Super Smash Bros. Ultimate censors one of Xenoblade Chronicles 2's main characters

Apparently Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will censor the design of one of Xenoblade Chronicles 2's main characters.

[AnnaDea]

Cleavage.

Must protect our children!

[StormSnooper]

Guns don’t kill people cleavage does.

[darthv72]

hell yeah it does. Havent you heard of Letha Weapons???

[Gamist2dot0]

There should be mass bewbs, not shooting.

[drpepperdude]

I mean if they are willing to censor characters wearing American Indian attire for a millisecond because a few people were triggered I don't see why they wouldn't be willing to censor anything as long as someone is triggered.

[Enturax]

They even censored her legs, lol

[Relientk77]

Lame censorship is lame

[Dabigsiebowski]

I mean this is a Nintendo game after all. I'm sure people weren't truly expecting them to go all out for a game designed for everyone (including young kids)

[vork77]

but the character was not censored on the main game

[Dabigsiebowski]

The main game also probably had a higher rating? Isn't smash bros E while xenoblade is T?

[Sm00thNinja]

Ok this is pretty absurd actually

[FallenAngel1984]

First Solid Snake’s defined butt disappears and now this

[PhoenixUp]

I was surprised to see Nintendo release a game with a lot of guest hentai artists behind the design for various characters in the game. I’d hate for them to censor these characters in any crossover titles like SSB.

[Zeldafan64]

Yeah I thought it was a little surprising as well.

[CrimsonWing69]

Why include her then?

If a kid plays Smash and likes this character and wants to Xenoblade Chronicles are you gonna censor patch the game?

What about Bayonetta?

So, tired of this garbage. Back in the day characters used to fight in thongs with tig ol' bitties. It's not like anyone is getting their rocks off to this.

[Teflon02]

As a kid no one I knew made a big deal about Cammy in Street Fighter. Now you see some people complain that they don't play games like street fighter because of characters like cammy being to revealing. The way society is a bunch of weak minded people is sad.
But like I've been saying for months. I personally don't care if something gets censored going forward because the main and only reason I have a issue with it is artistic freedom. But the same side that hates SJW's for trying to get things banned or censored are the same ones who weren't willing to listen to DICE's vision for BFV. They became the same and demanded they take things out, telling them they can't have freedom to add representation of people involved that don't get acknowledgement, but just through customization. So since I'm not allowed to have the full extent of customization in one of my fav MP games. I stopped caring. They can censor everything. Won't stop me from buying the game. I'd rather Devs decide on it than the gamers, since they've all become toxic and hypocrites at this point.

[Enturax]

As a kid I wasn't even turned on by chicks to begin with becuase I was a damn kid!

[Knightofelemia]

It's cleavage who cares I bet kids have seen far worse stuff on the internet since porn is so easy to get to. Yet Nintendo never asked that Senran Kagura game with Auska to be censored when you touch her all ever. If her cleavage was so bad why not fix it before Xenoblade came out.

[blackblades]

And the real world, where women wearing tight as leggings and others showing cleavage.

[Christopher]

The difference is Nintendo is making their own game, they are not forcing other developers to adhere to what Nintendo feels is appropriate, only doing it for their own games.

[King_Noctis]

This I do agree. Although there is almost no sane reason as to why they feel the need to censor this (unless she wear different costume), it still is their own game and so they can decide what they want with it.

[rainslacker]

While I generally agree with you, you have to look at the target markets for the two games. Smash is geared more towards families, and chances are, the people playing will be in groups and the parents will be involved because the game is accessible to kids.

XC2 was a teen rated game, aimed at the otaku JRPG gamer who was much more accepting of such things, and the character shown, while generously endowed, wasn't really going to far. But that kind of representation in a "family" game doesn't usually go over well.

This would have had nothing to do with the current social media attacks on gaming and men, just Nintendo being Nintendo and focusing more on their audience for a game. For all of Nintendo's faults, they do understand the nature of a targeting a market.

[Zeldafan64]

Smash is a teen rated game.

[rainslacker]

But its still considered one of their family games. Generally anything they have that is meant to be couch-MP, has this kind of family friendly mentality attached to it.

[kevnb]

Maybe she just wore something different that day...

[gangsta_red]

You should always dress appropriately when entering a melee brawl of smash bros proportion.

[Nintendew]

I'm just gonna let this guy do the taking....

https://www.google.com/sear...

[Baza]

Original design is much better.

[gleepot]

There's way more important things to worry about than censoring games.

[TheHan]

How lame

[patrick1]

I find this odd with all the NSFW hentai content that's available on the switch.

[rainslacker]

Smash and XC2 have different target markets. Smash is more mainstream, and more family oriented. XC2 is aimed at the Otaku gamer, who generally are more accepting of this kind of content.

I actually understand why Nintendo is doing it here, and I don't disagree with it because of the likely reason for it.

If this was a 3rd party game that Nintendo forced to change it, while potentially being uncensored on another system, then I'd have a problem with it.

[SegaGamer]

This is even more pathetic than Sony's recent censorship of games. It's cleavage and legs, does Nintendo think children are going to be scarred for life just by seeing this?

To all the women out there, make sure your legs and boobs are completely covered up, Nintendo thinks it's not suitable for children....

[King_Noctis]

How is it worst than Sony? It is Nintendo’s game, they didn’t force any developer to censor their game like Sony did.

And for all we know, this could just be a different costume.

[rainslacker]

Not the children, but the parents of the children. Many people play this game with their kids, and Nintendo probably doesn't want that kind of heat on them from this game.

It's not really pathetic, and while I wouldn't care if they kept the original, I can see why Nintendo would change it, because parents can be a pain in the ass, and can quickly cause a negative social media trend if they start the "my child was traumatized, and you're will be too" BS.

What Sony's doing is a much different scenario, because they're forcing the censorship regardless of the target market, and on behalf of the consumer when the consumer isn't asking for it....presumably for the purpose of not having too much heat coming back on them.

[BlackOni]

It's rated E, and they want to keep it that way. I'm typically against censoring out any form of lewd, but I'm not surprised they went this direction. Likely to appease the "E" rating so they don't run into issues selling their game as intended.

[blawren4]

This is the only answer. Finally someone with sense. if it came down to allowing Bayonetta or this minor character, they probably had to make a choice. Everyone has to conform to the ratings board if they want to maintain a certain rating. Don't want to restrict sales by removing a large part of your market.

[BlackOni]

The west has shown time and time again just how up-tight they are about showing skin, regardless of our "comfort" with violence. Again, I don't agree with the sentiment that we should be "protecting our kids from legs and cleavage" but clearly those responsible for the ratings do.

*shrug* either way, this game is going to be incredible.

[monkey602]

Smash was clearly built with this in mind. We aren't talking another countries laws preventing a section of a game being played like in South Park or an update to an existing game to cover up the original art designers work.

Non issue is a non issue

[AHall88]

It's more the A rating from CERO they care about.
I think every Smash title has had an A rating in Japan and in recent years, they've gotten a little more strict on what's allowed in the A rating.(It effects where and when ads can be aired in Japan.) The ESBR rating is almost irrelevant to them, as long as it doesn't go above T somehow.

I'm sure people are going to act like this is just as bad as what Sony is doing though, because people are ignorant on many levels.

[rainslacker]

Her original costume wouldn't have lost them the E rating. The "violence" in the game, as mild as it really is shown, is more likely to cause them to lose the E rating than her original costume.

As far as the "west" being the problem. I have to disagree. The west makes a lot of media which happily shows plenty of skin, and much more depending on where it's being shown. the ratings system in place, at least in the US, are pretty lax for anything that isn't directly sexual in nature.

The problem is a vocal minority who makes a rather large fuss. The vast majority of people don't care, and the most popular non-child media in western countries tends to have plenty of provocative content, and at the very least, plenty of sexual innuendo, if not outright soft-core sex scenes.

That vocal minority is affecting games heavily right now. But it's also infecting a lot of other media as well...but more on the front of having more female characters. But if you look outside gaming, the movie and TV producers aren't stupid enough to not include attractive women who dress "sexy" in all sorts of ways. This might be because the producers and devs in gaming aren't as well versed in how to skirt the line, and probably think they're being more progressive than they actually are.

[BlackOni]

Maybe I should have specified in saying, "in regards to video games, the west is less lax about it."

I agree though, it isn't a big deal considering they're trying to avoid running into any issues. Although, I also wasn't a fan of nerfing "Snake's cakes." The point there-in, was that they were a non issue to begin with, it doesn't need to be problematic to show a small hint of skin on her legs, if that makes sense.

[rainslacker]

That I can agree to. Video games do seem to have more criticism over such things than other media. Or at least in other media, such criticisms are rarely taken to so much heart.

But games still have this general psychological idea in society that they are somehow children's toys, despite most gamers being over the 18...or 30 to be precise. That means this crap gets more attention than it really deserves, which is why a lot of this SJW stuff has come and infected the community and industry, because it makes it easy to just point to how it's for the children, and implying this bad stuff is hurting them. Plus, it's a male dominated community, which is quite active on social media, so it makes it easy to attack a large number of males quite easily.

[TheColbertinator]

Censorship again? This industry takes another step forward going the wrong way. Shame on Nintendo. Sony too.

[Christopher]

This isn't censorship.

Monolith Soft has their vision of their character. They allow Nintendo to use it in their game and Nintendo has their vision of their character. It's two different artists seeing the character how they prefer.

Decrying Nintendo for not just copying Monolith is censoring their artistic license.

[Weeblordbad]

I'd argue the new design looks just fine anyways.

[gangsta_red]

I would have never have even noticed myself.

[frostlatch]

If not better. Its not like they downsized anything lol.

[gangsta_red]

Agreed, there's no mandate from Nintendo telling another company to blur something out or cover up said character.

[rainslacker]

I wouldn't say its censorship. But it is change to make it what the dev feels is appropriate for the target market.

That actually is a very important distinction that needs to be made when people start claiming censorship, because what Nintendo is doing here is much different than what Sony is doing.

Its not even equivalent to the publisher level censorship that happens with localized titles...like with NISA.

[WitcheRivia]

Why was it censored? Is it coming to PS4?

[GrizToof]

Would rather see the character removed than censored.

[King_Noctis]

Even if they had made almost no change to the character beside giving her a new costume?

[spwittbold]

I'd smash that.

[Aaroncls7]

I love Monolith Soft. Still gotta play that last Xenoblade

[AK91]

Not surprised

[Platformgamer]

big boobs are beautiful, let the children see them

[Sirk7x]

I would consider it censorship more so if the Japanese version of the game had cleavage, yet the Western version didn't. This is more like they chose to design the character a bit differently to make it more acceptable for the audience they're targeting. I'm not keen on censorship, as it diminishes what the game was meant to be, but this is different. If anything, Nintendo has been pretty good with letting developers release their games as they're supposed to be lately.

[MeteorPanda]

you know what? good. f xenoblade 2. l loved shulk and his journey... l could not fucking play 4 hours of 2. The voice acting was too bizarrely disconnected, the too waifu thing with their weapons. like fuck me really? hot chicks are your weapons? Where did that even come about. it was too weebo and l'm sure if they left bayonetta alone but restricted her then it's just a cheap naked outfit and no class.

l've never hated a game sequel more than xeno 2

[DrStronk]

Not a big fan of oversexualization with my JRPG-characters at all, it makes them look nothing short of silly. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was my GOTY 2017 but if it's one thing I didn't like, it was how slutty and suggestive all the blades were. That being said, i abselutely love this new design. I hope it's not fake.

[SR388]

When next to no kids will be playing it, mostly core fans and folks of my age group (25-35)

[iofhua]

They probably wanted Smash to be rated T.

[Blu3_Berry]

Seems like Sony isn't the only one censoring games.

[Moonman]

Nothing wrong with jiggle.....nothing at all. :)

[Imortus_san]

Nintendo being Nintendo.

[HeisenbergX]

Ohh noooo nintendo is censoring cleavage ?? they must be becoming arrogant

[FernDiggidy]

Cleavage kills people!!!

[DaniMacYo]

Boobs Boobs Boobs Boobs Everywhere!!!!
Oh Lordy what we do now!

[MinnesotaFatts]

We must protect the masses from the devastating power of the anime tiddies.

[Jrios355]

"Next month on December 7, 2019."

Lol it's okay. Small mistakes like this happen.

[InTheZoneAC]

Unnecessary, but let's use some common sense before raging. SSB is probably going to be rated E10+, no 10 year old girl with real parents will be dressed like her, an adult.

[frostlatch]

Aww now all the neckbeards have to fap harder to get it up. What the fuck do any of you actually care about censorship? The devs can literally do whatever the fuck they like and you are arguing? Really? What if and so what if they really DO want to limit objectification?

[ReVibe]

Another reason Monolith Soft should jump ship. Nintendo's been holding them back, and it's clear that we're never getting anything as deep as Xenogears/Saga again under Nintendo's watch. I know this was a censoring for Smash, but it's a clear prelude to the avalanching wave of political correctness washing over the industry... yes, even out of Japan.
If Monolith were given the opportunity to make an M-rated game, I think it'd make NieR Automata look like Ratchet and Clank.