Cyberpunk 2077 will be censored in Japan, when it releases on November 17th. Meanwhile, Australia’s version won’t be censored at all and will be rated as R18+.
The upcoming open-world title will be edited to suit the Japanese audience. During firefights, there will be “selective revisions” on how body parts will be severed and how exposed guts will be displayed to the player. Sexual acts and content will be “revised,” and naked characters in Cyberpunk 2077 will be wearing underwear to keep their privates shrouded from sight. One of the biggest changes will be the altering of the billboards and graffiti around Night City that are shaped like genitals; they will be either removed or altered.
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The censorship news from Press Start comes after the announcement of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, an anime based in the world of Cyberpunk 2077. Kill La Kill and Gurren Lagann anime producers Studio Trigger are behind the project, and it will release on Netflix in 2022. With this news of the game being censored in Japan, will the anime series suffer the same fate?
This isn’t the first time a Japanese localization has been averse to gore. In 2015’s Until Dawn, there was an infamous scene, in which a circular saw tears apart Josh in half. The West experienced the gruesome event in detail, gore and all, but in Japan, the scene simply goes to black when the saw comes in contact with screams overlapping the blankness of the screen. It goes to black again as Chris runs towards Ashley. Censored Gaming recorded the scene below.
Cyberpunk 2077 is set to be one of this year’s biggest games with widely open narrative paths you can take, Grand Theft Auto style exploration, and incredible graphics in a genre that has not been fully explored in the AAA space.
According to CD Projekt Red, the game’s content (like the quests, skills, cutscenes, etc) is complete and the gameplay is finalized, but as the game is complicated and huge, the developer still needs to work on fixing bugs and balance game mechanics. It was previously scheduled for a September 17th, but now it will come out just in time for the Holiday season on November 19th for PS4 and Xbox One. For those who buy it day 1, there will be free upgraded versions coming for PS5 and Xbox Series X.
Source: Press Start
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