Some Versions of the ‘Resident Evil 2’ Demo Censor Gore

It looks like Capcom turned down the gore of its recent Resident Evil 2 demo in Japan, which is noticeably less bloody and has less carnage than the North American version of the demo.

That’s right, if you’re planning on picking up Capcom’s upcoming survival-horror remake in Japan, you may want to cop a version from elsewhere, unless you don’t mind your Resident Evil less gory than normal.

When Resident Evil 2 released in 1998, it was pretty shockingly gory. Now in 2019, the remake enhanced to look like a modern game, takes gore to the next level. And apparently this is a problem for the Japanese market, or at the very least, Capcom suspects it might be.

The censored gore was first spotted by Tristian Cooper on Twitter, who tweeted out a side-by-side comparison of the game’s demo in North America and its demo in Japan. And the differences in gore are pretty substantial. More specifically, the Japanese version is seemingly less visually sharp when it comes to gore, and replaces the brutal details with a more smudgy bloody look.

Now, if you’re from Japan and follow the Resident Evil series, this won’t come as a surprise. In 2017 when Capcom released Resident Evil 7, it was also partially censored in Japan to make the game less glory.

And this isn’t uncommon in Japan, where localized games can censor out excessive gore. Meanwhile in the west, localized games are known to censor out some sexual content from Japanese games. And this is all a result of societal norms and what not. In the west, there’s more tolerance for violence and gore, and less tolerance for sexual content. In Japan, it’s the opposite.

Resident Evil 2 is in development for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and is set to release on January 25. At the moment of publishing this, there’s been no word of a Nintendo Switch port.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the game’s newly released demo, which you can find more details on by clicking here.

Thanks, DualShockers.