Starfield Rating Reveals Mature Content and Themes

gamerant.com:

The upcoming Bethesda RPG,Starfield, has received an age rating for mature content and themes. The rating for the Microsoft exclusive Starfield comes from Australia's Classification Board, which is notoriously strict on content in video games.

Bethesda has a history with the ACB; in 2008,Fallout 3 was refused classification by the Australian Classification Board, which made it illegal to distribute or purchase the game in the country. In order for the game to be reclassified, the content that had caused issue in the Australian version of the game had to be removed by Bethesda and resubmitted to the Australian Classification Board. The main issue was the use of drugs in the game, with stand-in drugs such as Jet and Psycho mimicking real world drugs. The content was not removed entirely from the revised version of the game, but the animations of drug use were removed. While not explicitly condoned by Bethesda, drugs continue to feature in their open world games, Skyrim even lets players sell drugs to orphans.

Starfield May Be Using a Feature From Fallout 4

Similarly, Starfield has received its restricted age rating from the ACB with regard to “interactive drug use." The rating recommends that Starfield should only be sold to players over 18 years old, and breaks down its content into six categories: themes, violence, language, drug use, nudity, and sex. According to the report, Starfield has a higher rate of violence and drug use when compared to the other categories. The rating considers the “impact” of these categories; sex is registered as “none,” nudity is “very mild,” themes and language are registered as having “moderate impact,” violence has a “strong impact,” while drug use is rated “high impact” and is marked by the