1. It was nifty how they revealed that Cooper Howard was essentially the inspiration for the Fallout Boy including his thumbs-up pose.
2. The attention to detail for virtually every prop, from the wallpaper, to the lamps, to the doors, to the guns, to the armor, to the vertibirds, door controls, the Vault doors, everything was spot on. The same wood panelling in the overseers office. It's an incredible achievement to bring a virtual setting to life with such care.
3. I like how there is relatively little interaction with the plots of the other games. Better to establish its own canon without interference. Easter Eggs and some basic comparisons (leaving the Vault to find your Dad etc.) are fine, but they've managed to keep it its own thing.
4. The New Vegas teaser was a nice touch - having Robert House there as the representative of RobCo during the Vault Tec meetings is interesting. The young actor doesn't quite have the gravitas of the character in NV, which would be my only gripe, but it's understandable given how much time has passed since then. Robert House is one of those larger-than-life Captains of Industry with dubious morals and pure capitalistic inclinations that tend to be fascinating character studies (much like Andrew Ryan in Bioshock).
As far as the timing is concerned, the show is supposed to take place in 2296, which is 15 years after New Vegas (2281). It makes it a bit tricky because they'd potentially have to choose a canon ending to New Vegas to work with. But the elimination of Shady Sands and the fall of the NCR gives them a lot of room to play with politically. The House ending would probably be the best one for this show to work with, and I suspect the linkage between Vault Tec and House/RobCo was established for the viewer during the big meeting of the corporate entities and could explain why Lucy's Dad is headed there for safety.
5. The allusions to the "game" are wink-wink nudge-nudge but done in an amusing and bearable way. When Lucy is describing her Science and Speech skills to the council as a potential spouse, it earned a well-deserved smile.
6. The amount of CGI employed was restrained and bearable. It's hard to do fantastic creatures on a TV series budget but I think they did well enough.
7. It's a rare achievement to be equally vested in all of the storylines, even the pre-apocalypse setting. Lucy, Maximus, Cooper and Norm all had me equally interested in what they were doing, which was refreshing when it switches point of view - you don't feel annoyed or frustrated that you're going to a different angle.
8. The Brotherhood of Steel is always an interesting faction to interpret. There is so much latitude, from noble knighthood fighting evil monsters and helping the common folk, to xenophobic fascists who want to hoard all technology and eliminate anything they deem as abnormal from the face of the Earth.
It looks like Nolan and Joy are pushing more towards the latter type of behaviour, which to be honest, is more in keeping with the general outlook of the faction. Elder Owyn Lyons in FO3 was more of the exception to the rule, where he prioritized the health, safety and well-being of the people.
9. The soundtrack is so important for the show. It's crucial to establish that this is an alternate future where 40s and 50s pop culture remains ascendent despite all the technological advancements in atomic technology. Hearing a lot of the same songs brings you instantly back to your gaming experiences. There was even a moment where they played the Fallout 3 intro music, which was goosebumps inducing.
10. The show is gory, much like the game, but uses humour to try and make it a more bearable watching experience (much like the games themselves, or shows like the Boys). I think they hit that balance well. There are still shocking moments of horror that remind the viewer of how horrifying the Wasteland can be.
11. I had assumed that Dr. Wilzig was a synthetic humanoid like in Fallout 4 (and one character in Fallout 3). I wonder if that was meant to be a bit of a red herring given that he wasn't re-animated or put into a new body, but rather he was just the carrier of revolutionary tech. The head was a pure MacGuffin but it was sort of morbidly funny to see how deteriorated it had become after being swallowed, immersed in radioactive water, and carried across half the Wasteland.
12. The big reveal, that Vault Tec was responsible for starting the war, is a good one. It's a new revelation for the series, but unlike "Somehow, the Emperor returned", there's a cold, dispassionate logic to it. Imagine these people, spending their lives and endless resources building these rat traps, only never to use them? I think it speaks to the horrifying consequences of internal group think, where you can rationalize or even convince yourselves that the greatest crimes against humanity are actually in the interest of humanity after all.
13. It will probably be worth watching again to catch all the little details. I enjoyed how Cooper's ad for Vault-Tec involved the same scientists who were later seen barricading doors in Vault 4 because their utopian scientific community had essentially run amok.
14. I'll admit that Vault 31-32-33 being responsible for Shady Sands was a twist I saw coming very early on. But I figured that it was related to the desire to recolonize the surface without interference, not that it was more of a personal vendetta from Lucy's Dad.
15. Bad acting can ruin a science-fiction show, because you have to believe that the character believes where and when they are. I think all four main characters did a fine job.
Lucy had the difficult job of being naive yet inspiring and not whiny and silly, and I think she manages that crafty bit of acting.
Walter Goggins saunters through the show effortlessly, essentially playing two characters at the same time. A lot of parallels between Cooper and Nolan and Joy's "Man in Black" in Westworld - the morally ambiguous gunfighter with an intriguing past.
Maximus has the toughest role to play really - a warrior who is unsure of himself, eager to prove but lacking in skill and experience. It's an inherently unlikeable character, particularly at the beginning, but there's definitely room to grow. He has a bit of that Finn in SW role of being hapless for humour's sake on occasion. To be honest, he's probably the hardest character to believe because the BoS would have mustered him out if he was that incompetent. At the same time, the line about "we always have more squires" sort of shows how much they value their individual lives. The ludicrously giant golf bags that the squires tote around further adds to their lack of value.
Norm is a fun character in that he's clearly clever and intelligent while small and unassuming, lacks commitment to the high-minded ideals of Vault life, but also possesses a seeming dark side to his nature that might be cultivated in an intriguing way down the road. A character to watch over subsequent seasons (I hope).
16. One of the funny and unavoidable challenges of Fallout properties is the fact that they typically depict the Wasteland as cluttered and destroyed beyond recognition (with a few exceptions). This despite the fact that hundreds of years have passed. No one since has bothered with a broom. The odds of finding anything in a pre-war hospital after 3 or 4 generations of people have scrounged the heck of any obvious location for supplies are pretty remote, but they go looking anyway.
