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Fallout 3 Launches Amidst Controversy

Posted by Soulskill on from the or-fallout-one-might-say dept.

Earlier this week, Bethesda released Fallout 3 after a long campaign of defending and protecting the game's reputation from claims that it contained inappropriate content. Ads for the game in Washington DC's subway system were pulled after they upset some touchy travelers over the depiction of post-apocalyptic Washington landmarks. Shortly before the game's release, early trailers were removed as well. Earlier this year, the game was banned in Australia for its in-game use of morphine, causing the drug's name to be changed to Med-X. On the issue of sensitive content, Bethesda's Emil Pagliarulo wrote in Edge Magazine about the design decision to disallow the killing of children in the game. Gamasutra ran an opinion piece on the same subject, and the Washington Post discusses the role of Washington DC in Fallout 3. On the DRM front, the game does come with SecuROM, but Bethesda says it's only used for a disc check. Reviews for the game have been overwhelmingly positive so far, despite reports of bugs with the save system and occasional lock-ups.

3 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. DC Metro (subway) ads by Southpaw018 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Those ads weren't pulled, at least as far as I'm aware. They were still plastered all over Metro Center (the central stop, and the busiest stop, in the system) as of Friday evening on the way home from work.

    --
    ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
    1. Re:DC Metro (subway) ads by BMonger · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Yeah. Nothing in the linked article or the 2 articles it links to says the ads were pulled. There was just some guy that wrote a letter to the editor saying he didn't like them and he thought they should be pulled. Way to go editors!

  2. Re:Bah! by Fallingcow · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Bought mine on Steam, not supposed to have any Securom.

    Worked fine for ~2-3 hours, now crashes ever 2 minutes or so, every single time I fire it up. Tried all the solutions I can find, not going to keep looking, because I really shouldn't have to be dicking with this.

    I've not seen a PC release from a major publisher have problems this severe in years. I guess it's partially my fault, since Bethesda's known for releasing beta-quality software and fixing it in the 1.1 patch, but for me their poor QA had usually manifested itself in a crash every 1-2 hours, not an entirely unplayable game. Especially since they're just using the now-sort-of-old and well-tested Oblivion engine, I thought this was their best chance at a solid release, but they still managed to fuck it up.