Unlike Every Past Halo FPS, Halo 5 Earns a Teen ESRB Rating

Halo 5: Guardians has received a Teen rating from the ESRB, making it the first of the Halo first-person shooters to earn anything other than a Mature rating.

The newly published ESRB listing highlights the standard Halo violence you'd expect: "Players use pistols, machine guns, grenade launchers, and futuristic weapons to kill alien and human enemies in frenetic combat. Battles are highlighted by realistic gunfire, explosions, and occasional blood-splatter effects. Characters can also use 'assassinations' to kill characters by snapping their necks, or by stabbing them with bladed weapons."

Then there is the game's language, which ranges from typical curses--"The word 'a*s' appears in the dialogue"--to the bizarre: "[There are] occasional taunts/insults (e.g., "I have copulated...with your genetic progenitors!"). Another example insult includes a possible Monty Python reference: "Your father was a filthy colo and your mother was a hole in the wall!"

All of this apparently wasn't enough to warrant a Mature rating, which is what every Halo FPS to date has received. That rating never completely made sense, what with the bulk of the violence involving dead aliens; the ESRB's description of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary doesn't read much differently from Halo 5's.

There are Halo games that have received Teen ratings in the past, but both--Halo Wars and Halo: Spartan Assault--were spinoffs that adopted isometric cameras due to their genres (strategy and top-down shooter, respectively).

Halo 5: Guardians is due out for Xbox One on October 27. This week, we also learned that a sequel to Halo Wars is in the works at Total War developer The Creative Assembly.