Fallout 3 inherited a great deal from its developer’s last successful game: Oblivion. Although this means that Fallout 3 may not be the gameplay sequel some fans had hoped for, the final product is somewhat more accessible without losing that post-apocalyptic flavor.

. . . is not possible. Sorry for the bait and switch, but Simon Parkin has posted an editorial at Gamasutra about this very issue. His main point is that, although the postapocalyptic RPG Fallout 3 has a fairly open world that leaves you free to be as noble or horrible as you like, the game makes special exception for the sanctity of young life and this ostensibly moral design decision says something sinister about games as a medium.

The problem boils down to this: without the designers’ invisible hand, the game doesn’t make a very convincing argument against killing kids. There are a lot of reasons why making the argument would be difficult, but most of them revolve around the idea that games are entertainment, and being punished for murder isn’t very entertaining. More subtly, the idea that designers need to police your moral behavior suggests that they think you’re learning morality from the games you play.

Cynical readers could probably argue that the designers are only really worried about how they’ll be perceived, rather than by the consequences of their design decisions on players. However, it really does seem like there should be some serious problems (gameplay or psychological) with being a horrible person. Go give the article a read and post some suggestions for what to do with this problem if you have any ideas.

Microsoft India will be canceling Fallout 3 because local cultural sensitivities are too risky for an India release.

While the company won’t go into specifics about what is offensive in particular, American gamers can look forward to finding out in about a week on 10/28. This news follows a delay announcement from Sony regarding LittleBigPlanet, so that the corporate giant could scrub the game clean of any Qu’ran references.

Perhaps it’s just the gaming glut from the approaching holiday, but content compromises from two high-profile games in two weeks seems a little above the norm for localization casualties. The two games have taken a complementary approach, one modifying its content and releasing, and one preserving the content and canceling. It’s difficult to balance between the right to speech and good business decisions, but if you had to pick between dropping a game or compromising it, what would you do?