For players of the Fallout video game franchise, the Pip-Boy isn’t just an accessory. It’s a way of life. The clunky armband (similar to what Leela on Futurama calls her “wrist lojack-a-mater“) is how you access the map, your stats, your inventory, and quests. It’s key to life in the wasteland. And irl, it’s super fucking heavy. On the Fallout series red carpet, Vulture asked the actors playing Vault-dwellers what it was like wearing one of these things for days — if not months — of shooting. “You know how Popeye looks?” said Kyle MacLachlan. “Very similar, but only on my left arm.” Ella Purnell joked that her left bicep got noticeably bigger after playing the show’s Lone Wanderer. She hopes she can switch arms eventually.
Fallout takes place in an alternate future, in which nuclear fusion is easy af but making a car without fins or writing a song that’s not western swing is impossible. “It’s an alternate future stuck in the 50’s,” said production designer Howard Cummings. “Having real stuff in there was one may to make the game come to life.” Bringing as many elements of the video game out of pixelspace and into the real world was key to production. “When I got there, they had built a multi-story vault that you could just walk around,” said Bethesda Softworks’ Todd Howard. Howard admitted he got lost in the vault set, just like so many gamers before him encountering yet another labyrinthine vault.
But the reality of those Pip-Boys was a shock for the actors. “The Pip-Boy was extraordinarily heavy, but very cool,” said Chris Parnell, who plays a one-eyed vault overseer. “It’s got an actual screen in there, with an animated character in it. They made it out of real materials, real metal. It wasn’t some plastic thing. And I think that comes across when you watch it.”
By Bethy Squires , 2024-04-11 06:36:18
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