Oblivion, is the M rating deserved?

[Druid_lord]

i am trying to convince my mother to let me buy oblivion, and i was wondering if people thought the rating change from T to M was necessary or just.

[Jibar]

Answer: No. Not at all.
Explanation: Oblivion is just another case of the censors acting on the people's demands. When people discovered that it was possible to make the characters naked, they complained, and so the game was boosted up to an M.
Statement: These people failed to overlook that this could only be done via modifications for the game, in turn ignoring that this could also be done to other games as well.
Explanation: It's possible that this was because the half finished textures for these nudity modifications were stored on the game disc.
Statement: It is very much like the infamous "Hot Coffee" instance.
Suggestion: You may be better off playing Morrowind if you have not already first. Many will cite for you that it is indeed superior to Oblivion, and the game is also a good introduction to how Oblivion works.
Concern: Why did this post come out as HK-47?

[Druid_lord]

I have already played morrowind extensivily. I'm am planning to buy a 360 and oblivion seems like a good game to start with.

[Ranis]

Absolutely not. The worst thing I can think that you can do that's sketchy is poisoning people with apples, and doing some assassinry murders for the Dark Brotherhood. The bump to M was extremely overexaggerated.

[Arameus]

Damn right! We can murder a family in cold blood for money whenever we want! But doing it unclothed? That's (apparently) the line!:smallsigh:

[Neon Knight]

Oblivion doesn't deserve the M rating.

As to Morrowind being better, story wise it is undoubtedly true. But the part where you stab people? I personally felt Oblivion did that better.

Though I miss spears. Why, Bethesda? It's only the most common weapon of the period you're trying to emulate, and you don't even have on example of it. For shame.

[factotum]

The only reason Oblivion got an M rating is because they don't have a "C for crap" one... :smallwink:

[Gaelbert]

Concern: Why did this post come out as HK-47?

Because HK-47 is made of awesome and win.

[Ronsian]

The M rating was changed from PG-13 (or whatever it was), because some random person on the internet uploaded a mod making everyone topless. He made some crap about, "I'm fighting against censorship! I'm fighting the man.". So, the man fought back and made it M.

[Tengu]

Oblivion deserves the M rating because some of the faces you can create for your character are so absolutely hideous that they will leave a scar on your psyche.

[horseboy]

Me and my (at the time) roommates got Oblivion back when it was still T. We used to laugh that the only difference between Oblivion and GTA was GTA had guns. There's drugs, drive by's, shooting random people for fun, killing people for money. In short all that makes a game great. :smallcool:

[Pwenet]

I own the game, and I personally believe that it is not bad enough for a M rating.

Like others have said, it's all because a modder added in some scenes that required a modification to the game.

[Alex Kidd]

Geez guys get your facts straight will ya. Now I'm as against the whole "Oh my God! You got nipples in my nice clean sadistic ultra-violence, you pervert!" reactionary crap but that's not really the case with Oblivion.

1. The nipples were in the game and easily accessible with small adjustments, not added in, that's what differentiated Oblivion from say playing UT2004 with a topless mod or something. Still it does require minor modding know how. Though I personally think nipples would be fine in a T game, but I'm a crazy immoral Australian.

2. Most importantly the ratings increase was for violence, and personally I think it was justified. It has splatter(hit something like a wolf hard with a sword, you'll see what I mean) and in particular mutilated corpses, which from memory are the traditional line between T rated and M rated violence. So the real reason for the rerating was the ESRB was lazy and didn't play around enough to see the DB missions or the gorier caves.

Now personally I'd let a younger teenager play it as long as they seemed responsible. And if she still won't let you, go for Morrowind, lower graphics but better gameplay and from memory less gore(if only because of lower detail due to lesser graphics).

[Jibar]

2. Most importantly the ratings increase was for violence,

Have you got a source for that? Everything I've read about it was because of the textures on the disc, not because of the violence.

I'm not sure why anyone would want to see them naked in the first place. (http://www.gucomics.com/comic/?cdate=20060407)

[Emperor Ing]

Theres a way to fake out the rating system. I got my copy from Ebay, and it was a T-Rated box! :smallbiggrin:
Go ahead, take my idea. I wont sue you!

[Alex Kidd]

Have you got a source for that? Everything I've read about it was because of the textures on the disc, not because of the violence.

I'm not sure why anyone would want to see them naked in the first place. (http://www.gucomics.com/comic/?cdate=20060407)

I looked into it a bit more, it seems that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESRB_re-rating_of_The_Elder_Scrolls_IV:_Oblivion#_note-BDNBTG) the nippples weren't actually in the game files. It seems it was just Barbie under the shirts. However this mod resulted in calls for the game to be rereviewed by the ESRB. In the course of the review they found considerably more gore than they thought was in there. For some reason they when deciding the rating earlier had not taken the obviously most extreme questline, the Dark Brotherhood.

Now outside the Wiki I've found conflicting sources on whether the nipplery was actually a final cause of the rerating rather than just spurring the review, but everything I've found has said that the violence was.

So in summation

1. People are prudes to a ridiculous extent.
2. The ESRB is lazy/incompetent.

[Jibar]

Hmmm... enlightening. That does answer a lot. And always raises more questions, like whose job is it to make a corpse that detailed anyway, and what do they use for source material?



1. People are prudes to a ridiculous extent.
2. The ESRB is lazy/incompetent.

I would have called those facts of life really.

[Alex Kidd]

Yeah probably.


Hmmm... enlightening. That does answer a lot. And always raises more questions, like whose job is it to make a corpse that detailed anyway, and what do they use for source material?

I'd say, just go to a good university with an anatomy course and slip a post grad a few twenties. >_>

[Cruxador]

The only description the ESRB added to the rating thingy was nudity, despite what they may have said about gore.

For some reason they when deciding the rating earlier had not taken the obviously most extreme questline, the Dark Brotherhood.


They actually don't play them at all. They review them based on a trailer type thing. There was some talk about changing that after this 'nipple' thing. A couple things about America, though:

1. People are prudes to a ridiculous extent.
that's actually mostly soccer moms and Jack Thomson. And southern baptists an east coast people, from what I hear. But it's soccer moms the politicians listen to. Understandably, they can be scary, they often control their whole family's vote, and they spread their opininons throughout the whole town in a week.
The relevance here is that they don't like any flesh shown, ever at all. except for those topless marble statues at every government building. but they don't count, cuz they're made of marble. :smallconfused:

As for Druidlords problem, tell your mom the (Selective) truth. It's rated M because someone made a mod for it that shows nudity. And you can only use mods on the PC version anyways, except for the Bethesda released ones, which don't have nudity. Just leave out the fact that ESRB says they also found gore.´

And Bethesda tried so hard to make it a T rated game too. Ah well. After this, maybe they'll put back in some of the more mature content the took out between Daggerfall and Morrowind.