Topic: Nintendo Switch 2

@FishyS, I think what @FrenchVaniIIuxe is worrying about is warranted because this may be Square Enix just worrying about and avoiding government censorship from some governments on its own. For example, I believe a few months ago, it was revealed that the casino or whatever wouldn't be returning in this reimagining. That might be because the EU gives any game with simulated gambling a mature rating. Did Square Enix itself decide to take out the casino? Most likely. But would they have just kept it in if the game wouldn't have been slapped with a mature rating because of it? Also probably, considering the DQ series' relationship with casinos throughout the entire series. They might've only taken out the casino just to avoid the mature rating so that it would be viewable on the eShop for gaming platform accounts that aren't mature-verified or whatever.

Now about the specific case at hand (the changes to the outfit design), several governments and organizations have ramped up their crackdowns on stuff like s*x, n*dity, outfits that show a lot of skin, and the like, especially when it comes to Japanese media. Case in point: what happened with Steam, Visa, Mastercard, and Collective Shout in the summer of last year. So Square Enix might've decided to make some outfit changes just to not face any crackdowns from said organizations and governments. Did Square Enix make the changes themselves? Yes. But did they do it out of fear of getting cracked down? I'd say that's probable, especially with all the news going around involving "protecting kids online", and the UK's online safety act, and the fanservicey gacha game Brown Dust 2 wanting to censor some new outfit designs for all regions just because one region wanted them to (though they did back down on that, saying that they would just change the designs for that one region only).

So, to recap: Square Enix most likely did choose to tone down the designs themselves. But there's also a decent chance that they only did it in the first place because of fear of being cracked down upon. And crackdowns are seemingly only getting worse as time goes on. That's why I think the situation sucks. Not because of this one small change, but because the past few years, there has been one more small change after another, one more small crackdown after another, and it is very slowly reaching the point where many people are getting concerned about their favorite series that are being impacted, or have a chance of being impacted because of their contents. I myself didn't become more concerned about "censorship" and all that until late 2024, when I started getting into series that are kind of controversial like Hyperdimension Neptunia.

Yeah, this is legitimately the issue. Nearly everything about Censorship is just the worst things about creepy, awful people. Anyone virtue signaling about WoKiEs is someone I don't take seriously at best or actively awful at worst. It's all the Fire Emblem petting mechanic all over again but somehow more vapid and stupid.

@Nep-Nep-Freak in the immortal words of Killer Mike, "I support the sex workers unionizing their services." That's where all of this is coming from because women are making money on adult websites.

Resident Evil Requiem on Switch 2 is looking 🔥

Check out this gameplay in handheld mode. Notice the hair looks pretty good compared to prior demos and trailers.

@Nep-Nep-Freak
That's a fair point. The frog being boiled slowly. The individual changes are rarely enough to even turn your head at, but cumulatively over time they start eroding creative vision in a more substantial way.

I can respect that. It still doesn't bother me but, I can at least understand the argument and point of view.

I mean, we have two recent Square Enix reimaginings of old games with 7 in the title. One of them made things more explicit and also added extra gambling. Now one has very slightly less fan service and maybe less gambling. That is not much data to try to generalize from. Did everyone complain about anti-censoring with final fantasy 7? Actually, some people kind of did but not in those words; basically people complain both if there are changes and if there are not changes in any remake.

I'm not saying censorship is not a worry (I think there is a nonzero chance very broad censorship laws could get passed in our country), but inevitable slight tweaks in society and artistic standards are very different than true censorship and we have not seen any evidence Squeenix is suddenly going on a true censorship spree.

@FishyS

They changed dialogue in DQ3 as well. It sucks that they waited after Toriyama’s death to do this.