Jack Thompson Weighs in on Oblivion

Robotron23 writes "Jack Thompson has commenced his attack on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by seeking appearances on several talk shows. A press release announcing his availability speaks of Take Two not having 'learned its lesson' over the Hot Coffee scandal, before continuing to detail the issues surrounding Oblivion's re-rating, in particular regarding nudity - concluding that the game content will spawn 'an even worse disaster' than occurred during Hot Coffee."

Clarification:

[Avillia]

The skin was a nude skin used to render clothing. It was technical nudity. It was unlocked via a third party modification. There was no intended nudity or a fellatio minigame, just a skinning component detached and refactored. Not nearly as severe, but still hot-coffee-esque.

Re:Overrated

[Enderandrew]

Actually it is a fair parallel to Hot Coffee. The content shipped on the disc, but the content isn't a sex scene. The content is a nude-colored texture for female characters. However, this horribly offensive nude "patch" doesn't even have nipples. The odd thing is that you can't access it on the 360, but the 360 version is being rerated and ripped off the shelves. So no nipple, and not even in the 360, but the 360 is being rated for having nudity. Thank God for the ESRB to protect me!

Re:Overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, this is where you're wrong. It's NOT a nude colored texture for female characters. What the mod does is take the MALE base texture (which is not fully nude) and puts it on the female body mesh. In effect, the content does not exist in the game at all, yet the game is being pulled and re-rated.

Re:Overrated

[Enderandrew]

I read both ESRB statements. The first one said it was due solely to violence, and not the nudity. Except Bethesda came back with a 60-page report demonstrating that they clearly explained to the ESRB EXACTLY how violent the game would be.

The ESRB's response to that was nudity was the real issue. So which is it?

Re:Well there's a surprise.

[krist0]

SPOILER :

Towards the end of the Dark Brotherhood line, some guy (not saying who) is hung upside down from a ceiling, skinned.

Bit gruesome. Also in the oblivion plane there is alot of messed up corpses, blood splatters on walls/floors...

Doesn't bother me but maybe some parents would not like their 13 year old seeing it.

I think it should have been M and be done with it. I am sure it would have sold exactly the same.

It was applying a MALE skin to the FEMALE model

[Ahnteis]

There are topless males in the game. By applying the MALE texture to the FEMALE model, you get boobies. Sort of.

Could we send this to ALL talk shows

[AzraelKans]

For those who dont know, all the Mod did is:

It changes the male bare chest texture for the female bare chest (which has a bra)

Theres no "hot coffee" no hidden sex scenes, games, or anything, just some kid who realized in our culture is ok to show male breasts not female breasts you can do this "MOD" in ANY game.

Case closed.

Is there a way to send this info to ALL the talk shows this moron is presenting hilself on? (seriously)

p.s. IMO Oblivion does desserve an M rating theres quite a bit of blood, realistic violence, you can create an "evil" character, and theres some innuendo here and there, worst of all Oblivion (the land) does look a lot like hell. I have no idea why the ESRB didnt rated it "M" in the first place. My guess is they didnt played it at all. ( in which case is the ESRB the one who should be sued)

Re:Overrated

[Surt]

Actually, most of the sources I've read agree that the nude content was shipped with the game, and unlocked pretty much the same as hot coffee. Here's a couple:

http://www.igniq.com/2006/04/oblivion-nude-mod-alr eady-available.html [igniq.com]
http://www.oblivionsource.com/?page=modforge&op=vi ewproject&project_id=191 [oblivionsource.com]
http://grbeta.bolt.com/download/pc/the_elder_scrol ls_oblivion_4_nude_patch [bolt.com]

Do you have a source that says it did not ship with the game?

How about this, then?

[Moraelin]

First of all, yes, there is blood in Oblivion and occasionally blood skidmarks as the corpse is thrown back by the Havok engine.

But also try stuff like this:

- decayed corpses in cages, corpses hanged over a flame, corpses hanged from ropes (sometimes with a kicked chair underneath, meaning the bugger was alive when he got hanged), a burning corpse looking like he tried crawling out of a lava pool right in the very first oblivion gate. Skeletons in spiked cages. I'm told there's even one with a tiny skeleton inside it, presumably a pregnant woman was left to die in that cage. People or corpses in cages whose bottom you can open and let them fall on some spikes below. Etc.

- the end of the Dark Brotherhood quest arc was already mentioned, so lemme detail a bit more: they hanged the bugger upside down and gutted him like sardine. Alive. Literally. The fresh corpse is basically hollowed. They'll even talk about it.

- towards the end of the Figher's Guild quest arc you get to experience getting drugged out of your mind, and in that hallucinating state going and slaughtering a whole village of innocents, including going in each and every single house and slaughtering every single villager.

- heck, if blood was bad, you can also set people on fire and watch them running around burning. (Try enchanting your bow for maximum fire damage, for example, watch people bursting in bright flames every time they get hit by an arrow. Or make a potion of fire damage and "poison" your arrow with it, same effect.)

- torturing people. Spoiler warning, btw. In one quest along the main line you get to explore a madman's "paradise". In fact, it's closer to our idea of "hell", and one section has people in cages in or over lava. And you can play with the levers to lower them into the lava, or raise them out of it. In the previous section you get to watch people be hunted by demons for sport, and you get one quest to free an even nastier demon and sic it on them.

That's just off the top of my head. Basically I'd say it's a _very_ gruesome game at times, not a super happy fun escapade through flower-filled meadows where deer bounce around.

So _if_ violence is considered a reason to keep kids from playing a game, then, yes, I fail to see why this game wasn't M to start with.

Re:Overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Topless *male* textures were included with the game, which were then overlayed onto a female model to create a female "topless" model.

Is it indecent for a male to go without a shirt? And should it be a problem for nudity to be included in a game? You would see worse on Page 3 [page3.com] of a newspaper here.

Re:Overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

Your 'sources' would be wrong. The 'hot coffee' incident was a fully scripted event in GTA. The nudity in this was not; it requires hacking the model files to remove/disable armor and clothing parts.

Try thinking for yourself sometimes.

Re:Overrated

[Aladrin]

Sorry, no, it was a female mesh with a female texture. I don't have the data here at work, but it was like 'meshes/character/femalebody.nif' and 'textures/imperial/_male/femalebody.dds' (Yes, the second path says _male, but the actual file says female.) Those are not the exact file names, but they aren't far off and both DID say female. That's hardly an accident.

The mesh was not actually used anywhere in the game.

I Googled and found the instructions to mod it yourself, without a download. I'm too lazy to change the above text.

From http://rome.ro/2006/05/oblivion-re-rated-bad-news. html [rome.ro]:

• Open 'Oblivion - Meshes.bsa'
• Extract 'femaleupperbodynude.nif' to \data\meshes\characters\_male\
• Rename the extracted file to 'femaleupperbody.nif'
• Run the game

Re:I think...

[pidge-nz]

Nice Monty Python reference.

But you forget the "pppphhhhffffttt! Can you edit that out? Yes? Thanks"

Re:Overrated

[canajin56]

Incorrect. The mod replaces a file named "femaleupperbody.nif", with a file that was also included, named "femaleupperbodynude.nif". You cannot try to argue that "femaleupperbodynude.nif" is their texture set for their male characters. It clearly is for females, and clearly differs from the default file in that this one is NUDE. And there is no horrible wrapping resulting in things being in the wrong places, they match up perfectly because they are the female textures INTENDED for this purpose.

Mod Parent UP, Grandparent DOWN

[Deathbane27]

The model meshes\characters\_male\femaleupperbodynude.nif refers to the texture textures\characters\imperial\female\UpperBodyFemal e.dds, which has distinctly female breasts with fully bump-mapped nipples.

I'd love to know how this whole "male texture overlayed on the female mesh" business got started, because it's complete rubbish. Yes, you COULD do that, but that's not what's going on.

Re:Overrated

[Criterion]

Sorry no, you are wrong. It's NOT a male texture.. well, unless you can call this...

http://elliottback.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2006/ 05/oblivion-nude-texture.jpg [elliottback.com]

anything like male.

Re:And what lesson should they learn for Hot Coffe

[SatanicPuppy]

Bethesda's views on user mods are just the opposite...They want an active mod community, and they opened up the API hooks to help the mod community make better mods.

Almost all good RPGs are doing this these days, because it drives interest and gets new content for free. Look at Neverwinter Nights...The mod community there is huge, and that game is still popular well past the point where a lot of similar games stalled.

Sure, every now and then you're going to get boobies. It's a hard life. It should be common sense that mods can add to the game and change the rating. Mind I think the game was rated too low, but I think that based on the out-of-the-box content, not the mods.

Re:Overrated

[Criterion]

Nope, not a male texture, topless *female* textures are *also* included in the game...

See for yourself.

http://elliottback.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2006/ 05/oblivion-nude-texture.jpg [elliottback.com]