For years, Fallout fans have wanted to play as a ghoul in the mainline Fallout games. In early 2025, they’ll be able to realize that rather grim fantasy via an update coming to Fallout 76.
This technically won’t be a first for the Fallout franchise, as Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel let players play as a ghoul called Cain, one of six playable characters in the 2004 PlayStation 2 and Xbox spinoff. And in 2001’s Fallout Tactics, characters in multiplayer can be of any of the six races featured in the game, including ghoul. But this is certainly a first for the mainline Fallout games, which have so far forced players into creating human characters before booting them out into the wasteland.
In the Fallout universe, ghouls are former humans so significantly affected by radiation that they become unrecognizable and gain certain abilities, including immunity to radiation sickness. Some ghouls lose any remaining shred of humanity to become feral ghouls, attacking the player and other creatures of the wasteland on sight.
In a recent interview with IGN, Fallout 76 creative director Jonathan Rush said that, as you’d expect, ghoul players shouldn’t be too concerned about radiation. In fact, radiation heals you as a ghoul.
“You get hurt and you get some radiation, go drink some dirty water, you’ll heal,” Rush explained. “Radiation will also be positioned to have other very striking benefits, punctuated a bit more by the dozens of ghoul-specific perk cards that we’re going to be adding.”
This is quite the departure for Fallout and indeed the way players have been trained to behave in the games. In Fallout, players strive for protection against radiation and take drugs that mitigate its effects. One of the benefits of wearing Fallout’s iconic Power Armor is that it confers extra radiation protection upon the player. But as a ghoul, it’s in your best interest not to wear Power Armor because you want all the exposure to radiation you can get.
Rush said the hope is this will encourage a play style we’ve never really seen in Fallout before. “A player who doesn’t wear Power Armor has just freed up a ton of perk points they can use in a whole bunch of different other ways,” Rush said, “which is a whole different play style in itself. And you layer on all the perk cards and it’s going to be cool.”
But don’t go thinking you can start playing Fallout 76 as a ghoul straight away — it’s a level 50 requirement.
The addition of playing as a ghoul comes following the breakout success of the Fallout TV show, which stars Walton Goggins as The Ghoul, an imposing wasteland veteran who has emerged as perhaps the most-popular character in the Prime Video series.
Rush said the development team has talked about ghouls “for a while,” but “wanted to take the time to figure out what it meant to play as a ghoul and how that would fit, and how we’ve seen players play 76.” So, this update is not necessarily jumping on the popularity of the Fallout TV show, but will obviously benefit from it.
“It felt like the right time as we have a lot of in-game players level 50+ that may want to experience different ways to play through more difficult in-game content,” Rush added.
One intriguing element of the Fallout TV show — which, remember, takes place after all the Fallout games and is considered canon — is that ghouls must regularly consume a strange yellow substance in order to stave off the inevitable feral turn. We see The Ghoul struggle to manage his dependence on this mystery drug as he goes about his death-dealing business.
So, the inevitable question is, will Fallout 76 players who become a ghoul need to similarly regularly consume a drug to prevent them from becoming a feral ghoul? “Possibly…” Rush teased.
In the short term, Fallout 76 will expand its Appalachia map with the release of the Skyline Valley expansion on June 12.
For more, check out everything announced at the Xbox Games Showcase 2024.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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