Homefront developer Kaos Studios has told GamerZines that the controversial scenes included in the game were not simply put in there for "shock factor" but to "represent occupied America", saying that removing them would have been "shying away" from the team’s objective.
The game, which launches next week, contains a distressing scene in the opening chapter which sees a young child witness his parents’ execution.
But Kaos Studios’ general manager David Votypka admits that he wasn’t sure about the scene at first, and that it was originally planned very differently.
"Actually, the parents and the child scene on the bus ride was a tough one for me at first," he says.
"The original idea for the scene was for the child to be on the street corner crying and abandoned, which I think would have been fairly emotional as well.
"But the scene that got into the game was thought of during the motion capture shoot. They tried it and they brought it back and told me about it and I’m like, ‘I dunno, man’, you know? But we put it in the game and it was very emotional, no question, and I realised that if we shied away from things like that then we’d be shying away from truly representing the goal of occupation and the things that happen.
"That’s why we didn’t really do a lot of cutting of the hard-hitting scenes. We didn’t put them in there for shock factor; we just put them in because our goal was to represent occupied America. We couldn’t not do them."
Homefront tells the tale of a resistance group fighting against the Korean People’s Army following its invasion of the USA.
The game was written by Apocalypse Now co-writer John Milius, and awarded a BBFC 15 certificate for its strong language and violence.
"In one cut scene at the very beginning of the game," reads the BBFC description, "a distressed child is seen crying as his parents are executed by North Korean soldiers but the sequence includes little in terms of blood or injury detail."
But is it one cut scene too far? Find out for yourself when Homefront launches next Friday, 18th March on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
Tags: Homefront
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