For those of you who don’t already know — and haven’t already spent the past week or so plugged into your Pip Boys — Bethesda recently launched the latest in their post-apocalyptic line of video games; the long-awaited Fallout 4.
Personally, I could not be more excited about this game. Granted, I’m only like a tenth of the way into it, mostly cause I get distracted discovering random locations and completing minor side quests over finishing the main storyline, but that’s neither here nor there. One thing I have already noticed about this highly anticipated game is the shockingly different appearance of the feral ghouls.
For those of you that don’t know, here’s a quick history lesson.
The world in the Fallout games is built around a society that never left the Cold War behind. Even in 2077 — the year the world ended according to all canon — the American Dream of lily white picket fence suburbs and perfectly coiffed hair of the sixties was present all around.
Fallout 4’s take on the nuclear apocalypse is particularly interesting, as it gives players a slice of life before the aptly named Great War — one that lasted about two hours before plunging the world into total darkness, mind you.
While it’s all fine-and-dandy to talk the nuclear holocaust, what’s really important about this history lesson is the time period of the War. The whole thing lasted about two hours, meaning no one, absolutely no one was prepared for the nuclear detonations. As such, there were people outside mowing their lawns when the bombs fell. Skeletons litter the barren landscape, frozen in the act of whatever they were doing when the bombs fell on October 23, 2077.
Most of those who survived did so in Vaults underground. However, there were a special few who survived the initial nuclear blast, only to have their bodies irradiated into decay. Their appearances shot, their voices forced into a raspy monotone, these reimagined zombies shamble about the wasteland (Capital, Mojave, Commonwealth, what have you) just itching for a fight with the Vault Dweller (or the Lone Wanderer, or the Soul Survivor, or you catch my drift).
Here’s the kicker: not all ghouls are bad. Half the NPC’s — that’s non-player characters for those of who not familiar with the lingo – in the game are actually ghouls that the gamer can talk and interact with. The only ones that players ever have to fight are the feral ghouls, or ones whose brains have been so rotted by radiation that they savagely attack whatever crosses their path.
And Bethesda really upped the ante with this new batch. In addition to a creepier facelift and a stealth mode that allows them to act dead until the player character moves close enough to poke them with a stick, these feral ghouls shamble around like true zombies until they catch a whiff of the player, then they turn, stalk towards you and burst into a sprint like those creepy monsters in “World War Z.”
Already not a huge fan of jump scares, I’m not ashamed to say I screamed the first time one of those suckers attacked me. Their creepy factor might have been compounded by the fact that the first time I encountered these guys it was on a railroad track, in the dark, with a mist-fog hybrid hanging in the air around my character.
Let’s just say, it didn’t end well for her. Or me.
But Fallout’s feral ghouls are even scarier when you stop to think about them. Although the game mechanics show them crouching down over a body every so often, there is some evidence that the ghouls need to eat human flesh to survive, but nothing entirely convincing.
To me, it seems feral ghouls attack because they can and because their brains are so fried that they have to. At least zombies are just trying to survive. Like a wild animal desperate for food, zombies will attack and eat pretty much anything they come across.
But ghouls? They don’t attack for food. They attack for fun.
On that cheery note about what may be if our governments ever decide to throw nuclear bombs at each other, I leave you with this video of a guy getting attacked by a bunch of feral ghouls. If you listen hard enough, you just might hear the sound of me whimpering in fear in the background.
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