What immediately stuck with me when Dennaton released the trailer for Hotline Miami 2 was when the butcher removed his pants and proceeded upon a helpless girl on the floor. My first thought, in fact was, “Wow, that just happened.” Understandably, some people took offense to this; therefore, Dennaton is reconsidering the controversial scene from Hotline Miami 2.
Dennaton revealed this news in an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The writer consistently asked tough questions, and Dennaton’s Dennis Wedin responded tactfully. When asked if he saw one of Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s writer’s response to the trailer, Wedin said, “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.”
Part of the problem is that the trailer shown only one female character, who was represented as a victim. According to Wedin, this doesn’t accurately represent the entire game. For instance, Hotline Miami 2 will have plenty of playable characters, many of whom are female. Of course, the demo doesn’t depict any of this, and we have no idea if Dennaton will successfully meet its story-telling goals in the final build. And when asked if the game will make it into the final build, Wedin had this to say:
“We’ll see. We’re gonna see how people react to it when we test the whole game. We’ll get opinions and stuff like that. We’ll see how we can present this in a good way. In a way that we want it to come across. Not just as provocative. That’s not our meaning at all.I respect people’s comments and the fact that people voiced them. That’s how they feel. Our scene made them feel this way, so we have to think about why and if there’s something we can do to make it better. I don’t think it’s right to just say, ‘You’re wrong. You’re just looking at it wrong.’ That’s not the way to go.'”
I have to give props to Wedin for handling the situation with tact. I hope that this won’t ruin the story the team is trying to create, but I appreciate that they’re doing extensive testing before they make their final decision.
Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun
