Cabot House (SPOILERS)

Someone correct me if I'm way off base, but I thought that in conversing with Harold in FO1 you discover that he was dipped in the FEV vats and as a result became a ghoul, which was the whole point of the mutants searching for vaults in the first place. They needed non-radiated humans to create new super mutants, because radiation + FEV resulted in ghouls.

I don't recall anything in FO2 contradicting that. I don't think Tactics even touched on their origin (but it's been forever since I played it) and 3 then just hand waved it?
 
JureelKrix said:
Someone correct me if I'm way off base, but I thought that in conversing with Harold in FO1 you discover that he was dipped in the FEV vats and as a result became a ghoul, which was the whole point of the mutants searching for vaults in the first place. They needed non-radiated humans to create new super mutants, because radiation + FEV resulted in ghouls.
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Harold isn't actually a ghoul, though. He initially looks like one, but he's not considered to be a real ghoul like those in Necropolis.
 
Gotcha, I missed that. Where do they explain that? (Since he's hanging out with the other ghouls at the Vault Reactor in 2)
 
JureelKrix said:
Gotcha, I missed that. Where do they explain that? (Since he's hanging out with the other ghouls at the Vault Reactor in 2)
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It's not explicitly explained as such, I think. It's mostly just commonly accepted that ghouls are created by intense and prolonged exposure to radiation, like in Necropolis, and not through (incomplete) FEV exposure like Harold and Talius, because Tim Cain said so :D
 
It may be the case now (that Bethesda has changed the core premise of the series); but it doesn't seem the case in Fallout. In Fallout, I always got the impression that the ghoulfication of vault 12 was a direct fluke of the war; which could have been part radiation, but could have been part something else; or something else entirely. Vault 12 was the single common origin for all the ghouls in Fallout 1 & 2, and most of the events in the West were meant to be regional to that corner of the world, and not universal.

*The one thing that seems silly to me, is that [Fallout world style] radiation is claimed to kill people, or transform them into radiation immune; and hence ~by further exposure radiation exposure ~that they are immune to... a gradual loss of their sanity. Yet in Fallout 2, the ghouls didn't mind walking into the live reactor; said it felt warm; and the town of Gecko had radiation warnings; implying that they are exposed all year around.
 
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It's weird and cheesey, yeah. But I believe people in this topic are being overly critical of Bethesda because cheesey story elements/characters aren't exclusive to Bethesda made Fallout games. In fact it's a trend that got started in the series in Fallout 2 mostly.

Examples:

Keeng Ra'at - A giant mole rat capable of controlling an army of rodents with his mind. Not only that but he's also capable of speaking and even has a similar brother!
Melchoir - A super Mutant magician capable of pulling a Deathclaw out of his top hat.
Goris - An intelligent talking Deathclaw.

How are these any less cheesey than the Cabot House?
 
SaucyLad said:
It's weird and cheesey, yeah. But I believe people in this topic are being overly critical of Bethesda because cheesey story elements/characters aren't exclusive to Bethesda made Fallout games. In fact it's a trend that got started in the series in Fallout 2 mostly.

Examples:

Keeng Ra'at - A giant mole rat capable of controlling an army of rodents with his mind. Not only that but he's also capable of speaking and even has a similar brother!
Melchoir - A super Mutant magician capable of pulling a Deathclaw out of his top hat.
Goris - An intelligent talking Deathclaw.

How are these any less cheesey than the Cabot House?
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Goris and the other Deathclaws out of [redacted] were experimented on by The Enclave who used FEV to manipulate them into something more intelligent and hoped to use them as shock troopers. They made them too intelligent though and so they abandoned The Enclave and took up residence in [redacted]. I don't see what's so Cabot about it. Enclave has tons of research and huge facilities on the Oil Rig and they'd rather waste animals than their fellow man when engaging with hostiles. FEV can increase the IQ of a human so why wouldn't it be able to increase it in an animal? The only thing I find weird about it is the vocal cords. But then again, Deathclaws are humanoids. So chances are their DNA was spliced with human or ape DNA or something. There's nothing outrageous about them really. They're just kinda silly. I'm okay with silly.

Now then, Keeng Ra'at. Mole Rats apparently are the creation of splicing genes. Maybe Keeng Ra'at was one of those scientific "what if" experiments where they decided to throw in some human DNA that allowed it to be able to think and talk. Would help explain why it can speak in the first place. Don't get me wrong, it is a stupid character and was most likely just thrown in there for teh lulz. But it's not elder god immortal magic blood drinker kinda stupid that shits all over lore.

Melchoir, IIRC he's a Psyker that literally creates what he imagines out of FEV. It's stupid. I ain't even gonna try to justify it. It's just stupid. Plenty stupid. But again, not as stupid as Cabot.
 
SaucyLad said:
It's weird and cheesey, yeah. But I believe people in this topic are being overly critical of Bethesda because cheesey story elements/characters aren't exclusive to Bethesda made Fallout games. In fact it's a trend that got started in the series in Fallout 2 mostly.

Examples:

Keeng Ra'at - A giant mole rat capable of controlling an army of rodents with his mind. Not only that but he's also capable of speaking and even has a similar brother!
Melchoir - A super Mutant magician capable of pulling a Deathclaw out of his top hat.
Goris - An intelligent talking Deathclaw.

How are these any less cheesey than the Cabot House?
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They are cheesy, and probably not even really something that fitts in to Fallout - Melchoir in particular. But(!), and that is the point, Fallout 2 contained a hell lot of very well crafted and writen characters and locations, least enough to balance those out that didn't worked so well. Lynette and Vault city alone can probably balance out most of the cheesy stuff. I hated Lynette so much, but in a good way. She's simply a really well writen character! And fits perfectly to the world of Fallout together with Vault city and Gecko. It probably isn't really fair, I will give you that ... but like I said, we are talking about Fallout 2 here, it is a bit of the step child, it contains a lot of whacky stuff, but it also contains a lot of really good quality! Fallout quality. And makes me forgive it a lot of things. With Fallout 3 or 4. Not so much.

Neither Fallout 3 nor Fallout 4 contain enough of that quality that could at least give you a reason to forgive the errors, so it makes it kinda hard to simply overlook the cheesy parts of Fallout 4, not to mention that there are really outright stupid things in the game that show a complete missunderstanding of the setting, like JET beeing a pre-war thing now - and not just am minor detail, when you consider how important JET was for New Reno. Or that Super Mutants are now the generic Orcs of Fallout, and you probably will never ever see a Fallout game again without them magically poping up somewhere, because everyone now probably owned a small secret vault with FEV somwhere in their garden for experiments ...
 
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SaucyLad said:
It's weird and cheesey, yeah. But I believe people in this topic are being overly critical of Bethesda because cheesey story elements/characters aren't exclusive to Bethesda made Fallout games. In fact it's a trend that got started in the series in Fallout 2 mostly.

Examples:

Keeng Ra'at - A giant mole rat capable of controlling an army of rodents with his mind. Not only that but he's also capable of speaking and even has a similar brother!
Melchoir - A super Mutant magician capable of pulling a Deathclaw out of his top hat.
Goris - An intelligent talking Deathclaw.

How are these any less cheesey than the Cabot House?
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because none of those take the piss on the lore on such great magnitude? Some of those can easily be explained (save for Melchoir, but he's not exactly shafting the very creation of humanity and world of fallout, now is he? No, he's more like a silly joke), but the Cabot house is going off into the deep end, and not only that, has a message that is basically Bethesda telling Obsidian 'to go fuck themselves'. Not only does it shaft humanity of fallout's universe (which takes a major role, mind you), it also shafts upon a major region, more specifically: the Mojave Wasteland, and probably New Vegas. I can't help but feel like Cabot was one of their last quests they were working on, and one of the dev's got fucking butthurt after reading people praising New Vegas and made that comment just to spite people.
 
How does anything in Cabot's questline shaft anything in NV?

There supposedly being another city in the Mojave changes absolutely nothing about anything about NV or its events.
 
Well I finally did this quest. And while it is a pretty shitty quest writting and structure wise I don't get why people are saying it shits on New Vegas? I mean the whole "Immortality serum from alien artifact" is just retarded beyond belief, it was probably a Skyrim quest they cut out and recycled but I never even heard anything about New Vegas at all.
 
Walpknut said:
Well I finally did this quest. And while it is a pretty shitty quest writting and structure wise I don't get why people are saying it shits on New Vegas? I mean the whole "Immortality serum from alien artifact" is just retarded beyond belief, it was probably a Skyrim quest they cut out and recycled but I never even heard anything about New Vegas at all.
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Did you get back to Jack Cabot after a week? He'll tell you that maybe he'll travel to the south west because he heard that there's supposed to be a large alien city under the Mojave. That's all.
 
Oh. No, I just completed it, guess I'll have to wait for a couple of in-game days.

A large alien city under the Mojave? Maybe he means Big MT or the Divide? Ugh.... alien cities. Bethesda stop.... seriously...
 
Walpknut said:
Ugh.... alien cities. Bethesda stop.... seriously...
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This is why I say Fallout 3 had way more grounded writing and story than Fallout 4. It gets a lot more ridiculous from there...

I find myself having to rewrite the lore in my head to keep playing Fallout 4 - telling myself it wasn't aliens he was just mistaken or something.
 
I found it hilarious that I was attacked by the Mercenaries on the Asylum like 20 hours before I even did the quest because I walked past them and everytime I fast traveled there they always respawned and attacked me, then the Ghoul dude mentions that I "shot up the place" and ruined his operation.... but still gives me the mission and the Mercenaries respawn friendly...
 
RangerBoo said:
Bethesda is just so freaking schizophrenic with their tone and theme. One minute they try to do this grim dark, gritty and sad tone and theme then in the next minute they do this goofy, wacky and outrageous shit that feels like something off a Saturday morning cartoon. Its so baffling.
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Because BIS/Obsidian never did that! It's not like they ever had F2 detour into Super Mutant magicians and talking mole rats, or keeping a serious, if not slightly varying tone, with Dead Money, Honest Hearts, and Lonesome Road, but also creating the wackyass completely gonzo campy sci-fi B-movie of a DLC called Old World Blues.

You'llforgive me if I don't really care when BethSoft pulls Cabot House or Mothership Zeta on us. Besides, it's unlikely Cabot House is anything more than a really long and drawn-out easter egg.
 
Ben Soto said:
RangerBoo said:
Bethesda is just so freaking schizophrenic with their tone and theme. One minute they try to do this grim dark, gritty and sad tone and theme then in the next minute they do this goofy, wacky and outrageous shit that feels like something off a Saturday morning cartoon. Its so baffling.
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Because BIS/Obsidian never did that! It's not like they ever had F2 detour into Super Mutant magicians and talking mole rats, or keeping a serious, if not slightly varying tone, with Dead Money, Honest Hearts, and Lonesome Road, but also creating the wackyass completely gonzo campy sci-fi B-movie of a DLC called Old World Blues.

You'llforgive me if I don't really care when BethSoft pulls Cabot House or Mothership Zeta on us. Besides, it's unlikely Cabot House is anything more than a really long and drawn-out easter egg.
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In Fallout 2 it was a joke. A lot of stuff in Fallout 2 was satire. OWB was played as a 50's Sci-fi horror comedy. Not something to be taken seriously. Bethesda plays the stupid aliens in Fallout 3 and 4 straight and takes them seriously. That's the difference between Bethesda and Obsidian.
 
Old World Blues did it right. Fallout 4 did it wrong. It really is as simple as that. Fallout 3 DLC Point Lookout had a similar sci-fi thing going on, and I loved it as well.

I can suspend my disbelief while playing Old World Blues or Point Lookout, I cannot for Fallout 4. A lot of people in this discussion need to look up the definition of suspension of disbelief and why it's important.
 
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