Walton Goggins on the Fallout show's three main characters as 'avatars' for players: 'It's almost like three different religions'

Three actors on stage with a person inside a suit of power armor
(Left to right) Someone in power armor, Aaron Moten, Ella Purnell, and Walton Goggins at The Game Awards (Image credit: The Game Awards)

At a panel today before The Game Awards, the cast of the upcoming Prime Video Fallout TV series spoke about how they viewed the three characters they're playing on the show.

We got a glimpse of those three main characters in the first Fallout series trailer last week. There's Lucy, played by Ella Purnell, leaving the Vault for the first time (as so many players have done in the game). We saw Maximus, played by Aaron Moten, traveling with the Brotherhood of Steel as they cross California. And then there's Walton Goggins as gunslinging outlaw The Ghoul, relishing some frenzied combat in the town of Philly.

In some ways an inexperienced newcomer, an idealistic crusader, and a manic with a six-shooter represent not just different kinds of characters... but different kinds of Fallout players. 

At the panel, the cast said they see it that way, too.

"I think the character creator is where that idea comes from," said Moten. "Jonah [director Jonathan Nolan] has been talking a lot about how he's the type of player that spends eight hours in the Creator before he can even launch into the game."

"I think all three of our characters are so different," Purnell said. "You can't think of what our characters would have in common when you first meet them. You'd have no idea. But I think by the end you realize that there were survivors in different ways."

Walton Goggins

Walton Goggins (Justified, The Shield) (Image credit: Getty Images - Dimitrios Kambouris / Staff)

"They are three avatars essentially, right?" Goggins added. "To me, it's almost like three different religions.

"You have the naivete of the Vault Dweller, and this can-do kind of open attitude that she comes to the world with," Goggins continued. As for Aaron Moten's character Maximus, "He's looking for courage, and he's looking for order, right? He wants to bring order to this universe," said Goggins. 

"And then you have the ghoul, [who] just embraces the chaos. And if you think about it, if you put the three together, that's a great theology, man. That's a great way to live your life on some level," Goggins said.

"And it's cool, is what I'm saying," he added. "It's really cool."

We'll find out how cool in a few months: The Fallout TV series will stream on Prime Video beginning on April 12.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

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