The British Board of Film Classification’s rating for BioWare’s latest venture, the sci-fi epic Mass Effect, revealed that the title features a “brief and undetailed” sex scene, reports Pro-G.As expected with a BioWare RPG, there are several versions of the scene depending on which character you chose to woo. One apparently involves nudity, possibly extraterrestrial. If you play a female player character, you have a choice between romancing a male or female companion.

Is this the next step in the evolution of storytelling in games? Are gamers mature enough to handle such explicit material?

Sex scenes and nudity have been tolerated in films for the past few decades and are often done with taste and a meaningful intent. R-rated films are by no means box office pariahs, although the same can’t be said of NC-17 films.

The ESRB has a similarly taboo rating — the dreaded Adults Only, which recently killed Manhunt 2. AO marks a game as appallingly offensive either for sexual content or over-the-top violence. But just as the line between an Mature and AO rating is only one year (17 and 18+, respectively), there is a fine line between mature content that is offensive and mature content that is acceptable and perhaps significant.

Of course, Mass Effect won’t be the first instance of nudity in video games: Who could forget BMX XXX or GTA San Andreas’ Hot Coffee debacle? But perhaps Mass Effect will handle mature content with respect and use it to further the story rather than draw in a hormone-driven crowd with promises of flashing tits. Perhaps it can drag the AO rating out of the gutter and make it just as viable as an R.