Fallout 3 - Serious Business (UPDATED: Child Killing)

Link · **Posted:** Sun Nov 16, 2008 10:05 pm

So, this is more or less a debate topic I made.

Does it make sense for Bethesda to remove the "nuke Megaton" side-quest (practically the ONLY major questline you can do) in the Japanese release of the game? I understand renaming the "Fat Man" weapon, since that CAN be considered insensitive, but... seriously, removing 1/10th of the game, if not more, by removing both the character for the quest line and the quest itself? That seems a little overboard if you ask me. It's not like you can hide the fact that Fallout 3 is in a post apocalyptic world or nuclear weapons or anything. I mean, fuck, Metal Gear Solid (which is a Japanese game) FOCUSES around nuclear warfare, and even the tragedy of Hiroshima (Otacon's ancestry, etc.)

Also, should Japanese content be more filtered for American consumption, such as 9/11 references and other such stuff, like Gantz or Read or Die for example?

cameramanjoe · **Joined:** Thu May 29, 2008 1:01 am **Posts:** 435

i dont think anything should be filtered. People should be aware of what they are buying. If there are some games that have some controversy they should remain how the programmers and creators intended them to be

Producer_Shane · **Joined:** Sat Jun 07, 2008 5:13 pm **Posts:** 92

cameramanjoe wrote:

i dont think anything should be filtered. People should be aware of what they are buying. If there are some games that have some controversy they should remain how the programmers and creators intended them to be

Agreed, f*** filters

Fox · **Joined:** Tue May 27, 2008 1:07 am **Posts:** 1509

I thought Japan didn't have much interest in games made in the US, some high profile titles like Gears of War 2 aren't even being released there.

Since the game is called Fallout, censoring the whole nuclear weapons part is just stupid.

Shady-Lurker · **Posted:** Sun Nov 16, 2008 11:15 pm

What's the deal with Japan lately? I don't know if I've just had the wrong impression about them for a long time but it seems like recently they've gotten really into the whole censorship thing. No More Heroes, Fallout 3, other things that I can't seem to remember right now.
Like I said, maybe I'm just ignorant and they've been coming down on violence for a while, but I always thought the land of dating sims and animated tentacle porn was extra lenient with this type of stuff (except the whole poorly censored porn thing).

I can sort of understand the whole nuclear bomb thing. It was a terible thing for sure and we havn't gone through it so I'm not about to tell them that it's time to move on and get over it, but like you said, Metal Gear revolves around it in a big way. Not to mention that in Fallout it's totally optional. Nothing is forcing them to nuke anything.

Eh, either way it's stupid IMO.

It'll go pretty unnoticed anyway I bet. From what I understand Japan doesn't care about first person games very much. Some do for sure, but it's not like they're censoring Final Fantasy.

Link · **Posted:** Mon Dec 22, 2008 12:38 pm

Just to spice this topic up a bit. Do you think it's "unfair" that Fallout 3 disabled the ability to kill children and/or do you think it's fucked up that people WANT to kill children in a game?

Crittbeast · **Joined:** Tue May 27, 2008 1:58 pm **Posts:** 1186

I think it's dumb that you can't kill children in the game.

Why the hell would they make an area like little lamplight and then disable to ability to kill children?

Mr Crix · **Posted:** Mon Dec 22, 2008 1:43 pm

There shouldnt be any real reason to kill kids in Fallout 3. The only time I had to do so is when I needed to kill Dave from the Kingdom of Dave or whatever it was because for some reason after I killed all the adults the kids started to attack me and then flee. After like 20min of walking away from them the 3 kids still followed me and would randomly attack and then run away. It was very annoying, so I looked for a bear or something to kill them but it wouldnt. So I just got pissed and killed them.

CRX Forum

Link · **Posted:** Mon Dec 22, 2008 1:52 pm

crxforum wrote:

There shouldnt be any real reason to kill kids in Fallout 3.

Plot wise there isn't, but just for malicious evilness purposes.

householdutensils · **Posted:** Mon Dec 22, 2008 3:59 pm

Killing kids is pointless, in any of the games that you can do it in (you could do it in a lot of the older iso crpgs)....their drops suck ass.

Mr Crix · **Posted:** Mon Dec 22, 2008 5:24 pm

The only game where it seems to be a benefit that Ive seen is Fable II when you sacrafice them to the Church of Whatever Darkness Cult Thingy. You get more exp than regular sacrafices.

CRX Forum

Kaiserhawk · **Posted:** Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:20 pm

Well I grew up with the censored Euro version of Fallout which had NO childeren so I don't care about inabillity to kill them.

Also Imagine the media storm that would boil.

householdutensils · **Posted:** Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:35 pm

Kaiserhawk wrote:

Well I grew up with the censored Euro version of Fallout which had NO childeren so I don't care about inabillity to kill them.

Also Imagine the media storm that would boil.

You can get a patch for that at NoMutantsAllowed.

Fireblood Fox · **Posted:** Tue Dec 23, 2008 8:58 pm

Hey I love people, young and old, but some of those kids in Fallout really deserve a good whoopin'. Also, think about it, if these kids start murdering adults, what's up with that? They can't be killed by the adults, or even the kids themselves! The funny thing is, I remember watching Zero Punctuation and hearing him rip on Fable 2 for not being able to kill kids, but he never mentioned that in his Fallout 3 review. I don't know, it's rather unnecessary, but at the same time, being prevented from doing something in a free-roaming game feels a bit....odd. Adults, poor elders, and animals are cool to kill for an evil guy, but those annoying little punks can get away with anything and not get their dues.

In general, screw censorship. I had no idea they took so much out of the Japanese version.

Dr Dib · **Joined:** Tue May 27, 2008 4:35 pm **Posts:** 227

Well it is possible they removed child killing because of a possible Ao rating. The first one came out in 1997 when the ESRB was still in its infancy, so they did not have to worry about much recourse. Plus it was probably hard to see what was going on. Today if they gave Fallout 3 an M rating with child killing it could turn ugly for them. But when it comes down to it, I'd only see killing a kid in a game a necessity if they are really annoying.

Gunfanic · **Posted:** Wed Dec 31, 2008 5:32 am

If there were to be any child killing of any sort, politicians would most likely be at this game and Bethesda throat. There would even be a possible AO rating on this game since the ESRB would go nuts on it. To put it short, no child killing in any video game unless you want problems to occur.

Umbra · **Posted:** Fri Jan 02, 2009 1:51 pm

Child Killing:

Well i guess Bethesda just wanted to save itself a lot of heat from the general media, and i can agree with that decision. Not that many players feel the need to kill any children in Fallout 3 and the "bad press" Bethesda would have gotten for including this feature, would not have been worth it. (Besides, do we really need another Jack Thompson?)

Censorship in Japan:

As far as the quest is concerned i don't think they should have changed anything, it had nothing to do with Japan. Bethesda's self imposed censorship was not necessary.
However i do understand them changing the name of the Fat Man since that is a direct reference to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

Release in India:

Microsoft knows what it is doing (that may be an oxymoron :-D

). India is an important market for Microsoft, for them it was a simple business decision.

Drug references:

Censorship boards are the same everywhere, they act like self-righteous confused monkeys, and Australia's OFLC is no different. And while gameplay wise changing Morphine to Med-X is not a big deal, it's annoying that people don't realise that games are just that... GAMES

Link · **Posted:** Fri Jan 02, 2009 2:00 pm

Yeah, there's a mod and renames the item to Morphine actually, which is cool I guess. It just doesn't seem to match up with any of the other fictional drug names now, haha.

nomad · **Posted:** Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:43 pm

first off the censorship:

I don't see the point really, MGS2 did have a madbomber named "FAT MAN" and they did pretty well. and EA did release MOH: Rising Sun a few years back....making you kill japanese soldiers. so...to hell with the censorship its about the developers morals now than censorship.

children killings:

i don't mind it adds thrill to it, its better to do it virtually than IRL. but then again .... i need my morals straighten

hellman101 · **Joined:** Tue May 27, 2008 4:56 pm **Posts:** 147

I really don't mind that the game was somewhat gimped for it's Japanese release. Bethesda did what they had to do for the game to be released in the country, and everyone should be able to experience the awesomeness of this game. Blowing up Megaton or not.

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Fallout 3 - Serious Business (UPDATED: Child Killing)

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