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Bandai Namco Ent. Posts Statement on Scene Change in Tales of Berseria's Localization
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The official Facebook page for the Tales of video game series posted a statement on Friday regarding a change Bandai Namco Entertainment has made in a scene in the upcoming English version of Tales of Berseria. Bandai Namco Entertainment had posted a nine-minute English-dubbed trailer on Thursday that included the changed scene. The scene Bandai Namco Entertainment changed is the scene where [spoilers, highlight to read: Laphicet is killed.]
The Facebook page posted the following statement about the change:
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.
The company added that the scene is the only one that Bandai Namco Entertainment has altered from the Japanese version. The Facebook page additionally stated, "everything else is exactly the same as the Japanese version including costume designs." Bandai Namco Entertainment also referenced a previous interview in which it "promised not to censor the game in the West," and added that the statement applied only to "Velvet's outfit at the time." The company added, "we did our best to keep the game as close to the Japanese version as possible."
Bandai Namco Entertainment is releasing a demo for the game on Steam and PlayStation 4 on January 10. Tales of Berseria ships for PS4 on January 24, 2017 and for PC via Steam on January 27 in North America. In Europe, the game ships on January 27 for PS4.
Bandai Namco Entertainment shipped the game for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 in Japan on August 18.
this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history