Teen Modification - Swearing Discussion

[tdphys]

Pillars of Eternity received an M rating from the ESRB.  Most notable difference from BGEE which had  a T rating, was the inclusion of the F-bomb.

 

We had a discussion about a swear toggle for those who want to save the children ,  and varied meaningless philosophical discussions about child -rearing  etc...  Personally, I'd like to play without the swearing, but I'm happy to do the gruntwork and mod it out without requesting Obsidian to rewrite the thing.  

 

 

Now that Pillars is here, on linux I've been able to locate the english strings here:

 

  Pillars of Eternity/game/PillarsOfEternity_Data/data/localized/en

 

Simple grepping:

(modified for forum etiquette)

    grep -Hr "[Ff]u**" * | wc -l  

 

yields

 

22 lines of conversation with f***

38 lines of conversation with s***

83 lines of conversation with d***

114 lines of conversation with h***

1  lines of conversation with c***

 

I really, really appreciate the open design of Pillars to modding.  I'll be able to change these trivially.   Now I need your help,

 

What ideas do the lore-masters  here have for an appropriate Eora based cursing replacement?  Admittedly,  I have less problems with d*** and h*** since they have legitimate religious connotations, and will probably leave them for my playthrough.  However,  if you ever wanted to design a new cursing system to support a deep and rich world,  why not exercise that on all of our behalfs

 

Some of my  off the top of my head  lame (and kind of silly) idea replacements are -  

 

f***  - Lerg ( Lerging,  lerger)

s*** - muhk ( muhkhead  )

d*** - fogg  (fogged, fogging )

h*** - hest  -- I'm sure there's a more appropriate reincarnate religion version for this. 

c*** - poof

 

I'm happy to do a search and replace and then upload when the mod site gets going, for those who want to play without the cursing.

Edited March 27, 2015 by tdphys

[General_Redfox]

tdphys,

 

Thanks you so much for having a look into modding the swearing out of Pillars.  I would greatly appreciate a mod like this.  I was really hoping that Pillars of Eternity was going to be rated T.  Since it is not, I have been thinking over the idea of trying to mod out the swearing, but it seems you had the same idea and are going to make it, which is great! I make mods to make game a bit more T rated.  I would love all the words to be out of it.

 

Question: How modding friendly is the game? Are there any tools available? I've seen a few things about modding the interface in this thread

 

I can't say I'll be much help for replacement words.  I read some forgotten realms books long ago, but I don't remember anything they might have said for cursing.  My favorite curse word is blast!

 

Where do you plan to host your mod? Will it be at moddb.com? or Nexus mods? or both?

 

Let me know where you'll post your mod.  I would love to follow the progress.  I don't have the time to play Pillars for a long while.  i've got too many other modding projects that I'm working on.  Here's a list of the ones that I have finished: General_Redfox Mods. There's a lot more that I've started and gotten stuck, but eventually I'll have a lot more posted on moddb.com as I finish them.

 

Thanks for your hard work.  I really appreciate it!

[sparklecat]

Just want to note that anyone who thinks modding out the swearing will make the game appropriate for their non-mature children may want to reconsider that.

[Darji]

Just want to note that anyone who thinks modding out the swearing will make the game appropriate for their non-mature children may want to reconsider that.

Yeah totally agree. This game deals with some very heavy stuff. swearing would be the last of its Problems  to make a child friendly.

[PrimeJunta]

Yeah. Somebody at Obs has a seriously twisted imagination. I suspect George Ziets.

[Rosveen]

Just want to note that anyone who thinks modding out the swearing will make the game appropriate for their non-mature children may want to reconsider that.

Agreed. Some themes the game touches upon are far darker and more difficult to explain to children than swearing. And aside from dialogues and stories, which can't really viably be changed, there are places like the brothel in Ondra's Gift, which would also have to modified to remove offered services.

[TheisEjsing]

/

Edited March 31, 2015 by TheisEjsing

[Quantics]

 

Just want to note that anyone who thinks modding out the swearing will make the game appropriate for their non-mature children may want to reconsider that.

Yeah totally agree. This game deals with some very heavy stuff. swearing would be the last of its Problems  to make a child friendly.

 

 

Was thinking the same, how is reading the f-word worse than reading about

rich uncles raping their nieces

?

Edited March 31, 2015 by Quantics

[Mlatimudan]

While I don't think swearing is inherently bad for kids, good on ya for doing something about it and not complaining someone else should.

 

The only issue you might have is that at least  some of the lines are voice acted and I am not sure how you can cut those out

[PrimeJunta]

Never even mind when

 

 

 

you can send a frightened orphan off to be devoured by a darghul for your personal aggrandizement

 

 

 

which ranks among the sickest things I've seen in a game since

 

 

 

I sent a family of down-on-their-luck peasants to be devoured by cannibal monsters

 

 

 

in MotB.

 

(Note: I am not objecting to this content at all. But this is NOT a game for children, teenagers, or the easily impressionable, and the occasional f-bomb is not the reason.)

[Bubbles]

 

 

 

Just want to note that anyone who thinks modding out the swearing will make the game appropriate for their non-mature children may want to reconsider that.

Yeah totally agree. This game deals with some very heavy stuff. swearing would be the last of its Problems  to make a child friendly.

 

 

Was thinking the same, how is reading the f-word worse than reading about

rich uncles raping their nieces

?

 

 

 

 

Couldn't you simply change all instances of the r-word to "yell at" or "be mean to"? That still explains why the uncle is doing something bad without upsetting children.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Bubbles

[Valmy]

My kid wanted to play so I let him, under my supervision, but made sure he found the game as boring as possible so he would go back to wanting us to play train sims (mission accomplished!). This is not 'baby's first RPG'

Edited March 31, 2015 by Valmy

[sparklecat]

 

Was thinking the same, how is reading the f-word worse than reading about

rich uncles raping their nieces

?

 

 

Couldn't you simply change all instances of the r-word to "threaten" or "be mean to"? That still explains why the uncle is going something bad without upsetting children.

 

No, the quest involved would make absolutely no sense.  I'm not saying it'd be impossible to mod this game to make it child-friendly, but I think it would easily take re-writing half the game, at which point they may as well just play something else until they're grown up enough for this one.

[Mlatimudan]

I don't know about all that, I was a kid playing the old fallouts and with the whole depraved world at my feet I just went around Jesusing and saving people and being a nice guy.(multiple identical playthroughs)

Only recently have I started playing darker characters like slavers there.

 

I'm guessing I would do the same with PoE as a kid.Hell I'd probably be doing it now if I wasn't waiting for a paycheck to buy the damn thing

 

edit:I think it's more important what you(or your kids) actually do than what you can do.

you CAN sacrifice a kid but I probably wouldn't even for a pretty good armour or whatever, even though it's just pixels.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Mlatimudan

[Bubbles]

Never even mind when

 

 

 

you can send a frightened orphan off to be devoured by a darghul for your personal aggrandizement

 

 

 

You could change the dialogue here to imply that the "d" is taking him "someplace better" without being specific. You could also rewrite the "o" a little bit so that he comes across as less frightened and more shy or careful. It's not ideal, but it's still much better than what's in the game.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Bubbles

[PrimeJunta]

Couldn't you simply change all instances of the r-word to "yell at" or "be mean to"? That still explains why the uncle is doing something bad without upsetting children.

 

Would not work without rewriting the whole quest. And it's not the only one.

[Valmy]

 

Couldn't you simply change all instances of the r-word to "yell at" or "be mean to"? That still explains why the uncle is doing something bad without upsetting children.

 

Would not work without rewriting the whole quest. And it's not the only one.

 

 

I am pretty sure he was making a joke.

[PrimeJunta]

It's hard to tell sometimes.

[Darji]

I don't know about all that, I was a kid playing the old fallouts and with the whole depraved world at my feet I just went around Jesusing and saving people and being a nice guy.(multiple identical playthroughs)

Only recently have I started playing darker characters like slavers there.

 

I'm guessing I would do the same with PoE as a kid.Hell I'd probably be doing it now if I wasn't waiting for a paycheck to buy the damn thing

Oh of course. But if somone wants to let his children Play such a game and he/she is already worried about swearing in games than he just should not let his/her Kids Play this game at all.

 

Editing a huge part of the games text seems also very dangerous to me since it will lessen the maning and effect of such acts. Especially when it was not written by an "professional"

Edited March 31, 2015 by Darji

[PrimeJunta]

Yeh I wouldn't want it in either, but if someone wants to grep out the bad words on their copy it's no skin off my back.

[dirigible]

Keep in mind, Durance's voice actor straight up says **** and whore a bunch of times. So you'll have to remove or bleep out his sound files.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

that would be nice, I'd prefer some gibberish word like dookie brown, instead of s**** as an example. If you want to include a more natural alternative that takes the context into play that's ok too. I was taught Bastard was a bad word growing up, but there's appropriate context for that. using the F word 35+ times or another word 100+ times is just lazy writing. Shoot even if it was ***** instead of a word, I know what ***** is, or I can fill in the blank.

[Darji]

that would be nice, I'd prefer some gibberish word like dookie brown, instead of s**** as an example. If you want to include a more natural alternative that takes the context into play that's ok too. I was taught Bastard was a bad word growing up, but there's appropriate context for that. using the F word 35+ times or another word 100+ times is just lazy writing. Shoot even if it was ***** instead of a word, I know what ***** is, or I can fill in the blank.

I can not agree with that.

 

Using words like the F word if used correctly shows also what kind of Character the person is.  Many many people swear all the time. So not swearing at all would not only be lazy writing but even more important totally unrealistic writing.  Especially not in such a harsh and sick world which PoE is set in. 

Edited March 31, 2015 by Darji

[Mungri]

I don't understand why people are so frightened of the F bomb. Your kids are using it everyday at school, and there are far worse things they could see.

 

Like its ok for them to play a game full of killing all the enemies, but oh noes NOT THE F BOMB!

[kozzy]

The game deals with some heavy issues, I would argue even if you take out the curse words that there is MUCH worse stuff in there for a youngster.