Fallout Online's first playable race revealed via 'Pip-Pad'

Fallout Online's first official player race has been revealed by developer Interplay, and it looks like swarmy smoothskins won't be the only wastelanders making friends online.

Buried amidst The Armageddon Rag articles on Interplay's Pip-Pad site (Fallout's steampunk version of the Apple iPad), the studio has dropped a description of the game's Ghoul class. The sickly creatures are a diverse race that can hold their own in battle, and specialize in engineering and trade.

According to the description: "[Ghouls] enjoy fixing broken technology more than most survivors in the wastelands but that doesn’t prevent them from being dangerous opponents in combat. Ghouls have high radiation resistance and slightly better than normal Intelligence. Their gear tends to be in better condition than other races, but that’s not always true.”

The post also explains that players who choose to go ghouly will begin the game with two abilities, Complaint Department and Geiger Counted; as well as have access to two unique traits, Radiant One and Tech Wizard.

Interplay has been dropping hints about its upcoming Fallout MMO via cryptic emails for some time, but only recently have those hints translated into cold, hard details. Ripten has also dug up some interesting information from the studio's forums; namely, that guilds will be called 'guilds' (strange, we know), and that the new combat system will not be a clone of Bethesda's VATS system, but one designed specifically for the MMO space wherein one's SPECIAL characteristics will be calculated on the fly and have a huge influence on combat outcomes.

Nov 22, 2010

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