Most Twisted Metal games, despite their carnage, have been rated T for Teen. The lone exceptions are Twisted Metal: Black, the 10-year-old PlayStation 2 game with a darker bent, and this fall's equally grisly PlayStation 3 reboot.
Eat Sleep Play co-founder and Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe told Comic-Con attendees this weekend that the PS3 game, originally designed with a T rating in mind. But the game's live action cinematics, bloody vignettes based on the game's key players, were too graphic for the ESRB's lower rating.
Jaffe showed Comic-Con attendees an incomplete version of one of those live action sequences, this one based on the series' iconic serial killer Sweet Tooth. Beforehand, Jaffe warned that it probably wasn't appropriate for little kids, given the blood, violence and grim dialogue. While not excessively gory, the impressive live action cinematic did contain some very intense imagery, with a high body count, some nasty language and at least one eye-stabbing scene. The audience lapped it up, reacting positively to the promise of more graphically violent horror fare from Eat Sleep Play.
Better still, the cinematic did a very capable job of explaining why a serial killer was taking part in a car combat competition run by Twisted Metal's Calypso.
What may disappoint fans of Twisted Metal were two thing Jaffe all-but shot down: a public multiplayer beta and a collector's edition of the PlayStation 3 game. Jaffe said that Twisted Metal would see a private and semi-private beta, but that a wider beta test wouldn't really be necessary. As for the collector's edition, Jaffe poo-pooed the idea, implying that the game itself would comprise the complete package.
The Twisted Metal creator showed off plenty of live gameplay, giving attendees a tour of the Black Rock Stadium level (which Kotaku previewed in April) and gameplay set in a New York level, Metro Square, complete with a destructible stock exchange and subway system.
Jaffe also promised that the development team was running with its newly targeted M rating, adding more blood and gore to the already violent game.
Twisted Metal is on the books for an October 4 release date on the PlayStation 3 in North America.