Resident Evil Requiem Japanese players fight “immersion-breaking” censorship

Resident Evil Requiem players in Japan are complaining of overt censorship of the horror game’s goriest scenes.

While most territories can play without automatic censorship, players of the Japanese version see black boxes obscuring gory and grusome scenes, leading some players to complain that it “really breaks immersion.”

“Before RE4, Capcom would heavily censor the gore in very basic ways,” one player explained on Reddit (via IGN). “The lack of headsplitting to the cop in Biohazard 7 is a good example of this. Then, in RE4, they introduced a new type of censorship, where cutting off limbs were ‘allowed,’ but the actual ‘insides’ would be replaced with a black ‘shader.’

“Anyway, in Requiem, due to the much more graphic gore in both cinematics and gameplay, the black censorship is way more noticeable [in my opinion], to the point where it really kills immersion.

“Prior to launch, I thought they were going to keep the gore in at least the PC release due to comments made by the director, but [I guess]I thought wrong,” they continued.

“What’s funny is that, like the ESRB, the CERO rating system (which is the root of this censorship) does not apply to PC games, so Capcom could get away with having the intended, uncensored gore in their Biohazard titles on PC in Japan, yet they choose to stick with the censorship seen on consoles…yet that’s not the case for the US releases.”

The concealed gore and violence comes despite director Koshi Nakanishi previously insisting that “while not completely identical to the global version,” the Japanese CERO Z (18+)-rated version of the game “is quite comparable.”

Some players have requested refunds due to the “heavy, unnecessary censoring that looks absolutely awful.”

For more, read our Resident Evil Requiem critical consensus roundup.