In a development that suggests there truly are no heroes left in man, following the discovery that a patch censored the game’s ‘Holiday Rabbit’ outfit, Stellar Blade director Hyung-Tae Kim has claimed that he always intended for the updated, less-risqué version of the costume to be its final design.
As seen in both the game’s demo and its unpatched, on-disc release, the original version of the ‘Honey Rabbit’ outfit provided Stellar Blade protagonist Eve with a hooded leotard featuring a bunny tail ‘pom-pom’ on its back and a plunging, cleavage-heavy neckline on its front.
However, following the release of the game’s Day One patch – the same one that censored the game’s ‘Hard’ graffiti graphic due to concerns that one particular instance of the image could be taken in bad faith as a reference to the n-word racial slur – players soon found that rather appearing as it did originally, the Honey Rabbit now covers up Eve’s chest with a lacy undershirt and extends out towards the bottom in order to cover up the amount of skin shown around her thighs.
Unsurprisingly, upon its discovery this bit of stealth censorship prompted outrage from excited players, many of them feeling particularly betrayed given developer Shift Up’s previous promise that the game would release “uncensored”.
To this end, one fan sought to take the issue directly to Kim himself.
Per a translated video shared to the /r/StellarBlade subreddit, during an April 26th launch event for the highly-anticipated action title, Kim was asked by an attendee if there had been “any thinking of rolling back to the version before the censorship?”
In turn, the director affirmed, “Understandably, we also recognize this issue. However, the final costume that we wanted to show you is indeed the costume in version 1.0.0.2.”
“I want to clarify that is our final product,” he added. “However, I know this answer is not enough to convince our users. There is an internal discussion ongoing regarding this, so I think we’ll have a chance to answer it soon.”
As noted above, while the patched version of the game censors the Honey Rabbit outfit, players can still access the original costume by playing the physical release and declining to update it.
Unfortunately for players who had hoped the Korean action title would stand tall as a pillar of ‘anti-censorship’ amidst an ever-growing puritanical media environment, this is not the only confirmed instance of censorship in Stellar Blade.
In addition to the aforementioned censorship of the game’s ‘Hard’ graffiti, players have also reported that the Day One patch has drastically reduced the amount of blood and gore effects featured throughout Eve’s adventure.
(While numerous reports have flooded in regarding the further censorship of even more outfits, as of writing, many of these remain unconfirmed.)
