Elliott C. Back: Technology FTW!

Oblivion Nude: Elder Scrolls goes Mature (M)

Posted in Computers & Technology, Cracking, Games, Hacking, Sex by Elliott Back 2 days, 19 hours ago.

Please note that this post contains pictures of trivial female upper body nudity

You remember the GTA sex scandal where a mini-game could be unlocked that simulated sex between the main character and nude females in the game. For that, Hillary Clinton got involved, and the game was yanked to put an M rating back on the box. Now, according to Joystiq, it seems like Oblivion is next in line for the M stamp because Bethesda included a naked upper-body texture on all its female characters:

In the process of trying to create a nude skin for Oblivion, I found Bethesda had already done all the work for me. They just covered it up with underwear afterwards. Please note, this is a realistic nudity mod, not a pornographic one. The file included removes the bra welded to the skin of females of all races, showing things as most people know they are in the real world after removing upper body clothing. It will not show every female in the game as topless. I do this because I hate government/society/whatever forcing companies to “protect our innocent population from seeing those evil dirty things 50% of them posess personally anyways” not because I’m trying to turn it into a porn game.

Fileplanet already has a list of other naked mods for Oblivion in what the media would call the latest “video game sex scandal.” In actuality, the ESRB is overreacting to the artistic development of character models, where people are realistically built up naked, then layered with clothes. Here’s a sample screenshot of the base texture which has so many people upset, because it’s a realistic depiction of the female body:

oblivion-nude-texture.jpg
Bethesda Softworks \ Oblivion \ Data \ textures \ characters \ orc \ female

Of course, in the game, this texture *could* with a patch be used to unlock naked upper-body characters. However, they look completely non-sexual and rather silly, as the following photo shows:

oblivion-nude-screenshot.jpg

Here’s what the ESRB says about the Oblivion nude mod:

The pertinent content causing the change in the ESRB rating involves more detailed depictions of blood and gore than were considered in the original rating of the game (the game already carried a Blood and Gore content descriptor), as well as the presence in the PC version of the game of a locked-out art file that, if accessed by using an apparently unauthorized third party tool, allows the user to play the game with topless versions of female characters. The locked-out topless skin was found by ESRB to exist in a fully rendered form on the game disc, but is not accessible in the Xbox 360™ version of the game.

Why should the game carry a nudity descriptor when this content is not part of any part of the playable game? There’s a difference between pornography and nudity, and unlike Grand Theft Auto’s intense sexuality, Oblivion’s nude models are used in the artistic process of creating the game.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 4th, 2006 at 1:27 pm and is tagged with bethesda softworks oblivion, video game sex, base texture, realistic depiction, sex scandal, character models, hillary clinton, pertinent content, fileplanet, simulated sex, nude females, dirty things, artistic development, mini game, porn game, esrb, elder scrolls, actuality, nudity, screenshot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

Viewing 61 Comments

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    It does look silly, and it's not a big deal to me.... how much titillation can you get from that mod.

    It has nothing to do with Bethesda! I can't believe they're punishing them for what modders do!

    Someone should mod a crappy Disney-game (ie, Ice Age 2) to include nudity, forcing them to slap a 'MA" rating on it...
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    now this is really silly.
    i don't know the original rating, but i guess it's been Teen or something that should not allow little kids play it. and point a teen who hasn't seen a nude woman upperbody...
    i guess the esrb guys are channeling their childhood's painful feelings and their unsuccessfullness in sexual life on innocent games and gamers...
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    The Truth is Very simple, Mass Nazi Like Censorship is the new band-wagon. Its where alot of Mainly Liberal democrates are trying to make a name for themselves. Why do we let the goverment censor us!? I do not want to have to buy all my games from Europe just so I can enjoy the ARTISTIC side of life. Enough with this Puritan utopia crap!

    Hilary, Liberman and the others can Stuff it! I want to see TALENT, if that means seeing an orcs green wang.. whoopdie do. Ive seen alot of nudity mods for various games, and oblivion is by far the LEST sexual. We ban books because of "sugjestive" words, but but we smoke our cigarettes and kill people without a second glance... one word describes the current MOB mentality... Hypocrite
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    Next time, for their next installation, Bethesda should have an official fully rendered topless playable character for gamers and in the process should get an M rating from ESRB, purposefully, hiding nothing.

    That way everybody will be happy.

    PS.
    M ratings don't hurt developers like Bethesda (they shoulda asked for it in the very first place) and kids can always wait to grow up!
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    confucious say: one who looks underneath shirt, will find nipples. Its a fact of life.
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    re-rated because this?!?!?!

    dam.. stupid people and ridiculous censors!

    the 4 ever utopia about the perfect and moral country...
    aa! ridiculous, please, show more porn, because americans
    lost the sense of nude and hard fucking...

    stupid laws. a big dick for politics.
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    I think it is stupid for them to change the game rating for what players do to alter the game. If they are going to change the rating of "Oblivion" because of this, then they need to change the rating of "The Sims" and "Sims 2" because of the censor removal patches you can download for them. There are many other games on the market that players have modified the characters to make them nude. In "Morrowind" there was a mod that would make the NPC's not only nude, but anatomically correct. The company that creates the game is not responsible for player made modifications and therefor should not be punished for the acts of players. If parents are offended by what is in player made mods then they need to get off their lazy *** and look at what their precious little child is downloading off the internet.
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    This is crazy. Anybody who played the earlier Elder Scrolls games (pre Morrowind) can tell you all about the fact that the underwear that now adorns the characters when the clothing is taken off is a new thing. The older games had full nudity for both male and female characters when the clothing was removed. What's the ESRB going to do now go back and put a M rating on all of the pre ESRB games. These nazi game hunts are completely stupid. If these people would focus their attention on the real issues instead of trying to make the lives of gamers and game developers harder the US may actualy end up a better place to live.
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    Wow do i love being in Australia. We get things like oblivion a bit later than you guys, but there is no question of censorship ever in video games, people just dont give a shit. Same with the drinking laws, u guys have to wait till your'e 21 but over here the "Legal" age is 18 and the unofficial age is whenever you discover the effects of alcohol... anyway, i'm off to go buy some more games ur politicians have all but banned... have fun in the land of the prudes
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    IDIOTS! (ESRB)
    If i could i would make mod that include nudity and sex for child games to show them how easily a game gets what they think of as adult. Its a bit sick that games where you can slice,BBQ and send your enemies into nothingnes and all other imangible things gets a teen rating (min age 13) (my country).
    But a game where skin is shown gets a mature rating (min age 18) even if its the work of an outsider (modder) ITS SICK!
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    *wink* *wink* You know, I'm naked under all these clothes...
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    OMFG Dude whoever called Liberals and Democrats bookburners needs to take a history course on Conservatism and THE RIGHT WING.....You are a moron! With that said......TITS BOOBS YABOOS KNOCKERS CONES its all good...Half the population in this world has them......BIG DEAL! I'm thinking overused marketing ploy to make it so easy to unlock but hey the MADONNA controversy= SALES=$$$ has worked for alot of people and companies nowdays....Now...I got to put what file where to see those JUMBLEES? 8P
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    While I definitely agree with the premise of this article, I thought I'd point out that the 'Hot Coffee' mod turned GTA from being an already M-rated game to one which was rated 'Adults Only' (AO), NOT the same as with Oblivion, which went from 'Teen' to 'Mature'. The big difference here is that the AO rating was a major blow to sales for GTA, because so many game stores don't stock AO games. Changing the rating to M for Oblivion will have no real effect on sales, imo.

    Frankly, I think in both cases there's no real reason to change the ratings if an internet mod is necessary to access the 'inappropriate' content. But even more than in the case with hot coffee, there seems to be nothing wrong with what Oblivion did. Basically they made all their game models anatomically correct, so they look more real, rather than like dolls--then covered them up with clothing. Nowhere is there the INTENT to have people remove that clothing, even though everyone probably knew it would happen. Point is, no reason to hold Bethesda responsible for being meticulous in their representation of their players' avatars.
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    Will not hurt Oblivion sales??? My friend went to Wal-Mart around the time this was happening and they didn't even stock it anymore. Wal-Mart must be a too family friendly store to carry a M rated game. Yet they carry movies like Hostle.
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    It's amazing how times change, we use to tell the governmemt what to do, now they tell us what to do. A bit ironic huh? As for Wal-Mart they just pulled Oblivion off the sheves to place little "M" stickers on them. Just picked me up a copy last night. :P
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    Ive had a strong belief that by 2020 the government will control what we say and do and think what we watch what we hear what we read and even what we play. Its like farenheit 451 where books are banned. Sooner or later the hipocrites and all the others will win and we will lose our games then our movies our music and soon our freedom. I say introduce this kind of thing to a kid early, what is going to happen. if you dont make it out to be bad the kid wont think bad of it and a kid wont get trauma cause they saw some breasts in a game or in a popup or in a movie. A kid will grow up and eventually see this kind of thing but if you make bad of it then the kid will fear it and if all kids start to fear it then the gene pool becomes stagnant and we start to die.

    If a game is banned here whats to stop me from ordering it from the developers them selves or an out of country retailer or on Ebay. now a lot of games can be boght over the internet and just downloaded Steam runs its own store for its games and doesnt care what gets put up there so long as they are told about it. RWS (running with scissors) has gotten so much flak over its games and now they really cant be bought where i live from a retailer so i bought it on Ebay and now you can download it from other sites.

    I could probably sneak into ESRB and see swazticas and hear the different ESRB members saying "SEIG HEIL!" To ban something or change a rating on something because of what was done by an outside community is just stuiped if you dont want to see that then dont download it. the only way for it to be accessed is if you willingly clicked the download button and installed it. SO SHUT UP! SIT DOWN! AND STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THIS. if a person wants nudity in their games thats their choice if they dont then that their choice too. you know what you did so dont complain its your fault. they just wanted accuracy and not flat-chested women. Im tired of hearing about this and all the others. dont try to make someone else think like you or be you.
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    Anyone ever hear of 'A Puzzle of Flesh', now there is a game if you want to talk about nudity. To fuss over some CG nudity is lame. Go to an art musium and you will see some there does that mean you have to be atleast 18 to enter? It's not the case because it is not sexual. It's just artistic nudity. Now does the game show sexual content with this mod? No. It's just CG artistic nudity.
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    This is just pathetic, Oblivion deserves all the respect the world can give it!!!
    Then one fine day a little company named ESBR screwed up our perfect world.
    Won't you let me LIVE!?!
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    Yeah this has to be about the lamest thing I have ever seen... ESRB WTF in gods name were you thinking? If your reading this i hope all you FAGS that rated this game just go jump off a bridge and die... go fall into a knife or somethin man... like you didnt see it happen in so many other games... the TORTURE and GORE would have been a good enough excuse but you had to pull titties into this... DIGITAL TITTIES... LMAO ESRB... you are the lamest people that could ever rate video games...
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    wow. fuck all those sensorship monkeys. Okay, so the game is rated teen. And there is a way that you can make it so that you can see some rendered "boobs" on the female character. Lets be serious here. How many teens already look at pornography? A lot. Now, if they really wanna crank one out, which would be more logical? Downloading some porn vids of limewire or going out to buy an uber expensive computer game and mod a female character's boobs off? For one, all the female characters in oblivion have faces that resemble dudes, and second, the only reason that anyone would mod off the clothes on a character anyways is for kicks! This is bullshit.

    Murder the Government!
    Oi Oi Oi!
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    Ah, I see, and here I thought the 'freedom of speech' act was to let people have a mind of their own, but in your cuntry it seems to be what you're free not to do... You're all well within your rights to be up in arms about this crap, but don't forget: If you sit back and let it happen, it will get worse. If you feel you have the right frame of mind and everyone else's opinions too, then run as an independant and fix this mess :) It's the way to make things better, and ANYONE can do it, so why wait for someone else to do it for you? You could be waiting forever. Why are people so ashamed of what they looklike anyway? I'll leave that to you to decypher.
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    ya ESRB just so u know sex is already happening at the teen age and even back at 7th grade i remember people sharing sites of where they could watch some hard core fucking so whats some simple tits showing in a game where u have to choose to download it?!? the game developers didnt purposely make tits show on the game, instead some moder spent his happy time to make it visible!! atleast half of america is based on sex and just a simple statistic for ya moe than 75% of internet content either is or contains porn so ESRB what r u goin to do about people's free will?!? u gonna out a rating on that too?!?!?