Assassin’s Creed Valhallahas been a smash hit for Ubisoft, releasing off of the back of both Sony and Xbox’s brand new console launches. For those who haven’t heard,Assassin’s Creed Valhallabroke series sales recordsduring its first week of release.
Unfortunately, Ubisoft’s latest entry in theAssassin’s Creedseries has not been without its own controversies, including apparently being censored in Japan. Now, Ubisoft has officially addressed the censorship issues in the Japanese versions ofAssassin’s Creed Valhallaand will issue a fix in the future.
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Apparently, the Japanese version ofAssassin’s Creed Valhallahad most, if not all, depictions of blood completely scrubbed from the game. Initially, players were unsure if theJapanese versions ofValhallawere simply glitchedor if depictions of blood were purposefully removed from the game. In the Japanese version ofValhalla’s options menus, there is a setting for players to toggle on and off in-game blood. However, players quickly noticed that even toggling the option to “on” resulted in no depictions of in-game blood, which many players were frustrated by.
Now, a Japanese Ubiblog post has addressed this issue officially after weeks of the game being out. In the post, Ubisoft acknowledges the issue, stating that blood cannot be depicted in-game and that the development team is “preparing a patch to solve the issue” releasing sometime in December. Ubisoft goes on to apologize for the inconvenience to its customers. It’s a strange issue to be sure, especially because on November 18, Ubisoft explained that the decision to remove the bloodfromAssassin’s Creed Valhallain Japanese versions was due to age rating regulations.
Yet, the age rating company called CERO in Japan confirmed a day later thatValhalla’s depiction of blood would still allow the game to be sold with little issue in Japan. As such, Ubisoft further explained in its apology post that the problem was an internal issue within the company which will be investigated further going forward. It’s understandable why Japanese players would be upset by this level of censorship, consideringAssassin’s Creed Valhalla’s combatis such an integral part of the game. Having major flair and effects such as in-game blood removed altogether would be jarring, to say the least.
Unfortunately, players who own the Japanese version ofAssassin’s Creed Valhallawill have to wait a bit longer to have in-game blood back in the game. ThoughValhallajust received is 1.0.4 patch, the issue isn’t solved alongside it. Fortunately, the issue should be resolved before the end of the year, though that’s still quite the wait to play the game the way it was intended.
Assassin’s Creed Valhallais available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
