Hey you. Remember the town that served as the background to the showdown in that first clip from the Fallout TV show we got last month? Well, it sounds like it’s actually inspired by Fallout 3‘s Megaton, with a mountain of useful rubbish taking the place of the unexploded nuke.
Alright, stop plotting to convince some greenhorn vault dweller to blow it up for you, Mr Burke. Seriously though, the place is called Filly and it sounds like there’s a lot more to it that just being your average wasteland trading post.
In a new interview with IGN about the show, which also saw the its creators discuss how Vault 33 will be used by it in way that’s a bit different to the games, director Jonathan Nolan revealed a bit more about the place where Ella Purnell’s Lucy and Walton Goggins’ Ghoul first meet. Nolan cites the location, which serves as a bit of an introduction to the wasteland, as having drawn a lot from Megaton, which he fondly remembers serving the same purpose in his first playthrough of Fallout 3.
This even feeds into Filly’s “centrepiece”, which isn’t quite an unexploded nuclear bomb, but instead a “a giant pile of trash that is slowly sinking into the earth”. Yes. What’s special about this rubbish mountain, you ask? Well, Nolan explained: “Our landfill basically becomes their gold, their mines that they dig into to extract old bits of technology, old bits of trash.”
So, basically, it’s designed to cleverly convey the link between pre and post-war America in a similar manner to Megaton’s bomb, just with a bit more recycling and – hopefully for the town’s residents – less opportunity to be blown up by an rich English toff who doesn’t like looking at Filly from his balcony. That said, I hope we still get a cult that worships the trash pile, a la the Children of Atom. The junk church of the great sinker, I can picture them now.
Filly aside, Nolan also revealed why the series is set in California, explaining that the state: “really felt irresistible to us, given on a meta-level that, here we are, the Hollywood folks coming to adapt these games.” I’m not sure if that’s an ideal reason to have decided on such an important aspect of the show, but to be fair, given that we know the NCR and the Enclave are set to feature as factions, odds are plenty of other factors like that played a role in the choice too.
While you wait for the Fallout Show to arrive on April 11 so you can see Filly’s trash heap for youself, why not check out this recently released fan film, which offers a look at an alternative way Fallout 4’s main story could have wrapped up.