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Censor Profanity


JackServant

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My 11-year-old son watches me play Fallout 4 and keeps begging me to let him play it. I keep telling him no because of all the foul language. I don't know if it's possible to sensor the the dialogue at all. Maybe bleep out the F bombs in the Raider combat dialogue? Maybe just delete the lines all together? Is anybody even willing to fix this for me?

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@OP

this is an interesting topic -

i look forward to seeing what the creative modders of Moddb and Nexus have to say about this!

 

mods are about making the game more fun and accessible for folks.

constrained story telling modes tend to lead to unexpected awesome. look at alphabetical africa...

previous fallout games explored this a lot more with FORPG elements too.

the scope of such a mod as this is enormous -

look at the project to remove 'drugs' and all references to them from FO4 - nuka-cola contains caffine, so is therefore also a drug. beers, gone. wine, gone. drugs, gone.

the project to remove nudity or tattoos? similarly difficult.

 

I am a firm believer that - 'there is no such thing as a stupid question" -

if you don't ask, you never know,

and there's probably a whole heap of other folks out there who'd ask the same thing

so thanks for breaking the ice!

this thread and a few similar ones like it lead to great kinds of discussions,

so apologies for a novella in reply.

 

a censored 'limited edition' (get it? limited, as in, you're paying more money for even less content)

would be interesting too - not least for mocking via satire concepts such as 'pay-per-use' or 'dlc's"

you get to code your own game, censor your own screenplay etc... with promotional 'vault-tec' themed inserts.

there's an instruction pamphlet that tells you how to redact the other booklets.

though, there's another 'hand-written' card that tells you to ignore the other pamphlets...

that'd give you a real sense of vault-life hehe.

I'd play that!

 

who or what is 'censoring' the audio?

what words or topics cannot be discussed, and those are where you find who has what power - voltaire.

how is the censorship imposed?

ie - Diamond City 'censored' mutants and ghouls - they banished them to exile, where they formed Goodneighbor.

is it the death penalty to say certain words which must not be said?

he who must not be named - Lord Voldermuerde in 'hairy pothead and the excessive sequels'

gee, I wonder what they did to Carlin then, and that list of words that still can't really be said in certain circles...

 

could censorship indicate they're in tranquility lane and is it stanislaus altering the very recollection they have?

is the institute playing back the memories from a dead sole-survivor at some future point, and censoring what they saw?

does the BoS or Enclave censor stuff? (hint, president John Henry Eden might) is that part of propaganda?

 

is the player themselves reviving codes of conduct from before 2077 via self-censorship? is it the vault dweller's mentality being conveyed? - in a way,

that mocks the paranoia during the scare era, and the 50s levels of ridiculous censorship with the comic code, fcc and all.

politeness and certain morality or conduct would have changed a lot in the intervening 230 years or so...

is the vault dweller stuck in the past? - will that benign self-censorship morph into a vulnerability to joining the Enclave and doing heinous things,

merely to revive a world that can never return or be made again?

conversely, does what the sole survivor brings to the 2290s help the future? are people nicer to one another, despite how terrible the world is?

 

is it the children of the atom censoring the game itself?

is it like graffiti and counter-graffiti? ie, did the enclave put up a poster, which then the institute has censored, over which the Atom Cats have re-graffiti'd?

is it more like 'the collected works of TS Spivet" - a subtle histrionics? an unreliable narrator...

very much a case of 'less is more' because of the 'but why?'

censorship tells us a lot about codes and values of a society, often unwritten but held in oral living memory as a code or unspoken 'rule'...

 

consider "the stick of truth'

the AUS version is sought after, in part due to hilarious censorship which replaces two levels of that SouthPark game with

an image of a crying koala and some paragraphs of anti-censorship.

 

consider things such as "being ned kelly", "postal" or "who shot jfk?" -

those are 'beyond classification", yet are really historically crappy laughable games...

it wasn't so much cursing, it was the content of the game itself which was the subject of censure.

 

-----

how do we make a mod happen?

my own mod fu is subpar, though it shouldn't be too difficult - many hands make light work.

it could be done by manual over-write of all audio files which contain 'the profanity'.

another way to play, is to 'mute' the audio output for voices, probably music too as there are some choice words and concepts...

and a few mods work for that... particularly for FO fans who

want the protagonist to have no voice.

you could then append the 'profane' dialogue sentence by sentence.

|expletive deleted| or |content redacted|, (how creepy would that be in-game?)

or strikethrough as sous-rature, or blacked-out as a block...

for audio censoring,

would you do the simlish cursing instead, or charlie brown style trumpets,

or just that C key beep, or stuff like coughing or paper-tear?

or, 'no' in different languages?

PK Dick's idea to have different random words in place of the ones we don't want to hear

would be a nice nod to "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

 

I'm partial to replacing cursewords with snippets from a champion 100db mountain yodeler, or, an airhorn.

or, will ferrell saying 'ninny-muggins'.

 

-----

There's nothing wrong with encouraging folks to respect manners or 'civility';

isn't it awesome to see it when folks voluntarily choose as much though?

politeness realized, vs politeness imposed.

that's what rubs a lot of folks the wrong way with 'censorship' -

"why water yourself down if folks can't handle you at 100% the real you?"

 

a lot of folks would like a non-obligational option available,

to be able to redact stuff or change the audio -

yet, they don't want to give real-world censors an inch from which

they can and will take a mile, make mountains from molehills,

and alter the permissible of what games, novels and comics can explore.

 

it starts with 'what is permissible in fiction' and meanders to

'what is historically accurate in creative-non-fiction' - truman capote.

 

real world censors, like sarkeesian and jack thompson;

there have been events such as gamergate over as much.

to play devil's advocate, they can ask questions too. its when such questions become

imposition inquisitions, and when certain other realms of fiction are beyond such critical reflection,

that it smacks of hypocrisis and disingenuousness.

 

those people are not compelled to play games they do not wish to;

what force or entity is obligating people who frankly hate videogames of any sort, to spend money on games, and load up a game they don't want to play?

do these people not have agency/free will of their own?

prove beyond any doubt an x to a outcome, prove the causation of some effect, and people would agree - however,

it is much more complicated than either side presents...

likewise, if we want to have different modes for games available as a mod or whatever,

we can do that, and it's a win win.

 

there was a great twilight zone episode

about a person in the 50s who meddled and censored people all the time.

that goes really hand in glove with Sheldon Allman and

"big bother is watching you"

 

who or what has the right to censor others?

what are the limits of freedom? is one persons freedom another persons subjugation?

those are awesome questions that Bethesda instills in the audience,

and what Fallout asks every time a gamer plays it.

 

-----

so,

if you remove gritty hyperviolence and cursing etc from FO universe,

how much is left, and is whatever remains

is it still really fallout?

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tawatabak, let me worry about the violence and how to raise my child. I'm not incompetent.

 

AGreatWeight, I'm actually asking for my copy to be censored. It's not being imposed on me. I just want the option to turn it on or off.

 

montky, I'm not trying to spark a debate or choose sides in the one that already rages. I just want certain words muted like they do when playing movies on network TV. And asterisks in the subtitles. The violence can stay (maybe tone down the blood) and so can the drugs. They provide good opportunities for me teach my boy about such things as I watch him play. It'll still be Fallout.

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@qwertyzeldar

awesome stuff, qwerty! that sounds good and will be great to follow.

will it be like other audio replacer or dub mods?

or will it be toggleable from the options menu in-game?

 

i think JackServant was looking along the lines of

George Carlin's 7 words you can't say on TV list + anatomical references or other slang.

from post #5;

" I just want certain words muted like they do when playing movies on network TV. And asterisks in the subtitles. The violence can stay (maybe tone down the blood) and so can the drugs [...| It'll still be Fallout."

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Though i understand you, would it not be more effective to just teach your son about ESRB ratings? It's an M 17+ game for a reason, simply have him wait a few years and play other games, Skyrim is safe enough.

 

Or in the meantime he can play FO3 and NV with Lances language filter mod:

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/48842/?

 

http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/14159

 

Just keep him away from the atomic wrangler casino (NV) and Dukov's place (FO3) and he should be fine killing people without worrying he runs into a nipple or two.

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@gilibran-

there's limited censored editions of FO3 and FONV?

I'll have to load those up and give those a go then -

thanks for the tipoff!

Yes, though i do not use it, i did remember it passed by when i was searching for mods when i re installeed FO3 and NV for Tale of two Wastelands. Hope it helps

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