Ready Or Not’sconsole launch is right around the corner, bringing new players to the RoNiverse (I’m coining that phrase now), but changes and censorship are needed for final certification, which may even carry over to the PC version.
The team atVOID Interactivereleased anew development briefing outlining manyof the areas and changes needed before the upcoming console launch of Ready or Not and how they will affect PC players as well as console versions.
Ready or Not is a police SWAT team FPS with a focus on simulation and realism. Because of that, it includes sensitive subjects, nudity, dismemberment, and sometimes touches on the mistreatment of children as victims of criminal action. All of these areas are the focus of the upcoming censorship changes, as outlined by the recent dev briefing.
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Although the developers insist that they are doing their best to only censor essential items, certain changes are needed to maintain the ESRB ratings on consoles.
“We’ve done our utmost to only make changes when they are flagged as absolutely required by our first party partners,” the briefing reads, “…any changes aim to remain faithful to the original tonality of the game, so there is no reason to be alarmed.”
The good news is that the changes to PC are largely being made with crossplay in mind. Firstly, because it’s difficult to maintain two separate versions of a game going forward (e.g.Warframe’s console integration took almost 10 years to reach parity).
Second, if the in-game assets don’t match, it would prevent crossplay from working and anyone who plays RoN currently knows just how buggy games can be, even without adding in mismatching assets.
“If a content change was just a texture swap, we were able to apply it to console only while keeping the PC version the same as before. However, if the change involved transforming an entire asset (like adding clothing to a character model) this was less feasible.”
Censorship is coming in three major areas: dismemberment effects, nudity, and scenarios involving children. Nudity has been covered up and dismemberment was changed in a very specific way, now only occurring when targets are alive, but will no longer happen to dead bodies (which seems a fair compromise).
Regarding violence and mistreatment of children, while already restricted within the game now, have been further changed and edited to meet certification requirements. One example was given where an animation was changed to a child sleeping instead of convulsing, as well as the censoring of some evidence and photos in the console version.
Censorship can be a hot-button issue, but these changes seem reserved and necessary. Players will have to wait and see how it pans out on July 15th for the Ready or Not console debut.
