As long as I can be extra sneaky... Fast/Slow, doesn't really enter into it.

Ok, radioactive mutants as per the knowledge of and lore surrounding 50s understanding of radioactivity. There. Point still stands.

Don't quibble.

I watched an interview with George R.R. Martin where he discussed the nature of fiction. Long story short, he stated that in a work of fiction, who is to say which vision/version of a fictional telling is right or wrong?

You're pointing out the absurdity of malnourished, rotting corpses running faster than human beings, but you forget that ghouls even existing are an affront to the biological nature of humans to begin with. Radiation doesn't cause mutation to the degrees seen in Fallout, and yet here we are. Who is to say that Ghouls can't outrun human beings? Further, the very devs who developed the characteristic of ghouls in Fallout, subscribed to Bethesda's 'reimagination' when developing FNV.

Characters in fiction are always subject to change. Batman, for example, started out as not having a moral compass and didn't hesitate to kill criminals. Batman comics/works of fiction have bent the "no guns" rule http://toybox.io9.com/7-times-batman-has-bent-his-no-guns-rule-1634040693.

yes they seem a lot faster. Which is a glorious thing for my character's master target list and combat/marksman leveling up abilities.

Context. Things happen in Fallout for fear of the atom. Ghouls exist because it's the nightmare fate of those that survive the atom bomb ~to the 50's pop culture angle. [They are the walking dead/ghosts ~and not in the zombie sense of the terms. If anything Ghouls are Fallout's anti-elves.]

Ghouls and supermutants are infirm. Ghouls get 'all deformed' and monsterous ~and pitiable; not ~and become superhuman X-man villains.

They basically rot away and regenerate all day. Offhand I don't recall seeing a ghoul ever run in Fallout or Fallout 2; but they all walk like they have 2x4's for legs.

And?

And what?

(And why don't they sprint like frilled lizards?)

(I'd say it's unrealated, but... what pop 50's movie have you ever seen where ghouls didn't shamble about ~but instead could outrun Olympic sprinters?)

*The above post's point was that it was an infirmity, not a superpower. It's not even supposed to be for horror sake; it's supposed to invoke pity and/or sympathy for the unfortunates; (and for the regular humans, a relief that it isn't them). IE. like burn victims, not sword fodder in a Blade: vampire flick.

With feral ghouls, Bethesda has trivialized ghouls into generic post-apoc bogey men for sake of something else to shoot.

No one is arguing that, conversely you're saying that the only lore that can exist is whatever Bethesda owns and fabricates.

Yes they were, gotta love the reaver encounters

Without intruding, you do misunderstand or misconstrue my posts and most post i've seen you reply to.

Misunderstand probably isn't accurate, I think "obfuscate" is the apposite word, as you tend to bend logic or over-complicate/confuse everything.

For example I asserted that "Fallout 3 had poor writing" a typical argument from you is too say how the whole series has terrible writing and writing generally svcks in gaming.

You've posited a similar balderdash, that 'well all ghoul lore is messed up so who really cares if they are fast, jeez the devs can't even agree on their origins bla bla bla...' (this is an obvious paraphrasing).

Infirmity is vague and synonymous with 'flaw.' You can be physically unable to lift anything beyond your body weight, but very well capable of extreme speeds which makes up for your lack of muscular strength.

Whether ghoul's shambled around in the 50's is really irrelevant. Snyder, for example, mixed up the age old "zombies are slow" that Romero hammered down in Dawn of the Dead, by making his zombies fast movers. The ghouls of Fo3/FNV aren't x-men super villains, that's an absurd hyperbole.

I'm not going to fall back onto the argument of "it's Bethesda's game, they can do whatever they want," as absurd - yet true- as it may be. But, I will say that the original devs themselves felt fine with the representation of fast ghouls, as evidenced by the transition of Fo3 to FNV.

----

As an aside, can you name any computer's from 50's film era that portrayed computers in the manner that Fallout does (i.e. lo-fi sci-fi computers). I personally haven't seen many 50's movies that didn't portray them as massive, bulky machines (much like the ones used in the 40's/50's).

That it is; but of the rest... what's your point?

How can you think it irrelevant, when the world setting is bent to their expectations?

Is it your belief that they assumed that computers would get bigger over time?

It's not supposed to be the pop 50's in the future; it's supposed to be the pop 50's prediction of the future.

I stated my point already, it came right after the statement you yourself highlighted in orange.

It's irrelevant because that argument relies on the notion that the portrayal of ghouls or zombies in older genres is sacrosanct. It is not - especially in works of fiction.

But, no, my belief is not that they assumed computers would get bigger over time. My statement was merely a challenge to your callous statement regarding Fallout's thematic portrayal of ghouls being based on 50's retro futuristic film. The point being, the computer terminals of Fallout are far removed from 50's film representation of computers, and more akin to the lo-fi sci-fi that was presented in films like Ridley Scott's Alien and/or Bladerunner universe. They borrow themes from many eras, a lot from the 50's, but they don't need to copy it word for word.

in fact, fallout's computers ARE just these bulky machines (and also there in the game, but not as usable objects (except for a few exceptions like in the purifier end scene etc)) -

the things we hack, these are just their terminals.

Oh, yeah definitely. It's a mix, but even these big, bulky machines persist in contemporary culture (like server farms).

How exactly can anything be unable to lift more than its body weight, and yet move quickly?

Oh it is in this case, that's certain. First off, it was already presented that way twice; that's enough by itself. But secondly, you are positing that future authors can invent new interpretations of ghouls... and in this case, the setting is what the past authors expected of them.

The quote was separate of the point, and even labeled as unrelated to it.
It was an aside.

Maybe a little clarification for you and Gizmo, firstly there is no techinal limitation behind it. If you choose to do so you can wade through and create a huge horde of animation files to give creatures much more flexibility, but considering the role they had in previous games why go to the effort? But the Searchlight NCR trooper ghouls are still just creatures, all Obsidian did was create new meshes and rigged them to the existing ghoul skeleton.

It's actually easy to rigg to the human skeleton and I've rigged a skeleton to the human skeleton in the past, so there's no reason why it can't be done with the creature feral ghoul mesh. The only problem I would have is with the face movements due to .egt .egm and .tri files, community knowledge on them is almost non-existent, but I don't think that would be a problem for Beth.

Not literally, just an overblown example. But, the point remains. One's physical strength does not necessarily have cross-over to one's dexterity or speed.

You're not wrong that it was presented that way twice, I'm not contesting that. What I am contending however is that the devs of the originals themselves were not sure how they wanted ghouls/mutants to function (Possum already covered this). We saw the transition of ghouls becoming a faster enemy in Fo3, and CA/JE were A-Ok with it. It's a minor retelling of something that changed ghouls into a much faster enemy for players to deal with. I suspect it was largely a gameplay decision as well (largely to create a tense moment of having 3-4 ghouls about to crawl up your ass mid-reload).

Do you remember A New Hope, and how Lightsabers originally didn't cauterize wounds? It was a bloody affair. It wasn't until ESB which established the cauterizing nature of the LS. Things can change and still fit within the context of the universe.

Those are indeed the specific reasons.

And shouldn't have; and they shouldn't have been.
(If they needed a fast enemy, they should have made one, no co-opted an existing one. The ferals remind me of Benny Hill Show ~minus the canes and walkers.)

I remember that Han shot first.

No, Gizmo, Bethesda owns it and can now expand from the original, extremely limited lore. The original lore has nothing to do with the world context on the East Coast of the United States of America. Bethesda can introduce any form of Ghoul, Super Mutant, etc and get rid of the ridiculous Wild West spaghetti Western context of the original West Coast setting and its associated lore (get rid of it due to being an entirely different location with its own developments before and after the Great War, that is). Expanding information in a fictional world is a GOOD THING, but some people do not seem to understand this concept. Obviously, fan fiction and various individuals may have their own ideas, but it is the people who spend millions to actually own an IP who have the authority to offer official new lore. Anything else is unofficial.

As for Feral Ghouls being fast, they should be and easily are by nature. They are NOT zombies, after all. They simply look like zombies due to the nature of Ghoulification and its results on the physical body. The results are in no way the same as actual biological decay. It might be closer to the process of animals such as a snake shedding its skin (rough anology only).

Anyway, Feral Ghouls are merely Ghouls where the process has gone so far that their brains are essentially gone. Regular Ghouls are not faster than normal humans.

By the way, people who want entire squads of 20-30 Ghouls of various kinds spawning at once can have this in FO3 with Martigen's Mutant Mod. The Metro Central is very lengthy and tough at mid- to upper-levels of play because you have squads of several Feral Ghouls, Feral Ghoul Roamers, Glowing Ones, Ramblers, and Feral Ghoul Reavers. These groups will attack in a coordinated fashion, too, based on each type's individual abilities, so giving away your location without thinning their numbers first is pretty much suicide. The Museum of History if much worse than Metro Central due to the close quarters and difficulty in maintaining stealth status or running if cover is blown.

Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't you just contending that with Possum, and now you're guilty of doing the same thing by acting as a voice piece for what CA/JE should and shouldn't be ok with?

That is very disingenuous if that is the case, Gizmo...

The other issue is that Bethesda doesn't even stick to the way they represent them in their own game. Even in Fallout 3 they're depicted as rotting corpses and the butt of racism, yet they contradict themselves in gameplay.

So even if we discount everything from previous games and say, "Okay, Ghouls on East Coast make sense and they're a bit different now", there is still the major issue of Bethesda representing them as humans exposed to the harsh wastes for decades and in some cases even 200 years. Talking with ghouls and wastelanders you get the idea that they are rotting and therefore shouldn't have the durability and agility that they possess.

Considering they've been represented the way they were in several games before Bethesda took over, and even Bethesda themselves supported previous lore with ghouls falling a part (outside of gameplay of course)?

Not to mention the feral ghouls look like they made it out of some messed up concentration camp. Have you seen the movie Unbroken or documentaries about WWII concentration camps? I doubt they'd be running like they do especially after decades or centuries of rotting the way they have.

Fact remains that even with Bethesda's representation their gameplay is nonsensical. They should have made a different enemy to fill the role of feral ghouls plain and simple.

Not by any stretch.
(Disagreeing is not the same as gainsaying.)

*There is also yet another context here; are you aware of it(?),or did you just pluck that one post as ammo for an hypocrisy claim? (Honest question; not meant as a slight or jab.)

As for CA & SW... I've talked to both; I don't know them, but I do know that it's silly to shoot your own foot in the business.
(Also both of them are late comers; having worked on Fallout 2 & VB respectively (Prior to NV). Fallout 2 has its issues just as FO3 does.)

I haven't accused you of hypocrisy just yet, but I can if you would like me to?

This conversation is done I suspect (and has been for some time).

...And both of those games had the problem of needing ties to the past. Both had Ghouls... But in Fallout 2's case, the Necropolis ghouls were dying off by attrition. In VB... they actually went and retconned ghouls to allow born ghouls, when the lore stipulated that ghouls were sterile.

I thought it close enough, using the term disingenuous implies that. If it wasn't meant, then it wasn't meant.

** No one denies that they own it, and can ruin it (or improve it), but the lament is careless canon;
like if Brian Herbert or Christopher Tolkien officially added stuff that clashed with the lore or didn't recognize the elegance of it in their additions.

They could both have written https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull into the lore if they chose, but privileged or not, they really shouldn't; and neither should Bethesda ~though they can.

There is a limit at which things become silly, and suspension of disbelief falls apart. Overwriting established lore, and adding questionable additions, furthers it along at great pace.