There's a lot of taboos that the video game industry has tackled over the years, but as games unfortunately are not yet considered an artful medium, like film for example, you can only push the envelope so far. Most have gone on to accept violence as par for the course, but anything sexual is a big no no more often than not. Try combining them as a developer, and you're in for a rough time. Case in point, a particular scene that ruffled a few feathers in the demo of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is being reworked.
For those of you who've seen sequel's demo, you may have noticed the charming scene where a man in a pig mask appears to force himself onto a young lady. After the scene received some criticism, developer Dennaton has since removed the scene from the demo, but it will be reworked for the game's final release.
It should be pointed out that the scene in question was possibly taken a bit out of context. The scene was actually nothing more than a bit of pretend. Not long after the sow faced sicko dropped his drawers, a director appears barking orders at the "victim," implying it was all for a movie shoot.
In an interview with RockPaperShotgun, Dennaton's Dennis Wedin explained the developer's decision to modify the scene: "We were really sad that some people were so affected by it, because maybe they had been through something like that of their own. 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."
The first Hotline Miami was a decidedly violent game, managing to shower the game's levels with the blood and organs of countless Russian mafiosos. The retro and low-res graphics no doubt made the violence a bit more disturbing, as if a young child created them with MS Paint.
The idea for the demo's questionable scene originated from a friend of Wedin's, "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]," giving off a Manhunt sort of vibe.
Dennaton and the rest of its staff are looking forward to seeing fans' reactions to the new scene. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number launches next year on PlayStation 4, PS Vita, PC, Mac, and Linux.
