Mr Viral
Before we cross the ticker tape into 2025 and beyond, let’s rewind back to mid-April. That’s when Craig —then a younger, more emotionally stable version of himself — joined millions of ‘kink-shamed’ TV fans binge-watching Amazon Prime’s Fallout adaptation. Why mention kink shaming? Well, it might have something to do with Craig’s father? But more appropriately, it’s when we all became obsessed with Walton Goggins’ portrayal of Cooper Howard, an irradiated bounty-hunting corpse-man. Yeah! That’s right Craig’s dad, we’re into ghouls – get over it!
Not too long ago at the incredible Fallout-themed Bethesda HQ in London, UK, we were invited to go hands on with MMORPG Fallout 76 and its upcoming Ghoul DLC – which left us feeling less shameful in our kinks, and quite optimistic about Fallout 76, and our love for the ghouls.
Let’s kick things off by talking about what we actually got to go hands on with in November. After a brief presentation from Bethesda’s Creative Director Jon Rush, and Production Director Bill Lacoste, we sat down with a PC alpha build of Fallout 76, playing as a ghoul for roughly two whole hours. This is the first time a ghoul has been playable in the history of Fallout games, we might add! During our session we underwent the “ghoulification” questline, before being set loose to explore the Appalachian wastes to our undead heart’s content.
Our first hour focused on the “Leap of Faith” quest – step one of our mission to permanently ditch skin-care routines and become a ghoul. This quest allowed Bethesda to flaunt some of the most compelling voice acting we’ve seen in Fallout 76 to date. If you remember the NPC drought of 2018, you’ll understand why having NPCs to start with, let alone ones that ‘talk good’ is a big deal. Whilst we weren’t die-hard Fallout 76 fans going into this preview (more like casual enjoyers), the quest to save a scavenger named Leamon from a lethal dose of the “bad rads” stirred up a little of that Fallout 3 magic.
That same quest led us to Radiant Hills, a new location nestled in the north-eastern Appalachian mountains. Once a nuclear missile launch site, it’s now home to a community of ghouls called the “Revenants.” Without giving too much away, let’s just say that if life hands you Leamons, you might as well embrace the ghoul life. After all, the whole reason we hopped on a train to London was to bid farewell to our smooth skin, take a hit of that magic inhaler, and awaken with a hunger for radiation – plus 32 ghoul-specific perk cards to respec our irradiated flesh bag with.
Playing as a ghoul honestly felt great. Whilst Bethesda hinted at both pros and cons to “ghoulifying” in Fallout 76 (and it seems the choice might be permanent), we mostly saw the upsides. For starters, you can fully re-customise your ghoul with a range of fleshy faces, hairpieces and radiation is your friend – no need for Rad-Away, as ghouls are 100% immune to radiation damage, and it even heals you. Survival becomes a vault-load easier too – no need to scavenge for food and water when you can drink from any rad-soaked pond and feast upon the corpses of your enemies. Tell us, where’s the downside in any of that? Even Bethesda’s supposed drawback felt like an advantage – a feral meter replaces hunger and thirst, depleting over time but manageable with chems. Let it drop too low, and you’ll face reduced accuracy and hit points. But go fully feral, and your ghoul transforms into a berserker with devastating hand-to-hand combat skills!
Our only complaint with that is, when you’re in this feral state, your character glows an overwhelming amount of green. And we’re not the only ones who find ghouls hard to stomach. Non-Ghoul friendly factions like the Brotherhood of Steel will shoot a ghoul on sight. We won’t spoil much here other than it made us chuckle, but If you visit Jaye Vo in Radiant Hills, she’ll give you a ‘disguise’ so talking with these factions won’t leave you with a bullet in your belly.
Building radiation, or ‘Glow’ as Bethesda calls it, becomes a strategic tool for surviving scraps too. When your glow meter fills and you’re radiating that uncanny green hue, your ghoul gains a second bar of health that enemies must drain before inflicting any real damage to you. Just another pro to add to that growing list – “to ghoul or not to ghoul”.
And, somehow on top of all of that glowy goodness, as we mentioned earlier you’ve got an extra 32 ghoul-specific perk cards to boot. For the sake of clarity, levelling up in Fallout 76 unlocks perk cards that can buff your character builds in various ways. So, now that you’re a ghoul, opting for ghoul-enhancing perks like ‘Radioactive Strength’ to boost your power attacks & bashing by 100% once you reach a certain level of ‘glow’ just feels super OP. Ghouls are unnecessarily goated characters to do battle with, and despite our lack of combat experience in Fallout 76, we were effortlessly crushing super mutant skulls into clouds of red mist.
At this point, we’d love to say that becoming a ghoul in Fallout 76 when the update drops in early 2025 is a perfect starting or returning point. However, you’ll need to act a bit sooner. To begin the ghoulification process, both new and returning players must first reach level 50 to unlock the required quest. It’s not the worst roadblock, just an unexpected one. Grinding to level 50 in solo, or better yet, with a bunch of pals in Fallout 76 is at its most enjoyable now than it ever has been. The team at Bethesda has consistently dropped content and quality of life updates to Fallout 76 for six years now. And if you were anything like us, who dropped the game back in 2018, didn’t think much about it until Goggins’ Ghoul and the resulting Fallout Fever post Amazon’s incredible TV show, then you’ll find a completely different game packed with hours upon hours of content to get stuck into.
We suppose the TL;DR is that we had a blast visiting Bethesda HQ, hanging out with a ‘genuine’ real-life ghoul, eating Blamco Mac & Cheese with the dev team, and, of course, playing as a ghoul for two hours in Fallout 76.
You can look forward to the Fallout 76 ghoul update arriving at some point in March 2025 on Xbox!
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