It seems a little odd to instantly undermine your game’s central selling point. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what’s happening with Square Enix’s new title.
The Quiet Man, which is due to release on PC and PlayStation this November, centres on the journey of a deaf protagonist as he searches for a kidnapped “songstress” in a dark city. According to the game’s Steam page, one of the key features of the game is that players can “experience the world in the way Dane does” – in other words, without sound. How strange it is, then, that the game is receiving a post-release update which will add sound and speech on a second playthrough.
The optional mode, which was revealed in a recent Japanese live stream (via Gematsu), is due to arrive one week after the game’s release. The Quiet Man’s Steam page description explains that the first playthrough will have “very little distinct audio and no subtitles,” leaving it up to players to “make up [their] own interpretation of the story”. The second playthrough, therefore, is supposed to reveal the “truth” by introducing the full dialogue.
Source: Eurogamer The Quiet Man's second playthrough will add sound in a game about deafness