Many things can bump a T-rated game up to M-rated status, like nudity, or drug use, or, apparently, dead fish.
Evan Wells, co-president of Uncharted developer Naughty Dog, explained to the semi-official PlayStation 3 blog Three Speech that at one point in the game's development, it was possible to shoot those lovely fish you see swimming through the water, but the idea was eventually abandoned to keep the game teen-friendly.
"We had hit reactions and even some death animations for the wildlife in the game but we chose to remove it. It was flagged as a potential issue by the ESRB and it seemed like a small concession to make in order to maintain our "Teen" rating. It may have also affected the rating in Europe," said Wells.
Naughty Dog toned down the ragdoll physics on downed enemies for similar reasons. "Actually we had the bodies reacting to bullets all the way up until the last couple of weeks of development. It came down to a ratings issue, and we really didn’t think that it was worth the risk of receiving a more mature rating for such a small feature," said Wells.
I'm fine with not being able to make corpses dance by riddling them with bullets, but those fish? They have it coming.
Image courtesy Sony
Your Questions Answered by Naughty Dog's Evan Wells [Three Speech]
