One of the most interesting things happening with Fallout right now, as we close out what’s been a very newsworthy year for the franchise, is Fallout 76 taking a crack at letting players turn their wasteland wanderers into ghouls for the first time.
It’s something Fallout fans have been asking about for years, and it’s been implemented in an interesting way that involves sometimes letting you glow bright green. Speaking of green things in Fallout, in a recent interview, we asked Fallout 76 lead producer Bill LaCoste about the possibility of following up playable ghouls by letting you play as another Fallout staple – the super mutant.
“I don’t know,” the developer said, “I mean, it kind of depends on how the ghoul plays over and how much people enjoy playing a ghoul. When you’re talking about super mutants, that’s also something that it may just be above my pay grade to talk about, in terms of the direction and where we go with that.
“But, if the ghoul is successful and we actually play that off the way it’s supposed to be, with kind of the system we’re giving [to] players and [if] it’s highly engaged with [by] players, that does give pause to talk about, ‘Okay, does it make sense for us to have anything else in this world that players can do?’ Honestly, for Fallout, it may be no. It may be only ghouls [are] the right thing to do for that.
“I do know that players have asked in the past, could I have a background story in being a Brotherhood of Steel person? Or be a responder, or raider, or settler, and having those background stories to it. But yeah, I think it’s always possible that we take a look at how successful ghoul is and talk about, you know, if it makes sense for not only 76, but maybe future Fallout games. Right now, I think we’re just focused on the ghoul and making sure that’s good.”
So, it sounds like the playable super mutant is an idea that Bethesda and Zenimax would be open to at least considering, if the series’ first playable ghoul proves there’s substantial appetite from players for this kind of thing. Maybe your pipe dreams of romping around the wastes as Frank Horrigan’s somehow more evil twin or a brainy brute that’s handy with a gatling laser like Fallout 3’s Fawkes won’t stay that way forever.
For more on Fallout and especially if you’re into 76, make sure to check out the other bits of our most recent interview with LaCoste, and the one we conducted with him earlier this year, when the game was sending players off to Skyline Valley and Phil Spencer’s C.A.M.P had recently been nuked.