Welcome, Vault Dwellers: A Guide to the Fallout Universe

The new TV series “Fallout” on Prime Video is based on a gargantuan video game universe of warring factions, world-changing stakes and irradiated monsters. Although the show has an original plot and viewers do not need to be experts on the source material, you may prefer to watch with some level of fluency.

In the six mainline games, beginning with 1997’s Fallout, you can wander through the nuclear-decimated United States as a noble hero, a criminal scumbag or anything in between, adopting skills and specialties in ways that recall the inventiveness of the tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons.

The games are packed with dialogue and texts about postapocalypse survival, meaning you would need to play for hundreds of hours to understand the full back story. Or you could just read this primer.

In an alternate-reality version of the not-too-distant future, America and China are the last global superpowers battling over dwindling natural resources. There are hostile takeovers, Cold War-like developments of dubious technologies and increasingly intense robot armor. By 2077, this war ends with both sides pressing their Big Red Buttons to launch nuclear weapons, ending human existence as we know it.

That’s only the beginning of the Fallout story, thanks to a network of sophisticated underground shelters that the United States got up and running just in time.

Most of the games begin at a crucial threshold: at least one generation has been living a sheltered, subterranean existence when a resident is compelled to venture to the surface of the earth. (On the Amazon show, Ella Purnell plays Lucy, who has grown up in Vault 33.) That step always includes a transition from a frozen-in-time pastiche of 1950s Americana — think smiling cartoon mascots, oversized chrome cars and optimistic robot butlers — to a blinding sun and a rugged, morally uneven civilization beneath it. This is not Plato’s cave, but Plato’s nuclear vault.

After emerging from the vault, you’ll wander across the wasteland, desolate terrain that was once a major American metropolitan region (e.g. Las Vegas, Washington, Boston). Stumble upon a building in a ghost town, and you may spend a while picking through it only to find nothing useful.

That’s the point.

Fallout sells itself as a realistic postnuclear world, one where the things you find aren’t necessarily supplies or guns but rather stories that have been crystallized via visual storytelling and leftover diary entries. Playing Fallout games means learning about how past mistakes beckoned a tragic end, and then carving your own unique, story-filled path to humanity’s post-nuclear redemption, even if you take a morally dubious path to get there.

Take the town of Megaton from the 2008 game Fallout 3. Walk down its streets, and you’ll meet people who need favors done in exchange for cash or loot. Video game-y stuff. Go through one alleyway, however, and a man approaches you with a different request: Blow up the whole town. By triggering the bomb hidden beneath the city, you can irrevocably destroy everything and everyone for a handsome reward. It’s your choice.

The Lore

Though each Fallout game takes place in different decades and places, their narratives all feature captivating characters, like a stacked cast of a classic TV western.

Each character tracks your previous actions and allegiances, often leading to surprising interactions. Did you commit a crime against a particular faction? Someone may learn that and shun you, while someone else might react by sidling up with a captivating offer of assistance or glory.

Amazon’s take on Fallout includes series references of all sizes — “Grognak the Barbarian” and healing stimpaks appear in the first episode — but you will enjoy the show more by knowing a few of the biggest.

Brotherhood of Steel

Most factions of survivors are confined to specific regions, but thanks to its roots in the U.S. military, the Brotherhood of Steel is an exception. The organization is the franchise’s most traditional protagonist. It searches for technology relics in society’s ruins, and likes its guns big and its armor even bigger. However, its might-makes-right stance on law and order doesn’t always lead to compassion. (As seen on TV: Aaron Moten as Maximus, a young initiate in the Brotherhood.)

The Enclave

As the 21st-century war against China loomed, a shadowy, superrich cabal worked behind the scenes to wrest power, survive nuclear war and infiltrate the American government. The Enclave’s far-reaching evils can be found in nearly every Fallout game, and it figures prominently in the TV series.

Ghouls

Many ghouls — humans who have been excessively exposed to radiation — are mild-mannered and live peacefully yet stigmatized thanks to their flayed skin and the curious side effect of living for hundreds of years. That’s not helped by the fact that feral ghouls, which have glowing skin and monstrous behavior, should be shot on sight. (As seen on TV: Walton Goggins as the Ghoul.)

Super mutants

With an origin story much like Batman’s Joker, super mutants are the tragic consequences of scientific ambition gone awry. A virus developed by a private defense contractor has flooded industrial vats and water supplies, turning certain humans into bioengineered combatants. They’re not smart enough to talk but they are smart enough to pick up and use guns.

Dogmeat

If you prefer more loyalty and barking from your companions, forget asking a human for help and enlist the series’ friendly dog instead. Its species has varied, but its name has remained consistent. In some games, Dogmeat’s nose will lead players to adventures and plot points.

Radscorpions

When radiation is dumped into habitats like arid deserts, plenty of freakish monsters come out. Radscorpions, which are larger than an S.U.V. and scurry too quickly for anyone’s comfort, are some of the most iconic monsters in gaming. And they come in increasingly terrifying varieties like queen, glowing and spitting.

Power armor

The giant robot suits, which typically feature a mask with a prominent valve and a scowl-expression visor, are known as power armor. Conveniently, the same defense contractor responsible for the scourge of super mutants also operated a machine-armor division. Power armor suits like the T-51 include radioactive-protective coating and compatibility with big guns.

Pip-Boy

Imagine if the U.S. military of the 1950s invented a robust, oversize version of a Dick Tracy wristwatch, and you’ve got the Pip-Boy. This wrist-strapped computer is roughly the size of Marvel’s Infinity Glove, and was distributed by the Vault-Tec Corporation to the inhabitants of its many fallout shelters.

Vault Boy

Not a device, but a mascot! Vault-Tec includes this blonde, smiling cartoon in posters, Pip-Boy instructions and much more, usually to darkly comic extremes. For example, Vault Boy can be seen on a poster winking and giving a thumbs-up in front of a mushroom cloud while demonstrating a proper duck-and-cover technique.

Nuka-Cola

Not much of this popular drink survived Armageddon, but survivors can’t escape the stuff, whether because of the ubiquitous advertisements that survived or because Nuka-Cola bottle caps have become the nation’s de facto currency.

The Games

If Amazon’s “Fallout” makes you want to bask in the radioactive glow of the video games, which are currently created by Bethesda Game Studios, you have many options. The list below is loosely ranked in recommended order.

Fallout: New Vegas

The official semi-sequel to Fallout 3, which transformed the franchise from isometric gameplay to a first- or third-person perspective, is often considered a best-of-all-worlds entry point for Fallout newcomers. Many of its landmarks evaded full nuclear destruction, so you’ll pick through more recognizable buildings and outposts. And you’ll meet a greater, more sophisticated variety of companions and townspeople. Fallout: New Vegas offers players the most dynamic results for their actions and dialogue choices, and you can play the 2010 game by Obsidian Entertainment on current-day computers and Xbox consoles.

Fallout 2

If you want to see how the series began, start with this 1998 sequel by Black Isle Studios, which cleans up the original’s rough edges for a more accessible adventure. Since this is an old-school game without a built-in tutorial, you will need to read some of its whopping 150-page manual to understand what’s going on. (You will also need to play on a computer.) Thankfully, time freezes between every movement, gun shot and dialogue choice, which is nice for anyone who becomes stressed by action-filled games.

The rest

Try Fallout 3 if you enjoy Fallout New Vegas, or Fallout 1 if you devoured Fallout 2. (Fallout 1, by Interplay Productions, is a particularly short game at first glance, but it’s designed to reward gamers who play multiple times and discover alternate paths to the ending.) Fallout 4 skips some of the series’ role-playing charm, while the modern Fallout 76 is less of a proper plot-driven Fallout game thanks to its focus on playing online with friends.