Starfield Gets R-18 Rating In Australia For Its Depiction of Drug Use – How Bad Is It?

gameranx.com:

Starfield has received a Restricted R-18 rating in Australia, with some very strange and unexpected connotations around it.

In their classification guide, the item with the highest impact is its depiction of drug use, followed by violence. The game’s themes, and language are lower priorities. At the bottom of these items are sex and nudity, which all but confirms that Starfield won’t have either.

As reported by The Gamer, this is not unusual for Bethesda, who have received Restricted ratings for their other games also because of its depiction of drug use.

For example, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim has skooma, a fictional potion that is straight up depicted like a narcotic. Characters who imbibe skooma will experience brief euphoria, followed by extended periods of tiredness and weakness. Skooma is also smoked, and made with fatally dangerous ingredients. Even if it is completely fictional, Bethesda did not leave a lot to the imagination as to what skooma is supposed to be.

Fallout is even bolder in its depiction, as drugs are straight up referred to as chems. In this universe, chems have effects very similar to modern day illegal substances, like painkillers and performance enhancing drugs. In the fiction of Fallout, they are straight up build by pharmaceuticals after their society had fallen to the point that no laws control their usage. The newer nations that have emerged also seek to control chem use, as a mirror and parody of how we experience them in the real world.

Now, what is interesting is that Starfield’s rating is higher and harsher than what these earlier games received.  Does this mean that Starfield takes things further with their depiction of illegal or restricted drugs? Or is this a matter of a conservative