Lollipop Chainsaw’s series producer has denied the remake will be censored, but will nonetheless have to negotiate with platform holders.
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As previously reported, the 2012 hack and slash video game was teased and eventually announced to be having a remake in 2023. Yoshimi Yasuda, CEO of Dragami Games and an executive producer on the original Lollipop Chainsaw, explained part of the motivation was to bring the game onto newer systems to be more easily played.
However, the remake would not be without hitches. Many of the licensed songs within Lollipop Chainsaw would be impossible to use again, and aside from a few of those tracks, the soundtrack would feature new music. Further designer Suda51 seemed to not be involved, along with writer and future director James Gunn.
Yasuda also stated “since we have access to consoles with higher specifications, we will be taking a more realistic approach to the graphics this time.” Since the original game had a unique style, and the near decade of censorship of sexual content in video games, fans were worried this was a veiled confession the game would be censored.
As such, Yasuda took to Twitter once again to clarify some points. “Many fans have asked questions about Lollipop Chainsaw Remake, so I will answer them,” Yasuda began.
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“It has been a week since the Lollipop Chainsaw Remake has been announced. Many fans have inquired about the contents of the previous announcement, and we would like to take the time to share our thoughts and intentions regarding the project,” Yasuda explained.
“The primary goal of the Lollipop Chainsaw Remake project is to make it so that players who wish to play Lollipop Chainsaw can do so easily, not to make a new Lollipop Chainsaw game,” Yasuda clarified. “Of course, the ideal thing to do would be to make a remastered version of the original game, changing nothing.”
“However, we were unfortunately unable to include 16 of the licensed songs, which were a great part of the original game’s feel, and so we are instead aiming for a remake that is as close as possible to a remaster.”
“We have taken notice that there has been speculation that the remake will change the story,” Yasuda admitted. “We believe that Lollipop Chainsaw’s story is a huge part of what fans love about the original game, and we, the development staff, feel the same. As such, the story will not be changed in the remake.”
“Additionally, we do not intend to change the aesthetics of the game. The mention of how the game will have a more realistic look in the previous announcement was meant to refer to how we will make use of the advanced rendering technology available in current game consoles,” Yasuda clarified.
“We do not wish to change Juliet’s design, and the assumption that we want to is baseless,” Yasuda assured. “We were the ones who created Juliet’s model data after great trial and error ten years ago, and feel attached to her more than anyone else.”
“Finally, we learned after the announcement of Lollipop Chainsaw Remake that many fans are worried about censorship in the game. We have not yet discussed the issue with the platform holders yet, and thus cannot say anything about the topic, but what we can say is that we intend to negotiate with the platform holders to make it so that the game can be as close to the original version as possible.”
Lollipop Chainsaw does feature plenty of fan-service, with main character Juliet usually wearing a cheerleader uniform- or more scandalous unlockable costumes- with several camera angles showing off her buttocks and chest. The original Lollipop Chainsaw was launched on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but the former may cause an issue this time around.
In 2018, a PlayStation executive admitted the then-recent revelation Japanese developers were being told to censor sexual content in games on their platform were to meet “global standards.” With that censorship ongoing to this day, a hypothetical PlayStation version of the game is unlikely to be uncensored.
PC may be another avenue, as Valve previously announced that they would “allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling.” While there have been several cases of games being banned, their dark sexual content was far beyond anything that was found in the original Lollipop Chainsaw.
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