When Wuchang: Fallen Feathers launched earlier this year, it was met with a warm reception, continuing the popularity of soulslikes dominating the industry. However, the game’s recent patch, 1.5, is not sitting right with players as the patch makes drastic changes to the game.
Patch 1.5 addresses many of the issues that have been plaguing the game since launch with many performance and optimization fixes. The patch also includes bug fixes and other quality of life improvements such as sped-up healing and the ability to dodge cancel out of the recovery animation. However, many noticed certain lines that seems to have everyone confused:
“Made adjustments to animations, values, and level design for certain NPCs and AI. Added dialogs for some NPCs to complete some plots. We will further optimize the exhaustion animations in the future to improve the plot performance.”
Players have since found out that these notes are in reference to a big change in the game. Now, it is not possible to kill certain bosses and other NPCs who are based on real-life historical figures.
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers takes place in 1600s China at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the last dynasty ruled by the Han Chinese before the Qing took over. The game originally used the ending of the Ming Dynasty to effectively frame its message about death and moving on. There is a heavy focus on themes of death, and being able to accept the death of a loved one or a period in one’s life. Many of the enemies in Fallen Feathers are actively trying to thwart death, or prolong something that will inevitably come to a close. So in several of these cases, them not dying at all completely flies in the face of the game’s message of accepting death’s inevitability.
Prior to the patch, players could target and kill certain human NPCs they encountered throughout the game. Murdering them affected the main character’s “madness” mechanic which changed up the gameplay consideriably. After the patch, this is no longer the case. Players cannot target the NPCs, effectively removing the ability to engage with the “madness” mechanic.
The changes significantly impact Chapter 4 of the game as there are many human enemies trying to attack the main character. Now, those enemies aren’t hostile at all. On top of this, many challenging bosses don’t “die” as they did before. Instead, they either get “exhausted,” or just run away, or claim that the battle was all just a “trial.”
With the changes, a flood of negative Steam reviews and posts on various social media platforms are accusing Leenzee of self-censoring, allegedly due to feedback from a segment of largely Chinese players upset about the game’s treatment of the Ming characters.
“Improving game performance is welcoming,” reads one “not recommended” Steam review from August 13, by someone with 58 hours in the game. “But this must be the first time I’ve heard of story plot change post release. As far as I am aware. Plot change made the story completely different, and even make some of the characters motivation pointless. I don’t know what kind of pressure Leenzee got to go as far as changing the games plot. I’ve read that it was criticized by some gamers for not being historically accurate. But the story is ficiton is it not? I have decided to stop playing for now, and hope Leenzee undo the plot changes. Or at least make it possible to rollback to patch 1.4.”
“Loved the game all the way until patch 1.5,” added another players with 28 hours logged. “Game definitely has its flaws, but in the end very enjoyable. The story was good, combat was great(ish). 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. Would not recommend until dev fix this or give global players a way to revert this themselves.”