|
|
Condemned 2 worried about ratings
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 25th July 2007
The violence which formed a central theme in the original Condemned may be cut back in the sequel over fears of a AO rating.
The reality is that the banning and censorship of Manhunt 2 has stripped away another level of innocence for this young medium which we call computer games and questionable content is something developers now have to weigh up considerably.
Producer of Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Constantine Hantzopoulos, spoke in a recent interview about how his game has been censored and trimmed down even before more than a handful of screenshots and trailers have been released.
"I worked on Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit in Europe) and had to cut the sex scenes out of the game for the US...It sucked because I don't believe in that, right. But you've got to do what you've got to do. We're working closely with the ESRB to make sure everything goes through okay but there's stuff we've cut already. There were things we were doing that even I couldn't believe we were going to those places....An example of what we cut would be putting someone's head in a vice. That was too much, you know."
The original Condemned: Criminal Origins, which is a PC favourite for some bit-tech staff, was rated 18 in the UK for its language and viscerally violent themes, but it sounds as if the sequel has raised the violence level a little above the predesscor.
So, on the one hand we have a producer who clearly thinks that his game has pushed the boundaries too far in some respects. On the other hand, the same developer laments that the ESRB are meddling with his creative output and taking away from the violence which was actually a powerful and intense theme to the game series, creating an interesting subtext about violence in society as the main character battled a manifestation of Metro City's hate.
What strikes us as odd is that this is all going on while the game is still in development and that the ESRB are monitoring and guiding the shape of the game before they can be presented with finalised data.
Are we only one step away from the ESRB being listed as a co-developer for the level of input it has had on the creative process which the game has gone through? Let us know what you think by posting in the forums or comment below.
Related articles on bit-tech.net
Comments (16)Stats: 0.154 seconds
H.B.
imagine if res evil 4 or 5 had to cut down its content, im sure there would go down as some of the worst games in history!
That's my point.....Its should be balanced
They'd get slaughtered if they hid it somehow and it'd end up banned and boycotted.
What they SHOULD do is release a normal one and then, months later, release a 'Directors Cut' with an AO rating for the PC.
I don't see why America (and the world generally) is so open with things like films and music, but with games it's a completely different matter. So it's interactive? So what? Any normal person can easily tell the difference, and an basket case that "trains" on a game will go out and murder someone eventually anyway.
If Condemned 2 is the same as the original, violence wise and the way it's depicted then i see no problem with it getting released. However if it turned into some sort of sick feast like Manhunt 2 then i won't be buying it anyway.
And in light of that, the ESRB needs to be recast to reflect reality.
In the US Adult anything comes with the connotations that it's pornographic therefor a lot of stores won't stock them because of the tittle implies getting down and dirty hardcore style. The ERSB use this to their advantage to financially extort companies in to complying with their version of acceptable in essence making it possible for them to censor games without calling it censorship. Make no mistake it should be considered and abomination of free speech and a major failure of our gaming rating system.
It's the reason I have to buy the international version of The Witcher; They are cutting material out of the US version to make it comply with the ERSB's standards of acceptable material.
No way dude. Condemned is one of my all time favorite games for the 360 and I'd be upset if they stripped down the 360 version and released an AO version for the PC. I haven't been able to recommend Condemned enough since the first time I played thorugh the demo. It only took one play thorugh the demo to get me to go directly to the store and buy the game... and I'm not an impulsive buyer!
But no one looks at ratings anyhow, and people know now that AO doesn't necessarily mean there's gonna be porn in there. Did shops stop selling Oblivion or GTA: SA, I'm pretty sure both of them received AO ratings eventually.
I agree with everyone else that a privately run board can extort developers like this, hell it's not even required by law for a game to be rated by ERSB, it's just shops have generally decided games need to have a sticker on saying it's age rating to be sold in their shops.