The ESRB published today the rating for the upcoming MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online, that will be released on April 4th for PC and Mac and in June for PS4 and Xbox One.

The official blurb describes plenty violence and some debauchery:

This is a multiplayer online role-playing game in which players assume the role of a warrior in the fantastical world of Nirn. As players explore open-world environments, they can perform various quests and complete tasks. Characters use swords, arrows, axes, and magic attacks (e.g., lightning, fire attacks) to kill human-like and fantastical enemies (e.g., orcs, demons, giant insects). Players engage in melee-style combat, hacking and slashing at various enemies; battles are highlighted by cries of pain, impact sounds, and blood splashes. Some sequences depict large amounts of blood streaming up-close as vampires attack/feed on characters. In some quests players have the ability to mount creatures' severed heads onto pikes; some environments depict corpse piles or skeletons hanging from torture devices. Text descriptions or dialogue sometimes contain references to sexual material and/or innuendo (e.g., “She...raped the men as cruelly as Bal had ravished her”; “In his mind, she would be the sheath to every knight's blade”; “No sweetmeat for you”; But it is huge! It could take me all night!”). During the course of the game, alcohol (i.e., wine, mead, ale) can be purchased and consumed by the central character; one sequence prompts players to engage in a drinking contest, resulting in the central character's blurred vision/slurred speech.

The content descriptors give a more synthetic summary: Blood and Gore, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence

I'm quite sure I'm not the only one that chuckled at the metaphors in some of the lines described above, but that's pretty much par for the course for The Elder Scrolls games.

In the meanwhile a new beta weekend is scheduled to begin on Friday, while the game seems to have polarized most testers between very positive and very negative opinions for the moment. Personally, I feel that it still needs quite some work, but it shows promise. We'll have to see how much polish and "soul" Zenimax will be able to pump into it before release.