Sony has confirmed that the European version of Beyond: Two Souls is missing content found in the US release.
The cause is the same as that which led to the censorship of The Last of Us in the region – Sony is fearful of irking sensitive European censors. Specifically, the platform holder wanted to ensure the game would be eligible for a PEGI 16 rating.
“There are only two amends between the EU and US versions of the game, amounting to about 5-10 seconds of gameplay that’s not been removed, just edited slightly to be in line with a PEGI 16 rating,” product manager Ross Alexander said on the PlayStation blog.
“For Beyond we wanted to make the game available to as many people as possible, hence applying for a PEGI 16 rating. The 5-10 seconds I mention above would have upped our rating to a PEGI 18, so it made perfect sense to make these two VERY minimal changes to get our planned 16 rating.
“I can assure you that this does not affect the game’s story at all, and that if you didn’t know these scenes had been amended, you wouldn’t even notice.”
Beyond: Two Souls will be released on PS3 on October 11th.