Fallout 3 Edited Version To Hit Australian Shelves 91
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."
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: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).
Re:European versions of FO1 and FO2 (Score:3, Informative)
Killing children was never an objective in the game, if you did it people hated you. They hunted you down and killed you. It added to the game's "shit happens and it happens bad" atmosphere; children die in movies all the time because it's emotionally powerful. Nobody would complain if it were any other medium but a computer game.
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.