Assassin's Creed 2: Sodomy, rape & 'crying as I f*ck her'

8:40 AM on 11.11.2009   |   Jim Sterling

51 comments

It's been said before, but someone really ought to compile the best ESRB ratings and make a book out of them. The latest, and perhaps most surprising, of the game rating summaries is for Assassin's Creed 2, which details some of the game's more sexual moments. The things included in the game are actually pretty amazing.

Rather than stall any further, he's the ESRB's full summary of AC2's sexual content:

The game contains strong sexual overtones. During one "seduction mini-game," players are able to press buttons to kiss a woman and remove her dress; with the woman's back facing the camera, the two characters lower to bed and blow out a candle. Some scenes take place inside brothels, though no nudity or sexual acts are depicted. The dialogue contains the following sexual references: "So the whip or the paddle today?" and "Does your wife know about your page-boy fantasies, Captain?"

Character backstories, narrated through still-frame vignettes, explain how villains and historical figures achieved their notoriety; some biographies include references to adultery, sodomy, prostitution, and rape (e.g., "Caterina was captured and sent to Rodrigo Borgia . . . who kept her imprisoned for a year and is rumored to have raped her alongside his son."). One cutscene depicts a man and a woman wearing translucent, flesh-toned bodysuits as they flee from danger.The digitized lighting effects, the glow from their futuristic suits, obscure most of the details, though outlines of breasts and buttocks are partially discernable (i.e., not definitively nudity).

Consumers may also wish to know that the game contains strong profanity, both in English and Italian (e.g., "f**k," "sh*t," c*zzo," and "m*rda"); the most explicit instance occurs when a man frantically describes a "vision"—"I'm at the opera . . . the soprano is so beautiful . . . I'm in bed with her, she cries as I f**k her."

There's too much greatness in there to pick a favorite, but I do love the fact that whoever wrote this had to make a note of the fact that he/she almost saw breasts and buttocks in one scene by imagining that they were there and deciding that what was imagined was bad enough to mention. I love the ESRB, and I love picturing these grown men and women watching videogame footage and writing about all the breasts they saw.