this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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I can see both sides of this. On the one hand, it's a T rated game. It would be weird for a T rated game to have a big focus on sex.
On the other hand, the update is called Sins of the Flesh and the art for it depicts the characters dancing naked around a fire, with leaves covering their genitals.
On my mutant third hand, it's weird for a satanic-adjacent cult game to be rated T in the first place. I guess they're really coasting on their cute aesthetic? I haven't played this game.
You can murder and sacrifice followers, and there's mushrooms. But that's really it. Worshipping Satan doesn't warrant a content rating any more than worshipping a different god.
What I meant was presumably it has murder and blood sacrifice, it would be a pretty poor cult game without those. And if that's true, that sounds like an M rating to me.
I'm an atheist, I don't have a dog in the "Satan v. God of Abraham" fight.
None of that has ever warranted an M rating unless it's graphically depicted.
Can you give an example of another game with unambiguous premeditated murder on the part of the main character, that isn't either in self-defense or as part of a war? I'm trying to think of any but I'm coming up short.
I can’t find the ratings for the original (the game may be older than ERSB) but black and white 2 is T for teen. It has sacrifice, murder, child abuse, etc as a mechanic for the “evil” route.
Link to ersb page for bw2
I’m sure there are more games like this. I remember drowning my Sims for fun as a child and I’m pretty sure that game is also T.
I have played cult of the lamb, and there wasn’t really anything in it a highscooller shouldn’t see.
(Edit: I have done no research on the dlc. The marketing does look edgy, but that doesn’t mean the content is inappropriate. I don’t plan on buying the DLC. Imho the art was cute but the gameplay was mid. Also, personal opinion, poop management as a mechanic is boring and dumb.)
Skyrim, you have a whole questline being an assassin for a god of death.
In Oblivion you could only join them by murdering a random innocent person.
I intended that to be T and under games with premeditated murder by the player in them, but I realize looking back that I didn't say that so you are correct. They are, however, both M rated. Although, Oblivion was famously T rated before being rerated to M because of some PC mods with nudity in them. Even the console version was changed to M, which I remember thinking at the time was BS. So I'm going to call that a T rated game with murder in it.
I remember the official Bethesda word on that back then was "whatever, Oblivion should have been rated M to begin with anyway".
However, Morrowind has stayed ESRB T and has an assassin group you can join too. it's technically legal in-universe, but they're assassins nonetheless.
Final Fantasy series, along with a lot other JRPGs?
FF is typically self defense and/or war, but there are probably some murders in there somewhere I guess
FFVII has what is probably the most memed on graphic onscreen murder in the whole franchise. As graphic as you could get with those polygons anyway.
Interesting question honestly. Sims 4 (rated T) certainly allows you to kill off Sims, but you're an omnipotent being, it doesn't have Sim-on-Sim murder. I think this is true for a lot of simulation games where the player isn't a character in the world. Cult of the Lamb is obviously inspired by those games, but also makes the leap to you being represented by a character.
We have really normalized cruelty and violence huh
It's a game.
There's nothing wrong with dark things happening in fiction. And there are plenty of T rated games with similar content.
Sure I agree but I meant to point something different, murder is the extreme of violence and sex is the extreme of love. Its not extremely graphical violence but I do want to ask if there was sex on display the same way murders are would it warrant the M rating? And if so, why Murder would only warrant T?
That would be the gripping hand.
Ratings always suffer diminishing returns over time. It happened with the Comics Code, TV standards, and Movie Ratings. The dilution of game ratings was inevitable.