The sequel to The Last Of Us will be the first Naughty Dog game to earn its 18-rating for anything other than violence and swearing.
Like most things to do with Sony at the moment, we don’t really know much about The Last of Us Part 2 yet – beyond the fact that it’s out on 29 May.
It was announced back in 2016 and yet relatively little has been seen of it in all these years, although it immediately made headlines for its first trailer being unusually violent.
Whether Naughty Dog has adjusted their approach since that outcry is unclear, but according to the game’s age rating information in the US it will also feature nudity and sexual content.
What the famously puritanical ESRB counts as a nudity and sexual content is difficult to say, but if there’s one thing the trailers have made clear it’s that Ellie has a new girlfriend.
The ESRB rating is Mature/17+, the same as for the first game and roughly equivalent to an 18 in the UK.
As noticed by DualShockers, The Last Of Us Part 2 is specifically described as having ‘Sexual Content’ as opposed to the tamer ‘Sexual Themes’ of the first game. The ESRB rating on the official website also reveals the sequel contains Nudity, Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, and Use of Drugs.
Sexual Themes are classified as mere ‘references to sex or sexuality’ whereas Sexual Content means ‘non-explicit depictions of sexual behaviour, possibly including partial nudity’.
There’s no chance that The Last Of Us Part 2 will have anything explicit as that would require an Adults Only rating, which almost no game gets as most American retailers refuse to stock anything with that rating – for fear of a backlash from prudish parents.
An Adult Only rating is what Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was threatened with back during the Hot Coffee controversy and is why games in general have no real sexual content, as everything is calibrated to America’s standards.
The good news from all this is that if The Last Of Us Part 2’s already been rated than that hopefully means it won’t be delayed again, although it remains to be seen if rumours of it also being released on PC are true.
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