For anyone who has been following this story, Fire Emblem: Fates seems to be one of the most confusing games out there when it comes to what has been censored, or if anything has been censored at all. Just when we thought everything had been laid to rest in terms of the game’s censorship and petting minigame, we just learned that even less content might have been removed than we thought.
With the review copies now in the hands of… well… reviewers, we now have a solid picture of what controversial content is still in the game. If you want just the general answer: almost nothing has been removed from the game.
EDIT (02/14/2016): Since the time of this publication, there has been an update on the “swimsuit situation”. Rumors were flying about that they had also been removed from the game. However, these were quickly shot down by this video by RasouliPlays that confirms that they are still in the game.
The skinship minigame is still here!
At the heart of the Fire Emblem: Fates controversy has been the petting minigame. Only a few days ago I broke the news that players can still access the skinship ending dialogues. Today, we’ve received reports that the minigame is still accessible under certain situations, namely with the character the player decides to marry or characters you have an S-Rank support with.
According to the Gameranx article, players can access the minigame during the following scenarios:
“In one scenario, your wife or husband is sleeping, and you are prompted to rub their face to wake them up. If you jam the stylus, you can wake them up rudely and they will get angry at you.
In another scenario, your wife and husband has just come out of the bath and a lot of steam is coming out. You blow on the 3DS microphone to move the steam out of the way.
What about the original scenario, where you invite people into your house to flirt with you? No more petting is possible in this scenario, but you can scan their bodies as you talk to them.”
Ryan Perreno, via Gameranx
That’s right. The final verdict is that you can touch the person you marry in the game, just not anyone else. Apparently this was the original intent of the Japanese team before they expanded to having this feature with literally every character you met. If this is true, then think of the international release as a “definitive edition” of sorts, even if we are still technically getting less content.
So yeah… Anyone who is still upset that they can’t pet their waifu/husbando? You can literally only pet your waifu husbando in the international release. Yay?
The Hot Spring/Bath House is still in
The one question everyone has had on their mind ever since the censorship fiasco began was if the Hot Spring was also censored in the international release. This was due to a number of reasons, namely the fact that the female characters wear bikinis while in them. This could be classified as revealing clothing to some, and some players were concerned that it would be removed as a result.
Thankfully, the above image shared with us by Kotaku reveals that the feature is still very much here. In fact, according to Patricia Hernandez’s article, players can still strip all the clothing from their characters while in the accessory shop.
Looking at the above image, it seems safe to assume that the swimsuits and other risque attire will be left in the game. This is great news for gaming purists who want none other than a clean localization of the game in North America.
Another image (courtesy of Kotaku.com) shows that Camilla is just as suggestive of a character as ever, which should please fans.
Polygon jokes about the game being “more sexual”
Two staff members at Polygon have gone to Twitter with their own posts from the game. The first, Nick Robinson, jokes about Treehouse making the game more sexual than the original translations in the following tweet.
at times it actually feels like Treehouse made the skinship stuff MORE sexual for the English version of Fire Emblem pic.twitter.com/45ZoL49my3
— Nick Robinson (@Babylonian) February 8, 2016
Meanwhile, Allegra Frank makes a personal joke about the earlier mentioned skinship feature where players blow into the microphone to cool off their spouse after a bath.
why do boys always have to play me like that :/ pic.twitter.com/iQ6i8gcTWO
— allegra frank (@LegsFrank) February 9, 2016
In the end, it seems like everything has worked out. I would once again like to stress the importance of waiting for a game’s release before believing any rumors that sprout up on any news breaking service. Without flawless evidence, nothing should be believed, and this whole situation is a perfect example of it.
Now that the situation has been clarified once and for all, are you still considering not purchasing the game? Are you someone who regrets canceling their pre-order now? Are you surprised that the game is nearly intact after all? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!
