Disclaimer: I have not yet played Fallout 3 (soon I hope!).
GameSetWatch has a really interesting essay up about Fallout 3, it’s moral choices (or lack thereof) and why Bethesda made the game the way they did. Very much worth reading.
In Fallout 3, you cannot kill children.
…
Problematically, in singling out and self-censoring one particular type of ‘crime’ in his game Pagliarulo by implication justifies all the others as being non-gratuitous and necessary. Last night I blew the head from a homeless scavenger girl, one who’s barely into twenties. The slow motion camera tracked her head’s explosion before lingering on the crimson fountain spurting from her neck stump. Is this kind of interaction and feedback ‘socially responsible’? And so then what’s the difference to killing a minor?
I am not a fan of the new slow motion bloody thing they have going and I am not even using the Perk that makes it worse. Gore just doesn’t do anything for me at all.
I am really liking the game alot. It’s bloody that’s no doubt!
“…In real life, if you kill a child you will be imprisoned and, depending on where you live, killed for the crime. Not only that but, insanity aside, there will also be heavy physical, mental and emotional repercussions to your action, things that will stay with you throughout the rest of your life. How can these kinds of severe, complex outputs be communicated in a videogame?”
[quote from linked areticle in post]
Too much emphasis on ‘killing children’ in this article – there are plenty of moral choices in the game, nuke a whole town(Megaton) or not being just one.
I didn’t really like the articles approach but still worth discussing.
you can actually kill children in this game, ever blow up megaton like Osbon said? what do you think happens to poor little maggie? As much as they have tried to restrict it theres always a way around everything.