Interview More Fallout: New Vegas Tidbits

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Chris Avellone; Fallout: New Vegas; Obsidian Entertainment

<p>Not tired yet of the same E3 based info again and again? If so here are <a href="http://g4tv.com/videos/46734/E3-2010-Inside-Fallout-New-Vegas/" target="_blank">2 video interviews</a> <a href="http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6267110/" target="_blank">with MCA himself</a>.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Plus another preview appears, <a href="http://www.gamingunion.net/news/e3-2010-fallout-new-vegas-hands-on-preview--2045.html" target="_blank">this time it is GamingUnion</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After arriving at the NCR outpost and getting to know each and every soldier there, we eventually got into some combat. It feels very much like Fallout 3, although the addition of the iron sights doesn't require you to rely on VATS as much and makes the combat feel much more FPS-like. Somehow, the NCR captain fell down and died. (Possibly because I shot him in the face) But this lead me to discover that there won&rsquo;t be any unkillable characters in New Vegas! Naturally, children are still exempt from this.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Spotted at: <a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/98535-fallout-new-vegas-preview-and-video-interviews.html">Gamebanshee</a></p>

 

[Angthoron]

Why do they tempt us with adding children if they won't let us shoot them and throw them into the ocean? This is not fair.

Down with the Puritan morality.

 

[Mister Arkham]

From an in-game moral perspective, isn't it better to kill the children along with the rest of the town, rather than leave them to die alone in the desert?

Honestly though, I've always found the fact that you primarily can't kill kids in games that are going to consoles to be incredibly telling. There's often some reaction to killing a child in a game, some wrath that will be incurred, and gamers used to know that. How many people, when playing Fallout or Fallout 2 for the first time, sought out a child in earnest for the express purposes of killing him? I know I haven't; every child death I've ever caused in a game has been tied to a combat accident. I know that doing so will net me some serious reaction. The average console gamer though? They don't give a fuck. They just want to kill everything because, L0LL0L MURD3R 51MUL470R L0LL0L. Fuck those guys.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

From an in-game moral perspective, isn't it better to kill the children along with the rest of the town, rather than leave them to die alone in the desert?

It's also lulsy how you can sell one of lamplight's kids into slavery, tricking her into trusting you so you lead her out of the cavern. But you can't punch her, that'd be WRONG.

 

[Turok]

i play fallout 1 and 2 and i never know that i can kill childrems, i just know it long time ago, i think it was in this page or another no remember, or a news page.

 

[Drakron]

Fallout 1 had no children, Fallout 2 did except on its European release that had then removed (breaking and removing questing).

 

[FeelTheRads]

Fallout 1 had no children, Fallout 2 did except on its European release that had then removed (breaking and removing questing).

Fallout 1 had children too, and just as with Fallout 2 they were removed in the UK (not sure if in any other European releases too) version.

 

[The Wizard]

childkilling mod will be one of the first, anyway.

How many people, when playing Fallout or Fallout 2 for the first time, sought out a child in earnest for the express purposes of killing him?

the den.

in front of every goddamn building.

stealing your shit every time you enter one.

sledgehammer to the groin is the only solution.

 

[Gragt]

It had another twist in the first Fallout: there is a kid in the church of The Hub and he might get killed if you start a fight with Jain — whether you kill the kid or someone else does, it ends the same way: you get branded as a childkiller. Chasing the kid away before attacking Jain is a good idea.

 

[Xor]

In fallout 2 I would always punch those kids in the leg once when I first enter the Den. It doesn't make anyone else hostile except other kids, and they'll run away from you from then on instead of being little bastard thieves.

 

[Mister Arkham]

childkilling mod will be one of the first, anyway.

How many people, when playing Fallout or Fallout 2 for the first time, sought out a child in earnest for the express purposes of killing him?

the den.

in front of every goddamn building.

stealing your shit every time you enter one.

sledgehammer to the groin is the only solution.

Not the same thing, really. My point is that when Fallout 2 was released, it would only have been the very rare player who started up a new game and then said, "I'm going to go forth and find a child to stab in the groin repeatedly." Hating the kids in the Den is a learned reaction: They try to rob you when you walk by them, thus you react an the basis of your choice as a player. You can ignore it or actively try to get by them before they nick anything, or you can just not use any of the shops in the Den, or you can kill the kids and face the consequences.

The ultimate crux here is that there were consequences to killing a child in these games. For the most sociopathic of players it may have started as something that was done for kicks, but the ramifications were still there. Accidental or not, you did something and then you had to deal with it (OMGC&CSHADESOFGRAYOMG). Now you can't kill children in any game, because the developers are convinced that all of their players will automatically want to if they are given the option to. I'm not saying that there aren't some players who just want to kill kids, but the rest of us shouldn't be penalized for the sake of a select few assholes. Taking that option away from us removes more than the act itself from the game, it removes an opportunity for depth and consequence and an act that may actually weight heavily on the player's mind. It is a pitiable loss, especially in a title that espouses "shades of gray" and "tough moral choices" and "being able to kill anyone."

 

[Gragt]

I remember when I tried to kill a little girl on the island of the Baldur's Gate expansion and she turned into a freaking werewolf …

 

[Clockwork Knight]

the den.

in front of every goddamn building.

stealing your shit every time you enter one.

sledgehammer to the groin is the only solution.

Hating the kids in the Den is a learned reaction: They try to rob you when you walk by them, thus you react an the basis of your choice as a player. You can ignore it or actively try to get by them before they nick anything, or you can just not use any of the shops in the Den, or you can kill the kids and face the consequences.

Or you can enter combat mode as you pass through the doors so they can't try using their pickpocket skill, but that's just crazy old me being meta. If anything, planting dynamite is a more elegant solution, that takes two kids with one bomb.

Now you can't kill children in any game, because the developers are convinced that all of their players will automatically want to if they are given the option to.

I think that developers, dealing with games themselves, don't think so; yet, they have their hands tied by the ever-watching media moral guardians that are convinced all those newfangled vidya gaems involve killing prostitutes for points. See that Fallout 3 exmple above, you can sell a 6 year old girl into slavery; major assholery not far from killing kids, but it's such a minor event that it goes under the radar.

Killable kids would be easily noticed and as such they'd have to deal with their own Hot Coffee, unecessary for Beth since they're not necessarily striving for customers.

Of course, I'm assuming they chose not to let kids be hurt / killed, and not flat out censored forbidden from doing it. Wouldn't surprise me, though.

I remember when I tried to kill a little girl on the island of the Baldur's Gate expansion and she turned into a freaking werewolf …

I remember watching a friend play NWN 1 once. He went inside a house, killed the adult occupants, then tried hitting the girl. He always missed, but she kept following him all over the city, including inside buildings, eventually killing him with a never ending barrage of 1 dmg punches.

 

[Mister Arkham]

I think that developers, dealing with games themselves, don't think so; yet, they have their hands tied by the ever-watching media moral guardians that are convinced all those newfangled vidya gaems involve killing prostitutes for points. See that Fallout 3 exmple above, you can sell a 6 year old girl into slavery; major assholery not far from killing kids, but it's such a minor event that it goes under the radar.

Killable kids would be easily noticed and as such they'd have to deal with their own Hot Coffee, unecessary for Beth since they're not necessarily striving for customers.

Of course, I'm assuming they chose not to let kids be hurt / killed, and not flat out censored forbidden from doing it. Wouldn't surprise me, though.

I will concede that this is more likely. I don't like it either way, but this is more likely. I'm sure that this is a silly kind of thing to apply the label to, but when I think about developers self-censoring for the sake of averting a controversy that may not happen...it smacks of the voluntary sacrificing of artistic integrity.

I remember when I tried to kill a little girl on the island of the Baldur's Gate expansion and she turned into a freaking werewolf …

That really sort of wigged me out when it happened the first time.

 

[Volourn]

"I remember watching a friend play NWN 1 once. He went inside a house, killed the adult occupants, then tried hitting the girl. He always missed, but she kept following him all over the city, including inside buildings, eventually killing him with a never ending barrage of 1 dmg punches."

You can kill children in NWN.

 

[Cassidy]

There is a difference between the game content done by the developer, that is the one that ought to be evaluated when a game is analyzed, and the user-made content, that should be reviewed separatedly from the game.

It's possible to kill children and all NPCs in Failout 3, if you install the proper mods.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Media doesn't distinguish between usermade content and original content. The sex minigames in San Andreas, for example, were scrapped before release yet someone hacked it back into the game as a mod.

OUR CHLDRNE ARE BING CORRUPTD, F U ROXSTAR, WE'LL SUE