News

Fear Not, PS5 Exclusive Stellar Blade Remains Uncensored in All Regions

2 weeks ago

0 9 minutes read

Fear Not, PS5 Exclusive Stellar Blade Remains Uncensored in All Regions

If you were concerned that the PS5-exclusive Stellar Blade, out 26th April on PS5, might run afoul of Sony’s censors, fear not. Developer ShiftUp is advertising that the game will remain entirely uncensored in all regions, including Japan.

We’ll be honest: this wasn’t something we’d even considered could be a problem (or a prospective selling point), as protagonist Eve and her costumes, or lack thereof, have featured so prominently in the lead-up to the game’s launch. Still, we’re glad to see ShiftUp so excited its vision will soon be in the hands of millions (probably) of players.

Subscribe to Push Square on YouTube144k

Watch on YouTube

In other Stellar Blade news, Yoko Taro reckons it’s better than NieR: Automata, and we were glad to discover the game will remain respectful of your PS5 storage space. You can try out the demo now, which almost managed to double the daily active users of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s own, pretty impressive stuff for a first-time console showing.

Will you be there for Stellar Blade on day one? Are you glad to see the game wasn’t censored at the eleventh hour? Let us know in the comments section below.

[source twitter.com]

Khayl Adam is Push Square’s roving Australian correspondent, a reporter tasked with scouring the internet for the most succulent PlayStation stories. With five years of experience as a freelance journalist and mercenary wordsmith, RPGs are his first great love, but strategy and tactics games are a close second, genres in which he is only too happy to specialize.

Author Profile
Twitter/X
Reply

1
ATaco
11h ago

Im interested to see how well this game does commercially and wether we’ll see another shift in the ever changing gaming landscape.

2
VatoLoco47
11h ago

The demo ran smoothy and liked the combat mechanics. Day 1 for sure

3
MrBook
10h ago

Only seen a few snippets of this. Getting strong Bayonetta vibes, which is a good thing of course.

Not something I intended to buy any time soon though, too much backlog

4
CWill97
10h ago

Preordered and should be here by launch day. Probably won’t play until night but I’m pumped nonetheless!

5
HeeHo
10h ago

Good, developers should be allowed to realise thier vision no matter who may disagree with said vision.
This goes both ways, I’ve been getting tired of people moaning about how a character is too ugly or too sexy and woke this, male gaze that.
Both sides shut tf up, you don’t like the content? go find content you do like and not try to force everything to conform to your personal tastes and ideologies.

6
Kingy
10h ago

This is my April game. Everything I’ve seen of it looks promising.

7
Korgon
9h ago

I’ve never understood nor liked the idea of censorship so this is most welcome news. Let the content be experienced as intended by the creators. It’s as simple as that.

8
nessisonett
9h ago

This will play well with the audience they’re targeting.

9
Impossibilium
9h ago

That seems to me like a pretty shady marketing trick. Claiming that the game is “Uncensored” when there’s no content in the game that would need to be censored. Trying to make people think that there might be some extra sexy stuff in it that hasn’t already been featured in plenty of other games without issue.

PlayStation is the worst company when it comes to making developers change game content to meet their weird standards, and they’re the advertising partner for this game. It’s completely illogical to think that any content PlayStation wouldn’t approve of was either already removed long ago, or was never in the game to begin with. It’s just a stupid marketing stunt.

10
B0udoir
8h ago

I’m curious how far this game will go in the “censored” territory. My guess is that there is a lot of noise to create a hype, but at the end there will be nothing more than the camera locked on the unrealistic jelly muscles of the protagonist.

11
Zenos
8h ago

Great news! Not long to go until review embargo is lifted. 24th I am hearing.

12
thefourfoldroot1
7h ago

You may think it didn’t need stating, but where Sony is concerned it’s always necessary unfortunately.

13
AsterZero
7h ago

Hopefully this will change the landscape back to what it was before all this politics entered gaming.

14
DennisReynolds
7h ago

BG3 has full frontal nudity and strong sex scenes so i had zero doubts it would be censored.

15
DennisReynolds
7h ago

@AsterZero Yeah back to when Hot Coffee existed and God of War sex scenes took place off camera. Gaming more then ever is open to sex and nudity.

16
Gaia093
7h ago

The tweet specifically mentioning the Japanese version implies that this is about addressing violence/gore censorship more so than about sexual content.

I definitely expected Japan to get some level of gore censorship after I saw that chopped off arm in the first section of the game, given how strict their guidelines are for this kind of stuff in games. On the other hand Japan has zero issue with just having characters wearing skimpy outfits, so this is obviously not about that.

17
Rhaoulos
7h ago

When I buy a game, I want every characters to be blurred out, or hidden behind some light magically hiding specific parts of the body. This is the only way to enjoy 4K graphics.

18
Rhaoulos
7h ago

@Korgon Censorship exist so parents can safely buy their 8yo kids games for mature audience. At least that’s how I see it. If only there was a way to know what the game includes… Like a label of some sort.

19
LifeGirl
6h ago

@DennisReynolds I get what you mean about the likes of the Hot Coffee controversy. But I think that sex scenes look ridiculous in video game form unless the graphics and tone are top notch. Watching two dead-eyed models make noises and bounce back and forth is cringe. I would much rather have the ”Roger Moore putting his tie on the door” method any day because i’m not sitting there with my face in my hands.

20
UltimateOtaku91
6h ago

Don’t things get censored so they fall in line with the games age rating? People always moan about Sony but have they played the Last of Us 2? Or the older God of War games? If the age rating is correct then Sony don’t care what devs put in their game. The only games getting censored these days anyway are Japanese games with mini games that let the user inappropriately touch underage girls breasts and other areas. This Sony is bad for censoring rhetoric is getting boring.

You want gore, sex or nudity or certain language/themes in your game then make it age rated 18, simple. It’s not like parents give a damn about the age ratings either, just look at how many kids are playing call of duty and GTA.

21
DennisReynolds
6h ago

@LifeGirl Don’t get me wrong i don’t care that much for sex scenes in games (though i think BG3 and Cyberpunk handle them well) i just think its laughable when people act like gaming is too prudish nowadays when it very clearly isn’t, Hot Coffee caused a massive uproar and could have really impacted gaming for the worse yet compared to what Cyberpunk offers its pretty tame. Hell look at Mass Effect that game caused a meltdown to the point lies were being spread and scenes were just PG-13 level, Andromeda contains full topless female nudity and pretty strong sex and no one cared.

I doubt Stellar Blade contains much nudity though and i bet we don’t see a single female nipple, it will be as graphic as Bayonetta. Anyway we already know what Eve looks like naked as she opens the game naked, that robotic form is her body laid bare.

22
DennisReynolds
6h ago

@UltimateOtaku91 The only time Sony i feel went a bit far is censoring Trish’s bare ass in DMC5. It never made sense as to why it was censored considering she’s an adult and the scene wasn’t even sexual in nature. They did uncensor it in the US version though Euro/UK versions remain censored.

23
Shepherd_Tallon
5h ago

@UltimateOtaku91 That one game where players were rewarded for groping the girls is what comes to my mind every time this conversation comes up.
I remember being concerned about the censorship too, until I saw what they were censoring.
The only mistake they made there was that they started doing this at a time when everyone is screaming “stop telling me how to live and what to think!” at everyone else.

24
matekomlosi
5h ago

@Gaia093 there are unnecessary amount of brutality in games and movies nowadays. They’d rather show a close-up shotgun headshot sooner than a pair of boobs. Yeah, boobs are particularly dangerous to a young, healthy mind.

25
Yorozayu
5h ago

Just trying to be edgy with marketing. There’s nothing worth censoring in this game. DOA is on PlayStation, Stellar Blade is pretty tame compared to it.

26
Gaia093
4h ago

@matekomlosi I don’t approve of any type of censorship, so you’re preaching to the choir here.

27
Nepp67
4h ago

@DennisReynolds The Trish ass getting censored in the U.S. was likely a mistake considering like you stated UK hasn’t had their version censored.

28
matekomlosi
4h ago

@Gaia093 I’m not about censorship either; I just pointed out that there’s been an increase in the use of gore recently because now they can realistically do it. In the past, when someone was about to be shot in the head, the camera would just switch to the victim’s point of view, and right after the shot, the screen would go dark and things like that. We also got the message this way. But now there’s just too much gore, even in games/movies where I wouldn’t expect it. Yet when it comes down to boobs, they tend to censor or cover them almost every time. Strange, eh?

29
Glotny
4h ago

Played the demo and also couldn’t tell what’s the thing in this game that’d require censoring. Boob physics…?

I do think the funny thing about this whole ”controversy” around Stellar Blade is that apparently there’s still an audience for those 90’s/early 2000s magazine ads that just had a photo of a hot lady and a tagline to try and sell you a game, which I guess worked on some people at least?

The gameplay really didn’t click for me, so sadly even a hot cyborg lady won’g get me to spend 80€.

30
DennisReynolds
4h ago

@Nepp67 No we did have are versions censored, the US version got an update to be uncensored because of backlash but it was only the US version that got updated.

31
kejsi-sensei
3h ago

what’s the point of censoring if we’re all adults here…

32
Korgon
3h ago

@Rhaoulos
That’s a great idea! I’m going to pass that suggestion along to my friend Pegi.

33
BIG3
2h ago

This game is checking all the boxes for me. Friday can’t come soon enough.

34
Fiendish-Beaver
2h ago

I pre-ordered the Deluxe edition of the game yesterday. Hopefully the game will run smoothly, and the gameplay will excel. Really looking forward to it, though I still have to finish The Banishers at the moment (which is a really good game)…

35
playstation1995
2h ago

N.i.c.e. because i like big butts and i can’t not lie.😀.good.stellar blade is going to be wonderful.word up son

36
revansgc
47m ago

Another win for this developer.

37
Gamer83
26m ago

I didn’t notice anything in the demo that would lead me to think the game should get censored, but good to get clarification anyway. It does highlight how inconsistent Sony is when it comes to this stuff, though.

38
Gamer83
21m ago

@matekomlosi
I don’t know if I agree with you as far as violence in games these days. Aside fom TLoU 2 (and even that isn’t over the top) everything seems more PG-13 or very light R, not like back in the 6th and 7th gens where there was an ‘edge’ (maybe even a bit too much for some) to the brawlers and shooters. The Like a Dragon series, as much as I love it, is particularly watered down in this category.

Related Articles

Stardew Valley-like Sim On The Bottom Of Your Screen Spawns New Genre

Hunter x Hunter Game Confirmed as a 2D Fighter Punching to PS5

Warzone players are demanding changes to 'sick joke' Rebirth Island audio

Remnant 2’s second DLC takes us back to Yaesha on April 23