Top 10 Biggest Differences Between Fallout Season 2 and the Games

#10: The Dino Dee-Lite Motel

For the most part, the TV show managed to get the Dino Dee-Lite Motel right. You got a rundown motel sitting in the sands of the post-apocalyptic Mojave Desert. And of course, you’ve got the dinosaur statue as the centerpiece. Only thing that’s off is the size of the location. The show depicts Dino Dee-Lite Motel as a small, menial location as many motels tend to be. In “Fallout: New Vegas”, the lot is a bit more sizable than what we saw in the show, almost big enough that you may think it was a miniature amusement park.

#9: Area 51

Early on in Season Two, we witness the Brotherhood of Steel uncover the infamous military base Area 51, which had spent much of its time in the apocalypse buried in sand. Inside, the Brotherhood finds all kinds of artifacts from before the war, ranging from classic cars to even frozen alien bodies. We’d love to tell you that you can visit Area 51 in “Fallout: New Vegas”, but that is not the case. You cannot perform your own raid like it's 2019. However, with the Wild Wasteland perk, you can possibly run into alien lifeforms as you travel across the Mojave desert.

#8: Sunset Sarsaparilla

When the show is bringing us up to speed on what our cast has been up to, we find that Thaddeus has been housing kids and having them work at a Sunset Sarsaparilla factory. Looks like a cheery and whimsical place to be in. Well, judging from the outside, anyways. In the game, Sunset Sarsaparilla tries to maintain its charm, but it’s a little more disturbing than the factory we saw in the show. The Sunset Sarsaparilla HQ contains an animatronic cowboy named Festus, who seems to be on the brink of a complete breakdown. It also houses several other robots that may or may not try to kill you. Yeah, the factory looks way more welcoming than the headquarters.

#7: Vaulties Everywhere

This may seem like a somewhat general detail to point out, but does anyone else find it peculiar that there are so many Vault Dwellers running around in Season Two? We’re not just talking about the ones living under Stephanie and Betty’s rule. There’s the entire group led by Norm throughout Season Two as well. We find this peculiar because in “Fallout: New Vegas” and even the other “Fallout” games, you don’t run into other Vault Dwellers too often. There are a couple here and there, but usually, the games keep the player character as the primary Vault Dweller. Any others are usually relegated to brief side quests.

#6: Explosive Collars

As we see throughout Season Two, Hank returns to Vault-Tec HQ to continue work on a prototype the company had in the works before the bombs dropped. This device is lodged into the back of the victim’s neck and can brainwash all of their bad thoughts to turn them into more upstanding citizens. This has never been a part of the games, let alone “New Vegas”. “New Vegas”, instead, had explosive collars that some characters were forced to wear by one entity or another. These collars came equipped with microphones, allowing the user to monitor their victims whenever they so desired. One misstep, and…well, it’s all over but the crying.

#5: Thaddeus’s Mutations

For those who don’t remember, our former squire took a serum in Season One that makes him immune to pain and radiation. But Season Two shows this is clearly taking a toll on his body. Though he believes he’s becoming a Ghoul, this is far from the truth. What he is experiencing is mutation, and in the games, mutations were not a mechanic until “Fallout 76”. In “New Vegas”, you simply suffered from radiation that caused SPECIAL stats to slowly drop to zero…or just kill you if you reached one thousand radiation points. Could Thaddeus maybe have consumed the Forced Evolutionary Virus and is becoming…a Centaur? If not him, then…perhaps Norm?

#4: Freeside

Hardcore “New Vegas” fans probably found the show’s depiction of Freeside a little bit odd. See, the New Vegas Strip is fairly huge. You can see the strip from almost any position in the Mojave desert. However, once you get into Freeside, you’ll find a huge chunk of the strip is depressingly derelict with a lot of borderline empty roads. In the show, Freeside is depicted with a smaller scale, almost like the simple set of a spaghetti Western movie. Also, it seems to be quite heavily populated, which is something we cannot say the same for in the video game rendition.

#3: Fisto

Another detail hardcore fans of the 2010 classic likely noticed was the cameo made by Fisto! In “Fallout: New Vegas”, Fisto was a Protectron that dreamed of one day fulfilling more promiscuous acts. You know, for those who had a thing for robots. However, you find him at Freeside inside Cerulean Robotics. For some reason, in the show, he’s out and about in the Mojave, going on dates with the weird snake oil salesman. Perhaps Season Three will show Fisto setting out to rescue him from Hank’s brainwashing device? …Nah.

#2: Super Mutants

The sixth episode of Season Two was something truly special as we got our first glimpse of a super mutant. These towering beings were missing from Season One (save for an Easter egg), and now, we may finally see what they’ve been up to all this time. It's been strange watching Season Two without seeing them really wandering around. In the game, super mutants are a somewhat common enemy in certain regions. There’s even an entire settlement they all live in called Jacobstown, which the show has yet to even mention. Something tells us we won’t be seeing any of these guys again until sometime in Season Three.

#1: Mr. House

For those of us who played “Fallout: New Vegas”, seeing him living and breathing in the show was almost bizarre, yet mesmerizing. The whole “paranoid mathematician/gambler” approach was very fitting for his character and kind of explains just how crazy he’s willing to get to come out on top. But in the grand re-reveal, when the Ghoul powers up House’s computer with the cold fusion, we weren’t expecting an animated, digitized version of the corrupt corporate leader. The 2010 game simply displays his face as a static image in the same way the Securitrons do with their different personas. Maybe House was saving the better technology for himself.

Was there another major difference you spotted between the show and “Fallout: New Vegas”? Let us know down in the comments.