‘I haven’t sat down to play the games, and I won’t’: Fallout’s Walton Goggins says he ‘not interested’ in playing the RPGs his show is based on

Fallout Season 2 is set to begin airing weekly starting December 17 on Prime Video, and that means we’re finally headed to New Vegas, baby! Ahead of the show visiting the site of the most cherished of the Fallout games, I got the chance to talk to some of the key cast members, including Walton Goggins, Ella Purnell, and Aaron Moten.

My number one question for the cast: have they played any of the Fallout games the show is based on, either prior to filming Season 1 or following its huge critical success?

“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.”

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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.

Another Fallout cast member who hasn’t played the games yet is Aaron Moten, who portrays Brotherhood of Steel member Maximus on the show—though unlike Goggins, Moten said he does plan to play the Fallout games. Eventually.

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“I haven’t played them before, and I can’t play them now,” Moten said. “I feel like I need to be done with the work that we’re doing before I can jump in.”

Moten wasn’t talking about waiting until the end of Fallout Season 2, but the end of the show entirely—however many seasons and years that winds up being.

“I feel like I get this really uniquely particular opportunity to be within the world of the game, like the Disney World version of it, where it’s life-like and built out in front of me. But I’m still gonna wait. I’m gonna wait till I’m done,” he said.

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“And who knows, maybe we’ll be working on this so long that Bethesda will have a new Fallout number for us to jump into,” Moten said.

(Image credit: Prime Video)

Unlike her co-stars, Ella Purnell, who plays Vault-dweller Lucy MacLean, has played a Fallout game—and plans to play more of them soon.

“Yeah, I played Fallout 4 when I was in prep for season one, and that was a really fun and exciting experience,” she said. “I’m really glad I did, and not because it necessarily informed my performance. Obviously, it’s not a one-to-one adaptation. My character’s not really in the games, but just because it heightened the enjoyment and the experience, like getting to see the power armor and that they actually built it, putting on the Vault suit, walking into the set for the Vault.”

Having played Fallout 4, she could feel the same thing fans of the games felt watching those scenes in the show. “I knew what that meant. I knew how important that was,” Purnell said.

“This time around, I did not play the game, and I kind of did it in reverse, where I want to wait for the show to come out, watch all the episodes, and then play New Vegas, and then do it in reverse and see how that changes the experience of playing the game,” Purnell said.

“And then I don’t know what I’ll do for Season 3,” she said. “Maybe I’ll play them all and become like a really addicted gamer. Who knows?”