Content warning for sexual assault.

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories (out next week) is a great game - one of my favorite of the year so far, actually! I'm pretty deep into it as of this writing, and plan to have my full thoughts out this weekend. But the further I get into it, the more an early scene in the game sticks out to me. See, Granzella took it upon themselves to depict a scene of attempted rape, and folks: it's bad!

The scene in question happens shortly after you rescue a woman pinned under rubble in a subway tunnel. You grab her and walk upstairs towards the exit. Unfortunately, you're accosted by two drunks who start harassing the two of you. This is where the trouble starts. Right off the bat, you're given a choice to tell the two men, "back off, she's mine." Yikes! That's... not great.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. In what I'd bet dollars to donuts is exclusive to playing as a female character, you're threatened with rape and tied up. Your attackers tell you to stop struggling, before remarking that it's more fun when you resist. Then you're forced into a position where you have to bargain your way out of getting raped. You can beg, struggle, or curse out the men, but one option in particular really sucks: offering to give up the woman you just rescued in exchange for your freedom.

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The game flows the same regardless. You're put in a position where you're tied up and have to crawl around while the men loot the train station, looking for a cutting implement to free yourself (hint: it's the tape cutter behind the counter in the convenience store.) It's yet another novel and clever moment in a game that's full of them, but I couldn't help but feel... gross about the whole thing. Because the subtext of the stealth section is very adjacent to cult gem Haunting Ground: try not to get raped.

Now, look. Depicting sexual assault or attempted assault in a game isn't taboo to me - The Last of Us and Alice: Madness Returns do a great job giving it the gravity it deserves. Disaster Report 4 fails on two major counts. First, this is a generally goofy, campy game with broad humor that's very much in line with the Yakuza franchise - this scene just feels out of place.

Second, there's nothing in the game's content warnings or ESRB labels that warns players that this game has sexual violence in it. I wouldn't have so much of a problem if I knew it was coming. I've been raped more than once, and cornered by men who were cut from the same cloth that these in-game chuds more times than I can count. I'd like to, y'know, know what I'm getting into when I'm playing something.

Again: before this gets twisted as "angry lesbian wants to censor video games," I want to reiterate that I love Disaster Report 4. It's a fantastic game with so much authenticity and ambition. But not warning players about an attempted rape is a bad look on the publisher and developer both, and the scene itself leaves a lot to be desired.

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