Changes to the NA release of Fire Emblem

I imagine most of the people here who care about FE have been following the news of the alterations that have been made to the NA version of the game, but for reference I'll link to this article. Do you all think the removal of the affection mini-game is a big deal? Will it affect your decision to buy the game? Personally, I would prefer to receive an unaltered game, but I still do intend to purchase the game as soon as it comes out.

Much like Xenoblade Chronicles X, the changes could not possibly seem more insignificant, so it doesn't really bother me. That said, it kinda does bother me because I wish they should stop changing shit that doesn't need to be changed. It just makes them look paranoid because they're afraid the rest of us are overly-sensitive weirdos who can't handle whatever it is that they decided needed changing.

As someone who has been playing the Japanese version for the last couple of weeks, I think these changes are positive. The face rubbing feels like a tacked on, creepy afterthought with no place in the game and no real reason for being included. The other thing with the drugging and gay conversion? That shouldn't have been put in the game in the first place. Gross.

This is one case where the "altered" US version is superior to the original Japanese version. I think that will hold true for most people. If you really want the face rubbing and to be able to drug a character to trick them into changing their sexual preference, you can always import the Japanese version and use an English fan translation. And hey, the US version added same sex marriages on all three paths which is a good thing. There aren't many of them, but at least it's possible now.

What ever it was weird stuff to begin with, it's a nonissue if it's not in it. The kicker is the fact that you can pet your pokemon in very suggestive ways in X/Y, and the people petting IS OVER THE LINE.

What were impressions about Rub Rabbits when it first came out? Probably very similar, yet somehow that came through with minimal changes.

Seems dumb to take it out as if it's "over the line of acceptable things in games." I mean your decisions can get your friends killed and you kill people and that's no big deal. Then again it's such a small thing, it just sucks to get an incomplete game no matter how small the changes are.

Seeing some shots of the rubbing mini-game and seeing some of the dialogue (summaries of the dialogue at least since I don't speak japanese), I feel pretty confident in saying I don't mind it being gone. I'm all for people having the right to rub their anime husbands and wives while they talk dirty or whatever, but considering NoA likely wants to reach as wide of an audience as possible this is a smart move. Such a mini game would not be looked upon kindly by the general American population. It was getting weird enough in pokemon in my opinion. To use actual representations of humans just pushes it further.

I do hope they make it possible to build the support up and get some of these conversations through other ways though. Without the game it'll be much harder to get supports in conquest for instance where you can't grind it out in battle.

I'm not buying it. You put all this content being taken out on top of the minimum 80 bucks for everything and I just have zero interest. The "gay conversion" wasn't even a thing in the game and was just people misunderstanding the whole character and now they are taking out actual gameplay. Sorry NoA, but this is way farther than the Xenoblade stuff and I was pretty upset about that. Just translate my game and give it to me. That's all I want.

Whatever the context, I just hate that translators go in and change what the creators made. No matter what it is.

I am not going to buy it, but not only because of the cuts. I feel like the direction they took with the game to begin with wasn't really what I wanted for the series. Awakening started in that direction, and Fates continues. Its a far cry from the original Fire Emblem games, that were oh so good.

@mike:

To be fair, there was never really any "gay conversion" going on in the game, and gay marriage was already a thing in the Japanese version, they just decided to not remove it for the NA release.

I'm surprised this is the first topic that has shown up about this considering how long this info has been out there and how long people have been bitching and moaning about it. I don't want localization teams to take out content from games as much as anyone else, but from what I've seen from recent releases, the changes are somewhat understandable and welcome in some cases for me personally. Some things that are culturally acceptable in Japan are not acceptable in the West. If you can't understand that, then I don't know what to tell you. Dressing up a 13 year old girl in a skimpy bikini just because you can doesn't fly in the West, even if you pretend she's 18. A bunch of people whining on internet forums and signing petitions isn't going to change any minds, especially with the direction Nintendo of America seems to be maintaining with its family friendly atmosphere.

Say NoA removes an entire questline from a game because of censorship for a western audience, then you have every right to complain and sign your petitions. When NoA removes a minigame where you pet 2D fictional characters (some related to the main character) and they make suggestive sounds, I'm sorry but you can go get your creepy jollies elsewhere. It was weird in Pokemon and it's even weirder here. I don't care if you get slight boosts in supports or get random item drops, calling the game "incomplete" because a minigame was removed is absurd. And honestly, if you don't even care about the face-petting, but you're boycotting the game because it was removed, that's fine, but chances are you don't care about Fire Emblem that much to being with. Also, the "gay conversion" thing is more about the main character drugging another character without their consent than anything else. Regardless of intention, people would have serious problems with that.

You know, I get it. Why killing hundreds of people in cold blood is okay but rubbing your sister's face while she makes what could be construed as sexual noises is not, I don't really know, nor do I wish to devote the time and energy to figure it out. But what I do know is that I was annoyed when this stupid face-petting thing was revealed because I knew it was going to be taken out the second I saw it, and I am annoyed now because of all the negative attention this game has gotten because of it. That creepy shit doesn't belong in a Fire Emblem game to begin with. I am very excited for this game, but everywhere I go I just see bullshit spewed all over about this nonsense.

I didn't mean for this to be as long winded as it was, but man, I'm just tired of hearing about this.

No matter how dumb or unfitting a part of a game appears to be I do think they should translate it. As for what they are cutting it doesn't seem like a huge loss.

It doesn't feel like it belongs in the game, either. What happens is that while you're in the My Castle portion of the game, occasionally you can call for characters to come to your room for a rub session. You can then rub their faces for awhile, and your relationship with that character improves. That's it. That is the entire thing. When it first happened, I almost couldn't believe that it was in the game. It feels so tacked on, pointless, and creepy.

I suppose they are leaving the hot tubbing in for the US release, though. That's a whole different thing.

Thanks for this. I was going to write up something similar but I gave up halfway. I'm all for getting a game "as intended", but there are some things-or some cases-where it's understandable for a big company like Nintendo to change some stuff in a big release like Fire Emblem. There are a ton of niche games that keep that kind of stuff in it because they are fairly low-key and barely marketed so they can get away with it. Fire Emblem isn't really in that spot anymore.

"Gay conversion" that's not what happened, tho. Like, talk about the morality of it all you like - it's a magic potion not a fucking roofie - but the intent isn't to drug the character straight. Like at all.

The face touching is whatever, that's like some Pokemon shit and who cares other than people that use waifu literally.

It's just to trick the character into being attracted to someone they normally wouldn't be?

1. It's 100% gay conversion, cause it's in a fantasy world does change the intent of the arch at all.

2. As you could guess from above I'm happy about the changes. I stand behind the rule of don't play video games that make you ashamed to play them in public and anime girl face petting simulator falls into that category.

Hey, you can pet men's faces too!

@mike: careful someone might drug/potion/cause a chemical reaction of some kind in your body without your consent so you'll only pet women.

@theblue: 100% agreed. Thanks for taking the time to write all that up. Summarizes the reason why this isn't a big deal pretty well.

With the way some are reacting (not here but elsewhere) you'd think Nintendo was back in the old days of giving us rpgs with all the content stripped out cause it's "too difficult". This is nothing. It's a smart business/marketing move and that's all it comes down to really. Better to anger the niche crowd that actually wants this than lose all of the potential buyers who will turn away the second they hear about it

Standing up for the creators original intent and for receiving complete products through localization is great and all, but this is a bad hill to die on for the cause in my opinion. I'm curious how many people who are saying they won't buy it because of a missing mini game will stick with that and not buy it. And how many actually weren't buying it anyway but just want to stand up against the big bad localization.

Dude she isn't a lesbian. She's not attracted to women in that way. If ANYTHING she's bisexual or bicurious, but her orientation isn't flatly stated. It's a trait she gets from her womanizer father and started doing it to show him up/spite him.. She's not "Hey I am sexually attracted to females". She hits on her own mother but she's not trying to sleep with her. She is unable to perform on the battlefield due to her getting distracted by them, it's not a romantic type of thing. It's like in bad animes where the main female characters fondle each other's breasts and call each other cute. This sort of thing happens in anime constantly, the straight girl who flirts with other girls, and Fire Emblem Fates has anime stereotypes as characters because that makes the war stuff easier to swallow or something. The potion isn't "Now you're straight" it's "Here's something to help you get over your problem" and it works, she's told it works (and that's a point of discussion since it's done so after the fact), and then after the fact can then fall in love with the MC. It's not especially well written but it's also not "MC drugs a lesbian to turn her straight".

The "creators intent" thing also seems kind of dumb in this case as it's NINTENDO changing a NINTENDO game. It's not like some 3rd party localization thing is going on here and changing their content, they're doing it themselves.

@epidehl: Very true.

I'm talking about this game. Not all Japanese games or all Western games.

Regarding the dialogue change, that's actually more understandable than anything else. The existing one was not intended to be "gay conversion". If people have misunderstood it as / it has been poorly written to resemble it, changing it to fit the intended spirit of the support conversation: one that is suppose to be rather comedic, is fine.

Taking out the face touching though, there's no good reason to do it. Absolutely none outside of Nintendo simply having no spine.

Its in the same vein as SEGA taking out a number of side activities out of Yakuza 3 out of fear that they were too "Japanese" for a western audience. That didn't make that game sell better, and it certainly won't make FE Fates sell better.

@mike: Really? Tell me, how is a completely option mini-game any worse than the entirely required and absolutely unnecessarily gory violence found in things like God of War or Mortal Kombat? Why can't people take it as comedic the same way people take the absurdity of Saints Row games?

Get that bullshit out of here.

I suggest you calm down and go review the rules before posting anything else in this topic. Relax.

@turambar: Loss of sales and difficulty marketing to families who know about the feature isn't a good reason? At what point does the game being more of a success in the west stop mattering? You have to know your target audience. I think Nintendo knows it's target audience in the west well enough to know what to include and what to remove. If it was actually a significant gameplay portion maybe I'd agree with you. But it's a side game. Something that no one would ask for if it was never added in the first place.

Clearly not if they took out the face touching.

Evidence that the game would be less successful otherwise would be required before making that argument. There currently is none outside of complete conjecture.

@turambar: This isn't anything new, though? Western society has always kind of worked that way. We-as a whole-have decided over the years that we're okay with depictions of violence in media to a certain degree. Sexual content is another beast entirely, especially if it concerns characters that could be considered underage. That's just... The way it is. There's no good "reason" other than 'because that's how it is'. It's why Japan has more of this kind of content in it's media and we don't.

It isn't really something one person, or even a group of people, one day set forth as "this is whats okay and whats not", it's a societal thing that's evolved over many years.

@mindbullet: No, its not new. It's also always been extremely stupid as well.

But most damning, its not even something that is necessarily true. In this specific instance, thinking taking out the mini-game will increase sales is more something that a company has convinced itself to be true, just as taking out the side activities in Yakuza 3 for the sake of sales is something SEGA convinced itself to be true, but actually had no benefit what-so-ever and was reversed in the following games.

I don't care at all, I'm not interested in rubbing a touch-screen anime face even slightly.

@turambar: Never claimed it was anything more than conjecture. It's enough of a possibility, however, that it's worth it for Nintendo to do obviously. They don't just remove things willy nilly for giggles. They have a team of people making educated decisions on what to do and what not to do. If you're going to argue that sales were not on their mind then I don't know what to tell you. You're just ignoring the reality of what leads to the best case scenario for them as a company. Maybe it wouldn't affect sales, but it's apparently not worth the risk of alienating the average westerner or it would be in.

@mike: I wouldn't think the term "bullshit" would be seen as crossing a line on this site of all places, but fair enough. My questions stand though.

It's not bullshit by itself, but ending a post with "Get that bullshit out of here" is needlessly aggressive, and that kind of thing is really over the line and will only serve to escalate conversations into arguments. I'm sure you can find a more productive and polite way of expressing yourself on the forums.

I've played video games long enough to know that those educated decisions don't always actually bear fruit. I'm not arguing they didn't have sales in mind. I'm arguing their thought process was ultimately based on something untrue: the idea that the existence of the face-touching mini game would cost them sales.

I keep coming back to Yakuza 3. Things were taken out there for the same reasons both in terms of the financial and also cultural justifications, but didn't result in any benefits for SEGA and simply annoyed many fans of the game. I don't see Nintendo's removal here being any different.

Like, really think about it now. Who are the players that will know the game has a face-touching mini game before hand, and can base game purchase decisions based on that? Are they actually people that would get alienated by the mini-game's inclusion?

I was speaking mostly to your argument of why we're okay with violence but not face rubbing. The Yakuza games (namely Yakuza 3) were something entirely different from what's happening here. Changing chopsticks to spoons is not equivalent to changing a scene that could be misunderstood as something horrible. Taking out hostess clubs is understandable from a business sense in that there isn't really anything similar in Western society that most people would be able to draw fair comparisons to. Rubbing someone's face is universal, though. People don't need a frame of reference when they're asked to touch someone's face.

@turambar said:

That's hardly an apt comparison. Mortal Kombat is designed and marketed to be a fighting game with excessive gory violence. God of War is designed and marketed to be an action game with explicit sex and excessive gory violence. That's what those games are. Fire Emblem is a tactical RPG, not a face petting RPG. I see absolutely no reason to include the minigame other than to titillate a portion of its fanbase.

You're absolutely right though, why is excessive violence okay in the west while anything sexual is taboo? I don't really know, but what I do know is that the majority of western audiences like violent action, and they do not like petting anime characters. That's just the way it is and I'm sure that is how these decisions are made.

Frame of reference isn't exactly the point here though. Both are decisions based on this single idea: if we take out portions of the game we think wouldn't fit the market, we can expand the number of purchases. But that doesn't work. It didn't work then, it won't now.

@turambar: Please be more specific about Yakuza if you're going to keep referencing it. Was there some interactive game with sensual undertones in it? With family members and young characters involved? I'm asking honestly here because it is not a popular series for any of my social groups. I don't hear about it anywhere except from the occasional fans on the Internet. Which coincidentally is another reason why I might argue that it's sales weren't affected. Other variables may likely be at play in that game's case.

I don't find it unapt. You can still stay true to the violent nature of your game without, say, showing someone being pulled literally in half the long way, or vividly showing someone ripping another person's head off. Those are indulgences, not core pillars.

@turambar: That's a case-by-case assessment. I don't think it's entirely possible to say that "this game sold well because it had this mechanic in it" or "this game didn't sell well because it didn't have this in it". If I were trying to sell something to a certain market, I would be sure that it had the greatest chance possible to appeal to that market without turning them away.

Personally, I'd be okay with the weird face rubbing stuff. I might even be able to stomach the hotly debated romance scene if it were written well. But that's only because I've played a bunch of games like this, and I know how comprehend it. A tentpole release like Fire Emblem isn't being sold to me. It's being sold to everyone and not everyone has the kind of experience with this sort of thing we do.

Here's a full list of cut content.

To make it more relatable for people on this site, think of Persona 4 but with things like the Culture Festival or the school Midterms taken out because Atlus didn't believe they fit well with a western audience, and with their removal, could get them more sales.

The average western video game player already isn't playing this game because there's anime art on it. The average western video game player isn't playing it because it's not Pokemon, Mario, or Zelda. As much as people try to act like Awakening and Smash has made Fire Emblem this huge franchise it is still very niche compared to any of Nintendo's other big franchises. Hell I'd say Star Fox resonates with more people than Fire Emblem and that hasn't had a game since the Gamecube. I just don't see what they gain by pissing off the people that have proven they will buy it.

@turambar: One of the central draws to the Persona and Yakuza games is that they occur in modern day Japan. The Fire Emblem games main draw has been the high-stakes strategy gameplay. A face petting mechanic has never been a core component in the formula in the way an authentic Japanese setting has been to those other games.

If that's the original vision the developer wanted for their game, then fuck man, keep it. The potion thing is disgusting and the petting bullshit is creepy (but not wildly unexpected for a Japanese game; Fire Emblem maybe), but don't hide your creepy fucked up shit. I'd rather know they're there and dislike those parts than want them gone so I can pretend the developers didn't originally want em in there.

I'd rather be critical of the work than have an altered version made specifically for me. At some point you break that down and gotta ask "well do you want games to be "better" or not?" and I think I'd really prefer everyone make the games that they want, and I'll like what I like and not like what I don't.

Is that even a thing? Being critical of something without always implicitly wanting some personally idealized form of it? I don't see why not.

My response would be: who would the mini-game turn away before they made a purchase?

Also, with Awakening, Nintendo wasn't trying to go after as wide a market as possible. They were actually trying to pull back in as many of the existing fans of FE that had ceased to buy those games, not make new ones. Hence why every mechanic shoved into that game until it was ready to burst were from previous games through out the entire franchise.

With FATES, their focus on two entirely different campaigns show that they are simultaneously trying to maintain interested in the fans that they have pulled back in with the kitchen sink approach, and also address the dissatisfaction of much more traditional fans that liked a linear structure as opposed to the FE8's over world structure that Awakening adopted.

Based on the way the game has been designed, I don't think trying to pull in more new fans was a priority for Nintendo so much as making sure they can satisfy all the existing ones.

That certainly didn't stop SEGA from taking out of parts of what Yakuza fans expect to be in the game for the belief that it would improve the game's western reception. And while the face touching mini-game is by no means central to the game (I'd actually take issue if it was), the belief that its removal would somehow make it fare better in a western market is still faulty.