Lost opportunities for Fallout 3

Monday, October 20th, 2008

Much ado has been made recently over the long anticipated post apocalyptic role playing game, Fallout 3.  After all, it has been just over ten years since the release of the last game in the series, Fallout 2.  (This is not counting Fallout Tactics, which was not a roleplaying game as such.)

Fallout 3 is a roleplaying game set in a post-apocalyptic world.

Fan expectations for such a project are inevitably high.  Just as inevitably, fan complaints have been legion, especially from the die-hards who remember the original games with a fond sense of nostalgia.  There has been a great deal of worrying from these types that the new Fallout, which is being developed by Bethesda rather than the original developer Black Isle, will lack that special magic that made the first two games great.

Undeniably, a part of that magic was the mature nature of the games.  The original Fallout series featured many adult topics, including sex, prostitution, drugs, and drug addiction.  Unfortunately, times change, and many of these topics are no longer considered fit for video games, at least if they want to avoid the instant death sentence that is an “Adults Only” (AO) rating.  Games with this rating will not be sold in most brick and mortar stores, which means there is little hope of AO games achieving the kind of sales that less harshly rated titles often do.

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