Any FO3 canon(storyline/backstory) questions answered here.

[minngarm]

In OWB, if the 6 brains are the leads from the think tank, which are portrayed in various monitors, where did Dala come from, as all 6 members shown are male?

[CoreXion]

The simple answer is that there are 5 males and 1 female pictured in the photograph of the scientists working at the Big MT. facility. Dala appears on the far left, but the style used for the drawing of the scientists doesn't show her figure or that of the others. It is much like how Bridgette from the Guilty Gear series is often thought to be a girl, when in fact Bridgette is a boy.

[minngarm]

Valid point.

[RatcatcherOfKvatch]

So does FEV turn a radiation-damaged person into a ghoul, or does radiation itself do it?

 

 

 

Har har, as if anyone could be naive enough to ask that question innocently ...

 

 

[CoreXion]

FEV ( Forced Evolution Virus ) does not cause ghoulification. FEV is responsible for the creation of Super Mutants and their pet Centaurs, why one turns into a Centaur and not a Super Mutant is unclear. Perhaps it has to do with the dose given.

 

The process of becoming a ghoul boils down to random mutation caused by sever exposure to radiation. It does appear that it is completely random in how it works, with people like Trash from New Vegas who attempted to transform herself into a Ghoul only to end up dying from radiation poisoning, while others transform into Ghouls. Carol, a resident in Underworld, tells you through her dialog that she slowly started to transform into a Ghoul while living in the ruins of DC and others around her died from the radiation. In the case of Searchlight, a number of NCR soldiers and town residents apparently were transformed into Ghouls, as for the other people in the town it is unclear what happened to them. They may have all been killed when the dirty bomb was detonated and their bodies made into snacks for the now feral Ghouls or they could have fled. Either way, the bodies of other residents aren't found. Another example as to how it can be completely random is if you carry out a nuclear attack on Cottonwood Cove by releasing toxic nuclear waste on the Legion forces there, which will kill everyone at that location without turning them into Ghouls.

[warkiller75]

i belive a centuar is a dog and a human, put into the same vat. Edited September 7, 2011 by warkiller75

[CoreXion]

@warkiller75,

After doing a bit of researching, you are right. Centaurs are a result of combining human and various other animals that are infected with FEV.

[RatcatcherOfKvatch]

FEV ( Forced Evolution Virus ) does not cause ghoulification.

Didn't lead designer Chris Taylor say it did?

 

"Harold" in the Tim Cain [non-FEV] version of the canon even had to be retconned into "ghoul-like mutant" to unmake the FEV explanation for all the rest of the ghouls. Surely this proves Chris Taylor was right?

 

(If you had said "yes" I would've argued for "no". The "ghoul FEV question" having conflicting answers is as classic a part of Fallout lore as Vaults and Pipboys. The only correct answer is the genre-aware Fourth Wall crasher: "Tim Cain says, 'No,' but Chris Taylor says, 'Yes.'")

 

What makes the question so great is it's even worse than a "Lady or Tiger" question where the author is in on the joke and can, at any time, write whichever ending he pleases. Not even the Fallout designers themselves agree, making the question truly unanswerable (until someone pays a fat bribe to either Tim Cain or Chris Taylor to change his story ...)

[warkiller75]

Herald wasnt knocked into a vat, to my knowlege, he just absorbed radiation inside the facility i belive.

 

edit-

after checking, harold isnt a ghoul, but a FEV mutant, that apperantly just looks like a ghoul.

 

To the untrained eye, Harold appears to be an ordinary ghoul. This is not so, however. Ghouls are the result of massive and/or long-term radiation damage to a human body; Harold is a product of the Forced Evolutionary Virus. Unlike most people who are exposed to FEV, Harold did not become a super mutant, but is the result of a unique combination of radiation damage from constant low-level environmental exposure, indirect exposure to FEV (it is unclear how Harold was infected with FEV as he blacked out for a while during his exploration of Mariposa) and a fair amount of random chance. Thus he's not a ghoul, and certainly not a super mutant. To quote Tim Cain, "Harold is special."

- fallout wiki

 

also, harold has appeared in every fallout game exept:

Fallout Tactics

Fallout New Vegas

Edited September 10, 2011 by warkiller75

[RatcatcherOfKvatch]

Heh, the whole point is that you're quoting Tim Cain and not Chris Taylor. Chris Taylor's version of the canon has Harold a ghoul just like all the other ghouls: radiation-damaged people subsequently exposed to FEV. I'm vaguely remembering a sort of hierarchy of radiation damage and FEV effect:

 

Badly irradiated + FEV: ghoul

Mildly irradiated + FEV: stupid mutant

Clean + FEV: Smart super-mutant

Clean super-genius + FEV: The Master!

Scorpion + FEV: Radscorpion

 

Tim Cain, whose claim to the canon doesn't seem to me to be any better or worse than Chris Taylor's, had to retcon Harold into a non-ghoul who just happens to look exactly like a ghoul (and who even refers to himself as one) in order to retcon the FEV out of the rest of the ghouls.

Even the Radscorpions have to be retconned, as I remember something somebody said in Fallout 1, maybe the doctor in Shady Sands, about how FEV finally explains the Radscorpions because radiation damage couldn't possibly turn normal scorpions into mutated giants -- it had to be something else. I don't remember the exact quotes or who says them, but I do remember someone in Fallout 1 calling the idea that radscorpions came about from radioactive mutation to be ridiculous, and I remember FEV offered as an explanation at some point.

 

So that establishes what's wrong with Tim Cain's version of ghouls: even in the 1950's the effects of radiation were well-understood in the scientific community, and the idea that you could become a "ghoul" or that humble arthropods would mutate into giants from radiation exposure would, even in those times, be considered completely ridiculous. FEV is a much more "realistic" thing to have come from hard science fiction of the 1950's as DNA had just been discovered, so it makes sense you'd stick your hand-wavium into the black box of that era rather than make ridiculous assertions about a phenomenon, radiation damage, that scientists already fully understood. (In a famous radiation accident in 1946 a scientist wrote equations on a chalkboard to determine who in the room would live and who would die. All his predictions came true, including that of his own death.)

 

But is Fallout trying to be hard science fiction or a tongue-in-cheek lampoon of the pulp science fiction of the 1950's? Did the 1950's man on the street -- or kid reading a comic book -- commonly believe that radiation would make giant ants and so forth? When you meet the Zax at the bottom of The Glow should the conversation be serious or silly?

 

Well, that settles it: FEV is where radscorpions and ghouls and all the things we love about Fallout came from, and all the people [in-game] who think it was the radiation think that because they don't know about FEV and read too many comic books. Fallout dwellers "in the know" know that behind every mutated shrub is a glowing green stick of MiracleGro called "FEV". Tim Cain was wrong, and Chris Taylor was right!

 

If you think I'm about to put hammer to nail you'd be right. The problem with Chris Taylor's version of ghouldom is that one of the classic signatures of Fallout, ghouls, can never appear anywhere there is no FEV. Every DLC, every new location (Fallout: Communist China!), every place under the sun where there are ghouls there has to be FEV and a canonical backstory explaining how it got there.

The storytellers have a conundrum: FEV needs to be rare and terrible, but ghouls need to be ubiquitous. Enter Tim Cain's version of the canon: if there's one thing about radiation in Fallout that holds true everywhere it is that radiation is ubiquitous, just like ghouls and radscorpions.

Tim Cain's Fallout lets the FEV be tucked away in some hidden vat somewhere for the player to discover after much effort and many stimpacks. Those who control the FEV have a terrible power, and most people haven't even heard of FEV except as some kind of urban legend. FEV is diminished if it's everywhere and into everything -- and of course if everyone could just lick the walls of the nearest defunct Vault to get some of their own.

 

Were I writing the canon I would probably lean toward the FEV explanation despite its challenges, simply because it would create two classes of people in Fallout: those who know about FEV and those who think it's the radiation. As a writer I could play with that. FEV is everywhere, yet it's still mysterious because nobody really knows much about it, and enough exposure wipes your memory. FEV conceals itself almost like a living thing, not so much as a devil but as a trickster like Loki.

But if you know about FEV and find yourself taking a fatal dose of radiation you could save your life with FEV -- sort of. People who knew about FEV and who are crippled or dying might actually choose to become ghouls, choose a hideous immortality over death, and it is a choice that anyone "in the know" could make if FEV is how you make a ghoul. A parent might even choose it for a radiation-exposed child. The player might even be sent on a quest to bring the parent FEV for the child! How's that for a classic morally-fraught Fallout quest?

 

But I could go either way, really. Fallout is well-written whether Tim Cain or Chris Taylor is right about FEV, and there is something to be said for keeping the mystery alive. It's part of the Fallout mystique. If Cain and Taylor got together and picked one canon over the other it would clear things up but it would also take away the Big Unanswered Question that is part of Fallout legend.