Half Gamer Half Crab

So today Bethesda announced that Fallout 3 will indeed be getting both DLC and a mod making kit, along the lines of the TES Construction Sets which have given so much life to Morrowind and Oblivion. Actually which just made Oblivion good.

I'm quite surprised. The reason I am quite surprised is due to a controversy which occurred when Oblivion had its heyday. Specifically, the business surrounding the game's re-rating, primarily due to a mod which made women topless in the game. Much as with the Hot Coffee business back with GTA: San Andreas, the developer and publisher got into trouble because of something a user did. Now it's true that R* could have handled the Hot Coffee business better than they did, but that's beside the point. One of the fundamental advantages of PC gaming, one of the things which most involves players in games over the long term, and indeed one of the few ways into the industry for someone with no real qualifications, is modding.

So, they've learned their lesson and not included topless skins at all, we can presume. Why would the modding tools be in doubt, especially given that we're talking about a company renowned for treating its modding community very well, by industry standards? Well, because Fallout 3 contains children. Fallout 1 and 2 originally allowed the killing of children, and this could be modded back in very easily. And given that it's often asked about on the forums - it's only a matter of time before someone mods child killing into the game. I'd give it about two hours after the necessary tools become available (it might actually already exist, I've not checked).

This was contentious enough with games that looked like this. Now we're talking about a game that looks like this. Headshots and gore like that. With kids. Yeah I don't see this ending well!

In other news I finally got Wrath of the Lich King, and I've been playing it loads. It's pretty awesome; Borean Tundra is good, but Howling Fjord is truly epic. And now that I'm getting the hang of my DK she's becoming pretty neat as well. That whole zone was just awesomely done though, absolutely great.