Ghetto Goose wrote:
It seems the smaller animals altered by FEV improve in intelligence and can bread better, while larger animals (including humans) become impotent and stupid. So by theory there should be more smaller critters and very few larger ones.
Not neccesarily, look at Deathclaws. Smarter and Smarter. Humans though become dumber in most cases, but the FEV wasn't introduced to the whole world, remember?
Deathclaws were probably mutated form smaller animals (not many 5 foor something lizards) and became smarter and stronger, plus were not impotent. Humans are larger creatures, and became impotent a lot stronger but also a lot dumber.
Racoons were probably deathclaws.
Have a look at the FEV experiment holodisk 9see it on the dac main page)
It says smaller animals and insects became larger and stronger, while dogs and baboons started to become fucked up.
But radscorpions and geckos (i think) were radiation. Radiation just makes things bigger in the fallout world, while FEV makes it bigger and either dramatically changes your intelligence or you are importent or not.
I think this is because smaller animals HAVE TO
evolve to become stronger and smarter, to adapt to humans being a big threat. Humans meanwhile don't need to become smarter as most of the stuff is already there, they just need to be stronger and tougher.
Talking deathclaws-I like to think you can just pick any fallout game up and start playing it without playing a previous game. Same with movies. So if you're happily going along fallout 3 without playing 2 you'll wonder why a large lizard is talking, and everything else isn't.
personally I think deathclaws came from the FEV infected racoons that escaped, and being still
injected with FEV (not dipped) and having it run around there blood-stream they would have evolved themselves to the wasteland, beocming the perfect beats to survive against it.
They are the toughest, strongest critter. Also probably the largets and smartest.
They are lizards, perfect for the desert like area of the wastes
In fo:t mabye they became hairy because it was colder. Again, adapting to their enviroment
I assume the enclave experiments on them involved FEV, then bringing the ability to talk and lose the beast-like hostility like the DC's in the north areas.
In fo2 also they worked out the importance of a vault. It provided more safety than a cave, and also worked out how to use a little technology.
I think they could be pretty dangerous in fo3 if they worked out how to use armour and guns.