Fallout Showrunners Reveal Hardest Part of Adapting Huge Video Game Franchise

The dangerous and devastating world of Fallout is finally making its way to TV. 16 years after Fallout 3 arrived and turned the franchise into a juggernaut of the video game industry, Amazon Studios and Westworld's Jonathan Nolan have developed the story into a live-action TV series. That said, the Fallout games are some of the most expansive around, so the task of whittling that world down to an eight-episode TV series is certainly a daunting one.

So how did the writing team manage to cram a large part of that world into a series? Well, the short answer is they didn't. Speaking with ComicBook.com ahead of the Fallout premiere, showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner explained that there was simply to much to fit into one season, but they crammed every inch of every frame with references and nods to the Fallout universe.

"I think it was the great filter go getting 25 years of games, and if you're a completionist, it can be 1,000 hours per game," Wagner told us. "It's story in every terminal, in every filing cabinet, just an amazing abundance of story and then we have eight hours of a season. And the moment it dawns on you just how little you can actually get in and get in effectively. We had a great group of writers, an amazing story team on set. Every nook and cranny of the frame is filled with stuff. But we still feel like we barely scratched the surface of the Fallout world in this first season. But we hope it's a memorable scratch."

As of right now, there hasn't been any word about a second season of Fallout from Prime Video, but the immense popularity of the game series offers hope that the series will be a hit. The creative team already has ideas on where to go should it picked up for more episodes.

"It's an uncertain time in television. So the art form of season finales has become: provide enough closure, but leave the door open for more," Wagner told Total Film. "But we feel we've barely scratched the surface of the Fallout universe. We literally have documents and documents of stuff that we're, in success, eager to dig into. Our fingers are crossed that we're going to get the opportunity to do all that stuff." 

All eight episodes of Fallout debut on Prime Video April 11th.