Was there ever an official explanation for why the player is the only one who can't smoke in Fallout 3/New Vegas?

[deuxhero]

It always seemed odd to me you could collect loads of cigarettes in these games, but could never use them besides vendor trash, but loads of NPCs smoked constantly. Even stranger is that New Vegas lets you harvest and use chewing tobacco to nearly strictly beneficial effect (small addiction chance the only negative). It would be less weird if the effect of a cigarette was purely negative (e.g., -1 HP and -5 AP) like in Deus Ex. Has some developer interview ever explained this? I can only assume it was some foreign rating board saying "It's OK if NPCs smoke, but the adult PC can't" (see "Med-X"), or some moralist foot down from some senior Bethesda person.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

It always seemed odd to me you could collect loads of cigarettes in these games, but could never use them besides vendor trash, but loads of NPCs smoked constantly. Even stranger is that New Vegas lets you harvest and use chewing tobacco to nearly strictly beneficial effect (small addiction chance the only negative). It would be less weird if the effect of a cigarette was purely negative (e.g., -1 HP and -5 AP) like in Deus Ex. Has some developer interview ever explained this? I can only assume it was some foreign rating board saying "It's OK if NPCs smoke, but the adult PC can't" (see "Med-X"), or some moralist foot down from some senior Bethesda person.

Considering this is Bethesda, they didn't implement it because they would find a way to cram more bugs into it.

 

[Lemming42]

You're 19 in Fo3 and don't want to fuck your lungs up that early, and your head injury in NV damaged your mouth and lip muscles so that the cig would just slide right out.

 

[lukaszek]

deuxhero wait until you notice in elex all that toilet paper

 

[Impressive Organ]

Todd needs to stop forcing his anti-smoker politics into his games.

 

[huskarls]

same reason they renamed morphine to med-x. in fact I can name more games where you can kill children than do drugs (not counting alcohol)

 

[just]

what about killing children while on drugs

 

[Bester]

You can smoke metaphorically. You're smoking a dick the entire time by playing an inferior version of Fallout 1 & 2.

 

[BruceVC]

It always seemed odd to me you could collect loads of cigarettes in these games, but could never use them besides vendor trash, but loads of NPCs smoked constantly. Even stranger is that New Vegas lets you harvest and use chewing tobacco to nearly strictly beneficial effect (small addiction chance the only negative). It would be less weird if the effect of a cigarette was purely negative (e.g., -1 HP and -5 AP) like in Deus Ex. Has some developer interview ever explained this? I can only assume it was some foreign rating board saying "It's OK if NPCs smoke, but the adult PC can't" (see "Med-X"), or some moralist foot down from some senior Bethesda person.

It is strange but fortunately there is a mod that allows you to smoke and even a chance of nicotine addiction

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/18947/

 

[ERYFKRAD]

It always seemed odd to me you could collect loads of cigarettes in these games, but could never use them besides vendor trash, but loads of NPCs smoked constantly. Even stranger is that New Vegas lets you harvest and use chewing tobacco to nearly strictly beneficial effect (small addiction chance the only negative). It would be less weird if the effect of a cigarette was purely negative (e.g., -1 HP and -5 AP) like in Deus Ex. Has some developer interview ever explained this? I can only assume it was some foreign rating board saying "It's OK if NPCs smoke, but the adult PC can't" (see "Med-X"), or some moralist foot down from some senior Bethesda person.

Dude don't smoke because he chews tobacco direct

 

[Fargus]

It always seemed odd to me you could collect loads of cigarettes in these games, but could never use them besides vendor trash, but loads of NPCs smoked constantly. Even stranger is that New Vegas lets you harvest and use chewing tobacco to nearly strictly beneficial effect (small addiction chance the only negative). It would be less weird if the effect of a cigarette was purely negative (e.g., -1 HP and -5 AP) like in Deus Ex. Has some developer interview ever explained this? I can only assume it was some foreign rating board saying "It's OK if NPCs smoke, but the adult PC can't" (see "Med-X"), or some moralist foot down from some senior Bethesda person.

It is strange but fortunately there is a mod that allows you to smoke and even a chance of nicotine addiction

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/18947/

This one for NV is better
https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/67205

 

[BrainMuncher]

same reason they renamed morphine to med-x. in fact I can name more games where you can kill children than do drugs (not counting alcohol)

Yes the game was denied ratings classification (essentially banned) in australia for incentivising drug use. So they changed it but for everyone not just australia.