The lead designer of Fallout 3 has spoken about why the game series no longer allows you to shoot small children. But has failed to deal with why you can still do the same to plenty of other characters in the game.
Speaking to Edge Magazine, Emil Pagliarulo, the lead designer of Fallout 3 said Bethesda, the company behind the game, had asked itself: “What benefit would there be in killing the kids in the game? It just seems gratuitous, unnecessary and cruel. It wouldn’t have been socially responsible.”
However, the game designers have shown no such moral responsibility when it comes to many other characters in the game. Early in the game you encounter a desperate and ill ex-prostitute living at the near starvation line. Want to blow her head off and then kick it around her shack? No problem! And as well as the morally non-problematic rampaging mutants and feral ghouls, you can also do this to worried townsfolks, traders and two-headed cows.
So, while children are sacrosanct in the game, the culturally insensitive “Brahmin” cattle aren’t. And neither are ordinary folks. Isn’t this rank hypocrisy at worst, or moral squeamishness at best? Either it’s fun to kill people in games or it’s not. Why is there an age exemption, Bethesda? Prostitutes, for instance, suffer horrific real-life attacks across the world on a depressingly regular basis. Yet their violent abuse has been portrayed in scores of games for a cheap laugh. Is it really OK to beat them to bits in-game while not cute ickle kids? Answers on a postcard please…
Out 31 Oct (for PC, PS3, Xbox 360) | from £35 | Bethesda
