Howard Cummings is quick to tell me that he isn’t a gamer, but we could certainly go toe to toe onFallout lore. Since joining Prime Video’s Fallout adaptation as the production designer, he’s had to throw himself into the deep end, and as any fan knows, it’s a very deep pool.
“I actually gave this game to somebody as a gift for Christmas, who later said it changed their life,” Cummings says, speaking to me ahead of the premiere. After playing a bit ofFallout 4himself, he admits he “sucked” at it - but quickly became aware of just how much this was going to mean to the fans.
“I had to learn about Fallout from researching it and the best research was going onYouTubeand watching these tutorials that people were making,” he adds. “I used to fall asleep listening to The History of the Brotherhood of Steel […] I was just like, this never ends.
“There are these people who love the game, who are making their own mods and creating their own versions of stuff that they thought were cool,” he continues. “I felt like I had to honour that. I got attached to them.”
Cummings has worked on a range of film and television sets, with his most recent credits including Westworld and Lovecraft Country. His job means he has to quickly become an expert in whatever world he’s tasked with bringing to life, and the pressure is on when you’re dealing with a series that already has legions of fans, all with their own ideas on how Fallout should look and feel.
Keeping fans happy and staying loyal to the games is a tall enough order on its own, but this was only compounded by another requirement that the team agreed to early on: there would be minimal CGI. This impacted Cummings’ work greatly, with executive producer Jonathan Nolan asking him to create power armour that not only looked like the real deal, but actually operated in real life.
Jonathan Nolan’s brother and occasional collaborator, Christopher Nolan, is also known to prefer practical effects over CGI wherever possible.
“We enlisted this company called Legacy [which] didIron Manand stuff like that, but they had never actually made [a suit] quite as functional as this particular suit,” says Cummings. “We had a version that the actor could wear, but then we had a stuntman for some of the other ones.” Despite initial fears, Cummings says he realised the team had figured it out when he spotted the stuntman dancing in his power armour between takes.
In the run-up to the show’s release date and during production itself, we’ve heard a lot from figures atBethesda- usuallylongtime director Todd Howard- about howeverything was handled. So it comes as quite a surprise that Cummings didn’t have to get every single item he created for the show approved by the game developers.
“When I got hired, I said, ‘How much of Bethesda am I answering to?’ Because I’ve done movies, like with NASCAR, and I had to talk to every person in there. […] And I was doing race cars and suits and the whole thing. The level of approval I had to go through was crippling.
“So I thought, ‘Do I have to do this whole thing again?’ And no. [From] the beginning, it was my choice whether we’re going to take Fallout and make it sleeker, maybe or strip it down. At first, that’s what I thought it was going to end up doing.”
What we’ve seen of Fallout so far
But as Cummings got stuck into his research, he discovered that he didn’t need to change much from the source material. The set design in the games, especially what we see of the vaults, is “frigging crazy”, and “like someone was super stoned and just drew this thing,” as Cummings puts it. “I began to really love it.”
Early on, Bethesda representatives would keep a closer eye, but Cummings says they were pleased with what they saw. “We did a bunch of concepts up and they said, ‘Oh, you’re doing the game’. And I said yes. After that, they honestly let me just do what I wanted. Because I proved to them I understood what the game was.
“We got to play with the style of things. And I shifted out of the game for some things, but we always applied whatever the game mindset was to it.”
The Fallout show doesn’t just reflect the games, it expands upon them. From the very first episode, we see sides of the Brotherhood of Steel and vault dwellers that are never really explored in the games.
I had to learn about Fallout from researching it … I used to fall asleep listening to The History of the Brotherhood of Steel.
“The story is not part of the existing game lore, which is great because I got to do stuff that had not been in any of the Fallout games,” Cummings explains. This meant being confident enough in his knowledge of the lore to be able to look at certain locations, events, and characters before going, “How do I Fallout this?”
Its writing called for this confidence quite early on, as the first episode shows us what a wedding looked like in the confines of a vault, and how the ceremony is affected by decades of isolated living. Unsurprisingly, these unions are all about procreation and keeping the vault going, with dwellers coldly and systematically matched together by a board of their peers.
But like everything Fallout, it’s dressed up as the American dream. Cummings captures this with the set design, as the lucky pair marry in a field of projected corn, made to look like rustic America that means nothing to anyone in attendance. It’s clearly just there to keep them complacent and drenched in a perpetual coating of grim, pre-war Americana.
I got to do stuff that had not been in any of the Fallout games.
As we leave the vault, the show continues to make additions to the world. An early episode sees a trader pull out a pre-war device made for the sole purpose of providing at-home amputations. The discarded limb is then replaced by a wildly impractical robot foot, made in bulk to no doubt meet demand before the bombs dropped. All of this feels like it’s plucked straight from the games, and fits into the world with relative ease.
Even for these completely new inventions, Bethesda was hands-off. “They were informed of it, but they actually let us do it,” says Cummings. “It was very important to me that it always honored what the game was. I became attached to [the fans].”
For all the love that Cummings has for the Fallout player base, some have already taken issue with what they’ve seenin the trailers. He is aware of this criticism and even references an article from my colleague that argues the show looks too clean. Cummings says that this will be addressed in future episodes, however, using the character of Lucy as an example.
“In the trailer, she looks like the perfect vault dweller, but it’s part of the setup. She has to go into this dismal place,” says Cummings. “Later on, she gets trashed, completely trashed by the end of the show.”
While this might not address all of the complaints, particularly concerns that the locations don’t look like they’ve weathered nuclear fallout, Cummings asks fans to give his team and the show a chance before prematurely casting it aside.
“How the fans felt became super important to me, I think more important, actually than the people I was working with,” Cummings laughs. “We literally based everything on the games. The kit you can get to build your own vault, we followed the rules. We took the parts, pulled them apart, and then analysed [them].
“I think that sort of protection, that kind of respect to that kind of detail, I’m hoping will translate to people feeling rewarded rather than let down.”
