388: Fallout TV S2 Ep4 - Easter Eggs, Lore Connections, and Everything You Might Have Missed

0:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Robots radio, games, lore, stories, community, just press play. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Fallout lore cast. [SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that explores the boundaries of our knowledge about the world of Fallout. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to the Fallout lorecast. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so excited to talk about the fourth episode of Season 2 of the TV show because there's a lot to go over.

0:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Deathclaws, combat in Alaska. [SPEAKER_00]: We finally got to see different types of power armor with the T-45 and I'll be piecing it all together in order to try to figure out where the rest of the season is going. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, huge shout out to the patrons for taking over last week.

0:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks again for all your help with that. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure everybody enjoyed your perspectives, but it's good to be back and to share some thoughts that have been stewing around in this brain about what's going on and fall out. [SPEAKER_00]: So take some buff out, get in your power armor, grab a rifle, and let's get going.

1:12 [SPEAKER_00]: So in this episode, we finally get to see the actual conflict. [SPEAKER_00]: The war as it was playing out before the bombs dropped. [SPEAKER_00]: This is in Alaska. [SPEAKER_00]: This must have been within a year, maybe a year and a half of the actual bombs dropping in 2077. [SPEAKER_00]: And Cooper and Charlie are in T-45 Power Armor.

1:34 [SPEAKER_00]: This of course was an earlier variant of the power armor than we've seen in the show so far. [SPEAKER_00]: We've seen the T60 suit. [SPEAKER_00]: There's also T51 that I don't believe we've seen anywhere and the T45. [SPEAKER_00]: And because this was one of the earlier suits, it does not operate as well.

1:50 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, this conflict in Alaska was canonically one of the places where the United States government got to actually test out the power armor in the field. [SPEAKER_00]: And as we see in the scene, [SPEAKER_00]: Starts breaking down. [SPEAKER_00]: Charlie's arm ceases up and Cooper ends up having some problems as well, because it wasn't exactly ready for combat yet.

2:11 [SPEAKER_00]: It was still effective enough to push the Chinese out of Alaska, but as Cooper explains to Bud in one of the previous episodes, it got a lot of soldiers killed. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I mentioned that this is one of the first times that we actually see combat in Alaska, not because we didn't know that combat happened in Alaska, and not because we didn't actually get to play through parts of this in one of the games.

2:34 [SPEAKER_00]: We did, but the version that we played through in the fallout DLC where we actually go into a simulation and get to fight off the communist threat, [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wasn't exactly historically accurate. [SPEAKER_00]: That simulation was highly edited in order to forward American propaganda.

2:55 [SPEAKER_00]: So even though we've actually gotten to play through portions of the Alaskan campaign, [SPEAKER_00]: it isn't really what happened. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a glimpse of something that actually happened. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, this setting here is not on the mainland. [SPEAKER_00]: This is on an island and the simulation takes place in Anchorage, which is on the mainland.

3:17 [SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: Cooper and Charlie are being deployed to a different location, now maybe they are pursuing the Chinese out of Alaska, maybe this is towards the end of the conflict, or maybe they were multiple fronts. [SPEAKER_00]: We don't really know the details about that. [SPEAKER_00]: But we do get to see though, our actual Chinese soldiers, including a woman, which was a little bit surprising.

3:38 [SPEAKER_00]: I think you might assume that the Chinese would have only put men on the front line, but no, they were [SPEAKER_00]: And then, of course, we have the death claw. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, there's lots to discuss about death claws. [SPEAKER_00]: You can go back and listen to those episodes. [SPEAKER_00]: But very briefly, death claws were not an accidental mutation that happened in the wasteland due to the radiation or the FVV getting out.

4:02 [SPEAKER_00]: any of that kind of thing, they were intentionally created and this has been hinted at for a very long time. [SPEAKER_00]: In a few different ways. [SPEAKER_00]: The first reference to this doesn't come from the games. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, nothing about the origin of the death clause was very clearly explained or hinted [SPEAKER_00]: But in fallout two, which came out in the late 90s, there was a guide, a strategy guide, remember those, for fallout two, and specifically in that strategy guide, so maybe or maybe not canon, it says, death claws were originally created to replace humans during close combat search and destroy missions.

4:41 [SPEAKER_00]: They were derived from mixed animal stock and then refined by the master using genetic manipulation, the master, of course, being the main villain [SPEAKER_00]: one. [SPEAKER_00]: He was responsible for messing with a lot of genetic stuff and super mutants and those kinds of things as well.

4:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Although he also did not create the super mutants, the super mutants as we know were also a United States project in order to try to create super soldiers. [SPEAKER_00]: So it seems that death clause were also, at least early on in the series, considered to potentially be something very similar to that.

5:13 [SPEAKER_00]: They were an intentional creation of [SPEAKER_00]: mixing different DNA from different animals, primarily chameleons in order to create a monster that they could put on the front lines instead of soldiers. [SPEAKER_00]: So the big question becomes, why was the death claw here? [SPEAKER_00]: And I've got two possibilities on that.

5:30 [SPEAKER_00]: The first, I have to credit Oxhorn on YouTube. [SPEAKER_00]: Oxhorn has a wonderful lore channel on YouTube. [SPEAKER_00]: He's probably done more for [SPEAKER_00]: uncovering the lore of Fallout and anybody else I can recommend so go check out his channel if you want to learn more about some of the things that we talk about on this show.

5:46 [SPEAKER_00]: He got a video up before I was able to put this together and I noticed in his video that he mentioned that he speculated that there may have been a secret research base in Alaska, probably on whatever island this is on and the Chinese either accidentally ran into it or [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I throw out there is maybe they intentionally attacked it knowing it was doing some sort of military research.

6:12 [SPEAKER_00]: And this death claw gets out and starts, I don't know, causing all sorts of chaos. [SPEAKER_00]: That could have been one thing. [SPEAKER_00]: But I think there are some other details to consider here. [SPEAKER_00]: They are looking, they being Cooper and Charlie are looking for Raider 3, which based on the radio dialogue from the very beginning of the scene seems to be a squad that was lost or in danger on this island.

6:36 [SPEAKER_00]: They are doing some sort of reconnaissance to go into this area and bring those people out. [SPEAKER_00]: This is not a [SPEAKER_00]: front in a traditional sense. [SPEAKER_00]: This is a go find the soldiers and rescue them sort of mission. [SPEAKER_00]: Why were Raider 3 on this island?

6:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Why are the Chinese on this island? [SPEAKER_00]: We don't really know. [SPEAKER_00]: But here's another possibility. [SPEAKER_00]: What if the Raider 3 squad? [SPEAKER_00]: was the squad that was used to release a death claw into a combat situation in a limited engagement area like a small island where the death claw could do very little harm to any of the other US soldiers.

7:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why Raider 3 or the only people who are supposed to be on this island is because they were the squad that was releasing the death claw. [SPEAKER_00]: and then the death claw attacks them, and they go missing or whatever, and Cooper and Charlie get called in to try to rescue them.

7:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Chinese haven't come across the death claw yet until they come across Cooper, who is now seized up in his armor and not able to attack back. [SPEAKER_00]: So there's some fun speculation about what's actually going on there and why we're seeing a death club before the bombs dropped.

7:46 [SPEAKER_00]: But there's some other fun little details here. [SPEAKER_00]: The Chinese when they come across Cooper seem to have some sympathy for the fact that he's just a soldier doing what the soldier needs to do in order to follow his government and [SPEAKER_00]: clearly they understand what that's like.

8:01 [SPEAKER_00]: This is a common thing in war movies and in history, this idea that the soldiers have more in common with each other on opposite sides than they do with the leadership who sends them into battle. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole what are you actually fighting for thing when we could just be getting along with the other people on the other side who we actually have more in common with.

8:20 [SPEAKER_00]: and another sign that war never changes. [SPEAKER_00]: The other thing that happens here is when the female soldier leans down and starts talking to Cooper or talking about him to the other soldiers or whatever, she says Okidoki. [SPEAKER_00]: And Okidoki throughout the series has been used by Lucy and Hank and this character in order to [SPEAKER_00]: Basically conveys something very different every time it's used.

8:44 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, you could probably do an entire episode of every time Okidoki is said and how it means something slightly different. [SPEAKER_00]: In this case, she's making fun of Americans by saying something that Americans would say. [SPEAKER_00]: In a situation where Cooper is clearly not Okidoki.

9:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Now the other thing here that people seem to be pointing out is this Jurassic Park kind of moments where the death claw is similar to a big T-rex or you know dinosaur comes up to Cooper, Sniffs him but decides not to attack him and a lot of people have speculated that that's because just like in Jurassic Park which is not actually true to the biology of [SPEAKER_00]: Torres-Saurus Rexes, they explain that they are movement-based with their vision, and if you don't move, they don't really see you, and they can't really attack you.

9:35 [SPEAKER_00]: That's not true at all. [SPEAKER_00]: Tyranosaurus Rexes were extremely accurate with their vision. [SPEAKER_00]: Dinosaurs have a lot in common with birds, and their vision is very important. [SPEAKER_00]: Think about an eagle being able to spot a mouse from a mile in the sky. [SPEAKER_00]: That sort of thing.

9:52 [SPEAKER_00]: So in the case of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, it is one of the most massive dangerous predators that has ever existed on the planet, and its eyes were very large, and so it would have been able to identify things very clearly, and probably had much better eyesight than you and I do. [SPEAKER_00]: So I would speculate that it's not that the death claw couldn't see him, the death claw clearly looked directly at him and sniffed him, [SPEAKER_00]: It's that Cooper was no longer a threat to it, so it didn't need to finish off its prey.

10:19 [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't defending itself. [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't hungry. [SPEAKER_00]: It was just checking out what he was and then decided to leave because he was no longer a threat. [SPEAKER_00]: So [SPEAKER_00]: So the scene moves forward and we get the title. [SPEAKER_00]: The title pops up and these are always fun.

10:33 [SPEAKER_00]: This time it's on a piece of ice that breaks, which relates to the cold in Alaska, but it also relates to the fracturing of a lot of the situations that we've seen. [SPEAKER_00]: Every group we come across is broken and fractured and falling apart. [SPEAKER_00]: We saw this with the Legion in the previous episode.

10:52 [SPEAKER_00]: We saw it with the NCR and the confusion about the front and these two NCR agents. [SPEAKER_00]: And what seems to be the downfall as you'll see in the later stuff at the end of the episode of their Air Force Base that they used to inhabit and fall out new Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: Known as Camp McCarran.

11:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And we will also see the fracturing of this specific group of brotherhood or at least all the local chapters of the brotherhood in the future part of this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: So then we get to see where Maximus is dealing with the well the fallout of fallout. [SPEAKER_00]: of hitting the the pallet on the head with his hammer and killing him.

11:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Harkness is dead and that doesn't vote well for the Commonwealth not coming over here and kicking everyone's butts, which I've discussed previously and how that would be so bad, especially if they still have Liberty Prime. [SPEAKER_00]: The giant robot, pro-democracy robot, which is of course always wonderful.

11:45 [SPEAKER_00]: But [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so their endanger Maximus has responded and done what he believed was right because he didn't think they should just kill all the children, even the ghouls, which aligns him more with the NCR. [SPEAKER_00]: As we've seen, the NCR are accepting of ghouls and they're supporting of them, and they understand that they're not all just terrible monsters that are going to eat you at any moment.

12:06 [SPEAKER_00]: But traditionally, the brotherhood has not seen ghouls like that at all. [SPEAKER_00]: So in order to continue protecting the children, he convinces Thaddeus to put on the armor, pretend to be harkness, which of course he does a terrible job at, bumping into things and muttering to himself the entire time and kind of making himself look like an idiot.

12:23 [SPEAKER_00]: But then they get on the vertebrae and they leave. [SPEAKER_00]: saving the children. [SPEAKER_00]: And as they leave, you can see the gigantic statue of Sunset Saspirilla at the front of the building, which is almost exactly like the location that we get to see in Fallout New Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, as we'll see with, like, when we get to the strip and some other sets on this specific episode, [SPEAKER_00]: These settings are very similar to what we see in the games, and we saw this with Novak as well, but they are slightly different.

12:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Some of the buildings are slightly did. [SPEAKER_00]: They had to find some real world locations in some cases in order to do this, so the setups for these aren't identical hundred percent, but they are really close. [SPEAKER_00]: So that makes you wonder. [SPEAKER_00]: Is this exactly that same location?

13:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Or is it another one? [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they had a few different bottling factories throughout this part of the world. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're new to fall out, you might be wondering, what are they doing in a sunset sasperil, a factory, trying to collect all these bottle caps, and what does that mean?

13:21 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you recall from the first season, we see that bottle caps are the currency of the wasteland, and so basically he's using a bunch of children to mine for money. [SPEAKER_00]: in order to make him wealthy in the wasteland. [SPEAKER_00]: So, but he's treating the kids well, ish, and making them work ridiculous hours.

13:41 [SPEAKER_00]: It's all a little bit messed up, of course, but like many things in the wasteland, it could be even worse. [SPEAKER_00]: So then the scene transitions to Lucy and the Google and Lucy is being taken care of by the NCR Rangers that we met in the previous episode and she's hooked up to an IV, she's feeling better, she gets up, turns out that she was being drip fed buff out.

14:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Now, in the Fall Universe, there are, of course, many different chems and drugs and all sorts of other things, and you can choose to take these in the games, and they give you some benefits, some short-term benefits, with a long-term problem. [SPEAKER_00]: The main one for both out being that it is highly addictive, and as we see later in the episode, Lucy starts to feel the effects of that addiction.

14:26 [SPEAKER_00]: This is another gameplay mechanic that they've perfectly worked into the world, so it was really cool to see this, but of course I feel bad for Lucy, but it does justify some of her erratic behavior later on in this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: About Izakem that you can find in basically every game in the series, and generally, and of course this changes from game to game a little bit, but generally it raises your strength, your reflexes, and your maximum health, which could be why they're using it to help reinvigorate her.

14:53 [SPEAKER_00]: But of course it's highly addictive and Cooper and the future scene says that it'll take about five days to get over it unless you just keep taking more drugs because that's the good way to deal with it, but of course as we know more drugs means more problems in the long run. [SPEAKER_00]: On the way out, Lucy mentions that they were nice and Cooper or the Google responds with the questions, says, well, do you think they'd be so nice if they knew what your daddy did?

15:16 [SPEAKER_00]: Implying that if they found out she was the daughter of the man who destroyed their capital, shady sands. [SPEAKER_00]: then do you think they'd be so nice to you and Lucy responds with that saying if you're implying that I was going to stay basically you don't need to be worried about that all I saw was more matching jackets and now this does two things it implies that she thinks that the goal actually wants to keep her around and he did go save her.

15:43 [SPEAKER_00]: But as we've seen in previous episodes, his reason for keeping around isn't sentimental, it's because he's going to use her in some way when they get to Hank. [SPEAKER_00]: And the scene makes me not quite sure if she realizes that or not. [SPEAKER_00]: But she does respond that she, there was no chance she was going to stay with them.

15:59 [SPEAKER_00]: All she sees is more matching jackets. [SPEAKER_00]: That, [SPEAKER_00]: is a really interesting perspective from her at this point in the story because that's what she grew up with everybody in vault suits and then she's discovered every time she comes across a faction with matching jackets, they all seem to be terrible in some way, the brotherhood, the Legion, heck, the fight with the cons earlier this season.

16:23 [SPEAKER_00]: And this plays into the gameplay of the games as well because you can, in many of the games, sign up with one of the factions, or you don't have to. [SPEAKER_00]: You can spend the entire game being a lone wanderer, just taking care of yourself if you want. [SPEAKER_00]: Now you don't finish certain quest lines if you do that, but it is an option.

16:41 [SPEAKER_00]: the scene transitions back to vault 33 and we have the in bread people's club or whatever they're calling it drinking a lot of water and this leads into the whole situation unfolding about vault 33 and the fact that the water ship still is in fixed and they're rationing water but this group has [SPEAKER_00]: official use of the water they have and that's creating tension within the vault.

17:07 [SPEAKER_00]: We get all of that. [SPEAKER_00]: More interestingly here, the song, Raman Coca-Cola plays by the Andrew Sisters. [SPEAKER_00]: This was a song that came out in 1945 and the use of the song is interesting here for two reasons. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I guess three reasons really, they're drinking water, drinking Coca-Cola that's drinking a drink, right?

17:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Also, the song is about a paradise. [SPEAKER_00]: It's about this relaxing scene on a tropical beach drinking rum in Coca-Cola, being on vacation. [SPEAKER_00]: And that is ironically placed like many of these songs when they're in the vault to show that this is paradise, no, it's not. [SPEAKER_00]: The vault is not paradise, even though the songs seem to imply that this is the best life you could live.

17:46 [SPEAKER_00]: And that is becoming exceedingly clear that Vault Life is not the best life in the wasteland. [SPEAKER_00]: It just is a little bit removed from some of the other dangers. [SPEAKER_00]: The other thing that's interesting here is that the song mentions Coca-Cola. [SPEAKER_00]: And we know in the Fallout universe that they have Nuka-Cola, which clearly was a playoff of Coca-Cola when the games were written and created early on.

18:08 [SPEAKER_00]: So it makes you wonder, is Coca-Cola... [SPEAKER_00]: actually in the history of the world of fallout. [SPEAKER_00]: And many things in our real world do exist in that world, including a lot of these old songs, they actually do exist in the fallout world. [SPEAKER_00]: The reason why these songs get played in the show and in the games is because these old recordings are [SPEAKER_00]: discovered again years later, and DJs in the wasteland are putting them out on these radio frequencies that you can pick up on your PipBoy.

18:39 [SPEAKER_00]: So those songs existing in the following universe imply that those artists actually existed in the following universe, then that also means that the topics of the songs are also accurate to history, which means that because Coca-Cola was created at the end of the 1800s, that it [SPEAKER_00]: It implies that it probably lost popularity some time after 1945 and eventually Nucacola replaced it as the most popular soft drink at least in America.

19:13 [SPEAKER_00]: And I know that's a lot together from just the single use of a song and one word or phrase that shows up, but it seems to imply that. [SPEAKER_00]: I also like how Redge in the scene with Betty here actually stands up for himself and starts to learn to kind of play the political game. [SPEAKER_00]: That's interesting to me, but we're seeing now that Betty is struggling as overseer in this episode, not just to maintain control of her own vault, but when she's negotiating with vault 32, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

19:43 [SPEAKER_00]: Then we transition to the scene of Lucy in the ghoul walking away from the NCR camp having the conversation about how she's hungry for something but it's not food and he's like oh I know that feeling and they're kind of bonding over being drug addicted while she discovers what that means and discovers that it's making her aggressive and grumpy and very reactive.

20:03 [SPEAKER_00]: which will explain the future decisions she makes in this episode, but there's also something interesting to note along this pathway as they walk. [SPEAKER_00]: You can see a car on the side of the road that's all broken down with a bunch of luggage on top. [SPEAKER_00]: This must have been vehicle from the pre-war probably a family trying to evacuate due to the conflict and the bomb's dropping and the vehicle must [SPEAKER_00]: broken down on this old road, and has been left here for over 200 years, and of course this is another thing we see all throughout the Fallout games, all of this environmental storytelling.

20:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Every little bit of debris, every little broken down car, every body, or skeleton left seems to tell its own story. [SPEAKER_00]: So you have to wonder, what happened to this poor family, broken down out in the middle of the desert, over 200 years ago? [SPEAKER_00]: The scene transitions again, Maximus and Thatties have returned to the Brotherhood Command and Dane knows some things up.

20:59 [SPEAKER_00]: They have a conversation and they basically make a plan. [SPEAKER_00]: They're going to deal with the situation as the best they can and what's interesting about this is that Maximus's answer to the problem continues to be violence. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I didn't get to talk about this in the last episode, because the patrons did the episode, but one of the things that we saw happen in the previous episode is a recurring theme with Maximus.

21:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Multiple times now, he has ended up in a situation with his superiors nearby, and tried to figure out what they want, and then takes them at their word acts on that, or on their reaction acts on that, and then gets condemned for that action. [SPEAKER_00]: would be the fact that the other brotherhood guy from the other faction started to fight with him, remember it with the knife scene and he ended up killing him and that seemed to get approval from Quintus and everybody else around him.

21:53 [SPEAKER_00]: But then when he responds with the idea that violence will solve the problem with harkness, he gets shot down by Quintus who's like, no, you're an idiot. [SPEAKER_00]: That's going to create a war. [SPEAKER_00]: We don't want to do that. [SPEAKER_00]: So he's trying [SPEAKER_00]: actions work or certain justifications work in some scenarios, but they don't work in every scenario.

22:16 [SPEAKER_00]: You kind of see him working through this. [SPEAKER_00]: Another example of this is in the previous episode where Quintus is making the justification, the arguments that if God is on their side, then whatever they do will be blessed by God and they will succeed. [SPEAKER_00]: to which that's when Maximus says, well, then why don't we just do what we need to do in kill Harkness, and then if God blesses us, then things are going to work out, to which Quintus is like, well, no, that'll start a civil war, but Maximus was using Quintus' logic.

22:47 [SPEAKER_00]: To justify doing a thing that he thought would solve it, because God would then therefore make it okay, which quintess rejects. [SPEAKER_00]: So clearly, quintess is not using the same logic that God is going to move them forward on. [SPEAKER_00]: that response as opposed to any other response, but Maximus is seeing this as like an overarching thing.

23:09 [SPEAKER_00]: If we're doing what God wants us to do, then whatever we do, we'll be blessed and we'll be okay. [SPEAKER_00]: You can kind of see the juxtaposition there, and I hope you explain that clearly, but [SPEAKER_00]: Quintus is very clearly trying to push a specific agenda, though one he thinks is what God wants, and Maximus is using that as a justification, much more broadly, which shows that Maximus is trying to understand and trying to use that same logic, but it doesn't work the same way, because clearly Quintus has his own agenda that he's using God to justify rather than the inverse.

23:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So they come up with a plan, Maximus decides he needs to end Quintus, and Dane says that they need to steal the cold fusion, which of course is going to cause more chaos, and we're going to get to that. [SPEAKER_00]: One more thing I forgot to mention, in the scene where Maximus and Thaddeus are talking before they leave the sunset sasperrilla location, [SPEAKER_00]: There's a conversation about the right thing to do, and Maximus says sometimes running away is the right thing to do, and he has this like longing in his eyes.

24:11 [SPEAKER_00]: This isn't the first time that you can tell that there's kind of this implied emotional need in him to reconnect with Lucy, and that he understands that it was okay for her to leave. [SPEAKER_00]: She needed to run away. [SPEAKER_00]: as that scene would have described it, but he misses her.

24:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And on some level, he just is continuing to seek to be in the right place, and he's even more understanding at this point in the story that he is not in the right place. [SPEAKER_00]: The Brotherhood is the faction that would destroy a bunch of children's ghouls, and that is a line too far.

24:47 [SPEAKER_00]: So in the next scene, we have [SPEAKER_00]: Norm, and Norm is now the supermanager of all these vault 31 people who came out of their cryo chambers, and we get a few interesting details here. [SPEAKER_00]: The woman that he talks to her name is Claudia, and she's looking at the bridge, and she's reminiscing just a week ago, because she's been frozen this entire time, that she crossed that bridge on a way to the interview that she had with vault tech, and here she is waking up.

25:13 [SPEAKER_00]: just a week later in her own mental timeline, and this implies that all of these people were not necessarily the best and the brightest. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, you have to wonder what position she got that allowed her to be cryogenically frozen with everyone else. [SPEAKER_00]: I would imagine it was a fairly high position in the company even if she'd only been there for a week.

25:33 [SPEAKER_00]: It also implies that not all of these vault tech people, although they're very corporate types from the pre-war world, are as cutthroat and corporate as everyone else. [SPEAKER_00]: Then we meet Clark, who says that he was the assistant to bud before the bombs dropped. [SPEAKER_00]: And he seems to imply that he knows more about the actual timeline for the vault experiments for 31, 32 and 33 than we realized.

26:01 [SPEAKER_00]: It seems that there's a phase two and that phase two wasn't just going back onto the surface. [SPEAKER_00]: It was something else. [SPEAKER_00]: Norm of course doesn't know what this is, and then plays Koi and allows this new guy Clark to kind of lead the way in order for him to get some time to figure out what this might actually be.

26:21 [SPEAKER_00]: And I have a feeling this will absolutely play out in future episodes before the season is over. [SPEAKER_00]: And maybe this is just me, but there's clearly an error of not, and maybe not a aggression, but a sinister error to this conversation and the music in the background, and it's not just sinister because it's like, oh, there was this other phase to the experiment, and it's going to be bad.

26:43 [SPEAKER_00]: I think there's something very specific about Clark that we will find out in a future episode. [SPEAKER_00]: And then we're back in the vaults with Stephanie and Betty having a conversation beddies coming to Stephanie because they are running low on water and notice they haven't sent anyone else onto the surface in order to go search for a water chip as was the plot of Fallout 1.

27:02 [SPEAKER_00]: There's still just trying to fix it and deal with it and it's not going very well. [SPEAKER_00]: This scene is interesting because it absolutely sets up the fact that these vault tech workers [SPEAKER_00]: are corporate cutthroat executive types. [SPEAKER_00]: And given the opportunity to break away from whatever the structure was that was already there, they will absolutely like Stephanie take that opportunity to seize power for themselves.

27:31 [SPEAKER_00]: She realizes in the scene that she has leverage [SPEAKER_00]: and she is going to use it and she doesn't care what happens to anyone else as long as she gets what she wants. [SPEAKER_00]: And it turns out that there is a container somewhere, very similar to the one in the scene where Barb is packing up and Cooper comes into the room with her from like a few episodes ago.

27:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Something like that, there's something like a box with something in it that she wants. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, what this is going to be, and revealed to be, I'm not really sure, but it seems interesting to me that Phase 2 was just mentioned in the previous scene, and this box was something hiding away is mentioned in this scene.

28:08 [SPEAKER_00]: We also find out that they both know that Vault 31 has been evacuated, and that Bud was put in a bucket, so Bud is now probably flipped back over and functional again. [SPEAKER_00]: But clearly, they are in a place that they've never been before with these vaults. [SPEAKER_00]: Things are not functioning the way they were supposed to.

28:27 [SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to see some desperate measures from both of these groups. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think we're going to see other characters start to rise up and prove that they're more capable than we may have assumed. [SPEAKER_00]: Now of course Woody is hearing what's going on in this conversation and in the future scene which we'll just go ahead and talk about right here.

28:45 [SPEAKER_00]: He talks with Stephanie about it and brings it to the overseer because she is the overseer and of course all of us are like, oh my god, are you serious? [SPEAKER_00]: Why would you do that? [SPEAKER_00]: But he doesn't know. [SPEAKER_00]: He's acting kind of like a child would in a situation with their parents where they're told that their parents are the ones that they should trust and then they bring something up to their parents that [SPEAKER_00]: They, the parent would be upset about it like it's that kind of scenario and clearly Stephanie is manipulating him in her responses knowing that he's going to do what he's supposed to do in those situations and trying to still maintain control of this probably in the back of her head thinking okay well if I have to off this guy before he becomes too much of a problem I'm down with that because she seems totally the type to be okay with just killing somebody when she needs to.

29:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And using whatever manipulative tactics or justifications she needs in the conversation with Betty, she even was talking about how she has to look after her child because her child is the thing that means the most to her when we clearly saw that she didn't even care what name the child had.

29:46 [SPEAKER_00]: So she is 100% manipulative and villain established right away, which is of course funny because she has an eye patch too. [SPEAKER_00]: And in the scene later on, with Chet still holding on to the baby, taking care of all the domestic chores and things, you can clearly see that he's starting to wake up to what Woody was talking about, and understand that Norm was right about what's going on.

30:08 [SPEAKER_00]: There's this hidden slot in the desk where Stephanie has stashed her ID. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, what's interesting about this ID is that the date is clearly visible, and this shows a few things. [SPEAKER_00]: The first most obvious thing is that she was a Canadian citizen, but Canada was annexed by the United States, which is noted on the idea as well.

30:28 [SPEAKER_00]: That is true. [SPEAKER_00]: The United States decided that they wanted all of the oil from Canada and control over all of those natural resources, so they basically marched in and said, this is our place now, which feels kind of way too real at this point in history. [SPEAKER_00]: But also, it clearly shows that her birthday was the 15th of February 2045.

30:49 [SPEAKER_00]: So she's an American citizen through Canadian annexation who worked for Valtek and was born clearly before anybody else in the vault who currently is there. [SPEAKER_00]: So [SPEAKER_00]: Things are coming together for chat, and I think we're going to see some sort of character arc similar to Norm.

31:06 [SPEAKER_00]: In both cases, they both seem to be cowards and Norm is the first to wake up to this and to start to stand up and do something. [SPEAKER_00]: I think we're going to see chat attempt it. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how successful he will be, but I guess we're just going to have to wait and see.

31:21 [SPEAKER_00]: So before we go back to Cooper in Lucy and talk about the kings and going into New Vegas, let's talk about what happens with the brotherhood of steel and the rest of the scenes with Maximus. [SPEAKER_00]: He confronts Quintus and pulls a laser pistol out, which is modeled exactly like it is in Fallout 4.

31:38 [SPEAKER_00]: And then they have a conversation and I've seen some places online where people are joking that Quintis gets a like a charisma check or something in the conversation that allows him to try to manipulate Maximus. [SPEAKER_00]: And you can kind of also see that Maximus is not 100% sure about actually following through with this.

31:55 [SPEAKER_00]: He's having second thoughts. [SPEAKER_00]: In Quintis plays into this idea that he is like a father to Maximus and even implies that he himself was the knight who saved Maximus [SPEAKER_00]: at shady sands which might be the case. [SPEAKER_00]: Now the scene plays out in a way that's interesting to me because it says a lot about the characters of these characters.

32:16 [SPEAKER_00]: I guess the character of these characters. [SPEAKER_00]: Maximus is hesitant and he doesn't actually start shooting at him until he gets shot at himself. [SPEAKER_00]: So again he's defending himself or somebody else and that is what is causing him to be violent or to attempt to kill somebody.

32:31 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not in cold blood. [SPEAKER_00]: Quintus on the other hand decides that when the conversation isn't going 100% where he wants, that he will use violence and will kill Maximus in order to solve the problem. [SPEAKER_00]: He also justifies in the conversation that the only way to save the wasteland is through authoritarian rule at any cost.

32:52 [SPEAKER_00]: That this type of cruelty is necessary to rebuild civilization. [SPEAKER_00]: Who does that sound like? [SPEAKER_00]: We've already met the Legion, and of course Edward Sallow, Kaisar, where Caesar is already dead, and they have this now civil war conflict thing going on. [SPEAKER_00]: But that was very much in line with his justification, and I've done videos and episodes on this before, but one of the consistent themes we see across literature and movies and heck even [SPEAKER_00]: human history is that people who use force and control and cruelty in order to try to get to some sort of better end are almost unanimously the villain and are doing it more for their own power than for actually the greater good of the people who follow them.

33:40 [SPEAKER_00]: And so this puts Quintus squarely in the villain camp as far as I'm concerned. [SPEAKER_00]: So things cut back and forth the [SPEAKER_00]: stolen by Dane and Thaddeus is having conversations and kind of a breakdown, talking to these other factions, and then everything, well, hits the fan, you know, the expression.

33:58 [SPEAKER_00]: We clearly see that all of these chapters were all actually working on their own agenda. [SPEAKER_00]: They wouldn't have joined Quintus, they were just looking out for themselves, which seems to be a theme that keeps coming up like the different vaults that we just talked about. [SPEAKER_00]: And it may be a justification for why all of these different groups are falling apart.

34:16 [SPEAKER_00]: You can see that there is no real unity even within these individual groups. [SPEAKER_00]: There are just internal plays for power that turn into external plays for power against every other group. [SPEAKER_00]: And this is a wonderful representation of why authoritarian power never works.

34:34 [SPEAKER_00]: It always falls apart. [SPEAKER_00]: It creates a system where nobody can trust each other. [SPEAKER_00]: There is no actual cooperation within a group and no greater good for everyone. [SPEAKER_00]: It is simply power plays at every level. [SPEAKER_00]: So this scene ends with Quintus Alive.

34:50 [SPEAKER_00]: Maximus is unable to kill him. [SPEAKER_00]: He does shoot back, but he doesn't actually kill him. [SPEAKER_00]: and Dane gives Maximus the cold fusion, and we see him in Thadius running away in the desert while a major conflict erupts up in the sky behind them, and it's it's beautiful.

35:05 [SPEAKER_00]: I love all of these brotherhood vehicles attacking each other and all of that. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very cool. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, one other thing that was worth noting here is that during the conversation with Thaddeus, the elder from Yosemite mentions Maxin, Arthur Maxin, the current leader of the Commonwealth Brotherhood, the same Arthur Maxin from Fallout 4.

35:25 [SPEAKER_00]: who was also a descendant of Roger Max and the original founder of the Brotherhood, and she seems scared of him. [SPEAKER_00]: And so now we know not just that the Commonwealth Brotherhood still exists, but it is still under the same control by the person that we know from Fallout 4 from only nine years previous.

35:44 [SPEAKER_00]: And one thing to note about Arthur Maxine is that he was absolutely in line with what Harkness would have done trying to kill all of those schools because [SPEAKER_00]: He, much like Quintus, sees any mutant as an abomination. [SPEAKER_00]: All right, so now the even more fun part of this episode, probably my favorite part of this episode, the Google and Lucy are coming up to the strip.

36:08 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Google notices that something's wrong. [SPEAKER_00]: He's clearly been here before. [SPEAKER_00]: He knows where free side is. [SPEAKER_00]: It's right outside of the strip, which is true to follow new Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: Although in following New Vegas, there's not really a separate entrance.

36:19 [SPEAKER_00]: You go from free side. [SPEAKER_00]: It is actually a little bit more connected, and like I noted earlier in this episode, some of the physical locations are changed a little bit, probably because it works better for the story, but also because it's hard to find physical real locations that look exactly the same.

36:34 [SPEAKER_00]: As they approach the strip, you can clearly see some of the different casinos, Gamora tops, and they aren't exactly in the same locations when they actually get into the strip, you can kind of tell this as well. [SPEAKER_00]: But it's a close enough representation, and what we see are the secure trons all blown up in Fallout New Vegas.

36:52 [SPEAKER_00]: They're all waiting there at the front in order to guard the entrance. [SPEAKER_00]: But they're all dead. [SPEAKER_00]: Something happened where a dead, I guess, dead for a robot. [SPEAKER_00]: Something happened that killed all the robots. [SPEAKER_00]: And instead, you have all of these ghouls.

37:05 [SPEAKER_00]: These ghouls, if you haven't played Fallout New Vegas, [SPEAKER_00]: are the kings. [SPEAKER_00]: They are a minor gang. [SPEAKER_00]: They are actually one of the better organizations in the wasteland. [SPEAKER_00]: The king himself, the leader of the ghouls, is a fairly good guy. [SPEAKER_00]: He is actually trying to make free side a better place.

37:22 [SPEAKER_00]: And although they are a little bit wacky because they worship [SPEAKER_00]: Elvis, and they don't even know very much about Elvis. [SPEAKER_00]: This entire faction was built around finding this old museum to Elvis, and misunderstanding that he wasn't some sort of like prophetic religious figure or something like that, instead he was an entertainer.

37:42 [SPEAKER_00]: So they take that information as many of these groups do in weird and wacky ways and they start dressing like him and acting like him because they have some old footage of video and that kind of thing and talking like him and the leader becomes the king [SPEAKER_00]: in the way that Elvis is the King of Rock and Roll.

38:01 [SPEAKER_00]: And these ghouls are feral. [SPEAKER_00]: Something happened. [SPEAKER_00]: In the game, they're regular people, but in the years that have passed, something happened to gullify at least this group of that gang. [SPEAKER_00]: This doesn't mean that there aren't other kings out there that haven't been gullified or maybe have been gullified, but haven't gone feral.

38:22 [SPEAKER_00]: But these ghouls are. [SPEAKER_00]: Lucy's all [SPEAKER_00]: tweaked out on buff out and decides that she's just going to take them all out and we get this awesome scene if her actually being capable of doing so, using multiple weapons and all of that, which votes well for future conflicts.

38:38 [SPEAKER_00]: This is one of those things that happens in movies, [SPEAKER_00]: in order for a character to do something really badass later in the movie or the show, you have to show that they're capable ahead of time. [SPEAKER_00]: And we've seen that she can, she's not a bad shot, she was trained in firearms in the vault.

38:53 [SPEAKER_00]: But in this scene, she actually takes on multiple enemies in a very satisfactory, fallout game sort of way as you do. [SPEAKER_00]: This also parallels in the games where you can choose to stealth past something, you choose to try to have a conversation with somebody. [SPEAKER_00]: or sometimes you're just like, well, hey, I've got all sorts of gear, and it's a lot of fun to shoot everything, so let's just shoot all the ghouls, which is the decision a lot of us make when playing the game.

39:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Cooper hangs back and she basically takes care of all of them, and then the king himself, and you can tell that final ghoul has a white jacket and a guitar. [SPEAKER_00]: He looks [SPEAKER_00]: as close to the video game version of the leader of this faction as you possibly could get, seems to be running away, which is a little bit odd for a Google to do, or maybe he was just unaware, I don't know, but he gets shot in the back of the head, and I've seen already online people lamenting this.

39:48 [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know that they're all gone. [SPEAKER_00]: There could still be [SPEAKER_00]: part of this gang out there, and another new vucking who runs the gang. [SPEAKER_00]: Something else we should note about this scene is that the ghoul seems very happy with Lucy's decision. [SPEAKER_00]: He was arguing that they need to go to the recid, which I'm sure they're eventually going to get to, because we've seen little clips of this in some of the trailers.

40:10 [SPEAKER_00]: But he is down with this side of her, which seems to imply [SPEAKER_00]: Through the drugs that Lucy is becoming more and more like the Google, that is her journey, that is her character arc that we are seeing. [SPEAKER_00]: She's becoming more violent, she's becoming more willing to justify doing what she needs to in the wasteland and kind of even enjoying it at times.

40:33 [SPEAKER_00]: So there is a parallel going on there and I think that that parallel will continue to influence the character arcs of both characters. [SPEAKER_00]: My guess is she will continue to lean into this darker side of her personality to the point where first of all the Google will notice her go past some line somewhere and it will be another wake-up call to him.

40:55 [SPEAKER_00]: for remembering the person that he used to be, but then also it will be a wake-up call to her, and she will realize that the dangers of the wasteland are not just on your life, but also on your morality. [SPEAKER_00]: And that will be the point where she bounces back and tries to find this balance point between just being naive and hopeful, but also being honest about the dangers out there and what she needs to do to survive.

41:18 [SPEAKER_00]: So, all of the warnings outside the strip continue once they walk into the strip and somehow hours have passed, a joke here would be that the load times in Fallen of New Vegas were not very good on the original hardware that the game ran on. [SPEAKER_00]: It's maybe hours passed for the load time, but more likely something changed during the filming and production of the show.

41:40 [SPEAKER_00]: There was something that would have caused one scene to be very much in the dark and the other scene to be [SPEAKER_00]: filmed the footage and re-edited it, it just didn't line up perfectly. [SPEAKER_00]: This happens. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a crazy thing. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's a lore-breaking thing.

41:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's just a production thing. [SPEAKER_00]: So in our minds, we can probably assume that it was like sundown when they took out the ghouls and then by the time they get through that fight into the location, it's now early night. [SPEAKER_00]: but it also makes sense to have this at night because it makes confronting a death claw on the strip that much more scary.

42:16 [SPEAKER_00]: So Lucy in her naivety finds an egg and makes a joke about a giant chicken which is kind of hilarious to think of a death claw as a giant chicken. [SPEAKER_00]: But Cooper is absolutely, and notice I say Cooper here because he's remembering what this was like when he was in the war, which bookends this episode.

42:34 [SPEAKER_00]: We get the beginning with the war in the death claw and then we get the end with a death claw. [SPEAKER_00]: This also implies something else. [SPEAKER_00]: The death claw that we see that buss out of the building is menacing in huge, of course. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think the character model on this is really, really well done.

42:49 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not identical to Fallout 4 or Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas or 1 or 2, but it is similar. [SPEAKER_00]: And in some ways, even more aggressive and large, the arms seem bigger. [SPEAKER_00]: It's very tall. [SPEAKER_00]: This is one of those little known facts about death clause. [SPEAKER_00]: If the horn's point forward, it's a male.

43:14 [SPEAKER_00]: If the horn's point backward, it's a female, which implies that this also is not the only death claw that could be in the area because male death claws don't lay eggs. [SPEAKER_00]: And as we've seen in Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4, sometimes there are mother death claws, and they can be even more terrifying than just a lone male death claw out here on the strip.

43:37 [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm sure the next episode is going to pick up with what happens and how they get out of this situation and it's been kind of hinted in the trailers that they will be confronting at least another death call probably this one later on with the power armor and fattyus is there and the ghoul is there and other people from free side so it seems like this is going to be a problem that they will be solving probably in the next few episodes maybe in the climax [SPEAKER_00]: Not exactly sure about that, but the end scene here, just like the other end scenes in the other episodes, is very interesting because it plants not just some little details that we enjoy.

44:13 [SPEAKER_00]: Camp McLaren, which is the NCR location, is now clearly non-operational. [SPEAKER_00]: Has been taken over or all of the individuals were killed. [SPEAKER_00]: We see this as the scene kind of pans out. [SPEAKER_00]: And this doesn't just... [SPEAKER_00]: Harkin' back to like the one about Prim where we're like, oh, Prim still exists, there you can see the roller coaster, but it tells us more about the world, the NCR has been pushed out of their primary base in the New Vegas area.

44:37 [SPEAKER_00]: They were attacked. [SPEAKER_00]: That duo of... [SPEAKER_00]: Rangers are the only people who are stationed over here, but the Rangers have implied that the NCR still does exist. [SPEAKER_00]: It just exists further away, which makes a lot of sense because the total range for the NCR was much of California parts of Arizona, parts of Nevada.

45:00 [SPEAKER_00]: So we can see that the NCR as we knew it in New Vegas doesn't really exist the same way as it does now, but maybe that's a good thing. [SPEAKER_00]: They've lost shady sands, and yeah, that's a huge problem because they were really making some progress on bringing actual civilization back.

45:16 [SPEAKER_00]: But they've also lost some of these locations in New Vegas, and as we know from New Vegas, the NCR wasn't perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: The leadership wasn't great, and it was no longer standing for all the things that it was originally built to stand for. [SPEAKER_00]: It had kind of lost itself in bureaucracy.

45:32 [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe... [SPEAKER_00]: The idea that the NCR is being pushed back out of this area and has taken a lot of losses is waking people up to what actually matters and will eventually rejuvenate the movement. [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe it's the flip side, maybe we're seeing the inevitable decline and death of the NCR piece by piece.

45:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Either way, it makes for an interesting story, and I'm glad that things aren't just kind of the same way they were in Fallout New Vegas. [SPEAKER_00]: I know a lot of people out there, a lot of the super New Vegas fans are lamenting that they're changing the story so much, but come on, it's been a decade and a half.

46:11 [SPEAKER_00]: Things are going to happen, and the wasteland inevitably is a dangerous place, as we've seen across all the games. [SPEAKER_00]: factions do not stay the same. [SPEAKER_00]: They grow. [SPEAKER_00]: They decline. [SPEAKER_00]: Things happen. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm glad that they're working this out because I think it creates a platform that's both accurate and true to the previous details, the previous lore that we know, but kind of opens it up in a direction that we may not have predicted, which is fun, personally.

46:38 [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's actually really cool. [SPEAKER_00]: So there you go. [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, let me know your thoughts on this join us on the robots radio discord and comments on this episode. [SPEAKER_00]: If I missed anything that you thought was super cool that I should have pointed out, absolutely politely comments and say, hey, I noticed this thing.

46:53 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought this was cool and I'd love to learn more about some of the things that I might have missed because as I've said before, this is a community. [SPEAKER_00]: We're all here together learning and enjoying the series and the IP and everything about fallout. [SPEAKER_00]: So thanks for being here.

47:07 [SPEAKER_00]: But [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to be right back. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got to go thank our patrons and everybody else who helped support the show. [SPEAKER_00]: So don't go anywhere. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for tuning in as usual and huge thanks to our patrons. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to our newest patrons, Sophie S and Emily L. Thanks for joining.

47:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for supporting the show and keeping it going. [SPEAKER_00]: And we've had a number of new free patrons who have joined as well. [SPEAKER_00]: So welcome to all of you and also if you would like to just join patreon.com slash fall at Lorkast and be a free patron so you can get updates about the show and just kind of notifications.

47:42 [SPEAKER_00]: If for example, I'm going to have to take a week off or something like that, I'll post it on the Patreon and you'll be able to. [SPEAKER_00]: Expect that there won't be an episode that week, but you know sometimes there's a mother stuff that we do on there as well Also shout-outs to our century bots germinator dusty ray in era m. Thank you so much Also, it's a huge help if you leave a review on apple podcasts or anywhere else or you comment and Anything you can do to help the show out share it with your friends absolutely is helpful and keeps this show going [SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing this full-time podcasting this show and some other shows that I do for over five years now, so thank you to all of you for being here.

48:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Also, thanks to the new reviews that we got, the Wolf Awakens posted on iTunes, a great podcast, been listening to the podcast since episode 1, robots does a great job explaining the lore. [SPEAKER_00]: Keep up the great work. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for taking the time to do that.

48:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And then also, C-Dubs, O-5, wrote Best Podcast Ever This Show, [SPEAKER_00]: your kind words keep me going and they really do make my day so thank you so much for all the little things you do to help keep the show going. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't wait for episode five so I'm sure we'll all be discussing this in the next week.

48:48 [SPEAKER_00]: Have a wonderful week and stay safe out there in the wasteland and if you come across broken giant eggs that's not a chicken. [SPEAKER_00]: See you next time. [SPEAKER_00]: To plug into everything else we're doing, check out robotsradio.net, reach out to me on Twitter at robots underscore radio, check out the robots radio rocket club where you can join me and a bunch of our other creators creating your podcast starting a new podcast or helping your current podcast grow.

49:18 [SPEAKER_00]: There's more information about that on RobotsReady.net as well, and you can always talk with us and the entire community over 2,000 people on the RobotsReady Discord. [SPEAKER_00]: Come join us. [SPEAKER_00]: We'd love to chat with you. [SPEAKER_00]: See you guys next time.