OFLC – meaning (Australian) Office of Film and Literature Classification – forced Bethesda to make some changes to the game because of an in-game drug called ‘morphine’, that should be used as a painkiller, just like in the ‘real life’. At the time, Bethesda announced that a ‘special’ version of Fallout 3 will be released in Australia, version that has no reference to drugs and / or morphine.

However, now it seems that Bethesda is going to release the same ‘Australian’ version globally.
Pete Hines – vice president of PR and marketing at Bethesda Softworks – said that “We want to make sure folks understand that the Australian version of Fallout 3 is identical to both the UK and North American versions in every way, on every platform.”
This means that Fallout 3 will not have any real-world drugs reference.

I know, this is not a big deal – I mean, who cares that a drug has the name ‘tomato’ or ‘tometo’ ?! – but still, those associations like OFLC could lighten up little. We hear about drugs everywhere, in mass-media (TV, radio, internet, newspapers, you name it) but when it comes to a game let’s just play the “ostrich”: we stick our head in sand and we say “OMG, how can we let real drugs NAMES in a game?”.

P.S. Fallout 3 release dates (PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360): on 28 October in North America and 31 October in Europe.