Zomblog 8: Argyle is the Best

As has been discussed before, not all Zombies are evil. We’ve named examples throughout the course, but one thing we’ve never discussed is the idea of a heroic zombie. That’s because there aren’t many.

But I found one. Oh, boy did I find one.

That’s right ladies and gents and nonbinary people, we’re going back into the world of Fallout. I’ve talked about Fallout a lot; I even wrote my second paper on it. Surely, there must not be much left to discuss when it comes to Fallout’s Ghouls. Well, pretty much, except for the fact that this guy exists:

That, my fiendish friends, is Argyle. While he may not be the most important Ghoul in Fallout, nor the only one to save lives and fight for the greater good, he is the most badass Ghoul that nobody remembers. Argyle isn’t a major character. You can’t even meet him. His exploits are nearly unavoidable.

For those who don’t know, Fallout is designed as an anachronistic setting where certain dated elements of the past exist in a post-apocalyptic United States alongside futuristic elements. The best way to explain this perhaps is to show you one of the game’s robots:

They’re clearly intentionally designed to harken back to the way a super powerful robot may have looked in a pulp serial or B-Movie. This is important to understand in order to really get Argyle.

Fallout’s soundtrack is made up of Golden Oldies like Cole Porter and Dean Martin. These songs are being listened to by your character (who you can design and name yourself) on a radio playing out of a device on your wrist called a Pip-Boy. Pip-Boys are sort of like really shitty apple watches. They’re huge and clunky, but they fit the aesthetic of the world. The radio broadcasts are being created by people across the wasteland. Most notable of these guys is Three Dog, a guy in the wastes of Washington DC who is a major character in Fallout 3. Three Dog not only plays music, but also pulpy radio dramas centered around Herbert Dashwood and his trusty sidekick: Our guy, Argyle. Surprisingly, they're real characters in-universe.

Argyle’s pre-war, meaning he existed before the nuclear war and was transformed into a ghoul by the radiation. Apparently he met Dashwood under less-than-stellar circumstances. You see, Dashwood accidentally stole Argyle’s girlfriend. Despite this, Argyle became extremely loyal to Dashwood, following him and aiding him on his adventures.

Argyle was skilled in unarmed combat, being trained in Kung-Fu and capable of disarming explosive slave collars (slavery is rampant in the Wastelands). The pairs adventures aren’t all detailed, but with the level of fame they retained (popular enough to have a radio drama based on them) we can only assume they were pretty rad. Argyle is stated to be strong enough (at least according to the likely exaggerated radio dramas) to quickly dispatch a Super Mutant. That’s no small feat, as Supermutants are massive cannibalistic Orc-Hulk guys who crush people with rebar pipes and then devour them.

Look, I don't want to fight one.

The big story, the one which matters to the player, is the “Rockopolis Crisis”. Rockopolis was a secretive underground settlement led by King Crag, the location of which few knew. That few happened to include Dashwood and Argyle. After the duo escaped from a group of slavers, they rescued a woman to be a fellow hostage named Penelope Chase, who tricked Dashwood into revealing the location of Rockopolis and how to enter. It turns out she was actually the leader of the Slavers, and her minions were headed to the location Dashwood provided.

Argyle rips her heart out with his bare hands.

The duo travel to Rockopolis to warn King Crag, who becomes justifiably angry and orders the inhabitants of Rockopolis to attack the duo. They try to escape, and are separated. Dashwood makes it out alive but, tragically, Argyle dies.

Years later, an elderly Dashwood hires the player’s character, nicknamed in-game “The Lone Wanderer” to find Argyle in order to give him closure. Dashwood refuses to believe Argyl is dead. While he is wrong, the player is able to bring him some closure when they find Argyl’s corpse.

This is especially nice of the Lone Wanderer who is currently on a mission to find their father (voiced by Liam Neeson) and also defend the inhabitants of the Wasteland from the Enclave, Nazi-like remnants of the jingoistic and McCarthy-ish pre-war United States government.

The Enclave seem like nice people.

Good of he/she/they to take some time away from that to help an old man come to terms with his loss.

Argyle shows us something. Not all zombies are evil. Some are kung-fu manservants who fight monsters. I assume Argyle is based on Kato from The Green Hornet, being a minority, a servant of the hero, and an accomplished martial artist in a radio programme. With the amount of pop culture references in Fallout (Deckard’s gun from Blade Runner is in New Vegas, the whole thing is inspired by A Boy and His Dog, there’s even an Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull reference!) I doubt this isn’t the case.