I’m not an evil person. But when I play through Fallout 3 and someone I wanna talk to pisses me off, I kill them.

Little Lamplight is a town full of disrespectful little shits (with the exception of two kids) that spew verbal garbage that, morally standing, children the age of 8-10 should not be saying. <- Point number 1 against Bethesda.

When someone comes up to you in real life, and say something like, “You’re just like that person over there because you’re…” and they give a comparison, and then insult you not moments later for being that, you’re gonna either have the urge to maul that person and wont for legal reasons, or you fucking go off on them.

The word “Mungo” speaks to me like the N word would to an African-American. It’ll get that person killed. However, when every other sentence ends with Mungo, I wanna blast you the hell away.

If a white child walked up to a black child and called him a N***a (I censored it! calm down!), that kid, that kids brothers, and possibly that kid’s cousins will all jump the white kid.

So what in the hell should the same situation (in my mind) be allowed for?

The fact that you could not kill children dramatically dropped all respect I had for the game.

As sickening as it may seem to other people, I take pride in painting the wall with a game character’s blood when that someone has been disrespecting me when I did nothing to deserve it.

So obviously, I think that if you’re willing to toss insults like an adult, you should be shot like an adult.

Go ahead and make it so that the other children cant be killed… just make it so I can kill those disrespectful fucking pricks in that shitty underground Little Lamplight with so many twisties in that cave that it takes an hour to find your way around!!!

Morality aside, it doesn’t make any logical sense.

Plus, Fallout 1 and 2 has few limits as to what it possible for the player. You can literally kill everyone and everything in fallout 2 and still beat the game. Much of the outcry is from gamers truly wanting a sandbox experience – not one that is tied by out-of-place morality. In the fallout world, there is no judeo-christian morals, which makes it so odd to bind the gamers to it in fallout 3.

I agree with Soren; a likely effective and obvious solution in my mind would be to take the close-up, slow-mo graphic violence out entirely; it’s like a teenage boy’s wet dream to see blood spraying from a decapitated neck, but in all honesty, it just wouldn’t work that way.

A more realistic and somber approach to killing, death, and violence, as well as more appropriate in-game consequences for this type of behavior (staying true to the vision of the game) would be a better solution, IMHO, than to superimpose this restriction on the player and claim moral high ground.

You can make a fairly convincing argument for the inconsistency being worth it, for the extra flavour having children around gives the game, much as you can make an argument for having unkillable npcs to add structure to a story. But if you try to justify it on *moral* as opposed to commercial grounds, you open a whole can of worms.

As to not including children at all, well, that might have been easier on the developers, but Bethesda got a lot of flak from gamers and press for “chickening out” of the same debate in both Morrowind and Oblivion by not including children. With this method they were able to incorporate several interesting plot options involving children, without putting those children in direct peril at the hands of the player.

As to your other argument that an RPG should never force morality on a player, I agree… and I don’t think Fallout 3 does force morality on the player. You’re free to help or ignore children as you see fit; you’re just not able to butcher them. There’s a significant difference between “not forcing morality on a player” and “allowing a player to do anything s/he wants, even to the detriment of the game.” Based on your logic, Fallout 3 is a weaker game because you’re not able to molest children, or cook them into pies, or hang them from hooks by their Buster Browns, or shave them bald, or make them wear sandwich boards with silly slogans, or lock them all in a shed, or any of a bazillion other interactive options that are wildly outside the scope and storyline of the game.

An RPG should never force morality, no, but nor is it required to accommodate every possible interactivity with every possible character and setting.

I do understand the external, commercial pressures for not having it in there, but if you can’t deal with it convincingly, just cut kids out of the game.

Or maybe they could have toned down the juvenile, gratuitous slow-mo ultro-gore kills. Yes, yes, I know I’m a badass. But a single bullet from my rifle is not capable of decapitating a man.

That is not how bullets work.

It is incorrect.

I recall reading a recent article in which a Bethesda creative director mentioned that the team had several long and serious meetings about this very issue, and finally decided – as you suggest, Ben – that to include violence against children might increase the gritty realism quotient but wouldn’t be worth it in the long run due to the potential negative reaction. Note that Neither of Bethesda’s most recent previous games, Morrowind and Oblivion, have children in them at all – for the same reason.

I’m frankly amazed that Bioshock got as little negative publicity as it did, given the content. And Parkin’s somewhat disturbing assertion that he should not only be able to kill children, but be able to enjoy the same spectacularly gruesome death animations as Fallout 3 treats us to with adults, strikes me as frankly a little creepy. Even Bioshock politely cut away at the final moment, and went to great lengths to illustrate the fact that Little Sisters may appear to be children, but are actually not human at all.

In the end, it wouldn’t have been worth it. Including the opportunity to kill children violently in a game like this strikes me as a Rockstar move; something done to the detriment of the game simply to increase the shock value and horrify the nongaming public. Bethesda and other serious developers aren’t interested in tawdry publicity stunts, they’re interested in making quality games. I applaud their decision.

Great post, Ben.