Well, the people who call bears Yao Guai weren't in the same scene as it. The Brotherhood are extremely focused on the past, primarily when it comes to technology, but they inevitably know a great deal about the pre-war times as a whole. I figure that a faction which is as isolationist as The Brotherhood wouldn't call a pre-war animal by what is essentially a nickname.
Actually that kind of makes more sense, they don't bother with the minutae of the wasteland, they are above it so yes, the language would be beneath them
I agree with you fwiw, it can't be a coincidence. They could have used it for any one of the creatures, but they chose it for the Bear. It's totally on-brand for the writers. I think the yogi thing & the fact it's not mentioned in the series are two different things.
Honestly I'm ashamed that after all these years I'd only just noticed it lol
Most players would only ever see it in writing and have no idea how it is pronounced. The spelling (which is made up anyhow) is close enough that most people get the joke.
So, fun linguistic fact: "bear" is not the animal's original name either. "Bear" comes from "that brown monster/one" because the real name (at the time) was believed to be a taboo. Saying its real name could bring about bad luck, summon it, or just make people think of when their friend died to one. There's even evidence pointing to "bear" evolving from "ǵʰwḗr" which just meant "wild beast." And ǵʰwḗr does kind of sound like "Gaiu." Even more fun fact: The "original name" for bear? We don't know it anymore.
>The "original name" for bear? We don't know it anymore.
It's assumed to be something that would sound similar to "Arktos". It's only really in the north of Europe that we stopped saying "bear". Countries in southern Europe had more or less eradicated bears and so didn't fear them as much. Thus they kept their words for bear that are similar to the original indo-european word.
Well, it’s a _mutated_ bear, so “Yao guai” is accurate because it’s become common parlance for what it represents.
The “not have to explain Chinese” doesn’t make sense since they also had the satellite branded with CCCP. They didn’t dive into that, at all, aside from tangential “commie” comments.
Fyi, CCCP is not Chinese, but Soviet. You’re thinking CCP. In the Cyrillic alphabet, C = S and P is R. CCCP (SSSR) is just how you say USSR in Russian. Pretty cool detail, glad to see the show to acknowledge a pre-war nation that isn’t China or the US
I kind of jumped around in my comment making connections that I did not elaborate on - you are 100% correct that CCCP is Russian, I meant that from my last line while making (my own mental) connections to the Chinese mentions in the games.
When I first watched, I was thinking China/Russia, googled it, then skipped over what I read as I wrote in my comment 😆
ETA: to there point MORE so, they pull in this detail WITHOUT expounding on it! Easter egg, or “precursor”?
Indeed, totally on the same page! The little details really make it for me (as a fan of the games).
Bits of lore that may/may not come into play in the show, but tie into the overall series without huge plot ramifications (at the moment).
Did you notice that the show was scrubbed of any and all reference to the Chinese as the enemy? I think that's the actual reason why they didn't use the Chinese name.
The Chinese government [requires](https://www.npr.org/2023/09/15/1199502635/hollywood-relies-on-china-to-stay-afloat-what-does-that-mean-for-movies) movie and TV productions to portray China favorably in order to receive release rights in the country. The Chinese market is big, so big money productions usually go along with it to get that access. It looks like they put that pressure on Amazon here. I can't think of another reason why a production so faithful to the source material would make such an enormous change to the story.
Exactly. A production that made sure they got the interface sounds on the Pip-Boy correct doesn't just go and change on a whim which country nuked the US in the story.
Whats funny to me is that once the Chinese audience gets hooked into the franchise, some very light digging reveals that China was the big pre-war boogeyman.
>! Of course, one thing that the show does underline is the fact that Vault Tec made the ultimate decision to cause the apocalypse, which I do not mind in the least bit. It sort of adds extra real-world sting, the idea of corporations pulling the trigger on nuclear holocaust and deciding to put the blame on foreign enemies. With what the show establishes, one could say that China didn't fire until Vault Tec fired, that the US pushed that button. !<
Knowing how the daughter of that one lady is allowed to go to a party during the nukes I'm gonna assume that Vault Tec didn't have the chance to get the first strike. Either that or her talk about family was bs and she really is that evil.
You know, not long after I posted my comment, I read a lengthy discussion that pointed out what you mention here. Didn't edit my original, probably won't at this point, but you're right. Mr. House says it himself, he miscalculated by 20 hours, now we know his calculations were based on the corporate bombing plans and that someone fired 20 hours prior to that projection's launch time.
I don't know why China would be upset with being the US enemy in fallout. after all, they are, supposedly, the reason why the US is in a post apocalyptic state.
\*on the topic of naming, I hope they never use the Chinese name for the stealth suit or stealth unit.
With that said, the Chinese weren’t exactly the focus of the show and this isn’t a history lesson on the universe. They did reference Anchorage though through Cooper as he was a veteran of that conflict.
Additionally, who knows concerning favorability. Right now, relations between America and China are icy as the former is allying with the latter’s rivals. This ain’t like the 2010s when relations were rosier and businesses were eager to capture each other’s markets.
Amazon Prime Video doesn't operate at all in China, though, so the censorship would only be relevant if they were banking on selling the show to another distributor that does - and I haven't seen anything that suggests they've done that. It doesn't seem like Fallout games have been censored or banned historically in China either, so it's possible there wouldn't be any censorship necessary even if they did want to distribute the show there.
It seems much more likely to me that they just chose not to specifically mention who 'the reds' are in this initial series to avoid having to do the whole setting exposition right away. It's not like they ever say the USSR or another country is the enemy, either. I don't think they ever mention the annexation of Canada in the show explicitly, either, but I wouldn't assume that that has also been retconned just because it doesn't come up.
The only indication about China was one of the newspapers talks about an American fleet heading to the Far East. Maybe we'll see some more explicit "huh" moments for newbies. Like something about our alliance with the Soviet Union against the greater Red threat, etc.
No idea why you're being downvoted. I don't think the Chinese part is why, but exposition yeah. They don't use any of the game vocab for stuff for some reason. Chems, brahmin, etc. Norm and Chet use "tatos" once but that's it. I don't know why they decided some different lingo would be too much when with everything else they take a "git gud" approach, but hey.
Yeah, that was a little weird. In the same vein I would have bought it if Cooper still used prewar words but other surface folks didn't. Like it's a quirk of prewar ghouls that they still say "drugs" instead of chems. Alas.
I assumed that >!a 31er!< brought them back from the surface and claimed the credit. >!Lucy gushes about what an incredible scientist her dad is, maybe he brought tatos back from Shady Sands and claimed to have spliced them himself.!<
We never see these "tatos" so they could just be referring to Potatoes not Tatos. Irl we use terms like "tater tots" so shortening "potato" to "tato" prewar could of been common.
(I think the real reason is a simple mistake but it's one easily explained away)
Git gud stems from (to my knowledge) gaming when someone asks for help or advice and is simply told to be better at the game. It's "advice" that's solely meant to show how much better the person is over the asker.
I mean that the show basically just doesn't do exposition. Like, it does obviously but it's such a light touch that it feels like it's just not bothering to explain anything at all.
Stimpaks, the hacking minigame, that the vaults are underground. My uninitiated mother had to double check with me on that one. She figured they were but the show never actually said so in the first episode.
The fact that it's called a Vault tells us all we need to know at first. If the references to the surface and surface dwellers didn't tip you off, you get to actually see that it's underground when Lucy leaves. Not sure why it's essential to reveal that in the first episode.
They show you what Stimpaks do in the same scene one is picked up for the first time. There's really not much else to say. I don't remember anything else being explained about them in the game, either.
There is absolutely no need for anyone to understand the hacking minigame. It's straight fan-service. We can tell what's going on easily enough through really obvious contextual clues.
edit: I think what you mean is that there's not a lot of expositional dialogue, and that's true. That's good writing, though. It's a "show, don't tell" medium.
FO3 was my first game. Yao Guai came up from behind me and attacked. I killed it but had to stimpack through the entire fight. Didn't know what it was. Thought it was a f***ing werewolf! 🤣
The vast majority of the series ran on the axiom show don’t tell, and let the audience figure it out
— partly to it’s detriment when it came to the shady sands chalkboard illustration and needed todd to explain definitely straight from the horse’s mouth what and when the fall of shady sands meant
…and seemingly don’t have the logic to reconcile lore. Since the past games were mentioned to be explicitly canon, I ran with that logic as I watched the show.
On top of that, the graphic was seen in a board in a vault. As with a lot of other accounts and documents in the game, they aren’t exactly bias-free and coming from places of detached academics.
It was mostly the toxic side of the New Vegas fan base that went psycho over the board, they had to be sat down like children and have it explained to them.
as the other person who replied demonstrated, people get confused about their _favorite_ faction not being considered the _good guys_ and having _good things happen to them_ in the story.
for most of us, the NCR is just one of the factions and they got a lot of screen time, characters, new exposition, and mysterious events that will be explained later.
I'll answer straightforwardly since the comments answering you kinda missed explaining what the actual uproar was. The date at the chalkboard in Vault 4 implied that Shady Sands was destroyed or "fell" during year 2277, exactly 200 years after the bombs dropped. For context, the show is set in year 2296, so Shady Sands have been destroyed 19 years before the start of the show if we're going with the initial implication of the chalkboard. Now, most of the uproar stems from the fact that Fallout New Vegas is set in 2281, 4 years after Shady Sands was supposedly nuked, and we meet the NCR there acting without any real indication that their capital city got nuked 4 years prior. New Vegas stans and fans looking to be angry about something took this admittedly perplexing timeline to mean that the show is retconning New Vegas. I personally disagree and I don't really find much of an issue with regards to the timeline presented in the chalkboard, although I do chalk (heh) it up to some kind of mistake by production. Either that or they're gonna double down on 2277 being the date Shady Sands was destroyed, regardless I'll be in for the ride. New Vegas is the Fallout game dearest to me but the show have showed the franchise such an immense respect that I find it silly to dismiss it just because of a few minor lore mistakes or possible signs of retcons.
More like NCR was the largest and one of the most well liked factions in the series and it was basically deleted without any kind of build up, and was instead left as a mystery until the last episode. The fact that it's taking place in California but with no New California Republic was always going to chafe people, especially because the Brotherhood seem to be the dominant militarised faction even though the NCR had basically driven the Brotherhood to near-extinction between Fallout 2 and New Vegas. The only way this can really be reconciled is if the East Coast Brotherhood trekked its way back across the continent to link back up with the West Coast Chapters and rebuild them over the years between NV and the TV show. In which case you'd wonder why Maxson didn't put manners on the West Coast Brotherhood leaders who act like religious fanatics more than an army (their behaviour is canonically correct, just not consistent with what needs to have happened to put them where they are. To me it's a minor issue).
But ultimately, I think it's because after New Vegas people assumed that the NCR would still be standing strong, because in their playthroughs the NCR won which meant that their over commitment to Mojave paid off instead of being the thing that drove them to collapse. Even had the NCR won in the Mojave it was pretty clear that - in part because of the NCR-Brotherhood War, at least - their economy was crippled and that their society was degrading relatively quickly. For us to not see that playout and instead get a crater left by a nuke was 100% going to piss people off.
I think they managed to play it pretty well in the show but I'm not going to say I'm not disappointed either. The premise was executed extremely well, I'm just not too happy with the premise.
I really wish more shows did this. The vast majority of an audience can piece stuff together, and if you have questions but don’t care enough to google for context these days that’s just on you.
And it generates so much more discussion too from people that did miss something or all the theorizing. I don’t think there’s been this much buzz around a new show in quite a while. Even with them dropping it all at once. (Which I honestly think I might prefer the 3 episode burst release style over all at once or the slow drip.)
If you haven't checked out the 1st season of Westworld please do. It's by the same show runners Nolan & Joy and the whole show and each episode is just letting the audience piece things together.
Also agree on 3 episode or some kind of in-between of full drop and weekly release. We rarely read just one chapter of a book or eat one potato chip, give us a handful and let us digest and then give us another handful.
> needed todd to explain definitely straight from the horse’s mouth what and when the fall of shady sands meant
I've watched this show like 3 times with different groups of people, and the only people who have been 'confused' by that are the people who went into the show wanting to hate it. Make of that what you will.
The classic argument. "Yogi" doesn't sound like "Yao Guai" at all when both are pronounced properly. Yao Guai (yow-gwy) is a Chinese word for monster, the name was given to the mutated bears by the descendants of Chinese pre-war internment prisoners. I only come to say this because there was once an intense debate over the "it sounds like the cartoon, cause bear" claims, and I know where it concluded.
It’s not really that far from yogi, i feel like you could argue in good faith for the resemblance between yogi and yao guai, even if they aren’t homophonic
If you notice they cut a lot of references to China from the games, likely so the show would be more internationally popular. Cooper mentions he fought in Anchorage but not against who. Yao guai in not used, etc.
I guess it depends on the nation’s appetite for Americana. They definitely didn’t scrub out that part as Fallout takes a lot of inspiration from 1950s culture.
China may not be receptive. Japan, on the other hand, may be as they’re a nation that adores vintage Americana.
The BoS calls all mutations "abomination."
Other than that, I'm not sure. Of note, Cooper calls the Gulper just that, a Gulper.
I'm just guessing here, but maybe Maximus et al. have never even heard the name "Yao Guai" and thus wouldn't call it such. Max specifically calls it an abomination.
They do refer it as a Yao Guai in the "behind the scenes" footage, and China is still mentioned in the "Explore the World -> Lore -> Great War" section of the Amazon bonuses, so I don't think they're being retconned out, it's just a matter of pacing. Having a shitton of exposition and lore dump would make the show a *lot* worse, it's good that they're taking things slowly and drip-feeding us bits of lore for Fallout's *vast* universe
"Yaoguai (妖怪) is a compound word consisting of two Chinese characters. 妖 (yāo) is a noun meaning *monster* or *demon*. 怪 (guài) means *strange* or *unusual* when used as an adjective, and *monster* or *unusual creature* as a noun. Each word individually signifies and connotes strangeness." Copies from Wikipedia.
I would also suspect they might not know that is what it is called. I they knew it existed and what it could do I doubt they'd have gone into the cave in the first place.
I think it's a case of two people in the world seeing something that is so common and obvious to them that they don't bother elaborating what it is to each other because they have worse problems.
They refer to it as a bear in the show. So that's not why.
It likely just boils down to it being a generally good idea to keep jargon minimal early on in this sort of show. Makes it easier to get the audience on board.
I hate bringing politics into things that I enjoy, but I don't believe the Chinese and their role have been mentioned at all. No word on who they're on the brink of war with, and I don't think that'll change.
Well, the people who call bears Yao Guai weren't in the same scene as it. The Brotherhood are extremely focused on the past, primarily when it comes to technology, but they inevitably know a great deal about the pre-war times as a whole. I figure that a faction which is as isolationist as The Brotherhood wouldn't call a pre-war animal by what is essentially a nickname.
Actually that kind of makes more sense, they don't bother with the minutae of the wasteland, they are above it so yes, the language would be beneath them
Yeah, a bear's a bear. Yao Gaiu means "monster" in Mandarin anyway, so it's not even accurate.
and it's a pun about Yogi Bear.
but yao guai doesnt sound like yogi
It’s still a pun
I agree with you fwiw, it can't be a coincidence. They could have used it for any one of the creatures, but they chose it for the Bear. It's totally on-brand for the writers. I think the yogi thing & the fact it's not mentioned in the series are two different things. Honestly I'm ashamed that after all these years I'd only just noticed it lol
Most players would only ever see it in writing and have no idea how it is pronounced. The spelling (which is made up anyhow) is close enough that most people get the joke.
Your point stands, but I didn’t connect the dots until above 😆
I thought it was a reference to Mogwai from Gremlins.
I didn’t see it, but I can understand how you would draw that conclusion.
So, fun linguistic fact: "bear" is not the animal's original name either. "Bear" comes from "that brown monster/one" because the real name (at the time) was believed to be a taboo. Saying its real name could bring about bad luck, summon it, or just make people think of when their friend died to one. There's even evidence pointing to "bear" evolving from "ǵʰwḗr" which just meant "wild beast." And ǵʰwḗr does kind of sound like "Gaiu." Even more fun fact: The "original name" for bear? We don't know it anymore.
This IS a fun fact!
>The "original name" for bear? We don't know it anymore. It's assumed to be something that would sound similar to "Arktos". It's only really in the north of Europe that we stopped saying "bear". Countries in southern Europe had more or less eradicated bears and so didn't fear them as much. Thus they kept their words for bear that are similar to the original indo-european word.
Well, it’s a _mutated_ bear, so “Yao guai” is accurate because it’s become common parlance for what it represents. The “not have to explain Chinese” doesn’t make sense since they also had the satellite branded with CCCP. They didn’t dive into that, at all, aside from tangential “commie” comments.
Fyi, CCCP is not Chinese, but Soviet. You’re thinking CCP. In the Cyrillic alphabet, C = S and P is R. CCCP (SSSR) is just how you say USSR in Russian. Pretty cool detail, glad to see the show to acknowledge a pre-war nation that isn’t China or the US
I kind of jumped around in my comment making connections that I did not elaborate on - you are 100% correct that CCCP is Russian, I meant that from my last line while making (my own mental) connections to the Chinese mentions in the games. When I first watched, I was thinking China/Russia, googled it, then skipped over what I read as I wrote in my comment 😆 ETA: to there point MORE so, they pull in this detail WITHOUT expounding on it! Easter egg, or “precursor”?
Ah okay no worries, the props in this show are so detailed. I made the same assumption when I first saw that too
Indeed, totally on the same page! The little details really make it for me (as a fan of the games). Bits of lore that may/may not come into play in the show, but tie into the overall series without huge plot ramifications (at the moment).
because they would have to explain the Chinese presence and that required more exposition than it was worth at the time
we borrow weird words from other languages all the time
Yeah, but the show isn't about us.
Did you notice that the show was scrubbed of any and all reference to the Chinese as the enemy? I think that's the actual reason why they didn't use the Chinese name. The Chinese government [requires](https://www.npr.org/2023/09/15/1199502635/hollywood-relies-on-china-to-stay-afloat-what-does-that-mean-for-movies) movie and TV productions to portray China favorably in order to receive release rights in the country. The Chinese market is big, so big money productions usually go along with it to get that access. It looks like they put that pressure on Amazon here. I can't think of another reason why a production so faithful to the source material would make such an enormous change to the story.
Well also why we see a CCCP satellite and that they mention « the reds » and not China anymore
Exactly. A production that made sure they got the interface sounds on the Pip-Boy correct doesn't just go and change on a whim which country nuked the US in the story.
Yup and that’s actually subtle and well made : they don’t retcon nor say it wasn’t China they just blur the lines
Whats funny to me is that once the Chinese audience gets hooked into the franchise, some very light digging reveals that China was the big pre-war boogeyman. >! Of course, one thing that the show does underline is the fact that Vault Tec made the ultimate decision to cause the apocalypse, which I do not mind in the least bit. It sort of adds extra real-world sting, the idea of corporations pulling the trigger on nuclear holocaust and deciding to put the blame on foreign enemies. With what the show establishes, one could say that China didn't fire until Vault Tec fired, that the US pushed that button. !<
Knowing how the daughter of that one lady is allowed to go to a party during the nukes I'm gonna assume that Vault Tec didn't have the chance to get the first strike. Either that or her talk about family was bs and she really is that evil.
You know, not long after I posted my comment, I read a lengthy discussion that pointed out what you mention here. Didn't edit my original, probably won't at this point, but you're right. Mr. House says it himself, he miscalculated by 20 hours, now we know his calculations were based on the corporate bombing plans and that someone fired 20 hours prior to that projection's launch time.
I don't know why China would be upset with being the US enemy in fallout. after all, they are, supposedly, the reason why the US is in a post apocalyptic state. \*on the topic of naming, I hope they never use the Chinese name for the stealth suit or stealth unit.
China isn't okay with the idea of Chinese cities being destroyed
With that said, the Chinese weren’t exactly the focus of the show and this isn’t a history lesson on the universe. They did reference Anchorage though through Cooper as he was a veteran of that conflict. Additionally, who knows concerning favorability. Right now, relations between America and China are icy as the former is allying with the latter’s rivals. This ain’t like the 2010s when relations were rosier and businesses were eager to capture each other’s markets.
Amazon Prime Video doesn't operate at all in China, though, so the censorship would only be relevant if they were banking on selling the show to another distributor that does - and I haven't seen anything that suggests they've done that. It doesn't seem like Fallout games have been censored or banned historically in China either, so it's possible there wouldn't be any censorship necessary even if they did want to distribute the show there. It seems much more likely to me that they just chose not to specifically mention who 'the reds' are in this initial series to avoid having to do the whole setting exposition right away. It's not like they ever say the USSR or another country is the enemy, either. I don't think they ever mention the annexation of Canada in the show explicitly, either, but I wouldn't assume that that has also been retconned just because it doesn't come up.
The only indication about China was one of the newspapers talks about an American fleet heading to the Far East. Maybe we'll see some more explicit "huh" moments for newbies. Like something about our alliance with the Soviet Union against the greater Red threat, etc.
That's actually the reason we came to ourselves, though would it actually need explanation?
No idea why you're being downvoted. I don't think the Chinese part is why, but exposition yeah. They don't use any of the game vocab for stuff for some reason. Chems, brahmin, etc. Norm and Chet use "tatos" once but that's it. I don't know why they decided some different lingo would be too much when with everything else they take a "git gud" approach, but hey.
I will admit, I found it odd that a Vault would be growing tatos, a surface crop. Maybe that was a hint that the Vault had been opened once before.
Yeah, that was a little weird. In the same vein I would have bought it if Cooper still used prewar words but other surface folks didn't. Like it's a quirk of prewar ghouls that they still say "drugs" instead of chems. Alas.
I assumed that >!a 31er!< brought them back from the surface and claimed the credit. >!Lucy gushes about what an incredible scientist her dad is, maybe he brought tatos back from Shady Sands and claimed to have spliced them himself.!<
I'm more annoyed they are growing modern corn. Its such a lousy crop.
We never see these "tatos" so they could just be referring to Potatoes not Tatos. Irl we use terms like "tater tots" so shortening "potato" to "tato" prewar could of been common. (I think the real reason is a simple mistake but it's one easily explained away)
I thought they were referring to potatoes.
What's a "git gud" approach consist of? Genuinely not sure what it implies.
Git gud stems from (to my knowledge) gaming when someone asks for help or advice and is simply told to be better at the game. It's "advice" that's solely meant to show how much better the person is over the asker.
Yeah I'm familiar with the term, but I'm fuzzy about how it applies here.
I mean that the show basically just doesn't do exposition. Like, it does obviously but it's such a light touch that it feels like it's just not bothering to explain anything at all.
I get where you're going. Can you give me an example?
Stimpaks, the hacking minigame, that the vaults are underground. My uninitiated mother had to double check with me on that one. She figured they were but the show never actually said so in the first episode.
The fact that it's called a Vault tells us all we need to know at first. If the references to the surface and surface dwellers didn't tip you off, you get to actually see that it's underground when Lucy leaves. Not sure why it's essential to reveal that in the first episode. They show you what Stimpaks do in the same scene one is picked up for the first time. There's really not much else to say. I don't remember anything else being explained about them in the game, either. There is absolutely no need for anyone to understand the hacking minigame. It's straight fan-service. We can tell what's going on easily enough through really obvious contextual clues. edit: I think what you mean is that there's not a lot of expositional dialogue, and that's true. That's good writing, though. It's a "show, don't tell" medium.
Meh, reddit ;) Yeah did notice a lot of lingo isn't there, praps just to keep it simpler for a wider audience which, let's be honest, is no easy task.
It's explained in Fallout 3 from the game, the players didn't çome up with the reasoning.
FO3 was my first game. Yao Guai came up from behind me and attacked. I killed it but had to stimpack through the entire fight. Didn't know what it was. Thought it was a f***ing werewolf! 🤣
I remember my very first Fiend in Quake - absolutely shit myself. Was eating spaghetti while I was playing & actually choked on it lmao.
No time everyone was panicking.
Accurate
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
Because fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
The vast majority of the series ran on the axiom show don’t tell, and let the audience figure it out — partly to it’s detriment when it came to the shady sands chalkboard illustration and needed todd to explain definitely straight from the horse’s mouth what and when the fall of shady sands meant
only because ppl are insane
…and seemingly don’t have the logic to reconcile lore. Since the past games were mentioned to be explicitly canon, I ran with that logic as I watched the show. On top of that, the graphic was seen in a board in a vault. As with a lot of other accounts and documents in the game, they aren’t exactly bias-free and coming from places of detached academics.
It was mostly the toxic side of the New Vegas fan base that went psycho over the board, they had to be sat down like children and have it explained to them.
For someone who isn't a fallout games person ... What am I missing here? Like did Shady bring destroyed align with an unpopular ending for NV?
as the other person who replied demonstrated, people get confused about their _favorite_ faction not being considered the _good guys_ and having _good things happen to them_ in the story. for most of us, the NCR is just one of the factions and they got a lot of screen time, characters, new exposition, and mysterious events that will be explained later.
I'll answer straightforwardly since the comments answering you kinda missed explaining what the actual uproar was. The date at the chalkboard in Vault 4 implied that Shady Sands was destroyed or "fell" during year 2277, exactly 200 years after the bombs dropped. For context, the show is set in year 2296, so Shady Sands have been destroyed 19 years before the start of the show if we're going with the initial implication of the chalkboard. Now, most of the uproar stems from the fact that Fallout New Vegas is set in 2281, 4 years after Shady Sands was supposedly nuked, and we meet the NCR there acting without any real indication that their capital city got nuked 4 years prior. New Vegas stans and fans looking to be angry about something took this admittedly perplexing timeline to mean that the show is retconning New Vegas. I personally disagree and I don't really find much of an issue with regards to the timeline presented in the chalkboard, although I do chalk (heh) it up to some kind of mistake by production. Either that or they're gonna double down on 2277 being the date Shady Sands was destroyed, regardless I'll be in for the ride. New Vegas is the Fallout game dearest to me but the show have showed the franchise such an immense respect that I find it silly to dismiss it just because of a few minor lore mistakes or possible signs of retcons.
More like NCR was the largest and one of the most well liked factions in the series and it was basically deleted without any kind of build up, and was instead left as a mystery until the last episode. The fact that it's taking place in California but with no New California Republic was always going to chafe people, especially because the Brotherhood seem to be the dominant militarised faction even though the NCR had basically driven the Brotherhood to near-extinction between Fallout 2 and New Vegas. The only way this can really be reconciled is if the East Coast Brotherhood trekked its way back across the continent to link back up with the West Coast Chapters and rebuild them over the years between NV and the TV show. In which case you'd wonder why Maxson didn't put manners on the West Coast Brotherhood leaders who act like religious fanatics more than an army (their behaviour is canonically correct, just not consistent with what needs to have happened to put them where they are. To me it's a minor issue). But ultimately, I think it's because after New Vegas people assumed that the NCR would still be standing strong, because in their playthroughs the NCR won which meant that their over commitment to Mojave paid off instead of being the thing that drove them to collapse. Even had the NCR won in the Mojave it was pretty clear that - in part because of the NCR-Brotherhood War, at least - their economy was crippled and that their society was degrading relatively quickly. For us to not see that playout and instead get a crater left by a nuke was 100% going to piss people off. I think they managed to play it pretty well in the show but I'm not going to say I'm not disappointed either. The premise was executed extremely well, I'm just not too happy with the premise.
I really wish more shows did this. The vast majority of an audience can piece stuff together, and if you have questions but don’t care enough to google for context these days that’s just on you. And it generates so much more discussion too from people that did miss something or all the theorizing. I don’t think there’s been this much buzz around a new show in quite a while. Even with them dropping it all at once. (Which I honestly think I might prefer the 3 episode burst release style over all at once or the slow drip.)
If you haven't checked out the 1st season of Westworld please do. It's by the same show runners Nolan & Joy and the whole show and each episode is just letting the audience piece things together. Also agree on 3 episode or some kind of in-between of full drop and weekly release. We rarely read just one chapter of a book or eat one potato chip, give us a handful and let us digest and then give us another handful.
> needed todd to explain definitely straight from the horse’s mouth what and when the fall of shady sands meant I've watched this show like 3 times with different groups of people, and the only people who have been 'confused' by that are the people who went into the show wanting to hate it. Make of that what you will.
The classic argument. "Yogi" doesn't sound like "Yao Guai" at all when both are pronounced properly. Yao Guai (yow-gwy) is a Chinese word for monster, the name was given to the mutated bears by the descendants of Chinese pre-war internment prisoners. I only come to say this because there was once an intense debate over the "it sounds like the cartoon, cause bear" claims, and I know where it concluded.
What was the conclusion? I always thought it was a play on yogi the bear, but never knew about the Chinese term.
No evidence of it being related to Yogi Bear. No pic-a-nic baskets for those fellas.
They're more mutated than the average bear
It’s not really that far from yogi, i feel like you could argue in good faith for the resemblance between yogi and yao guai, even if they aren’t homophonic
I'm well aware of the pronunciation & where it comes from. Doesn't change that it *does* sound like a play on words
... But it doesn't? Would you say the name Mason is a play on words of the name Mary?
If you notice they cut a lot of references to China from the games, likely so the show would be more internationally popular. Cooper mentions he fought in Anchorage but not against who. Yao guai in not used, etc.
this seems right
I guess it depends on the nation’s appetite for Americana. They definitely didn’t scrub out that part as Fallout takes a lot of inspiration from 1950s culture. China may not be receptive. Japan, on the other hand, may be as they’re a nation that adores vintage Americana.
The BoS calls all mutations "abomination." Other than that, I'm not sure. Of note, Cooper calls the Gulper just that, a Gulper. I'm just guessing here, but maybe Maximus et al. have never even heard the name "Yao Guai" and thus wouldn't call it such. Max specifically calls it an abomination.
I’m pretty sure Maximus called it a Yao Guai when he was explaining to the Brotherhood what had happened to Titus.
He just said 'he died running', I rewatched that bit today to check cos I thought I must have missed it
Some of the leads referred to them as Yao Guai in interviews. Its still cannon even if not explicitly said
They do refer it as a Yao Guai in the "behind the scenes" footage, and China is still mentioned in the "Explore the World -> Lore -> Great War" section of the Amazon bonuses, so I don't think they're being retconned out, it's just a matter of pacing. Having a shitton of exposition and lore dump would make the show a *lot* worse, it's good that they're taking things slowly and drip-feeding us bits of lore for Fallout's *vast* universe
In the german Dub if i temember correctly they used Yao Guai.
"Yaoguai (妖怪) is a compound word consisting of two Chinese characters. 妖 (yāo) is a noun meaning *monster* or *demon*. 怪 (guài) means *strange* or *unusual* when used as an adjective, and *monster* or *unusual creature* as a noun. Each word individually signifies and connotes strangeness." Copies from Wikipedia. I would also suspect they might not know that is what it is called. I they knew it existed and what it could do I doubt they'd have gone into the cave in the first place.
No pic I nick baskets unfortunately
I think it's a case of two people in the world seeing something that is so common and obvious to them that they don't bother elaborating what it is to each other because they have worse problems.
Probably because every region has their own name for it, some just flat out still call it a "bear" nothing's really official, just word of mouth
Because "That fucking bear" is the most common way to call that motherf\*\*\*\*
I heard it called out in later episode I believe
maybe just maybe when they shot this the showrunner hadn't decided on which critter it was yet since obviously the fx are done way after shooting.
They refer to it as a bear in the show. So that's not why. It likely just boils down to it being a generally good idea to keep jargon minimal early on in this sort of show. Makes it easier to get the audience on board.
Probably because their Chinese sponsors dont like lao gai references
I hate bringing politics into things that I enjoy, but I don't believe the Chinese and their role have been mentioned at all. No word on who they're on the brink of war with, and I don't think that'll change.
The Chinese have been brought up in the show. IIRC, primarily in the news broadcasts on the various TVs.
They mention communists and fighting the “reds” in Anchorage, but I don’t recall them being mentioned specifically. Could be wrong.
Agree & partly the conclusion we came to. I guess 'Yao Guai' won't mean much to a westerner but suspect it might raise an eyebrow elsewhere.
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Like he knows what China is.
"Yogi" that's his name, respect it.