Well, personally I don't mind those bone bags.

Fallout NV also had the various feral ghools however they was not a very common enemy. On the balance FO3 had more friendly ghools too.

Why did we get good karma in NV for killing Ghouls?

I told myself it was for 'putting them out of their misery'

Sane ghouls are also humans, and often, because a sizable portion of them dates from the Great War, they are wiser than "normal" humans.

Yes, they are also humans, but I don't know how they will be treated in FO4....

Both options 1 and 2 apply. They're human, just with a radiation inflicted disease.

From an out of character perspective, the mistrust they get is well founded and fits very well. On one hand, they can go feral, posing a threat to any non-ghouls or mutants that happen to be nearby. On the other, even the feral ones are humans. It sort of goes to the Second Season of the Walking Dead T.V. Show. Are zombies still people even if they've lost their ability to reason and think?

I think Three-Dog put it perfectly:
"Just a friendly reminder to all you would-be bigots out there, ghouls are people too. You see, children, ghouls are simply humans who've been exposed to an ungodly amount of radiation and haven't had the good fortune to die. Sure, they may look like hideous zombies from an old monster flick, but their hearts, their souls, their tears, are all very much human. So please, if you meet one of the Capital Wasteland's many Ghouls, leave your prejudice at the door an your pistol in its holster. Ah, yes, one important caveat, kiddies. Those feral ghouls that prefer the dark, dank underground? They ARE basically mindless zombies. So kill as many as you damn well please."

Nah they were in Fallout and Fallout 2 as well. They were just called "Mindless Ghouls" in FO and "Ghoul Crazies" in FO2. There weren't as many of them as there were in the later games though.

Note that its no problem to have ghoul raiders or even more organized groups of hostile ghouls.

And the only group who was treated better in NV was the supermutants, in FO3 non hostile supermutants was rare, In NV they had an settlement and various stuff involving them.

The poll needs a bit of layers IMO.

What i don't want to see again is the crowd of hostiles running ghouls. If those guys are hostiles AND mindless, they would be killed at some point. Since they can't reproduce, their need to disapear quickly, so only the socialized ghouls remains.

About the socialized ghouls, i don't mind some racism there and then, but it should, first and foremost, depend on the various settlements, factions and societies that live in it.

Some would blend pretty well the three kind of people (normies, super-mutants, ghouls). Some others would have the three, but the ghouls and SM being treated as inferior/superior. Some would be very reluctant to have them, with occasionnal burst of violence from racist, and some others would simply just shoot on sight everything that don't look like a pure normal human. It depends on where you are.

I expect them to be treated the same, i.e. supposedly sad example of racism and xenophobia you're supposed to sympathise with no matter what they do, because they're victims of hatred Q_Q

It's becoming quite repetitive with the whole ghoul hatred. Fallout New Vegas went a different approach and had more ghouls among humans and there was no ghoul settlement where they isolated themselves away from 'dem smoothskins'. I like that, and I would prefer it if they continued that. It's been 204 years already, it's time to move on from the ghoul hatred. Some humans will share a disdain for ghouls, some will outright fear and/or loathe them whereas others will be indifferent towards them or even open towards them. But it's time to move on from "[censored] the ghouls". Necropolis, Gecko, Underworld, it's time to move on. Do a new storyline for them.

The only time I want to see this crap again is if they do Reservation from the Van Buren design documents. And even then humans actually went out and traded with Reservation, even Legion went out and traded with the ghouls there.

Other than that I don't want to see ghouls being so loathed by society that they're forced to live in squalor in some slum district. It has become a boring plot element.

I enjoy thinking about how a ghoul has managed to survive the Apocalypse, survive for 200 plus years in a nuclear wasteland just to run into me and my sledgehammer

I kill the zombies every chance I get, just hope there are not too many essential ones or ones where the whole town aggro's on you.

Given The fact that most ghouls you encounter Are feral, a healthy sceptizism would be rather neutral. I would shoot first and ask questions later if in doubt.

But then that rule would apply to most anyone in the wasteland.

Hopefully there's a good balance of varying sentiment towards ghouls. Some individuals/communities will outright hate ghouls.. for reasons ranging from the difference in appearance, to the potential for going feral, to mistrust, to envy even perhaps.. considering ghouls can live for hundreds of years and have no fear of radiation, etc. Some will tolerate ghouls. Some will accept them. And on the flip side of the coin, ghouls may hate normal humans, or be tolerant or accepting, etc.

As a metaphor for racism, Three Dog is kind of [censored] up. Because he 's basically saying that a few ghouls are civilised people, but that the vast majority of the ones we see are violent monsters who should be actively hunted down and murdered.

He also calls for support for the BOS, even though they actively hate ghouls too.

Weird, I was just playing Fallout 1 the other day and whenever they attacked me they were called "Ghoul", nothing more and nothing less. I assumed it was because of tension between humans and ghouls. What reinforced this was the color of the noncombative ghoul's responses to me, usually red responses mean they're close to aggressive.

Let's be honest though. Would you want to be around them regardless of whether or not they're civil or were once human?

I've never been around a rotting human corpse, but the smell of dead animals is horrendous. These ghouls were once human, true, but they are now rotting to the point of [in some cases] muscle, bone and organs being visible. We know from earlier games that they smell like rotting corpses and they attract a crap-ton of flies. I would assume they get maggots as well.

In Fallout 1 (I played with FixT or whatever its called though, maybe it changed some NPC titles?) I saw zombie ghouls and mindless ghouls in Fallout 1.

Still, mindless or "zombie" does not mean feral. The ghouls whose minds went simply went crazy. Some turned animalistic, but they were not the majority and they didn't suddenly become stronger, faster and healthier than the healthier relatively civilized ghouls.

I just opened my save in Necropolis. I see where my mistake was: When I scan them prior to combat they are labeled "Zombie Ghoul", but upon entering combat they are labeled "Ghoul" when taking or delivering damage.

My PC will treat them the same as my PC did in FO3. If they serve a purpose to me, fine, they live until said purpose is no longer needed. Once they serve their purpose, or just plain of no use to the PC, shoot 'em in the head.

I'm 87.4% sure they had feral ghouls in the first two games, except with a different name. I think it was insane ghoul or something. One of the cool things about ghouls is that nobody really knows how ghoulification or going feral works.

So are black people, so are apostates, so are homosixuals as are objectum sixuals just to name few various denominations and all of these groups are faced with invective and rancor in various cultures.Humans are bigots by their egocentric nature, if anything I'd expect notable sects of ghouls to rebel against smoothskins.

I'm not sure how much "ghouls are people" even matters, since I've murdered a huge number of ordinary humans in Fallout anyway.

This^^. Raiders are people too, but I have laid waste to a great many of them without prejudice.

Probably yes. They're basically Bethesda's 'go-to' with fantastical racism. I just hope it's treated better than in Fallout 3. Let's explore that, shall we?

+ Gob gets talked down by Moriarty. We don't see examples of other Megatonians talking down on Gob so it seems it's just one guy being a dike to Gob and for all we know, it's not even because Gob's a ghoul. And even if that were the case, one dude treating Gob like crap while the others don't hardly screams 'Poor Gob is pushed around by the humans!'

+ A ghoul community in DC talks about how the Smoothskins hate them. Except they let us in and accept us as an honorary Ghoul. We never see the BOS pick on them despite them saying such.

+ Roy and the others can't get into Tenpenny Tower because they're 'zombies'. This is the closest thing we can get to for racism and what happens? You can kill all the humans and let them in, or work out a peace deal between the two...only for the humans to be killed off anyway.

I find it highly sixist that only humans Are ghoulified. There should be sentient female ghoul horseraddishes too.