To censor or not to sensor. (Localization for North America)

[The DanMan]

Is there any precedent for games getting a lower age rating in the United States than in Japan without changes to the content in question? Since that's what would be required for it to stay as-is and get a T rating.

Monster Hunter is Cero 15.

Yeah the way it is now, it more or less lines up with the MPAA's movie rating system.

E = G

E10+ = PG

T = PG-13

M = R

AO = NC-17

Edit: Now that I think about it I do have some old Game Gear games rated K-A and looking at the box Diddy Kong Racing for the N64 is still K-A. Makes me feel old.

I'd say that's not exactly accurate. E alot of the time seems to lean towards FV7 (to use TV ratings). E10 also tends to lean more towards that than straight PG. T is generally a "light" PG-13. M is anywhere from a "hard" PG-13 (Halo, for example, has had two live action miniseries that have been rated TV-14 with similar content to the games) to R. But I've spent way too much time thinking about this in the past.

Rune Factory 4 had hot springs too... o_o People had half naked sprites, and it was rated T. No one freaked out about it.

I'm not sure why that feature is so shocking to people in particular.

Maybe the Amie lines, but not really the hot springs.

What Rune Factory 4 are you talking about? It's E10+.

Anyway, I'm just expecting the toning down of the skinship lines and changes to Camilla's intro cutscene.

[Water Mage]

I remember Camillas's intro appearing in the E3 trailer, and even if only a part of it appeared, it looked the same as the original.

[littleprince]

I was debating responding for a while and here is my two cents.

Honestly? I don't believe there should be censorship. I believe there probably will be, but I won't agree with (most of) it. Unless they just slap a T rating on it and be done with it (wishful thinking). I've seen streams of both Hoshido and Nohr game so far, and it's really, really good. Like, really good, story wise. The only things I can see getting smacked with censoring are probably some supports, the skinship and maybe the bathhouse.

But because we were shown the bathhouse and skinship and all the little pandering fanservicey things in the most recent amount of videos... Plus the insane amount of misinformation that shows up every couple of days people are shouting out for censorship/removal of these completely optional extras/etc.

Supports are gonna get slapped with censorship, no doubt about it, no matter how much they fly under Western ideal radar. I really really really hope they don't, but FEA had some of its supports completely warped (see: Henry. Just Henry in general. Localisation's poster boy). They'll either make them more humorous, make up backstories for characters again, or just. FEA. All over again. The "sibling" supports are probably going to be thoroughly scraped with an iron, simply because of how hard Famitsu and other material pushed the family angle.

for it to turn around in game with a lol no you're not related

I'd prefer most of the supports not suffer FEA's treatment but they probably will.

Skinship isn't some new original concept in games, it's just new to FE. And because FE is still riding on the high from Awakening, naturally it's got a backlash from the Western Audience, who aren't even the target audience in the first place. I suppose this is also due to most people not being completely introduced to this addition from otome games, VNs, even most mobile games because of region lock. In FE, until you marry someone, the patting is literally just on the head, rather affectionately, and pretty familial. After marriage, that's when it gets I suppose, pretty risqué. I listen to drama cds. If anything, some of the lines are more amusing than lewd, and it's just another one of those things. And like many people in this thread said, Senran had so much more than this and it got through. I would honestly hope skinship makes it throughout we'll see.

Tales of Xillia anyone? The little ova type thing for the males in the bathhouse, then getting eaten, then being rubbed up against each other all suggestively with heavy blushing yadayadayada. Rune Factory also has this. If anything, from the few bathhouse scenes I've seen, it's just funny. And I don't think most people realise that if this option stays in the game, you don't have to? My only reason for seeing it stay is that the Nohr game has very limited options to allow you to build supports and this would be one of the ways to do it.

tldr; I hope they don't censor the game at all, but if they do I hope they don't do it heavily. If things get changed, well, I'm gonna gripe about it until the next century. Just now with the explosion of stuff on tumblr making its way onto sites like Kotaku and Destructoid, there's gonna be censorship, no questions asked.

Edited July 2, 2015 by littleprince

[Reflex]

Holy hell, did you seriously call Henry censorship? They made him MORE brutal in the locazliation, because he killed with a code instead of being a misunderstood guy cliche.

Please clarify, because that was really stupid.

[littleprince]

Sorry, no I was wrong there. Got my wording messed up. Localisation made him more into a gimmick than anything else. Added a new backstory to explain his violent tendencies, gave him mage camp and magic school and all that.

In the original he was just childish. For whatever reason the localisation made him more macabre. Again, apologies on my wording.

[TheEnd]

M tag or bust.

[Airship Canon]

Henry got warped by the localization [Particularly his support with Olivia], but for the most part, he was left alone.

[littleprince]

Henry got warped by the localization [Particularly his support with Olivia], but for the most part, he was left alone.

I honestly regret bringing up Henry now but his support with Olivia was definitely messed with. Also with Panne, Cordelia, somewhat in the DLC... etc etc even just idle conversation. I've never been sure why they ever did that to him considering he was very low-key in the original Japanese. But whatever, Awakening was several years ago now and I regret mentioning him (mostly did as an example of what localisation can do to a character).

Someone wrote more examples here if you care to read it: link

[kewl0210]

It's actually fairly common for Japanese games to have dialogue changed to avoid misunderstandings. Like if there's a harmless trope in Japan that doesn't exist in the US, people could take it the wrong way.

Janet Hsu, the head localizer for some of the Ace Attorney games talks about it here:

http://www.capcom-unity.com/zeroobjections/blog/2014/11/21/localization-and-ace-attorney

Here's the quote I'm talking about here:

Even still, there have been times when the original Japanese dialogue was simply too over the line. I’m speaking of course, of everyone’s favorite lecherous fake doctor -- Director Hotti. To say nothing of what he says about Mia, which, while not necessarily taboo, was definitely skirting that line between a T and an M rating back in 2006, if you show Dr. Hotti a picture of Pearl in AA2, episode 2, he says some pretty average-sounding things on paper that become three text boxes of “Absolutely Not!” when combined with his grabby pervert animation.

You’ll note that in suggestion C, I was thinking of changing the animations altogether to further reduce the ick factor, but unfortunately, the team was unable to change the animations for the localized version, so a text rewrite where Hotti’s lechery is directed at an adult nurse was the option we chose to go with. Does this count as “censorship”? Maybe. But again, creators are not out to offend their players either.

Japanese humor related to pedophilia and perversion is calibrated to a very different standard than the one we use in America. No one in Japan thinks that pedophilia is great or even OK. In fact, people are usually very upset whenever there is an article in the newspaper about a schoolchild who’s been abducted or found dead after being abducted. But how a culture chooses to deal with these sorts of issues is up to that culture, and in Japan, it’s still OK to have lecherous characters to laugh at in order to defuse some of the harshness of reality. But don’t evermistake that for wide-spread approval because the perverted characters that hit on little girls are never the good guys and are always the butt of jokes or the bad guys or play some other negative role. In this case, the punchline and real knee-slapper part comes from Phoenix’s very strong reaction against Hotti, who serves as the “silly set-up character”. When thinking about it in the cultural context of Japanese society, the original Japanese is wildly perverted, but is still funny to a Japanese person. In America, the original would have just been sickening to a lot of people regardless of how the last line played out because it’s not something we joke about in the same way at all.

Localizing usually isn't the same as censoring (Except, you know, when they just stick a curtain in front of something). The idea of establishing something differently to avoid discrepancies between cultural differences is very common. If it's not offensive/odd/is a trope or cliche in Japanese, but it is in English, it won't have the same impact on the English audience as it does on the Japanese one. Which is why changes like that get made.

Edited July 2, 2015 by kewl0210

[The DanMan]

Sorry, no I was wrong there. Got my wording messed up. Localisation made him more into a gimmick than anything else. Added a new backstory to explain his violent tendencies, gave him mage camp and magic school and all that.

In the original he was just childish. For whatever reason the localisation made him more macabre. Again, apologies on my wording.

At least NOA is doing the localization themselves rather than 8-4 (who, from my experience with another game they localized, seem to have a track record of pulling crap like this). So the changes will (hopefully) be minimal and much more low-key.

[Sky Soldier]

There's good localization and bad localization. For every Henry (whom everyone seems to think was ruined forever) there is a Gregor (who was a completely boring nobody in the original but was turned into a fan favorite with some creative writing).

There are actually many places in this story where I would like for the localization team to smooth things over, not to really change the impact of anything, but just so that people here can actually understand why a specific character would act the way they do. So that things make sense.

[Haeresis]

Everyone know what expect from the localization team.

Thanks for the QQ

[Airship Canon]

There's good localization and bad localization. For every Henry (whom everyone seems to think was ruined forever) there is a Gregor (who was a completely boring nobody in the original but was turned into a fan favorite with some creative writing).

There are actually many places in this story where I would like for the localization team to smooth things over, not to really change the impact of anything, but just so that people here can actually understand why a specific character would act the way they do. So that things make sense.

See they're busy turning Pier-Err Cotton Candy head into the next Henry.

They're molesting poor Tsukuyomi's supports,

and leaving Soleil exactly the way she is.

[Reflex]

There's good localization and bad localization. For every Henry (whom everyone seems to think was ruined forever) there is a Gregor (who was a completely boring nobody in the original but was turned into a fan favorite with some creative writing).

There are actually many places in this story where I would like for the localization team to smooth things over, not to really change the impact of anything, but just so that people here can actually understand why a specific character would act the way they do. So that things make sense.

Nope, got to preserve the terrible translations from amatuer 1st year japanese speakers because of purity, Sky Soldier-sama. Because translating is just direct-wording japanese sentences each kanji at a time without an editor.

[Giga Man]

I don't think this is a big deal for VAs as much as people think. Assuming most of the FE14 english cast is made of FE13 VAs, these people also did work for games like Conception 2, which is an extremely fanservicy game with dialogue far more lewd than anything you'll see on Amie.

Heh. You're right.

[Eveangaline]

Eh, I play these games for the strategy story and characters. If they decide to remove sexy stuff I don't really care, since I don't buy the games as fap material. So long as the game's good, I don't care if they take out facerubbing, sibling marriage, or put Camilla in a t shirt and pants.

[Somnium]

What Rune Factory 4 are you talking about? It's E10+.

Wups, I remembered that wrong LOL. You're correct. However that does further prove my point.

RF4 had some suggestive dialogue too when you're married (when you sleep in your spouse's bed), and it's not even rated T.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Somnium

[Chalis]

Wups, I remembered that wrong LOL. You're correct. However that does further prove my point.

RF4 had some suggestive dialogue too when you're married (when you sleep in your spouse's bed), and it's not even rated T.

Hello.

[Glorie]

They are probably going to censor and change a few things, but I hope they don't change too much.

For instance, Zero's lines with virtually everyone are very informal, familiar, rude, and down-right lewd. That's how he keeps people at arms' length; he jokes around to deflect and tries to gross people out so they leave him alone. However, once he warms up to someone, he's super sweet. I really hope that they don't change that, since it's a big part of his character.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Tigerpanda13

[General Banzai]

Nowi made it through unscathed

We're gonna be okay

[Airship Canon]

Nowi made it through unscathed

We're gonna be okay

The real question now, is will the fleet of lancasters in bound for the City of "Weren't paying attention to today" make it through?

Will MKamui/Soleil survive?

Because after today's spectacle... I sure ****ing hope so.

[Reflex]

There are things I 100% do not want changed for the Western release. There are things I 100% DO want changed. It's very hard to predict at this point what will and won't be edited, but I think it's important to get it out there, from someone who's played the games in Japanese:

YOU HAVE NEVER PLAYED AN "INTACT" FIRE EMBLEM.

Here are some changes you probably never even knew existed:

1. Eliwood - Eliwood's personality was completely rewritten for the English localization of Blazing Sword. While in the original Japanese script he was submissive, shy, stammering, and sensitive, he was given a more typically heroic personality for our release? Why? Western consumers tend to consider effeminate men weak and can't admire them as heroes. Eliwood was more like Ricken than Chrom, and would have turned a predominantly straight male audience off. The biggest example of this is how before the final fight, Eliwood says "Everyone, stand back, this is my fight!" in the English, and "Everyone, I need you now, I can't do this alone!" in the Japanese.

2. Marth - Marth in Shadow Dragon underwent basically the exact same treatment as Eliwood. Sweetness, shyness, bashfulness and "weakness" erased and replaced with Western heroism.

3. Soren - The prickly, bitter, angry Soren we all fell in love with has very little in common with his Japanese counterpart. All the parts of him that are angry and sour in the English are translated from, again, a very submissive, weak, and feminine personality in the Japanese. His interest in Ike as a love interest was a hundred times more explicit and there was very little doubt that Soren, at least, was in love. (Ike was still debatable.)

4. Inigo - Japanese Inigo was a bashful, awkward failure and had zero success with women. He was defined more by his awkward try-hardness and basically never actually got a girl because he was too busy falling all over himself. (This is easy to tell if you turn on Japanese audio and listen to him talk.)

5. Lyn - Lyn was 15 in the Japanese version. Aging her up to 18 was just a basic Westernizing, so that her romantic supports and exposed thighs are less creepy.

6. Nowi - Nowi was written as a MUCH younger character in the Japanese script of Awakening. She skews about 14 in the English version, but appeared more 5-10 in the Japanese. The English goes to lengths to establish that Nowi only ACTS young. Also an invention. Nah literally calls her father a lolicon in their supports in the Japanese version, instead of the "pregnancy" comments.

7. Character Names - I'd say around 40% or more of the character names we have are changed from the Japanese.

8. The Black Knight - In the Japanese version of PoR, the Black Knight warps out of the collapsing fortress rather than disappearing under it. Western consumers are much less able to accept small plot holes like this than Eastern ones, so it was an obvious change.

9. Kyza & Heather - Both were explicitly gay in the Japanese. Kyza's entire personality was stripped, because he was an offensive gay stereotype in Japan -- an "okama." Heather's flirting was turned up to 11 in the Japanese. There's a whole fascinating debate to be had about whether Kyza's sexuality disappearing is good or bad, but the undebatable side of it is that Radiant Dawn came out, it was 2007, eight years ago, and there was an entirely different public opinion in America about homosexuality than there is today.

10. Henry - Henry is another one of those 100% rewritten characters. In the Japanese, he was neglected by his parents, raised by a wolf, killed his entire village after the wolf was killed, sent to an orphanage after that where he was tortured and broken. No magic school, no mage camp. He (edit: TRIES VERY HARD TO) kill the puppy in his Olivia support to put it out of its misery. No puns, and his laughter is less jokey and more sinister. An obvious change because the darkness of the original character didn't seem to fit into Awakening's slilghtly goofy anime tone.

[SilverPants]

There are things I 100% do not want changed for the Western release. There are things I 100% DO want changed. It's very hard to predict at this point what will and won't be edited, but I think it's important to get it out there, from someone who's played the games in Japanese:

YOU HAVE NEVER PLAYED AN "INTACT" FIRE EMBLEM.

Here are some changes you probably never even knew existed:

1. Eliwood - Eliwood's personality was completely rewritten for the English localization of Blazing Sword. While in the original Japanese script he was submissive, shy, stammering, and sensitive, he was given a more typically heroic personality for our release? Why? Western consumers tend to consider effeminate men weak and can't admire them as heroes. Eliwood was more like Ricken than Chrom, and would have turned a predominantly straight male audience off. The biggest example of this is how before the final fight, Eliwood says "Everyone, stand back, this is my fight!" in the English, and "Everyone, I need you now, I can't do this alone!" in the Japanese.

2. Marth - Marth in Shadow Dragon underwent basically the exact same treatment as Eliwood. Sweetness, shyness, bashfulness and "weakness" erased and replaced with Western heroism.

3. Soren - The prickly, bitter, angry Soren we all fell in love with has very little in common with his Japanese counterpart. All the parts of him that are angry and sour in the English are translated from, again, a very submissive, weak, and feminine personality in the Japanese. His interest in Ike as a love interest was a hundred times more explicit and there was very little doubt that Soren, at least, was in love. (Ike was still debatable.)

4. Inigo - Japanese Inigo was a bashful, awkward failure and had zero success with women. He was defined more by his awkward try-hardness and basically never actually got a girl because he was too busy falling all over himself. (This is easy to tell if you turn on Japanese audio and listen to him talk.)

5. Lyn - Lyn was 15 in the Japanese version. Aging her up to 18 was just a basic Westernizing, so that her romantic supports and exposed thighs are less creepy.

6. Nowi - Nowi was written as a MUCH younger character in the Japanese script of Awakening. She skews about 14 in the English version, but appeared more 5-10 in the Japanese. The English goes to lengths to establish that Nowi only ACTS young. Also an invention. Nah literally calls her father a lolicon in their supports in the Japanese version, instead of the "pregnancy" comments.

7. Character Names - I'd say around 40% or more of the character names we have are changed from the Japanese.

8. The Black Knight - In the Japanese version of PoR, the Black Knight warps out of the collapsing fortress rather than disappearing under it. Western consumers are much less able to accept small plot holes like this than Eastern ones, so it was an obvious change.

9. Kyza & Heather - Both were explicitly gay in the Japanese. Kyza's entire personality was stripped, because he was an offensive gay stereotype in Japan -- an "okama." Heather's flirting was turned up to 11 in the Japanese. There's a whole fascinating debate to be had about whether Kyza's sexuality disappearing is good or bad, but the undebatable side of it is that Radiant Dawn came out, it was 2007, eight years ago, and there was an entirely different public opinion in America about homosexuality than there is today.

10. Henry - Henry is another one of those 100% rewritten characters. In the Japanese, he was neglected by his parents, raised by a wolf, killed his entire village after the wolf was killed, sent to an orphanage after that where he was tortured and broken. No magic school, no mage camp. He (edit: TRIES VERY HARD TO) kill the puppy in his Olivia support to put it out of its misery. No puns, and his laughter is less jokey and more sinister. An obvious change because the darkness of the original character didn't seem to fit into Awakening's slilghtly goofy anime tone.

My whole life is a lie...

I actually really enjoyed reading about all the changes made for these game. Is there more of this stuff or are these all the changes made for the localized games?

Now I'm curious, what are they going to do this time?

[Giga Man]

A little piece of Henry's old past almost slipped out in his support with Panne. He said he was abandoned by his parents in the woods and was raised by the "nice animals" who lived there. Later, they died. The End.

^{_{I had to look up that support because I really thought he said something about a wolf in the English version, but no.}}

Edited July 3, 2015 by Giga Man

[AceDaemon]

i really hope they won't censor too much stuff, i mean senran kagura is a fan service overload game and it's released internationally without it being censored xD