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Fallout 3 Edited Version To Hit Australian Shelves
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:11 AM
from the full-up-on-mutant-insects-and-jellyfish dept.
from the full-up-on-mutant-insects-and-jellyfish dept.
UgLyPuNk contributes this excerpt from Internode Games Network, which might interest Australian readers in particular: "Just last week, we told you that Fallout 3 had been resubmitted to the Classifications Board, in the hope that it would be deemed suitable for Australian audiences.
While the Classifications Board can take between a few days and a few weeks to hand down their decision — it seems that the edits made to the Bethesda Softworks title have been successful, with the second edition of the game granted a new MA15+ rating this afternoon. We don't yet have the details of the decision, but are currently finding out just what was changed in the game in order to secure the new rating — and release in this country."
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SWEET (Score:2, Insightful)
Purchase? Pirate! (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again, social responsibility may encourage them to boycott the australian release, causing the game to have horrible sales in australia, but phenomenal sales everywhere else in the world... that might make the publisher put some pressure on the classification board, and get them to change their policies.
Re:Purchase? Pirate! (Score:5, Insightful)
not necessarily pirate - mod it with files from other countries like I've done with many European games that have been edited for US markets by major publishers.
Parent
Re:Purchase? Pirate! (Score:4, Interesting)
Better yet, the publisher should just refuse to release in a country that wants to censor content. Then when enough bootleg copies flood the market from overseas the ratings board might realize how ridiculous it is trying to protect their children from little 1s and 0s floating around on the internet...
Parent
Censorship (Score:2, Interesting)
What makes you think the US version won't be edited? I remember the US version of Oblivion, for example, had no titties, while all the (continental) european versions did. Also, if you compare US TV with european or south-american TV, you'll find that there's a lot of censorship in the US (even for US shows and films - you can sometimes find whole scenes in the "export" version that were censored in the US). Not to mention the ridiculous american media habit of bleeping out words, as if people couldn't fill
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It's even more complex than that.
I live in Switzerland, were we fortunately still trust parents to make decisions for their children.
So we have almost no video game censoring here.
We speak four languages here - German, Italian, French and RÃto-Romanian (the latter is dying).
I'm in the German speaking part, and most tv movies that feature action and are oriented towards adults are heavily cut on Germanys commercial TV. Almost all the gore is filtered out.
If the same Movie is shown on an Austrian or Swis
nannies (Score:5, Funny)
All in game characters have been replaced with nannies trying to feed you the Australian bottle of ignorance.
Re:nannies (Score:5, Insightful)
What I can't understand is why they don't just allow the R18+ (like movies) and be done with it.
They still have the power to refuse classification if it's featuring illegal or seriously freaky shit.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But they have to. You see, if this game were to make it to market in Australia, it would awaken the criminal gene of the population.
European versions of FO1 and FO2 (Score:5, Informative)
The European versions of FO1 and FO2 were edited/censored to remove the ability to kill children. I'm not necessarily a proponent of censorship, but it wasn't like the game was really missing anything.
The Bethesda games (Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion) don't feature kids because you can kill anyone in game.
I wonder how this was handled with FO3.
Re: (Score:2)
Yikes....and with this iteration with its pretty 3D graphics....and the bloody mess feat....Yeah. I wouldn't expect you being able to load up a bunch of babies into the Rock-it Launcher then going on a rampage through the D.C. orphanage.
Re:European versions of FO1 and FO2 (Score:5, Informative)
That wasn't all that was cut out. In the uncensored version if you were blasting some enemy from short distance you would get a lot of splatter effects (from bullets spraying out their backside). This was cut from the German release and critical hits were as bloodless as non-critical hits (as far as I can remember).
Parent
Re:European versions of FO1 and FO2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Killing children was never an objective in the game, if you did it people hated you. They hunted you d
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I used to walk through that area carrying nothing but armed explosives, and watching them disappear from my inventory...Technically if they steal a bomb from you and it goes off later, that's not actually your doing, and you don't get flagged.
Which broke several quests and caused problems (Score:5, Interesting)
I've played both the US version and the censored German version, and the censored problem had a few more problems. They hadn't only removed the ability to kill children, they had removed all children from the game outright.
Which now caused a few quests to be broken. E.g., you couldn't find the kid in the well, because there was no kid.
Some things were removed so brutally that it caused even more bugginess than the game had anyway. E.g., at the vault in the north-east, the kid with the doll was missing, but his idle chat would keep happening, because the game script thought he's still there.
Some of the alternate ways to solve other stuff also got broken in the process. E.g., once you got to the next town, now you couldn't have that kid's wrench.
So I'm not saying it was necessarily fatal, but saying that it's not really missing anything... is a bit mis-leading too, IMHO.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, only the ELV (English Low Violence) and dubbed (French, German) versions were crippled, most of us europeans in other places got the uncensored US version (thankfully).
/Mikael
post-apocalyptic RPGs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:post-apocalyptic RPGs (Score:5, Funny)
Nope. All the NPCs died from nuclear radiation.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The edition is actually in the title (Score:5, Funny)
Since Australians are upside-down, they had to change the title to "Climbout 3".
Re: (Score:2)
Since Australians are upside-down, they had to change the title to "Climbout 3".
i'd think "Blackout" is a more accurate title given the nature of the story.
Its the drugs (Score:2, Informative)
According to what I've read on NMA, one of the major issues concerns drugs in FO3. Not that drugs exist or are used, but that the ones in the game are named for real drugs, such as morphine. They may have to rename the drugs to something fictional to get the game rating changed.
Re: (Score:2)
Drugs were present in FO1 and FO2 as well but were called things like Psycho, Buffout and Stimpaks. Perfectly good names, so I never understood why Bethesda felt the need to change them.
I hate Australian classifications (Score:2)
While we do enjoy some of the most liberal laws in terms of broadcast medium, we suffer due to the lack of a classification (R+) that would limit the sale of a game to an adult.
Apparently there is talk of a proposal and the govt is seeking comment on an adults-only rating for games.
This surely makes sense as the average gamer is now 28 years old. In fact, 20 per cent of Australian game players are aged 39 and over.
Let's hope this is brought into line with the movie ratings where we enjoy an adult only R rat