Hotline Miami 2 dev tweaking sexual assault scene, may cut

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number developer Dennaton Games has removed a controversial sexual assault scene from the game's current demo while it works to change the sequence, said the studio in an interview with Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Dennaton recently presented a segment of Hotline Miami 2 to members of the media and received criticism — most notably from an article on PC Gamer — for a scene at the end of the demo in which the player character appears to force himself on a woman and is about to rape her. It's quickly revealed that the sequence was part of a film, but the backlash against Dennaton still stands.

"We didn't add the scene just to be controversial," Dennis Wedin, the game's co-creator, told Rock, Paper, Shotgun. "There is a meaning to these two characters. There's a lot more to them than just this scene.

"We removed it for the demo. We're going to work with it, see if we can fix it. You get a bigger picture when you play the whole game, which is lost in the demo, of course."

Wedin noted that Hotline Miami 2 will feature female playable characters, whereas the victim in the demo was the only woman in that part of the game. In addition, Dennaton will evaluate feedback from testers of the full version of Hotline Miami 2 before the studio decides if it will include the scene in the final game.

"Our scene made [people] feel this way, so we have to think about why and if there's something we can do to make it better," said Wedin.

You can check out our preview of Hotline Miami 2 here.