As part of the latest Fallout 76 map expansion into the land of Burning Springs, players will gain access to the New Vegas-inspired deserts of Ohio, more hordes of raiders, and a brand new bounty hunting system courtesy of your favourite ghoul, The Ghoul (played by Walton Goggins).
Cut to a sudden broadcast of Walton Goggins' close-up face filling my screen as he uttered the following: "Hello everyone. It's me. Walton Goggins, aka The Ghoul. Guess what? I am in Fallout 76, and I can't wait for you to play it. We're here in New York, and we just laid down the tracks, and I've seen what all of these people have been working on for so long, and it's extraordinary.
"We've had the time of our lives. And I just hope you enjoy playing it as much as we did making it for you. To be involved with Bethesda or the game Fallout on any level is a feather in my cap. But to be The Ghoul after finishing Season 2 in the actual videogame itself—there are rainbows coming out of my heart. We hope you enjoy Fallout 76, it's from the heart."
It sure does sound like a passion project, and one that I've been looking forward to ever since the giant Ghoul update earlier this year added playable ghouls and a whole town of no-noses up by the Hillside Cavern. I found it hard to believe that Bethesda would add all these new characters into the mix and somehow forget Goggins.
"Walton Goggins is a big fan of the franchise," creative director Jon Rush says. "So [the collaboration] came organically, really quickly—we had folks on our side working on the script, good folks on their side working on the dialogue script, and it just came together. Walton Goggins then took the script and really made it his own, made those adjustments, it was cool to see him go from Walton Goggins to The Ghoul."
There have been plans to tie together Fallout 76 and the Fallout TV show for some time now, even if they are the furthest apart timeline-wise, with the events of the show taking place 194 years after Fallout 76. But a couple of centuries is no time at all for ghouls.
"[Fallout] 76 may be the furthest back in time in the Fallout timeline, and the show is the furthest forward in time," Rush says. "But lucky for us, The Ghoul has kind of preserved himself through ghoulification. So, The Ghoul existing in the 76 timeline makes sense, although what he's doing in Ohio, or what I guess used to be Ohio, is still to be determined."
But enough about Walton Goggins (boo-hiss, I know), let's get into what he's actually doing in Burning Springs, as the bounty hunting collector. "Bounty hunting takes off in this sprawling settlement of Highway Town, located in the heart of Burning Springs," Rush says. "Highway Town is a huge community hub teaming with bustle and a lot of hustle. The word around the wasteland is that there's a ghoul somewhere around here paying caps for some work."
There'll be Runt Hunts and Head Hunts for players to pick between at the Last Resort (an aptly named shady bar), the former being easier than the latter. These will send you off on bounty hunting quests across Appalachia and Burning Springs as you hunt down people of interest and complete tasks given to you by perhaps the current most popular ghoul in Fallout (sorry, Raul)—Walton Goggins' The Ghoul.
"Completed Head Hunts give our bounty hunters the chance to earn one of dozens of unique new mods benefiting human and ghoul play styles alike," Rush explains. "Grunt hunts and Head Hunts are unique experiences to the Burning Springs region and take place randomly in one of 20 preset custom locations that are thematically resonant with the ghoul. Bounty hunting is destined to be a hit with our players."
There's also the added benefit of a new community hub for players, in the form of Highway Town. "Everybody's going to be going into Last Resort, gathering Grunt Hunts, getting Head Hunts, and we haven't really had a space like that before," the lead producer, Bill LaCoste, says. "I don't know if it was by accident or if it was on purpose, but that's what it's created, and I think that's a really cool aspect of what we've got there."
I, for one, will definitely be hanging around Highway Town and the Last Resort if it means I can get a look at the new Fallout 76 version of The Ghoul, and I have a feeling that I won't be the only player with those intentions either. Just remember everyone, there are no orderly queues in the Wasteland—it's every smoothskin and ghoul for themselves.
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