Final Fantasy 16 (FF16) received a Mature rating, meaning the game is not for players under the age of 16.

As it turns out, Naoki Yoshida and Creative Business Unit III weren't kidding.  They previously said that they were aiming for a Mature rating for FF16. Recent news says they were able to do just that. Brazil's MSRB rating for the game recently came out, giving it the Mature rating the team was aiming for. The document containing the reasons for the rating is in Portuguese. Thankfully, a user on Reddit translated its content. According to them, the report had two parts: the extenuating circumstances, and the aggravating circumstances.

For those not familiar with these terms, let me explain them to the best of my ability. Aggravating circumstances are story segments or gameplay features that push the rating up. In other words, the more of these a game has, the higher the minimum age to play it is. Extenuating circumstances, on the other hand, are story segments or gameplay features that help mitigate or lessen the rating's increase. A good example is when a game shows violence but does not show blood or gore.

In the case of Final Fantasy XVI, here are the reasons the Brazil board gave for the Mature rating (taken from the Reddit comment)

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  • Violence with weapons
  • Blood
  • Intentional death
  • Torture and victims suffering
  • Drugs
  • Prostitution
  • Sexual content, both shown and talked about
  • Hate crimes

If you think the above reasons are bad enough as it is, then you're in for a surprise. The document itself lists the details exhaustively, giving way more reasons than the list above. Whatever it is that Yoshida plans to put us through in FF16, we can be sure that it won't be as lighthearted as before. As for the extenuating circumstances, it says that the sexual scenes are not fully shown, while the violent content is attenuated by the scene's direction. Of course, this is still not enough to lower the game's rating. Besides, as mentioned above, Yoshida and the team wanted this Mature rating.

We'll have to wait until the game comes out to see just how mature it can get. Although we don't know when exactly the game comes out next year, we may get more information soon. For one, the game's release date was reportedly leaked just the other day. For another, Yoshida himself will be presenting at the upcoming Game Awards. We just might get more information then.

For now, that's all the information we have about Final Fantasy 16's mature rating. To stay updated with gaming news, check out our gaming news articles.