The now infamous sex scene in The Last of Us Part II, which graphically depicts the first few moments of intercourse between newcomers Abby and Owen, has been censored in the Japanese release of the game.
As documented by Censored Gaming, an account run across several social media platforms dedicated to cataloging various instances of censorship across the entirety of video game history, the awkward imitation of sexual relations in The Last of Us Part II was censored in Japan “due to the Japanese console rating system (CERO) and its rules forbidding certain explicit content.”
To abide by these regulations, the game “fades to black not long after the characters begin kissing, cutting out the nudity and other explicit content that follows.”
When the existence of the in-game sex scene was first revealed, Naughty Dog VP and The Last of Us Part II director Neil Druckmann promoted the scene as “tasteful.”
This particular instance of censorship is, sadly, quite ironic, considering Sony has made a company policy of censoring even the slightest of risqué content in Japanese games, only to have a pretentiously lauded scene of their own production censored upon its release in Japan.