The PC Brigade

I used to be an avid PC gamer. I don't have much time to play games any more outside rare drunken sessions of The World of Warcraft with Dan. To my knowledge we are the first racist guild on WoW, only accepting a certain species of character. We thought our name of Strength Through Joy might get us in to trouble with Blizzard, the makers of the game, but since our racism is justly confined to the fictional species of the game world we are fine. Anyway, everyone knows that if you play as a Blood Elf you are a bell end.

Unfortunately not all games embrace the freedom of expression found in WoW. I was playing the "free form" game Fallout 3 a week ago and was bitterly disappointed with the world in which I found myself. The beauty of role play games is that you get to sculpt the character and world in which you live. When I played Mass Effect a number of months ago my character did no wrong and justly fought for the weak and innocent no matter the personal cost. In Fallout 3 I choose a darker path.

I generally go around killing anyone who upsets me or might have something of value on them. The beauty of the game is that you can kill anyone, even central characters, which changes what options you have in the future (a dead person won't be able to give you tasks and rewards but may have valuable items). There is a karma system that operates based on the decisions you make along the way. Even if my character cured aids, cancer and puppy death I still would not be halfway up that karma scale based on my current play.

In my pursuit of evil I picked the lock of a solder's house that I thought would have good weapons and money. I then stole everything inside of value and messed around with his furniture (there is no benefit to messing around with other peoples furniture in the game but as I already have explained I am evil this time). On investigating the last room in the house I came across something unexpected, a young child that had been adopted by the soldier. He made a shout and made a run for the door to the town. If he got out then I would have about 30 townspeople on my ass. My shotgun didn't need much aligning with the back of his head as he ran past. A child's life versus the stuff I had stolen was an easy decision to make. My shotgun rang out with the sound of child murder. To my surprise the child kept running. Another blast failed to down him. I then got out my flame thrower and cooked him for about 20 seconds. Still nothing. I then realised the situation. The makers of the game had made it impossible to kill children.

In Fallout 3 you can club in the head of a defenceless animal or murder an unarmed prostitute by beating her to death with a knuckle duster after having slept with her but you can't kill a child when he is about to snitch on you.


Pete