Starfield gets a surprising 18+ rating in Australia

Even though Bethesda's epic RPGs often deal with mature themes, they are rarely very explicit. This made it possible for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 4 to receive 15+ ratings in Australia to make them available for a wider audience.

It does however seem like the upcoming Starfield will be a somewhat different story. The game, which will be Bethesda Game Studios' first original franchise in over 25 years, recently got a firm release date after the delay last year and premieres in September. This means we're roughly six months away from the release, and now the video game content rating organisations of the world has started age-rating Starfield.

First out is Australia's classification board, and it turns out it has got an 18+ rating. While Australia is known to be really tough on games, these are the motivations behind this decision: moderate impact themes and language, strong impact violence, very mild impact nudity, high impact drug use, and finally no sex.

Are you surprised to see Starfield get a higher age-rating than previous Bethesda Game Studios titles, or is it in line with what you expected?