Bethesda Responds To Oblivion Re-Rating

Gamespot has details on Bethesda's response to the ESRB for their (some would argue) knee-jerk reaction to fan-added elements of Oblivion. From the article: "There is no nudity in Oblivion without a third party modification. In the PC version of the game only - this doesn't apply to the Xbox 360 version - some modders have used a third party tool to hack into and modify an art archive file to make it possible to create a mesh for a partially nude (topless) female that they add into the game. Bethesda didn't create a game with nudity and does not intend that nudity appear in Oblivion." They go on to state they submitted a 60-page document detailing the violence in the game. If anyone is at fault here, I think it's the ESRB.

Comments

Re:Why I'm ashamed to be an American in the 21st c

[(A)*(B)!0_-]

"Want to mod your videogame? Sorry, there is the POTENTIAL someone could modify it to show more nudity or violence."

What does the government have to do with the ESRB?

Re:Why I'm ashamed to be an American in the 21st c

[Sven The Space Monke]

At this point, not much. However, there have been attempts at legally enforcing ESRB ratings. To my knowledge, most of them have been unsucessful (at least in the US). There is at least one law that I know for sure is an attempt to legally enforce the ESRB ratings, but it's in Canada. Bill 30 is the province of Saskatchewan's attempt to make it illegal to even advertise or display a game where someone under the ERSB rated age could see it. It doesn't have much opposition at the moment, as the government is playing the lame-assed "you want our children to see PORNOGRAPHIC VIDEO GAMES?!?" card to anyone who speaks up against it. While it isn't shutting me up, it kills almost any support I manage to cull.

Re:Hot Coffee 2: More Cream Please

[AnyNoMouse]

Oblivion, on the other hand, does not have that content shipped with the game. It cannot be unlocked because it doesn't exist. What Bethesda did do, was make a tool set available so that players could make their own content for the game. There are dozens of player created mods available with new content that you can add to the PC VERSION ONLY. One of these player created mods happens to be a naked woman model.

Actually, that's not entirely true, at least in the PC version of the game.

In the packed BSA files there is a nude female mesh torso with a nude female texture associated to it. This mesh is meant to be used with armor and clothing to allow skin to show (arms, neck, upper chest, stomach, etc). The first nude mod released for Morrowind was simply this nude mesh and texture extraced from the BSA archive, renamed and placed in the proper directory.

As proof of this, Bethesda has not released a .nif exporter for Oblivion and only recently have people been able to create models for the game purely through the efforts of a few people reverse engineering the format (it's hardly complete and the support for models is limited at the moment).

Of course, I don't think it will be possible to use this mesh on the 360 version and Bethesda's 1.1 beta patch removes the nipples on the texture. Also, the nude mesh is horribly deformed to make it fit to clothing necklines better.

Just wanted to point out what the reality of the situation is... I think Bethesda is in the right on this matter (and Rockstar as well, btw).

-MD