I announced back in December that our site would be covering more Nintendo-centric content, but I haven’t been great about actually following through with that. We’re currently looking for more writers (volunteer, sorry) so please send us a message if you’re interested.
Fire Emblem Fates, a pair of new titles in the series, will be released in North America on February 19, but the game has not made it unscathed through the localization process. EDIT: The source for this is Kotaku’s response from Nintendo
Relationships have always played a part in Fire Emblem games, often granting bonuses during combat and unlocking backstory through dialogue. One of these conversations has drawn ire, however, for featuring a magical powder which helps a female overcome her incessant overreactions when she sees cute girls. Some have mistakenly identified this as a “cure” for her same-sex attractions (it isn’t) and that the covert way in which it was administered as violating (it wasn’t).
More than happy to appease the vocal minority, Nintendo has “leveled up” when taking on the West’s growing fascination with the moral cleansing of media through social justice campaigns: it will just hack away at its games to make sure there isn’t problematic content for international releases.
Gamers who haven’t read up on the title won’t know the real backstory between the two characters because it has been altered and will not feature the psuedo-controversy. It’s a real shame that fans will have to resort to online guides or other resources to find out what they may be missing from the game because of the more stringent localization process.
It isn’t just dialogue that has seen the ax, though. The Japanese game had the ability to “physically” interact with characters through the touch screen of the 3DS, similar to Pokémon’s own Amie mini-game, but this was apparently seen as too much for English speakers to handle. The dialogue characters gave changed depending on their relationship level and could get quite romantic if they were close.
What do you think? Do you wish that Nintendo hadn’t caved to the easily offended?
<3 PJ