Upcoming indie thriller Martha Is Dead has become the subject of controversy after it was revealed that Sony required the game to be altered in some way for its PlayStation 4 and 5 release. Martha Is Dead is expected to be incredibly graphic, and certain sequences appear to have crossed a line for the content Sony allows on its platforms. The exact details of how the PlayStation version of the game has been altered remains unclear, but many on social media have been lambasting Sony for the censorship.
Martha Is Dead, a visceral and engrossing thriller, takes place during the final months of World War II, set in the Tuscany region of Italy in 1944. By this time, fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had been ousted from power and the new government had signed an armistice with the Allied forces invading the Italian mainland. During the timeframe of Martha Is Dead, even loyalist Italian forces have turned on the occupying German forces, declaring war on the Axis. The game promises to give players a first-person view of the war's atrocities through the eyes of Martha's twin sister. As the title would imply, Martha's body has been found, apparently as a result of being drowned.
The project developed by LKA and published by Wired Productions will be exceptionally graphic, and has received an M rating from the ESRB for blood and gore, intense violence, partial nudity, sexual themes, and strong language. Martha Is Dead won't be censored on Xbox, though, and a change to the game's content seems to be a mandate by Sony as a prerequisite for it being available on PlayStation platforms. The Martha Is Dead Twitter account revealed that there would be changes to the PS4 and PS5 versions earlier this month, saying these unexpected requirements have now delayed the release of the game's physical editions.
What Sony Might Be Censoring In Martha Is Dead
[Warning: Discussion of graphic violence below.]
Although the press release from the game's Twitter account doesn't go into specifics, many have already speculated on why Martha Is Dead is getting altered for Sony's consoles. Some have pointed to a scene from early looks at the game in which the player performs quick time events (QTEs) to cut the face off of a corpse. Like something out of a The Silence of the Lambs video game, players make inputs to drag a razor around the edges of a body's face before pulling the decaying skin free. The revolting sequence is made worse by the game utilizing a first-person perspective, but it's much more visceral than what players might expect from other first-person games in the genre, like the upcoming horror-filled open world of Ghostwire: Tokyo.
Although there's no confirmation that this is the part of the game in particular that Sony has taken issue with, it's a good indicator of how gruesome Martha Is Dead is going to be. The game appears to be attempting to deliver an unapologetic look at the Second World War, where war crimes and similar mutilation were performed. Although the press release is vague, LKA and Wired Productions' statement seems to imply that the changes made at Sony's behest have just rendered certain parts of the game unplayable: "It is with regret that we have had to modify the experience on the PS5 and PS4 versions, with some elements no longer playable." This seems to indicate that all visual components of the game are still intact, but the player's direct involvement through controller input has been removed.
A key component to the video game medium is giving the player an immersive game world to explore, and taking away the player's agency is detrimental to the core experience. If LKA wanted to include a cutscene of a face being cut off of a corpse, it would have. The player being involved in the act is clearly the intent, with utter revulsion the desired reaction. If Sony has required LKA to remove some of the QTEs, then it jeopardizes the vision of Martha Is Dead at large. According to the developer, the game gives players overt and frequent forewarning that the experience is not for the faint of heart. If Sony is concerned about the game reaching an unintended audience, then there has been a failure somewhere else in the systems already in place - PlayStation's parental controls, for instance - not with the game.
Sony's Hypocrisy In Censoring Martha Is Dead
Sony taking steps to alter an independent developer's project is especially egregious when considering the levels of brutality on display in PlayStation's own first party titles. The critically acclaimed The Last of Us Part II is exceptionally gruesome, even personally so, yet players are still allowed to participate. Even TLOU 2 struggles to justify all its violence, with the game featuring multiple bloody executions, violence against animals, and visceral, emergent gore effects. There may not be any face avulsion, but is the Martha Is Dead scene really so far removed from players being put into Poseidon's perspective to watch Kratos shove his thumbs through the Olympian's eye sockets in God of War III?
Even multi-platform games (just like Martha Is Dead) have been allowed on PlayStation consoles without edited gameplay. The infamous "No Russian" mission from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in which players can slaughter countless innocents in an airport mass shooting, wasn't censored in any way. Modern Warfare 2, just like Martha Is Dead, gave players ample warning of the sensitive content, and trusted their individual judgment. Certain edits can be positive, like Nintendo censoring Ocarina of Time to remove iconography that might disparage certain ethnicities, but what Sony has done to Martha Is Dead fundamentally changes the experience to something other than what the developer intended.
All this controversy has done is potentially jeopardize an entire customer base for an independent developer. People being rightfully mad over Sony's censorship may have given Martha Is Dead some extra publicity, but there are sure to be many PlayStation users that now avoid purchasing the game because it's been compromised. Things like the ESRB and parental controls are already responsible for categorizing and restricting video game access, but Sony has taken an extra step with Martha Is Dead, flexing its authority to create more work for the developer and lessen the game's impact.
Source: Martha Is Dead/Twitter