Oblivion on PC now rated Mature

[Joker T]

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/theelderscrollsivoblivion/news.html?sid=6148897


The Entertainment Software Ratings Board today issued a parental advisory that it has changed the rating of Take-Two subsidiary 2K Games' hit role-playing game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for the PC. Originally released with a rating of T for Teen, the game has now been re-rated M for Mature, due to "more detailed depictions of blood and gore than were considered in the original rating, as well as the presence of a locked-out art file or 'skin' that, if accessed through a third-party modification to the PC version of the game, allows the user to play with topless versions of female characters." The Xbox 360 version of the game will retain its T for Teen rating because the nude skin is inaccessible in that version of the game.

[GrandAmChandler]

FYI: Some (Maybe most) places have pulled all copies of Oblivion from the shelves, and have been recalled.

[nik]

whoop dee do, those guys are fuckin heroes, working hard huh?

I sure as hell hope my taxes arn't paying for their lazy bitch work.

[hezeuschrist]

Man, Take Two can't catch a break. First Hot Coffee horridly explicit polygonal fucking, and now boobs that don't move?! SMUT PEDDLERS!

[njiska]

Fucking americans! Sorry no offense to the intellegent Yanks on the board but things like this are just asinine. I mean it's a thrid party mod for christs sake. Yeah the skin was there already but honestly it's just easier to do it that way. Sure they could've chosen not to draw on nipples but honestly, why bother? The character is anotomically correct. Big fucking deal.

And on top of that it's only unlocked by modifying code.

[heybtbm]

The 360 version is now rated "Mature" too.

Let me be the first to say that I will personally bitch slap the first person who asks if the teen-rated version will be "rare" or "worth picking up".

[Joker T]

Why would the 360 one be rated mature?

you cant mess around with database files. Nor are there any mods.

[Gamereviewgod]

Why would the 360 one be rated mature?

you cant mess around with database files. Nor are there any mods.

As I sat on this for a bit, I think they're covering themselves (no pun intended). Once the word gets to certain people, it's going to cause a ridiculous over reaction. They'll look at every version, and in all honesty, it's a game already close to a M. Not re-rating it would only cause more problems as they point out the flaws of the ESRB.

That said, if the 360 version is recalled, Take Two should NOT be the ones paying for it. It was mis-rated in the first place.

[Trumpman]

By the way, did anyone check out Gamespot's new feature on Oblivion. I need to get those mods - Just look at their screenshot!

[Lothars]

Fucking americans! Sorry no offense to the intellegent Yanks on the board but things like this are just asinine. I mean it's a thrid party mod for christs sake. Yeah the skin was there already but honestly it's just easier to do it that way. Sure they could've chosen not to draw on nipples but honestly, why bother? The character is anotomically correct. Big fucking deal.

And on top of that it's only unlocked by modifying code.

I agree fully it's so asinine it's just bad

I am just blown away at this

[tylerwillis]

As with the GTA mod, I think it's ridiculous to penalize a game based on what a third party mod can do. And yes, I do realize that the code is already on the disc, but the fact remains that you can't get to it without intentionally modding the product. Johnny Public isn't going to have a clue about it - unless someone makes a big deal.

[poe]

As I sat on this for a bit, I think they're covering themselves (no pun intended). Once the word gets to certain people, it's going to cause a ridiculous over reaction. They'll look at every version, and in all honesty, it's a game already close to a M. Not re-rating it would only cause more problems as they point out the flaws of the ESRB.

That said, if the 360 version is recalled, Take Two should NOT be the ones paying for it. It was mis-rated in the first place.

Agreed on both parts. Dismembered torsos hanging on chains in some of the Oblivion gates qualifies as an 'M' in my book.
The ESRB wants to backpedal on the violence and try to aggrandize some nude, non-explicit, inaccessible textures to justify something they would have done had they been actively working as an industry agency, rather than cashing checks for doing squat. Check here (http://www.esrb.org/ratings/faq.jsp#3) for their rigorous testing, consisting of an elite threesome, who by design have nothing to do with games. How can they be expected to catch something like this? We need a proper body of regulation along the lines of capable programmers who get a gold master before any duplication is done, who know to look into the texture and map files, and on discovery of anything questionable (i.e. sex game UI text or nipple textures) would send the game back for a couple weeks retooling as needed.

[Raedon]

There needs to be a PG, PG-13, and R type system.

[Richter Belmount]

this is pretty retarded , cant any game probably be modded somehow and someway?

[XYXZYZ]

Fucking americans! Sorry no offense to the intellegent Yanks on the board but things like this are just asinine. I mean it's a thrid party mod for christs sake. Yeah the skin was there already but honestly it's just easier to do it that way. Sure they could've chosen not to draw on nipples but honestly, why bother? The character is anotomically correct. Big fucking deal.

And on top of that it's only unlocked by modifying code.

For some reason this thread reminds me of an English DJ's interview with Frank Zappa on BBC1 radio in 1984- The interviewer asked Frank about music that deals with sex, and how the Americans go nuts and censor everything-

Frank Zappa- "Well, you have to understand that in America, the basic national neurosis has to do with their inability to deal with sex, in theory or practice- it's really sad; they've done things to sex that are preposterous. Only understandable if you know... some of the original settlers came from this country.. I mean, how about...What do you think about a nation that started off using bundling boards?

Interviewer- (laughs) I don't know what a bundling board is!

Frank Zappa- A bundling board was a wooden board placed down the middle of a bed, so that the man person wouldn't get over there on top of the woman person while they were sleeping- that's a bundling board.

Interviewer- and... and this is what we're up against, you say?

Frank Zappa- Yeah, you start out with a bundling board, and work your way downhill; that's the problem with Americans. And so today, any kind of violence that you might want to imagine is perfectly suitable in television and films and everything, but any kind of sex you might want to imagine is still matter to produce sheer terror."

:/

[meancode]

Fucking americans! Sorry no offense to the intellegent Yanks on the board but things like this are just asinine. I mean it's a thrid party mod for christs sake. Yeah the skin was there already but honestly it's just easier to do it that way. Sure they could've chosen not to draw on nipples but honestly, why bother? The character is anatomically correct. Big fucking deal.

And on top of that it's only unlocked by modifying code.

Ummm, no offense taken. Oh wait, you said intelligent, my mistake...

Fucking Americans!

And I could not agree more with your assessment of the situation.

Although, I would like to add: there are places in this game while playing I was saying "This is not Teen" and this had nothing to do with the boobies. The boobies THAT TAKE A MOD TO UNLOCK.

What is next, WOW Rated M?

This game was rated incorrectly in the first place. Thanks now go out to the ESRB for fucking up Take Two's year once again. Once Jack Thompson and all those fucking "parenting groups" get ahold of this we will have Hot Coffee 2.0.

God dammit this pisses me off. Almost as much as Hot Coffee 1.0.

[Raedon]

Don't blame America.. blame GOD!! FATHER!!! I FEAR YOU!!! 666!

[Xizer]

Who funds the ESRB? I sure as hell they don't get paid for this. The ESRB's behavior as of late has been asinine and immature.

They rate games too harshly as well. There needs to be a "15 and up" rating added like the UK has - most M rated games are nothing a teenager can't handle. Trust me, they see and hear far worse at school everyday, watching TV, surfing the Internet, et cetera.

[meancode]

Bethesda Responds to Oblivion Rating

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/704/704837p1.html

[jdc]

LOL

Man, I've been playing this game for hundreds of hours.....and I can't even find that woman that invites you to "come upstairs". She's the one who zaps her dog and practices archery in the pre release videos.

[NeoSNightmarE]

grrr...i can only agree with everything that has been said. its stupid, immature, and just annoying at this point. watch this shit like said, turn into a hot coffee situation. but how are you going to get someone into some recalling shit that made the files INACCESSABLE and in need of some undeveloped tool? they took the precautions technically as far as they can. so stupid.

[Push Upstairs]

:shameful:

Do they even work at the ESRB, or do they just show up to be there?

This overacting over nudity crap is one of the main things i really don't like about this country.

I think the ESRB needs to go re-rate "Tomb Raider" because, ya know, someone made Lara nude with a hack/patch. :roll:

[Gamereviewgod]

Nice discussion going on over at Blogcritics:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/04/171723.php

[njiska]

Nice discussion going on over at Blogcritics:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/04/171723.php

Whore. Remember Matt this ain't Digg.

[meancode]

Nice discussion going on over at Blogcritics:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/04/171723.php

Whore. Remember Matt this ain't Digg.

You're right, this ain't Digg. And the fact that Matt wrote it, and that is it about the entire Oblvion "M" rated thing has no relevancy at all to this discussion.

[Griking]

Meh, I doubt that a changing the rating from teen to mature is really going to make a big difference in terms of game sales. If parents are buying GTA for their kids they probably won't blink in buying this for them.

The larger threat that I see is that developers will stop including design tools with new games and make it much more difficult to make add-ons in fear that this will happen to them?

Couldn't someone design a nude quarterback model for a Madden game and if someone did would they game's rating then be changed to "M" as well? When you think about it, couldn't a 3rd party nude patch be created for any game? Should all games be rated "M" for this reason?

[SuperNES]

this is freaking rediculous. people get worked up over a skin which wasn't included in the game, and can only be unlocked with a third-party hack. ZOMG! anatomically correct characters! IIRC, another elder scrolls game, redguard, had full nudity, so i'm really not surprised.
anyway, morrowind still pwns.

[boatofcar]

The only thing more rediculous than the rating is the amount of time people on the internet spend complaining about it.