Bandai Namco has just released a new trailer for the upcoming "Tales of Berseria," where it showed the Western localization of the game its comparison with the Japanese version.
According to Dualshockers, Bandai Namco had to make these changes in order to keep the PEGI 16 rating. Here's their actual message:
"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."
An interview with producer Yasuhiro Fukaya also mentioned the protagonist Velvet keeping her outfit as is as part of maintaining a lot of the aspects from the Japanese version.
"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 [in the trailer] 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."
An updated message addressed the trailer scene with the child:
"As some of you noticed from a Tales of Berseria video posted to BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe's YouTube channel earlier this week, a scene involving violence against a young child has been edited in the Western version of the game. As a company we strive to deliver a consistent experience between all versions of our games whenever possible. However, a few occasions deem it necessary to alter the original content in order to work within different markets around the world. The level of violence depicted in an early cutscene has been slightly edited to keep the game in a rating category as to not prohibit younger fans of the Tales of series from playing the game while keeping the original dramatic intent intact. Outside of small changes to text and speech, which is standard when localizing a product to territories around the world, no other content has been edited from the original Japanese release of Tales of Berseria."
Here's the video clip of the trailer for those who haven't seen it yet:
In an earlier article, "Tales of Berseria" finally shows a female protagonist after the series' 21 years running. The name of the protagonist is Velvet Crowe, who's a pirate whose arm has been afflicted by the Daemonblight curse. The curse is said to infect humans and turning them into demons with an uncontrollable "beserk" rage.
"Tales of Berseria" will release in the West on Jan. 24, 2017 for PlayStation 4 and Jan. 26, 2017 for PC via Steam.
