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Starfield Receives “Restricted” Rating in Australia : "Interactive drug use", "Strong impact violence" and “very mild impact nudity"

Ombretoile

Ombretoile

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Sep 8, 2022
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gameinfinitus.com

Starfield Receives "Restricted" Rating in Australia

Starfield, the highly anticipated space-themed action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, has been classified as "Restricted" in Australia.
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Starfield, the highly anticipated space-themed action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, has been classified as "Restricted" in Australia. The game's classification was determined by the Australian Classification Board, which noted that the game features "moderate impact" language and themes, "strong impact" violence, "very mild impact" nudity, and "restricted" interactive drug use.
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Starfield represents the first new intellectual property by Bethesda Game Studios in over twenty-five years, and has been described by director Todd Howard as "Skyrim in space". The studio had been exploring space-themed games since as early as 1994, but it took a while to cement the ideas behind Starfield that would distinguish it from other science fiction games already released.
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It is important to note that Australia has some of the strictest video game classification laws in the world, and games that are classified as "Restricted" are not allowed to be sold or rented to minors.
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FYI, Skyrim and Fallout 4 were only rated "15+", so Starfield goes even further in everything.

https://www.classification.gov.au/titles/elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-special-edition

To my knowledge, Starfield is the first Bethesda game ever to have this kind of rating.
 
canderous

canderous

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Magnus

Magnus

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Oct 25, 2017
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Don't games only get rated when they're pretty much at the finish line dev wise?
 
Poimandres

Poimandres

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Oct 26, 2017
6,926
I forgot we even had an R rating these days. Plenty of games banned in Australia over the years, like Left 4 Dead 2 (maybe we got a censored version?).

Anyway, I'm definitely over 18 so congrats to me I guess.
 
chrominance

chrominance

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Oct 25, 2017
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So if I'm reading the classification tables right, it sounds like the reason Starfield got an R is actually because of drug use? It looks like the rest of the ratings are actually pretty in line with Fallout/Skyrim except for Sex, and Starfield apparently has basically none.
 
Max|Payne

Max|Payne

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chrominance said:
So if I'm reading the classification tables right, it sounds like the reason Starfield got an R is actually because of drug use? It looks like the rest of the ratings are actually pretty in line with Fallout/Skyrim except for Sex, and Starfield apparently has basically none.
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We gonna run into Space Heisenberg's empire and shit's gonna pop off real good.
 
Bessy67

Bessy67

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Oct 29, 2017
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More drug use than Fallout? They obviously did not watch me downing Mentats like there's no tomorrow
 
Benzychenz

Benzychenz

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Nov 1, 2017
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Drug use showing positive effects (healing etc) makes for an instant R 18+ rating here.

This is completely nothing news.
 
Shirkelton

Shirkelton

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Aug 20, 2020
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chrominance said:
So if I'm reading the classification tables right, it sounds like the reason Starfield got an R is actually because of drug use? It looks like the rest of the ratings are actually pretty in line with Fallout/Skyrim except for Sex, and Starfield apparently has basically none.
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Yes, it's probably a similar situation to Fallout 3c which originally called Med-X 'morphine' and got an R18 rating for it.
 
Bessy67

Bessy67

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Koukalaka

Koukalaka

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Oct 28, 2017
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BGS not quite going back to their full-on nudity days - pretty much the only thing I remembered about Daggerfall the first time I played it was the digital schlongs and tiddies... and the confusing as hell dungeon layouts.
 
skeezx

skeezx

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Oct 27, 2017
20,345
chrominance said:
So if I'm reading the classification tables right, it sounds like the reason Starfield got an R is actually because of drug use? It looks like the rest of the ratings are actually pretty in line with Fallout/Skyrim except for Sex, and Starfield apparently has basically none.
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i guess the game is more direct with "you are using DRUGS" as opposed to skooma/whatever experimental craft in Elder Scrolls or alcohol in Fallout. anybody who normally plays these games probably wouldn't notice a variation there
 
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