Prime Video’s long-awaited Fallout series has exploded onto the streaming platform (such an original joke) a day early. Based on the acclaimed video game series of the same name, Prime Video’s new show launches audiences into an alternate future where the 1950s never ended, Nat King Cole is still number one, and the world has gone boom a couple of times.

Fallout opens with something the games rarely do, giving audiences a glimpse at life before the bombs dropped in 2077. As a bankrupt actor, Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins) is forced to make appearances at kids birthday parties – enough to make you pray for the end of the world. Luckily for Howard, it does, and he gets a first class view of the apocalypse from the Hollywood hills. This dark opening gets the audiences heart pumping and their eyes weeping as Cooper powerlessly flees from the blast with his young daughter. Then hard-cut to 200+ years later, and Fallout‘s exploration of war-loving, capitalist America truly begins.

Fallout is one of, if not the best video game adaptations so far. Creator Jonathan Nolan expertly extracts the iconic visuals and dry humour that defined the games and extrapolated their impact on screens. The first episode starts with an emotional gut-punch, then dives head first into the bizarre retro-futuristic ‘American Dream’ lifestyle that the Vault Dwellers confine themselves to. Fallout‘s three-pronged story (the series follows three main ‘protagonists’) is a major diversion from the first-person, RPG-style plot of the games, but this works in its favour.

Like any series or film, Fallout‘s exemplary quality is the sum of its parts. The cast are absolutely phenomenal, and Walton Goggins undoubtedly steals the show as The Ghoul, a darkly sarcastic and sadistic bounty hunter. While everyone knew Goggins would give an incredible performance, he is equally matched by the rest of the cast. Ella Purnell adds a refreshing quality to the over-used fish out of water character trope, balancing on the line between comedically unaware without pushing into irritatingly stupid. Aaron Clifton Moten also brings a twisted depth to Maximus, a Brotherhood of Steel initiate who is loyal to their cause, but flooded with jealousy and rage.

Fallout doesn’t just adapt the video games, it builds on the worldbuilding, much like a new entry into the franchise. In the games, Vault-Dwellers do not differ to much from the Wastelanders, except for their hygiene and blue orientated dress sense. But Purnell’s Lucy isn’t just a regular person who happened to be born in a vault, she embodies the meritocratic nature of vault life. The same goes for Maximus, who embodies the Brotherhood’s shoot first mentality, whilst (seemingly) questioning their xenophobic ideologies.

With a franchise as visually unique and silly (in all the best ways) as Fallout, it would have been very easy for Nolan’s team to make their adaptation look stupid and faux. However, the series grounds the 1950s inspired wasteland in reality, despite its absurd qualities. The costumes, which are often caricatures of 1950s regalia and the stereotypical characters found in post-apocalyptic classics like Mad Max, immerse audiences in the reality of this wasteland, and adds individuality to each character – no matter how small their role. The games’ continuous dives into absurdity could easily have ruined Nolan’s live-action adaptation, potentially detracting from the heart and grit at the core of the franchise. But, like how Ella Purnell’s performance tows the line between comedic and stupid, Nolan finds the equilibrium between the franchise’s bleak reality of nuclear war, and the hilarious inhabitants of its wasteland.

Prime Video’s Fallout proves that TV is the best format for video game adaptations. It’s a sentiment that fans have held since Netflix’s Arcane and Castlevania, but studios are only just catching on to. The extended screen time of a series was vital to conveying the overwhelming scope and detail of Fallout‘s world, characters, and style. Fans of the games will know how often their missions are diverted by an endless number of new locations and side quests, and Fallout incorporates this into its plot, a feat which can only be achieved through an episodic format.

So what makes Episode 1 of Fallout such a good video game adaptation? It sounds reductionist, but it ultimately comes down to a true love and understanding of the source material. Some faithful adaptations fail because, in trying to be faithful, they incorporate aspects of the games that fans didn’t like – see Assassins Creed (2016). Meanwhile unfaithful adaptations fail because of their disregard for understanding what makes the IP so popular – see Netflix’s The Witcher. Jonathan Nolan is a die-hard Fallout fan. Over a decade before bringing the franchise to life for Prime Video, Nolan was addicted to Bethesda’s Fallout 3. Nolan admitted this in an interview during a press event, via T3, saying that his love of the game impeded his work on 2005’s Batman Begins. “I was an aspiring young writer at that point, and it almost derailed my entire career.”

Jonathan Nolan’s passion for the franchise is obvious, and is exemplified in the pixel perfect recreation of many of the games’ beloved iconography, like the vaults, weapons, and creatures, and the tragic undercurrent that adds weight to the show’s gripping narrative. Nolan also brings his own flavour to the adaptation, incorporating many unique, and hilarious characters and concepts, like the idea of connected vaults (which fans of the games know will lead to a dark reveal in a future episode).

Episode 1 of Prime Video’s Fallout has laid the perfect groundwork for the series to come. If Nolan can maintain this momentum, Fallout could easily be the best video game adaptation so far!

Fallout is currently streaming on Prime Video.