Fallout 3 & kids

[Chaosut]

Well, i going to try my best to approach this as maturely and seriously as possible. So here i go... Basically, i was somewhat dissapointed by the invincibility of kids in Fallout 3, i mean it's not a big deal, but it's just one of those small details i would've changed if i could've. Before you accuse me of wanting to murder kids through some sort of repressed desire, it's not so much the fact that i wanted to do it but more the fact that i wanted to have the freedom to do it if i chose so. As you know, fallout 3 is all about freedom, and most of the people in the game you can kill unless they're essential to a mission or the story. I guess it also seems a bit odd that killing teenagers, adults, elderly people, animals and super mutants is okay but killing kids is just off-limits. Now as i said, it's not so much that i want to go around killing kids because that's not why i play Fallout 3, but just knowing that your freedom isn't restricted. Imagine if elderly people and teenagers were invincible too, it would just seem a bit hindering. But this is just my opinion, hopefully i won't regret making this thread down the track (as i sometimes do with the thread idea's i get)

 

[megapenguinx]

I think there is some clause in the ESRB that is killing kids will give your game an AO rating but I'm not sure..

 

[Chaosut]

I know how you feel. I like the freedom to do things I wouldn't. Just knowing that I can is good enough.

Yeah, just knowing that you can would've been nice. I mean it wasn't a huge detractor, but i guess Fallout 3 allows the player freedom in almost every other aspect. It just seemed a little bit out of place personally.

 

[Chipperz]

I totally agree. It doesn't help that all the kids in Fallout 3 are about as annoying as you can get without having them bugging you in the middle of Behemoth fights.

Spoiler

Also, I recently played through as a bad guy, who's main shtick was shooting anyone who wouldn't co-operate with him, which works for pretty much 90% of the game. I got to Little Lamplight and... Oh wait! I have to jump through hoops for the Mayor because my speech isn't high enough!

At least you can kill that teenager who asks you to help him get to Big Town.

 

[Chaosut]

I think there is some clause in the ESRB that is killing kids will give your game an AO rating but I'm not sure..

Oh okay, i guess if it would've caused a big uproar or stopped alot of people from getting to play the game, it might not have been worth it then. But i imagined that the game was intended for a fairly mature age anyway with the ability to blast off limbs in a fairly messy way, but i don't really know anything about the rating system.

 

[megapenguinx]

I think there is some clause in the ESRB that is killing kids will give your game an AO rating but I'm not sure..

Oh okay, i guess if it would've caused a big uproar or stopped alot of people from getting to play the game, it might not have been worth it then. But i imagined that the game was intended for a fairly mature age anyway with the ability to blast off limbs in a fairly messy way, but i don't know anything about the rating system.

I'm pretty sure that's it. Either that or the public would just go on a frenzy and call it a murder simulator because you can kill children. I'll have to dig around and check (but later when I'm not about to go to sleep)

 

[Chaosut]

I think there is some clause in the ESRB that is killing kids will give your game an AO rating but I'm not sure..

Oh okay, i guess if it would've caused a big uproar or stopped alot of people from getting to play the game, it might not have been worth it then. But i imagined that the game was intended for a fairly mature age anyway with the ability to blast off limbs in a fairly messy way, but i don't know anything about the rating system.

I'm pretty sure that's it. Either that or the public would just go on a frenzy and call it a murder simulator because you can kill children. I'll have to dig around and check (but later when I'm not about to go to sleep)

Cool, thx for clearing that up. I guess being such a widely played gam it might've caused quite an uproar.

 

[Flour]

Some adults are unkillable.

I found that out when I made a character that was forced to leave the vault and hates her father for it, after a few weeks in the wasteland she's no longer wants answers, but she wanted him dead.
Guess what happens when I finally found James?

At least there are mods [http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=376] for the PC version that fix these problems [http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3943].

 

[Khazoth]

Its fear, you kill a kid and you get slapped with an AO rating.


A complete commercial failure is not worth the extra bit of freedom.

 

[CoziestPigeon]

This was a hot topic about a year ago.

 

[Korolev]

I'm pretty damn sure Bethesda made the kids EXTRA annoying because they know you can't kill them (without a mod). Granted, pretty much everyone in that world is a jerk, but the kids are often incredibly arrogant and snotty, and have the most grating voices of all the characters in that game - even Super Mutant snarls are more pleasant to listen to than the shrill, whiny, voices of the kids at little lamplight.

Yes, of course, Fallout 3 should have treated the kids as any other NPC. But can you imagine the "fallout" (ahahahahahah I'm a comedic genius) from letting the PC kill NPC kids? Granted, I remember people saying that you were allowed to off virtual kids in the first 2 fallout games, but that was way back in the 90s, before FoxNews and CNN and The Daily Mail started going on about "SeX-boxes" and "Lesbian aliens". They just can't do it anymore, because the "news" people are out there scouring for any little scrap of interesting information to fill the huge gaping time slot left in 24 hour news programs after all the REAL news has been reported.

I imagine it goes something like this:

24 Hour News Manager: "Well, we covered Darfur, N.Korea, the recession and swine flu, but it's only 2:00pm! What the hell are we going to talk about!? Help!"

Staffer 1: "We could repeat it again"

Manager: "We already did that! Twice! And it's still only 2:00pm. Quick, write up a fluff piece of no consequence to which we can use to fill in the void!"

Staffer 2: "Why can't we just do real reporting on deserving issues that don't get much attention?"

Manager: "Because REAL reporting is HARD, and the average Television viewer wants to be entertained and outraged, rather than informed!"

Staffer 1: "We could run a piece about a cat called mittens in East London that eats only a specific brand of Chocolate pudding!?"

Manager: "Not good enough! What else can we do? Hurry, the audience can only stomach so much of Richard Quest's face and voice!"

Staffer 2: "I heard that a video game let you kill a completely fictional, virtual kid that has no feelings or emotions and the game is only played by adults...."

Manager: "You've just earned yourself a promotion Staffer 2! It's PERFECT! We'll repeat it twice and then get Jack Thompson on the line to yell at the camera for a half an hour and then we'll repeat it four times. Crisis Averted."

 

[VitalSigns]

Realistically, the uproar from the gaming nazi's would be too much to bare. Admittedly a lot of those little shits would have been killed in Lamplight, and It wouldn't have just been me, admit it.

 

[manaman]

Worst, and something nobody mentioned, you can kill them in previous games in the same series.
I killed a kid who pickpocketed me in Fallout 2 by placing a bomb in his inventory. I was hoping the little bastard would give it to the guy running the child thief ring killing him without me getting credit for it.

Ah the days of really having some freedom. I wandered around in that game so long I forgot what I was supposed to be doing until I started getting old man visions about the dying tribe. I was like "oh shit time to get back to that second town I visited and get back on track."

 

[Garla Mapit]

Fallout 1 and 2 allowed you to kill children. Infact, if you did kill a child you instantly took a huge negative karma penalty and received the "Child Killer" trait. Anytime you approached any kid in the game they ran screaming from you that you were a murder. Also, almost every good person in the game turned on you. You became the epitome of evil to the people. But you could still do it. I guess when they are little sprite on the screen it's okay to kill them but give them names, faces, and voice overs and it's a little too real? I dunno. I wish it could have been done. No need to obliterate them like you do with the bloody mess perk, but some of those kids were down right annoying and it's really hard to back up your threats of violence and death when you are the Scourge of the Wastes but you can't actually do anything more than give them a bump on the head. Little Lamplight was like a just bluff for my character apparently. Those kids could kill me, but I couldn't have stopped them with a tank.

 

[Chaosut]

Its fear, you kill a kid and you get slapped with an AO rating.


A complete commercial failure is not worth the extra bit of freedom.

Yeah, does seem to be the case

You can kill Maggie and the sheriffs kid if you blow up Megaton, but thats the only place.

It's a little odd though that you can turn a town of about 50 to glass with a nuke but you can't kill a 10 year old who keeps threatening to shoot you.

. Yeah, the ethics of that situation does seem a bit odd. I suppose it's prboably got something to do with what people are used to see in video games, films and even books. Seeing a early 20's/30's or mid-aged male get killed is pretty common in say, an action film or game is pretty unsuprising. In my opinion, violence is violence, and if you going to give the player freedom to kill elderly, animals and so fourth then why should children be seen as the only ones who are immune.

 

[Khazoth]

I have another, quite valid question...

Why the fuck do you WANT to kill children? I mean this is kindof twisted even to me.

As for the discussion of morality (I.E blowing up a town vs shooting the mayor of little lamplight).. Answer me the question of why killing spanish peasant villagers with racially insensitive content was okay.. But the exact same deal with african villagers is not. Matter of fact, answer me the question of why its okay to portray a game where you can commit genocide is fine, but five seconds of bare ass isn't?


Why?


Because the entire human race is a genetic step away from swinging off tree branches and flinging shit at each other. Nothing good can ever come out of the human race unless its an accident or Bioware.



(Am I the only one who was never really able to play an evil character? I mean I could do things like blow up megaton and kill wandering merchants but when it came to being a total dick to people in conversation, expecially the early vault stage, I just couldn't be mean, expecially to James or Amata.)