So what lore has Bethesda done gone fucked up?

Yeah I still don't consider ferals to be canon, at all.
Ghouls used to go crazy, sure. Mindless even.
But the ferals Bethesda came up with just doesn't make any damn sense so I don't really see the point in even trying to make sense out of them. A feral ghoul, who looks extremely malnourished, can sprint faster and hit harder than a human being in his/her prime. Doesn't make any sense. They should be frail, and if they're frail then they should be easy pickings for any other carnivores out there and if they are easy pickings then... Well... Why are there so many of them? Why is the world littered with ferals? And what about all of ghouls who live around a lot of radiation elsewhere? Why haven't they turned feral? Why haven't their minds gone lost?

The way I see it, and this is just headcanon by the way, is that ghouls can simply snap just like humans can but when they snap they snap real hard. A ghoul is under extreme mental trauma since the moment they turn and have to come to terms with it lest their mind breaks. Not everyone will be able to accept the way they look, the way their bodies feel, the way that their movements are limited, the discrimination from normies. So they go crazy. Some of them go so far as to turn into mindless shells of their former selves.

In Fallout 1/2 we had Crazies, Scavengers and Mindless Ones/Zombies. The only ones who went animalistic were the Mindless Ones or "Zombies" and they were frail, they were not fast in the slightest, they were weak and the only place I remember ever seeing them was around Necropolis. I don't even remember seeing any in Fallout 2. Why's that? Cause they've long since died off. Why wouldn't they die off? Darwinism, man. And if there were any then they were accompanied by Crazies and/or Scavengers. Why? Cause they need protection. Yet Bethesda think that these malnourished, rotting corpse-like beings are not just able to run faster than a human being, but also able to inflict massive damage on them and are able to survive for decades if not centuries, some of them without even eating anything.

Fuck ferals. They're dumb and doesn't make any sense and none of us should even acknowledge them as that'd just be enabling Bethesda's shitty design.
 
I've since accepted as headcanon that a "feral" ghoul is going to be more like an Alzheimer's patient or a schizophrenic than a flesh-eating cannibal. Or perhaps "feral" in the sense that he drinks out of puddles and eats Radroaches raw and lives purely on animal instincts.
 
@Mr Fish I too have huge issues with the marathon running, violent assault 'zombie' ferals.

FO1 and 2 made a not inconsiderable deal of illustrating that rational Ghouls stay away from danger because of their frailty... and the fact that if they break a leg, they face possibly centuries of being crippled, while injuries have 'less' effect physically because of their rad-soaked bodies being deadened to pain and having at least moderate regenerative capability they still have advanced atrophy and skeletal structure that is quite bad at even holding things in place - as we learn from the dialogue in FO2 talking with Harold.

Ghouls are slow, weak and prone to falling apart ... There is simply no way they can 'run' let alone inflict unarmed damage enough to rend power armour away.
 
I agree with @cratchety ol joe and @Mr Fish

I find it plain silly how these ghouls in Fallout 4 that look like a mix between Nosferatu and a crispy Anikan Skywalker that look thin and fragile can beat someone's ass in a full suit of armor while running faster than a super hero. Don't even get me started on how a Glowing One can shoot a huge wave of green gooey radiation that can fill a whole room?
Why aren't they shuffling around like the ghouls in Necropolis? They should be fragile due to their decay but it's whatever, in my eyes this feral ghoul zombie shit shouldn't be canon.
 
MercenarySnake said:
I agree with @cratchety ol joe and @Mr Fish

I find it plain silly how these ghouls in Fallout 4 that look like a mix between Nosferatu and a crispy Anikan Skywalker that look thin and fragile can beat someone's ass in a full suit of armor while running faster than a super hero. Don't even get me started on how a Glowing One can shoot a huge wave of green gooey radiation that can fill a whole room?
Why aren't they shuffling around like the ghouls in Necropolis? They should be fragile due to their decay but it's whatever, in my eyes this feral ghoul zombie shit shouldn't be canon.
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I think that while anything exerting a strong enough force should kill them easily, they should also be numbed to pain. A BB bullet will do little to no damage, apart from maybe burying itself inside the ghoul, while an explosive round would rip apart the muscles and tendons easily.
 
Imagine how much better the "ferals" would be if they were designed like the "zombies" in Fallout 1? I mean, you're in a ruined building or whatever, and it's very dark and you're just walking around hearing this very eerie background music that would happen in darker locations and then you turn a corner or open a door and this mangled piece of flesh is just staring at you. No "AEEERGH!" or sprinting footsteps or anything like that that would pinpoint what you're facing and what direction they're in. No, nothing, just silence. Then you go around a corner and you're met with one of them. It'd fucking freak me out whenever that'd happen. Imagine having to jump down a hole in a dungeon to keep going and the room is pitch black so you turn on your pip-boy light and once down you start to hear footsteps, slow shambling footsteps and the occasional moan and you look around you and begin to see silhouettes all around you. That'd be fucking scary even if I were in a power armor. Imagine you're in a warehouse and you meet one of them and you shoot them and the shot echoes through the building and once it calms down you after a few seconds hear a distant moan... Then another... A garbled voice that sounds like it is trying to say something, a footstep... Another... You begin to hear more footsteps, slow, all around you, not knowing where the fuck they are. That'd be unnerving.

It's about playing a trick on the players mind. They're weak and fragile but they're also so damn creepy and eerie that it really doesn't matter if they're weak and fragile; They still creep you out.

That's how "ferals" should've been designed IMO if they absolutely had to have ferals at all.

When I look at the design Bethesda came up with in FO3 all I can think of is them ripping off 28 Days Later.

Because for some reason it appears as if studios have forgotten how to make slow-moving "zombies" eerie. So they just opt for shock horror. Something going "OOGA BOOGA BOOGA!" right in your face. It's quite frankly lazy and uncreative.

Digression inbound:
Hell, the ones that do try to go for slow moving zombies end up creating "monsters" that don't even feel like they ever were human beings in the first place. (The Walking Dead... (tv-show, I like the comic, probably cause it's in a comic book format)) I mean, once they start to feel more like monsters with the way they screech and growl and move far too cartoonishly then they stop being scary. Point of zombies is that they ought to remind you that they were once human. A TWD zombie? I see one of those and I don't see something that used to be human. I see a cheesy movie-monster.

*sigh*

And you think it's hard being a Fallout fan. Try being a zombie-fan and sift through the mountain of shit that is spewed out. Least with Fallout we only get a few titles to sift through, with zombies? Ugh... Oh and I'm reading World War Z right now. I watched the film prior and I got 10 minutes into it before I turned it off. The book on the other hand? So far it's great. Because it understands what the appeal of a zombie setting is. Humans. And whenever zombies have to be in the picture then it should be Romero zombies.
 
Can I just emphasize on the fact that Stanley from FO3 says how hard it was to remove a pipboy and yet the SS removes it in about a second?
 
I always thought Stanley's line about bio metric seals was just him messing with the Lone Wanderer.
 
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That's probably the case since he only says that if you complain about the Pip-Boy. A way to prevent the LW from taking it off I guess.
 
Dr Fallout said:
Yeah, I find it a bit weird that the there's a secret government... for the government... which is made up of the government... does that sound stupid to anyone?
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What?
Some goverment was democratically chosen by people. And it just existed.
But then we have Enclave. Guys with the most power in the America, who control chosen by people goverment.
Some of them probably were public people also chosen for specific function (like president) but others not. (but again, it's kinda obvious that president probably used Enclave resources/influence/and support to win elections)
The point is. That they COULDN'T do all those actions (experiments, controling most of the USA corporations etc) with the consent of the society so they're making it from shadow.
Remember entire unrest in pre-war America? Now imagine, how much bigger it would be, if every american citizen would know the truth about Enclave and what they were doing. That the country is run by people not picked by citizens. That they're doing literally bad things. And more.
Where's the problem? What's stupid there? : |
(not even mentioning essential thing, that by being hidden they can escape Chinese, and answering to your weird question, enclave wasn't some lame organisation, which could be found by some random chinese spies... it would just break immersion.)
 
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Languorous_Maiar said:
What?
Some goverment was democratically chosen by people. And it just existed.
But then we have Enclave. Guys with the most power in the America, who control chosen by people goverment.
Some of them probably were public people also chosen for specific function (like president) but others not. (but again, it's kinda obvious that president probably used Enclave resources/influence/and support to win elections)
The point is. That they COULDN'T do all those actions (experiments, controling most of the USA corporations etc) with the consent of the society so they're making it from shadow.
Remember entire unrest in pre-war America? Now imagine, how much bigger it would be, if every american citizen would know the truth about Enclave and what they were doing. That the country is run by people not picked by citizens. That they're doing literally bad things. And more.
Where's the problem? What's stupid there? : |
(not even mentioning essential thing, that by being hidden they can escape Chinese, and answering to your weird question, enclave wasn't some lame organisation, which could be found by some random chinese spies... it would just break immersion.)
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It's just... you know, ever heard of the government doing secret things without needing a shadowy alternate government to do them... it's been happening a lot in the 20th and 21st century.
 
cordelionreaver said:
I always thought Stanley's line about bio metric seals was just him messing with the Lone Wanderer.
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Operation Anchorage, in a locked room right next to the simulator thingie there is a Gary Clone who had a Pip-Boy who they tried to remove, how? By cutting off the arm of course. Why would there be a dead Gary with his arm cut off in there?
 
Mr Fish said:
Operation Anchorage, in a locked room right next to the simulator thingie there is a Gary Clone who had a Pip-Boy who they tried to remove, how? By cutting off the arm of course. Why would there be a dead Gary with his arm cut off in there?
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Wait what? Gary was in Operation Anchorage? Maybe it's a conspiracy!
 
The Dutch Ghost said:
I would say 'Ghouls are now everywhere'.
From what I understood from Fallout 1 and 2, Ghoulism is very rare and both games had only a small numbers of Ghouls that lost their mind and became animalistic.
Some were simply hostile without having lost their mind.

In Fallout 4 I have encountered several buildings and locations now that are infested with feral Ghouls and I have not met a single one yet that can talk.
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Bethesda needed something to shoot, the games emphasis has moved from RPG to shooter. In the first 2 games encounters weren't as common. Players moved hundreds of kilometers and only encountered a handful of critters (fairly realistic in a post apocalyptic world), with the newest versions (I haven't played either) the encounter numbers are crazy. In first person shooters running around encounter-less environments will drive the players insane. :V

Always appeal to the lowest common denominator...that's where the dollars are.
 
Making "Feral Ghouls" into separate and completely visually different creatures is fucking stupid. Specially when they keep pushing this stupid "Ghoul Racism" message on their games.... while making ghouls into literal Zombies that move like weird lizard people and you have no option other than to kill them.... and also fill buildings with surprise Ghoul hordes that spawn out of camera... They even have Gloing eyes now and are naked while having no genitals... And the number of ghouls now is just ridiculous, go into Dunwich Bohrers, there are dozens of them all in one place, and the location itself implies they were created from actual dead people, like they got sacrificed to a Mini Nuke or some shit and now they are a bunch of ghouls.... There are respawning Ghouls in graveyards and everything.

They also come in all sorts of weird variations, with Gangrenous, whithered and Bloated ghouls somehow being more resistant to damage than regular ghouls...

Ghouls have gone full circle and became directly what the original ghouls where a deconstruction of.... Because the people at Bethesda are that dense... I mean hell, they even made a bunch of Mr Handies have AI, Romances with Robots and they present the pre war world as happy and colorful...
 
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