After hearing that The Prince of Persia: Rival Swords for Wii would be a straight port of The Two Thrones from the last-gen consoles many people assumed it would get the same rating.
But it seems that Ubisoft has toned the Wii version down. The main differences you'll see in the pic above is that Blood and Gore has been replaced by simply blood. By the ESRB's rating guidelines "Blood" means "Depictions of blood", while "Blood and Gore" constitutes "Depictions of blood and mutilations of the body". Which means that it's more than likely Rival Swords will lack the beheadings and the scenes of your enemies being sliced in half which were present in The Two Thrones.
While Violence and Intense Violence are actually quite different. According to the ESRB Violence is defined as "scenes involving aggressive content" with Intense Violence being "graphic and realistic-looking depictions of physical conflict. May involve extreme and/or realistic blood, gore, weapons, and depictions of human injury and death". In case you didn't catch all that, it basically means that Rival Swords will be less violent than The Two Thrones.
How do you guys feel about this?
If Ubisoft did this on their own inorder to broaden the appeal for the game, then I'm ok with it. If Nintendo asked them to lighten up a bit with this version of the game...then I don't like that at all. I'm guessing the first point is the real reason.
No gore, no intense violence
I actually prefer it that way, since i cant buy M-rated games anyways, this will probably make me actualy buy this game!!! Yippeee!!!
Since when have stores been paying attention to the ESRB ratings? I bought The Two Thrones and Resident Evil without any trouble (not when they were new so it was pretty recent). I've heard that some EB Games and GameStop stores have really been cracking down but I doubt you're going to run into trouble at places like Target and Best Buy.
I never evenn noticed the blood in PoP. I just remember sand spewing out of people's bodies.
About the blood:
Spoiler: (hover to reveal the text)
There was blood at the very beginning before the vizir kills the godess of time and turns all his men into sand monsters. So after that the sand simply replaced the blood.
That's probably why I don't remember. =(
If it was just in the beginning then why even include it?
Bah violence is good! Gives the game a more realistic feeling especially with the wii, SLICE with the Wiimote = slicing someones head fun fun (:
The game hardly warranted an M rating in the first place as Kindrik and Ricky pointed out for most of the game the enemies "bleed" sand so don't get too excited/disappointed.
Cool. Gives me an excuse to final purchase the Prince of Persia series. Gotta get the first and the second one on Wii.
Rival Swords and Two Thrones are basically the same game only RS has Wii Controls right?
Rival Swords and Two Thrones are basically the same game only RS has Wii Controls right?
Yup. I just made a minor correction to your post.