“No, I haven’t sat down to play the games,” said Walton Goggins, who plays pre-war movie star Cooper Howard and his post-war counterpart The Ghoul. “And I won’t. I won’t. I won’t play the games. I’m not interested.”
The reason is actually pretty simple: Goggins doesn’t want to think of the world or the characters of Fallout as elements of a game.
“All of a sudden, I’m looking at this world from a very different perspective, and as something on a screen in which I am an avatar in. I don’t believe that I’m an avatar. I believe The Ghoul exists in the world. I believe that Cooper Howard exists in the world.” he said.
“The best way that I can serve this world and serve the fans of this game, I think, is to go to work every single day and believe the circumstances that I’m presented with,” Goggins said.
Walton Goggins apparently
Fair. It’s not like his character is in them.
I disagree with this approach. People are shaped by the world they live in, and so too would characters. Short of an isekai or total insanity, it doesn’t make sense for someone to be disconnected from their reality.
It would be like playing an Earthling Star Trek character in Starfleet, while having no idea about Klingons, Vulcans, or Wolf 359.
Weird looking dude. Hair dye’s not his thing either.
Well, he is a ghoul.
My mind’s eye flashes to something like The Master and I’m bummed that’s considered “gamey” by great actors. Not that I expect actors to go fucking play Fallout 1 with a Small Gun Crit/Speech build and go collect the Brotherhood’s data and confront the Master in a battle of words… but if someone would like to show Goggins on their phone that kind of thing is in the games, that the games themselves strived very hard to make living, colorful worlds, I think it certainly wouldn’t hurt the show. Hell if someone wants to show that scene to anyone currently at Bethesda I think it could positively impact the next game.
Spot on. People in this thread are incorrectly assuming that we want him to play them for “the lore” and not so he can see the tone of some of the performances.
But I do respect the actor wanting to take notes only from the director, it’s just I don’t trust this particular show’s direction.
Sounds like a pretty standard Method Acting way of going about it.
Makes sense to me. The Ghoul is an original character, and Goggins doesn’t need to know a lot about the setting or source material.
Yeah I mean, I assume he knows all the relevant details about the show from reading the scripts, and the show is probably designed so a viewer can get into it without knowing the games well, so there’s really no need to know all the lore stuff from games that isn’t in the show anyway.
Plus TBH the dude is a movie star, he’s probably got movie star shit to do rather than putting a few hundred hours into a bunch of RPGs lol.
I think people have gotten some unrealistic expectations from Henry Cavill. For all I know, Walton Goggins has absolutely nothing to do with the writing, so why would he care much about the source material? I can respect him for just wanting to do his job, listening to how his boss wants him to do it.
It’s the director and the writers people should expect to care about the source material, not the actors.
Was Cooper Howard a character in the games or was the entire role written for this show?
If it was a character from one of the games, it would be so minor that I missed it. I think that character was created for the TV series.
I’m totally cool with this. He’s not involved in the creative direction. He’s just a damn good actor, he doesn’t need to understand the whole feral, or glowing one, or whatever. Let the writers write and actors act and ffs keep the executive away from both!!!
Fallout has inconsistent lore to begin with. There’s no be efit to having him know the lore.
This thread is awful quality for this community, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised considering the article that started it is PC Gamer ragebait. Gamers are always looking for their next moment to rise up.
You think it gets any better? Lmao at least we don’t have the 4k word essays made by AI we get in every other post.
He’d be perfect for the writer’s room
EDIT: Jokes aside, I respect his decision as an actor, but I also don’t have faith in the direction they’re giving him. Fans want him to play the games because they don’t have faith, either, and they’d like someone on set pushing for something closer in tone to the West Coast games than the East Coast games. He’s easily the best part of the show.
Makes perfect sense from the perspective of an actor.
They want their performance to come naturally and with the direction of the writers/directors.
Playing the games can make an actor subconsciously act how they think would fit the games rather than how would fit their specific character.
And also I assume it’d take probably a few hundred hours to go through every single game which like… I don’t think anyone would expect him to do ~200 hours of research for his character in White Lotus, so I don’t see why this should be any different really.
I was going to make this it’s own comment, but it fits well as a reply here.
I don’t agree with this. I don’t think he needs to play them, but the argument doesn’t make sense. Would he say the same if it were a movie? I’m willing to bet not. He just doesn’t want to play the games, and that’s fine. The bullshit excuse of “not wanting to believe the world” is stupid. If you’re making a movie set in a larger cinematic universe you don’t get to act noble about refusing to engage in the rest of the media. It being a video game doesn’t change anything.
Yeah, it actually also makes sense for an actor to avoid seeing other films with that character if they’re going to portray an entirelly new version of that character.
In Method Acting character building is a lot about what are the motivations and drives of the “person” which is the character and “living truthfully (the character’s life) under imaginary circunstances” and judging by how he talks about it he is indeed using Method Acting.
As for games, they might be an even worse influence than previous films because the emotional depth of in game characters is generally zero or close to it (except in things like cutscenes were they used actors, MOCAP and a very detailed model for expressions), akin to a woden performance.
It’s valid for an actor using Method Acting not to want to be exposed to a different representation of the world their character is supposed to inhabit and of the characters in that world - Method Acting is pretty “soft and smooshy” rather than a set of iron rules and mechanisms, relying on a person’s own “emotional engine” and ability to pretty much forget that they’re not that “person” which is the character living those things (think of it as an actor’s version of suspension of disbelief) so who knows what influences the actor might take in subconsciously which then affect their embodyment of that character, which would be a bigger concern now that they’ve already embodied that character (for the last season of the series) and that should not change for actor reasons rather than character reasons (i.e. the character should only change due to things that happen to the character).
No doubt some actors would think that playing the game would make no difference, but it’s valid for some to think it might.
The character does not exist in any of the games so your argument doesn’t apply.
A somewhat different version of that world and of characters similar to the one he’s acting exists in the games.
When building a character for acting one bases oneself in the script to “fill-in the blanks” of “how would this person feel in these circumstances”, based on things like the past of that person, the world around them and past events (sometimes actors using Method Action will even during rehearsal enact an important events of a character’s past which are NOT on the script, just to try and get an impression of how that might have shaped that imaginary person).
So it still makes sense that now, after he built a character based on the script’s version of that world and of people like that character in it, he would avoid different versions of that world and those people.
Mind you, he might just not be at all a gamer and this is just an excuse not to play the game. Then again he might genuinely want to avoid the negative side effects for his character building of being exposed to two different versions of the same world - it is a valid consideration for some actors. Only he knows if it’s a genuine reason or just some bollocks he said to get fans of the games of his back.
I don’t think he’s trying to act noble. I think he’s just very aware of his own acting process and how his brain works. It’d be different if he said nobody in the cast should play the games. Or maybe he doesn’t think it’s a great idea for the star of a video game adaptation to say he doesn’t like video games.
He also might just not have that time. My brother would loveNew Vegas but at 45 with a wife, kids, and career that isn’t going to happen because he won’t have the time to really play.
If it’s for your job you take the time to always be learning, hopefully on the clock.
Understandable, but he might never know the glory that is fisto, which makes me sad.
I’m sure, if he goes to them, convention goers are more than happy to let him know.
Considering none of the characters in the game played the game either, I don’t see the controversy.
Good for him. Actors who want to embrace their character and the world they are portrayed in shouldn’t feel pressured to consume the source material, whether that’s a video game series or a book, especially when the show or movie could wildly diverge from the source.
especially when the show or movie could wildly diverge from the source.
Which is very relevant in this case.
Counterpoint, Henry Cavill in The Witcher. Though he left once they started diverging from the source because he knew that it would make the show subpar. And it did.
Knowing the source material can help actors understand more nuance of their character and the world the show takes place in.
Counter-counter: Henry Cavill was playing the Witcher, the central character in the lore. Walter Goggins is playing someone not in the original lore.
The word you are looking for is pointercount. Note somewhat NSFW for language.
Yeah, no.
Your only source is a video from a movie that is nearly 50 years old.
A single usage in a video doesn’t make something a word.
The video itself doesn’t even make it a compound word. No one on the video ever says those words.
Pointercount, the lore in Fallout is grossly inconsistent which is not the case for The Witcher.
The lore in Fallout is grossly inconsistent because of a lack of Henry Cavills working at Bethesda.
There’s still a chance to retcon stupid shit. I really, really would prefer that outcome to "eh the lore in this RPG series doesn’t matter that much.
The lore in Fallout is grossly inconsistent because of a lack of Henry Cavills working at Bethesda.
They have had staff that knew the lore the fact is they decided to change things because it made the game more fun. For example mutants and supermutants should not be in almost any part of the wasteland as the means to create them is not universally available according to lore, yet they are in every single game because they are fun enemies to fight.
Fallout chose fun gameplay over consistency.
You can have both fun gameplay and consistency. In terms of gameplay, Super Mutants are just big, tough humanoids, nothing unique. I do like what the addition of the suicider in 4 does for gameplay, but they’re bullet sponges in most of the games. Bethesda proved they can come up with a regional variant on that enemy type in Point Lookout with the Swampfolk.
As for the Super Mutants themselves, they have at least half-assed an excuse every time they appear in the games, with 76’s Super Mutants kinda fitting pretty well. The more they do it, the less valuable FEV is, but the Super Mutants are really the least of my problems with the lore. However, their constant reuse indicates a desire to establish series icons that they can use to market the game instead of good mechanics (look guys BoS again!). Above all, it really indicates a lack of creativity to me. They absolutely did not have to make a choice between their game being fun and their game having well-thought-out lore.
You generally need a single person with the vision to maintain consistency throughout the whole series, and as far as I know that was not the case with Falout the games.
Absolutely. They switched out creators almost every game. But I would still say that even with the differences between 1, 2, and NV the series still splits pretty cohesively into the West Coast series that tries to build upon the history of its world and the East Coast series that tries to create a freshly-fucked apocalypse with every outing.
There’s a difference in knowing the source material and being a fan/playing the games.
Counterpoint: You can know the source material without having played the game.
Cavill was a book fan too.
The most recent season of the Witcher was pretty good though.
Sure, but if everyone later complains that the show was too different from the source material, they’ll look back to things like this.
Fallout has the most inconsistent lore of almost any IP
Fair point, not exactly the ideal ip for “lore accuracy”
And if that happens the odds of it being the fault of a single actor are zero.
Why bother slapping a name on the show if you don’t want it to have anything to do with the game?
How many of these games have you played? The lore is never consistent so he really has little to gain from the experience. As he’s in his 50s he might not have time to game
That is the furthest thing from what he said. You’re looking for a reason to be upset.
…why would I do that?
I don’t think I’ll answer your silly question. Instead I’ll answer whatever I like.
When the birds flew off their wings batted away all the seeds.
LOL ok
Counterpoint:
Art is interpretive by its nature, and each person has their vision for how it should appear. That said, why would you want to watch something that is a 1:1 of something you’ve already consumed? It’s okay, and often encouraged to stray from the source material.
Even the creator of Fallout acknowledges this.
For example — for better or worse — comics exemplify this idea with the many iterations of their superheroes. e.g. Superman originally couldn’t fly. Some are better than others, but in the end we (the fans) get a more rich and diverse world for our imaginations.
why would you want to watch something that is a 1:1 of something you’ve already consumed?
Well…
- I haven’t. One is a TV show and one is a game, obviously.
- It doesn’t have to be 1:1. The words that were used were “wildly diverge from the source”. How can you understand any of the lore without playing it? Would you act in a movie based on a book and intentionally sequester yourself from the book?
The games wildly diverge from each other. Mutants should never be found in New Vegas for example yet they are in the game because they are fun enemies to fight.
Do you know the franchise at all?
Help me out: who said, “wildly diverge from the source”? (Quotes were yours)
Also, actors act based on the script they’re given and through the artistic direction of the director. They do it all the time; it’s their job.
But, you imply a good point (that I sort of touched on): not everyone likes it. And, I’ll further that sentiment by saying: not everyone has to like it.
You obviously don’t like it. And that’s okay.
It was kaidenshi in this comment:
Brother, just scroll up.
I suspect the actor can read and relied on that.
…read what?
The script of the show, it usually has all of their lines in it.
The script doesn’t contain nearly enough information to get an accurate view of who the character is that they’re portraying or what the fictional universe is like. That’s why a good actor will research the lore.
The bible.
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Removed by mod
It doesn’t really matter for Fallout either, it’s pretty basic at its core. It’s not like he needs some deep understanding of the factions to play a character here. It’s just a post-apocalyptic world, where his character happens to have no hair or nose. It’s always been a sandbox, which lends itself well to a show.
I mean, it’s not like he’s the writer lol
Doesn’t seem like an issue to me
He finds it to be an issue subjectively for him so since he’s doing the acting, I’d say he probably knows what’s best for himself as an actor.
Not even just to see if the games are fun? Like, he doesn’t need to take inspiration for his character from it, but if he is interested in playing video games for fun outside of relating to his acting roles, why not give them a shot?
If he said “I just have no intetest in playing video games” I’d have no follow-up questions about it.
Maybe he plays other games for fun, it doesn’t say.
But it sounds like he’s choosing not to play these ones because it would affect how his perspective on (and he feels about) the setting, which may affect the quality of his work.
The games aren’t without charm but coming from the series first? It’d feel like those mobile gacha game ads. You think there are such interesting complex characters in a politically nuanced setting that tackles some tough themes about how people survive… after all, you’re acting one of them.
…and then you play the game where 90% of it is getting number pop-ups from shooting nameless raiders, and strangers yelling ring-a-ding-ding as you pass by.
I love FONV, but I think he made the right call. Even if he enjoyed the gameplay, it would change how to did his job.
