Gears 2 lets mommy filter out blood and swearing

by Dustin Burg on Aug 5th 2008 2:30PM

Even with a very adult "Mature" rating, Microsoft has confirmed that Gears of War 2 will include the option to filter out both the game's extreme violence and foul language. A system that's very similar to the original Gears' that filtered out gore, but a bit different.

According to What They Play, they've been informed by Microsoft that the Gears 2 violence filter "turns the blood into sparks," and the language filter in turn "takes out all the swear words." Sparks replacing blood? No manly Gears swearing? Doesn't sound much like Gears to us, but if it makes parents feel comfortable enough to let their eleven year old children experience the Gears universe then we're okay with it. Whoa, whoa ... wait a second ...

Source

Tags: epic, epic-games, gears-of-war-2, gow2

Reader Comments (75)

Good. My sons, 6 and 8, can play Gears with me now instead of just Halo 3. Yes, Halo has blood, but the language is kept to a minimum. They sure did have fun, though, watching me play GTA IV and pointing out the bad words.

And don't try criticizing my parenting - I know what games they play now, and they know what they can play. Good times are then had by all!

I actually think your a good parent, my dad did the same thing. AMERICA NEEDS MORE DADS LIKE YOU!

lolz.

I just find it weird that you have no problem with bodies being cut in two. Heads exploding and bodies being blown to chunks but someone swearing is something that you see as a bigger issue.

I just don't fully understand.

Yeah, I also love this new "let them learn all the swear words in the world and hope they won't use them" style of parenting. I mean, they were probably going to learn them some time before the 7th or 8th grade anyway, so why not 1st grade?

I'd have been behind you if it was just Halo, but GTAIV? Really? Come on now. This is the kind of crap that gives the slightest little bit of legitimacy to crackpots like J.T

Anyway, got to get back to playing Custers Revenge with my children.

(no, I don't have children /end sarcasm/)

You're a good dad, and this isn't just for parents. As a pussy I'd like to say I prefer my Gears without over-the-top blood and swearing... I don't know why...

Yeah, I'm letting learn the swear words... Believe me, if I could have turned it off on GTA I would have. My parents cursed a lot, but I don't have a potty mouth. Watching a game or TV or anything with swear words and NOT saying anything is worse than having them sit there with me and explaining the words are "bad" and shouldn't be used. I don't curse around them, so they understand the difference, and they know what a game is and what "real life" is.

You're not going to be able to keep your kids inside some "skittles and rainbows" bubble. They're going to hear them. If they understand them, they'll know they are inappropriate for normal conversation. My sons haven't dropped the S bomb or F bomb, at least around me. And I'm pretty sure they haven't done it around my wife or their friends. Worse I heard of my oldest son was when he was 2 or 3, and he said "bi-otch." I don't think he remembers that.

And to be honest, my sons have not watched me play GoW, so they haven't seen bodies cut in twain. Halo doesn't even split guys from a plasma sword cut, and GTA just drops 'em.

Yes, you're kids are going to catch THE GAY... FILTERS WON'T HELP YOU!

Wait, wasn't this an option in the first Gears too?

This is a joke... surely? You gotta be kidding!?! The fact that you sit around playin video games whilst your kids sit by your side "pointing out the bad words" is alarming. Sounds like a barrel of fun in your house - "lets go see daddy sit on his fat ass all day long playing xbox".

Sounds like a lot of the people commenting don't have kids. Nothing wrong with what Deezul is doing, and to claim that you somehow know better is ridiculous.

not just america, but the world needs more like you!

"Halo doesn't even split guys from a plasma sword cut, and GTA just drops 'em."

What you mean like in REAL LIFE!!!!

This to me seems very naive at the impresionable nature of the young mind. When it comes to parenting it is each to their own to a degree. I have to say though that these games are full of things which as an adult we may overlook, but can make a very strong impression on the growing brain.

Im not criticising you personally because I don't know you, but I think that this post modern approach to parenting is incorrect.

My kids also know IT'S A VIDEO GAME. It's not "post modern." I'm a parent first, not a breeder, who thinks "time out" will somehow make the kid understand. I heard this from a parent of a three Year old "I can't control him." A THREE YEAR OLD! And this is one parent who won't know their child is 8 playing GTA VI, and talking about "popping caps" and "screwing bitches." Being a parent doesn't mean keeping your kids in a bubble, sheltered from the world. It means making them understand right and wrong, the real world and the fake world. They will understand life isn't fair a lot sooner than most, and they'll be able to adjust and not pout and cry to mommy and daddy about it.

So now video games are teaching our youth that killing is okay as long as we don't see blood.

joey? is that Jack's new internet alias?

youre either not a parent or a bad parent whos child is in his/her room playing GTA4 right now, but its not youre fault because you cant be arsed to check.

NOPE, It's just Joey

bad idea all around... I feel all games are going to have this now. NEXT: change storylines also so nobody dies. You're been warned!

Halo 3 had that feature

No, YOU'RE been warned!!!

LMAO!!!

YOUR BEEN WARNED, ENEMY CRAB!

YOU'RE......

Xboxless....

xD

The next feature is a reverse child filter for Gears online. Instead of relying on mothers to keep their kids off of M rated online games, the filter will keep kids from landing in the same online game with you. That way, you don't have to listen to them, and kids all end up together. The resulting cluster f**k will probably assplode the internets with various racial slurs, but luckily you'll be in happy adult land with other adults. Oh wait, some adults are annoying too. There is no winning.

Or, you could join one of the hundreds of adult gaming communities out there designed specifically to create rooms/matches without the immature 12 year olds.

So when you chainsaw someone you'll see sparks flying around? I would think parents would have a bigger problem with the actual sawing of people into two halves than just blood?

Seems kind of pointless to me.

SOunds like Gears 1 so far. Spark insted of blood? Psh.

In Gears 1, I don't think a chainsaw still saws someone in half when you have violence turned off.

It's not a matter of just making the blood be invisible, they actually went out of their way. Headshots don't pop people's heads off, they just die. Instant shotgun kills don't blow people to bits, they just fall over and die (the same way it looks when you get triple-downed). And I don't think chainsaws actually leave the person in pieces. It just goes into the animation, and then the guy falls over.

I'd imagine Gears 2 would be the same way in this regard.

But will the parental filters lock out the ambiguous homoerotic undertones that the Gears series is renowned for?

VERY good idea. They should have done it in the first one and they also should have done it for GTAIV. I couldn't go 2 minutes without hearing a curse word while my kids were watching me play so I didn't really ever let them watch even though they were in love with all that games craziness. I bought it for 360 and I would've bought it for them for PS3 if there were a filter like this.

I agree parental controls like this need to be implemented in more games. But I hope that there arent eventually two copied of the same game. One without the filter, and one with. Similar to Music CDs.

/end worrying

Giving players a choice: gee, yeah, that's REALLY bad!

I'm not a mommy, but I am glad to have this option... for MYSELF. I don't care about your souls, you seem to already be lost causes, many of you, but I don't want to fill my head with the ultra-gore that's shoved into these games more and more frequently.

So take your puppy dogs and shove 'em.

Oh man, I wish puppy heads did fly out instead. Awesome.

Instead of taking out the swear words the voices should be changed like when an R rated movie is dubbed for television.

I think the filters are great. I personly don't enjoy playing game with strong language, so for me this is great. The violence filter isn't new. Mortal Kombat used to have a violence filter and other games could turn red blood to green.

Doug: ditto
I don't need to swim in blood to feel tough.
Also, this is a choice - whoever resents that has got a bigger problem. Let us always have choices.

"Eat shorts and die!" Is the new Dom Catch Phrase.

Ya, I don't like hearing the strong language either. I just kinda cringe when ever I hear someone drop the F bomb all over the place. Discusting.

How about they just replace the swears with more appropriate words? Shit can be doodie, ass can be butt, goddamn can be gosh darn.

Sparks, eh Epic? I would suggest this instead.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeNag_B6sMU

As for the censorship..well, we'd have heard kids in GOW2 matchmaking regardless. At least it's something.

And as least it's not replacing the gore...there's that too.

Personally, the blood for sparks thing is somewhat silly, as you are still SAWING SOMEONE IN HALF. It doesn't matter if it's ketchup, Karo syrup and food coloring, whatever.

Now, on the removal of swearing, I'm all for that. I don't want to hear it, and I don't want my daughters who are in the next room to have to hear it. I applaud them for this. (If only they would have done it in Rainbow 6 Vegas and Vegas 2, I'd be a happy camper.)

As was mentioned before, I'm pretty sure if you use the violence filter in Gears one then chainsawing someone doesn't actually cut them in half. It just goes into the chainsaw animation and then the person falls over. No torso or legs being cut into pieces.

I miss hearing 80's swear words like "Turkey!"

Oh man, it would be sweet if they had a mode that produced puppies instead of blood! Then the puppies could run around all over the map! Imagine a horde of puppies frolicking on the fields of Sera!

Honestly, its a dumb idea. Parents that censor their children shouldn't even have a game like GOW2 in their minds for anyreason. No, you should all have Wii's and supersmash brothers or mario cart bottom line.
Gears is for adults not kids.

i remember that in some tony hawk game (3 or 4 i think) you could change the blood to smiley faces.

Lol, o...k, you want to filter out violence and swearing in gears? What is Gears without blood and violence? Its just ears. :S

Pointless filter :)

I'm inclined to believe that a parent perfectly willing to subject their little kids to people being chainsawed in half and blown to bits probably drops the "f-bomb" around their own kids more than any movie or game would.

Also, any parent concerned enough with what their children are consuming media-wise most likely wouldn't be picking up this game even with the filtering.

Then there are the 6 year olds cussing like sailors and asking for gay sex and laughing hysterically at the vulgarity.

I seem to recall a story a few months back about parents being ignorant of the consoles censoring features. Are these the same parents that will be using the softwares censoring features?

It's all so very pointless. If my kid wasn't old enough to play Gears turning off the blood wouldn't make me suddenly be okay with it.

They had the turn off extreme content in the first, took away the blood and stuff. No language filter tho.

ONE THING IS FOR SURE:

Gears 2 will turn you GAY (or give you "the gay" for that matter). There is no filter for that.

This for some reason reminds me of the Power Rangers and how sparks would come out of their suits whenever they fought. Kinda funny

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

Gears 2 lets mommy filter out blood and swearing

Reader Comments (75)

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:35PM Deezul AwT said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:51PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:18PM ZenGaijin said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:20PM BananaBoat said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:25PM Triforceowner said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:39PM Deezul AwT said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:55PM gnikeltrut said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 4:22PM anoffday said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 4:25PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 5:48PM Haizeus said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 7:23PM tann said

Posted: Aug 6th 2008 3:34AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 6th 2008 6:47AM Deezul AwT said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:38PM Joeybeast said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:41PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 6th 2008 2:34PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 6th 2008 5:42PM Joeybeast said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:39PM gnikeltrut said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:42PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:44PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:50PM gnikeltrut said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:07PM xThePunisherx said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:24PM BananaBoat said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 5:34PM Vcize said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:40PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:42PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 5:40PM Vcize said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:40PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:41PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:48PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:43PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:50PM Softserve said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:50PM ObiBen8 said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 2:51PM N1Anon said

Posted: Aug 6th 2008 5:58PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:09PM StampedinBadger said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:06PM MrU2 said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:07PM Gemini Ace said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:08PM Magic Whiskey said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:10PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 5:49PM Vcize said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:09PM Magic Whiskey said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:15PM ZEBRA NINER said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:16PM ccc said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:20PM BillyShears64 said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:36PM Spunky Monkey 190906 said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:37PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:39PM DarkNightRJ said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:52PM gnikeltrut said

Posted: Aug 5th 2008 3:47PM Mitochondria said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW