Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number developer Dennaton Games is considering removing a sexual assault scene included in game’s current demo.
Speaking with RPS, the scene in question was part a demo shown to the press and has received criticism over the playable character Pig Butcher tossing a woman down before dropping his pants.
According to the RPS interview, the female in question was the only one shown in the demo, and after the pants dropping bit, a “director” came onto the screen telling her to act “utterly horrified in a more girly way,” – insinuating the scene was a fake one.
“We were really sad that some people were so affected by it, because maybe they had been through something like that of their own,” said the firm’s Dennis Wedin. “Maybe they had a terrible experience of their own that was triggered by the game. That was not intentional at all. We didn’t add the scene just to be controversial. There is a meaning to these two characters. There’s a lot more to them than just this scene.
“We removed it for the demo. We’re going to work with it, see if we can fix it. You get a bigger picture when you play the whole game, which is lost in the demo of course.”
Wedin said these two characters come back later in the game and the player will learn more about them.
“There’s also gonna be playable female characters – a lot more of them in the final game,” he said. “She’s the only one in this demo, so I understand why people got so upset. But there’s gonna be a lot more to these characters.
“The idea for the opening Pig Butcher scene came from a friend who played the original Hotline Miami and saw it as a horror game. That isn’t really how we see it, but we thought it was pretty cool. We wanted to explore the idea that people can see the game different ways – what it’s all about.
“So for this game, we thought it would be cool to examine that idea. Show how some other people saw the game, like if we gave them the ability to do a remake of the first game. That’s why we did the whole movie director [angle].”
Wedin went on to say that the developer’s reasoning behind the assault scene was due to it being a “trend in horror movies,” which tend to take the next step up with sequels.
“So almost doing that with the illusion of an assault but then having the game stop you, that’s us saying we’re not going to go the whole way,” eh said. “That’s not Hotline Miami. That’s not what we’re about. So instead, it just stops.”
Wedin said the team will see how people react to the reworked scene when the whole game is tested, when it can be presented in full and “in a good way,” instead of provocative.
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number launches next year on PS4, Vita, PC, Mac, and Linux.
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