Gamasutra kills children

[Sorrow]

Nobody in the game world has high expectations for your success until you actually succeed.

What it has to do with the topic of overpowered guards/bounty hunters/whatever being present in large quantities?

 

[Leon]

They didn't seem all that powerful or bountiful in BG to me. In Morrowind or Oblivion, very much so.

 

[Sorrow]

Flaming Fist units that "punished" evil characters were very powerful and could ambush the player's party on outside towns. They could have easily destroyed the bandit camp.

 

[golfmade]

I took the 'heart of a child' perk fairly early on because I figured, they put such a perk in for a reason as A) You can't kill kids and B) If there is such a perk there must be a location or quest you can use said perk on.

And bam, not long after I run into Little Lamplight area. Haven't fully explored it yet but seems an awful like
[spoiler:b151086436]Lord Of The Flies[/spoiler:b151086436], guess this is what some of the reviews talked about when discussing said work.


As for not being able to kill kids, I understand but don't agree with it. Hopefully there will be a patch for it.

 

[Mane]

The main problem is that Bethesda is completely incapable of handling actual adult thought and concepts.

They at best can refer to them, often in a childish fashion, that talks about sex like they're in teh 4th grade and afraid they're going to get in trouble if someone older than them overhears.

The fact that Bethedsa can't handle the complexity of choice and consequences is readily apparent in the game where everything has benefits, consequences might scare people away.

The belief that their violance is gratuitous and over the top, unrealistic, and is therefore 'cartoony' and ok is frigging retarded.

Fallout and even Arcanum had routes where you could massacre entire towns and kill children, did they encourage you to do so? No. It was a route however if you decided you were amoral, but your decisions were remembered and it would affect how you continued to play.

In real life children as young as 7 are handed a rifle and taught to be soldiers. Are they good soldiers? Doubtful. Do they kill? Yes. Worse if you're a UN Peacekeeper what do you do when confronted by a child pointing a weapon at you? Does it really matter if he knows any better?

This is a post apocalyptic wasteland, and kids are still supposed to be sweet and innocent hopping around without a care in the world? With limited and often corrupted resources they are kept in a happy little idyllic world rather than having to contribute to society in a harsh land?

Even in the town of kids, a rather silly concept, all complicated issues are pushed to the back. Everyone leaves at 18, uh huh, but they've kept up a steady supply of children for 200 years in thier little bubble. Hmmmm, how could that happen? Sounds to me like a little cloister of underage sex to me, maybe that's why they skip around happily in pajamas and scout uniforms. Oh, but you can't kill them, that'd be wrong. A wealth of complicated issues that could be explored in that little town... if anyone but Beth was handling it.

Hell, it's supposed to have FPS elements, crappily implemented ones but we'll ignore that, I'd be impressed if they simply allowed friendly fire on children. Have a raider use a kid as a sheild, hell make using an automatic weapon around innocents perhaps a moments consideration for a game that still has karma but does it in such a silly fashion. Make morality of some importance on actions rather that a crappy difference of two endings after you decide to suffer through they idiot tripe of a plot they leave us with.

There are no difficult moral decisions when dealign with Beth games, they're afraid of them. Making someone think at all might cost them a console kiddy. Load up on the blood and gore for kids who aren't shocked by much anymore and it's easily marketable to the masses. Anything else is just too hard or too risky.

The immune kids are just a further aspect of a complicated issue that Beth fails to grasp in anything but the most rudimentry terms. Life in a post apocalyptic wasteland should be HARD. Tough decisions would have to be made because survival isn't a certainty for anyone. Beth instead just thinks every happily eats iguana, wears dirty 200 year old clothing, and all the trees are dead and the grass is brown, but everyones happy happy happy.

 

[cratchety ol joe]

I clearly remember my first experience of the pick pocket kids in the Den (FO:2)

--First off I noticed nothing, and did nothing.
--Then I noticed the little animation as I walked passed, but nothing apparent had happened, I did nothing.
--Then (paranoia setting in now) as I watch the animation play out, I check my inventory, sure enough, some bits are missing. I was a little miffed, but took no action, went on my way grumbling "fecking little shites..."
--After it happened again, I got peeved and walloped the kid around the sweed with a crowbar. he ran off crying. I noticed that the attitudes of the people in the town become more hostile.
--Upon returning to the den and having one of the little bastards steal a gun from me I went ape pulled out a Pancor and shredded the little twit. Sure enough, the town erupts around me and I end up running for my life, from then on traders, caravans and even some of the people that assign quests basically hated me, and wouldn't talk to me... this was the slippery start to my first IRONMAN 'baddie' character.

To me it made the game a bit deeper, my actions had consequence and dictated how the rest of the game played out.

I don't WANT to kill children, I just want the option.

 

[aenemic]

Read the article?

Edit: ninja'd.

ok, I read it now and I'm standing by what I said. he does mention the ESRB early on, and then he only says it wouldn't be socialy responsible to have killable children. and I just take that as saying "we would get a lot of shit of it". not only from the ESRB, but probably also from people families, friends and certain fans. which all boils down to the same thing: they didn't decide not to have killable children because they're a sucky company who thought it'd make the game better, but because of how others would view the game.

 

[MorbidMind]

I wouldn't really mind not being able to kill children in F3, if they weren't all so insufferably annoying. Its as if Bethesda made them as hateable as possible because they knew you couldn't touch them. [spoiler:d43efd7cc5] Little lamplight especially. Just about every kid there talks down to you and when you try and act like a tough guy they just say "Start something then!" Which naturally you can't. [/spoiler:d43efd7cc5]

 

[Sorrow]

--After it happened again, I got peeved and walloped the kid around the sweed with a crowbar. he ran off crying. I noticed that the attitudes of the people in the town become more hostile.

Usually, my characters just steal their stuff back from them. Actually, I think that the game creators fucked it up - they didn't give the player two important options - talking with the kids about stealing and intimidating them into stopping stealing from the PC.
Also, my characters often simply killed Flick and Tubby which IIRC ends the stealing thing.

--Upon returning to the den and having one of the little bastards steal a gun from me I went ape pulled out a Pancor and shredded the little twit. Sure enough, the town erupts around me and I end up running for my life, from then on traders, caravans and even some of the people that assign quests basically hated me, and wouldn't talk to me... this was the slippery start to my first IRONMAN 'baddie' character.

I remember that one time I was playing a whore/thief/junkie/murderer named Susan. One of the kids before the Flick's store have stolen her Jet, so she hit him in the head with a crowbar, killing him. Then she killed the other kid. Finally, she beaten Flick to death. I don't remember anyone caring. She would kill Tubby too, but he was her source of Jet.

In real life children as young as 7 are handed a rifle and taught to be soldiers. Are they good soldiers? Doubtful. Do they kill? Yes.

Two words. Raider kids.

Worse if you're a UN Peacekeeper what do you do when confronted by a child pointing a weapon at you? Does it really matter if he knows any better?

I wonder...
Would an UN peacekeeper get a Child Killer reputation?

Even in the town of kids, a rather silly concept, all complicated issues are pushed to the back. Everyone leaves at 18, uh huh, but they've kept up a steady supply of children for 200 years in thier little bubble. Hmmmm, how could that happen? Sounds to me like a little cloister of underage sex to me, maybe that's why they skip around happily in pajamas and scout uniforms. Oh, but you can't kill them, that'd be wrong. A wealth of complicated issues that could be explored in that little town... if anyone but Beth was handling it.

Hah, is it something like Lord of Flies?

 

[Lancelot]

Usually, my characters just steal their stuff back from them. Actually, I think that the game creators fucked it up - they didn't give the player two important options - talking with the kids about stealing and intimidating them into stopping stealing from the PC.
Also, my characters often simply killed Flick and Tubby which IIRC ends the stealing thing.

The amazing thing about Fallout is its depth. You DO have an option of "intimidating them into stopping stealing" and yet many players don't know about it. All you have to do is leave your NPC somewhere far, so they won't join the fight, punch that little brat once and then exit the combat mode. And what do you know, every time they see you, they will run away without even entering a combat mode! (unlike other "scared" adults).

Also, its fun to be creative. I usually let them off with a slap on the head when I am playing as a good guy. When I am bad though - well... when they regain consciousness, i don't think they're gonna be able to use their broken arms ever again. Ahh, Fallout. So many possibilities...

 

[Forhekset]

Sad to see so many otherwise intelligent-sounding people flaming the author of this piece over at Gamasutra. Very few, if any of them could satisfactorily answer the question of "what's the difference between killing an adult and a child in a video game?".

Most replies that disagreed with the article simply pulled out the tired, worn-out "why would you want to kill children anyway?" card, as Per alluded to. So many people seem to be unable to grasp this concept - it's not about wanting or not wanting to kill children, it's about censorship and the lack of true choice and consequence. It's also about Bethesda fucking up yet another thing from the original games. Wasn't broken - no need to fix it.

I do understand that Fallout 3 is an extremely high-profile game (in large part due to Bethesda's own hype machine) and there's a good possibility that the game would have received an AO rating had you been able to kill children - especially with Bethesda's emphasis on slo-mo replays of over-the-top, gory VATS deaths - which is a death warrant for any AAA title. But Bethesda could have simply admitted that they needed to ensure a "M" rating, unless they really believe that BS excuse about morality. It's really laughable to talk about how "violence is fucking funny" and how darkly humorous it is to decapitate an old woman, then stick her head on a shelf and talk to it - and then preach to me about morals and how child-killing is just too far out of bounds.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that killable children added an additional element of risk to combat in the old games - not only did you have to watch out for innocent adults during combat, unless you didn't really care about your karma, but if you were trying to avoid being labeled a child-killer, you also had to make sure that no children wandered into your line of fire. I've had to reload my save game a few times after accidentally hitting a kid with some burst fire, either with my character or one of the indiscriminate NPCs (thanks, Ian!).

 

[TheRatKing]

I don't think it has been mentioned enough, but when you are playing a ROLE playing game, you are not playing yourself, you are playing a made up person that you create. If your character is a fucked up psycho who kills innocents and children, it means your character is a psycho, not you. "Why would you want to kill children?" they ask, well, I don't, but Jerry here is high on Jet and kills anything that moves so...

 

[Sorrow]

Exactly. That's what Role Playing Games are for.
If I would play only a character with my own morality, I would be limited to doing what is proper and just. Without so many characters that can be played, Fallout wouldn't be as replayable as it is.
I played Fallout hundreds of times and I still find it very playable as long as I have a good character idea.

The amazing thing about Fallout is its depth. You DO have an option of "intimidating them into stopping stealing" and yet many players don't know about it. All you have to do is leave your NPC somewhere far, so they won't join the fight, punch that little brat once and then exit the combat mode. And what do you know, every time they see you, they will run away without even entering a combat mode! (unlike other "scared" adults).

Well, it doesn't take into account the "bloodthirstyness" of CNPCs, so it's a rather bugged method. Doing it in dialogue would be much better.

Sad to see so many otherwise intelligent-sounding people flaming the author of this piece over at Gamasutra. Very few, if any of them could satisfactorily answer the question of "what's the difference between killing an adult and a child in a video game?".

I suspect extremely low emotional intelligence .

It's really laughable to talk about how "violence is fucking funny" and how darkly humorous it is to decapitate an old woman, then stick her head on a shelf and talk to it - and then preach to me about morals and how child-killing is just too far out of bounds.

I suspect that because of his "violence is fucking funny" views. I still don't understand what's so humorous about killing someone in game unless it's in Mortal Kombat, GTA1 or similar cartoonish over the top game.
Satisfying - yes. Relaxing - yeah. But humorous?

BTW.
Alas, poor Darion...

 

[mulaalia]

In real life children as young as 7 are handed a rifle and taught to be soldiers.

Like those poor kids in Liberia, fighting on acid trips they were canon fodder. The same thing would probably happen in the Wasteland.

 

[Sorrow]

Speaking of children - it's pretty weird how few children are in Fallout. One could think that without anticonception there would be more of them. Also, taking in account that that there's no social insurance system having a lot of kids would be important when one gets old.
They would probably start working early too..

 

[Forhekset]

I don't think it has been mentioned enough, but when you are playing a ROLE playing game, you are not playing yourself, you are playing a made up person that you create. If your character is a fucked up psycho who kills innocents and children, it means your character is a psycho, not you. "Why would you want to kill children?" they ask, well, I don't, but Jerry here is high on Jet and kills anything that moves so...

Just to play Devil's Advocate, I'm sure the response to that argument would be "why would you want to play the role of a child-killer?". Thing is, people who throw around the "why do you want to kill children in the first place" argument are dangerously close in their thinking to the simpletons who insist that video games cause real-world violence. Obviously, only a real-life psychopath would want a game to include mortal, killable children, right?

Just ask the dad who posted on Gamasutra and is horrified that a Fallout game might allow someone to "fantasize" about killing kiddies.

 

[tekhedd]

Nobody ever mentions the one reason I would want to kill children in Fallout: By Accident!

In the first two games, I remember being branded a child killer because of an accidental "you missed!" shooting, and had to live with the shame for the rest of the game.

When I shoot a car by accident, it bursts into flames (huh?) and then explodes (ouch). And I feel sorry. Not so with children.

 

[Sorrow]

Not to mention spamming mini-nukes.

Just ask the dad who posted on Gamasutra and is horrified that a Fallout game might allow someone to "fantasize" about killing kiddies.

I guess that guy is pretty obsessed with children. What he doesn't understand is that others don't share his obsession .
I don't recall ever killing a kid in Fallout just because I felt a specific need to kill kids. They just died along with everyone else .

Actually, I found the severe reputation loss for any innocent, including guards in BG a lot more natural than the "child killer" thing in Fallout.
The mere existence of that reputation singles-out children while being any kind of known murderer would probably have bad consequences.

 

[Iozeph]

Speaking of children - it's pretty weird how few children are in Fallout. One could think that without anticonception there would be more of them. Also, taking in account that that there's no social insurance system having a lot of kids would be important when one gets old.
They would probably start working early too..

Well I'm sure it's not for lack of trying, but possible reasons for less children would be weakened immune systems, sterility, birth defects caused by increased background radiation, poor diet, lack of medical care(vaccinations etc), lack of education, as well as a higher infant mortality rate. By extension, you'd have to deal with super bugs- Either mutated strains of cold/flu or cases of virgin field casualties from adult versions of diseases like measles, chicken pox, mumps etc. You might also have a return of previously thought to be eradicated killers like polio, tuberculosis, and bubonic plague.(no wonder they were working frantically on F.E.V.!)

Life expectancy would be one of the more interesting changes to observe. Average age for pregnancies would probably drop back into the early teen years if say, adults weren't expected to make it much beyond their mid to late 30's or 40's. And child bearing would be a constant every year of post adolescent life for any woman able to successfully carry them.(just to offset the die-offs)

Of course, that's assuming that cannibals, raiders, general infighting, and other scavengers/pack hunters didn't take them out first.

Point is, you'd be looking at a lot less humans, regardless of age group. Survival of the fittest and all that rot.

That could all change if organisations like Vault City, NCR, or the Brotherhood of Steel actually got off of their asses and decided to restore infrastructure, instead of hunkering behind their own walls or within their bunkers.

/shrug

 

[Sorrow]

Life expectancy would be one of the more interesting changes to observe. Average age for pregnancies would probably drop back into the early teen years if say, adults weren't expected to make it much beyond their mid to late 30's or 40's. And child bearing would be a constant every year of post adolescent life for any woman able to successfully carry them.(just to offset the die-offs)

Speaking of it, I have noticed a lack of pregnant women in Fallout. And a very low amount of families. Most of NPCs are like some kind of subhuman robots.
It would be pretty interesting to see how such conditions would affect people.

BTW.
My new PC, Nordrak has just committed a cold-blooded murder in Shady Sands. After getting information that he needed, he decided that he needs a rope and a hunting rifle. He murdered Seth with two shots.
Then he took his rifle and his rope and his money and started withdrawing.
Katrina alarmed guards and ran after him.
He shoot two guards before they had a chance to stop him.
Then he shoot Katrina. Katrina was a kind woman who served as a town greeter. Her skull was blown apart and now she won't greet strangers with her pretty smile.
Nordrak killed two more men. He brutally stabbed them to death with his knife. Now their wives are without husbands and their children are without fathers.
Then he sneaked back into town and entered the guardhouse - he cowardly murdered Ian, a caravan guard that was helping to guard the town.
He murdered one more guard, took the towns supply of rifle ammo and left.

Shady Sands was left in mourning and severally weakened. They kindly welcomed the stranger and he repaid them with robbery and murder some of the most valuable people of the town.

But he didn't kill any children, so it's okay .