Bandai Namco released a new trailer for Tales of Berseria showcasing the game’s English voice cast for the first time, and fans are quite divided over a glaringly obvious change made to cover up a more graphic part of the original Japanese trailer.
The company has gone on to say that the change was necessary as it wouldn’t allow them to obtain the rating they wanted, restricting how many players could enjoy the game – due to the violence seen in the original scene. However, they pledged their commitment to keeping this the only altered scene.
“This is the only scene which has been altered from the Japanese version of the game,” the company said in a statement. “Everything else is exactly the same as the Japanese version including costume designs.”
A decision was made to alter the scene completely, while keeping the pivotal moment mostly intact so you can still get the gist of what motivates Velvet to become the vengeful warrior seen in later trailers.
This is a SPOILER WARNING as the alteration directly involves a story cinematic.
The original cinematic shows protagonist Velvet trying to save a character from the game’s antagonist, only to see the character be impaled with a sword. The western version doesn’t show the actual impalement, instead the character is shown floating in the sky with big slashes going through them.
Censored Gaming has a nice comparison between the two versions, with the altered western version seen first and the Japanese original seen last:
Here’s the entire statement, from the Bandai Namco Facebook page. This statement also contains SPOILERS, so please read with caution.
Dear Tales of Community,
We read about your concerns regarding some changes between the Japanese and the Western versions of Tales of Berseria, the next game from the Tales Of series to be released on January 27th 2017 on Playstation 4 and PC.
In the western game footage released on December 8th, you discovered a scene that has been reworked compared to the original Japanese game.
As a company, Bandai Namco Entertainment has to follow the regional regulations regarding video games content to allow the games to be released with appropriate rating. The violence depicted in the original Japanese scene in Tales of Berseria would not allow us to keep our current 16 rating. A major change in our rating wouldn’t have allowed to share the game with as many fans as we’d like and it would have prevented us many opportunities to show the game on social networks, websites and even during events. Therefore, instead of deleting the sequence, we decided to rework a portion of the scene to keep its importance in the story. We’ve ensured its impact in the story is the same. Even if the exact actions are different, their consequences are exactly the same: the defining moment changing Velvet’s Story and opposing her to Arthur Collbrande, the moment it becomes a tale of emotions versus reason. We made this modification out of necessity, be sure of that.
You may have read in an interview that we had promised not to censor the game in the West. The statement applied only to the Velvet’s outfit at the time, and we did our best to keep the game as close to the Japanese version as possible.
This is the only scene which has been altered from the Japanese version of the game. Everything else is exactly the same as the Japanese version including costume designs which you will be able to see for yourself once we release the demo on January 10th.
Tales of Berseria is launching for PlayStation 4 and PC in North America on January 24th, followed by January 27th in Europe.
