Nintendo of America has today confirmed that a controversial conversation that is found in the Japanese version of Fire Emblem Fates will not be featured in the North American or European release. The conversation revolves around a controversial “drugging”/”gay conversion” support conversation.
“In the version of the game that ships in the U.S. and Europe, there is no expression which might be considered as gay conversion or drugging that occurs between characters.”
“In the Japanese version…One of the female characters, Soleil, is attracted to women, and often gets flustered and weak in the knees when she’s around them. She often fears that she can’t be a “strong and cool woman” because of this. Later in the support conversations if you pair her up with the male protagonist, he spikes her drink with a “magic powder” that makes her see women as men and vice-versa to help her “practice” around women. This was done without her knowing, as she fails to recognize the protagonist at the start of the conversation. Once the magic wore off, she found herself attracted to the male protagonist, and ends up proposing to him, saying that she fell in love with the female version of him, but now loves him as a male.”
Thanks, Nintendo Military Strategist Sylux
What a weird conversation.
“What” ~ My reaction after reading that.
Japan is weird sometimes. All the times.
And already the “It’s better now!” Comments roll in, more censorship please!!
The plot line would work if the main character didn’t spike her drink.
It is censorship, this does not hurt the plot and NOA isn’t improving anything by taking out things they disagree with.
Agree with this. It’s a fairly minor thing, but it all adds up.
I just think it’s something I would have changed anyway. The plot line is fine, but it would probably work better to the protagonist’s reputation if he just gave her a potion or something instead of it being dishonest very comparable to date-rape. I think the removal of the gay aspect of the character is pretty dumb though.
But the thing is, you, much like NOA should not get to change it. Even if you are fine with the change you should still be against it, because sure, this time you were ok with it but next time you might not be. NOA keeps chopping shit out of games and censoring, even when the game is fucking M or T rated, so it fits with what appeals to their ideals of what should be in a game. People can’t just go on enabling it, small changes are a big deal when they are pointless to begin with and there is no end in sight with this bullshit.
So murder is fine ?
is a video game is MAGIC
I, like so many others, don’t care about this.
I usually don’t care to much about censorship but this is so stupid.
But Awakening was an exception. Right.
Local Tactical RPG headquarters gets taken over by SJW resistance.
More babysitting.
God damn it Nintendo, THIS is why I don’t want to work with you professionally. I don’t care what the content itself is IF A DEVELOPER MAKES A GAME THE WAY THEY WANT TO. DON’T FUCKING CENSOR IT. Ever hear of a thing called Creative Freedom? No clearly not. You need a reality check, maybe if every countries leader made it illegal for a kid to have a Nintendo product then you would abandon this moronic “We have to protect the children, and be the internet police and a babysitter for people’s kids!” Mentality. I better be able to hook up a chick with a chick in that one version, CAUSE I WANT TO BE ABLE TO NINTENDO.
To be fair, Japanese and western culture is VERY different, so I can see why they change the games to better fit the west (not saying I necessarily agree with them). I really don’t care about this, though, just give me the damn game.
Japanese culture has nothing to do with this, drugging isn’t okay or less serious in japan. It is just dialogue NOA is taking out because they disagree with it, replace “fit the west” with “fit the SJW at treehouse”. You will get the game, with stuff taken out of it and changed for the same price. There is a lot of other problematic content in this game so expect some more news to come out about what they have censored, not that you will care.
But it’s not like they change content from the Japan versions, they just cut content. It’s all about cutting content with NOA.
No, they also alter content like what they did in awakening, Xenoblade chronicles X, FF5, bravely defualt 1 & 2, and other shit I am probably forgetting. Not that cutting is any better in the slightest.
Well, you could probably win this argument, but I still call it cutting content. The original content was taken out of the game. Doesn’t really matter to me if it was replaced by anything else, it’s not the original content.
Yeah, good point. Might as well not even keep it in since they butcher it and the entire point of whatever it was they changed. Like covering up what was meant to be fanservice.
Imo it’s NOA saying they’re against gays, and “drugs”, it was fucking magic powder, for all we know it could’ve been enchanted sugar.
That’s not at all what they’re saying. The big complaint besides the so-called “drugging” was that the character Soleil undergoes some kind of sexual orientation conversion, but this doesn’t happen. There are a couple characters in the game that can marry players of the same sex, but Soleil is not one of them. She will never actually marry a woman, regardless of what the protagonist does. She will only marry men. Even if you play as the female protagonist, Soleil will only marry a man.
Refer to this:
http://www.destructoid.com/the-fire-emblem-fates-controversy-clearing-up-the-muck-295232.phtml
I’m kind of confused by this. Is NOA removing Soleil’s attraction to women or just removing the druging/possibility of her becoming attracted to the male protagonist?
It seems it’s both. You can’t actually marry the character if your avatar is female, though, so she’s not homosexual going by the mechanics of the game. It’s more like a Tharja-female Robin situation.
she is not attracted to women as she was never gay
I read your above comment and now I’m really confused. You’re saying Soleil is never attracted to women? Then what exactly happens in this sequence? What does the main character put in her drink and why does he put it there? And does this quote actually happen?
“…she found herself attracted to the male protagonist, and ends up proposing to him, saying that she fell in love with the female version of him, but now loves him as a male.”
“she is not attracted to women as she was never gay”-according to the game mechanics. Why your character puts the enchanted powder in Soliel’s drink was to help her do better when fighting alongside other female warriors.
>>>And this is why sexuality, religion and politics based on real life should be banned forever from the gaming universe>>>
But Fire Emblem is all about Politics, Religion and sexuality Commander!! :) What would be left?
(I’m 60% joking)
as someone that owns the japanese version i will make some things clear so you dont get fool
she was never gay
She was not drug is magic
she is base on a anime trope
She was not converted even if you dont do her support she can only be with guys
Guess what? not everyone’s gonna put up to your stupid creepy anime tropes. However you put it, it’s still a date-rape-like scenario.
The game is rated T, what do you mean “put up with”, so dark/controversal subject matter should be censored?
No it’s not! And so what if it was anyways? Are you not mature enough to handle it?
What the fuck? Date-Rape? At what point does “practicing to feel more comfortable among men” becomes rape? Just because the spell was cast without her knowledge? Well then why aren’t you whining about how Tharja casts a spell on Stahl without his knowledge in their B support? Oh, it’s because when women do it it’s perfectly fine, isn’t it?
The feminazi mentality in a nutshell. It’s okay for women to do it but the moment a man does it, all hell breaks lose! They give real feminists a bad rep. I guess they skipped right over the part where the entire thing was done to HELP her talk to guys.
Not important in the big picture, but she needs help talking to women, not men.
Exactly. This is like Raj on Big Bang Theory- he needed to have an alcoholic drink just to talk to women or he couldn’t even speak to GUYS in the same room, and I’m pretty sure the other main chars gave him drinks when they felt he needed it.
I will not defend this removal for any reason as the very premise of what was cut was already ridiculous.
Oh yeah! If Big Bang Theory was a Japanese show & Nintendo published it in the States, they’d be censoring a shit load of stuff from that series revolving around Raj himself. And that would be a good majority of the series getting ruined, too, since it’s so ingrained in the series. They’d might as well not even localize it then.
Oh & I hate to break it to Nintendo & many of these white knights but… We do this all the time with kids & adults that have bipolar, ADHD, depression, etc & need help with the issue. I guess we should stop doing all of that, according to NoA, because it’s controversial. Well to a small minority, it is controversial but that’s their problem.
actually they skipped over the part where the whole thing was done to help her in battle when fighting alongside, as well as, talk casually with other females.
Nintendo of America really loves pullin out the SJW umbrellas these days, huh?
Actually it sounds like NoA still won’t accept genderbend material.
If they were OK with genderbending they would have gone with female Link instead of making it a new character in the form of Linkle.
Nintendo IS ok with genderbending. They’ve demonstrated this with Samus, Sheik, and a few others. Look up the definition of genderbending. Even Linkle displays genderbending qualities.
wait, Linkle was actually a thing? when?
Linkle was made for Hyrule Warriors Legends.
I’m actually really surprised that somebody could not know that.
Samus and Shiek aren’t men in girl’s clothes
It’s as if Nintendo think we’re not mature enough to comprehend this so-called “controversy”.
Why can’t they just leave these things be? Stop censoring the game ffs.
Wait, what?
I mean, it is censorship, but it is dumb… it has drugging, but-
If I try to keep thinking about this, I’ll end up overthinking it, it is dumb censorship (the gay thing) but it could have been better managed.
The main problem with stupid censorship like this is nobody cares about it! I mean seriously, beside NOA….. who cares? Who was going to complain about it? Who would have even noticed it? Nobody. The answer is nobody. Nobody cares about this silly stuff except NOA. They are losing their minds IMO.
I think the family image nintendo has is definitely a big part of it, but also the fact that nintendo has a lot of SJW hipsters working for them in seattle that will do whatever they want with apparently nobody stopping them. The kind of shit they say and post on twitter while also representing nintendo is mind boggling, no respect or at the very least neutrality. It would be one thing if they had no comment or said they were forced to change something, but they are ALL for censorship and changing what they percieve as disgusting content filthy japs put in the game.
But one of the biggest issue BY FAR is one that I was reminded of when I got back into nintendo. Something I forgot about when I gave up on the wii and came back because I really like the wii u. Nintendo fans are the absolute fucking worst, they will whiteknight EVERYTHING, every decision, every awful game, they will endlessly defend complete dogshit. To the point where it has to be federation force for people to complain at all. Horrible fucking fans that have the companies cock down their throat and ruin franchises by gobbling up whatever nintendo puts out.
I wish I could say I find it surprising when I see nintendo fans defending censorship. Really think about that, what fucking lunatic defends censorship?
Not all Nintendo fans are like that. They’re diehard fanboys. Every company has them, microsoft, apple, sony.
That goes without saying, but it is the overwhelming majority. Nintendo fans are abysmal.
You must not know very many Apple fans. They can be just as nonsensical and intolerable.
Where can I find the posts of the SJW hipsters? I need another reason to hate people.
Unfortunately, the original poster’s URL is broken. So you can’t see the original stupidity in its glory.
Well, do you know what the person said?
Most of it is along the lines of being “This new Fire Emblem game is completely sexist and homophobic if they think this is acceptable writing. And to believe that this is the same game that allows you to be married to the same sex”. That’s just the general idea of she said and it was mostly her being severely triggered.
Well, that’s really dumb. Did you say this person is part of Nintendo?
No, it was just your average Tumblr user who happened to find the lines, translate it, and share her disappointment with her followers (with most of them agreeing with her words).
There will be more cut. Just wait, much more is coming. NOA is going to lose their adult fan base. They have no respect for the mature gamer anymore, all they care about is mom and dad and what they think. Problem is Mom and Dad don’t give a fuck about this kind of shit. It’s only NOA that cares. NOA is on a censorship campaign. It’s almost every game now they cut some kind of content.
They are only censoring content that they know would be controversial otherwise. Plus, this is rated Teen. Not Mature. Many, MANY kids are Fire Emblem fans. This is America, people are offended by fucking everything. If you think no one would care, you’re goddamn delusional. Plus, this conversation is fucking weird and unneeded. Who the hell cares that it was changed is the better question? Whiny little bitches like yourself? “But NOA, I want my gay drugging dialogue!” Whatever floats your boat… this is changing because of culture. Open your damn eyes.
The things they are censoring can hardly be considered mature and this game will definitely be rated T anyway. They’re arbitrarily censoring whatever they deem potentially offensive to incredibly pathetic individuals. They bend over backwards for these asshats while babying their fans. Nobody has the right to not be offended. Censorship is never ok.
Also, you thinking something is weird and unnecessary is not a good reason to change other people’s creations and shove that opinion down everyone else’s throats.
dude, nobody would care if the original translated conversation was just in the game, sure a few people would probably be offended if they find it after the game came out, but the fact that NOA is censoring something THAT IS OPTIONAL is horse shit! you literately don’t have to view the conversation if you don’t want to.
There’s nothing gay or drugging about it. And so what if it was!? Are you not mature enough to handle it? You best stay away from games like Bloodbourne, Witcher, Dark Souls,…. hell just stay away from any game besides Yoshies Wooly World, you may get offended, and we wouldn’t want that!
If I was a developer, and my game had to be reviewed by NOA, every two hours into my game I would have my main protagonist pull his dick out and wave it at the screen, just to fuck with NOA. I know they are going to cut content anyways, might as well give them something to cut right?
Hahaha that would be great.
You wouldn’t be alone, Miyamoto once made a game with lots of religious symbols just to spite NOA called Devil World
If I made a game and NoA was going to change even one thing, I would tell them “you will put this game out there as is, you will not change a single thing, or the countries under your jurisdiction will NOT be getting it and then YOU can deal with all the angry people as I will happily turn them against you.”
And then your game would be banned and you wouldn’t be able to sell the game. Where does that get you, asshat?
You DO know that there are two-three other platforms to release games on, right? I just wouldn’t put it on Nintendo consoles- Nintendo cannot dictate things on systems that they did not develop.
Censorship like this only distorts a creator’s vision, and I despise such a thing and refuse to support it.
Yes, because that’s the appropriate type of content kids need, gay conversations and spiking a females drink. Bravo, a fictitious video game character must make it clear as to what fake sexual orientation it is, obviously you know because it’s so Damn important to the ground breaking story. That with spiking the a females drink, man like I said, ground breaking writing.
Too thick? Screw it, no regrets bra.
First off, the game is rated Cero (Adult) in Japan and will most likely be T/PEGI 12 in the west, so I don’t see why the game should be dumbed down for the kids that shouldn’t be playing it to begin with.
Second, the character is not a lesbian, there are two technically bisexual characters (Niles and Syalla) who can be paired with Corrin in a same-sex couple, but they both have a large number of possible S-supports with units of the opposite sex that yield much better rewards, so there’s no need to ever pair any units up in same-sex couples if you don’t want to.
Third, the plot doesn’t involve drugs, its about Corrin spelling Soleil to help her with her crippling fear of men (Much like Tharja and Lon’qu’s support plot from Awakening) and the only weird thing is that he doesn’t tell her before doing it; her falling in love with him through the spell is a thoroughly unintended consequence of the whole thing, as she is kind of a fangirl of his already.
Correction as it seems I had been misinformed; what Corrin wants to do is help Soleil with her tendency to go light-headed around extremely cute girls (Not all girls), which Soleil herself decries as a crippling weakness, everything else stands.
Ahh come ooon….
What AG said. It’s a T for Teen rated game, not E for Everyone. Kids under 13 shouldn’t be playing this game to begin with.
Word.
Kids are gonna play it anyway- they already play M rated games like CoD and TF2 (I’ve lost track of how many “squeakers” I’ve encountered playing that one).
That said, I there are some T games I see no problems with younger kids playing. LoZ Twilight Princess, Smash Bros. Brawl and Melee…
Very true. And why is that? Because they have parents that just don’t care what their kids play or they have parents that actually watch over them to make sure they don’t run across the wrong kind of people. Most parents actually have what is called trust in their children to make the right decisions & know their children aren’t idiots and know what they are playing is fictional & is in no way okay to do in real life.
I like how you don’t think the writing is ground breaking, so it’s ok to remove it from the game. I know, let’s take all the unimportant words from the national anthem and remove them. I mean who needs silly words like “the” or “to” in there. Let’s just keep the really important “ground breaking” words in there. Because that’s all that matters right?
Important words? I’m talking about the subject matter as a whole. You taking out random words from the national anthem has nothing to do with what I was saying. I was saying ground breaking in a sarcastic sense.
I understand you were being sarcastic. I was just trying to make a point that just because the writing may be bad, it gives no reason to cut it from the game, or change it in any way. My example was bit extreme, but the point is clear. An authors work should be left whole and intact, even with the imperfections. Unless the author themselves change it of course…
Fair enough, both our points stand, as we different opinions. We both win haha.
Tharja (Woman) curses Stahl (Man) without his knowledge to get something out of him = Cute and endearing.
Corrin (Man) spells Soleil (Woman) without her knowledge to help her deal with her fears = Rape.
Message taken.
This article isn’t fully accurate. The article at Destructood says what really happens. Go here:
http://www.destructoid.com/the-fire-emblem-fates-controversy-clearing-up-the-muck-295232.phtml
It clears up a lot of confusion.
That happens a lot on this site.
What they call “controversial” is what I call “Nintendo going pussy and nonsensical”.
I don’t see why people are so mad about censorship. They aren’t doing it because they only make games for kids, they’re doing it so that kids CAN play it if they want, without any complaints from parents, etc. Doing that actually can increase sales, so…
First off, I don’t know what kids are doing playing games that were released with a Cero rating in Japan and most likely will be T/Pegi 12-16 in the west, if you don’t want your children exposed to mature themes you should stop being a cruddy parent and learn to read the labels on the stuff you buy them.
Now, I understand why certain kinds of localization are desirable; I’m perfectly find with the alterations made to the Gerudo emblem and Lin’s clothing because that stuff is just too easy to link to criminal activity; but the alterations made to Corrin and Soleil’s supports stem from a disgusting misrepresentation of their actions and relationship.
There’s nothing more offensive in Corrin and Soleil’s supports than there was on Tharja and Stahl’s or Tharja and Lon’qu’s except perhaps the part about not telling Soleil about the spell before having her drink it (She is told right after though, and asked if she had a problem with the experiment), she has perfect knowledge of the effects of the spell and is completely aware that she is seeing her male companions as women and vice-versa, the purpose of the spell is to help her with what she herself describes as a weakness (Getting too light-headed near cute girls), not to toy with her sexuality or to have her fall for a man.
I’m saying this because there are already a LOT of kids playing stuff like COD for some reason, so they will want to play games with a higher age rating for some reason, and… You know what, never mind. I’m not even understand myself at this point. This censorship is pretty pointless.
And Dumblr strikes back by getting their way. No surprise here.
Nintendo needs to stop censoring shit for us baby Americans.
Hahaha. Nintendo of America is at it again.
i miss the days where weeabos weren’t slobbering over shit like this
Fire Emblem has fallen into the weeaboo dumpster
I’ll live, its not that big of a change anyway
Sell out. Voice out against this stupid shit. It’s reactions like yours that gives NOA motivation to keep doing this shit. “well most of em don’t care”… I can hear them now…
Oh boy.
To the Nintendo White Knights: There’s dozens of games rated T for Teen with controversial stuff in them. You don’t see all of those in America getting censored to please a bunch of whiny Americans too stupid to remember this is fiction/fantasy, not reality.
Hey, NoA! Grow a fucking pair like the rest of the gaming companies in the US & ignore the whiny religious douchebags, whiny far right tyrants, & whiny lazy soccer moms too busy complaining about shit like this instead of actually being a fucking mom & making sure her kid doesn’t play games like these.
Welcome to ‘Murica! One of the only few places in the world where people get offended by everything! But instead of doing the simplest thing they can do, which is actually fucking read the product to make sure it’s safe for their kid to buy or see if it’s something they are okay with their kid owning, they want to bitch, piss, & moan to these companies to babysit their kid for them when they should be parenting their own god damn children. Or wasting their time on the internet bitching about “that’s not appropriate for my child” instead of actually WATCHING their child/children.
You’re right. Nintendo needs to stop so much sensoring, and to add to what you said they should stop censoring religious material to appease the whiny liberal douchebags, far left tyrants, and whiny parents who don’t want their children exposed to religion but are too lazy too monitor their children themselves.
Oh yeah. I forgot about the opposite extreme. NoA has nothing to worry about, though, from either sides. These people are a very small minority, anyway. If they were the majority, NoA wouldn’t be the only company in the US censoring shit to hell & back.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, and theorize that the original text was to relieve strain on scripting and programming… Like, easier if we all accept the main character is a guy, but you get to play the female avatar version, but… Shit. I lost my thought…
I’ll fall back on, Bad Nintendo! Bad!
That’s it- angry letter time. I’ve had enough of this censoring bullshit coming from them. Fatal Frame 5, Xenoblade Chronicles X, now this…
It’s time for change.
…Also, this misconstrued conversation is not okay for a FE game while Tharja and Nowi talking about their “boingy bits” and Tharja cursing Stahl (and possibly Virion) unbeknownst to them are just fine?
I’m serious, NoA is gonna hear from ME about this.
I get the feeling it’s not so much about the drugging but the genderbend factor, NoA has a habit of censoring such things
They have a habit of censoring ANYTHING that ANYONE might find offensive. They also censor religious imagery and the more extreme political views.
Also, I think you mean to say the homosexuality factor, not genderbend. Gender bending is when people or characters do things that break the stereotypical view of their gender. An example would be a woman joining the military or working on a construction job. Nintendo has done this a few times, especially in the form of Samus Aran, Sheik, and Krystal.
That’s not genderbending, nintendo doesn’t give a crap if a girl does a “man’s job” genderbending is things like transgender and crossdressing, in the 5th gen pokemon games there’s a crossdresser npc that was changed to a girl in the localizations
I suppose what you say is true in that it’s now the most commonly accepted definition of genderbending. But, the term was first coined a little after world war 2 when women were starting to go against their expected societal gender roles snd that’s still the most basic definition of gender bending.
Seriously? Wow. I guess they didn’t want silly male Americans to feel like their manhood was being jeopardized by a man that chose to cross dress. Those poor virile, so called men. And they used the lie of localization, eh? More censorship hidden behind the premise of “localization.” Nintendo’s American Sect doesn’t know how NOT to lie, do they?
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NintenFags sucking Nintendo’s dick again
the content isn’t cut for japan -> gets cut for NA = censorship, not two ways about it
Wait. What?