Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro, director and writer of Deadly Premonition 2, has taken to Twitter to apologise for the handling of a transgender character in the game.
Following the release of Deadly Premonition 2 last week, players and reviewers criticised the way a transgender character had been depicted, with USgamer’s Mathew Olson highlighting that the character was sometimes misgendered and deadnamed (using a transgender person’s old name from before their transition).
“I realised by pointed out from friends, I might have hurt transgender people in my scenario,” Suehiro said on Twitter (with the help of Google Translate). “It wasn’t intentional. I am really sorry for that.”
Good morning everyone.
I need to tell you about my apologies about DP2.
So I wrote message by myself with Google-sensei.
Please forgive my poor english skills.SWERY pic.twitter.com/x5fR114HnF
— Hidetaka SWERY SueHERO (@Swery65) July 13, 2020
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According to Suehiro’s message, some scenes will now be checked over by a team “that include[s] diversity”, while Suehiro will rewrite the scene that caused problems. While the errors probably shouldn’t have slipped through the proof-reading stages, it’s good to see they’re now being addressed.