Ever since Fallout 1, players have wanted to have the option to play as a Ghoul. In the Fallout games made since Bethesda acquired the franchise, Ghouls have even used the same basic models as humans, allowing them to equip all gear and leading to many mods where Ghouls are made playable. However, there are some key reasons that Ghouls may never become a playable race in the Fallout games without mods.
Fallout 4 Play As Ghoul
Download: https://tinourl.com/2vKOM3
Ever since Fallout 3 the Fallout games have had the same basic formula as Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series. They use the same engine, both series are first-person open-world roleplaying games, and both worlds have a variety of races. While Elder Scrolls fans can choose from many of the races of Tamriel, however, Fallout players can only ever play as a human. One of the reasons for this lies in a subtle difference between the storytelling styles of the two series.
The Elder Scrolls games prioritize roleplaying freedom above all else. Players always start imprisoned in some way, but their reason for being there is rarely elaborated upon. Skyrim even avoids saying which way across the Skyrim-Cyrodiil border the player was attempting to travel when they were captured by the Imperials and sent to Helgen for execution. It is entirely up to players to determine their character's age, motivations, and any details of their life before the start of the game. While this also means that the Elder Scrolls games tend to have stories which aren't particularly character-driven, it also allows for the kind of roleplaying freedom exemplified by the ten different playable races.
The Fallout games may resemble The Elder Scrolls in a lot of ways, but there is a key difference. In most Fallout games, the player's backstory is established. In Fallout 1 the player character grew up in Vault 13, while in Fallout 2 the player is the first protagonist's direct descendant. In Fallout 3, the character is explicitly a 19 year-old who leaves Vault 101 in search of their father, James. In Fallout 4, the player is either a veteran or a lawyer who survives being cryogenically frozen within Vault 111 in 2077 and leaves their Vault centuries later in search of their missing son, Shaun.
While players can control who their character ends up becoming in the story and the choices they make, the Fallout games rely on a far more prescriptive storytelling style than the Elder Scrolls series, even if there is still much more freedom than other series like Mass Effect. It would have made no sense for the player character to be a ghoul in Fallout 1, 2, 3, or 4, because in all of those games they start off as a Vault dweller, and would never have been exposed to the initial nuclear blasts of the Great War of 2077.
For Fallout fans to have the option to play as a Ghoul or a human, the storytellers would have to make one of two choices. First, they could write a Fallout game which gives the player several different potential prologues, Dragon Age: Origins-style. In this case, a human character might start in a Vault, but a Ghoul might start out in the world or at the moment of their transformation in 2077. Alternatively, the game could forgo its introductory Vault sequence entirely. This already happened in Fallout: New Vegas, where the Courier's lack of backstory beyond their final delivery made playing as a Ghoul using mods a far more immersive option.
If the next Fallout game starts the player outside of a Vault-Tec Vault and has a story which doesn't involve family members, it seems possible that it could give the player the option to choose different races. However, there is a still a reason that the developers would likely decide to avoid letting fans play as a Ghoul.
Ghouls face immense prejudice in the world of Fallout, and the Fallout mods where players get to pick Ghoul as a race show just how much of the world's dialogue would need to be given alternate versions for Ghoul player characters and "Smoothskins." Skyrim already struggled to make each of its races feel equally immersive.
Khajiit and Argonian players are allowed into Skyrim's cities with no explanation, despite the rest of their kind being forced to stay beyond the city walls. Dunmer characters who enter Windhelm and see a fellow Dark Elf being harassed will still be asked if they're one of those "Skyrim for the Nords" types, leading to a ridiculous dialogue option where players can agree with the people oppressing their own kind, and are admonished for it by a Nord.
While this problem is certainly noticeable in The Elder Scrolls, the ultimate lack of character-driven storytelling lessens its effects. A Fallout game would need to have storylines with significantly different dialogue for human and Ghoul player characters. Without different dialogue, it couldn't have the same kind of character-driven storytelling that distinguishes the main quests in the Fallout franchise from those found in The Elder Scrolls. Not only that, but Ghouls are canonically immune to radiation, which would cause huge balancing issues.
Perhaps the greatest twist of all would be a Fallout game where players still only have one race option, and have to play as a Ghoul in a story built around that premise. This would present some exciting roleplaying opportunities and could be the kind of bold turn the Fallout games need after Fallout 76. Many players, however, would find only being able to play as a Ghoul even more restrictive than only being able to play as a human. Unfortunately for players who love Fallout's Ghouls, the franchise will likely star Smoothskins for the foreseeable future.
While there are plenty of ghoul race mods out there, this mod not only lets you play as a ghoul, but it also affects your character and the way others react to them! Finally, you can now immersively roleplay as a ghoul character!
Ghouls are a fictional race of posthuman beings from the post-apocalyptic Fallout video game franchise. Within series lore, ghouls are originally humans, many of them survivors of a global nuclear holocaust, who have been severely mutated by the residual irradiation, which greatly extends their lifespans but deforms their physical appearance into a zombie-like aesthetic. Many ghouls live alongside humans in settlements across the post-apocalyptic wasteland, while others mentally degenerate into a wild and antisocial state.
Considered to be among the most recognizable and iconic elements of the Fallout intellectual property (IP), ghouls have appeared in every media of the franchise, and have been the subject of numerous fan mods of Fallout series games. Critics have lauded their use as either antagonistic figures or as supporting non-player characters throughout the series, with some even calling for ghouls to play a more central role in future sequels or adaptations of the franchise.
The term "ghoul" in the Fallout series refers to human victims who were subject to prolonged exposure to radiation when they were caught outside during the Great War, a global conflict driven by the use of nuclear weapons which devastated much of the known world in the Fallout universe and provides the basis for the devastated world setting of the franchise.[1] Those who survive experience genetic mutations caused by elevated levels of radiation develop widespread necrosis or rot on their physical bodies, though their lifespans are greatly extended which allows them to live for at least hundreds of years if not effectively immortal.[1][2] Besides their prolonged lifespans, ghouls are no longer harmed by low-level radiation and even receive physical benefits when exposed to it.[1]
Ghouls who live within the rebuilt civilizations of the known world are similar to normal humans in terms of intellect or personality, but often suffer from discrimination due to their disconcerting physical appearance.[1] On the other hand, Feral Ghouls have all but lost their mental faculties due to radiation damage and will attack other non-ghouls on sight.[3][1] Feral Ghouls often roam together in packs and shamble around areas they are familiar with, such as a supermarket or a drive-in movie theatre, often with a form of muscle memory which vaguely drive them to relive aspects of the life they once knew, and trinkets looted from their corpses often provides hints or glimpses into their forgotten identities.[4] Some ghouls, colloquially known as "Glowing Ones", have managed to develop bioluminescence, rendering their bodies capable of illuminating dark areas with a glowing green light, though they also emit large amounts of radiation which can heal other ghouls and are dangerous to non-ghouls.[5][6] A new type of ghoul introduced in Fallout 76 are the Scorched, mutants infected with a virulent plague spread by large mutated bats known as Scorchbeasts; like Feral Ghouls, they are largely hostile to player characters but differ in their capability of operating firearms.[7][8]
In spite of their robust physiology and resilience towards radiation damage, ghouls are not as physically formidable as other types of mutated beings in the series, such as Deathclaws and Super Mutants.[9]
Ghouls were originally concepted as "Bloodmen" during the development cycle of the original 1997 Fallout video game.[10] Media such as Forbidden Planet by Fred M. Wilcox and I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, along with real-life accounts of radiation poisoning, were cited as inspirations behind the concept of mutated creatures like ghouls and their exposed flesh for the early Fallout games developed by Interplay Entertainment.[2] Character model designs were physically sculpted before they were scanned into the game.[2] To produce the grotesque-looking skin textures of Feral Ghouls in Fallout 3, the first game in the series to be created by Bethesda Game Studios following their acquisition of the Fallout IP, artist Jonah Lobe reshaped photos of packaged chicken meat using modelling tools and filters to simulate a resemblance to human muscle tissue and create an "icky translucent" look for the relevant character models.[11] The visual design for ghoul characters in Fallout 4 are somewhat different, though they also have a pronounced lack of nose, lips, and skin; the texture of their faces were described by Kate Gray from Kotaku as resembling melted Peeps in appearance.[12] 2ff7e9595c
Comments