Fallout’s Aaron Moten ‘forbid’ himself from playing the games, leaving Ella Purnell as the only show lead who’s actually rolled a character in the Wasteland

Walton Goggins, as is well-established, has not played and will not play Fallout. That’s absolutely fine—Goggins does a great job playing The Ghoul in the Fallout TV show without familiarity with the game series, and I doubt playing it would make him any better. Still, I hope people keep asking him about it, just because I enjoy hearing his highfalutin, actorly reasons for abstaining when I’m personally damn near certain his real reason is being a 54-year-old man who doesn’t play videogames.

But what about Aaron Moten, the actor who plays Maximus and known gamer (he’s an Ocarina of Time guy)? Surely he’s played Fallout, right? Right?

Not right. In Game Informer’s great honkin’ oral history of Fallout, Moten said that not only has he “not played Fallout,” he’s essentially vowed not to. “Partly, I forbid myself from playing it at this point. It’s our job to bring a sense of humanity to these three characters.”

Which is pretty much what Goggins says, too. I suppose their thinking is that interacting with this world—which has to feel ‘real’ to them in some sense—as a bunch of polygons on a screen might diminish it in their heads and that would translate to the screen. I’m not entirely sure that holds water, but I guess that’s why I’m not an actor. One of the reasons I’m not an actor.

Although he won’t play it, Moten hasn’t forsworn any contact with the Fallout games. “I have watched Twitch streams, you know, I’ve watched others play it.”

(Image credit: Prime Video)

I think I’ve cracked it. I bet Moten saw someone spend 3 hours modding their New Vegas playthrough only for it to not work and decided he had better things to do with his life. Fair enough, Aaron.

Anyway, that’s two of the Fallout show’s three leads swearing off playing Fallout. What about Ella Purnell, the third? Oh, you bet she’s played Fallout 4. Give it a few more seasons, and she’ll have incredibly strong opinions on GURPS.

About