Are the Fallout Protagonists the true "super mutants"?

[Talwyn224]

This is an idea that's been rattling around my mind for some time: that the heroes in the various Fallout Games - The Vault Dweller from Fallout, The Chosen One from Fallout 2, The Lone Wanderer from Fallout 3 and The Courier from Fallot: New Vegas are examples of the next level of humanities evolution. Or put another way, they are untended products [perhaps?] of the F.E.V virus.

 

What evidence for this do I have? well the fact that these are remarkable individuals who [in the games anyway] achieve and accomplish incredible things through their actions. Yes they are not true super mutants like we see depicted throughout the games but are possibly what the creators of FEV had intended all along - a super human immune to the New Plague able to do more and be more than the average human being?

 

I came up with this hypothesis recently as I was going through my science-fiction paper back library and came across an old series known as The Amtrak Wars. It's a post apocalyptic setting and the main protagonists are a couple of of people who are mutants but are classed as Super Straights. In other words they are indeed mutations but appear as ordinary human beings do but most importantly, they have meta human abilities.

 

Now when considering the various Fallout heroes, it makes me wonder if the designers may have had this concept in mind all along? The books came out well before the 1st Fallout game ever did and I wouldn't be surprised if the some if not all of the designers where familiar with the material and/or had read the series.

 

My assumption is that like any virus, FEV evolved and changed. Now it was supposed to be limited only to the West-Tek facility in California but it also appeared on the East Coast, specifically in Vault 87. As we know, viruses are incredibly small living things and despite the best efforts of labs, sometimes a virus may escape the lab in which its contained. Now we know that in the Fallout world that containment was no longer possible as the war saw to that. So we are presented then with 2 sites that contained this incredibly powerful pathogenic, genetically altering virus, and are now open to the world. As Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park, "life will find a way" . A virus is a living thing, it needs to survive and propagate, that is what they all do. So FEV escapes into the wider world in a diluted form and spreads across the US. Being a virus, it gets in everywhere, including the Vaults. We know that Vaults regularly opened up, even the ones which were supposed to remain shut like 101. So an airborne pathogen slipped in unnoticed, infecting everyone in these places. Of course not everyone was altered by FEV but a few were. And not everyone found themselves suddenly thrust into extraordinary circumstances like the Fallout protagonists were however because of their mutation, well perhaps it was this which enabled them to be more than that they could be?

 

Over to you...

 

:thumbsup:

[WastelandLoner]

Interesting thought, although i dont believe any of the developers shared this idea. The F.E.V was intended to bring about physical changes to make soldiers bigger, stronger, smarter and resistant to damage, whereas in fallout you can make your character weak, dumb and frail. Various sources about F.E.V in the games describe what was intended, although your point about the virus mutating is valid, this is also taken into account and explained by the Lieutenant in the original fallout, who also happened to be the epitome of super mutants. If you haven't seen it there is a vid -

- where you can find some good info about this stuff.

[7thsealord]

I think the idea that the LW is some kind of high-level mutant (mutant mutant? superdupermutant?) has definite merit. That is pretty much how I see it. During play, often imagine Enclave intel-types gathered around a conference table reviewing reports and spy footage, whilst saying to each other "She did WHAT?" "That's impossible.", etc.)

 

The Character starts off being fairly tough anyhow, and then rapidly develops a wide array of abilities. Some abilities can be attributed to experience and general "toughening up". Weird-ass technology (Moira's experimental treatment, that Combat Module from the Commonwealth, etc.) accounts for some more. But there is a significant number that seems to come totally out of nowhere.

 

Collectively, all this puts a mid/high-level LW well into the 'Superhero' class. Which is 100% fine with me, BTW - harsh gritty reality is for masochists.

Edited February 5, 2013 by 7thsealord

[Talwyn224]

@WastelandLoner - I do fully realise that in creating a character you can make then as puny as you like when selecting their SPECIAL stats. Being a mutant doesn't always mean being super tough/strong etc. Just look at some of the X-men like Charles Xavier, sure he's an incredible telepath but aside from that, he's pretty much normal like everyone else. The mutation is subtle, so much so that its undetectable and thus unnoticeable.

 

I'd say that there are others aside from the main Fallout protagonists that fit the parameters of this idea: Joshua Graham [the burned man] immediately springs to mind. Caser, the Malpius Legate, Jericho, Own & Sarah Lyons to name but a few. extraordinary individuals who are far more capable than your average human being.

[7thsealord]

I'd say that there are others aside from the main Fallout protagonists that fit the parameters of this idea: Joshua Graham [the burned man] immediately springs to mind. Caser, the Malpius Legate, Jericho, Own & Sarah Lyons to name but a few. extraordinary individuals who are far more capable than your average human being.

 

Comes to that, most people in the DC Wastes can soak up multiple headshots from the smaller calibre weapons (ie, .32 and 10mm) without armor - and STILL keep coming at you. Pretty sure that makes them a lot tougher than any of us.

Edited February 6, 2013 by 7thsealord

[charwo]

Actually, I have my own views on this. Now, the Courier is different because they have NO established backstory other than founding the Divide, which would probably but them in their early 30s at the youngest. In that case, it means they were super capable at a young age, and really the Courier leveling up may be more (at least say to level 50) less of being a supermutant, but slowly remembering how to be a badass. And I tend to beleive this snippet from TVtropes World of badass trope page:

 

The Fallout series, bare minimum, requires EVERYONE be an Action Survivor, and if you want to enjoy a healthy lifespan in a post apocalyptic world where quite often Everything Is Trying to Kill You, being some sort of badass is about the only way to enjoy most of your natural lifespan.

 

I personally played a frickin vampire, but that was to give a character from another story a story worthy of her. Also at least in my head gems like this: "Wow! You're THE Dean Domino! Oh snap! Well... you're a ghoul, and I'm a vampire (flicks out fangs like switchblade and then retracts), you may have known me back in the day as Theresa Schwebel, the venture capitalist, but I'm going by my maiden name right now. I'm a big fan! Could I have your autograph? And....you know....don't *ban me* up with the shape charge? Ha ha ha, you thought I knew about shape charges from construction! Really Mr. Domino you know nothing of the world of high finance!"

 

That said, I don't really care what Fallout 3 and New Vegas Lore imply: for any Vault, VR simulators would be a must. If only to avoid large scale agrophobia that some of the Vault Dwellers, but not all, seem to experience. The other is that it's a delightfully material free way to do training, where real world material is so very precious I'm not sure they could afford to fire pistol rounds in target practice for the security officer.

 

In Fallout, I had assumed from the get go, that there had been some kind of GOAT in Vault 13, and that my Vault Dweller had been drilled on basic military tactics, as all had, in case they had to leave the Vault and fend for themselves. The other is just as important: VR sims with or without (and given Nellis, WITH) a Vault Dweller is by definition highly educated. My Fallout Vault Dweller had tags of Small guns, Doctor and Speech. To justify this I said she had been trained secondarily as a combat medic, and was a medical student in the infirmary. Her command from speech was because unlike most outsiders, she had a solid liberal arts education and was thus well read and euradite. This would be standard in a Vault as the people in them will see themselves as perhaps the only hope civilization has to endure. Ergo, it is their responsibility to be educated and well rounded in technical fields. Think Heinlein's dictum about generalization, and then enforced by a harsh world and a community of small numbers.

 

The same thing applies to the LW. Despite being born outside, and likely knowing that their father was from the outside, was raised with this weak but skilled multiply disciplined corps of Vault training. In this case though, James is a full out badass. He went all over the periphery of DC, which he KNEW from 20 years ago was crawling with supermutants, and either avoided or axed them all with the precision only Liam Neeson can accomplish. SO the LW is no mutant: they are simply well educated, practiced with a BB gun, and most importantly, the product of Liam Neeson's sack. We should all be so lucky.

 

Despite sounding and living like f*&%^ing worthless ass tribal, the Chosen One is anything but. Somehow, and I suspect it has to do with Vault 13 pipboys having most of human knowledge and all of human porn in them like most flash drives these days, had something to do with it. Although this requires dropping the pretense of Sceince!!! and invoking a variant of Clark's Law, which I personally am happy to do.

 

If the protagonists are transhuman, it's because due to the mass biopunk of the prewar era, there is no such thing as a baseline human anymore. That's my pet theory on why ghouls exist at all. A superhuman healing factor, albeit an imperfect one, could keep one alive through that kind of intense radiation poisoning and still cause that kind of horrible necrosis. But I tend to believe that such bioengineering was done on only a chunk of the prewar population, the ones with the ability to pay for such treatments.

[charwo]

In addition, you guys don't know what humanity is capable of:

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/

 

There are a lot of fictional examples in there but most are real people who's stories while true defy belief. I can be fine with all the protagonists being perfectly human because after spending years on that site and reading about Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson, I am convinced that humans as a species are by nature a race of John McClane.

 

In keeping with that, in a firefight, a head shot is not nearly always fatal, and with medical treatment, 85% of all gunshots are survivable (think stimpacks in Fallout contexts). And if they aren't, the adrenaline can keep a person going beyond pain and such for hours after a fatal injury. They won't even feel it. Adrenaline is designed to do that.

[7thsealord]

Know the site well. Good stuff there.

 

One headshot though? Possible, but I wouldn't depend on it.

Multiple headshots, every frickin' time? Less likely, to put it nicely.

[charwo]

But shouldn't that be an acceptable break from reality? Real combat sims, even America's Army, developed by the Pentagon, and I want to play but hate multiplayer, is considered less fun because of it's insistence on realism, especially sighted are the very slow reload times and the fact that the M-16 family are underpenetrating lackluster POS. Much like the vanilla Fallout 3 R91 assault rifle.

 

I compensate by upping the damage factors up to harsh in FWE. This makes gunfights brief and BRUTAL. It also forces me top step up my game and makes my Lone Wanderer travel with a considerable posse. IMHO, that is how a mostly green traveler in a warzone should do it.

[DavidYokosukaJapan]

I'd say that there are others aside from the main Fallout protagonists that fit the parameters of this idea: Joshua Graham [the burned man] immediately springs to mind. Caser, the Malpius Legate, Jericho, Own & Sarah Lyons to name but a few. extraordinary individuals who are far more capable than your average human being.

 

Comes to that, most people in the DC Wastes can soak up multiple headshots from the smaller calibre weapons (ie, .32 and 10mm) without armor - and STILL keep coming at you. Pretty sure that makes them a lot tougher than any of us.

All the quotes and comments in this forum ring true, but the Lieutenant's speech in addition to these two comments in the above quote box tied it together concisely which leads us to now knowing why the Enclave hates everyone who isn't them -- they really are the last pure humans and of course feel threatened by these more resilient "impure" humans. It makes prefect sense. :armscrossed: :yes: (but nodding without the smile)

 

It's sad that that's true because it shows that all of us here now reading this basically wouldn't have a high probability of long-lasting survival in the wasteland... making us a lot like the Enclave. Especially true and hits a little closer to home for of those of us who really do "work for the government." :dry:

 

In addition, you guys don't know what humanity is capable of:

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/

 

There are a lot of fictional examples in there but most are real people who's stories while true defy belief. I can be fine with all the protagonists being perfectly human because after spending years on that site and reading about Teddy Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson, I am convinced that humans as a species are by nature a race of John McClane.

 

In keeping with that, in a firefight, a head shot is not nearly always fatal, and with medical treatment, 85% of all gunshots are survivable (think stimpacks in Fallout contexts). And if they aren't, the adrenaline can keep a person going beyond pain and such for hours after a fatal injury. They won't even feel it. Adrenaline is designed to do that.

Unfortunately those extraordinary people are few and far between and all people are not created equal... yet. Waiting on that FEV! ...... Juust kiiiddiiing :sweat:

This is an example of a

. Dude has an AGI of 10 and LCK is probably at least 9. Watch from 1:10. You'll be amazed.

 

A bit off topic but want to add an example of a real life head-shot survivor (and hero in my book) is Malala Yousafzai.

 

I like charwo's play method, though some people might think that difficulty level is masochistic. But isn't that the way it's meant to be played? Playing FWE on 'very hard' difficulty the battles normally last all of one VATS session or 5 seconds real time. It's absolutely the best. :biggrin:

 

And BTW everyone, charwo's right: Liam Neeson is a badass! :thumbsup: