Battlefield 3’s ESRB listing has detailed some of the sections of the game that are violent and/or profane enough to warrant the ‘Mature’ rating of the game, and one such section has the player shooting at police officers in order to complete a mission, according to the listing.
The listing reads: “The frequent combat is highlighted by realistic gunfire and large explosions; characters sometimes scream and emit large splashes of blood when shot. Players can also engage in hand-to-hand combat: repeatedly punching enemies in the face; stabbing soldiers to death with knives.
“In one sequence, a restrained character’s throat is slit (off-screen); in another, players shoot police officers to complete a mission objective. The words ‘f***’ and ‘s***’ can be heard frequently in the dialogue.”
Will Battlefield join Modern Warfare 2, Medal of Honor and several other recent shooters in the ‘controversial FPSs’ gang? This certainly goes against what DICE said some time ago about Battlefield 3.
“If you put the player in front of a choice where they can do good things or bad things, they will do bad things, go dark side – because people think it’s cool to be naughty, they won’t be caught,” DICE executive producer Partick Bach said some weeks back. “In a game where it’s more authentic, when you have a gun in your hand and a child in front of you what would happen? Well the player would probably shoot that child. We would be the ones to be blamed. We have to build our experiences so we don’t put the player in experiences where they can do bad things.”
Tread carefully, DICE. Tread very carefully.