Resident Evil 4 VR version edits out several lines of dialogue
UPDATE: Facebook acknowledges "select changes" for "modern audience".
UPDATE 3.15pm UK: Oculus has now provided the following statement on changes to its Resident Evil 4 VR version:
"Oculus Studios, Armature, and Capcom partnered closely to remaster Resident Evil 4 from the ground up for VR," a Facebook spokesperson told Eurogamer today. "This includes immersive environments and high-resolution graphics. It also includes select changes to in-game dialogue and animations that we believe will update Resident Evil 4 for a modern audience."
Eurogamer also understands that the animation which played when players attempted to look up Ashley's skirt in the original game has also been removed.
ORIGINAL STORY 2.30pm UK: The new Oculus Quest 2 version of Resident Evil 4 includes a number of dialogue edits to Capcom's survival horror classic.
Several lines of speech have been trimmed to remove flirting by hero Leon S. Kennedy directed at US government agent Hannigan. Some are fairly innocuous edits, though it's easy to see where they happen as they're disguised by static on Leon's video communications device.
The game's infamous line from Luis, where he describes Ashley's breasts as "ballistics", has also been cut, along with Ashley's comeback. This is during a cutscene, rather than via video call, making the edit a little more obvious - Ashley still looks pissed off after.
Here's how these changes look:
In the first scene above, Leon's original reply to Hannigan saying she was worried is: "Don't you mean lonely? Anyway, I started to feel dizzy, and then I guess I must have lost consciousness." The first five words are lost to static in the VR version. In an earlier conversation, Leon's comment that he'd expected Hannigan to be older is also gone.
In the second scene, Luis' original quote is: "I see that the President's equipped his daughter with ballistics too." Ashley then replies: "How rude. And I don't believe there's any relevance with my figure and my standing. Who are you?" All but the last three words here have been trimmed.
Eurogamer has contacted both Capcom and Oculus about the cuts, but neither was able to provide a comment.
Eurogamer's Ian Higton recorded the above footage showing the cuts during his playthrough of the VR port's first four hours - which otherwise he was complimentary about.
"Resident Evil 4 may be over 16 years old now, but the fact that developer Armature has managed to make the whole game run natively on the Quest 2 at a smooth 70 frames per second is still very impressive," Ian wrote in his Resident Evil 4 VR impressions piece published earlier today. "Especially so when you factor in all the remastered assets and geometry tweaks needed to accommodate the new first-person perspective."
Word that Resident Evil 4's content had been edited for its Oculus VR release first surfaced earlier this month on The Happy Warrior, which complained that Capcom had "allowed Facebook to deface and modify" its classic "to please the gaming media and the social justice crowd". It also claimed the game's final scenes had also been edited, including the line where Ashley asks Leon back to her place, and the entire final conversation with Hannigan where Leon flirts with her further, and comments on her lack of glasses. We haven't yet reached this ourselves so aren't currently able to verify these.
It will be interesting to see whether these changes remain in the game for Capcom's unannounced but inevitable remake.