Wuchang: Fallen Feathers baffling ‘censorship’ update stops you killing bosses

A strange update has been released for Wuchang: Fallen Feathers which stops players from killing historical figures, sparking a wave of negative reviews on Steam.

Between Black Myth: Wukong and the upcoming Phantom Blade Zero, there’s an ungoing wave of Chinese-developed Soulslike games at the moment, all mimicking FromSoftware’s single-player formula.

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, developed by Leenzee, is the most recent example. Set during China’s Ming dynasty, the action role-player blends its historical setting with supernatural elements, as protagonist Bai Wuchang contends with a mysterious disease turning people into monsters.

In a bizarre turn of events, the historical aspects of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers have become a controversial sticking point, after an update made alterations to the story and stopped certain historical characters from being killed.

In the game’s version 1.5 update, the developers delivered a comprehensive list of bug updates and alterations. While it all seemed relatively innocuous on the surface, one line raised some alarm bells.

‘Added dialogs for some NPCs to complete some plots,’ read the patch notes. ‘We will further optimise the exhaustion animations in the future to improve the plot performance.’

While ‘plot performance’ sounds like an awkward translation hiccup, players who downloaded the update discovered that this line actually refers to a dramatic change whereby you no longer ‘kill’ certain bosses and other enemies who are based on historical figures.

As highlighted by Lance McDonald on X, certain bosses no longer die after you’ve defeated them but now collapse in exhaustion. These bosses, like Ming General Liu Cheng’en, have altered dialogue too. ‘I won’t stop you going forward but the people ahead will attack you like a monster,’ the boss now says in his ‘exhausted’ state.

The fight with Zhao Yun has similarly been altered, with players reporting that you no longer fight the actual person but his spirit instead. Before the update, when defeated, Yun dies and says: ‘The mortal dream fades, my tale concludes, I understand now, all is as it should be.’

However, now his dialogue has been altered to something more trivial: ‘Ha, still set on this path? Good! That was the trial’s purpose all along! Hahaha!’

These changes have impacted other enemies. It’s claimed the game’s fourth chapter has now become ‘insanely easy because 50% of the enemies are now non-hostile to the player and you can’t attack them during the rebellion outbreak’.

As for the reason behind these changes, McDonald claims this ‘censored’ update is due to ‘pressure from Chinese players who were upset about being able to kill historically significant characters from the end of the Ming Dynasty’.

Other players have left a wave of negative reviews on Steam following the update, noting how the alterations go against the plot of the game, as the crux of the story is based around coming to terms with death.

‘Dev single-handed butchered the whole theme of the story by changing plotlines and catering to the idiotic nationalist, who would never touch the game,’ one Steam review reads. ‘Would not recommend until dev fix this or give global players a way to revert this themselves.’

It seems Reddit posts from players complaining about the changes have been deleted from the game’s official subreddit too, with one user sharing a screenshot of their deleted post on the ‘Soulslike’ subreddit.

While it’s unclear if these changes have been motivated by certain Chinese players or government pressure, the update is clearly something the developers are trying to gloss over. If furore continues though they may be forced to address it.

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