V.A.T.S. will usually trigger a slow-motion effect that is followed by a rather gruesome display of the kill. Sometimes, the camera will even follow the player’s bullet as it flies toward the enemy. V.A.T.S. has occasionally been viewed as a somewhat controversial feature due to the ease with which it can be manipulated, but it has by and large proven to be one of Fallout‘s most beloved combat systems to date.

Fallout’s Filly Shoot-Out Scene Recreates the Games’ V.A.T.S. Feature

Fallout‘s V.A.T.S. feature as it is likely wouldn’t be believable in live-action format, so Prime Video’s adaptation had no choice but to recreate it. When Lucy arrives in Filly for the first time, she is eventually caught in the middle of a shoot-out between Walton Goggins’ Ghoul and many of the town’s residents. During the shoot-out, the Ghoul subdues almost every person attempting to take him down, and it is here that the video game series’ V.A.T.S. feature is recreated in live action.

While it isn’t put on display for every one of the Ghoul’s kills, there are a few that are clear callbacks to V.A.T.S. At no point does the screen highlight each of the Ghoul’s victims’ weak points. Instead, a couple of these kills happen in slow-motion, just as they would during a V.A.T.S. kill in the Fallout games. For example, the Ghoul’s first “V.A.T.S.” kill occurs when two characters leap out from behind cover to attack him. Unfortunately for them, the Ghoul beats them to the punch as he quickly fires his weapon, and its bullet is shown careening toward the two victims in slow motion, eventually beheading one of them as it would in the video games.

Another of the Ghoul’s “V.A.T.S.” kills occurs when he exits cover and fires a “slow-motion” bullet at an enemy above him.

Going into its second season, Amazon Prime Video’s Fallout series will most likely continue to incorporate Easter eggs for fans of the series to discover, and that means V.A.T.S. may make a return in some way as well. Until then, new and old players can take advantage of the recent Fallout renaissance, since the show has skyrocketed the series’ popularity.