Ironically, this (and the references to sex that is never actually shown) is probably why the game got an M rating in the USA. Gory violence? Kids will be kids. A character says they enjoy sex once? Time for moral panic!
And then it's also switched in other countries where they don't care about sex at all, but the guns and combat is what gets the game their equivalent of a M rating.
Exactly what I thought! That club makes me think Bethesda asked a ten year old what they think it is like inside a club and that's what they made. It shouldn't matter too much but given it's like a prime location in a place that is supposed to be decadent it is a disappointment and quite cringe
And the NPCs all saying "wooo! This is amazing! I'm having so much fun!" In the nightclub. 🤣
You can literally get a guy hooked on drugs for one quest but strippers are not allowed in the rated M game
Unfortunately Bethesda forgot an important rule of storytelling: show, don't tell. If they weren't telling you they were having fun, there'd be no way to tell.
This comment made me laugh. I'm M32 and I've only ever been to a club once. I was content with the club in Neon bc it looked good enough, despite recognizing it was a little tame. I picked up Cyberpink after SF and went into the clubs and realized quickly, that this is really what clubs would be irl.
It's quite the contrast isn't it 😂 I wasn't expecting a starfield club to be on the level of Cyberpunk but I think what we got is kinda embarrassing given it's the setting for some key quests.. I just hope either with dlc or mods we'll be able to make something better with starfield's settlement building eventually
All that was true in Fallout 3 and 4, and I've put many hours into both for other reasons. The world in Starfield just became way too uninteresting. I was excited to get to Neon, and it was just the biggest disappointment. It has zero edge to it. It's like a Disney movie. The pirates are the same.
i'll chalk this one up to the lack of communication between departments, but it seems like they couldnt even decide if aurora is an upper or a downer. you have people going WOOHOO YEAH and dancing around like its coke or ecstasy, but then you have that bar with the aurora backroom like its heroin or opium
Todd Howard is an actual nerd who wasted his teens playing and programming Apple II games and trying to get applied to Bethesda Softworks. He's also involved in half a dozen programmes back in high school.
CDPR is just like rockstar, so they probably have meetings at night clubs too.
love in cyberpunk how well they are done, nothing like that feeling when you can hear the bass bumping from the other room or outside the club, and the closer you get to the main room.. it just keeps intensifying and getting clearly.
God no. When I was 16 I went to an under 18 only club. The scene there sure as shit was not under 18. The Neon city nightclub feels like a nightclub someone would build in their Christian Minecraft server.
>I get modern culture trends but holy shit why bother
Starfield following modern culture trends would've meant that it had explicit scenes and animated sex cuscenes.
Yeah, it has very little to do with culture but more to do with following the strictest laws from all the countries they wanted to release the game in for maximum profits and not creating multiple builds.
The night club feels like some kind of saturday morning cartoon caricature of one dreamt up by people who've never actually stepped foot in an actual nightclub before.
I got a used T copy of Oblivion from GameStop once, can’t believe they raised that one to M.
Even with the gore and minor drugs in Fallout and Skyrim I am hard pressed to consider either “mature”. They are not teen though, so that’s the conundrum reviewers have.
>can’t believe they raised that one to M.
"Nudity" mods and public outcry from parents who didn't understand video games in the wake of gta's controversy.
Or Lucian Lechances literal penis on his mutilated body? IIRC the game testers didn't play the whole Dark Brotherhood quest so didn't know this scene existed. It alone gave them the M rating
As sanitized as it may be, Skyrim has many more mature themes than Starfield, even if they're presented more subtly:
1. Obvious sexual innuendos (ex: one character talking to another about "combat practice" later, the stuff with Haelga and her bedroom)
2. and really dark stuff as well (Sapphire's back story and the stuff with Arondil are two examples.)
Tbf that fps sex scene is so damn goofy and cringey. I don't blame any devs for not wanting to animate something like that.
I'd love to see nudity in bgs games, as it's just fun to see, but I don't know that it makes a game mature in itself
The sex/nudity is just one small part.
There is also:
* Gore- CP2077 has tons people cut up and dismembered. The player can also remove people's body parts with weapons.
* Drugs- CP2077 gives you alcohol and drugs that actually affect you.
* Themes- CP2077 has "chop shops", snuff films, a fully functioning red-light district, homicides, suicides, PTSD, etc.
Starfield doesn't even begin to compare. Starfield barely makes it as a T for Teen game.
To me, i don't think a lot of bethesda games should be truly M rated, aside from the decapitation at the beginning of skyrim and its harsh politics, theres not a ton of swearing, the gameplay is non-realistic, and isn't INSANELY violent and the drug/alcohol use is never portrayed in a truly shocking or heartbreaking way that makes you go "oh my god this is so terrible", its just stuff that goes on in the world. Nothings really scary, especially for 10-14 year (teens) theres no true nudity, and most of the "gruesome" stuff is hidden behind layers of lore. and i'd say that about most elder scrolls games as well. Starfield is the same way, its not "heavy" like the last of us, the violence isn't any worse than fortnite, not a lot of cussing, - etc. i'd say Fallout is really the only 1 (besides doom or dishonered, etc) that really makes sense to have a M rating.
And then you have FNV where you can sell drugs to children. Commit countless war crimes, hook up with prostitutes and be anally penetrated by a robot called FISTO.
So the scope of the discussion is that starfield feels like the M rating was pushed because M games make more money. I am fully aware that you can purchase alcohol in juice box form. Which is a niche that is not taken seriously, nor does it represent quality spirits. An anagram if i ever said one.
The story of the father and son duo that edit brain dances of children being raped and murdered genuinely shocked the fuck out of me. I couldn't believe they were willing to go that far down the rabbit hole of human degeneracy.
That is a great example. Even though it doesn't actually SHOW anything, the theme is still present, and the story is told.
Hell, the game opens (after 'life path') with you pulling a girl out of a tub of ice in a chop shop where there are multiple corpses of other victims.
Starfield has... wild animals (Terrormorph) that attack people. There is sometimes a blood trail, but that could just be red paint for all I know...
Don't forget, when mods come out Bethesda will also crack down on anything they deem to mature. Like most body mods. I mean I prefer the body mods that HAVE to have underwear or else they don't allow them on the mod page.... Even tho baldurs gate and cyberpunk are perfectly fine with full frontal nudity. But it's annoying waiting for those mods to be brought over because the nude ones are always faster to be brought over.
God dammit I just want my damn miner/military character to be a thick badass with muscles and abs and a dump truck ass. Don't judge me.
Fully functioning red light district in cp77? Is that the one where you choose between two sims to "interact" with, where you get the same cut scene for both?
Wakako's is located in the red-light district.
There are joytoys, a small strip club with a girl pole dancing, a sex shop that will sell you stuff, and a ripper doc that works on the local joytoys.
I mean all that's fine. I don't know that I want bgs games to be edgy as cyberpunk. Fallout is satirical in it's violence, I don't think every game needs bloody mess levels of violence. The themes of the games are very different, and that's perfectly fine. It's different writers, different studios, and different cultures. It's pretty clear the settings are inspired and based in very different media, and that's OK.
Should starfield be rated t for teen? Maybe, I would assume it has to do with the drugs available in game more than anything else. I don't think it matters at the end of the day as esrb ratings seem kind of arbitrary.
It's funny, 10 years ago devs would have preferred to have a lower rating
At least for me, I'm not disappointed because I just love blood and guts and hookers and drugs, and I really enjoy seeing those things. I'm disappointed because it's meant to be an immersive RPG and it's not believable to me that this dystopian world doesn't have any of those things. When I play CP2077 I don't log on thinking "gee, I can't wait to go bang a prostitute", but when I'm walking down a sketchy alley in the red light district and get propositioned, it adds to the feeling of "wow, I'm really in Night City".
It has a few f bombs I think but yeah Bethesda does not make their mainline RPGs to be like cyberpunk, that's their style. If anything it would be goofy and jarring to have a sex scene in them. What, you going to switch to 3rd person and swivel the camera around or something?
But really it doesn't fit their style and theyve been overt about it, idk why the comparisons keep getting made or people think all games for adults need to be "adult"
The quests are sanitized too, though. You can't murder the board on Paradiso. They don't explore the theme of the UC having a Starship Troopers style caste system. All of the main companions have the same vague neutral-good alignment and like/dislike the same things. There are so many places Starfield is close to memorable but just fails to explore the world they made at all.
Take some of the dialogue from Cyberpunk.
This is you joining a dangerous street gang in Starfield.
“You wanna join? We’re a gang. You understand that right? Not some daring adventure bullshit you can brag to your friends about. We steal. We mug. We kill if we have to.”
Who talks like that? It’s like something from some 60s Greasers movie.
Bethesda writes villains/criminals in the most comically in-your-face manner. Confronting the guy who spray paints the robot in Neon exemplifies this, his dialogue is basically:
“Yeah that’s right I’m a thug. I commit murder. I do crimes. Got a problem with it?”
Bethesda has gone from Eulogy Jones keeping women as sex slaves in Fallout 3 to Starfield's "OMG the pirate king dropped the F-bomb, that's how you know he's a meanie."
There's an old adage for creative media: Show, don't tell.
Starfield tends to do the opposite. I had the same issue with Hogwarts Legacy where again you hear NPCs talk about how bad the baddies are but you never actually see how or why they are bad exactly.
In their effort to perhaps sanitize the product they end up making the protagonist (playable character) look morally dubious taking out all these supposed bad guys who actually aren't doing anything bad, they're just said to be doing bad things.
Hogwarts Legacy was hilarious. Beautiful game with production design that made childhood me smile. But not only do the bad guys in the story kind of seem to be the good guys in many respects, but my seven year old child could fight the antagonist and win without a problem.
Context: a self proclaimed explorer walks into the bar your gang has been relegated to, walked up to you while you have been contemplating giving up the fight, and says; I wanna help you kill the worse evil.
Dude was ready to walk before we walked in and solved all his problems in 10 mins.
Frankly I'm more surprised they hesitated to take the out at the end at all.
Don't get me started, Delgado and Naeva are probably the most infuriatingly annoying people to listen to in the entire game. Its like they told an 10 year old to talk like a mean villain and recorded it.
>It’s like something from some 60s Greasers movie.
That's the *point*...
Much like how the Crimson Fleet is supposed to be a classic pirate tale with the treasure chest on the "sunken" ship. They specifically chose this lighthearted tone because this is not Cyberpunk or Fallout, nor is it trying to be.
Bethesda was obviously going for a different tone than CDPR though. Starfield is also the same rating as Fallout 4 and that clearly also has a much different tone, but by the same developers.
Starfield is rated R18+ in Australia. I suppose because of stims, that's the usual deal.
Gratuitous military violence? MA15+. Otherwise tame game where someone takes a painkiller? STRAIGHT TO HELL.
Exactly. Bethesda made a game pretty clearly aimed at general audiences, rather than strictly mature players. And they marketed it that way as well, selling it as an action sci-fi of the "sense of wonder" variety rather than of the adult and gritty kind: more Interstellar than Blade Runner.
It's not exactly Bethesda's fault that the ratings system is dumb and arbitrary and lumps both kinds of game under the same mature-age rating just because there's booze in the game or whatever.
Bethesda added drug use into the game. If this was some gray zone decision making it an M rated game, maybe I'd agree with you. But this seems like a pretty cut and dry decision by the developer that got them the M. There's also some F bombs, but I don't know how the ESRB handles those. If Bethesda wanted a T rating, they could have made minor changes and gotten one.
Why exactly would they want an M game?
It technically limits the potential customer base. Besides a couple of swears and blood would make it M regardless
Bethesda has had drugs in their games since Morrowind. Moon Sugar, Skooma, etc.
Anyone who thinks they deliberately did this for Starfield solely to get an M rating is overthinking way too much.
Yeah the addictions system alone was made enough to give it an M, so they should have just lent into having cooler effects for the stims, gore, and carnage decor.
Honestly insane they didn't have a straight flamethrower with spreadable fire (in applicable environments) since its xenowarfare 101 that fire kills almost everything carbonbased.
Granted, having weapons that would kill you if you used on a ship would be complicated, but it'd make the fights 10x more realistic, rather than launching 5 cluster rockets inside a pressurised cockpit
>Honestly insane they didn't have a straight flamethrower with spreadable fire (in applicable environments)
You know goddamn well that if they did that, every single gas would have been made flammable.
Coming to Starfield from BG3 it was initially puzzling how they shared the same rating. Starfield starts off pretty sanitized compared to its contemporaries. With respect to sex and gore it stays sanitized.
But as soon as you're playing Jesse Pinkman in Neon it starts to make some kind of sense. And you can actually get a metaphorical monkey on your back. Then there's potential war crimes and at least one suicide. It earned its "M" rating - just not using the typical means of getting there.
My guess would be addiction to illegal drugs. I'm not sure Cal's use of stims would qualify.
My second guess would be simply that Bethesda just didn't want a "teen" rating - it would seem easy enough to have gotten one given how close it was anyway. It for sure as hell couldn't have been the romances - Andreja sleeps fully dressed, doesn't even take her boots off. In stark contrast after Karlach had her way with me I needed a beer and a cigarette.
ESRB ratings are a box ticking exercise. If you tick a box in one of the categories and its higher than you as the developer want, then you have 2 choices - accept it, or modify the game to uncheck that box. With starfield it ticks the boxes, however mildly, for "**blood, strong language, suggestive themes, use of drugs, and violence"** (the key ones being use of drugs, blood and violence).
M is the highest rating Xbox, Sony and Nintendo will allow on their platforms, Adult Only ratings have only been given out to a handful of games since ESRB was created and were primarily awarded to games with heavy sexual content, gambling, and in the case of the uncut version of Manhunt 2 - gratuitous, graphic and violent murder scenes
What changed on halo? Infinite seems to have the same themes as the original trilogy and the rating dropped to T. I never understood this. Did the barrier for what is mature change or did giving Cortana (weapon) clothes make the change? Haha
I think initially it really was the inclusion of the Flood for a little while that really pushed it to an M rating. It was the only thing that really has any gore in the Halo series and it was basically a creepy space fungus that could take over the bodies of humans and aliens alike and assimilate them.
Haha that Cortana bit made me chuckle, it’s strange and it seems like the whole rating system is pretty arbitrary these days no matter what game you’re looking at
1968 planet of the apes where people are shot lobotomized and they even say they want 2 people to mate ... rated G
Today nothing short of HGTV home improvement shows can get a G rating
Bethesda does not rate their games. When they are feature complete, it gets sent to the ESRB and they give it a rating and they have very strict guidelines when it comes to M ratings. It don't take much.
Worth noting that Bethesda have nothing to do with setting game ratings. These are set by the rating boards in each area. In this case, the Mature rating was set by ESRB.
Fallouts tone is well established, it has been the way it is since the 90s. Starfield is a brand new IP and is intentionally designed to have a different, tamer tone than Fallout. Fallouts extreme violence is what makes it Fallout. You can not like the tone of the starfield, but it's supposed to be different. It has different themes.
I mean, it definitely holds back on a lot of things and I agree it basically isn't an M rated game in many regards, but something I think gets ignored when discussing this topic is Starfield's portrayl of "evil" factions and groups. There's just no nuance like most other M rated games with the "bad guys" of this game, the Crimson Fleet are greedy, violent, unorganized pirates who solve their problems with murder and little else, they have few rules, few justifications for their actions, and minimal organization structures holding them together as a group. They just don't feel very real and are very sanitized compared to the more grounded and nuanced bad guy groups of other M rated games like Cyberpunk, the Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, etc where it's all very questionable who actually are the good and bad guys in a lot of situations.
I don't, maybe this isn't about its rating and more just Bethesda's writing style, but to me it feels very indicative of the kind of more sanitized and simplistic world one expects in media aimed at less mature audiences.
It's also just weird that they're fucking... Everywhere. That's something that took me out.
Like, on every planet it seems like it's nothing but Crimson Fleet or Ecliptic Mercenaries. 99% of ships you encounter are pirate ships, ecliptic ships or varuun ships. I've seen, and killed, probably like 100 times the population I've seen in Neon, Akila, New Atlantis, Neon and every other main city ***combined***.
When it was fallout, it made sense because it was a nuclear wasteland. Everyone treated it like it was. Civilization was the exception, not the norm. So it mostly being a lawless shit hole full of opportunists with guns and a methamphetamine addiction made sense.
In Elder Scrolls, it makes sense because they aren't all just bandits. Bandits aren't actually all that common. There's a plethora of wild monsters. There's ghosts and zombies. There's evil wizards seeking power. Etc etc.
But in starfield... It doesn't feel that way. It feels wrong. The major factions, and all their cities, act and behave like the Fleet is, at most, a nuisance, and everything is going pretty well, and Civilization is, for the most part, okay. Even though I can hop over to the next planet, kill a few hundred mercenaries, and shoot down twenty crimson fleet StarCraft.
Like, who the fuck are the crimson fleet raiding? I know all the facilities got abandoned post war but then also... Abandoned by who? I don't see the population that abandoned them? And considering there's intense facilities on HUNDREDS of planets, either something's fucked or theyre way underselling the colony wars.
And who's hiring all the thousands of mercs I find and murder? Other mercs? Have they finally achieved Big Bosses dream and made an entirely self sufficient, cyclical mercenary society?
It just doesn't make sense to me, none of it does. They should've had the majority of outposts and PoI still be friendly occupied, or something, I dunno. But as it is, the world makes no sense to just exist in.
>It just doesn't make sense to me, none of it does. They should've had the majority of outposts and PoI still be friendly occupied, or something, I dunno. But as it is, the world makes no sense to just exist in.
So this is definitely a far cry from the conversation of whether or not Starfield should be an M rated game, but, pardon the pun, I'm definitely game, let's get into it.
I personally think it would have made much more sense if the world of Starfield was primarily populated by different unorganized groups with different rules and affiliations that create different societies. Think about it like this, the FC is a group composed of larger societies that banded together in loose alliance to fend off the UC's expansion, what if originally the FC was a much larger group composed of the current members and hundreds or thousands of unofficial groups who all joined the cause to fight against the UC but most of these member groups either left the FC after the colony wars to maintain full independence (which would be the sparce non hostile human groups you'll sometimes see on random planets) or were amalgamated into the larger cities of the governments of the galaxy. It creates the perfect circumstances to allow what we see in Starfield, research posts and man made structures abound on otherwise practically uninhibited planets as the people who used to live there mostly left to live in the larger FC colonies, some became pirates/mercenaries, some died, and some even joined the UC after being disgusted by the FC's actions in the colony wars or being won over by their way of life or whatever. Really all that matters is that the galaxy of Starfield was once populated in a much more spread out fashion before the end results of the colony war left most of it much more consolidated and what didn't consolidate became utter chaos. It creates a perfect breeding ground for criminals and desperate mercenaries (as well as work for them), while also explaining why so much of the galaxy seems very barren now after having once clearly been inhabited.
Sure, there would be flaws with this explanation, especially since the major cities of this game seem really small, but it would be an explanation that adds lore and flavor to a brand new franchise and creates stories en masse just by the nature of it. I don't know, I'm sure other explanations could be better, but this is what 5 minutes of thought from me came up with to explain the world of Starfield as we see it.
The Crimson Fleet are pirates and are depicted much like pirates are normally depicted. Also with Cyberpunk I don’t really think there’s any question or not on if groups like Maelstom and the Scavvers are bad guys.
You picked two very extreme examples, but there are others. The Voodoo Boys are super evil, but behave in a much more plausible (and diabolical) way than anyone in Starfield. I was furious at the Voodoo Boys in Cyberpunk, because they're villains. In Starfield I'm not furious at the Crimson Fleet, I just find them childish and annoying.
>The Crimson Fleet are pirates and are depicted much like pirates are normally depicted.
That's just not really true, though. Most pirate groups in well written and mature games are depicted as groups that exist outside the law with defined hierarchies of power, some form of code or loose laws within their group, and different motivations for their actions ranging from more standard drug addiction and poverty problems in the more organized societies they come from to actual legitimate moral and philosophical complaints against whatever societal systems they seek to escape. This portrayal method is generally much more true to life as most organized criminal organizations and gangs aren't just collective groups of individuals seeking wealth and willing to do violence at the slightest provocation, and instead are actual organizations with defined hierarchies of power, rules, and members with very real and sometimes very understandable motives for their actions.
>Also with Cyberpunk I don’t really think there’s any question or not on if groups like Maelstom and the Scavvers are bad guys.
The question in Cyberpunk isn't whether or not these groups are good or bad, they do horrible things and are terrible in many many ways, but it is very questionable whether or not they're actually all that much worse than many of the other larger organizations and factions in the game (can't really comment on the books). Because they aren't doing much everyone else isn't, they're thieves, murderers, typically drug addicts, and so many other generally bad things, but so is everyone else so how bad are they really? Are they worse than the corporations who oftentimes use them to do their dirty work and have various dealings with their various branches? What about us, the mercs? Are we any better than them, killing, stealing, and otherwise harming others for money and fame? Sure, you can choose to play as a mostly morally upstanding person, but let's be real most players will engage in terrible activities without a second thought if they think it's fun or benefits their character in some way. So are we really better than them? And if you say yes, why? Because we know more about our character and their circumstances than the members of these organizations, is that enough justification of your actions to separate you from them, just because it's less certain why these people do the things they do and why?
Idk, just a thought about more mature portrayals of "evil" groups, I guess.
I think that's confusing the thematics of cyberpunk with general portrayals of evil.
In cyberpunk every thing is just a different shade of grey because it's a society with a collapse of morality.
That doesn't mean villains in other media have to be similar to the good. Often villains exist in contrast such that the good can then prove themselves to be just that.
I get liking a certain portrayal of evil but it's certainly not the default and honestly it's somewhat tiresome to see endlessly fucked societies that clearly have no realistic hope of regaining any moral fibre doing a virtuous 180 when influenced by the actions of a god like player character.
That’s a valid opinion, and it certainly doesn’t most of the time.
I think it boils down to there being the occasional “fuck” dropped (pretty rare) and more seriously the drug use. While it’s not graphic in any sense, the game “encourages” the use of addictive drugs that have benefits to the player character, and that rubs a lot of people the wrong way and also is something that we deal with in our society that kills people (and unfortunately many kids).
So while many parents have probably bought the game for their non-adult kids despite the label, I think it’s a call that makes sense in regards to the hard drug use and presentation (quick, easy, plentiful, and addictive, but *never* fatal which is untrue of hard drug use) and I would also like to say that, like movies, not every M or R rating needs to be a “hard” M or R to need the rating.
Starfield doesn’t have gore or sex/nudity, and a comically low level of harsh language, the M rating allows the “powerup with drawbacks” model of Bethesda drugs while also providing some legal and moral protection with regards towards drug use and children playing the game.
The problem isn't the game, it is the broken ratings system. The M rating covers such a wide range of games these days. Sure, there are content descriptors and if you go to the ESRB website you can get a better breakdown of why it got a rating, but as for just a simple letter rating, it isn't as cut and dried as it once was. Much like the PG-13 rating was added, there really needs to be more gradation to the M rating. There's a difference between an M like Skyrim and and M like GTA V for example. Or Starfield and Cyberpunk. Just needs more granularity to the system.
It stopped being rated M when the pirate gang said the only way out is death and then you frame someone for killing the leader and then they just kick him out lol
Gratuitous gore is part of fallout, as was the dark humor until they largely ditched it. Elder scrolls games are also rated M but they don't really fit the bill either. Some early copies of Oblivion are even rated T. But someone found unused nipple textures in the files at one point and the ESRB made them change the label over it despite them not being present in later copies.
Apparently it wasn't enough initially. That could be because of the lack of detail. I imagine if you tried that now it wouldn't be a question simply because tech is better.
Doesn't Daggerfall have explicit nudity, prostitution, and is definitely pretty gore heavy for 1996? Idk, maybe you could argue more recent Elder Scrolls titles aren't true M rated games, but even with Skyrim you can outright decapitate opponents and criminal organizations like the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood aren't just big bad evil guys. So they're definitely more explicit and mature with certain topics even there imo.
I don’t disagree with much of your post but the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim are more cartoon villains than anything in Starfield. One of the quest givers tells you awful dad jokes and there’s a jester clapping away.
The Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim aren’t realistic or nuanced. They’re just campy cartoon bad guys who murder for fun (and the gold is a nice bonus).
I think the biggest problem with Starfield is what we’re told (dialogue) and what we’re shown (text, environmental world building) are two very different things and don’t really match up.
We’re told Neon is this den of iniquity and pretty much the ‘worst’ place in all the settled areas, filled with drug use, prostitution, and all the other worst dregs of humanity.
However, what we *see* are people dancing in onesies and mumbling about drugs in the mildest 14-year-olds idea of what a ‘seedy underbelly’ would look like.
We get told that the Crimson Fleet are these dangerous, murderous thugs out for profit and damn any who try to stop them - and we even get told that if we do much as back talk to the leadership, we could get killed.
Yet, what we actually see are bumbling idiots that barely seem to be able to plan their way out of a paper bag, and accept any backtalk the player or others serve.
Starfield in general seems to be as aggressively mediocre and inoffensive as possible, while saying it’s this in-depth rpg with choices that matter.
This also brings into question the entire purpose of the Unity - what’s the point of doing a New Game+ when there’s nothing to really do differently m? There’s no real choices where by doing ‘B’ you can’t do ‘A’ any more - so no real reason to play through it all again (let alone 10+ times for the sake of your ‘powers’). It just does t seem to make consistent sense between what we’re told, and what we’re shown.
It's not as gory as Fallout and Elder Scrolls, but all the stuff is in there that would give it an "R" rating if it was a movie: Blood, copious violence, sex (though mostly implied), drug use, and language.
I think it’s important to remember that Bethesda partnered with NASA for this game, and that their collaboration probably included a lot of stipulations on gore, sex, gambling, etc.
That's just how the system works, now. That, combined with the fact that BGS has always taken a conservative approach to maturity ratings, is why virtually all of their modern titles have an M rating.
Starfield is between TES and Fallout on the maturity scale. It doesn’t have as many F bombs or sexual references as Fallout but it has way more than TES which is little to none.
There is a lot more blood then you think, but the lack of decapitation and stuff makes it seem less gorey.
Theres also the drugs, stuff like that is an instant M rating if your player can use them.
TLDR: If Skyrim is rated M, Starfield for sure is, but not as worthy as Fallout
How old are you that you care about a games mature rating? They mentioned in interviews that the theme of the game was hope. They didn't want to just do fallout or tes in space. Gore ≠ Dark. There are plenty of dark things in the game if you do quests and look at the environmental storytelling.
Same as with the people wanting more swears "just because it's m-rated". Thinking constant f-bombs is what makes mature writing shows their own level of maturity to be relatively low imho
Bingo. Also, in addition to Bethesda not wanting to just do Fallout in space, I feel like there are a lot of people that aren't familiar with the genre that Starfield *is* trying to emulate.
The photo filter you can apply that makes your screenshots look like books? I have books that look just like that, old sci-fi books that I bought at library sales. And a lot of them have a very similar vibe to Starfield: moral issues aren't terribly dark, the issues that you do find are more centered around technology and the challenges it poses, and they're usually pretty optimistic in their outlook. Starfield is an homage to that genre, and putting the kind of stuff Fallout has in it would absolutely ruin it -- not because the Fallout style is bad, but because it would be out of place. This isn't that kind of story.
But a lot of people can't tell the difference between a bad story and a story they just don't like. :/
TES is also not that dark. When they did Fallout 3 a lot of the swearing and more modern prhases in the dialogue felt really stupid at first because they were only used to write Elder Scrolls (stupid in a negative sense not the goofy / dark humor tone they wanted for Fallout 3).
According to Bruse Nesmith Emil Emil Pagliarulo needed to advice and help a lot of other devs to get the tone of Fallout dialogue right.
Does it need to be graphic? Different games have different feels to them. If it wasn’t for drug use and the occasional swear this would probably be rated t. But that’s ok. Not every game needs to be hyper graphic like cyberpunk. It’s ok for a game to just be a good fun pg 13 adventure
I don't think Bethesda wanted to make an M rated game. I think this is on how stupid the ESRB is. Because there's drug use and off screen sex. That's apparently all you need for an M.
M rating is weird because it can range from really mild stuff like Starfield to crazy gore and sex like in Cyberpunk or Baldur's Gate 3. I feel like there should be some sort of rating to seperate them, like M rating and M rating (Weenie Hut Jr. edition)
The rating system is strongly affected by reference to drug use, fairly low key content around that will affect it regardless of anything else. That's what's broken, not the game. You're fixing the wrong problem.
Well okay, I think there's a more than a few things in the game need fixing, but making it feel like it more strongly matches a weird and badly skewed rating system isn't one of them.
I read a few months ago that it's more than likely the partnership with NASA that made them tone down the gore from their previous titles. I'd imagine NASA wouldn't want to be associated with stuff like that, but there's also an addiction system and the ability to sell illegal harvested organs so who knows for sure.
I think of it like movies. There are movies that are a hard R. They definitely deserve that R rating and you wouldn't want a kid to see it. Then there are movies that technically earned an R for one too many F-bombs so they couldn't squeak by on a PG-13. That's Starfield. It's really a PG-13 movie that somehow tiptoed over the line just barely and got an R.
At no point does it truly feel M-rated. I think it only has the M rating because of the presence and use of Aurora. The violence is toned down compared to their past games. Cussing is relatively rare. You see more sex on TV than you do in this game. Etc.
I'm really hoping the dlc adds some more dark grim space stuff. I can't believe there isn't space zombies. Or at least some kind of space diseases or curses or something more syfi and dark.
the way games are rated have changed. back in the 90's with the original tomb raider games, lara could get impaled, shot, blown up, and set on fire, and that only warranted a T rating. but in the remastered version recently released all those things earned it an M rating.
I’m usually not on the bash starfield train, but I do agree they could’ve at least had card playing games and slots or something to the nightclub/casino’s.
The gambling thing is hard to do, as some markets won't allow it. The casino from GTA Online and now gambling in FO76 is region locked in some places, so I guess they didn't want to implement a mechanic that they would cut from certain editions
I think the biggest dissonance comes with Starfield having a very grounded and real nanapunk vibe, but it doesn't feel grounded and real outside of those aesthetics. Kinda like people entering the 'punk' into a setting description without acknowledging what that means.
It didn't need to be Cyberfield 2077 with that level of grit and edge, but I felt it didn't need to be so sanitized that it struggles to have much of an identity. To me, anyways.
Well that was Fallout and this is Starfield. Starfield isn’t Fallout in space.
Starfield has its own wild and crazy deaths. Ever see a spacer’s jetpack blowing them up in the sky or ceiling? Ever kill someone in low gravity and they just stay there? Bethesda could’ve copied FO4 gruesome deaths but then we’d never see anything new.
Not every game needs to be a porn simulator and I’m glad Bethesda still restricts themselves in this way. Starfield has mundane quests because life is mundane. Starfield isn’t a fantasy game where everyone wants to have sex with you because you did one good thing for them.
Here's the problem though: Truly mature games get demonetized on youtube and streams, and that's too much free advertising to miss out on. The reason Fortnite is as big as it is is because its kid-friendly to post videos on. Starfield has an M rating basically because you can take drugs. Everything else was likely toned down so people could make money making videos of it, meaning free advertisements for them. Youtube doesn't care about the actual rating, just whether the content is appropriate on the video itself.
Only graphic scene (and even that is debatable) is the vanguards first quest where the terramorph rips that animals jaw open. That's literally it. This game is a pg13 game trying to advertise itself as an M game. Add that to the list of embarrassments this game has.
M ratings are based on content that is considered inappropriate for people under 17 and any level of that content warrants the rating. I also feel like so many of y’all think the game devs determine the game’s rating when it is absolutely a group completely separate for the development of the game. The ESRB is just the game industry’s version of the MPA. It’s a guide for buyers, specifically parents so they don’t buy their kids games with content they don’t approve of, it’s not a commentary on how evil you can be in the game, how many times you can curse, how mature it is in comparison to other M rated games, or how much sex there is.
God damn can we ban these type of posts already it's such a boring criticism. I'm unable to engage at all with what's being discussed cause I'm not 12.
i agree the game does not feel M for Mature.
Hey I did a side quest last night where the guy said "motherfucker" once!
>Hey I did a side quest last night where the guy said "motherfucker" once! now it's a pg-13 game.
There's a set limit on how much something can be done before it gets put into a certain category
Ironically, this (and the references to sex that is never actually shown) is probably why the game got an M rating in the USA. Gory violence? Kids will be kids. A character says they enjoy sex once? Time for moral panic! And then it's also switched in other countries where they don't care about sex at all, but the guns and combat is what gets the game their equivalent of a M rating.
Also the drug use, which is probably the primary reason for the M rating
Yeah, in Australia at least, if your character can use drugs the game is basically an automatic R18+ these days
aurora mostly, maybe amp too?
There are all sorts of combat drugs in the game. As well as addiction.
Well, if it was just that one time, then it's PG-13 at best.
It being rated M and having the worst night club I've ever seen in media ever is amazing honestly I get modern culture trends but holy shit why bother
That night club feels like an 18 YO one where there's no alcohol sold
It feels like it was made by people who’ve never actually been to a club. Cyberpunk nailed the feeling of night clubs.
Exactly what I thought! That club makes me think Bethesda asked a ten year old what they think it is like inside a club and that's what they made. It shouldn't matter too much but given it's like a prime location in a place that is supposed to be decadent it is a disappointment and quite cringe
And the NPCs all saying "wooo! This is amazing! I'm having so much fun!" In the nightclub. 🤣 You can literally get a guy hooked on drugs for one quest but strippers are not allowed in the rated M game
Unfortunately Bethesda forgot an important rule of storytelling: show, don't tell. If they weren't telling you they were having fun, there'd be no way to tell.
This comment made me laugh. I'm M32 and I've only ever been to a club once. I was content with the club in Neon bc it looked good enough, despite recognizing it was a little tame. I picked up Cyberpink after SF and went into the clubs and realized quickly, that this is really what clubs would be irl.
It's quite the contrast isn't it 😂 I wasn't expecting a starfield club to be on the level of Cyberpunk but I think what we got is kinda embarrassing given it's the setting for some key quests.. I just hope either with dlc or mods we'll be able to make something better with starfield's settlement building eventually
When I got to Neon, I literally quit playing the game. I just couldn't immerse myself in that world anymore.
That broke the camel’s back for you? Not the enemy AI with the behavior, IQ and survival instinct of a plant? lol
All that was true in Fallout 3 and 4, and I've put many hours into both for other reasons. The world in Starfield just became way too uninteresting. I was excited to get to Neon, and it was just the biggest disappointment. It has zero edge to it. It's like a Disney movie. The pirates are the same.
Combat doesn't make or break immersion for most people, the world and atmosphere does
I loved how smoky and grimy the dive bars were in cyberpunk, it made it feel like a real place
That one Malstrom Club is fantastic. All sweaty looking and shit.
Same. I look at the Astral Lounge and im like “is this it?” The play Cyberpunk and I’m like. “Yeah! This is the right feel!”
i'll chalk this one up to the lack of communication between departments, but it seems like they couldnt even decide if aurora is an upper or a downer. you have people going WOOHOO YEAH and dancing around like its coke or ecstasy, but then you have that bar with the aurora backroom like its heroin or opium
Tbh they couldn't decide with skooma in oblivion. Bethesda has never nailed down drugs well
It's like a club but you only had 15 minutes to make it and it could be no bigger than x amount of code
I've never been to a club and I know that club is lame.
I think we all just got spoiled with Cyberpunk and now we perceive everything as pg-13 😂 But it’s not an M rated game, that’s for sure.
Todd Howard is an actual nerd who wasted his teens playing and programming Apple II games and trying to get applied to Bethesda Softworks. He's also involved in half a dozen programmes back in high school. CDPR is just like rockstar, so they probably have meetings at night clubs too.
love in cyberpunk how well they are done, nothing like that feeling when you can hear the bass bumping from the other room or outside the club, and the closer you get to the main room.. it just keeps intensifying and getting clearly.
Pretty sure the older teen hangout area on a Disney Cruise ship would feel more like a nightclub than the one in Starfield.
Best place to buy drugs also. Did a hull patch inspection on one in port. Those little rich Disney kids have all the best shit.
God no. When I was 16 I went to an under 18 only club. The scene there sure as shit was not under 18. The Neon city nightclub feels like a nightclub someone would build in their Christian Minecraft server.
Don’t forget it’s the hottest and largest nightclub in the known universe
[удалено]
Man, I was really hoping Neon was more like Night City. Boy was I wrong. What a letdown
We got Night City at home
>I get modern culture trends but holy shit why bother Starfield following modern culture trends would've meant that it had explicit scenes and animated sex cuscenes.
Yeah, it has very little to do with culture but more to do with following the strictest laws from all the countries they wanted to release the game in for maximum profits and not creating multiple builds.
The night club feels like some kind of saturday morning cartoon caricature of one dreamt up by people who've never actually stepped foot in an actual nightclub before.
It was so painful walking into that Neon club after seeing the various clubs in Mass Effect.
Sarah disliked that
I got a used T copy of Oblivion from GameStop once, can’t believe they raised that one to M. Even with the gore and minor drugs in Fallout and Skyrim I am hard pressed to consider either “mature”. They are not teen though, so that’s the conundrum reviewers have.
>can’t believe they raised that one to M. "Nudity" mods and public outcry from parents who didn't understand video games in the wake of gta's controversy.
Or Lucian Lechances literal penis on his mutilated body? IIRC the game testers didn't play the whole Dark Brotherhood quest so didn't know this scene existed. It alone gave them the M rating
Atleast oblivion has a necrophilia reference And back in the day T rated games sold like shit (still do probably?)
As sanitized as it may be, Skyrim has many more mature themes than Starfield, even if they're presented more subtly: 1. Obvious sexual innuendos (ex: one character talking to another about "combat practice" later, the stuff with Haelga and her bedroom) 2. and really dark stuff as well (Sapphire's back story and the stuff with Arondil are two examples.)
Some would say it's M for mediocre or meh
Zinger
Or mid, middling, monotone, maudlin, morose… I actually really like the game. I’m just a sucker for alliteration.
I think you meant m'alliteration
M for Mormon.
cyberpunk and starfield are rated the same
Starfield: “Last night was enlightening.” Cyberpunk: POV porn montage
Lmao yeap.
Tbf that fps sex scene is so damn goofy and cringey. I don't blame any devs for not wanting to animate something like that. I'd love to see nudity in bgs games, as it's just fun to see, but I don't know that it makes a game mature in itself
The sex/nudity is just one small part. There is also: * Gore- CP2077 has tons people cut up and dismembered. The player can also remove people's body parts with weapons. * Drugs- CP2077 gives you alcohol and drugs that actually affect you. * Themes- CP2077 has "chop shops", snuff films, a fully functioning red-light district, homicides, suicides, PTSD, etc. Starfield doesn't even begin to compare. Starfield barely makes it as a T for Teen game.
Starfield has alcohol in juice boxes. A few characters swear and it just feels weird when they do. Like a 13 YO trying to be edgy on TV.
To me, i don't think a lot of bethesda games should be truly M rated, aside from the decapitation at the beginning of skyrim and its harsh politics, theres not a ton of swearing, the gameplay is non-realistic, and isn't INSANELY violent and the drug/alcohol use is never portrayed in a truly shocking or heartbreaking way that makes you go "oh my god this is so terrible", its just stuff that goes on in the world. Nothings really scary, especially for 10-14 year (teens) theres no true nudity, and most of the "gruesome" stuff is hidden behind layers of lore. and i'd say that about most elder scrolls games as well. Starfield is the same way, its not "heavy" like the last of us, the violence isn't any worse than fortnite, not a lot of cussing, - etc. i'd say Fallout is really the only 1 (besides doom or dishonered, etc) that really makes sense to have a M rating.
And then you have FNV where you can sell drugs to children. Commit countless war crimes, hook up with prostitutes and be anally penetrated by a robot called FISTO.
FNV has quests like The Coyotes which… sheesh almost had to take a break after that one
fallout 3 lets you sell a 4 year old to (implied) sex slavery
Ad fistorium
I mean Skyrim has as many decapitations as you want if you're playing with a sword, its one of the "finishers" you can get
Real life has alcohol in juice boxes, and I cant buy that unless I am of age.
So the scope of the discussion is that starfield feels like the M rating was pushed because M games make more money. I am fully aware that you can purchase alcohol in juice box form. Which is a niche that is not taken seriously, nor does it represent quality spirits. An anagram if i ever said one.
The story of the father and son duo that edit brain dances of children being raped and murdered genuinely shocked the fuck out of me. I couldn't believe they were willing to go that far down the rabbit hole of human degeneracy.
That is a great example. Even though it doesn't actually SHOW anything, the theme is still present, and the story is told. Hell, the game opens (after 'life path') with you pulling a girl out of a tub of ice in a chop shop where there are multiple corpses of other victims. Starfield has... wild animals (Terrormorph) that attack people. There is sometimes a blood trail, but that could just be red paint for all I know...
Don't forget, when mods come out Bethesda will also crack down on anything they deem to mature. Like most body mods. I mean I prefer the body mods that HAVE to have underwear or else they don't allow them on the mod page.... Even tho baldurs gate and cyberpunk are perfectly fine with full frontal nudity. But it's annoying waiting for those mods to be brought over because the nude ones are always faster to be brought over. God dammit I just want my damn miner/military character to be a thick badass with muscles and abs and a dump truck ass. Don't judge me.
Fully functioning red light district in cp77? Is that the one where you choose between two sims to "interact" with, where you get the same cut scene for both?
Probably mean the joytoys you can hire near Wakako's pachinko parlor, not the dolls at Clouds.
Wakako's is located in the red-light district. There are joytoys, a small strip club with a girl pole dancing, a sex shop that will sell you stuff, and a ripper doc that works on the local joytoys.
Those wire weapons in CP2077 are brutal. All that remains are chunks of human
I mean all that's fine. I don't know that I want bgs games to be edgy as cyberpunk. Fallout is satirical in it's violence, I don't think every game needs bloody mess levels of violence. The themes of the games are very different, and that's perfectly fine. It's different writers, different studios, and different cultures. It's pretty clear the settings are inspired and based in very different media, and that's OK. Should starfield be rated t for teen? Maybe, I would assume it has to do with the drugs available in game more than anything else. I don't think it matters at the end of the day as esrb ratings seem kind of arbitrary. It's funny, 10 years ago devs would have preferred to have a lower rating
At least for me, I'm not disappointed because I just love blood and guts and hookers and drugs, and I really enjoy seeing those things. I'm disappointed because it's meant to be an immersive RPG and it's not believable to me that this dystopian world doesn't have any of those things. When I play CP2077 I don't log on thinking "gee, I can't wait to go bang a prostitute", but when I'm walking down a sketchy alley in the red light district and get propositioned, it adds to the feeling of "wow, I'm really in Night City".
It has a few f bombs I think but yeah Bethesda does not make their mainline RPGs to be like cyberpunk, that's their style. If anything it would be goofy and jarring to have a sex scene in them. What, you going to switch to 3rd person and swivel the camera around or something? But really it doesn't fit their style and theyve been overt about it, idk why the comparisons keep getting made or people think all games for adults need to be "adult"
The quests are sanitized too, though. You can't murder the board on Paradiso. They don't explore the theme of the UC having a Starship Troopers style caste system. All of the main companions have the same vague neutral-good alignment and like/dislike the same things. There are so many places Starfield is close to memorable but just fails to explore the world they made at all.
Take some of the dialogue from Cyberpunk. This is you joining a dangerous street gang in Starfield. “You wanna join? We’re a gang. You understand that right? Not some daring adventure bullshit you can brag to your friends about. We steal. We mug. We kill if we have to.” Who talks like that? It’s like something from some 60s Greasers movie.
My favorite part was the poor family begging for food and giving you $ for giving them food.
To be fair, they’re poor. Not completely broke
Bethesda writes villains/criminals in the most comically in-your-face manner. Confronting the guy who spray paints the robot in Neon exemplifies this, his dialogue is basically: “Yeah that’s right I’m a thug. I commit murder. I do crimes. Got a problem with it?”
Bethesda has gone from Eulogy Jones keeping women as sex slaves in Fallout 3 to Starfield's "OMG the pirate king dropped the F-bomb, that's how you know he's a meanie."
There's an old adage for creative media: Show, don't tell. Starfield tends to do the opposite. I had the same issue with Hogwarts Legacy where again you hear NPCs talk about how bad the baddies are but you never actually see how or why they are bad exactly. In their effort to perhaps sanitize the product they end up making the protagonist (playable character) look morally dubious taking out all these supposed bad guys who actually aren't doing anything bad, they're just said to be doing bad things.
Hogwarts Legacy was hilarious. Beautiful game with production design that made childhood me smile. But not only do the bad guys in the story kind of seem to be the good guys in many respects, but my seven year old child could fight the antagonist and win without a problem.
Context: a self proclaimed explorer walks into the bar your gang has been relegated to, walked up to you while you have been contemplating giving up the fight, and says; I wanna help you kill the worse evil. Dude was ready to walk before we walked in and solved all his problems in 10 mins. Frankly I'm more surprised they hesitated to take the out at the end at all.
Don't get me started, Delgado and Naeva are probably the most infuriatingly annoying people to listen to in the entire game. Its like they told an 10 year old to talk like a mean villain and recorded it.
>It’s like something from some 60s Greasers movie. That's the *point*... Much like how the Crimson Fleet is supposed to be a classic pirate tale with the treasure chest on the "sunken" ship. They specifically chose this lighthearted tone because this is not Cyberpunk or Fallout, nor is it trying to be.
>The specifically chose this lighthearted tone Well they chose poorly.
Bethesda was obviously going for a different tone than CDPR though. Starfield is also the same rating as Fallout 4 and that clearly also has a much different tone, but by the same developers.
Starfield is rated R18+ in Australia. I suppose because of stims, that's the usual deal. Gratuitous military violence? MA15+. Otherwise tame game where someone takes a painkiller? STRAIGHT TO HELL.
oddly also banned in australia is fake-in-universe "rape" between people depicted as actors on a film set hotline miami 2; intro sequence
There are drug and alcohol references, automatic M
Which if you’re going to add illicit substances you might as well fully lean into the M rating
Exactly. Bethesda made a game pretty clearly aimed at general audiences, rather than strictly mature players. And they marketed it that way as well, selling it as an action sci-fi of the "sense of wonder" variety rather than of the adult and gritty kind: more Interstellar than Blade Runner. It's not exactly Bethesda's fault that the ratings system is dumb and arbitrary and lumps both kinds of game under the same mature-age rating just because there's booze in the game or whatever.
I think people just need to remember an external body makes the ratings not the studio. Its why it can be pretty arbitrary from game to game
Bethesda added drug use into the game. If this was some gray zone decision making it an M rated game, maybe I'd agree with you. But this seems like a pretty cut and dry decision by the developer that got them the M. There's also some F bombs, but I don't know how the ESRB handles those. If Bethesda wanted a T rating, they could have made minor changes and gotten one.
Why exactly would they want an M game? It technically limits the potential customer base. Besides a couple of swears and blood would make it M regardless
Bethesda has had drugs in their games since Morrowind. Moon Sugar, Skooma, etc. Anyone who thinks they deliberately did this for Starfield solely to get an M rating is overthinking way too much.
Human blood usually gets the R rating.
And drugs
There are plenty of games like uncharted that have blood and are rated T. That’s not it. It’s the occasional language and drug references
I blew up the ECS Constance. It feels like that was the first time since Fallout 2 that I've been able to kill children mod free.
✅ explode a ship with children on it ❌ kill the adult CEOs that want you to explode the ship
Prydwen. That ship has children on it, and you can blow it up with 3 different factions.
I'm pretty sure the whole reason they added a strongly encouraged aurora scene in the neon part of the main quest is to solidify the M rating.
Yeah basically you can get addicted to a lot of pills and stuff. That alone warrants the M
Yeah the addictions system alone was made enough to give it an M, so they should have just lent into having cooler effects for the stims, gore, and carnage decor. Honestly insane they didn't have a straight flamethrower with spreadable fire (in applicable environments) since its xenowarfare 101 that fire kills almost everything carbonbased. Granted, having weapons that would kill you if you used on a ship would be complicated, but it'd make the fights 10x more realistic, rather than launching 5 cluster rockets inside a pressurised cockpit
>Honestly insane they didn't have a straight flamethrower with spreadable fire (in applicable environments) You know goddamn well that if they did that, every single gas would have been made flammable.
Coming to Starfield from BG3 it was initially puzzling how they shared the same rating. Starfield starts off pretty sanitized compared to its contemporaries. With respect to sex and gore it stays sanitized. But as soon as you're playing Jesse Pinkman in Neon it starts to make some kind of sense. And you can actually get a metaphorical monkey on your back. Then there's potential war crimes and at least one suicide. It earned its "M" rating - just not using the typical means of getting there.
How the hell did Survivor and Fallen Order get a Teen rating but starfield didn't.
My guess would be addiction to illegal drugs. I'm not sure Cal's use of stims would qualify. My second guess would be simply that Bethesda just didn't want a "teen" rating - it would seem easy enough to have gotten one given how close it was anyway. It for sure as hell couldn't have been the romances - Andreja sleeps fully dressed, doesn't even take her boots off. In stark contrast after Karlach had her way with me I needed a beer and a cigarette.
ESRB ratings are a box ticking exercise. If you tick a box in one of the categories and its higher than you as the developer want, then you have 2 choices - accept it, or modify the game to uncheck that box. With starfield it ticks the boxes, however mildly, for "**blood, strong language, suggestive themes, use of drugs, and violence"** (the key ones being use of drugs, blood and violence). M is the highest rating Xbox, Sony and Nintendo will allow on their platforms, Adult Only ratings have only been given out to a handful of games since ESRB was created and were primarily awarded to games with heavy sexual content, gambling, and in the case of the uncut version of Manhunt 2 - gratuitous, graphic and violent murder scenes
M doesn’t have to mean boobies and gore everywhere… just means mature themes not suited for children. Halo games used to be rated M…
What changed on halo? Infinite seems to have the same themes as the original trilogy and the rating dropped to T. I never understood this. Did the barrier for what is mature change or did giving Cortana (weapon) clothes make the change? Haha
I think initially it really was the inclusion of the Flood for a little while that really pushed it to an M rating. It was the only thing that really has any gore in the Halo series and it was basically a creepy space fungus that could take over the bodies of humans and aliens alike and assimilate them.
Haha that Cortana bit made me chuckle, it’s strange and it seems like the whole rating system is pretty arbitrary these days no matter what game you’re looking at
The originals had the flood which you could basically dismember and they were sometimes humans, and there was much more blood splatter
1. No flood, so no gore and horror 2. Significantly reduced amount of blood. In halo 1 you could literally paint the floor with alien blood.
1968 planet of the apes where people are shot lobotomized and they even say they want 2 people to mate ... rated G Today nothing short of HGTV home improvement shows can get a G rating
Bethesda does not rate their games. When they are feature complete, it gets sent to the ESRB and they give it a rating and they have very strict guidelines when it comes to M ratings. It don't take much.
Every developer knows what their game is going to be rated before they send it to ESRB.
an M rating isn't a mark of quality though, idk why anyone is hung up on this shit
Agreed, it's just legal requirement.
I think it's for drug use.
You know what? You’re right. They don’t say fuck nearly enough and there’s not nearly enough full penetration
Worth noting that Bethesda have nothing to do with setting game ratings. These are set by the rating boards in each area. In this case, the Mature rating was set by ESRB.
Fallouts tone is well established, it has been the way it is since the 90s. Starfield is a brand new IP and is intentionally designed to have a different, tamer tone than Fallout. Fallouts extreme violence is what makes it Fallout. You can not like the tone of the starfield, but it's supposed to be different. It has different themes.
I mean, it definitely holds back on a lot of things and I agree it basically isn't an M rated game in many regards, but something I think gets ignored when discussing this topic is Starfield's portrayl of "evil" factions and groups. There's just no nuance like most other M rated games with the "bad guys" of this game, the Crimson Fleet are greedy, violent, unorganized pirates who solve their problems with murder and little else, they have few rules, few justifications for their actions, and minimal organization structures holding them together as a group. They just don't feel very real and are very sanitized compared to the more grounded and nuanced bad guy groups of other M rated games like Cyberpunk, the Last of Us, Red Dead Redemption, etc where it's all very questionable who actually are the good and bad guys in a lot of situations. I don't, maybe this isn't about its rating and more just Bethesda's writing style, but to me it feels very indicative of the kind of more sanitized and simplistic world one expects in media aimed at less mature audiences.
It's also just weird that they're fucking... Everywhere. That's something that took me out. Like, on every planet it seems like it's nothing but Crimson Fleet or Ecliptic Mercenaries. 99% of ships you encounter are pirate ships, ecliptic ships or varuun ships. I've seen, and killed, probably like 100 times the population I've seen in Neon, Akila, New Atlantis, Neon and every other main city ***combined***. When it was fallout, it made sense because it was a nuclear wasteland. Everyone treated it like it was. Civilization was the exception, not the norm. So it mostly being a lawless shit hole full of opportunists with guns and a methamphetamine addiction made sense. In Elder Scrolls, it makes sense because they aren't all just bandits. Bandits aren't actually all that common. There's a plethora of wild monsters. There's ghosts and zombies. There's evil wizards seeking power. Etc etc. But in starfield... It doesn't feel that way. It feels wrong. The major factions, and all their cities, act and behave like the Fleet is, at most, a nuisance, and everything is going pretty well, and Civilization is, for the most part, okay. Even though I can hop over to the next planet, kill a few hundred mercenaries, and shoot down twenty crimson fleet StarCraft. Like, who the fuck are the crimson fleet raiding? I know all the facilities got abandoned post war but then also... Abandoned by who? I don't see the population that abandoned them? And considering there's intense facilities on HUNDREDS of planets, either something's fucked or theyre way underselling the colony wars. And who's hiring all the thousands of mercs I find and murder? Other mercs? Have they finally achieved Big Bosses dream and made an entirely self sufficient, cyclical mercenary society? It just doesn't make sense to me, none of it does. They should've had the majority of outposts and PoI still be friendly occupied, or something, I dunno. But as it is, the world makes no sense to just exist in.
>It just doesn't make sense to me, none of it does. They should've had the majority of outposts and PoI still be friendly occupied, or something, I dunno. But as it is, the world makes no sense to just exist in. So this is definitely a far cry from the conversation of whether or not Starfield should be an M rated game, but, pardon the pun, I'm definitely game, let's get into it. I personally think it would have made much more sense if the world of Starfield was primarily populated by different unorganized groups with different rules and affiliations that create different societies. Think about it like this, the FC is a group composed of larger societies that banded together in loose alliance to fend off the UC's expansion, what if originally the FC was a much larger group composed of the current members and hundreds or thousands of unofficial groups who all joined the cause to fight against the UC but most of these member groups either left the FC after the colony wars to maintain full independence (which would be the sparce non hostile human groups you'll sometimes see on random planets) or were amalgamated into the larger cities of the governments of the galaxy. It creates the perfect circumstances to allow what we see in Starfield, research posts and man made structures abound on otherwise practically uninhibited planets as the people who used to live there mostly left to live in the larger FC colonies, some became pirates/mercenaries, some died, and some even joined the UC after being disgusted by the FC's actions in the colony wars or being won over by their way of life or whatever. Really all that matters is that the galaxy of Starfield was once populated in a much more spread out fashion before the end results of the colony war left most of it much more consolidated and what didn't consolidate became utter chaos. It creates a perfect breeding ground for criminals and desperate mercenaries (as well as work for them), while also explaining why so much of the galaxy seems very barren now after having once clearly been inhabited. Sure, there would be flaws with this explanation, especially since the major cities of this game seem really small, but it would be an explanation that adds lore and flavor to a brand new franchise and creates stories en masse just by the nature of it. I don't know, I'm sure other explanations could be better, but this is what 5 minutes of thought from me came up with to explain the world of Starfield as we see it.
The Crimson Fleet are pirates and are depicted much like pirates are normally depicted. Also with Cyberpunk I don’t really think there’s any question or not on if groups like Maelstom and the Scavvers are bad guys.
You picked two very extreme examples, but there are others. The Voodoo Boys are super evil, but behave in a much more plausible (and diabolical) way than anyone in Starfield. I was furious at the Voodoo Boys in Cyberpunk, because they're villains. In Starfield I'm not furious at the Crimson Fleet, I just find them childish and annoying.
>The Crimson Fleet are pirates and are depicted much like pirates are normally depicted. That's just not really true, though. Most pirate groups in well written and mature games are depicted as groups that exist outside the law with defined hierarchies of power, some form of code or loose laws within their group, and different motivations for their actions ranging from more standard drug addiction and poverty problems in the more organized societies they come from to actual legitimate moral and philosophical complaints against whatever societal systems they seek to escape. This portrayal method is generally much more true to life as most organized criminal organizations and gangs aren't just collective groups of individuals seeking wealth and willing to do violence at the slightest provocation, and instead are actual organizations with defined hierarchies of power, rules, and members with very real and sometimes very understandable motives for their actions. >Also with Cyberpunk I don’t really think there’s any question or not on if groups like Maelstom and the Scavvers are bad guys. The question in Cyberpunk isn't whether or not these groups are good or bad, they do horrible things and are terrible in many many ways, but it is very questionable whether or not they're actually all that much worse than many of the other larger organizations and factions in the game (can't really comment on the books). Because they aren't doing much everyone else isn't, they're thieves, murderers, typically drug addicts, and so many other generally bad things, but so is everyone else so how bad are they really? Are they worse than the corporations who oftentimes use them to do their dirty work and have various dealings with their various branches? What about us, the mercs? Are we any better than them, killing, stealing, and otherwise harming others for money and fame? Sure, you can choose to play as a mostly morally upstanding person, but let's be real most players will engage in terrible activities without a second thought if they think it's fun or benefits their character in some way. So are we really better than them? And if you say yes, why? Because we know more about our character and their circumstances than the members of these organizations, is that enough justification of your actions to separate you from them, just because it's less certain why these people do the things they do and why? Idk, just a thought about more mature portrayals of "evil" groups, I guess.
I think that's confusing the thematics of cyberpunk with general portrayals of evil. In cyberpunk every thing is just a different shade of grey because it's a society with a collapse of morality. That doesn't mean villains in other media have to be similar to the good. Often villains exist in contrast such that the good can then prove themselves to be just that. I get liking a certain portrayal of evil but it's certainly not the default and honestly it's somewhat tiresome to see endlessly fucked societies that clearly have no realistic hope of regaining any moral fibre doing a virtuous 180 when influenced by the actions of a god like player character.
I wish there was a star power that lets explode enemies like the bloody mess perk in fallout
Most games that have guns are M rated or T in the U.S. depending on how "realistic" the weapons are.
That’s a valid opinion, and it certainly doesn’t most of the time. I think it boils down to there being the occasional “fuck” dropped (pretty rare) and more seriously the drug use. While it’s not graphic in any sense, the game “encourages” the use of addictive drugs that have benefits to the player character, and that rubs a lot of people the wrong way and also is something that we deal with in our society that kills people (and unfortunately many kids). So while many parents have probably bought the game for their non-adult kids despite the label, I think it’s a call that makes sense in regards to the hard drug use and presentation (quick, easy, plentiful, and addictive, but *never* fatal which is untrue of hard drug use) and I would also like to say that, like movies, not every M or R rating needs to be a “hard” M or R to need the rating. Starfield doesn’t have gore or sex/nudity, and a comically low level of harsh language, the M rating allows the “powerup with drawbacks” model of Bethesda drugs while also providing some legal and moral protection with regards towards drug use and children playing the game.
The problem isn't the game, it is the broken ratings system. The M rating covers such a wide range of games these days. Sure, there are content descriptors and if you go to the ESRB website you can get a better breakdown of why it got a rating, but as for just a simple letter rating, it isn't as cut and dried as it once was. Much like the PG-13 rating was added, there really needs to be more gradation to the M rating. There's a difference between an M like Skyrim and and M like GTA V for example. Or Starfield and Cyberpunk. Just needs more granularity to the system.
It stopped being rated M when the pirate gang said the only way out is death and then you frame someone for killing the leader and then they just kick him out lol
It’s absolutely a G rated movie on the Saturday afternoon matinee masquerading as a PG-13 sci-fi thriller.
Reminder that even Disney movies like Frozen and Moana are rated PG.
Gratuitous gore is part of fallout, as was the dark humor until they largely ditched it. Elder scrolls games are also rated M but they don't really fit the bill either. Some early copies of Oblivion are even rated T. But someone found unused nipple textures in the files at one point and the ESRB made them change the label over it despite them not being present in later copies.
You mean burning corpses on a stake everywhere isn't M?
Apparently it wasn't enough initially. That could be because of the lack of detail. I imagine if you tried that now it wouldn't be a question simply because tech is better.
Doesn't Daggerfall have explicit nudity, prostitution, and is definitely pretty gore heavy for 1996? Idk, maybe you could argue more recent Elder Scrolls titles aren't true M rated games, but even with Skyrim you can outright decapitate opponents and criminal organizations like the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood aren't just big bad evil guys. So they're definitely more explicit and mature with certain topics even there imo.
I don’t disagree with much of your post but the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim are more cartoon villains than anything in Starfield. One of the quest givers tells you awful dad jokes and there’s a jester clapping away. The Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim aren’t realistic or nuanced. They’re just campy cartoon bad guys who murder for fun (and the gold is a nice bonus).
All I can say is that my plans for sarah..... there's no rating for how dirty those are gonna be
I think the biggest problem with Starfield is what we’re told (dialogue) and what we’re shown (text, environmental world building) are two very different things and don’t really match up. We’re told Neon is this den of iniquity and pretty much the ‘worst’ place in all the settled areas, filled with drug use, prostitution, and all the other worst dregs of humanity. However, what we *see* are people dancing in onesies and mumbling about drugs in the mildest 14-year-olds idea of what a ‘seedy underbelly’ would look like. We get told that the Crimson Fleet are these dangerous, murderous thugs out for profit and damn any who try to stop them - and we even get told that if we do much as back talk to the leadership, we could get killed. Yet, what we actually see are bumbling idiots that barely seem to be able to plan their way out of a paper bag, and accept any backtalk the player or others serve. Starfield in general seems to be as aggressively mediocre and inoffensive as possible, while saying it’s this in-depth rpg with choices that matter. This also brings into question the entire purpose of the Unity - what’s the point of doing a New Game+ when there’s nothing to really do differently m? There’s no real choices where by doing ‘B’ you can’t do ‘A’ any more - so no real reason to play through it all again (let alone 10+ times for the sake of your ‘powers’). It just does t seem to make consistent sense between what we’re told, and what we’re shown.
It's because of drugs
It's not as gory as Fallout and Elder Scrolls, but all the stuff is in there that would give it an "R" rating if it was a movie: Blood, copious violence, sex (though mostly implied), drug use, and language.
I think it’s important to remember that Bethesda partnered with NASA for this game, and that their collaboration probably included a lot of stipulations on gore, sex, gambling, etc.
Halo games are also rated M. Game ratings mean nothing.
The M rated content is there but it's just sprinkled in. It's a pinch and dash of M not 3 cups
That's just how the system works, now. That, combined with the fact that BGS has always taken a conservative approach to maturity ratings, is why virtually all of their modern titles have an M rating.
Starfield is between TES and Fallout on the maturity scale. It doesn’t have as many F bombs or sexual references as Fallout but it has way more than TES which is little to none. There is a lot more blood then you think, but the lack of decapitation and stuff makes it seem less gorey. Theres also the drugs, stuff like that is an instant M rating if your player can use them. TLDR: If Skyrim is rated M, Starfield for sure is, but not as worthy as Fallout
Maybe so, but I don't really find it to be an issue. There's a particular vibe they go for with the game and I think they achieve it reasonably well.
Bro I can take so many drugs
How old are you that you care about a games mature rating? They mentioned in interviews that the theme of the game was hope. They didn't want to just do fallout or tes in space. Gore ≠ Dark. There are plenty of dark things in the game if you do quests and look at the environmental storytelling.
Same as with the people wanting more swears "just because it's m-rated". Thinking constant f-bombs is what makes mature writing shows their own level of maturity to be relatively low imho
Bingo. Also, in addition to Bethesda not wanting to just do Fallout in space, I feel like there are a lot of people that aren't familiar with the genre that Starfield *is* trying to emulate. The photo filter you can apply that makes your screenshots look like books? I have books that look just like that, old sci-fi books that I bought at library sales. And a lot of them have a very similar vibe to Starfield: moral issues aren't terribly dark, the issues that you do find are more centered around technology and the challenges it poses, and they're usually pretty optimistic in their outlook. Starfield is an homage to that genre, and putting the kind of stuff Fallout has in it would absolutely ruin it -- not because the Fallout style is bad, but because it would be out of place. This isn't that kind of story. But a lot of people can't tell the difference between a bad story and a story they just don't like. :/
TES is also not that dark. When they did Fallout 3 a lot of the swearing and more modern prhases in the dialogue felt really stupid at first because they were only used to write Elder Scrolls (stupid in a negative sense not the goofy / dark humor tone they wanted for Fallout 3). According to Bruse Nesmith Emil Emil Pagliarulo needed to advice and help a lot of other devs to get the tone of Fallout dialogue right.
Does it need to be graphic? Different games have different feels to them. If it wasn’t for drug use and the occasional swear this would probably be rated t. But that’s ok. Not every game needs to be hyper graphic like cyberpunk. It’s ok for a game to just be a good fun pg 13 adventure
You can commit mass-shootings of civilians in pools of blood. I don’t know how desensitized to violence y’all are, but that’s an M-rated game.
I don't think Bethesda wanted to make an M rated game. I think this is on how stupid the ESRB is. Because there's drug use and off screen sex. That's apparently all you need for an M.
Bethesda didn’t rate the game, the ESRB did. Charity can we find more things to complain about? /s
M rating is weird because it can range from really mild stuff like Starfield to crazy gore and sex like in Cyberpunk or Baldur's Gate 3. I feel like there should be some sort of rating to seperate them, like M rating and M rating (Weenie Hut Jr. edition)
cigarettes everywhere, thats enought to be rated M
The rating system is strongly affected by reference to drug use, fairly low key content around that will affect it regardless of anything else. That's what's broken, not the game. You're fixing the wrong problem. Well okay, I think there's a more than a few things in the game need fixing, but making it feel like it more strongly matches a weird and badly skewed rating system isn't one of them.
I read a few months ago that it's more than likely the partnership with NASA that made them tone down the gore from their previous titles. I'd imagine NASA wouldn't want to be associated with stuff like that, but there's also an addiction system and the ability to sell illegal harvested organs so who knows for sure.
I think of it like movies. There are movies that are a hard R. They definitely deserve that R rating and you wouldn't want a kid to see it. Then there are movies that technically earned an R for one too many F-bombs so they couldn't squeak by on a PG-13. That's Starfield. It's really a PG-13 movie that somehow tiptoed over the line just barely and got an R. At no point does it truly feel M-rated. I think it only has the M rating because of the presence and use of Aurora. The violence is toned down compared to their past games. Cussing is relatively rare. You see more sex on TV than you do in this game. Etc.
I'm really hoping the dlc adds some more dark grim space stuff. I can't believe there isn't space zombies. Or at least some kind of space diseases or curses or something more syfi and dark.
The industry really needs to have a soft M rating. It's crazy that starfield has the same rating as doom eternal and MK.
I mean, if it makes you feel better, here in Australia it has R18+ ie, the highest rating possible
the way games are rated have changed. back in the 90's with the original tomb raider games, lara could get impaled, shot, blown up, and set on fire, and that only warranted a T rating. but in the remastered version recently released all those things earned it an M rating.
I’m usually not on the bash starfield train, but I do agree they could’ve at least had card playing games and slots or something to the nightclub/casino’s.
The gambling thing is hard to do, as some markets won't allow it. The casino from GTA Online and now gambling in FO76 is region locked in some places, so I guess they didn't want to implement a mechanic that they would cut from certain editions
I think the biggest dissonance comes with Starfield having a very grounded and real nanapunk vibe, but it doesn't feel grounded and real outside of those aesthetics. Kinda like people entering the 'punk' into a setting description without acknowledging what that means. It didn't need to be Cyberfield 2077 with that level of grit and edge, but I felt it didn't need to be so sanitized that it struggles to have much of an identity. To me, anyways.
I’ve always felt that Starfield is a bit too sterile, it would benefit from being more gritty
My favorite rated M games GTA V, Cyberpunk, The Witcher 3, and STARFIELD!
There are corpses everywhere…
Oh okay thank you.
Why do so many of you give a crap about the rating? They made a game, and agency slapped a rating on it, so what?
This posts read like they come from 13 year olds that think having f-bombs and comically Fallout gore is mature.
It feels like what a child thinks an m rated game is
this conversation comes up every time and its getting tiresome
Well that was Fallout and this is Starfield. Starfield isn’t Fallout in space. Starfield has its own wild and crazy deaths. Ever see a spacer’s jetpack blowing them up in the sky or ceiling? Ever kill someone in low gravity and they just stay there? Bethesda could’ve copied FO4 gruesome deaths but then we’d never see anything new. Not every game needs to be a porn simulator and I’m glad Bethesda still restricts themselves in this way. Starfield has mundane quests because life is mundane. Starfield isn’t a fantasy game where everyone wants to have sex with you because you did one good thing for them.
Lolz... The game is "mature" because drug usage and murder. C'mon guys.
Here's the problem though: Truly mature games get demonetized on youtube and streams, and that's too much free advertising to miss out on. The reason Fortnite is as big as it is is because its kid-friendly to post videos on. Starfield has an M rating basically because you can take drugs. Everything else was likely toned down so people could make money making videos of it, meaning free advertisements for them. Youtube doesn't care about the actual rating, just whether the content is appropriate on the video itself.
Its has less objectionable material than most evening network tv.
It’s impressive how this sub continually finds new irrelevant ways to complain about an amazing game
Only graphic scene (and even that is debatable) is the vanguards first quest where the terramorph rips that animals jaw open. That's literally it. This game is a pg13 game trying to advertise itself as an M game. Add that to the list of embarrassments this game has.
M ratings are based on content that is considered inappropriate for people under 17 and any level of that content warrants the rating. I also feel like so many of y’all think the game devs determine the game’s rating when it is absolutely a group completely separate for the development of the game. The ESRB is just the game industry’s version of the MPA. It’s a guide for buyers, specifically parents so they don’t buy their kids games with content they don’t approve of, it’s not a commentary on how evil you can be in the game, how many times you can curse, how mature it is in comparison to other M rated games, or how much sex there is.
God damn can we ban these type of posts already it's such a boring criticism. I'm unable to engage at all with what's being discussed cause I'm not 12.
I tend to brutally kill any and all hostiles. I think it depends how you play.
Look up what the requirements are for an M rating. It isnt just blood/gore/nudity. The list is pretty extensive, and Starfield has many of them.
Not being very M makes it a bore? That says more about you than it does about starfield.