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.
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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?