Resi Evil 5 isn't racist, says BBFC

The British Board of Film Classification has dismissed suggestions that a particular scene in Resident Evil 5 is racist.

It's the bit where you see "a white blonde woman being dragged off, screaming, by black men", as our preview put it. Then, "When you attempt to rescue her, she's been turned and must be killed."

Kikizo also thought the scene was dodgy, and contacted the BBFC to see if they agree.

Board executive Sue Clark responded, "In the version [of the scene] submitted to the BBFC there is only one man pulling the blonde woman in from the balcony, and I can't say the skimpiness of her dress impressed itself on me. The single man is not black either.

"As the whole game is set in Africa it is hardly surprising that some of the characters are black, just like the fact that some of the characters in an earlier version were Spanish as the game was set in Spain," Clark continued.

"We do take racism very seriously, but in this case there is no issue around racism."

Odd that both Eurogamer and Kikizo reported it was black men doing the dragging, but presumably we were given an earlier version of the code than the one submitted to the BBFC.

[Editor's note, 9.51am: Having played through the code myself, I can confirm that the man doing the initial dragging is not black. When you enter the room, however, you face off against the monster version of the blonde girl and several black men. We'll very likely be exploring the specifics of this further in a blog post soon.]

"Just for information, were the distributors to be supplying a version of the game which we had not classified it would be illegal under the terms of the VRA [Video Recordings Act]," Clark added.

Even there was an issue, "the BBFC would not automatically cut a work for racism", said Clark.

"We would normally give a work a higher rating to take it away from younger consumers who might not understand the issues surrounding racist remarks or attitudes. In this case the game is already rated 18 by us, so we would be unlikely to intervene further."

We can all make our own minds up on 13th March, when Resident Evil 5 is released for PS3 and Xbox 360.