I think the second option in the poll is sightly misleading, I'd be turning the gore off for my own experience not anyone else's.
Regardless, the amount of ignorance/selfishness/sheer bloodymidness in this thread annoys me intensely, it's this sort of attitude that gives gamers a bad rep. How can you say no to an option for something?!?! It boggles my mind :shakehead:

I personally do not enjoy gore, and more than a little blood is unnecessary. I do not play TES games to get a lesson in what would happen if I slash someone with a sword. I play them because they are an amusing fantasy, and great experience. Gore does not need to be a part of that. If you want to have blood and gore, turn it on and slash and burn to your heart's content. I'm not afraid of blood and guts--I just don't want my screen and mind splattered with them. Thanks.
Why not give us who do not wish do drown in blood and severed limbs the option to not? Its not taking anything away from you.

People are saying no not because we are ignorant, selfish, or bloodthirsty. It's the same as the arachnophobia thread. It is impossible for a company to cater to every phobia/dislike. Especially when all those people are in the vast minority. If anything it's selfish of you to assume Bethesda would cater to your particular dislike and not someone else. What about the people in the arachnophobia thread? Should they get a toggle for spiders? Speluncaphobia? They should get a toggle for caves? The list goes on and on.

This. A thousand times this.



Because it costs development time to implement, which could be better spent on other features people actually care about. The fact that your mother is being taken into consideration should automatically invalidate your argument, as Elder Scrolls is clearly meant for advlt audiences. And advlts should be able to decide for themselves what they themselves can handle, moms should have no say in the matter.



You fail to understand the notion that there are literally phobias for everything. A friend of mine won't play Skyrim because she has arachnophobia and Skyrim has giant spiders. Should those be removed to satisfy her? Some people are afraid of dogs. Remove the wolves? Some people are afraid of mountains. Guess you have to remove the mountains too so you don't lose those sales. Essentially, if you want to make something that takes into consideration all of the phobias people have, you'd end up with nothing if not for the fact that there is a phobia of nothingness. Catering to phobias isn't your problem, it's their problem which they themselves need to resolve. It's a mental disorder that you can't help by sheltering them from their fear. They go through life with a phobia, I think more than a video game will affect them. Considering video games aren't real and all.



You, sir, beat me to the argument. I have been bested.


No, I am getting sick and tired of people who want to have more toggle options in their game because they're unhappy with one part of it, and think it's up to the developers to make the game special for everyone. Frankly, I have argued this more times than anyone should have to, so I'll just say that if you don't like it, don't buy it. A few lost sales is no big deal.

Maybe, but there's a HUGE difference between redesigning the game to be done without a major gameplay changer (spider for example) and just turning off a damn visual effect!

Honestly, I love blood and gore in games, but I'm actually in favor of such option. not everyone likes it, and not everyone has time to play without other, more sensitive people watching

I agree that its absolutely impractical for Bethesda tried to meet every want. But I disagree with your main point. This isn't a problem limited to a very limited few, and I don't need therapy because I don't want to see gore every time I play Skyrim. I may need therapy for a multitude of other things, certainly, but this isn't one of them

Its not taking away from anything and it is featured on many, many other games. Not loving gore is not an obscure phobia that one in a ten-thousand people have and would be useless to correct. It would open the game up to a multitude of new users, something that I think Bethesda might jump at. It is, after all, a business.
Anyway, bottom line, it wouldn't take away from anyone's anything and it would open the game up to more gamers.

If you want gore, fine. If you don't fine. Everyone wins. I don't know why you would deny others the same enjoyment you get from the game if it does not detract from your experience at all.

I'm not coming at it from the phobia angle, more from the fact I find lots of gore/blood distasteful and unecessary much like if i had to watch my character go to the bathroom and see EVERYTHING as a previous poster mentioned. I don't belive it adds anything to the imersion factor of the game. Personally I think that its the 'unecessary' element that separates this from the phobia argument because caves/spiders etc. are somewhat necessary to create a great rpg experience. And i don't think it's particularly selfish of me to ask for an OPTION to turn it off. If I was asking to remove blood/gore from the game completely then yes that would be. I don;t think it would be too uch work for beth to put a toggle in but i could be wrong :biggrin:

I was referring to the actual phobia. Which some in this thread have stated as a reason for wanting it removed. I realize some people just don't like blood and gore the same way I don't like pizza.

And I agree that it's not a big deal to implement a blood toggle. Hell, Mortal Kombat had it back in the day. But, I fail to understand how planting a axe in someone's face via a finisher is totally fine as long as red pixels don't come out. With the inclusions of finishers removing blood and gore would in fact require them to remove a entire part of the game. Not to mention certain set pieces involving quests. The end of the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion is a good example of that. For that matter Oblivion -The Deadlands- itself is a good example of something that would have been removed to get rid of gore.

My point is if all you want is blood to go away that's totally fine. Super easy and quick. But when you add gore to that toggle it creates a ton of problems.

To use a part of your argument, their mother is an advlt, and she obviously does not like gore. If she decides she wants to become a hardcoe gamer and such, and buys the game, from what was previously stated, she obviously will not want the gore. And she, as an advlt, can, and should, decide that. So she switches the gore off. And everyone else in the world is not affected. Your game will not suddenly shut down because she wants to turn her gore off.



An obscure phobia that a few in a thousand people, if not more, have, is no real loss of sales. However, the multitude of people (and there are) whose parents won't let them play such a gory game, or such, is a big chunk of sales that would be well worth Bethesda's time and effort. And, like ofnir pointed out, taking out a visual effect is much easier than other options. Plenty of games have done it, and plenty more will. It is really not a big deal, and it is something that many people are concerned with. I am an advlt, but I don't want to see that gore. And if you do, by all means, see it all you want. But I don't, and there are evidently more than just me, as I have gleaned from reading previous posts, that feel that way. Don't push your views on to me, please.

To the people who think a disable gore option takes development time; it really doesn't The German version of the game will have to censored (no gore at all), thus, disable gore will be in the game's code. This is why you can disable gore in Fallout 3 by editing the ini. file.

As a programmer myself, I know for a fact that adding in a toggle will not take much development time when option already exists in the game's code. If Left 4 Dead 2 and Gears of War, 2 of some of the goriest games of all time, can have such a simple option, you think other games like skyrim couldn't have the option? Please, if you don't know anything about programming, don't bring up the "development time" argument.



This.

I picked a 2nd option,of course option to turn on/off gore and blood woudnt hurt,but it requires time to implement...the devs dont even sure yet will be there a spell-combining...they better spend their time on this problem IMO.

I voted no. Remind them that you are playing a game and it is not real.

I play Xbox in my basemant, right next to where my step mom works (she's a hair stylist). She often has younger kids come over for hair cuts. I remember when I first got Gears of War 2, I would either turn off gore or just change games (even with gore off, it's a mature game for young kids, and the kids are ALWAYS watching me play).
But for a game like Skyrim, if there is A LOT of gore, I would like to turn it off, because some people can get grossed out, or they just don't want gore. And some people's parents may not want to see their kid playing a game because of gore.


I'm taking your word on that, because I'm not a programmer, but I trust you on that.

So it won't waste the developers' time, won't decrease quality of game, and can make the game more enjoyable for some.
Why not?

I would like a mature content filter in the options menu instead. and then blood/gore would just be one of the detailed features in the advanced. the mature content filter in the options should have an ON/OFF button and also the ability to toggle certain things in it. those things i think should be "Nudity", "Blood", if blood is on there will be an option to turn "Gore" on, i would add Bad Language but come on. this is The Elder Scrolls game series, theres no bad language words that are used in there that also apply in real life. maybe "damned" but come on... that would be pointless. mostly just nudity, blood and gore. sixual themes modders can handle, it'd make the game much more fun to have a good bunch of succubus, seductresses, prosttutes and i could go into deeper detail about more things that i wouldn't mind seeing in this game but this'll have to do, modders can handle that part because a lot of people would hate a game with much sixual content so... *shrug*

The option should be there but you picked it for a bad reason.

You dont read? Its not only an effect, its and effect, with some quest, with some realism.

I dont have any phobia :/

Yes there should be an option because it would take 5 minutes to put in the game. Even though I hate using other games as references on this forum if MK could do it, then BGS can. Although I won the argument with my parents on this a long time ago (I'm now a legal advlt). Only it wasn't about gore, so much as language. I was playing GTA4 and stole a car. Niko said something along the lines of "Get out of the [censored] car." My mom tweaked so I got out of the car and shot him in the face. I said, "I just stole his car, killed him, and am going to drive somewhere else now before the police show up. Would you really be less offended if he didn't say [censored]?"

If you can't slam an axe into a highwayman's skull and watch his kitty ears fly in opposite directions of his freshly detatched brain matter then you aren't in Skyrim.

But the option to turn that off wouldn't hurt anybody.

I voted yes only because I know that an advlt will buy their underage child the game. So if they include that, it would help at least a little bit with that issue.

I'm sure there'll be blood, but gore? I'll be a little surprised, since there wasn't really any in Oblivion.

As for the option, sure. I won't need and won't ever use it, so I don't really care if its there or not. If my niece shows up, I'd probably turn it onto Cartoon Network anyhow. The stuff that's on there would be more disturbing than most games could conjure up I'm sure.

Thats usually the case with me. I'll pause it, and change my TV feed and find something to watch while one of my nieces oor nephews are bothering me.

OT: I would find nothing wrong with them implementing something like that into games. I for one, would love to see games with even more gruesome-ness( dont know how to put that ), so I probably wouldnt use that option. But it could work out for alot of people that have little ones running around and such. Yes from me

I voted yes. What I don't understand is why people would vote no, I mean it's not like anyone is forcing you to toggle blood and gore off. Why do you care if some one else is doing it?


I personally would never use it anyway, I loves me some good ol' fashioned brutality. Every game I play I'm always like "What the [censored], how come after I completely dismembered this enemy I can't take out his internal organs and tear them to shreads with my chainsaw?"

If your too [censored] to not play when your parents are around because youll get in trouble you shouldn't buy it in the first place.

You don't need to be such an [censored] man. What if your kids were around? Would you care if they were watching you slaughter people?

Uhhhh no because im pretty sure my children (when i have them (i wont i hope) )will understand you dont go around killing people ,i seriously cant comprehend how much are society has gone into "ZOMG ITS BLOOD KIDS LOOK AWAY ITS INAPPROIATE" when it dosent do anything if you warn not to do that or if they even have half a brain