Deadly Premonition 2 director Swery apologizes for offensive trans content in game

Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise director Hidetaka Suehiro — known casually as Swery — apologized Monday on Twitter for the handling of a transgender character in the game. The director penned a statement via Google Translate, citing his “poor english skills.”

“I realized by pointed out from friends, I might have hurt transgender people in my scenario,” Suehiro wrote. “It wasn’t intentional. I am really sorry for that.”

Suehiro added that the scenes in question will be “sanity checked by a team that included diversity,” and said that he will rewrite an unspecified scene as soon as possible.

Deadly Premonition 2 is the follow-up to 2010’s cult hit Deadly Premonition. The survival horror sequel was released July 10 on Nintendo Switch, and takes place both before and after the events of the first game, in both 2019 and 2005.

The character in question — Lena Dauman — is present in the 2005 section of the game, which follows FBI agent Francis York Morgan. Lena is repeatedly misgendered and deadnamed (referred to by the name she used before transitioning, a practice often used to delegitimize transgender people). While York at one point gives a passionate speech to his assistant, Patricia Woods, about accepting marginalized people, he deadnames Lena to her face in the very next cutscene. York continues to misgender her throughout the game.

Lena’s storyline is riddled with transphobic tropes that go beyond deadnaming and misgendering, most notably a revelation that paints her as a sexual degenerate. Suehiro did not clarify which scenes would be rewritten or how many would be. Polygon has reached out to Deadly Premonition 2 publisher Rising Star Games about a timeline for the patch update, and we’ll update this article with any information we receive.