I get out of the boring pool full of dodgy barrels, geiger counter screaming like a white noise machine, and bring it in.
My skin and clothes are literally pulsing with a cartoony lime green glow. My health bar instead of being 90% red has a sheave of radioactive energy built up. I take out my gun, and I start to explode.
After I take a few hits from the Scorched I'm fighting, my healthy glow dissipates, leaving me with the normal health bar. Fortunately, the area I'm clearing out is full of clean bodies, which emit small bursts of radiation when they are burned to pieces. I use them to increase my health a bit as I run from viewpoint to viewpoint, raining down plasma fire.
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Eventually, because I am very careless about finding cover, I start heading towards death. It's okay, though. I run back to my irradiated pool, myself under water again, and ahhhhhhhhh, that's better. Then, after overcoming myself with a cry, I come again, ready to take on the rest of the enemies guarding the outside of the power plant.
This is the kind of thing I spent a lot of my preview session on Fallout 76It's a playable ghoul, and I'm not ashamed. After all, it took him to answer the distress call that starts the short series of quests that will see you, Appalachia's best CAMP builder, a member of an enemy kill squad, and the occasional nuker map , literally shedding your skin and starting to look as if you fit in among the inhabitants of the Underworld or Necropolis.
These quests themselves are an interesting mishmash of bad and kinda goofy, which, to be fair, has been an interesting cocktail that has long defined much of Fallout. The devs had a simple mission – get you to chew on a dodgy inhaler and then snuggle up next to a leaking nuclear warhead – and they've achieved it in a very interesting, if slightly tonal, way. throughout the shop. After picking up that distress signal, you go to Whitesprings and find an NPC that reminded me a bit of Forrest Gump telling me he's going to die of radiation poisoning without much help.
The two of you set out to find a radiologist, who turns out to be owned by a group of ghouls who are just doing what they need to survive. There's that mix – some cute chat about ghouls being persecuted and therefore living a harsh life you wouldn't want to condemn yourself to in a game, and a funny exchange between you and a scientist on turning people into noseless Neds seems a bit heavy handed. There are some okay things, and some characters that could be interesting, but overall it's not good to not give too slow an introduction to what is clearly a main event.
Although I didn't have enough time to dive deeply into putting together the special ghoul types that those who already have thousands of hours into 76 will build to inevitable through a bunch of tests, the basics I explained above are fun – if not the cup of tea of those who prefer their Fallout experience to be a little more serious and realistic. Additionally, while healing through radiation might feel a little overpowered in places like the power plant I chose to clear out, not every fort in Appalachia is sprinkled with helpful radiation pockets that you can dip in and out of at whim.
There are a bunch of new perk cards that complement your new glory powers to let you tap into that side of your character and they're nicely spread across the SPECIAL skills as you'd expect. The ones that came with my character later along the lines seemed a bit goulish than anything really awesome or unique, but it adds enough that there's probably more stuff out there. there at Bethesda to find out.
My ghoul's perks allowed them to do pretty run-of-the-mill stuff like not suffer the ill effects of eating irradiated things, but some of them were also designed around the ability of looking guns based on their card art to focus specifically on letting you. to build a ghoul that is inspired by the Fallout show character Walton Goggins, which is cool. Plus, there's one clearly built around encouraging people to play in ghoul factions by making you buff a faction, which is good because 76's other big novelty is the uber-hard Gleaming Depths dungeon which is aimed primarily at teams of players. .
Plus, I can guarantee that the Brotherhood of Steel won't appreciate your new look – you literally can't enter their base at Fort Atlas without digging in once you are goulified. However, at least in the building I played, you can still walk around outside the fort without getting shot. I think I got one passive Brotherhood NPC line of dialogue urging me to handle something, but Russell Dorsey, the designated BOS character was standing outside looking very happy to see me, even questioning that it was good to see a “familiar face”, a line that became a little funny under the circumstances.
As for the other high-profile disadvantage of going into the rads, the new wild meter that replaces the player's hunger and thirst, I can't say that I really noticed that it greatly affected my character's abilities. or a standard post-gunge pool. Then again, it might be something that will have more impact on longer play sessions where you can really rack up some rad long exposure and see how it affects your ghoul in the long run -time.
For better or worse though, what really came out to me during my thinking session was this – as someone who doesn't usually pay much attention to sustainability and therefore usually do not take benefits like Aquaboy/Aquagirl, this is probably the first time I spent a lot of time ever going for a nice swim in a Fallout game. Maybe it's because it's the other main Fallout thing I've spent a lot of time playing through this year – Fallout: London – really dials down the risk factor of landing in water as part of the tougher, survival-oriented attitude of things, that this went so far.
But it's cool, regardless. You never know, Fallout 76's ghoul update might have the weird side effect of turning all of the game's bodies of water into major soft spots, full of untidy skins making their chests until they go wild. Oh, and making sure to go back to shore every few minutes so they don't catch one of the game's waterborne diseases, that's one of the few things a ghoul swimmer needs be careful.
Well, apart from the mirelurks who also love dodgy irradiated pools.
