Mature Themes?

[pseudonymous]

Obviously, there will be no **** and fart jokes, but if the mature themes being explored are silly romances that reduce the sexual partner to a nude playing card (ala The Witcher) or incredibly silly soft-core cut scenes (ala every recent BioWare game and The Witcher 2), why should I open my wallet?

 

Could someone please explain what is meant by "exploring mature themes" in the game?

[Delterius]

You can't think of anything else that qualifies as Mature?

[oldmanpaco]

How about tasteful rape?

 

 

Anyway 'Mature' is a buzzword that needs to die.

[ComradeGoby]

Maybe you should play Planescape:Torment or Mask of the Betrayer or KOTOR 2 to get an idea of what they mean.

 

Although rape should be included in games like this. It fits the medieval setting of most of these games and if you want to play a really reprehensible character why not allow it?

 

Fallout had child killing and slavery

Edited September 15, 2012 by ComradeGoby

[Delterius]

How about tasteful rape?

 

 

That catchphrase matches your glorious avatar.

[oldmanpaco]

How about tasteful rape?

 

 

That catchphrase matches your glorious avatar.

 

You know my avatar is kid of messed up here. It's irritating.

[Lohi]

Mature themes are anything beyond "kill things and take their stuff and then go party". It could be politics. It could be deep discussions about whether orc babies are inately evil and should be killed or not. It could be trying to figure out what can change the nature of a man. Themes that aren't immature in other words.

[Giantevilhead]

I'm guessing the game will explore subjects like religion vs. spirituality, justice/redemption vs. punishment/revenge, idealism vs. pragmatism, nature vs. nurture, etc., plus various combinations of those ideas.

[Tychoxi]

how about mature themes like religion (faith vs reason, god/revealed morality vs. human-created morality, dogma vs. science), ecology (progress vs. stagnation, quality of life, health vs. smog, tree philes vs. normal people, overpopulation, expansion beyond that which can be susteinable), politics (freedom, repression, slavery, is it really okay to die for you ideas? what about to kill? submission to dogma, submission to the god-emperor? deceit, intrigue, morals, ideals, liberties, human rights, are you the resistance or a guerrilla?, moral absolutism vs pragmatism vs lawful-goodness, exploring democracy, technocracy, monarchy, anarchism etc), stuff like survivor's guilt, PTSDs, doing not what you want but what you managed/had to, redemption, emancipation, misogyny, racism, drug-abuse, xenophobia, ignorance, elitism or like those things which can change the nature of a man?

Edited September 15, 2012 by Tychoxi

[Delterius]

You know my avatar is kid of messed up here. It's irritating.

 

So I can see, the poor thing looks even more negative than usual, which is good since the Codex is quality entertainment. If you ignore much of it, anyway.

change the nature of a man?

 

That should be the Mature Themes Catchphrase.

[Tale]

By my understanding a mature theme is a theme that acknowledges the complexity of situations and may potentially challenge ideas of the audience. If art and theme are a form of communication, then the mature theme is the speech intended to make people think and become informed, as opposed to the speech designed to only pander by reiterating shallow commentary the audience will agree with out of hand.

[Arquebusier]

I'm guessing the game will explore subjects like religion vs. spirituality, justice/redemption vs. punishment/revenge, idealism vs. pragmatism, nature vs. nurture, etc., plus various combinations of those ideas.

 

A nice concept, and to add on that, I think that Dragon Age II's overall take on such issues would be a good place to start- the game shouldn't have a set ideology that it's preaching (i.e. spirituality=good, religion=bad), but it will be up to the player to find his/her way through morally grey areas to eventually take a stand that s/he agrees with. DA2 did an overall good job of not portraying either side of the main conflict as the overt bad guys, even though the plot continuum near the end absolutely fell apart. One way not to do it would be like in Baldur's Gate II, such as when the player is faced with the choice between Bodhi and the Shadow Thieves, the game made it pretty clear on who the villain was.

Edited September 15, 2012 by Arquebusier

[Doublehex]

Obviously, there will be no **** and fart jokes, but if the mature themes being explored are silly romances that reduce the sexual partner to a nude playing card (ala The Witcher) or incredibly silly soft-core cut scenes (ala every recent BioWare game and The Witcher 2), why should I open my wallet?

 

Could someone please explain what is meant by "exploring mature themes" in the game?

 

You do realize there was a great deal more to the Witcher games than the sexualized aspects you just mentioned, right? If they followed in the Witcher's footsteps they would be on the right track in my book.

[novander]

Whatever you may think of BioWare's romances, I'd put forward the whole genophage debate in the Mass Effect games as an example of mature gameplay I'd like to see more of. There was no moral absolute; it was up to the player to decide whether the genophage was rightfully used and whether it should be cured. If BioWare hadn't messed up the very end of the trilogy these would have been galaxy-changing decisions for the player to make with lots of complex ethical issues to consider.

 

It's pretty confusing that the word 'mature' is used to describe both a sophisticated understanding of complex issues and pictures of naked women. Let's hope Eternity is more focused on the former.

[generic.hybridity]

Yeah. It's probably got less to do with sex and more to do with philosophy. The good thing about a fantasy world is you can construct hypothetical situations and physical laws in such a way as to create analogous situations to real world problems or even metaphysical conundrum.

[rf5111918]

Whatever you may think of BioWare's romances, I'd put forward the whole genophage debate in the Mass Effect games as an example of mature gameplay I'd like to see more of. There was no moral absolute; it was up to the player to decide whether the genophage was rightfully used and whether it should be cured. If BioWare hadn't messed up the very end of the trilogy these would have been galaxy-changing decisions for the player to make with lots of complex ethical issues to consider.

 

It's pretty confusing that the word 'mature' is used to describe both a sophisticated understanding of complex issues and pictures of naked women. Let's hope Eternity is more focused on the former.

 

 

The genophage debate in Mass Effect was excellent. I thought the talk you had with Mordin was fantastic writing.

On the other hand of the spectrum, you had the writing in Dragon Age 2, which looked like it had been written by a college English major. Isabela's dialogue was particularly awful. Isabela was giving me her entire college thesis on postmodern feminist thought while I am running around in a medieval world fighting 10-foot tall giants with horns. Really???

The writing there actually made me enjoy the game a lot less because the companions' stories basically seemed to take precedence over your own. I felt like I was manipulated by Anders, and I didn't really have a choice in the end on what happened.

The same deal with Merrill, you couldn't really alter the ending in any way and I ended up feeling like an errand girl/boy for my companions.

The Dragon Age 2 companion stories, I think, got so large, that I think the main character's story got completely lost in the mix. Hawke's story ended up being completely forgettable.

I think the way Baldur's Gate 2 and Arcanum approached the companion stories was the right way to go about it.

Edited September 15, 2012 by rf5111918

[novander]

The genophage debate in Mass Effect was excellent. I thought the talk you had with Mordin was fantastic writing.

On the other hand of the spectrum, you had the writing in Dragon Age 2, which looked like it had been written by a college English major. The writing there actually made me enjoy the game a lot less because the companions' stories basically seemed to take precedence over your own. I felt like I was manipulated by Anders, and I didn't really have a choice in the end on what happened. The Dragon Age 2 companion stories, I think, got so large, that I think the main character's story got completely lost in the mix. Hawke's story ended up being completely forgettable.

I think the way Baldur's Gate 2 and Arcanum approached the companion stories was the right way to go about it.

I never finished DA2 (lost my save files, couldn't be bothered going through that same tileset another fifty times, will try again before DA3 comes out) so I don't know about later in the game, but early on I really enjoyed that the companions were their own people, that they all had their own houses in the city when they weren't following you around, that they all felt like fleshed out important people in their own right. My problem with the writing in DA2 was that it was all so much smaller than DA:O. To start with at least, you weren't playing a great hero and you didn't have much agency in the world. For these mature themes to feel like they matter, there has to feel like your actions have consequences.

 

We know that beings in Eternity have souls - actual, factual, magic-causing souls - so I'd assume they've put a lot of thought into the metaphysics of their world. I expect to see a lot of the "mature themes" involving this. I don't want another Planescape: Torment (Okay, yes, that was a lie) because we've already got PS:T and it still holds up, but the nature of souls, the value of a soul, I think that sort of thing will come up a lot. In fact, thinking about it, the whole "One good life. An extraordinary life. What levy must be paid for such a thing? If the gods won't answer it's for us to decide." quote is asking just that question.

[Monte Carlo]

Fighting in tunnels is quite mature. And if you like 'dark' fantasy then tunnels are great too, cuz there's very little light down there.

[Nonek]

The usual Obsidian quality of maturity is fine, human flawed characters, conflicting moral viewpoints and no real good or bad just choices and their consequences. Honestly don't think that the quite childish and illogical style of Dragon Age 2 would fit into an Obsidian crafted game, they're fun in a mindless accessible manner but I expect a lot more depth from Obsidian, substance over style.

 

Do apologise if I seem to be hating on Bioware, I know their games have a lot fans and i'm one of them, but Obsidian to me are markedly different in what they produce.

[HoonDing]

Fighting in tunnels is quite mature. And if you like 'dark' fantasy then tunnels are great too, cuz there's very little light down there.

One of these days, friend, you and your intrepid party are going to find yourselves inside a gelatinous cube.

[Audiocide]

Maybe you should play Planescape:Torment or Mask of the Betrayer or KOTOR 2 to get an idea of what they mean.

 

Although rape should be included in games like this. It fits the medieval setting of most of these games and if you want to play a really reprehensible character why not allow it?

 

Fallout had child killing and slavery

 

While I was just a kid when the first Fallout came out, and I did bursts with my SMG on unsuspecting kids in Arroyo with gleeful abandon, I think that sort of thing doesn't fly in games anymore. No matter what rating.

 

I know for a fact that the European version of Fallout 2 (with surprisingly good translations), didn't include children. So that you could not burst on them. You actually couldn't complete a quest, because the NPC was removed from the map.

 

Anything involving children coming to harm will result in an automatic ban in many countries.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Mature themes, to us, means exploring concepts in a frank manner from many angles through the story and the characters in it. Dead Money explored obsession. Honest Hearts explored religion. Even when dealing with alien (or elven[?!?!]) cultures and magic/technology, themes should relate back to what players would understand as part of the human condition. E.g. a film like District 9 is good at triggering sensitivities to (real world) racism and dehumanization in the audience even though the aliens are fictional.

[Stiler]

I thought the Witcher 2 handled the whole sex/nudity fine, it didn't feel like Bioware's style of "PG-13 can't show anything" cheap romance. It fit the character of Geralt and the game, didn't come off as tasteless or unfitting (like the whole card aspect did in The Witcher 1).

 

 

I'm hoping that mature relates not just to being able to show nudity (where it makes sense/is present, in both romance options but also in the game world-art, statues/paintings you might come across, heck look at a lot of greek art and many famous sculptures, they contain nudity) but also to the types of dialogue and encounters you come across in the game. Mature themes in terms of such things can add to the game.

[Audiocide]

Honest Hearts explored religion.

 

Finding out how the Father character came to be deified by reading his journals in Honest Hearts was the most beautiful thing in New Vegas. Kudos to whoever wrote that at Obsidian.

[patboy12]

Mature themes, to us, means exploring concepts in a frank manner from many angles through the story and the characters in it. Dead Money explored obsession. Honest Hearts explored religion. Even when dealing with alien (or elven[?!?!]) cultures and magic/technology, themes should relate back to what players would understand as part of the human condition. E.g. a film like District 9 is good at triggering sensitivities to (real world) racism and dehumanization in the audience even though the aliens are fictional.

 

 

This is exactly what I wanted to hear... My excitement level is about to bust. I'm glad that you are taking a true mature direction