Fallout: New Vegas

I dont think fallout had the protected tag actualy.

But yea, they would have.

Fallout does not have the Protected flag at all. It only has Essential and non-Essential (which is not a flag). And I don't have problems with the Essential flag. The problem is that is that Bethesda hands it out too much and is usually a lazy way to handle questing. It's not like Beth has good writers anyways, so they'd benefit from cutting down on the Essential flag and allowing multiple paths. Still, I don;t have problems with the flag in general, and I find myself adding Essentials to New Vegas. It's weird I know, but I like a few unkillables. I'd rather have an alive and functional game world than dead one. Which is why I don't mind the Essential flag and love the respawn flag. Still, Protected is by far the best of both worlds.

And yes, unkillable kids is annoying as fuck. Kids are annoying and usually not too exciting. And I don't go "look at the 'innocent' kid'". Unless a kid is important (which me wonder why you have important kids), they're going to be killable to me. Moral guardians be damned.

The kids being killable thing prolly has a thing to do with sales, and the ESRB ratings

Personally, I would have them be essential. They can be KO'd but not killed.

To quote Emil Pagliarulo: "We don't want to cross lines like killing kids (we actually never got as far as even putting kill-able kids in any builds of the game)... For us, that was a line we certainly didn't want to cross, and we think that was the right decision. It wouldn't have been socially responsible, at least in the case of Fallout 3."

tl;dr it was about "social responsibility."

As for the Protected flag not existing, IIRC it didn't really exist until Skyrim, anyway, so yeah. Hopefully FO 4 does away with the Essential flag entirely and just applies the Protected flag to important NP Cs. I'm fine with me locking myself out of quests by being a genocidal maniac; I'm not fine with being locked out of quests because of happenstance. *Glares at Gun Runners' Isaac*

Kids usually are Essential in New Vegas. It's just they also have the "child" flag in their race as well which prevent them from being hit at all. So much redundant protection for unimportant people and for dumb reasons. It doesn't matter to me though as I got a mod for New Vegas that lets kids be killed and even gibbed.

As a modder, I want that Essential flag for personal use. Having a true immortality flag is helpful, even if it's annoying. At least let me keep my awesome respawn flag.

edited 29th Jul '15 2:57:55 PM by KingFeraligatr

They can call it whatever they want but one way or another the fact remains that it is a legal matter, not one of how to tell a story or whatnot.

Fallout 1 and 2 had killable kids and made doing so a relevant choice (you got a particular wicked karma). Europe threw a bitchfit and you got the censored versions over there, which were buggy as hell, so they dropped the option.

Personally, I dislike Essential, though I'm not against the tag existing. I played Daggerfall, I played Morrowind, and neither of them needed "essential" to have vibrant, thriving worlds (helps that both games let you blow off the main plot completely if you so choose). Fallout 1 had one Essential for a specific purpose, and that was okay; 2 had the Arroyo essentials, which was annoying - there's a whole wasteland out there and most of FO 2 literally has nothing to do with Arroyo or the Enclave. And then came Oblivion and FO 3.

I'm not against the strategic and limited use of Essential, but the fewer Essentials you need in a sandbox game like Fallout or TES, the better. NV had the kids and Yes Man and thassit. That was probably the best they could do^note though I might have, instead of Yes Man, had a Wild Card ending where you break all three patron questlines, then personally erase both the Legion and NCR forces from the dam.

Same reason, I would rather not have children - I want to be able to kill the Mick and Ralph crier if he gets too annoying. While I liked the Childkiller option in FO 1 and 2, these days the Moral Guardians would, in fact, notice something like that and raise a hellfit that most publishers do not want to deal with (and it was annoying that you had to deal with child pickpockets without killing them in FO 2's Den unless you were prepared for the consequences, but that was the point - and there was supposed to be a fix quest for it before it got cut).

Moral Guardians need to fuck off. Children aren't any more god damned special than adults, so if you're going to go off and force companies not to put child killing in their products, you need to just ban violence period. EVERYONE needs protecting, not just kids. That stupid 18 year old line is an arbitrary piece of bullshit anyway considering how many adults act like they shouldn't even be running their own lives to start with.

That being said, if kids can't be killed in these stories, I'd rather they just not be visible. Stick child noises somewhere where they could be reasonably hidden so the world feels less dead, and otherwise just don't let them be out and about to get in my way.

I would imagine that society at large disagrees, which is why it's very rare to see children killed in Video Games.

Is it "typical" though? I distinctly remember Morrowind giving you a "you dun goofed the timeline" message if you killed someone 'essential' to the main quest. I absolutely loved that, it scared the piss out of me when I was younger, it was ominous, made me claustrophobic.

It's typical as of recently, yeah. Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim were all basically drowning in essential characters.

@Journeyman: Well, agreed, but gaming companies have to listen to bitching in America, and a lot of the big guys don't see No Such Thing as Bad Publicity as true. If they have family-friendly franchises, for example, they might not want crap flowing into that basket, or they might not want to be tarred with an image problem, their ability to advertise the game may be adversely affected, or they might not want an AO rating because Wal-Mart. Also, of course, they might want to sell outside the US, which means avoiding Australia's RC, the UK's R or Germany's Index.

Indie developers have more latitude, of course. If someone wants to make anything from classic Fallout to Columbine Simulator II: Pre-School Splatter and sell it off their website, they don't have to give a damn what Wal-Mart, the ESRB, or a troll pretending to represent the parents of America has to say about them.

Sorta weird to hear complainin' about a game that is not about killing indiscriminately, but that has a story with a beggining and an end, because it does not have indiscriminate killing. Like complaining how there is no LFG, Ult ability, DPS meter reports, or commentary about arab racial inequality.

Sure, others will "fix" it with addons, but to whine about a decision made by developers (A decision once again, based on legality of their business) seems kinda far fetched to me.

...what's LFG?

It steals a bit of immersion, and it seems heavy-handed to portray a wasteland with "real" people, making a constant commentary on how the human could destroy itself and not go all-out.

Walking Dead had the main character shoot a little girl who'd turned into a zombie. This set the tone for a series that is "TV's best drama" and airs weekly every October from 8-9 central. When a game about a post-apocalyptic wasteland has an M Rating (Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Use of Drugs) ,and then says "but kids are immortal", that makes me tilt my head.

But it's as much use complaining about that as there is complaining about lack of nudity/f-bombs on television. Public consciousness is weird.

And that, I guess "legal reasons", its far less cost-effective to include hardcore, gritty, killable children for the player to torture than it is to simply make them immortal.

I see the reasons I just don't like them. In my perfect, uncensored world you could burn down Megaton for absolutely no money. And Europe could f'ck off because I'd have unlimited money and a jetpack. I don't need their business.

edited 30th Jul '15 12:57:43 PM by Soble

@ Ramidel: Amercia is not to blame actualy, it is Europe.

It is illegal to have killable children there.

So rather then making two versions, which costs more....

It ruins the immersion no more than gameplay elements do. How immersive it is that the world literally pauses upon entering VATS? How realistic, or how deep into the message does it go?

Whatever your reasons or complains about lack of killable children, the message is not yours to make, it is the developers of Fallout's. Even if the reason is "We want to make a game enjoyable by many and to expand this idea we need to obey certain laws", on the subject of child-killing.

There is also no lack of dead children in small size skeletons with a teddy bear or two in the games around rooms and such, so that Infant Immortality is enforced in gameplay does not mean that philosophically the subject is off limits.

There were children in Megaton after all.

I mean, at some point you're just literally saying "I want to kill kids in a video game" and that's... really fucking creepy to me, sorry.

Personally I think there's a huge gap between watching Rick shooting a zombiefied kid and actually pulling the (digital) trigger yourself. At some point immersion just needs to take a back seat over having something that wouldn't even really make the game that much more immersive than, say, getting rid of VATS altogether or making any and all unarmored headshots one hit kills.

Yeah, put me down for finding the desire to kill children really off putting.

I think there is, however, something to be said for kids being killed by other characters.

I mean, it never actually happens in the game, but if there was some sort of event where, say, Fiends invaded Freeside, it would somewhat hurt my immersion that the Mick and Ralph's crier and the kids chasing that rat survived somehow when everyone else is dead.

That would be a suggestion I would back. Personally I know that I'll never be aiming my crosshairs at a kid's head and pull the trigger, so I don't mind them having the Essential flag when I'm involved, but them being killed by others, such as, like Mukora said, Fiends, is something I'm fine with. I mean, sure, it's terrible, but it's something that would be the reality in a place like the Mojave Wasteland.

I think the "philosophical" point trying to be made her is that there is a question of "Why can we kill ANYONE else, no matter how innocent, but not children?" and they fear that the argument that is wielded behind those who oppose them are "What you do in a game translates to real life"

Sorry for getting off topic, just need to close this subject from my part.

I mean, technically speaking you can kill a buttload of innocents at gunpoint in Fallout, so surely it is hypocritical to not do it to children, right? The problem is that even if it is not expected to so quite blatantly blow up aspects of "innocence" in the ungallant manner of wearing toddlerskin hats, it is also illegal, and considered (for whatever you wish) repulsive by societies.

It is fine to question it. The more we discuss the better. But at some point throwing little fits because society does not change to your standards on virtual reality NOW, seems a bit childish. So you need to understand that there is no accusation that "Video games will make you kill children IRL", or "Violent videogames beget violence", just that no one cares if your fetish is blowing clowns at the bathroom of the local 7/11 or murdering virtual children because even if harmless in reality, society does not care for that point of view.

My own philosophy is "If you're going to protect ANYBODY why in God's name are you allowing anybody at all to be killed?" So, we can't kill kids but it's perfectly okay to blow an unarmed woman's head off? Kids aren't put in danger, but in the very tutorial of the game you see an unarmed woman surrounded by vicious animals and it's a crapshoot whether you'll get there in time to save her or not? Fuck. Off. This is why I use JIP Command Console and if I can't mark a companion essential, I don't bring them into an area until the battle's done and they're needed to haul supplies.

Well any game that let you kill kids would be AO so...

plus dead kids can be upsetting to folks in ways other npcs aren't. A strong desire to protect children is sort of a human thing. Even virtual tiny humans.