I'm pretty sure Ghouls being born from radiation is still the canon, with the exception being Harold (who is not actually a ghoul and just looked like one).
@@sharpedog666onsidering the fruit growing from his head, and the fact that he became ugly looking after being knocked out in Mariposa (from what I remember regarding his dialogue), I think it’s safe to say he was human beforehand and became an FEV mutant.
@@sharpedog666don't forget that ghouls in classic Fallouts are outcasts, even more than in later games. Harold was a vault dweller and he became an important caravaneer and merchant in the Hub before he was exposed to fev. When the mutation happened, he became a hobo in the Old Town.
Yep, Harold is more a FEV mutant than a ghoul, despite looking similar to ghouls. One funny thing is how in Fallout 3, Harold pretty much becomes the Fallout version of the Great Deku Tree (esp Wind Waker with the whole frequent spreading of seeds thanks to the FEV virus).
Totally agree. Ghouls being radiation only fits the best in the lore in my opinion. By the way I am really loving your content. Fascinating and informative stuff!
Ghouls being the result of radiation shenanigans makes sense to me. It's always felt kinda pulpy to rationalise it like that, but that only adds to the charm of the setting.
I liked how Fallout treated radiation somewhat realistic, but it could also lead to some frustration since absorbing a lethal dose of radiation didn't immediately kill you. I've seen many people wondering why they die after leaving the glow. It sort of happened to me. I played chess with the computer and didn't realize time passed and the Rad-X wore off until it was too late. While making my way to the exit of The Glow, I noticed the messages about feeling ill, etc. I checked the "Geiger counter" and saw my dose, so I pumped myself full of Rad-Away and took more Rad-X, but I still died a few days later. BTW, the Geiger counter in the game should have been called a dosimeter since it measures your absorbed radiation and not background radiation.
In Fallout 3, if you decide to blow up the nuke in Megaton, you essentially create a Ghoul. Moira, the general shopkeep in town, is the only survivor of the blast, and she turns into a ghoul immediately after the explosion. This seems to follow your philosophy of how ghouls are created. She was evidently protected from the blast itself, but not the fallout. Therefore, no FEV was involved, only radiation.
@@Kyle-lv7sw what is this, the walking dead? I think by the time of fo2 all the FEV in the atmosphere would have cleared out, especially being a whole continent away from Mariposa
@@alfieburns9019 same. they're so similar your brain sometimes autofills the word without you even realizing it. and if i know what both of those words mean, then this guy definitely does. i came here to learn about fallout lore and he's teaching me more about DNA than school ever did.
My impression was that yes, ghouls were purely radiation (though I think Fallout 1 gave some of us the impression that only low-level exposure would transform people into ghouls, but it sounds from the video that exposure to high levels of radiation was always an alternative possibility), but with certain mutant creatures in the wastes it was the combination of FEV and radiation. Mostly based on the fact that the doctor in Shady Sands seemed to think that radiation alone couldn't have made the radscorpions grow so big, an idea that was also examined in the Fallout 3 quest Those! with the fire-breathing giant ants apparently being a product of FEV experimenting from Doc Lesko. Ultimately, at this point, the franchise has passed through so many creative teams that there's always gonna be inconsistencies, but it's interesting to hear your opinion on where it all started :)
If I remember correctly, in the Bibles Avellone cites a list of animals who have been or could have been exposed to fev and this could explain why many animals are bigger o so strage (like the brahmins). Fev gave them an increased sized and an immunity to radiation, so it would be easier for them to survive and reproduce. Other creatures are more complex (deathclaws, nightstalkers, cazadores, wanamingos), but it's explained that they are man made experiments, even if this information can't be known by normal wastelanders.
Wasn't there a guy in F1, who was exposed to FEV, but became a ghoul? I can't remember his name, but he was the guy who was sent from Vault 13 before us to find a source of water, you could find him in Boneyard.
@@brucecampbellboyz That's Harold! I think the devs have always argued hr was special, and they even had a tree grow out of him since FO2, so I don't think he quite matches the average ghoul! :D
@@brucecampbellboyz you're right. It's Talius and I think he looks more like Harold than ordinary ghouls. It would be cool if in a future game we can meet him again or other fev mutants that aren't supermutants.
@@bjobs316 I think Talius said he got exposed to a great amount of radiation in Necropolis rather than FEV, and that turned him into a ghoul. I might be wrong tho.
Honestly I always felt that Fallout had a unique sense of direction that the later games lacked. So it's really cool to get the chance to find out more about that universe in particular, rather than where the sequels went with it.
I love the amount of care and detail that goes into thinking about these things. I’m a lore nerd and this kind of attention to detail that informs the world and what’s in it is so cool to hear about.
What's respectable, is that you clearly did your research into the topic. This is where I feel many games and stories are going awry these days. Modern writers aren't doing their homework, they're just referencing what they saw on television growing up. Whilst you clearly took liberties on how radiation worked, you grounded it in logic and consistency. When you don't do that and just wave around radiation as a magic green wand. You get a boy who survived in a fridge for 200 years because he's a ghoul.
One thing that's shifted my perspective here is that I remember the original game saying Super Mutants live around 20% longer than humans, and later it was retconned to be that Super Mutants (and ghouls) are functionally immortal. Based on this quad helix information though, there's nothing actually incompatible with Super Mutant immortality right from the start. Pretty neat!
Eh, F1 took place 84 years after the bombs dropped. The character saying they lived 20% longer than humans might have been lying or making it up as supermuties were probably not being studied adequately. I personally like to think their lifespan is on the long side of sharks, so original dumb supermuties might regularly live 250+ years (if they survive that long) with the longest-living specimens, perhaps the healthiest/purest/smartest surviving well past that to say 500 years. Practically immortal on a human lifescale, as that'd be at least 3 times the current average lifespan (if not 20 times, assuming the average age is only in the 20s due to the ultra-violence and lack of sanitary medical clinics, unaffordable pre-war drugs and other treatments not withstanding).
@@erc3338Yep. He's absolutely right. Though I do like hearing Tims canon vs corporate canon. It's nice to see where it falls and if it actually works and all that jazz. It's kind of like how Chris Claremonts original canon of Sabretooth being Wolverines father is just a bit of fun vs the canon explanation of the Comics/movies (for the present because canon can absolutely be retconned). I'm just saying it's nice to hear it from Tim Cains mouth vs a corporate entity.
Making it that irradiated humans that are exposed to the virus become ghouls still fits logically into the idea that The Master needed unirradiated humans in order to make Super Mutants, given that the radiation damage would result in ghouls instead and that wasn't his aim. Either way, loving the content and clarifications!
Mr. Cain. Please keep making these clips. Words cannot explain what an expression Fallout left on me. And hearing the inner thoughts of the 'making of' and the theorycraft of it... its truly profound, how much fulfillment I'm getting out of this. And I feel I'm not the only one, but rather speaking for the 99999999 lurkers here, that aren't putting this comment in.
Ive always understood ghoulification to be a combination of radiation and genetics, at least in terms of who becomes feral and who doesn't or how fast it happens, since we've never gotten a glimpse at the process of one becoming feral.
Bethesda has sort of covered the process later on. I remember at least in Nuka World where a guy talks about how his friends all slowly lost their minds over time. Todd seems to stick to Cain lore at least in this topic.
@@jromero9795@plebisMaximus: Thing is, Bethesda's not hearing anything specific they might actually decide to address at some point due to the sheer volume of tantrums that've been thrown over its handling of the series. How could they possibly hear it over the mountain of hatred they have to face every morning? Here's the thing: "Believability of character and concreteness of world have never been priorities [for Bethesda] compared to visual iconography and expansive dungeoneering." -- Noah Gervais. In fact, the lore has been amended and retconned to such an extent that Fallout worlds are typically no longer coherent or believable. Noah pointed out that the originals and New Vegas were "strange, but believable" and that certain aspects of Bethesda's Fallouts, e.g. the BOS operating in W. Va., "only make sense from a marketing perspective, not a lore-driven one." In 76, it actually detracts from the world the artists and developers were trying to craft. Had Taggerdy's Thunder remained Taggerdy's Thunder instead of being made over in the image of the BOS, for example, all the factions of 76 would have been unique to the series with the exception of the Enclave, which made a modicum of sense given the region's proximity to Washington. Otoh, the base game world would have turned out to be utterly dark and gloomy -- without the gallows humor we've come to know and love in Fallout games -- unless it had undergone a major rewrite. I remember them saying they wanted the next Fallout to be "more serious" in tone, no doubt so they could tell a story as gripping as Mass Effect's, a series from which they've taken enormous inspiration. (Maybe a little too much. FO4 dialogue wheel anyone?) The "serious" approach pretty obviously doesn't work for Fallout, which is satire at its core. That's why people are saying Bethesda "never understood Fallout" or "doesn't know it's own IP" and the hell of it is, newer generations of players have no idea what the original Fallouts were essentially all about unless they go back and play them. 'Hubris Comics' is just a funny name to them, but hubris is what led to the Great War in the first place. Heh, "Hubris Comics."
@@lrinfi Some retcons are more severe than others and can impact a player's immersion, no matter how expansive or explorable the world is. The ghouls no longer needing food or water is a pretty big deal and the humor derived from this may not have connected as the writing team intended.
6:27 I suspect that Tim meant to say that melanin is no longer produced. Melanin refers to the natural pigments that give our hair and skin darker colors. Melatonin is a natural hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles and blood pressure among other things.
Tim, as a die hard Fallout universe fan, it is such a treasure to have your views and memories of the development of that wonderful world in which I've spent hundreds of hours of my life.... Thank you!!
One thing I think is worth noting here (about the since-day-one disagreement regarding ghouls) is that the "workaround" theory which (IIRC) the wider community ended up arriving at was that there's at least some small traces of FEV in the overall atmosphere, caused in major part by the fact that the War included biogenetic weapons (which the Head Scribe of the Brotherhood *does* directly tell the Vault Dweller in the original Fallout).
i also liked this as the source of your perk "powers" in 3 and 4 at least, as in those it was a pretty clearly uncontaminated human who encounters trace FEV during the game.
It’s a virus though, it’s a living thing. It’ll shave died or been rained to the ground a very long time ago. Even if it explains old ghouls it doesn’t explain new ghouls, and FEV wouldn’t be used in weapons given it was a supersoldier serum lmao
Many microbes have an otherworldy capacity to repair their genome. It's not currently understood how they can piece it back near perfectly from a mostly destroyed state. There isn't a backup copy but somehow their heuristics can figure out where the puzzles pieces go, and what the missing pieces were.
Awesome video! My only problem with radiation making insects bigger is that insects are not limited to their current sizes by a lack of food, rather, it's the fact that their open circulatory system depends on spiracles to distribute oxygen from diffusion. They don't have "forced" respiration, thus their size is limited by how much oxygen they can diffuse into their hemolymph by this mechanism. Ancient ancestors of insects like the Pulmonoscorpius did have primitive lungs and thus could grow bigger. The atmosphere was also much richer in oxygen in these times. Thus while radiation might mutate them bigger, it won't evolve them a lung system. Thus in my headcanon insects were both FEV and radiation enhanced, probably by accidental releases of FEV into the atmosphere. However that begs the question how did FEV hit wildlife but not the people after the bombs fell.
I mean, yes, but I think the insects irradiated into giantism comes more from the retorfuturism vibes than anything else. The "big bug" movies were a whole subgenre of sci-fi during the middle of the 20th century. I think Fallout 3 even named one of its quests after the most acclaimed one (1954's "THEM!")
Thanks for making these videos man, my first real RPG was Fallout 1, I got the CD from my stephdad and booted it up on my old 133mhz PC, and man I played that game until I had maxed out all perks and skills and beyond. Still one one my two favourite RPGs, the other one being Baldur's Gate 2 (And could add its expansion to it as well).
I always assumed that feral ghouls were caused by either/a mixture of normal mental decline and that while radiation might heal ghouls if you take brain damage the radiation might "heal" it but just looking at ghoul's bodies they aren't necessarily "healed" perfectly and that would apply to the brain. It might be able to recover to the point of maintaining some base functions but your memories and the things that make you human are lost forever and you become a mindless body operating on instinct.
It's been a long time since I looked into it so it's purely off memory, but if I can remember in the Fallout bible it was codified that wasteland mutations were caused by aerosilised FEV being launched into the atmosphere when the bombs hit the facility that would become the Glow. However since then, in Bethesda's games, they're actually changed it (or reverted it) more to what you describe it as. Ghouls / irradiated mutants are a product of radioactive mutation, and stuff like Super mutants or other aligned super mutant creatures are FEV by products.
The Leu told us that, as a result of the warhead hitting the MedTek facility, a weaker variant of the FEV virus was spread into the atmosphere. I figured that this was the reason there were so many ghouls on the day the bombs dropped. They were both infected with FEV and were being irradiated at the same time, so the two canceled each other out.
Hey Tim. I want to say thank you for your part in creating a franchise I have adored since the beginning of my love for gaming. I hope you're staying safe and keeping well!
i applaud your honesty and your wisdom in telling us the ins and outs of the GD world . We need a live Q&A if you have the time once a week or even a month i have a lot of questions regarding the fallout and the rpg genre in general.
glad to find your channel! im such a massive fan of the first two games ^_^ if the first ever got a remaster with faithful art styles and og voice acting files i'd lose my mind lol. absolutely lightning in a bottle game
I never thought about what would make the mutants infertile besides their dramatic physical transformation, the fact that the virus would wreck the DNA so badly like this is such a cool detail. by the way... What do you think about modding and the huge modding community that Fallout has acquired over the years?
@@fredrik3880 As awful as Mothership Zeta was, with a few years of hindsight, have Bethesda ever actually said that it was a "canon" DLC? It's never been referenced again, as far as I'm aware. Better to treat it like a weird 'what if' one-off special to a serial.
Not 4 purines 2 purines 2 pyrimidine. The hydrogen bonding allows for purines and pyrimidines to have the specific AT CG pairings without AC or AG (unless there is an error in polymerase replication) great video just correcting a semantic error
A thought Tim, you guys clearly consulted a lot of science for the background, even if to handwave reasons for fun stuff. My question was, based on all this, why was there less attention seemingly paid to how nuclear weapons work and radiation, especially concerning flora. Basically, physics speaking, radiation in nuclear weapons is the result of inefficiency in the fission or fusion chain reaction. Nuclear warheads since then only ever got closer in the theoretically desired ability to have a 100% reaction, which would be all explosive, with no radiation - W76 and W88 warheads from the 70s and 80s were and are still extremely efficient, with very little radiation let alone fallout. Even the early Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, their radiation and fallout mostly cleared up relatively early. You can see the converse in a dirty bomb, or even Chernobyl - VERY inefficient chain reaction, hence tons of long lived radiation and radioactive material spewing out. Given that the Apocalypse happened in the mid late 2000s, and with all the incredible scientific advancement of the Old World, why were nuclear missiles and their resultant detonations seemingly LESS efficient than even the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs? I understand radiation was intended as a kind of catalyst towards new flora and fauna in the world, but why then pair that with a radioactive dead wasteland with very little greenery anywhere? Grass didn't stop growing magically even in Chernobyl, if anything it's a wild preserve now. I chalked part of it up to a lot of the team being from California, but even SoCal isn't THAT desert-y, its some of the best farmland in the world. It became sort of jarring when the setting expanded, and you still had desert wastelands even in places where it just wouldn't be. Was it because the Internet was still very new then, so reference material was much harder to come by? I understand things like W88 warhead's specifics like yields would not be easily available then, but the physics of nuclear were quite well understood in the public knowledge sphere. Sorry, this seems like two questions, really.
Dirty bombs exists as a concept, deliberately causing as much fallout as possible, that could be the reason certain places in fallout (like the glowing sea) still have enormous amounts of radiation 200 years later, while other places are perfectly habitable (like the boneyard) also it seems someone at Bethesda realised the whole foliage thing finally lol
@@sierra1513 I think the term you were more looking for is neutron bombs? Though those operate less on spewing radioactive materials out, and more on converting much of the energy in a nuclear blast into intense gamma ray bursts. In either case while I want to agree, this just seems like a thing they didn't think about, or didn't care about. The Glowing Sea was pretty clearly caused by a standard atomic warhead hitting, you can see it right at the beginning before you're sent down to the Vault (though if we're speaking realistically, Nate/Nora should have been permanently blinded looking directly at it that close, and the shockwave would have hit them much faster, with them also getting lethal gamma rays, unless these nuclear devices ARE ultra-efficient and there isn't much of a gamma ray release and...gah, circular logic). Occam's razor says they probably didn't think about any of this, and/or didn't care. Looking at Pete Hines and Emil Pagluriano, its a very safe bet. Generally, states don't use dirty bombs, they're extremely wasteful, and no clear eyed military strategist wants to pollute their target permanently like that, especially since in a theoretical war, you'd be taking over of what's left of that. It'd be odd for the Chinese to switch to rad spewing bombs imo, especially when ICBMs are so expensive in the first place. You wanna cause destruction, not poison. Terrorists pursue dirty bombs because it's the best they could have access too (weapons grade uranium and plutonium's logistics chains are *extremely* well guarded, one of many reasons hence we haven't had terrorists with nukes yet. Even the South Africans, who had the most successful guerilla nuclear weapons program, their four finished warheads were all standard atomic devices with a clean chain reaction.
With how you described the quad helix for super mutants i could see a low viral load lets say a vat of FEV got exploded and it got aerosolized over an area would lead to some people getting that quad helix without all the other benefits like the size and strength. You can see low viral load effects in covid and the flu where you still get the antibodies but none of the visible symptoms.
A question: Were you onboard with Harold's origin story? Was there a canonical explanation behind why he changed into a ghoul-like mutant rather than a typical dumb super mutant? 2nd question: Likewise for Talius. The game strongly implies that you aren't the first person the Overseer sent out of the vault. How long ago did he (and Ed) leave the vault? How long ago did the water chip break down? Was the Overseer trying to keep it a secret all this time? And is this common knowledge in the community at Vault 13? In the opening cinematic, the Overseer briefing suggests that the problem is new to you, though when you return to Vault 13, everyone else seems to know about it as well. Was the Overseer just hoping the problem could be resolved before the knowledge came out? Did he reveal it in a public announcement this time?
Right now Ghouls are canonicaly made from radiation. There are a few things that go the other way, like Cazadors in New Vegas. There is no reason why they have to be lab made.
I know you weren't on F2 for long and didn't love the pop culture references, but one that sticks out fondly to me was Gordon Gekko of Gekko delivering the speech from Wall Street. It was one of those times where the reference completely flew over my head for years. Then I saw the movie. It was like thinking Sublime wrote Smoke Two Joints and finally hearing Bob's version years later.
We had deathclaw eggs in Fallout too. I think the idea was that, being reptiles, they could reproduce asexually, like many lizard species and even some snakes and scorpions.
@@CainOnGames Oh, that's interesting, I guess Fallout NV retconned that then, and only in the Obsidian Canon since it conflicts with the current Canon. Since it has Alphas and Matriarchs, meaning their not all Female.
Here’s a curveball, somewhere in the lore it talks about a great plague, and the Pan Immunity Viron before FEV- could it be a combination of the populace of the time having this PIV in their systems plus radiation that made the ghouls?
I like your thesis behind it, I think that if FEV in whole or in part created Ghouls, then FEV would also have to have been in the wild before the end of the war. I cannot remember if it was or not, but I have long assumed that it was something found in vaults, or was created afterwards by the Enclave. If we go by the show's logic, it seemed like they were working with FEV in that other Vault that the main characters fell into late in the season, and that the Enclave had it. It has been a long time since I played through the first two games, might have to give them another go again, my memory on all of that is pretty fuzzy. Can't recall how soon Super Mutants emerged onto the scene. As a kid (late teens), when I originally played them, I had just assumed that they all had a similar origin since the Super Mutants had the word "Super" in front of them, and that the regular creatures and Ghouls were just another form of Mutant, and that no one really knew about how they were created. What would be your thoughts on Rad Scorpions? Since the limiting factor on most of those general kinds of insects and arachnids are the fact that they have poor oxygen absorption, so they tend to be size limited as a result, and would need to evolve something more akin to lungs in order to grow. Seems like it would be more inline with FEV, in order to get that big.
I've always viewed ghouls in comparison to actual radiation burn victim cases. Peeling skin, rotting muscle. The necrosis ran its course, and the (un)lucky ones came out the other side wondering why they hadn't died yet.
I like this idea better. It feels like FEV gets pinned on too much in a sort of hand-wavy writing style--as in, "I don't know how to explain this *hand waves* must be FEV!" There are two characters in Fallout 4 who became ghouls via drugs/treatments. Eddie Winter apparently underwent some experiment before the bombs dropped to try to make himself immortal and he became a ghoul. And Hancock was such a druggie that he took whatever he could get his hands on and became a ghoul. I guess Bethesda was implying that Hancock somehow got his hands on FEV (either that or he irradiated himself accidentally?), and I suppose Winter managed to get FEV somehow through his criminal connections. Either way, both of those ghouls' origins always made me squint a little since every other ghoul I could think of before them occurred "naturally." And now the show seems to be leaning into FEV creating ghouls (though it hasn't come out and said it), so I guess the new canon is that they come from both? I'm not against the idea; I just prefer the radiation version.
To be fair the Eddie Winter tapes only mention something about getting radioactive material from a corrupt contact in a shipping company, as well as him mentioning a doctor with a theory of something like ghoulification caused by exposure to radiation specifically. As for Hancock I’m pretty sure the drug is mentioned as being radioactive, or having something to do with radioactivity. Honestly Bethesda seems to rely on the “radiation causes mutations” idea far more than the classic games did, the most I can think of in regards to widespread FEV being mentioned is Curie talking about FEV *Hypothetically* becoming airborne Edit: Here’s the relevant Eddie Winter quote: “You know those idiot brothers at Wicked Shipping? The ones smuggling the radioactive material? I put the screws to 'em. Got some of the stuff. I've been working with this doctor in East Boston. Guy's a fucking genius. Listen, I know it sounds crazy... but he had this theory... The right kind of radiation exposure, at the right amounts... it can change human cells. Mutate them. Baby... I can live forever. Yeah, I know... It could kill me. I'm willing to chance it. But I can't risk losing you. So I'm the guinea pig. And I've been getting... treatments.”
I'm also for grounding Fallout lore in the real world implications of a post-nuclear event as much as possible. Everything being caused by FEV strays from the always-exciting formula of blending reality and far-out/mystery bits that has worked well with Lovecraftian tabletop modules for example. Radiation as a cause for Ghouls carries the lore significantly in the direction of plausibility in that sense.
What if years before the bombs drop, vault tech was working on a special serum like an earlier version of fev which was given some people during a bomb scare they were told it could help them survive an atomic bomb explosion 🤔
@@oknodiangames6 Harold was only partially exposed to FEV, I think he was knocked out and had his head land in a puddle from an tipped over barrel of FEV. One of the people that was with him however was fully submerged in a vat of FEV, this happened at the same time as Harold was knocked out.
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on Harold. Was he just a typical Ghoul or was he like Chris Avellone said in the Fallout Bible "special". Nevertheless thanks for continuing to share.
I know you didn't work on New Vegas directly (though your influence can obviosly be seen), but what is your take on Camp Searchlight, where a bunch of NCR soldiers got exposed to radiation, and as a result, a bunch of them turn feral. Wouldn't this imply that a fairly sizeable percent of people turn into ghouls, and not some super small percent? Could just be a insignificant point, but I think it's fun to dig around at some of that stuff Edit: I realize it's kind of dumb now to ask this considering what you said, but im just interested in your opinion nonetheless
I'd say that by the time New Vegas was made, this take on the lore was probably forgotten - in Fallout 4 aswell, I think Hancock explains he wanted to become a ghoul specifically to live longer, as if becoming a ghoul immediately guarantees a longer lifespan
@@spuddle5375 well in hancocks case he actually didn't do it for the lifespan, but didn't wanna be his human self anymore (didn't wanna be recognized or look at himself anymore after all he had done) he jokingly says the silver lining is immortality but if you ask about that he clarifies its not immortality, but some ghouls live a long time as for searchlight I think it's implied there were a lot of soldier there considering it was seen as a prime target for the legion, so the ones you see are a smaller percentage of the NCR population there (definitely a higher survival rate than real life, but ghoulification is still not certain)
I'm of a mixed opinion on the ghoul radiation thing. I like how you explain it, but also, one of my favorite things about Fallout 1 was that you meet all these weird pulpy monsters and *think* that its due to radiation (like a 1950s serial), but then you learn there's this really hard science fiction underpinning with the well explained and relatively plausible FEV virus. But also, I get the muddying of the waters with the Master... But also, one thing I think is underrepresented in worldbuilding is when to leave things mysterious. In Fallout: New Vegas, if you ask Dan Domingo about the cloud shrouding the Sierra Madre, he'll cite himself being a ghoul as equally mysterious and equally inexplicable and...equally irrelevant to the task at hand. So, having there be no clear "reason" for ghouls has its own advantages for storytelling :D
I agree with your point on ghouls. Radiation makes so much sense for them. If they were the result of FEV it would make it too confusing with the difference between what a ghoul and a super mutant actually are. I could see people being like “wait so if super mutants are the result of FEV then why aren’t ghouls just super mutants? Or vice versa?” I would get why but it’s just needlessly confusing.
In Fallout Show, when referring to the entire surface being cleaned he was referring to the Enclave plan in Fallout 2, the Chinese use Nukes first because they found out of the experiments with SuperMutans and others, and it is possible that they also found out that Vault Tec wanted to use the first Nukes, so the Chinese launched first the nukes, the Chinese have spies all over America, so is that true??????
I always thought they were caused by radiation, tho Harold said he became like that because of the FEV. I think both explanations work (I don´t know if this was planned) in the setting, because when first seeing huge mutants you probably think that has something to do with radiation, only later finding out they were the result of an experiment. I played Fallout 2 first so I was partially spoiled of the plot in Fallout 1 when I later played it, but it didn´t really matter because both games are so much fun to play :>
Love the content. Please never stop talking about fallout 1,2 and New vegas. Explore every spot and corner in development of these games. If you can enlighten us about characters, locations, towns, vats system, side quest :) Thanks in advance.
About FEV, just like with Supermutants I would like it to be a unique feature of the west coast while other parts of USA (and world) had its own special encounters(also Ghuls and FEV do not mix). Sadly Bethesda gonna Bethesda and made it day one feature (along with BOS) of entire world a minute after the bombs dropped. I would like to add a possible future question/topic, how do you feel about retcons? Yay, nay or unavoidable feature of video game (or maybe all kinds) storytelling? (obviously its another jab at Bethesda and also other Fallout games more or less)
Yeah, didn't think about it before, but I agree. It would be more interesting if the East coast had it's *own* technology-preserving group, that is perhaps similar to the Brotherhood of Steel in some ways, but different in many other ways.. instead of just having the same organization spread across the whole continent. Same with various other unusual and interesting things (factions, creatures, whatever). Have something different on the East coast. I guess Bethesda didn't have the confidence to stray too far, at the time they made their first FO game (FO3).
Where were you working during the development of FNV? How come you didn’t have a hand in that game? Were you not working with obsidian until after that release. Also is there any chance you could do a chat with Josh sawyer, I would love to hear him talk about that game as well as his mod for it
This has always been one of the more interesting topics of Fallout to me, especially because of how debated it tends to be. I know Scott Campbell was a huge proponent for the “FEV causes everything” idea, Avellone mentioned supporting that at some point, though later changed his mind, and of course, the idea here that it’s mostly radiation. Far as I can tell right now it’s technically ambiguous but current games seem to heavily lean on the idea of it being a radiation thing rather than an FEV thing. A side affect of the FEV causing everything idea, is that to me it kinda ends up implying life wouldn’t have been able to survive *without* it, which is a whole discussion It really kinda depends on personal preference at this point, and who doesn’t like that?
kinda sounds like FEV plays a role, but only in a very limited capacity, FEV had to originate from somewhere, maybe in the fallout universe ghouls were found in WW2, kept secret, and they distilled and altered what allowed ghouls to resist damage into what now is called the FEV.
i like ghouls being created from radiation, and the irradiated specimens used to create the capitol wasteland super mutants explains why they are all ‘dumb’ mutants, as far as im aware the only non-irradiated settlement is vault 101
Ghouls should definitely be radiation only, agreed. I also loved your explanation on the ghoul lifespan, i always wondered about this. Although i think bethesda take this idea a bit far in F4, with the ghoul boy who was stuck in the refrigerator for 200 years. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Bethesadaverse Fallout can exist in its own timeline, it is an adaptation, which can explain its inconsistencies better than trying to force everything to reconcile within one story universe.
Wasn't there a cabin in one of the games where a person camped out in order to get irradiated and become a ghoul, and when you find it, it's a skeleton and a note? I can't recall if that was F3 or NV...
You might get a couple comments correcting you on what is a purine. Otherwise, for someone who I assume has no biology or even scientific background, that was really impressive.
I know I'm almost a year late to this discussion.. But if the quite a number of ghouls we see in the game is due to the Survival Bias because billions got bombed originally... then how does it explain Necropolis, the City of Ghouls, being founded by the ghouls of Vault 12, where the front door wouldn't close properly? I mean, what's the probability of SO MANY vault 12 dwellers becoming ghouls rather than dying or having too short lifespans? It's not that there are just 1 or 2 survivors from Vault 12, the story kinda implies there has been quite a community of ghouls in Vault 12... Or my memory fails me and I remember it all wrong 😉 On a side note, thank you very much, Mr. Cain for creating my most beloved and most favorite Fallout game of the franchise. This game is a masterpiece, mad respect and gratitude to you! 🙏🤩
Игры
I'm pretty sure Ghouls being born from radiation is still the canon, with the exception being Harold (who is not actually a ghoul and just looked like one).
Maybe Harold was a ghoul before he entered Mariposa? because it never truly explains if he his or not
@@sharpedog666onsidering the fruit growing from his head, and the fact that he became ugly looking after being knocked out in Mariposa (from what I remember regarding his dialogue), I think it’s safe to say he was human beforehand and became an FEV mutant.
@@sharpedog666don't forget that ghouls in classic Fallouts are outcasts, even more than in later games.
Harold was a vault dweller and he became an important caravaneer and merchant in the Hub before he was exposed to fev.
When the mutation happened, he became a hobo in the Old Town.
Yes, radiation is and always has been the canon way ghouls are created.
Yep, Harold is more a FEV mutant than a ghoul, despite looking similar to ghouls. One funny thing is how in Fallout 3, Harold pretty
much becomes the Fallout version of the Great Deku Tree (esp Wind Waker with the whole frequent spreading of seeds thanks to
the FEV virus).
As someone with a theoretical degree in physics, I can confirm that ghouls came from space.
Maybe the real theoretical degrees in physics are the ghouls we made along the way.
Thats why they wanna go back there. It all makes sense.
@@Kaiserhawk Well, space is full of all kinds of radiation
As a theoretical ghoul, been there, done that. Uhh, smoothskin.
Do you work at Repconn? Are you… FANTASTIC?!
Totally agree. Ghouls being radiation only fits the best in the lore in my opinion. By the way I am really loving your content. Fascinating and informative stuff!
Ghouls being the result of radiation shenanigans makes sense to me. It's always felt kinda pulpy to rationalise it like that, but that only adds to the charm of the setting.
I liked how Fallout treated radiation somewhat realistic, but it could also lead to some frustration since absorbing a lethal dose of radiation didn't immediately kill you. I've seen many people wondering why they die after leaving the glow. It sort of happened to me. I played chess with the computer and didn't realize time passed and the Rad-X wore off until it was too late. While making my way to the exit of The Glow, I noticed the messages about feeling ill, etc. I checked the "Geiger counter" and saw my dose, so I pumped myself full of Rad-Away and took more Rad-X, but I still died a few days later. BTW, the Geiger counter in the game should have been called a dosimeter since it measures your absorbed radiation and not background radiation.
I actually didn't know there was a difference. I never heard of a dosimeter until this and now I've gotta look it up!
My favorite thing about Fallout is the lore. In my opinion, it's the lore that produces such a fierce loyalty to the games.
don't fall for the reply on your comment, it's one of those telegram scammers.
It would be nice if they didn't make a mockery of it these days.
Is it correct that Bethesda rejects Fallout: New Vegas as canon?
@@bricaaron3978 No, they love to sell overpriced cheaply made merch referencing it.
I love how much consideration you guys put into Fallout. The game has a tone and atmosphere to it like nothing else. Thanks for the videos Tim
In Fallout 3, if you decide to blow up the nuke in Megaton, you essentially create a Ghoul. Moira, the general shopkeep in town, is the only survivor of the blast, and she turns into a ghoul immediately after the explosion. This seems to follow your philosophy of how ghouls are created. She was evidently protected from the blast itself, but not the fallout. Therefore, no FEV was involved, only radiation.
She has latent fev already...they all do
@@Kyle-lv7sw what is this, the walking dead? I think by the time of fo2 all the FEV in the atmosphere would have cleared out, especially being a whole continent away from Mariposa
@athena5573 every one on surface has had DNA altered by fev
@@athena5573I thought so too until there was smoke in Vermont from the wildfires in California. Apparently it travels quite a distance.
@@Kyle-lv7sw based on what...
6:27 I believe what you meant to say was your hair turns gray because your cells stop producing MELANIN, not melatonin. Great video!
no, hairs sleepy
I noticed that too haha
I’ve made that exact same mistake before lol.
@@alfieburns9019 same. they're so similar your brain sometimes autofills the word without you even realizing it. and if i know what both of those words mean, then this guy definitely does.
i came here to learn about fallout lore and he's teaching me more about DNA than school ever did.
@@kingdavid7516 real life autocorrect lol.
My impression was that yes, ghouls were purely radiation (though I think Fallout 1 gave some of us the impression that only low-level exposure would transform people into ghouls, but it sounds from the video that exposure to high levels of radiation was always an alternative possibility), but with certain mutant creatures in the wastes it was the combination of FEV and radiation. Mostly based on the fact that the doctor in Shady Sands seemed to think that radiation alone couldn't have made the radscorpions grow so big, an idea that was also examined in the Fallout 3 quest Those! with the fire-breathing giant ants apparently being a product of FEV experimenting from Doc Lesko.
Ultimately, at this point, the franchise has passed through so many creative teams that there's always gonna be inconsistencies, but it's interesting to hear your opinion on where it all started :)
If I remember correctly, in the Bibles Avellone cites a list of animals who have been or could have been exposed to fev and this could explain why many animals are bigger o so strage (like the brahmins). Fev gave them an increased sized and an immunity to radiation, so it would be easier for them to survive and reproduce. Other creatures are more complex (deathclaws, nightstalkers, cazadores, wanamingos), but it's explained that they are man made experiments, even if this information can't be known by normal wastelanders.
Wasn't there a guy in F1, who was exposed to FEV, but became a ghoul? I can't remember his name, but he was the guy who was sent from Vault 13 before us to find a source of water, you could find him in Boneyard.
@@brucecampbellboyz That's Harold! I think the devs have always argued hr was special, and they even had a tree grow out of him since FO2, so I don't think he quite matches the average ghoul! :D
@@brucecampbellboyz you're right. It's Talius and I think he looks more like Harold than ordinary ghouls. It would be cool if in a future game we can meet him again or other fev mutants that aren't supermutants.
@@bjobs316 I think Talius said he got exposed to a great amount of radiation in Necropolis rather than FEV, and that turned him into a ghoul. I might be wrong tho.
Honestly I always felt that Fallout had a unique sense of direction that the later games lacked. So it's really cool to get the chance to find out more about that universe in particular, rather than where the sequels went with it.
I love the amount of care and detail that goes into thinking about these things. I’m a lore nerd and this kind of attention to detail that informs the world and what’s in it is so cool to hear about.
What's respectable, is that you clearly did your research into the topic. This is where I feel many games and stories are going awry these days. Modern writers aren't doing their homework, they're just referencing what they saw on television growing up. Whilst you clearly took liberties on how radiation worked, you grounded it in logic and consistency. When you don't do that and just wave around radiation as a magic green wand. You get a boy who survived in a fridge for 200 years because he's a ghoul.
One thing that's shifted my perspective here is that I remember the original game saying Super Mutants live around 20% longer than humans, and later it was retconned to be that Super Mutants (and ghouls) are functionally immortal. Based on this quad helix information though, there's nothing actually incompatible with Super Mutant immortality right from the start. Pretty neat!
Eh, F1 took place 84 years after the bombs dropped. The character saying they lived 20% longer than humans might have been lying or making it up as supermuties were probably not being studied adequately. I personally like to think their lifespan is on the long side of sharks, so original dumb supermuties might regularly live 250+ years (if they survive that long) with the longest-living specimens, perhaps the healthiest/purest/smartest surviving well past that to say 500 years. Practically immortal on a human lifescale, as that'd be at least 3 times the current average lifespan (if not 20 times, assuming the average age is only in the 20s due to the ultra-violence and lack of sanitary medical clinics, unaffordable pre-war drugs and other treatments not withstanding).
Canon is fickle as any fanatic of religion, and comic books know.... So it's always good to hear it coming from the original source
He literally says in the first 10 seconds that what he says isn't canon since he doesn't work at Bethesda.
@@erc3338Yep. He's absolutely right. Though I do like hearing Tims canon vs corporate canon. It's nice to see where it falls and if it actually works and all that jazz. It's kind of like how Chris Claremonts original canon of Sabretooth being Wolverines father is just a bit of fun vs the canon explanation of the Comics/movies (for the present because canon can absolutely be retconned).
I'm just saying it's nice to hear it from Tim Cains mouth vs a corporate entity.
@@stevena488- I'm pretty sure Bethesda went with Tim's idea on ghouls.
@@whiteegretx That's awesome!
No doubt. If TES has taught me anything, one should "canonize" whatever suits their view of the worldscape best. Not like Zenimax has cops.
Making it that irradiated humans that are exposed to the virus become ghouls still fits logically into the idea that The Master needed unirradiated humans in order to make Super Mutants, given that the radiation damage would result in ghouls instead and that wasn't his aim. Either way, loving the content and clarifications!
Mr. Cain. Please keep making these clips. Words cannot explain what an expression Fallout left on me. And hearing the inner thoughts of the 'making of' and the theorycraft of it... its truly profound, how much fulfillment I'm getting out of this. And I feel I'm not the only one, but rather speaking for the 99999999 lurkers here, that aren't putting this comment in.
Ive always understood ghoulification to be a combination of radiation and genetics, at least in terms of who becomes feral and who doesn't or how fast it happens, since we've never gotten a glimpse at the process of one becoming feral.
Bethesda has sort of covered the process later on. I remember at least in Nuka World where a guy talks about how his friends all slowly lost their minds over time. Todd seems to stick to Cain lore at least in this topic.
@@plebisMaximus They also had a child ghoul locked in a fridge for 200 years with no sunlight or food so Bethesda isn't exactly consistent either.
@@jromero9795 we don't talk about _that_ quest
@@jromero9795@plebisMaximus: Thing is, Bethesda's not hearing anything specific they might actually decide to address at some point due to the sheer volume of tantrums that've been thrown over its handling of the series. How could they possibly hear it over the mountain of hatred they have to face every morning?
Here's the thing: "Believability of character and concreteness of world have never been priorities [for Bethesda] compared to visual iconography and expansive dungeoneering." -- Noah Gervais. In fact, the lore has been amended and retconned to such an extent that Fallout worlds are typically no longer coherent or believable. Noah pointed out that the originals and New Vegas were "strange, but believable" and that certain aspects of Bethesda's Fallouts, e.g. the BOS operating in W. Va., "only make sense from a marketing perspective, not a lore-driven one." In 76, it actually detracts from the world the artists and developers were trying to craft. Had Taggerdy's Thunder remained Taggerdy's Thunder instead of being made over in the image of the BOS, for example, all the factions of 76 would have been unique to the series with the exception of the Enclave, which made a modicum of sense given the region's proximity to Washington. Otoh, the base game world would have turned out to be utterly dark and gloomy -- without the gallows humor we've come to know and love in Fallout games -- unless it had undergone a major rewrite. I remember them saying they wanted the next Fallout to be "more serious" in tone, no doubt so they could tell a story as gripping as Mass Effect's, a series from which they've taken enormous inspiration. (Maybe a little too much. FO4 dialogue wheel anyone?)
The "serious" approach pretty obviously doesn't work for Fallout, which is satire at its core. That's why people are saying Bethesda "never understood Fallout" or "doesn't know it's own IP" and the hell of it is, newer generations of players have no idea what the original Fallouts were essentially all about unless they go back and play them. 'Hubris Comics' is just a funny name to them, but hubris is what led to the Great War in the first place. Heh, "Hubris Comics."
@@lrinfi Some retcons are more severe than others and can impact a player's immersion, no matter how expansive or explorable the world is. The ghouls no longer needing food or water is a pretty big deal and the humor derived from this may not have connected as the writing team intended.
6:27 I suspect that Tim meant to say that melanin is no longer produced. Melanin refers to the natural pigments that give our hair and skin darker colors. Melatonin is a natural hormone that regulates sleep-wake cycles and blood pressure among other things.
Not only that is a good idea, but you explained it perfectly, with all the biochemical background. Thank you!
The quad helix supermutant stuff was really well thought out
learning creative decisions were based in sci fi is really satisfying
I love these so much💖 thank you for giving me insight to my favorite rpg of all time and space
Tim, as a die hard Fallout universe fan, it is such a treasure to have your views and memories of the development of that wonderful world in which I've spent hundreds of hours of my life.... Thank you!!
One thing I think is worth noting here (about the since-day-one disagreement regarding ghouls) is that the "workaround" theory which (IIRC) the wider community ended up arriving at was that there's at least some small traces of FEV in the overall atmosphere, caused in major part by the fact that the War included biogenetic weapons (which the Head Scribe of the Brotherhood *does* directly tell the Vault Dweller in the original Fallout).
i also liked this as the source of your perk "powers" in 3 and 4 at least, as in those it was a pretty clearly uncontaminated human who encounters trace FEV during the game.
It’s a virus though, it’s a living thing. It’ll shave died or been rained to the ground a very long time ago. Even if it explains old ghouls it doesn’t explain new ghouls, and FEV wouldn’t be used in weapons given it was a supersoldier serum lmao
Many microbes have an otherworldy capacity to repair their genome. It's not currently understood how they can piece it back near perfectly from a mostly destroyed state. There isn't a backup copy but somehow their heuristics can figure out where the puzzles pieces go, and what the missing pieces were.
Awesome video! My only problem with radiation making insects bigger is that insects are not limited to their current sizes by a lack of food, rather, it's the fact that their open circulatory system depends on spiracles to distribute oxygen from diffusion. They don't have "forced" respiration, thus their size is limited by how much oxygen they can diffuse into their hemolymph by this mechanism. Ancient ancestors of insects like the Pulmonoscorpius did have primitive lungs and thus could grow bigger. The atmosphere was also much richer in oxygen in these times. Thus while radiation might mutate them bigger, it won't evolve them a lung system. Thus in my headcanon insects were both FEV and radiation enhanced, probably by accidental releases of FEV into the atmosphere. However that begs the question how did FEV hit wildlife but not the people after the bombs fell.
I mean, yes, but I think the insects irradiated into giantism comes more from the retorfuturism vibes than anything else. The "big bug" movies were a whole subgenre of sci-fi during the middle of the 20th century. I think Fallout 3 even named one of its quests after the most acclaimed one (1954's "THEM!")
I love waking up to these videos and starting my day with them.
Thanks for making these videos man, my first real RPG was Fallout 1, I got the CD from my stephdad and booted it up on my old 133mhz PC, and man I played that game until I had maxed out all perks and skills and beyond. Still one one my two favourite RPGs, the other one being Baldur's Gate 2 (And could add its expansion to it as well).
I'm so glad that you doing these videos, Tim. Thank you!
I always assumed that feral ghouls were caused by either/a mixture of normal mental decline and that while radiation might heal ghouls if you take brain damage the radiation might "heal" it but just looking at ghoul's bodies they aren't necessarily "healed" perfectly and that would apply to the brain. It might be able to recover to the point of maintaining some base functions but your memories and the things that make you human are lost forever and you become a mindless body operating on instinct.
It's been a long time since I looked into it so it's purely off memory, but if I can remember in the Fallout bible it was codified that wasteland mutations were caused by aerosilised FEV being launched into the atmosphere when the bombs hit the facility that would become the Glow.
However since then, in Bethesda's games, they're actually changed it (or reverted it) more to what you describe it as. Ghouls / irradiated mutants are a product of radioactive mutation, and stuff like Super mutants or other aligned super mutant creatures are FEV by products.
The Leu told us that, as a result of the warhead hitting the MedTek facility, a weaker variant of the FEV virus was spread into the atmosphere. I figured that this was the reason there were so many ghouls on the day the bombs dropped. They were both infected with FEV and were being irradiated at the same time, so the two canceled each other out.
Hey Tim. I want to say thank you for your part in creating a franchise I have adored since the beginning of my love for gaming.
I hope you're staying safe and keeping well!
i applaud your honesty and your wisdom in telling us the ins and outs of the GD world . We need a live Q&A if you have the time once a week or even a month i have a lot of questions regarding the fallout and the rpg genre in general.
glad to find your channel! im such a massive fan of the first two games ^_^ if the first ever got a remaster with faithful art styles and og voice acting files i'd lose my mind lol. absolutely lightning in a bottle game
I never thought about what would make the mutants infertile besides their dramatic physical transformation, the fact that the virus would wreck the DNA so badly like this is such a cool detail.
by the way...
What do you think about modding and the huge modding community that Fallout has acquired over the years?
I love the idea of ghouls just being so baked in radiation, the body can’t help but ignore it and continue on
would be interested to hear your thoughts on aliens in fallout, theyve been referenced subtly in 1/2 and more on the nose in 3.
Aliens were a joke in Fallout 1, 2 and NV. And should have been a joke in Fallout 3.
@@fredrik3880 As awful as Mothership Zeta was, with a few years of hindsight, have Bethesda ever actually said that it was a "canon" DLC? It's never been referenced again, as far as I'm aware. Better to treat it like a weird 'what if' one-off special to a serial.
@@comfylain yeah bethesda should def treat it as a joke as well
He said they were just a joke in Fallout 1 but he's fine with them in later games.
@@fredrik3880there was an alien corpse in The Glow.
Came for the game design. Stayed for the biology lesson.
Not 4 purines 2 purines 2 pyrimidine. The hydrogen bonding allows for purines and pyrimidines to have the specific AT CG pairings without AC or AG (unless there is an error in polymerase replication) great video just correcting a semantic error
I have to agree that I like this explanation of ghouls, it makessense. .
A thought Tim, you guys clearly consulted a lot of science for the background, even if to handwave reasons for fun stuff. My question was, based on all this, why was there less attention seemingly paid to how nuclear weapons work and radiation, especially concerning flora. Basically, physics speaking, radiation in nuclear weapons is the result of inefficiency in the fission or fusion chain reaction. Nuclear warheads since then only ever got closer in the theoretically desired ability to have a 100% reaction, which would be all explosive, with no radiation - W76 and W88 warheads from the 70s and 80s were and are still extremely efficient, with very little radiation let alone fallout. Even the early Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, their radiation and fallout mostly cleared up relatively early. You can see the converse in a dirty bomb, or even Chernobyl - VERY inefficient chain reaction, hence tons of long lived radiation and radioactive material spewing out.
Given that the Apocalypse happened in the mid late 2000s, and with all the incredible scientific advancement of the Old World, why were nuclear missiles and their resultant detonations seemingly LESS efficient than even the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs? I understand radiation was intended as a kind of catalyst towards new flora and fauna in the world, but why then pair that with a radioactive dead wasteland with very little greenery anywhere? Grass didn't stop growing magically even in Chernobyl, if anything it's a wild preserve now. I chalked part of it up to a lot of the team being from California, but even SoCal isn't THAT desert-y, its some of the best farmland in the world. It became sort of jarring when the setting expanded, and you still had desert wastelands even in places where it just wouldn't be. Was it because the Internet was still very new then, so reference material was much harder to come by? I understand things like W88 warhead's specifics like yields would not be easily available then, but the physics of nuclear were quite well understood in the public knowledge sphere. Sorry, this seems like two questions, really.
Dirty bombs exists as a concept, deliberately causing as much fallout as possible, that could be the reason certain places in fallout (like the glowing sea) still have enormous amounts of radiation 200 years later, while other places are perfectly habitable (like the boneyard) also it seems someone at Bethesda realised the whole foliage thing finally lol
@@sierra1513 I think the term you were more looking for is neutron bombs? Though those operate less on spewing radioactive materials out, and more on converting much of the energy in a nuclear blast into intense gamma ray bursts. In either case while I want to agree, this just seems like a thing they didn't think about, or didn't care about. The Glowing Sea was pretty clearly caused by a standard atomic warhead hitting, you can see it right at the beginning before you're sent down to the Vault (though if we're speaking realistically, Nate/Nora should have been permanently blinded looking directly at it that close, and the shockwave would have hit them much faster, with them also getting lethal gamma rays, unless these nuclear devices ARE ultra-efficient and there isn't much of a gamma ray release and...gah, circular logic). Occam's razor says they probably didn't think about any of this, and/or didn't care. Looking at Pete Hines and Emil Pagluriano, its a very safe bet.
Generally, states don't use dirty bombs, they're extremely wasteful, and no clear eyed military strategist wants to pollute their target permanently like that, especially since in a theoretical war, you'd be taking over of what's left of that. It'd be odd for the Chinese to switch to rad spewing bombs imo, especially when ICBMs are so expensive in the first place. You wanna cause destruction, not poison. Terrorists pursue dirty bombs because it's the best they could have access too (weapons grade uranium and plutonium's logistics chains are *extremely* well guarded, one of many reasons hence we haven't had terrorists with nukes yet. Even the South Africans, who had the most successful guerilla nuclear weapons program, their four finished warheads were all standard atomic devices with a clean chain reaction.
Genetics class from Tim Cain? I'm here for it.
Apparently nerve tissue does regenerate. Although it takes decades, so you'd be dead before that happens.
With how you described the quad helix for super mutants i could see a low viral load lets say a vat of FEV got exploded and it got aerosolized over an area would lead to some people getting that quad helix without all the other benefits like the size and strength. You can see low viral load effects in covid and the flu where you still get the antibodies but none of the visible symptoms.
A question: Were you onboard with Harold's origin story? Was there a canonical explanation behind why he changed into a ghoul-like mutant rather than a typical dumb super mutant?
2nd question: Likewise for Talius. The game strongly implies that you aren't the first person the Overseer sent out of the vault. How long ago did he (and Ed) leave the vault? How long ago did the water chip break down? Was the Overseer trying to keep it a secret all this time? And is this common knowledge in the community at Vault 13? In the opening cinematic, the Overseer briefing suggests that the problem is new to you, though when you return to Vault 13, everyone else seems to know about it as well. Was the Overseer just hoping the problem could be resolved before the knowledge came out? Did he reveal it in a public announcement this time?
What a great way to start my Sunday
Bruh
it's saturday
@@franklinhirsch1654 I was high as hell when I wrote that my b
Right now Ghouls are canonicaly made from radiation. There are a few things that go the other way, like Cazadors in New Vegas. There is no reason why they have to be lab made.
Great video! I agree with everything. What an amazing world the Fallout team made.
I know you weren't on F2 for long and didn't love the pop culture references, but one that sticks out fondly to me was Gordon Gekko of Gekko delivering the speech from Wall Street. It was one of those times where the reference completely flew over my head for years. Then I saw the movie. It was like thinking Sublime wrote Smoke Two Joints and finally hearing Bob's version years later.
So the Deathclaw thing was changed in Fallout 2, with them having Eggs, and reproducing, etc. Did you have any input into that?
We had deathclaw eggs in Fallout too. I think the idea was that, being reptiles, they could reproduce asexually, like many lizard species and even some snakes and scorpions.
@@CainOnGames Oh, that's interesting, I guess Fallout NV retconned that then, and only in the Obsidian Canon since it conflicts with the current Canon. Since it has Alphas and Matriarchs, meaning their not all Female.
@ValdVincent well if I recall correctly FEV infected animals generally could reproduce it was FEV infected humans that couldn't
@@ValdVincent 'Alpha males' as pack are mentioned in Joseph's dialogue in Fallout 2 too, so it seems to have originated in that
❤ love these vlogs Tim!
Good stuff Mr. Cain. I like hearing your perspective considering you’re the creator.
That's what I assumed Ghouls were too, products of radiation. It also makes sense, and contrasts well with Super Mutants.
I think its interesting to point out that changing an organism to a cuadruplex dna and rna would significantly increase its nutrisional needs
Here’s a curveball, somewhere in the lore it talks about a great plague, and the Pan Immunity Viron before FEV- could it be a combination of the populace of the time having this PIV in their systems plus radiation that made the ghouls?
I love science class
Another great video, thanks.
Not only do i get really cool pieces of programming knowledge and a motivation to go and learn some. I also get an introduction to DNA! Cool!!!
If ever given the chance, would you work on another Fallout?
I like your thesis behind it, I think that if FEV in whole or in part created Ghouls, then FEV would also have to have been in the wild before the end of the war. I cannot remember if it was or not, but I have long assumed that it was something found in vaults, or was created afterwards by the Enclave.
If we go by the show's logic, it seemed like they were working with FEV in that other Vault that the main characters fell into late in the season, and that the Enclave had it.
It has been a long time since I played through the first two games, might have to give them another go again, my memory on all of that is pretty fuzzy. Can't recall how soon Super Mutants emerged onto the scene. As a kid (late teens), when I originally played them, I had just assumed that they all had a similar origin since the Super Mutants had the word "Super" in front of them, and that the regular creatures and Ghouls were just another form of Mutant, and that no one really knew about how they were created.
What would be your thoughts on Rad Scorpions? Since the limiting factor on most of those general kinds of insects and arachnids are the fact that they have poor oxygen absorption, so they tend to be size limited as a result, and would need to evolve something more akin to lungs in order to grow. Seems like it would be more inline with FEV, in order to get that big.
I hope one day you have a guest host that starts out with "Hi everyone, it's me Tim." Such a wonderful intro for a wonderful channel. 🎉🎉🎉
Even though some of the science isnt exactly right, I really like the thought that clearly went into it.
The whole idea makes absolute sense to me.
I've always viewed ghouls in comparison to actual radiation burn victim cases. Peeling skin, rotting muscle. The necrosis ran its course, and the (un)lucky ones came out the other side wondering why they hadn't died yet.
1:28 Uncle Tim stumbling over his words, trying to explain the bees and birds🤭🤭🤭
I like this idea better. It feels like FEV gets pinned on too much in a sort of hand-wavy writing style--as in, "I don't know how to explain this *hand waves* must be FEV!" There are two characters in Fallout 4 who became ghouls via drugs/treatments. Eddie Winter apparently underwent some experiment before the bombs dropped to try to make himself immortal and he became a ghoul. And Hancock was such a druggie that he took whatever he could get his hands on and became a ghoul. I guess Bethesda was implying that Hancock somehow got his hands on FEV (either that or he irradiated himself accidentally?), and I suppose Winter managed to get FEV somehow through his criminal connections. Either way, both of those ghouls' origins always made me squint a little since every other ghoul I could think of before them occurred "naturally."
And now the show seems to be leaning into FEV creating ghouls (though it hasn't come out and said it), so I guess the new canon is that they come from both? I'm not against the idea; I just prefer the radiation version.
To be fair the Eddie Winter tapes only mention something about getting radioactive material from a corrupt contact in a shipping company, as well as him mentioning a doctor with a theory of something like ghoulification caused by exposure to radiation specifically. As for Hancock I’m pretty sure the drug is mentioned as being radioactive, or having something to do with radioactivity.
Honestly Bethesda seems to rely on the “radiation causes mutations” idea far more than the classic games did, the most I can think of in regards to widespread FEV being mentioned is Curie talking about FEV *Hypothetically* becoming airborne
Edit: Here’s the relevant Eddie Winter quote:
“You know those idiot brothers at Wicked Shipping? The ones smuggling the radioactive material? I put the screws to 'em. Got some of the stuff. I've been working with this doctor in East Boston. Guy's a fucking genius. Listen, I know it sounds crazy... but he had this theory... The right kind of radiation exposure, at the right amounts... it can change human cells. Mutate them. Baby... I can live forever. Yeah, I know... It could kill me. I'm willing to chance it. But I can't risk losing you. So I'm the guinea pig. And I've been getting... treatments.”
I'm also for grounding Fallout lore in the real world implications of a post-nuclear event as much as possible. Everything being caused by FEV strays from the always-exciting formula of blending reality and far-out/mystery bits that has worked well with Lovecraftian tabletop modules for example. Radiation as a cause for Ghouls carries the lore significantly in the direction of plausibility in that sense.
What if years before the bombs drop, vault tech was working on a special serum like an earlier version of fev which was given some people during a bomb scare they were told it could help them survive an atomic bomb explosion 🤔
Only 131k? The man is a legend!
Wasn't Harold, specifically, a weird hybrid of FEV and radiation? The story he tells of his origin certainly seems to imply it at least.
Harold (and Talus) are failed supermutants with similar properties to ghouls, but technically aren't.
@@oknodiangames6 Harold was only partially exposed to FEV, I think he was knocked out and had his head land in a puddle from an tipped over barrel of FEV. One of the people that was with him however was fully submerged in a vat of FEV, this happened at the same time as Harold was knocked out.
Makes sense. I like it.
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on Harold. Was he just a typical Ghoul or was he like Chris Avellone said in the Fallout Bible "special". Nevertheless thanks for continuing to share.
I know you didn't work on New Vegas directly (though your influence can obviosly be seen), but what is your take on Camp Searchlight, where a bunch of NCR soldiers got exposed to radiation, and as a result, a bunch of them turn feral. Wouldn't this imply that a fairly sizeable percent of people turn into ghouls, and not some super small percent? Could just be a insignificant point, but I think it's fun to dig around at some of that stuff
Edit: I realize it's kind of dumb now to ask this considering what you said, but im just interested in your opinion nonetheless
I'd say that by the time New Vegas was made, this take on the lore was probably forgotten - in Fallout 4 aswell, I think Hancock explains he wanted to become a ghoul specifically to live longer, as if becoming a ghoul immediately guarantees a longer lifespan
@@spuddle5375 well in hancocks case he actually didn't do it for the lifespan, but didn't wanna be his human self anymore (didn't wanna be recognized or look at himself anymore after all he had done) he jokingly says the silver lining is immortality but if you ask about that he clarifies its not immortality, but some ghouls live a long time
as for searchlight I think it's implied there were a lot of soldier there considering it was seen as a prime target for the legion, so the ones you see are a smaller percentage of the NCR population there (definitely a higher survival rate than real life, but ghoulification is still not certain)
I'm of a mixed opinion on the ghoul radiation thing. I like how you explain it, but also, one of my favorite things about Fallout 1 was that you meet all these weird pulpy monsters and *think* that its due to radiation (like a 1950s serial), but then you learn there's this really hard science fiction underpinning with the well explained and relatively plausible FEV virus. But also, I get the muddying of the waters with the Master...
But also, one thing I think is underrepresented in worldbuilding is when to leave things mysterious. In Fallout: New Vegas, if you ask Dan Domingo about the cloud shrouding the Sierra Madre, he'll cite himself being a ghoul as equally mysterious and equally inexplicable and...equally irrelevant to the task at hand. So, having there be no clear "reason" for ghouls has its own advantages for storytelling :D
FEV giveth, Radiation taketh away.
I agree with your point on ghouls. Radiation makes so much sense for them. If they were the result of FEV it would make it too confusing with the difference between what a ghoul and a super mutant actually are. I could see people being like “wait so if super mutants are the result of FEV then why aren’t ghouls just super mutants? Or vice versa?” I would get why but it’s just needlessly confusing.
In Fallout Show, when referring to the entire surface being cleaned he was referring to the Enclave plan in Fallout 2, the Chinese use Nukes first because they found out of the experiments with SuperMutans and others, and it is possible that they also found out that Vault Tec wanted to use the first Nukes, so the Chinese launched first the nukes, the Chinese have spies all over America, so is that true??????
I always thought they were caused by radiation, tho Harold said he became like that because of the FEV.
I think both explanations work (I don´t know if this was planned) in the setting, because when first seeing huge mutants you probably think that has something to do with radiation, only later finding out they were the result of an experiment.
I played Fallout 2 first so I was partially spoiled of the plot in Fallout 1 when I later played it, but it didn´t really matter because both games are so much fun to play :>
Love the content. Please never stop talking about fallout 1,2 and New vegas. Explore every spot and corner in development of these games. If you can enlighten us about characters, locations, towns, vats system, side quest :) Thanks in advance.
He doesn't really talk about New Vegas, because he did not work on it.
It is fascinating as A creator of Fallout but has no say now. I wish you had a chance and could develop Fallout more.
This is why Tim is the GOAT! The GOAT!!!!
About FEV, just like with Supermutants I would like it to be a unique feature of the west coast while other parts of USA (and world) had its own special encounters(also Ghuls and FEV do not mix). Sadly Bethesda gonna Bethesda and made it day one feature (along with BOS) of entire world a minute after the bombs dropped.
I would like to add a possible future question/topic, how do you feel about retcons? Yay, nay or unavoidable feature of video game (or maybe all kinds) storytelling?
(obviously its another jab at Bethesda and also other Fallout games more or less)
Yeah, didn't think about it before, but I agree.
It would be more interesting if the East coast had it's *own* technology-preserving group, that is perhaps similar to the Brotherhood of Steel in some ways, but different in many other ways.. instead of just having the same organization spread across the whole continent.
Same with various other unusual and interesting things (factions, creatures, whatever). Have something different on the East coast.
I guess Bethesda didn't have the confidence to stray too far, at the time they made their first FO game (FO3).
Where were you working during the development of FNV? How come you didn’t have a hand in that game? Were you not working with obsidian until after that release. Also is there any chance you could do a chat with Josh sawyer, I would love to hear him talk about that game as well as his mod for it
This has always been one of the more interesting topics of Fallout to me, especially because of how debated it tends to be. I know Scott Campbell was a huge proponent for the “FEV causes everything” idea, Avellone mentioned supporting that at some point, though later changed his mind, and of course, the idea here that it’s mostly radiation.
Far as I can tell right now it’s technically ambiguous but current games seem to heavily lean on the idea of it being a radiation thing rather than an FEV thing.
A side affect of the FEV causing everything idea, is that to me it kinda ends up implying life wouldn’t have been able to survive *without* it, which is a whole discussion
It really kinda depends on personal preference at this point, and who doesn’t like that?
Finally, some answers ❤
I learnt a lot of new things about DNA from this video…..
Foremost being that I don’t know a lot about DNA.
Something to do with Cats with Hats.
Bethesda is not catholic church to set canon, Bethesda just has it's own author's interpretation of fallout world
I personally believe Ghouls being from radiation alone makes logical sense, just like all other creatures minus Deathclaws and a few other things.
kinda sounds like FEV plays a role, but only in a very limited capacity, FEV had to originate from somewhere, maybe in the fallout universe ghouls were found in WW2, kept secret, and they distilled and altered what allowed ghouls to resist damage into what now is called the FEV.
i like ghouls being created from radiation, and the irradiated specimens used to create the capitol wasteland super mutants explains why they are all ‘dumb’ mutants, as far as im aware the only non-irradiated settlement is vault 101
Ghouls should definitely be radiation only, agreed. I also loved your explanation on the ghoul lifespan, i always wondered about this. Although i think bethesda take this idea a bit far in F4, with the ghoul boy who was stuck in the refrigerator for 200 years. It makes no sense whatsoever.
I'm curious on your views of the Fallout fan films like NukaBreak or Red Star
he was in NukaBreak, some bloke with a BB gun
suddenly it makes me sad to think that Hancock would turn feral one day
I read the title as "radiation is fev" and was confused for a while
Bethesadaverse Fallout can exist in its own timeline, it is an adaptation, which can explain its inconsistencies better than trying to force everything to reconcile within one story universe.
Wasn't there a cabin in one of the games where a person camped out in order to get irradiated and become a ghoul, and when you find it, it's a skeleton and a note? I can't recall if that was F3 or NV...
You might get a couple comments correcting you on what is a purine. Otherwise, for someone who I assume has no biology or even scientific background, that was really impressive.
not just that.. but it's close enough, it's a game, not a paper in a scientific journal. I just wish they consulted a real biologist.
@@totalnastoka Unnecessary in my mind. Also, maybe they did, I don't know.
@@solaufein3029they did. One of the previous videos said so
I know I'm almost a year late to this discussion.. But if the quite a number of ghouls we see in the game is due to the Survival Bias because billions got bombed originally... then how does it explain Necropolis, the City of Ghouls, being founded by the ghouls of Vault 12, where the front door wouldn't close properly?
I mean, what's the probability of SO MANY vault 12 dwellers becoming ghouls rather than dying or having too short lifespans? It's not that there are just 1 or 2 survivors from Vault 12, the story kinda implies there has been quite a community of ghouls in Vault 12... Or my memory fails me and I remember it all wrong 😉
On a side note, thank you very much, Mr. Cain for creating my most beloved and most favorite Fallout game of the franchise. This game is a masterpiece, mad respect and gratitude to you! 🙏🤩