The Amazon Prime debut ofFalloutis creeping ever closer, with the whole series being available for streaming beginning April 11. Many fans of the franchise may be glad to hear thatallFalloutepisodesare releasing at once, instead of on a weekly schedule. That means fans can enjoy the wasteland however they see fit.
Fallout’s plot revolves around three characters. The first is Lucy who, in true franchise fashion, is a Vault Dweller who must travel to the surface world in pursuit of an important plot element. The MacGuffin this time around is her father, Hank, though it remains to be seen how it develops from there. During her time in the wasteland, she’ll also encounter Maximus—a member of the Brotherhood of Steel—and The Ghoul, who is a bounty hunter. It’s all in the name when it comes to The Ghoul’s wasteland experience, but the story also explores who he was in pre-Great War America: an actor named Cooper Howard. Ahead of the show’s debut, Game Rant spoke with The Ghoul/Cooper Howardactor Walton Gogginsabout his experience with these two characters.
From what’s been shown of Cooper, he appears to be a good-hearted person and actor of the time, and this contrasts with the more daunting looks of The Ghoul. Playing both characters means Goggins has to demonstrate a certain range to show that these two distinct people are actually one and the same, and doing so all began with Cooper Howard:
“When we first started talking about this, it was more important for me to understand who Cooper Howard was than it was The Ghoul. I had to understand everything about Cooper to understand what The Ghoul could be 200 years later.”
From civilization to wasteland, from good looks to a radiated countenance, and from one life experience to threefold that, The Ghoul likely faced numerous untold tragedies in the 200 years between the bombs dropping and theFalloutshow’s place on the timeline. Still, they both needed to carry certain attributes. Goggins described both as having a sense of humor and an effortless charisma, but noted how one thing in Cooper - the seeds of righteous anger - manifest in The Ghoul, who only has a shred of his humanity left. The Ghoul is what Cooper, and perhaps anyone, becomes when everything is taken away in such a manner.
Fallout’s Cooper Howard and The Ghoul
Goggins also added that his intention is for the two characters “to speak to each other over time,” as the clips shown of Cooper Howard so far may somehow relate toThe Ghoul. For 200 years or so, The Ghoul has seen and done it all from comedic and absurdist situations to acts of survival. Goggins described The Ghoul as someone “moving through this world the way that one moves through this world, which is just in order to survive. Until something changes, right?”
Goggins references a key moment for hischaracter in theFalloutTV show, which will remain unspoiled here, that sort of encapsulates who The Ghoul is. The instance is emotional from a viewer’s perspective, but also emotional from the character’s perspective and the actor’s perspective.
“That is very important. It moved me deeply that day.”
It remains to be seen how audiences received Cooper Howard/The Ghoul, but everything from the plot to the characters screamsclassicFallout. Game fans are likely to enjoy it, as well as newcomers to the franchise like Goggins himself. Either way, The Ghoul’s narrative has already impacted at least one person, if not quite a few more ahead of its release, and there’s little more you can ask for than that.
TheFalloutTV show airs on April 11.
Fallout
Fallout is a post-apocalyptic RPG franchise created by Interplay Entertainment and developed by Black Isle Studios, before Bethesda Softworks took over the IP in 2004. The series features a retrofuturistic style following a nuclear war that devastated the game’s world. Players typically inhabit a Vault Dweller, someone who remained safe in an underground shelter, appearing in the post-apocalyptic world where a problem needs to be solved. While the older games were more tactical RPGs, Fallout 3 took the franchise into the first person shooter genre, while also retaining the RPG elements.
