The revelation of the edit came from Sony Europe’s Ross Alexander, as they sought to make Beyond: Two Souls as widely available as possible. It ”does not affect” the game’s story.
Censorship of any kind isn’t looked upon fondly by gamers, with Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us found out to have sneakily ‘toned down’ violence for a PEGI rating.
“There are only two amends between the EU and US versions of the game, amounting to about 5-10 seconds of gameplay that’s not been removed, just edited slightly to be in line with a PEGI 16 rating,” posted Ross Alexander.
“For Beyond we wanted to make the game available to as many people as possible, hence applying for a PEGI 16 rating. The 5-10 seconds I mention above would have upped our rating to a PEGI 18, so it made perfect sense to make these two VERY minimal changes to get our planned 16 rating.”
“I can assure you that this does not affect the game’s story at all, and that if you didn’t know these scenes had been amended, you wouldn’t even notice.”
The fact that European PS3 gamers won’t get to see Ellie [CENSORED] that guy while [CENSORED] pulls out a [CENSORED] risking everything to [CENSORED], is perfectly fine. It’s a minimal loss.
Beyond: Two Souls releases on PS3 October 8th in the US, 11th in EU.