I never saw the homosixual and the Dremora, but I do remember the House of Earthly Delights though :whistling:

Why would they fill the game with cursing and nudity just because it's rated M? That makes no sense. They are going to make the game they want to make, and I would imagine not really care about what rating it gets.

This topic reminds me of everything I hate about the "M rating is better!!" mentality.

Content should be designed and then rated. It shouldn't be designed around a rating. "Let's make the game all bloody and gory and have characters curse every other word and flash boobs so that giggly teenagers can feel like they are grown ups and 'mature' people!" ...no please.

Putting in more stuff just to be obnoxious due to an M rating would be as bad or worse than holding back to get a T as far as I'm concerned.

There is, of course, slightly shifting standards for ratings over the years. Some of the stuff is subjective, some of the stuff depends on how riled up the "moral majority" has been / how much attention there is on "those nasty videogames", some of the stuff depends on evolving cultural standards. (And then, of course, there's also the "didn't play enough of the game to see that" issue. The longer a game is, the less chance there is to see everything.)

Oblivion's M was deserved for the gory corpses.

I dont want swearing, or unneeded nudity, or any of that other crap in TES. Just because its rated M does not mean that it needs to have that crap in it. There are movies rated R that arent over the top gory, or have nudity, or gratuitious swearing. To say that "If its going to be M, might as well take it as far as M will take you" I kind of think thats silly.

I saw Todd say in an interview that it would be M. He didn't really elaborate on it. Seem accurate enough for just blood/gore alone.

It should be M, just so they can put in wahtever fits.... but I dont want modern day swearing..it just doesn't fit, swearing tha fits in TES sure. Now tha im on about swearing I think it's absurd that along with sixual stuff and violence swearing of all thnigs fall in with those things. I mean really? harmless words,I thought society had moved past such nonsense

If skyrim were to have cuss fests and gore parties like bulletstorm, then The Elder Scrolls will be dead as a series.

1. Rating can't be less than M since game is modable

2. Mature content should be appropriate, for example, war crimes (older people tortured and killed, opponents who threatens to cut your balls and feed it to mudcrab (it is ridiculous how many times I've been threatened to loose my balls from various a-holes), and similar.
Because the more primitive person becomes, the more violent and evil nature reveals itself- hunger, sixual urge and anger, so he will eat, [censored] and humiliate another person as much as he can, especially during war and other critical times.

3. Gore should be appropriate- If I smack someone with huge battleaxe, I expect to see his body heavily damaged. Also is this is place of wild animal attack there should be mutilated and half eaten corpses, and so on.

4. Nudity should be appropriate- for example priests of Dibella should be half naked or dressed in semitransparent clothes, also prostitution is widespread. There could be even conflict between Dibella's followers who believes prostitution should be done on behalf of temple and freelancer prosttutes and brothels who don't want to share part of profit with temple.

So mature content can fit in TES universe if it is appropriate and not cheap.

The ability to mod has nothing to do with the rating.

Yup. Remember, the ESRB rating does not reflect online content.
Incidentally, does anyone know what a game has to (not) do to get a T rating? It just seems that the spectrum that the M rating covers is ridiculously broad.

Most things could be T rated if not for a few things. Morrowind was T remember. The graphic gore in Oblivion on some corpses in the environments was a huge thing. I'm not sure if fake drugs count though.

Text seems to slip buy easier. I'm not sure if that's due to the ESRB just not seeing it or if the rules are more lax for text.

morrowind is moddable and its rated T so im not even going to read the rest of your missinformed post

I don't know about TES3, but Oblivion was originally released as T, but then changed to M
As far as I've heard one of reasons for that some mods was outside T rating
Anyway I could be wrong regarding this (I got this info in other forum), so yes this point was shady.
But I like how one inconsistency makes you believe that everything is wrong- don't read, it's you choice

You are wrong. Oblivion should clearly have been M if only for the mutilated corpses. Lots of attention got paid to the hidden texture that wasn't used in game, but Oblivion should have been M to begin with.

Yes you are wrong. If it was rated on mods then Morrowind would be an A.

Oblivion was increased as some in game content was left in that could be unlocked - not that it was added at a later stage by a mod. The game is rated on the content of the game, not what can be added later.

It was also mentioned that, while the "game content" that was locked spurred them to reevaluate their rating for the game, the actual gameplay was what made them change it to an M. I recall reading a comment from someone at the ESRB that said that they did not realize just how gory parts of the game could be, such as the various torture rooms with corpses lying about.

You gotta be careful with drugs, they could be dangerous....

Anyways I hold with the consensus that if the game is gonna be , might as well milk it for what it's worth...


EX

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/synopsis.jsp?Certificate=30650

edit: Typo

My understanding is that the rating change was increased mostly due to the blood, gore, and Dark Brotherhood-esque matters that were overlooked in the initial rating process. However, the re-evaluation was prompted because of the nudity files, if only to avoid what could potentially be another Hot Coffee Mod scandal. The files were patched out, but the rating stayed M without Nudity as the reason.

To give some perspective, Oblivion is rated M for Blood and Gore, Language, sixual Themes, Use of Alcohol, and Violence. God of War, on the other hand, is rated M for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, and Strong sixual Content.

On a side note, I wonder why anyone can generalize Oblivion and God of War so much that they share a rating. If you look at the descriptions, they're pretty similar except Oblivion has much tamer versions of what God of War has. And yet they share the same rating, one tame game and one over the top game. Why differentiate Strong Language and Language if they both end up in the same rating? I'd prefer it if there was an actual point-based system and a clear line could be drawn between T and M. I also think that the M rating should be relaxed into two categories, one placed between T and the current M, while M-rated games in that system are strictly over the top and bordering on AO. Because in reality, there is only a one-year difference between being able to buy M-rated and AO games. Where is the difference there? Does an extra year on this planet suddenly give one profound understanding of content that they couldn't have before?



And that is why I dislike a lot of the stuff on HBO



There's also some truth in this. I've noticed that the amount of M-rated games being made nowadays is growing dramatically from what it was years ago. Some things that are considered M-rated now would be T-rated 5 or 10 years ago. With that in mind though, I don't know how Portal 2 pulled off an E rating.



Not really. There are many games that are moddable, and in these circumstances you can't put a rating on any content because it is up to the user what they choose to expose themselves to. It's almost like the ESRB rating for online play, which is to say, there isn't one. World of Warcraft is rated T, but have fun stepping into the Goldshire Inn on the Moon Guard server. Games like Spore are also moddable, before you know it crazy [male genitalia] aliens can pop up in your game without you even knowing, but the game is still rated E.

What is difference between M and A anyway? Aren't both 18+?

To continue on topic, there are a lot of problems that can fall under mature problems, like I mentioned before, terrible war crimes, sixual violence, murdering of children, racism, drug addiction. And they should be brought to attention.

Because Cyrodiil was boring for both, shining paladins and dark villains, mainly because for good characters there wasn't enough things to fix and avenge, but for evil ones there wasn't enough misery and suffering to enjoy. There even was no slavery to fight against like in TES3 or FO3.

One example- Kvatch. Instead of piles of dead bodies and hordes of undead brought back to life by dark magic, we had something boring. I actually felt that Kvatch episode was biggest fail in TES4 (mod partially fixed it, but still). It started so great, but soon started to turn into parody, instead of war drama.



Been there, done that. My race was uniting galaxy under banner of peace and humanitarian ideas, but when such creatures were encountered there was no mercy I considered them as Grox allies.

Todd has already addressed this issue. The bethesda team does not worry about the rating they just make the game. What ever rating gets slapped on the final product is the rating the game receives. The point is bethesda is making no attempt to market to a specific audience but rather are making the best video game they can.

A is basically reserved for games with pormographic qualities or total, full on brutality (realistic strangling, for example). Most A rated games, thus, are pretty much just porm. As such, the vast, VAST majority of retailers do not stock them, both for PR reasons and probably because they wouldn't sell well anyways. A rated games usually aren't very good (BMXXX, anyone?).

End of one sentence explains last sentence. If someone would make great game with amazing story, interesting gameplay, great graphics, then it would sell even if it recieves A rating.
That is why I like Witcher series so much, they are slowly moving towards A rating, and proving that mature game that isn't ashamed of sixual relationship and our bodies can be interesting too.
Anyway something is terribly wrong with this world if Saw movies are more acceptable by society than porm :nope:

No, it wouldn't. Retailers won't stock AO games, and console developers don't accept AO games. I can only think of a handful over the past 20 years, and they were all straightoff porm.

(It's kind of like the NC-17 movie rating, just worse. Because there's a minute chance that some indie/arthouse film dude would accept an NC-17 rating, and a minute chance that an arthouse theatre would show one. Although, most films these days that might end up with a rating like that just stay with "unrated".)