Fallout 3 Edited Version To Hit Australian Shelves

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."

post-apocalyptic RPGs

[nomadic]

I'd rather see Wasteland 2. It's been 20 years, don't we get a sequel yet??

Purchase? Pirate!

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

They'll all just pirate the (american version of the) game, and if they feel socially responsible, they'll also buy a copy in australia.

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.

Too Little

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be importing. Screw the Classification Board.

I did it with GTA IV and saved about A$40 in the process.

Re:European versions of FO1 and FO2

[Zaphenath]

There was an interview with Todd Howard I saw where he says that there are children in the game, but you can't kill them. I guess that is for the best because do we really need FOX News plastering images of children exploding into bloody pieces on TV? Us videogamers have a bad enough rap as it is, what with our penchant for "cop killer simulators"...

Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

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 in the gap anyway (does the "evil" word become less "evil" if people only hear it in their heads, not their ears?).

I can sort of understand the UK censoring some stuff, like the USA (after all, not _all_ puritans crossed the Atlantic), but isn't Australia supposed to have been built by ex-cons? What exactly are they censoring? Parts of the game without beer?

Which broke several quests and caused problems

[Moraelin]

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.

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.

Re:Censorship

[lukas84]

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 Swiss TV channel, the gore isn't cut.

OTOH, Tits are no problem. You can basically see tits 24/7 on TV - Swiss, German, Austrian, doesn't matter. Of course, the context is mostly documentation/education.

Back to the topic at hand: video games.

Sometimes the only available version Switzerland is the German-German version, which is cut for gore. Some publishers might publish a Swiss/Austrian-German version that might be subbed but not dubbed. In that case, you'll have to make sure to buy the right version.

In other cases, you can choose between an unsubbed UK/US version and a German-German version.

Re:Purchase? Pirate!

[illumin8]

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.

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...

Re:Purchase? Pirate!

[Jimbob The Mighty]

As an Australian, I am getting the 'banned' version of the game imported (and getting the lunchbox and the bobble-head as a bonus). Remember, the ban, as I understand it, was on that particular version of the game being sold by Australian retailers. This is just another example of the classification board not keeping up with what the rest of the world is doing. With the advent of e-commerce and bit-torrent, the average 15-year old kid (which the ban is meant to protect) with any job in a supermarket can afford this option. And I'm older than 18. I don't need you to protect me thank you very much.