Ratings board gives away Silent Hill f’s gut-churning tricks, listing face-slicing, arm-sawing and, worst of all, ‘exposed buttocks’

The ESRB—Entertainment Software Rating Board—is, notionally, there to stick age ratings on games that make sure little Timmy and Sally aren’t scarred for life by the torture scene in GTA 5. In reality, I’m beginning to suspect the whole thing is a gigantic operation made to scupper games industry PRs’ carefully laid marketing plans. Like when it leaked the Horizon remaster, or Skull & Bones, or Quake, or Catherine.

It’s not doing much leaking today, but the ESRB has nonetheless gone absolutely ham describing just what kind of nastiness you can expect from Konami’s upcoming Silent Hill f, which just recently broke cover with a new trailer after a prolonged period of silence following the success of Bloober Team’s third-person wife-finder. It takes place in the ’60s, is the first Silent Hill set in Japan, and its core concept is, says script-writer Ryukishi07, “Find the beauty in terror.”

Heavy on the terror, apparently, because the ESRB would like you to know that the game features stuff like “enemy attacks [that] can result in players’ character getting impaled in the neck and/or getting their faces ripped apart,” plus “a character burned alive inside a cage.”

Which is no day at the zoo, let me tell you. It doesn’t sound like Konami is letting Silent Hill f’s teenage girl protagonist get in the way of doing horrible things to her. In addition to all the, you know, face-ripping and burning, we’ve also got a “woman branded by a hot iron; entrails and sinew displayed on serving platters in fantastical celebration/ceremony; a character sawing off her own arm,” and “a character slicing off portions of a character’s face during a ritual.”

They don’t say what ritual, though. I like to imagine that’s just how they do the eucharist in Japan.

Which, if you’re used to the ESRB’s précised, back-of-the-box stickers that just say stuff like “Mild violence” and what-have-you, is a little bit more detailed than you might be expecting. Still, better to know these things than not if you might find them upsetting.

Plus, the ratings board saves the truly vile stuff for last. Right at the end, after all the wanton violence and human degradation, the ESRB notes that the game features “a nude mannequin-like character, with exposed buttocks and partially exposed breasts.” Horrifying. Ban this sick filth.