The original post: /r/television by /u/Kaniketh on 2026-01-07 16:04:36+00:00.
(Just to be clear they are not retroactively ruining the game, nor is my issue that they changed some of the lore from the Game. I’m ok with that. I’m mad that they’re making everything from the game genuinely worse and less interesting)
I feel like they are making every single character and faction less interesting or cool than they were in the games. I think a big part of that is the tone they going for. While the games always had a goofy comedy and dark humor, it feels like they at least took the world seriously. Like for example, the brotherhood in the show is just reduced into this complete punching bag of militaristic incompetent assholes. And I know everyone is going to say that they were flawed/incompetent in the games, but having two knights play chicken with a grenade like literal middle schoolers in the middle of the meeting was just a bridge to far. The brotherhood immediately desecrating or destroying everything in area 51 like teenagers is again stupid and even goes against their own worldview and mission. Like there isn’t anything actually interesting, cool or likeable about this faction in the show, it feels like the joke villains that we get introduced in 1 episode of a different TV show, where we all laugh, cheer and clap as they get brutally murdered.
Another example is the first scene with the ghoul in it where we see the great khans, a pretty cool and interesting faction in the game reduced to another bunch of nameless goons that are dispatched easily by our main characters. I mean a literally scorpion gave Cooper more trouble than an actually interesting faction. Like what was the point of not just making them a bunch of nameless raiders? It feels like they just did it for fan service by showing the Khans logo (while just having them as generic enemies who die instantly and hilariously).
In the first scene of the show Mr House shows up in person, alone, with millions of dollars, to taunt a bunch of workers into beating him up, then testing the chip on them. Why would he take such an insane risk? Like he got pretty lucky to have that one opportunity to put the chip on the guy’s neck, and not have just been instantly surrounded or beaten up by his friends, have all of the money stolen, or even killed. This is a character in the game that is literally a face on a monitor for like 95% of it, and has everything done through robots or employees, and is shrouded in secrecy and doesn’t often let people meet him. Like why the show made him into just another caricature of a rich asshole rather than the intelligent mastermind he was in the game, especially by doing a 180 of the characters main traits in the first scene.
The thing that made me write this is their portrayal of the legion. Like they are just reduced to another comedy bit used for a filler episode. Like really, they’ve spent the last 20 years fighting over this one corpse and the note written on it? Also the legion goes from being described as an empire that controls Arizona, New Mexico, and even parts of Colorado and Utah to one camp that’s been at war this whole time?
Another thing that pissed me of is that they are so incompetent and stupid that they let cooper literally set up and explode dynamite right in the middle of their camp. Like again, why cant you make them feel smart or interesting or competent at all? Why is every single faction just something to mocked, made fun of, or not taken seriously at all? In New Vegas every single faction felt real, grounded, and like it would actually exist they way that it did. In the show they are all reduced to joke. The world just doesn’t feel real or grounded in the same way, it just feels like a theme park for Lucy and the ghoul to stumble on to the next band of merry fuck ups, who are used for comedic relief and easter eggs before they move on.
Ironically the only good parts of the show right now are the parts that are not from New Vegas at all with Kyle MacLachlan’s and Walton Goggins stories actually carrying the show. All of the cool interesting characters and factions from New Vegas are reduced to dumb caricature’s of themselves while the only good parts of the show (which seem to be being taken seriously) are not related to it at all.