Hey all I’m back with a topic that has meaning especially today for those in the US and EU. It’s all about Story Censorship!

Story Censorship?: I mean changing things in a game that affect the story, this could be removing missions or changing certain animations or models or scenes graphically to avoid getting hit with a higher rating. I hate this, it’s hypocritical and if you have to do so to ship a game with a “certain” rating you aren’t doing your customers and yourself any favors.

Give me an example: Today Tales of Berseria is launching in the US. In Japan there is a certain scene that occurs that directly impacts the story, and because of it’s graphic nature it was toned down to keep a certain rating. Bandai Namco America and EU have both said it won’t change the tone of the story. I’m here to tell you that any changes made, graphically or otherwise does affect the story. A game’s story isn’t made up of just gameplay.The story is made up of the text, the voice acting, the art, the music, and the gameplay. It all affects the story, so changing even a single part of that can and will change the intended tone that you as a consumer will experience. Normally I have great respect for Bandai Namco for bringing the Tales of series west much more often in the past decade, but the simple fact that they need to change the scene at all is a disservice to both themselves and us as consumers. I hope to be receiving a copy of Berseria to review, but regardless of whether or not I do receive it, I will be keeping this change in mind and it will affect my score, not greatly most likely but it will affect it.

There are other examples, like the Russian mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 which caused a very big controversy, but they are all disservices to everyone. Make it known that you ought to receive the original story intact, so you can experience it as intended. Otherwise you’ll be getting inferior games.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.