Pinocchio-meets-Dark Souls game Lies of P cut 'ACAB' reference to avoid controversy: 'We respect everyone who might want to play this game'
Lies of P is a game that asks a very unexpected question: What if Dark Souls, but Pinocchio? Or the other way around, if you prefer. Either way, it brings the famed puppet who was desperate to be a real boy into the punishing world of third-person soulslike combat, and lest you be envisioning a relatively lighthearted romp with Geppetto and Jiminy Cricket, it is dark—the kind of dark you typically only see when someone is trying to make a point that, hey, maybe a world where wooden children are eaten by whales is a little messed up.
An early Lies of P alpha gameplay trailer set the tone with all sorts of unpleasant imagery, including one bit that sees our man P striding across a bridge with a decapitated figure—an automaton of some sort, presumably—strung up in its arches. More important, though, is a large sign hanging from the body, with four letters scrawled across it: APAB.
The message is obviously a play on ACAB, an acronym meaning All Cops Are Bastards. The phrase actually originated earlier than you might think: in England sometime before 1940. ( But in recent years the slogan has taken on a charged political connotation thanks to its adoption by people opposed to police violence.
That APAB message didn't seem to turn up in future Lies of P promotional materials, though, and in fact a recent playthrough video by Solear Gaming indicates that the message has actually changed: In what looks to be the same scene otherwise, the message hanging off the beheaded marionette now reads, «Purge Puppets.»
In an interview with Video Games on Sports Illustrated, Lies of P director Ji-Won Choi confirmed that the message did in fact stand for All Puppets Are Bastards, and that it was removed in order to avoid controversy.
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