So the censorship rumors were...

[BEOWULF]

True or not?

1. Multiple costumes (all female characters) have been made less risque.
2. There is a hot springs scene which is completely removed from the game on Sony platforms. It is not plot significant, but it is still removed. The area still exists but one scene from there is gone.
3. Associated costumes (bath towels) that are earned by seeing the hot springs scene in question are completely removed.
4. The gender symbols (in the ingame language) on said hot spring’s doors have been removed.
5. There is an optional scene where the female characters make sexual remarks towards each other. This entire scene is removed.
6. There is a scene where one of the male characters walks in on one of the female characters, and it is implied that he sees her naked, though nothing is shown in any version. In the Playstation versions however, the dialog is different and the sexual implications are removed.
7. A weapon carried by one of the NPCs has had it’s design changed. I’m not entirely sure what the reasoning is behind this one.
8. There is a scene where an enemy punches one of your female characters. In the PS version, she dodges out of the way but still falls down.
9. A dialog choice has been altered. There is a flamboyant character (I don’t think it’s ever specified that he’s gay, but it’s heavily implied) who in other versions, you have the option of questioning his flirting towards you. But in the PS versions, this dialog is changed to you just calling him annoying.

Yes, Bandai Namco denied it but what else were they supposed to say?

[WarWeeny]

Originally posted by Shmider:

I'm not a huge fan of censorship but when I'm totally fine when it involves scantily clad teenage girls in lace. That's just not ok here in the west. It honestly makes me feel uncomfortable.

it is completely ok in the west, please keep your woke political agenda to yourself.

[Musou]

Originally posted by Mokinopomu:

Originally posted by Musou:

Dude, Sony admitted to it, they said themselves it's because MeToo and "Global Standards", stop defending this garbage company, the censorship imposed on Senran Kagura Burst Re:newal's PS4 version didn't change the age rating, even the heavily censored PS4 version of Omega Labyrinth Life (again imposed by Sony) ahs the same age rating as the uncensored Switch version, M, I can't think of a single game Sony demanded censorship on where it actually changed the rating, because Sony doesn't care about the rating.

Global standards not "me too." Trying to equate those is silly.

I'm not defending them in the least. I'm saying they always had garbage censorship.

But that's smply false, back then everyone censored, Nintendo did so, my country did so hardcore and Sony did, maybe Sega too idk. But already in the PS2 era Sony started to allow lewd games with bikini anime babes with jiggle physics, americans don't know that though as they were picked up by a back then very small european publisher called 505 Games Street so most of these games only exist in japan and PAL regions (and I own a bunch of them myself, like Party Girls, Demolition Girl and Zombie Hunters). And with time moving forward Nintendo and even my govt censored less and less to the point that censorship of games in my country is pretty much non existent with the exception of actual pornographic content (I say actual because americans have a differnet sense of what is pornographic, here it's really just visible erect genitals and penetration), now Sony is the only one who goes back to more censorship, not only lewd content but violence too (the Playstation version of DDLC+ had to change blood color on Sony's demand) and yes, MeToo is one of the reasons Sony themselves stated.

Originally posted by author:

Sony told the Journal changed its policy for approving new PlayStation games in response to the #MeToo movement and growing interest in livestreamers on platforms like Twitch and YouTube.

https://www.businessinsider.com/sony-metoo-censorship-playstation-games-2019-4?op=1

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Twitch and their ridiculous guidelines is the half of that statement you ignore but I stand corrected on the metoo thing.

Thanks for the info about the PS2 era as well. That's actually interesting. The closest America got to that stuff was probably DOA and Ar Tonelico.

As I brought up, Nintendo is still crazy censor happy (funny enough Nintendo of Europe are the really prudish ones) when it's stuff they produce or publish sadly. Fire Emblem Fates and Xenoblade 2 in particular suffered massive rewrites to remove even the slightest sexual content. They also have a weird thing for erasing/minimizing gay characters in Japanese games.

They leave third party stuff almost completely untouched though.

[Musou]

Originally posted by Mokinopomu:

Twitch and their ridiculous guidelines is the half of that statement you ignore but I stand corrected on the metoo thing.

Thanks for the info about the PS2 era as well. That's actually interesting. The closest America got to that stuff was probably DOA and Ar Tonelico.

As I brought up, Nintendo is still crazy censor happy (funny enough Nintendo of Europe are the really prudish ones) when it's stuff they produce or publish sadly. Fire Emblem Fates and Xenoblade 2 in particular suffered massive rewrites to remove even the slightest sexual content. They also have a weird thing for erasing/minimizing gay characters in Japanese games.

They leave third party stuff almost completely untouched though.

I know about FE Fate's massive censorship and rewritings to the point of completely changing characters and other things. Xenoblade 2 though is mostly fine in the german translation, plenty of sexual jokes and it's generalyl closer to the original japanese script, and none of the character designs has been changed from the japanese version, totally different from Xenoblade X which was localized by NOA. But the worst of the worst was Tokyo Mirage (also localized by americans) which even made changes in the japanese dub of the western release so the dub fits the censored english script, that was a new level of bs really.

[Jeffer'son Airship]

TMS is weird because Japanese Atlus was behind a lot of the censorship too. The big chapter rewrite was their idea which is why it got dubbed in Japanese.

Xenoblade 2 got utterly butchered in the English translation. They renamed a huge portion of the cast for no real reason and decided that the one obviously gay blade couldn't actually be openly gay for no real reason. Most of the goofy lewd humor bewe untouched which made the changes even stranger. It wasn't like dragon quest where they try to preserve wordplay or meaningful names.

Xenoblade X's character design changes, while dumb, are pretty minor in comparison.

[Monterossa]

Originally posted by Musou:

Originally posted by Mokinopomu:

The Sony "censor craze" is almost a decade old while Berseria's from 2016 as noted.

Hell, Sony's censorship goes far earlier than that. People seem to think Sony was some free, anything goes console maker before the PS4 era when that can't be further from the truth. PSX and PS2 games got HEAVILY butchered in worse ways than they do currently. We just didn't have social media calling it out. They let off it for some of the PS3 era mostly due to the region free nature, but their recent antics have been a return to form, not something new.

It's lowest common denominator censoring so they can release Japanese games worldwide with a teen rating. It's purely calculated capitalism, not some crazy secret agenda pushing. They do it because they believe it makes them more money (and the fact they keep doing it makes it look like they're probably correct.)

Dude, Sony admitted to it, they said themselves it's because MeToo and "Global Standards", stop defending this garbage company, the censorship imposed on Senran Kagura Burst Re:newal's PS4 version didn't change the age rating, even the heavily censored PS4 version of Omega Labyrinth Life (again imposed by Sony) ahs the same age rating as the uncensored Switch version, M, I can't think of a single game Sony demanded censorship on where it actually changed the rating, because Sony doesn't care about the rating.

Not to mention that Sony allow games with higher ratings on their platforms.

Games like Mortal Kombat where you kill people in realistic graphics, and Sony's official PS account on Twitter proudly promote the game (and other shooting games where you shoot people in the face with machine guns).

Sony doesn't care about ratings. They care about their own policies and how they're going to lecture the gamers about what's good or bad.

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Yeah but that's the publishers of anime games trying to bump ratings down more than Sony.

There's also just the simple sad fact that the ratings system is kind of corrupt in the first place with big name publishers like EA and Sony being able to skirt mature ratings more than smaller publishers.

The west is prudish about sex in games. Japan is prudish about violence. That part is just a cultural difference that's not going to go away.

[Aphelium]

Originally posted by Monterossa:

Originally posted by Musou:

Dude, Sony admitted to it, they said themselves it's because MeToo and "Global Standards", stop defending this garbage company, the censorship imposed on Senran Kagura Burst Re:newal's PS4 version didn't change the age rating, even the heavily censored PS4 version of Omega Labyrinth Life (again imposed by Sony) ahs the same age rating as the uncensored Switch version, M, I can't think of a single game Sony demanded censorship on where it actually changed the rating, because Sony doesn't care about the rating.

Not to mention that Sony allow games with higher ratings on their platforms.

Games like Mortal Kombat where you kill people in realistic graphics, and Sony's official PS account on Twitter proudly promote the game (and other shooting games where you shoot people in the face with machine guns).

Don't you dare show a nipple in my "chainsaw zombiekiller deluxe" game..

[Jeffer'son Airship]

Originally posted by Aphelium:

Don't you dare show a nipple in my "chainsaw zombiekiller deluxe" game..

And in Japan the zombies have no limb detachment with heavily reduced green blood splatter if any blood at all.

[Scyris]

Originally posted by Klipwc:

Originally posted by Aphelium:

Nope, been watching every single skit, doing every single side quest and everything. SO i'ts either a post game thing, it's a hidden scene were you have to be in a specific place at a specific time or i just don't understand,

Defeat the 5 bosses that came down to dahna. You will know it when you see it. The hotspring quest pops up in cyslodia after that.

You dont need to clear the game for it to pop up, but the bosses are pretty difficult, and you will most probably clear the game first before clearing thoese bosses.

The elementals right? they are level 60 ish I think.

[Aphelium]

Originally posted by Mokinopomu:

Originally posted by Aphelium:

Don't you dare show a nipple in my "chainsaw zombiekiller deluxe" game..

And in Japan the zombies have no limb detachment with heavily reduced green blood splatter if any blood at all.

Ever seen corpse party?

[Musou]

Originally posted by Mokinopomu:

Yeah but that's the publishers of anime games trying to bump ratings down more than Sony.

There's also just the simple sad fact that the ratings system is kind of corrupt in the first place with big name publishers like EA and Sony being able to skirt mature ratings more than smaller publishers.

The west is prudish about sex in games. Japan is prudish about violence. That part is just a cultural difference that's not going to go away.

The real problem is the ESRB having nothing between T and M, which is a huge age range, most other countries have 1 more rating between T and M.
Also no, America is prudish, I can go to the european e-shop and buy (well not anymore because i already did) Perky Little Things Mature Version (the Adult version Steam has falls under pornography due to visible genitals and penetration) which still has a ton of nudity and sexual imagery, and it's rated 16+, it is not available on the US e-shop. In the past games that have been M rated in the US were sometimes rated 12+ here, like Persona 3 and 4. Moero Chronicles and Crystal are 16+, Mary Skelter 2 is 16+, Gal*Gun DP and Returns are 16+, Gun Gun Pixies which Steam falsely marks as AO is 18+ here but PEGI 16 in rest of europe, America is the problem, the vast majority of censorship in games sold here today comes from america. Yes japan censors too but they are more like my country used to be in the past, in most cases the censorship only affected my country while the rest of europe got uncensored versions (legal to import for personal use, unlike New Zealand and parts of australia where ownership of unrated content itself is illegal), when america censors it affects the entire western world.

[Shmider]

Originally posted by WarWeeny:

Originally posted by Shmider:

I'm not a huge fan of censorship but when I'm totally fine when it involves scantily clad teenage girls in lace. That's just not ok here in the west. It honestly makes me feel uncomfortable.

it is completely ok in the west, please keep your woke political agenda to yourself.

I'd say this is more of a conservative view, the opposite of woke. Not to say I'm a conservative minded person, I just don't care for the exploitation of very young women. To each their own, though.

[FauxFurry]

Originally posted by Shmider:

Originally posted by WarWeeny:

it is completely ok in the west, please keep your woke political agenda to yourself.

I'd say this is more of a conservative view, the opposite of woke. Not to say I'm a conservative minded person, I just don't care for the exploitation of very young women. To each their own, though.

A lot of the so-called 'Woke' young people are the children of Conservatives who want to act out against their parents but not go too far outside of the box so they hang onto some of the same body exposure negative notions but think up new reasons for it so they will not feel too much as if they have become their parents.
I suppose I can see why some people make the mistake though they should try to be a bit more careful in the future rather than tossing that label around so loosely.

[TSVStriFe]

I also think this might be a switch port and not a PS4 one, unless Bamco screwed up switching the A and B around.