The game is coming out today and I just preordered

Remove all ads!

I am fairly sure there is a difference between letting a kid kill prostitutes in GTA and letting them hear a swear in a RPG but that is just me.

 

Considering letting my 11 1/2 year old play, if he's interested. I wouldn't offer the same to my 7 year old. A bit too young in my opinion.

 

The gore from the victim, probably a deer, from the first wolf you encounter is also not what I want her seeing. Probably wishful thinking on my part that the game would be awesome for me and appropriate for her.

 

Oh, there's worse stuff than that in the game.

Visual

The gore itself is usually not over-the-top (besides standard RPG tropes like dungeons with blood-filled pools etc). But the player is presented with some visual scenes that are quite harrowing in terms of what they show and how they let you feel about them.

For example, the scene you encounter when you reach the first village - that can probably give a child nightmares.

Story

I don't want to give spoilers, so I'll keep it very vague. Possibly-not-child-safe things that the player character may experience as part of the story, include:

• Friendly people dying a violent death after you've gotten to know them a little (and possibly already started to form an emotional connection to them).

• People in power who are responsible for inhuman crimes, intelligently defending and rationalizing their actions to you and trying to sway you from opposing them and to enlist you for their purposes instead. (I wonder if a child can see through and counter such immoral rationalizations...)

Back-stories / lore / world history

The themes and back-stories told through dialog and other means are sometimes pretty darn grim too; a good deal more so than in e.g. Baldur's Gate 1 (where the worst thing most locals were dealing with was an iron shortage and the risk of bandits).

In PoE's, the people's stories and the world's recent history (as presented to the player mostly in text form) contain thing like:

• Violent persecution and purges of people for their religion.
• War crimes, like whole villages of civilians being rounded up by enemy soldiers into a building and burned alive.
• Rape.

Worse yet, through "backflashes" of sorts (can't say more without spoilers), small fragments of such stories may be presented through the eyes of the perpetrators of the crimes, which can be quite disturbing.

Language

I tripped over a use of the f-word in a dialog in the first village, not because I have a problem with such swear words in general (e.g. I couldn't imagine something like South Park without them ), but rather because here it felt out of place.

Though I don't consider it a big deal, either, especially compared to the game's mature themes and violent images, and considering the fact that kids probably already hear those words every day on the playground/schoolyard.

That being said, some fans on the Obsidian forums have already said they plan to make a mod to edit out strong language.

Conclusion

When you want to decide whether to let a kid play the game, I'd recommend you play the beginning of it (at least until you reach the first village) yourself, and then form your opinion based on that.

Me, I wouldn't let a 7 year old play it, and only let an 11 year old play if they've got someone they can talk to about the stuff they see.

 

Friendly people and heroes die in children's stories and cartoons all the time. To be fair, sometimes they're brought back, but that's not a rule. Death is a part of everyday life and the emotions it triggers also play an important part in teaching kids why murder is considered morally wrong and how to deal with loss.

Morality is a point of view anyway. A child's mind is unlikely to understand why one side is more acceptable than the other until they learn to understand the society and culture they live in.

But it's still a game. Children aren't so easily swayed by the things they see on a screen. If anything is bound to give a child nightmares after playing a fantasy game, it's the actual monsters, not the human monsters.

I do find it amusing that it's the swearing that people find needs modding most. I'm betting it's a bunch of American prudes. I've rarely met a European unwilling to throw around curses.

 

The same can be said for any game, including Super Mario. There is still a bit of difference for kid between viewing the gore and knowing you "beat" them.

---------- Added 0 hours, 4 minutes and 41 seconds later... ----------

And tbh, half of me want s to keep my little angel "pure" so I won't introduce her to the game, yet..... but the other half knows that if I do let her play it the little angel can't keep her trap shut and will tell mom every single thing she saw in game. It's the ear-beating from the ball & chain that I am trying to avoid as well.

 

It´s a question of presentation. If it´s a fairy tale and the undoubtledly evil witch meets her just end (that normally is not described in gory detail) or some friendly old grandmother dies peacefully among her family and the tale is given by an adult or an adult is present to be there in case of questions, then that would be o.k.
Any game or movie with content in which a character is bloodily slaughtered/raped/tortured and that is visually shown is nothing for a child.

And "all the time" is an exaggeration. I can´t remember seeing friendly characters die violently in "Heidi", "Maja", "Pipi Langstrumpf", "Michel of Lönneberga" or even "Asterix"

For a mass murderer, butcher or undertaker perhaps.
No *sane* child or even adult thinks every day about death. Sure there are lots of death´s in the news but those are presented neutrally and have really nothing to do with ones life. Usually people live their lives and simply put the thought that in every minute someone dies on earth and they or their loved ones might be next aside to be able to live normally. And certainly seeing death as part of everydays live is something that should not be expected from any child.

There is no need for games or movies that visually show violent death to teach a child about loss. It´s a parents job to do that and explain it in a way the child can understand and live with. Noone should let games or TV teach a child about matters of life. It usually comes soon enough e.g. when a pet dies.

European or at least german versions of games usually are rated too and in some cases either restricted so that only adults can buy them or censored in a way (e.g. instead of bleeding enemies they are aliens with green blood or robots in some older games). While I *as an adult* sometimes buy the american version of a game to save me the censorship, I would not come to the idea to show any of those games to any children.

---------- Added 0 hours, 11 minutes and 0 seconds later... ----------

M (17+) is not the last rating that includes everything. There still is the A in the esrb ratings or the "18" in german USK ratings, e.g. for Dragon Age Origin:
http://www.usk.de/pruefverfahren/alterskennzeichen/
Strangely Pillars of Eternity (the demo and the trailer) has only been rated "12" by the USK. Was the demo a lot tamer than the actual game?

Edit: How did I do that - I posted my reply and then tried to reply to a different post and suddenly both my replies are part of one big post?

 

Clearly it was hyperbole for the sake of the argument. Also, I'm pretty sure I remember at least one death in Maya, and it seems rather unlikely that none of the friendlies have ever died in Asterix, but it's been a couple of decades since I've paid any attention to either. This weird obsession with removing any traumatic events from the stories we tell our children is a fairly recent thing (well, if we can call the modern age "recent"). Even the damn Bible has been edited almost to the point where it reads like a Disney book.

I think about death every day. Are you calling me insane?

(You'd probably be right.)

Why not? What's the downside of accepting the natural order of life from a young age?

Oh, I agree. There are better ways to approach the subject and I certainly wasn't suggesting that anyone should sit their seven year old in front of the computer and leave them to figure out the realities of life on their own. But with proper oversight, even playing a game of this magnitude at a young age shouldn't be a problem. One should probably ease the kid into it though. Pillars of Eternity is likely not the best way to break it to your kid that everyone's gonna die eventually and that there is no Santa Claus.

Also, I don't know why everyone hates that Noone guy. What's he ever done to anyone? I mean, he really cares.

Yeah, Germans have gone pretty crazy with that in recent years. Probably still overcompensating for the mistakes of the past.

 

I tend to think of swearing this way:

Either it is wrong or it is perfectly permissible. If it is perfectly permissible, then there's no need to shelter a child from it. If, however, one feels the need to shelter the child then that would mean that it's the former and, therefore, the adult should refrain from it as well. This is very practical as well since it is very difficult for people to refrain around children when they are in the habit around everyone else. If you don't want them to do it then don't do it yourself - at home or anywhere else.

I have certain problems with it.

1. I am a language purist and I cringe when I hear people tossing in meaningless words, especially when said meaningless words become even more meaningless because the person doesn't know he's saying it. We have how many million words in the English dictionary with how many thousands upon thousands of adjectives, verbs, and adverbs and people generally choose to stick to just a few curse word substitutes. I don't think constant swearing is doing anything for a person's ability to speak intelligently. I'm not saying that those people CAN'T (or that all can't) but it sure does affect a lot of them. I know quite a few people who speak like...:

"I was going to the ******* theater last night when a ******* car nearly ******* ran me of the **** road. That ***** of a ******** ought to have his ******* license ******* taken from him and his *** kicked to the ******* curb.

Seriously. It's stupid. Usually the more a person swears the more it infects the language and it becomes worse over time. That brings me to...

2. It sounds stupid. Yes, I know. There are plenty of things that sound stupid that aren't curses, but this is just a small reason mixed with the other ones.


3. Once upon a time, cursing was something taken a bit more seriously. If you cursed something then it wasn't for something light. Now it's just every day use solely for the sake of it.

4. Typical cursing (in the U.S.) tends to focus around sexual functions, certain body parts, and derogatory names for people. Regardless of whether or not one views them as harmless or not, it's purely crude and crass. Who wants to have images of some sexual act enter his head when talking about such a basic topic, say, the weather? Further, we're already bombarded with a constant stream of that stuff (sex sells stuff) in the media, the movies, the radio, magazines, clothing, and just about everything else. You'd think that was the purpose of life!

5. The other main subject of cursing tends to use the name of God in cursing. Yes, I realize that many people don't believe in God or many people believe in a God of sorts, but they don't believe he really has anything to do with the world except making it. However, even to these people, as there are certain socially accepted actions/words used commonly out of politeness or respect of other people, then it's also not asking too much that people refrain from these particular words out of respect for others. For those who use God's name to curse and actually do believe in God, I think there's a much more compelling argument for them to stop, but that should be rather obvious if they think about it.


In regard to games, I am quite aware that different characters are portrayed in certain manners. Sometimes there are gruff ones, sometimes their are the soft-spoken ones. Yes, they have to be written in a different way. If an occasional word pops up in that character's dialogue it doesn't really bother me (although I'd prefer it not be in there) but the trend in writing tends to be the same as in speaking these days; namely, overuse. Sometimes they are used as a crutch for bad writing (I don't think PoE writers are bad, by the way, just speaking in general). If you're going to take the time to write for characters, however, spend the time to become creative. I have seen the sailor-type character written very well in a manner that everyone KNOWS what that character is like without having to toss in numerous swears to get the effect across.



Short answer: swearing doesn't increase the quality of games at all. It's useless filler.

 

Does swearing increase the "quality" of a game? I don't know if I'd say that. I do think it can offer a certain "realism" to a game. Whether you like swearing or not, people swear. People swear on Planet Earth, and apparently people swear in Eora.

So while I'm not someone who swears a lot personally, I can appreciate when swearing is included in certain games, books, movies, etc. The recent WWII movie Fury without any swearing wouldn't have seemed realistic, for example.

 

Swearing has its place and its use. It's a proven stress and pain reliever and yes, also a common filler element in everyday speech. It can make writing both better or worse.

I can't tell if you were trying to be facetious or serious...

 

Hate to be the combo breaker, but anyone tried to get just one party member sneaking in the game? It seems to be whole party or nothing. Which is quite bizarre when you want your warrior to draw attention while your rogue flanks in the shadows.

 

I'm very happy with this game, it feels like a very good combination of planescape torment, IWD (I think they even reused some of the music) and BG. I've just reached the graveyard to the east of the first village and I was quite surprised at what I found there.

@BTA, thank you for putting a memorial for Sir Bel, Takara and Kitrax in the game. This really makes this game a personal thing for me, and I guess for most of us here.

 

That's by design (unfortunately).

Yeah, that doesn't work like it did in the IE games.

But remember that PoE rogues do not actually need to attack from invisibility to be effective. In fact they by default don't even have an AD&D like backstab ability, although they can gain one with a talent.

Instead, they usually use Sneak Attack, which automatically applies to any attack they make while one of the following is true:

• the attack is made during the first two seconds of combat
• the target is currently Blinded, Flanked, Hobbled, Paralyzed, Petrified, Prone, Stuck, Stunned or Weakened

The "first 2 seconds of combat" one is risky to pull off with melee weapons, as it pretty much means you'll have to send in your rogue first and let the enemies swarms him (though he can gain a special ability to allow him to break free again).

All of the other ones, though, apply pretty often. For example if you have the warrior and rogue attack an enemy from different sides, it counts at "flanked" and every attack the rogue makes against it becomes a sneak attack. And a whole bunch of Cipher/Wizard/Cleric/etc spells can make enemies "hobbled" or similar.

And remember that Sneak Attack also works with ranged weapons.

 

It's a matter of perspective....

---------- Added 0 hours, 10 minutes and 2 seconds later... ----------

Well, I dont need my little one swearing. Yes they will eventually come across it in life. I swear enough. I know I have swore in front of them when driving.... Effing Midwest drivers! But I still would rather she was mature enough to handle swearing and gore before I just throw it at her in a video game. That's basic common sense... Exposing kids to unfriendly and disturbing instances just because they exist in the world is a pretty stupid thing to do, IMO of course.

 

Damn, I didn't even know all three of them were gone. I was only aware of Kit's passing. That would have hit me hard if I'd seen it in the game.

A lot can happen in a few years...

 

That's good to hear, every instance of 'f' that I've encountered has been beyond hammy.