Even if the scene were universally decried as homophobic (I don't think it is, actually) that doesn't mean it should be cut. I can understand how someone who reads the scene this way might be upset.īut whether or not their complaints have merit (and this gets into authorial intent vs. There's a good reason why many people are sensitive to these issues. It wasn't so long ago that gay men were given chemical castrations in order to contest their illegal homosexuality. To many, myself included, the notion of using any means to change someone's sexuality is pretty terrible. (And many others will never know about the changes, never wade into the controversy, etc.)Ĭritics of the original controversial support dialogue compared it to "gay conversion therapy" and no doubt have the best intentions in mind. The changes are made to appease a small but vocal slice of the gaming community without much consideration for many franchise fans who'd rather experience the game as it was intended. People are deprived of the work in its originally intended form based on decisions made largely by corporate suits rather than game designers. In the instance of Fates, the motive for changing the game is profit-driven rather than purely moralistic and authoritarian, but the results are similar enough.
FIRE EMBLEM FATE AND ENGAGEMENT FULL
When the state censors, it does so with the full force of the law behind it and the implicit threat of violence. Nintendo's localization of Fates is not "censorship" in the same sense that Australia's government banning games like Fallout 3 or forcing the developers of South Park: The Stick of Truth to cut scenes or not receive classification is censorship. All our choices were made from that point of view.” But is it really best that Nintendo decides what's "appropriate" and what's not rather than consumers themselves? When we localize a game we do so in order to make it appropriate for that particular territory. “Making changes is not unusual when we localize games," Nintendo said in a statement, "and we have indeed made changes in these games. Or they should simply avoid products that they worry might be too offensive. Rather than censor products from countries like Japan, Americans should be okay with experiencing those products and, whether or not they agree or embrace them, at least find better and deeper understanding of them. Not only is this wrong-headed-of course art can and should be subversive, offensive, uncomfortable and so forth-but actively goes against the grain of multi-culturalism. This suggests that the purpose of art (and I include video games under that umbrella) is somehow at odds with causing offense, and that anything which might cause offense should be removed from art. parking lot) or to translate meaning more clearly, but to actively avoid upsetting American audiences. The problem here is that localization is being used not just to clear up confusion (car park vs. There are other problems with the localization, including entire dialogues cut and replaced with nothing but ellipses, and other sloppy errors and inexplicable dialog changes that have nothing to do with either clearing up confusion or removing offensive material. I mean, both the support dialogue and the petting game sound pretty bizarre to me, but I still think cutting them is the wrong move.) (All of which, to a Western audience, might sound strange but is pretty par for the course in Japan. This included a scene in which a character distracted by pretty women on the battlefield is given a drug that makes her see women as men and men as women, and a mini-game in which the player could use the 3DS touch-screen to "pet" characters, thereby strengthening their bond with the player character. The short version is this: Certain aspects of the game deemed by Nintendo of America to be potentially offensive to American audiences were cut or changed in the Western release.
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