Dragon's Dogma: killing innocents lowers your charisma
Plus: "I would never violate His Grace's privacy while he violates milady's privates."
Kill or injure innocents in upcoming open world fantasy game Dragon's Dogma and you suffer a penalty to your charisma, according to the game's ESRB rating summary.
Some sequences in the Capcom game allow players to injure or kill what are described as non-adversaries, such as unarmed villagers. It's these acts the game has a problem with.
The ESRB, which has awarded the game a mature rating, describes the violence: "The frequent combat is accompanied by slashing sounds, cries of pain, and large splashes of blood; attacks sometimes result in dismembered limbs and/or scattered body parts."
In one cutscene a man strangles a woman in her bedchamber. In another a character impales himself. Silly man.
The dialogue includes innuendo. The ESRB picks out two particularly evocative lines: "I would never violate His Grace's privacy while he violates milady's privates," and "perhaps you seek… a turn in the sheets with His Grace's own wife!".
And there's nudity, via female harpies whose breasts are fully exposed at certain camera angles.
For Dragon's Dogma Capcom has assembled its largest ever development team and put Devil May Cry 4 producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi and Devil May Cry 4 director Hideaki Itsuno at the helm.
It is built using the latest version of the MT Framework game engine, which was used to power Resident Evil 5 and Lost Planet 2. Development began two years ago. It launches for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2012.