It would apply to anything meant to be sold to an audience from paintings to albums. That's why I'm not a fan of that perspective. It leaves art with an insanely narrow definition.
Sure, I never argued that. But "it's different now" isn't useful or constructive criticism. If you're going to criticize it, explain why and how it negatively impacts the final product, what the actual change does that hurts the artistic merit. Again, changes, even seemingly large ones, aren't necessarily hurt artistic integrity and often trying to hard to be faithful might actually hurt artistic merit itself more than making a seemingly dramatic change because the faithful translation warps intent more. Feel free to criticize it, but actually apply real criticisms that require thought to generate and not just the lazy ass "it's different" arguement that holds absolutely zero artistic merit
There's a history of all-ages versions of visual novels even domestically. Not the same thing at all.
I'm saying if this was made before we got those versions you'd see the same complaints despite the fact that removing those things honestly made the game closer to Nasu's original vision. Which is to say no matter what artist integrity is going to be influenced by market realities and changes made don't necessarily lower said integrity and can often increase it.
Pretty much. As with literally every example of Nintendo editing the content of their own games in the past decade, this has very little to do with "localisation" and everything to do with an executive being fearful of a theoretical social media backlash.
Keeping it as is would have altered the tone more than changing it. Sexual assault played for laughs isn't common in the West anymore and has aged incredibly poorly for older comedies. If the localizers wanted to keep the scene "wacky", they had to change what it was about.
I'd be willing to bet a number of these changes weren't made by execs at all and were made by the localization teams who figured that keeping things as they were in the original would make the game less palatable to the audiences in their countries. Especially in a case like this it could just as easily be a change made by a single localizer who thought keeping things as they were might make certain audiences uncomfortable and disrupt their ability to enjoy the game in the way that was intended.
That was done to net a Cero rating so that the games could be on console at all. The PC version still existed if people still wanted to get their rocks off to the weird mana recharge lore.
It's a text-heavy ADV game. What's difficult to understand about the idea that changing the script such that the very action in the scene is changed or reframed as something entirely different alters meaning and interferes with intent?
Being a sex pest is funny in Japan. Sure they may get "punished" but it's played off for laughs. It is no longer as funny in America. So they made it so he was still a dick, but didn't put off the audience. I think it's a bit too random, but it's such a nothing scene anyway.
Altering meaning and interfering with intent aren't the same. And in the first place even if they did that doesn't necessarily hurt the artistic merit of the work. Again I take issue with the idea that different inherently means worse. I think something like Ace Attorney would've been way worse (and quite possibly died in the west tbh) if it had gone for a far more straightforward and "faithful" localization for instance because I think the localized version ends up capturing the spirit far better than a much more faithful translation would have.
The game's a product of its time, sure. And the remake retains those aspects - so why can't the localisation?
I don't agree. Consistently these changes come across as executive policy being poorly applied. This actually is a particularly bad example, given what you have to do to trigger the scene (examine a specific woman's chest multiple times) and the consequences of the scene (an immediate Game Over), and I don't think there's any room to interpret it as being pro-sexual harassment. Meanwhile, the edited version has the same trigger condition, but now turns into a complete non-sequitur. As I said, this does strike me as a change made out of fear of social media backlash first and foremost.
See my above post. If they were afraid of social media backlash then they wouldn't be changing this at all, given that making any change of this sort always leads to social media backlash anyways. As such it being a policy by execs seems kind of silly
I think it's pretty safe to say that if you get "backlash" from the "NO CENSORSHIP!!!!!!" crowd, you made the right choice.
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Mate, I've seen more than enough incidents where people loudly proclaim that depiction equals endorsement when then subsequently result in negative press coverage. I could totally see executives pointing and going 'make sure that doesn't happen to us, so we don't get the negative press coverage' (especially considering Nintendo's family friendly reputation). With the edits, most of the press coverage will be 'let's praise Nintendo to Own Teh Gamerz'.
