Radioactive spiders that live in the clouds and bite lightning bolts duh.

It's cause it's more immersive like that. And stuff.

Because I happen to believe in my ideas enough to stand by them until release day.

I had already made some amendments to the original details on my thread following some constructive and well-researched feedback from Helljumper. This is because his comments were based on evidence from one of the previous games in the series, as opposed to personal opinion or random insults. And so I have no intention of "conceding and being wrong" just because you tell me to. If I'm proved wrong when the game releases, is it really that much of a big deal? To be honest, no. But if I'm proved right on this as well as my other predictions, I suppose that will be a fairly big deal.

Well the previous games have no example of the Solar Powered perk granting a area-affect weapon.

Nor do the previous games provide any compelling evidence that the perk icon both serves as a reference to story line events nor even is it really indicative of the perks affect itself. Read Adamantium Skeleton, Cyborg, Little Leaguer, Fortune Finder, Infiltrator etc. And where they are explanatory they are because they are straight forward, Size Matters is someone holding a minigun and it increases the Big Guns skill, not because a thrown baseball also "appears" similar to looking through a telescope - hence a bonus to zooming.

Honestly, though - there's a lot of ways you could take that quote from Todd. You have to admit it's something of a leap to take that quote as meaning you even will be hit by lightning in the first place. So speculation #1 is that it's even possible to be struck by lightning in the game. Any conclusions from that as pointing to it being possible to be turned into a ghoul in-game is running with that unconfirmed speculation.

Myself, I think this is a long shot. My assumption is that radiation storms are accompanied by relevant atmospheric visuals. If you get caught in a radiation storm without protection your radiation meter will go up - I think that's pretty much going to be it though. Maybe I'm right, maybe you're right, we'll just have to wait and see.

Personally, I'm hoping "ghoulification" doesn't ever make it into a Fallout game. There's really not supposed to be much of an upside to being a Ghoul. Your life is misery, you're constantly decomposing, everyone hates you. In Elder Scrolls if you got turned into a Vampire or a Werewolf you at least got some powers to play around with and you were given a reason as to why you might want to keep that affliction. But in those cases you were curing a magical curse and the path to that cure was more magic. In Fallout if you stopped being a Ghoul then you're still a partially decomposed human that would likely immediately die from that advanced state of decomposition. (Though I will offer the caveat that you could solve that potential issue with the magical "Science!")

I could see potential in a spin-off Fallout game that follows a main character that is a Ghoul and thereby could do the theme justice. But otherwise we're talking about needing to change the reactions of just about every NPC in the game and altering or barring most of the quests in the game to take your new status into account. There are cities that won't even allow Ghouls to enter, after all - and many characters would not even be willing to talk to you; others would attack on sight. I just don't see Bethesda being able to go far enough to do the concept justice for a random status change without basing an entire game around it.

Exactly this. To become a ghoul isn't a cool feature that grants you beneficial pros to combat its cons like becoming a vampire or werewolf, it's just complete downsides. No doubt you will probably be granted some sort of significant radiation resistance, but there are plenty of other means in-game to achieve that anyway. Just seems like there is nothing desirable about it from both a gameplay perspective and certainly an in-universe perspective.

Indeed but that doesn't justify what-ever has convinced Gkzz7 that achieving the maximum perk rank in his Solar Power would allow one to activate a similar attack at-will. Considering that he has said he is "99%" sure that his predictions will be in the game I am merely curious as to what has inspired such resolute conviction aside from a few heavily blurred pictures.

I'm a bit unsure as to what my preference would be regarding ghoulification. It would certainly be interesting, but at the same time, I wouldn't want for it to take any dialogue resources away from where they could be used more appropriately. I suppose there are ways they could make it work, but I can't off-hand think of them. It's possible that some players wouldn't mind playing a character that has mostly downsides, but there could be some unique ways they could create upsides as well. There could be some special options one could get whenever they're around a fellow ghoul, or perhaps radiation could even heal the player or provide S.P.E.C.I.A.L. bonuses temporarily. These are just some thoughts, though.

Ghoulism has already been confirmed. It is just a matter of will it be available November 10 or sometime later with a Ghoulism mod. Although, I am leaning towards a Ghoulism mod since doing thousands of lines for both voiced protagonists and the npcs reacting to the ghoulified voiced protagonists will require a lot of extra work.

No, becoming a ghoul has not been confirmed.

Did Miora Brown's voice change after she became a ghoul?

edit: Checked the Wiki and apparently not, also the NV vegas ghoul cult leader I think also didn't have a 'ghoul' voice.

Have you checked out the link in my signature? Or Gkk7z's perk speculation thread? Nearly all of his speculations are backed up by quite a bit of information - a lot more information than "a few heavily blurred pictures". And yes, I think we will be able to play as a ghoul, as Bethesda has been listening to the fan requests.

I've a strong feeling that most, if not all of these predictions will turn out to be correct. November 10th will tell us for certain.

@Gkk7z - I'll take my payout in caps, please. lol, jk

Doing it in a way that doesn't make them sound unnaturally affected is, though. I could add any kind of pitch shift or distortion to a voice to make it sound robotic, or demonic, or just fuzzy, but I couldn't make Brian Delaney sound like Tom Waits.

Thank you for the vote of confidence. Although I haven't had time to post evidence for every single suggestion, to be fair there are quite a few! But I have tried to back up at least some with information that can be verified. And as you said, we'll find out for certain on November 10th just how close I am with them all.

PS: caps are fine lol!

Helljumper makes a really good point here! I wonder how much the player character's voice would actually need to change, if at all.

Where is the picture that the speculation about lightning causing ghoulification is coming from?

If you mean the icon on the chart, then it is the one at 9 Endurance, just above Solar Powered. What it shows is VB walking away from a nuclear blast which has a small localised explosion at it's base, which is also suggestive of a lightning strike. Also, if you look carefully at VB, his stance, skin color, and facial expression look altered, as if he has been affected by the blast. He actually looks like he could be an extra from The Walking Dead, which suggests possible ghoulification.

Also, due to a number of other correlations on the chart, the position of this icon is highly significant. If we take the three icons at E9, C9, and I9, we have Nuclear Strike, Wasteland Warrior, and Cyborg respectively. Each of these introduce what I believe is a major new gameplay feature, namely playing as a ghoul, riding a mount, and playing as a cyborg, which would include the ability to heal using electronic components, as well as parts taken from synths.

This is, of course, speculation. But it is based not only on evidence I have explained here, but also a detailed anolysis of available features from previous games (including Skyrim), as well as features that have been requested by fans or added via DLC or mods.

I'm less sceptical of ghoulification being in the game now, for me at least there is a plausable way for the player to be 'cured' of ghoulism through synthetic muscles and skin (via the human like android program), the voice would not need to change and there appears to be a unique specific path to ghoulism in the Boston region through the nuclear lighting strikes.

I've no idea if it is in the game of course, but then nobody but Bethesda knows at this point.

Also to quote myself on another topic...

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Nuclear_Anomaly

Same icon. I think this is what the perk will entail.

Indeed. My detailed anolysis also confirms the possibility that it is simply Nuclear Anomaly. Based on strong evidence from previous games that it is the same image for that perk.

http://i.imgur.com/WBRA8Fv.jpg the icon is a bit different. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's just Nuclear Anomaly or that goulification is in. They're probably not going to reveal what any of these perks are until the game launches in November.