Fire Emblem Fates Cuts Petting From English Version

[FirstNameLastName]

So I just looked up what this actually is, and ...
Effeminate, anime guy bordering on androgynous; fox tail and ears; weird fan-service mini game; yep, this is about as Japanese as it gets. I can sort of see why this type of thing isn't expected to fly with Western audiences, but then again, what's the overlap between people who are interested in this game and those who have a low tolerance for Japanese weirdness?

Oh no...that was holding the game together. Really, is anyone seriously going to miss this?

to be fair no, but how many more things are they going to cut?

I dunno, how many more stupid things are there in this game that just don't work outside of Japan?

I'd say the marrying your sister/brother but Game of Thrones is a thing, so...

Wait what? *Googles* Oh...WHAT!?

Just...just tell me something. Is this going to be like Game of Thrones where they treat it as fairly messed up? Or is it going to make it uber cutesy the way Fire Emblem has a tendency to do? Because if it's the later I think I have a date with a Jacuzzi filled with brain bleach.

I'm hardily the first person to make this rather stale observation, but isn't it strange that games where you can drag an innocent old lady out of her car and slit her throat, our douse a dog in petrol and set it on fire in front of the owner, is seen as acceptable content by Western gamers, but ploughing your sibling is just too far.
As fun as it is to laugh at Japan and their weirdly sexual media, I can't help but recognize that the content of our media depicts far worse atrocities than the strange sexual acts of Japanese media.

 

[Erttheking]

Oh no...that was holding the game together. Really, is anyone seriously going to miss this?

I can't believe people are seriously justifying the removal of an entire part of the game, when has that EVER been ok?

I guess you could call a tiny little mini-game an "Entire part of a game" but just barely. As for it being ok, well, seriously what are we losing because of this? I mean XCOM 2 is taking out the air battles that the last one has and no one is upset over that.

If XCOM 2 came out in Europe with air battles but America's version was cut people most definitely be upset.

I doubt it, considering how underwhelming they were.

 

[BX3]

Y'know, the more and more I hear about this game, the more I'm starting to worry that I'm not gonna be getting the dating sim I was promised upon release.

That sucks....

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

I wasn't going to buy the game for financial reasons, but now I have a moderate ethical concern as well. Don't cut the game up with features in different reasons. I'm a fucking adult; I can decide if the game is too Japanese for myself.

 

[Erttheking]

I'm hardily the first person to make this rather stale observation, but isn't it strange that games where you can drag an innocent old lady out of her car and slit her throat, our douse a dog in petrol and set it on fire in front of the owner, is seen as acceptable content by Western gamers, but ploughing your sibling is just too.
As fun as it is to laugh at Japan and their weirdly sexual media, I can't help but recognize that the content of our media depicts far worse atrocities than the strange sexual acts of Japanese media.

Yeah except most games don't portray slitting the throat of old women as something cute and adorable. My concerns are the game portraying the incest in the typical cutesy manner that all Fire Emblem romances are portrayed as. When Jaimie and Cersei were a couple of Game of Thrones, it was loving (Until Cersei went bananas) but it was still very dysfunctional. I overplayed my reaction but I'm really more annoyed than anything else. I just feel like this is going to be a sappy oversimplification of all the baggage that would come with a brother-sister relationship.

Also I don't think this is a really a Japanese culture thing. I know they like to have romance between adopted siblings but I've never really heard of them being really into blood brother sister relationships

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I'm hardily the first person to make this rather stale observation, but isn't it strange that games where you can drag an innocent old lady out of her car and slit her throat, our douse a dog in petrol and set it on fire in front of the owner, is seen as acceptable content by Western gamers, but ploughing your sibling is just too.
As fun as it is to laugh at Japan and their weirdly sexual media, I can't help but recognize that the content of our media depicts far worse atrocities than the strange sexual acts of Japanese media.

Yeah except most games don't portray slitting the throat of old women as something cute and adorable. My concerns are the game portraying the incest in the typical cutesy manner that all Fire Emblem romances are portrayed as. When Jaimie and Cersei were a couple of Game of Thrones, it was loving (Until Cersei went bananas) but it was still very dysfunctional. I overplayed my reaction but I'm really more annoyed than anything else. I just feel like this is going to be a sappy oversimplification of all the baggage that would come with a brother-sister relationship.

Also I don't think this is a really a Japanese culture thing. I know they like to have romance between adopted siblings but I've never really heard of them being really into blood brother sister relationships

Even so, there's plenty of violence in games that isn't really justified but the morality of it is completely brushed over, particularly when it concerns rival factions. I know this tends to be how people in real life view conflicts, with all members of the opposing faction declared evil, but still, how many times in videogames have you killed a bunch of guards who probably weren't evil people? Often in RPGs the other people are treated as a generic mob; no different to a wolf or giant spider.
when compared to the kinds of violence that videogames often have, I really don't see why I should care even the slightest bit about incest. After all, is not like people will play the game and immediately say "Oh no, now that I've witnessed incest without any heavy-handed condemnation I no longer find it repulsive. I guess I'm now sexually attracted to family members. Damn you Fire Emblem!"

Now, I can see why it would be deemed unmarketable to western audiences, but I don't see why I or anyone else should be annoyed, angered, upset, outraged or bothered in the slightest, especially since I'm pretty sure it's optional anyway.

 

[xaszatm]

Oh no...that was holding the game together. Really, is anyone seriously going to miss this?

to be fair no, but how many more things are they going to cut?

I dunno, how many more stupid things are there in this game that just don't work outside of Japan?

I'd say the marrying your sister/brother but Game of Thrones is a thing, so...

Wait what? *Googles* Oh...WHAT!?

Just...just tell me something. Is this going to be like Game of Thrones where they treat it as fairly messed up? Or is it going to make it uber cutesy the way Fire Emblem has a tendency to do? Because if it's the later I think I have a date with a Jacuzzi filled with brain bleach.

Yes and no. It's treated lighter than it was in the 4th game (then again, the 4th game is just as good as A Game of Thrones and both book and game came out in the same year) but...

Spoiler

You're not really related to your family by blood. You're actually the son of an evil god. So, you're technically not doing incest.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Some people jump from "I think this is dumb" to "so it shouldn't be in the game " with an irrational line of reasoning. The thing to follow up that statement is "and I won't play the game/use the mechanic" and nothing else.


Nintendo is making a bet that more people would have not gotten the game with the mechanic intact than they are losing through censorship and it is in our hands to prove them wrong. These kinds of minigames are nothing new. In senran kagura you can blow on the 3ds microphone to lift the skirts of characterz even, and the game had a T rating and nobody died due to it being released. It did well enough to move up its sequel into a physical version too. There's no reason this game is any different.

I kinda had not much interest to begin with but now I have to add this to the import or ignore pile.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Yeah, but usually games fall into some kind of niche where they work their way around it. Either the enemies are cartoonishly evil (Most of Fire Emblem) the heroes are kinda psychotic (GTA, Borderlands 2) or they actually explore that morality. I do get where you're coming from though. Though the thing I'm trying to get at is tone. With games with violence tend to match their tone with their level of violence, and it gets to be problematic when they don't (Welkin in Vaklyria Chronicles talking about how he loves nature when driving towards the enemy lines in a tank makes him sound like a psychopath) I guess I just have my doubts of the game being able to come up with a tone that'll work.

Probably because incest is still rather taboo. Also your sister is considerably younger than you.

 

[Souplex]

Before people start going on about how this game is just too super Japanese, I'd like to point out Awakening sold well everywhere, not just in Japan, and that it had the best sales of any Fire Emblem in virtually all regions. Fates, spiritual successor that it is, is unlikely to be the kind of game that only appeals to the Japanese audience and I think its fair to argue that the Japanese audience was not the only audience IS had in mind when it was made.

To be fair, the reason Fates sold whereas other Emblems did not is that it was the only Fire Emblem to ever receive any form of advertising outside of Japan.

Oh no...that was holding the game together. Really, is anyone seriously going to miss this?

to be fair no, but how many more things are they going to cut?

I dunno, how many more stupid things are there in this game that just don't work outside of Japan?

I'm not sure that they so much "Worked" in Japan as they were tolerated. I don't think those work anywhere.

 

[Erttheking]

Oh no...that was holding the game together. Really, is anyone seriously going to miss this?

to be fair no, but how many more things are they going to cut?

I dunno, how many more stupid things are there in this game that just don't work outside of Japan?

I'd say the marrying your sister/brother but Game of Thrones is a thing, so...

Wait what? *Googles* Oh...WHAT!?

Just...just tell me something. Is this going to be like Game of Thrones where they treat it as fairly messed up? Or is it going to make it uber cutesy the way Fire Emblem has a tendency to do? Because if it's the later I think I have a date with a Jacuzzi filled with brain bleach.

Yes and no. It's treated lighter than it was in the 4th game (then again, the 4th game is just as good as A Game of Thrones and both book and game came out in the same year) but...

Spoiler

You're not really related to your family by blood. You're actually the son of an evil god. So, you're technically not doing incest.

Well that's certainly a thing. I really don't know how to react to this anymore. I think I need to sleep on this. It's certainly an improvement.

Thank you very much for making sure that I was informed on this.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

Snip

Yeah, but usually games fall into some kind of niche where they work their way around it. Either the enemies are cartoonishly evil (Most of Fire Emblem) the heroes are kinda psychotic (GTA, Borderlands 2) or they actually explore that morality. I do get where you're coming from though. Though the thing I'm trying to get at is tone. With games with violence tend to match their tone with their level of violence, and it gets to be problematic when they don't (Welkin in Vaklyria Chronicles talking about how he loves nature when driving towards the enemy lines in a tank makes him sound like a psychopath) I guess I just have my doubts of the game being able to come up with a tone that'll work.

Probably because incest is still rather taboo. Also your sister is considerably younger than you.

I agree that mishandling such things can completely fuck the tone, my point was more of a moral one, that portraying it in a more light hearted way that doesn't take a stand against it shouldn't be considered off limits or "too far". Maybe it's just because I'm fairly lax when it comes to sexuality, so unless there are consent issues I file it under "weird shit I'm apathetic to."

 

[Zhukov]

Is that the thing I heard about where you order your teenage companion NPCs into your room one-by-one, undress them and then feel them up to fill a some kind of bonding meter?

I dunno folks. I don't think the game will be quite the same without that feature.

If XCOM 2 came out in Europe with air battles but America's version was cut people most definitely be upset.

Can't speak for anyone else, but as someone who loves some XCOM, I would have been overjoyed to get a version without the air battles.

They were half-baked, barely interactive, relied on arbitrary and hidden dice rolls, didn't allow the player many options and were an annoying resource sink.

If there was a mod to remove them I would have installed it in a flash and I'm glad they're not going to be in XCOM2.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Yeah, but usually games fall into some kind of niche where they work their way around it. Either the enemies are cartoonishly evil (Most of Fire Emblem) the heroes are kinda psychotic (GTA, Borderlands 2) or they actually explore that morality. I do get where you're coming from though. Though the thing I'm trying to get at is tone. With games with violence tend to match their tone with their level of violence, and it gets to be problematic when they don't (Welkin in Vaklyria Chronicles talking about how he loves nature when driving towards the enemy lines in a tank makes him sound like a psychopath) I guess I just have my doubts of the game being able to come up with a tone that'll work.

Probably because incest is still rather taboo. Also your sister is considerably younger than you.

I agree that mishandling such things can completely fuck the tone, my point was more of a moral one, that portraying it in a more light hearted way that doesn't take a stand against it shouldn't be considered off limits or "too far". Maybe it's just because I'm fairly lax when it comes to sexuality, so unless there are consent issues I file it under "weird shit I'm apathetic to."

I feel the need to admit that I'm fairly squicked out by incest even though I can't really admit to having a good reason to. One thing I feel a bit more comfortable being squicked out by is the relationship being between a much older person and a younger person. It tends to work better outside of a family but inside of a family there's implications of an unequal power balance. If they want to tackle incest, they should be able to. I'm just pointing out problems I have with the concept. One that I admit is totally irrational on my part, and one I feel isn't so irrational. I'm not against it entirely, I've just got doubts about the quality of the end result.

Thanks for putting up with me not being that calm by the way. I've had a hell of a night and I haven't exactly been composing myself.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

Before people start going on about how this game is just too super Japanese, I'd like to point out Awakening sold well everywhere, not just in Japan, and that it had the best sales of any Fire Emblem in virtually all regions. Fates, spiritual successor that it is, is unlikely to be the kind of game that only appeals to the Japanese audience and I think its fair to argue that the Japanese audience was not the only audience IS had in mind when it was made.

To be fair, the reason Fates sold whereas other Emblems did not is that it was the only Fire Emblem to ever receive any form of advertising outside of Japan.

Path of Radiance was pretty heavily advertised, though it also was one of the better selling games (I think???) in the series so I guess that reinforces your point.

In senran kagura you can blow on the 3ds microphone to lift the skirts of characterz even, and the game had a T rating and nobody died due to it being released. It did well enough to move up its sequel into a physical version too. There's no reason this game is any different.

What the hell?? Why in the world are you comparing Fire Emblem to a fucking panty fighter? You realize the dramatic difference in budget and expected return between these two games, among a million other differences. If Senran Kagura gets a hundred thousand in sales outside of Japan, it did well. If Fire Emblem does, they stop localizing it. That's not even an exaggeration, that's literally what they did. You cannot compare the sales expectations and target audiences of these two dramatically different games.

I mean, I'm not against niche games like Senran Kagura existing or being made, but fuck, that's just not what Fire Emblem is.

 

[Cybylt]

In senran kagura you can blow on the 3ds microphone to lift the skirts of characterz even, and the game had a T rating and nobody died due to it being released. It did well enough to move up its sequel into a physical version too. There's no reason this game is any different.

What the hell?? Why in the world are you comparing Fire Emblem to a fucking panty fighter? You realize the dramatic difference in budget and expected return between these two games, among a million other differences. If Senran Kagura gets a hundred thousand in sales outside of Japan, it did well. If Fire Emblem does, they stop localizing it. That's not even an exaggeration, that's literally what they did. You cannot compare the sales expectations and target audiences of these two dramatically different games.

I mean, I'm not against niche games like Senran Kagura existing or being made, but fuck, that's just not what Fire Emblem is.

No, but it is what the franchise is turning into, if not what it already is between this and the SMT crossover.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

I am pretty sure Fire Emblem is still quite aways away from turning into a panty fighter. Fanservice would have to be the main selling point in the first thing in a long list of things it'd have to do

 

[Orga777]

Things get changed all the time. If all Japanese games that were released in the US with all the weird Japanese stuff still in them, we probably wouldn't have very many Japanese games here at all. If getting rid of creepy petting and a ridiculous character issue to get more people to buy different games, then that is a good thing. Usually when a franchise gets big enough, people change dynamics of the game to make it more accessable to as many people as possible. This is called smart business practice. And considering the US buys more games than Japan at this point, well, you do the math.

People complain about artistic integrity too much. Jesus. It is like it isn't the companies themselves doing the alterations or something.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

In senran kagura you can blow on the 3ds microphone to lift the skirts of characterz even, and the game had a T rating and nobody died due to it being released. It did well enough to move up its sequel into a physical version too. There's no reason this game is any different.

What the hell?? Why in the world are you comparing Fire Emblem to a fucking panty fighter? You realize the dramatic difference in budget and expected return between these two games, among a million other differences. If Senran Kagura gets a hundred thousand in sales outside of Japan, it did well. If Fire Emblem does, they stop localizing it. That's not even an exaggeration, that's literally what they did. You cannot compare the sales expectations and target audiences of these two dramatically different games.

I mean, I'm not against niche games like Senran Kagura existing or being made, but fuck, that's just not what Fire Emblem is.

No, but it is what the franchise is turning into, if not what it already is between this and the SMT crossover.

The SMT crossover will either be a glorious disaster or Persona with Fire Emblems. In either case I will enjoy it, even if it dramatically under-performs.

Still, it's not a panty fighter, just the most Japanese big budget game ever conceived.