Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake: Difference between revisions
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==Censorship controversy== | ==Censorship controversy== | ||
The game has been strongly criticized for the censorship of the female [[Gadabout]] and [[Warrior]]'s clothing prior to it's release, altering the classic designs to expose less skin in order to comply with the [https://www.cero.gr.jp/en/ Japanese CERO ratings board]. The ratings board has grown increasingly strict in it's regulations in the decades since the original release of the game in 1988, with the censorship being mandated in order for the remake to secure a rating of '''B''' and be legally sold to children. Fans noted the censorship of the [[boss troll]]'s lip colour in preview footage shown on June 18 2024, wherein the giant's lips were changed from pink to green and it's nose was altered to be significantly smaller. | The game has been strongly criticized for the censorship of the female [[Gadabout]] and [[Warrior]]'s clothing prior to it's release, altering the classic designs to expose less skin in order to comply with the [https://www.cero.gr.jp/en/ Japanese CERO ratings board]. The ratings board has grown increasingly strict in it's regulations in the decades since the original release of the game in 1988, with the censorship being mandated in order for the remake to secure a rating of '''B''' and be legally sold to children. Fans noted the censorship of the [[boss troll]]'s lip colour in preview footage shown on June 18 2024, wherein the giant's lips were changed from pink to green and it's nose was altered to be significantly smaller, though the change in the color of the lips were already present in its appearance in ''[[Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince]]''. | ||
The removal of gendered language during the character creation process has also been criticized. This was first revealed during June 2024 in the 32nd issue of Weekly Shonen Jump where the Hero and Heroine's full art was revealed, referring to the two as "looks A" and "looks B" despite the artwork clearly depicting the two as a man and woman respectively. Matching voice actors were cast for their battle dialogue as well, with [[Nobuyuki Hiyama]] and [[Yūko Minaguchi]] for the Japanese dub and Toby Laurence and Jenna Sharpe for the English dub. A trailer shown on August 27th would show this peculiarity extending to the party members as well, where their sex was replaced with "appearance A/B". The change was further criticized when it was revealed that the English script still uses proper terms when referring to characters in-dialogue, such as the appearance B [[Thief]] Samantha being referred to as a woman by Healizah when giving her a makeover, making the alteration totally pointless. | The removal of gendered language during the character creation process has also been criticized. This was first revealed during June 2024 in the 32nd issue of Weekly Shonen Jump where the Hero and Heroine's full art was revealed, referring to the two as "looks A" and "looks B" despite the artwork clearly depicting the two as a man and woman respectively. Matching voice actors were cast for their battle dialogue as well, with [[Nobuyuki Hiyama]] and [[Yūko Minaguchi]] for the Japanese dub and Toby Laurence and Jenna Sharpe for the English dub. A trailer shown on August 27th would show this peculiarity extending to the party members as well, where their sex was replaced with "appearance A/B". The change was further criticized when it was revealed that the English script still uses proper terms when referring to characters in-dialogue, such as the appearance B [[Thief]] Samantha being referred to as a woman by Healizah when giving her a makeover, making the alteration totally pointless. |
Revision as of 02:14, 2 October 2024
Main series games | |
---|---|
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake | |
Developer(s) | ARTDINK & Square Enix (Team Asano) |
Publisher(s) | Square Enix |
Designer(s) | Yuji Horii |
Artist(s) | Akira Toriyama |
Composer(s) | Kōichi Sugiyama |
Series | Dragon Quest |
Platform(s) | Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam |
Release date(s) | Nintendo Switch INT November 14, 2024 PlayStation 5 INT November 14, 2024 Xbox Series X/S INT November 14, 2024 Steam INT November 14, 2024 |
Genre(s) | Console role-playing |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Rating(s) | ESRB: Everyone +10 |
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is a full remake of Dragon Quest III. It was originally announced as part of the 35th series anniversary celebration on May 27, 2021.
Unlike previous remakes of Dragon Quest III, the HD-2D remake offers a modernized vision of the original title with additional scenarios, voice acting, new vocations, and modern Dragon Quest series features such as battle tactics or faster battle settings. The graphics are completely redone in the "HD-2D" style popularized by previous Square Enix published games such as Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy.
New features
Scenario changes
- New scenarios and characters supervised by Yuji Horii.
- New story segments that features Ortega, the heroes's father.
- The monster arena has been totally revamped to allow players to enter their own recruited monsters instead of relying on the arena's stable.
- T'n'T boards added in the Super Famicom remake has been removed.
Presentation
- Re-imagined locations and HD-quality sprites.
- Certain areas have been slightly modified to account for the perspective changing from the classic top-down view to the pop up book style found in other HD2D titles.
- Orchestral soundtrack.
- Increased language support: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, European Spanish, and Latin American Spanish.
- Dragon Quest III had not yet been translated into most of these languages prior to this remake.
- Voice acting support: English and Japanese.
- Fully animated monsters.
- Faster battle settings, as seen in recent Dragon Quest titles like in the Nintendo 3DS release of DQVIII or in the international releases of DQXI.
- The player can customize the party's appearance by eight options per vocation with four for each sex.
- The new character Healizah can modify a character's appearance between the four options, along with his or her hair colour and voice upon reaching Alltrades Abbey.
- Characters now speak in battle: shouting while attacking, yelling the names of spells while casting, grunting while being attacked, etc.
- The camera pulls back to reveal the party while the player is selecting actions for a turn.
- Equipped weapons are visible during this period.
Gameplay adjustments
- New vocation: Monster Wrangler.
- Stat modification: Resilience now determines base defence power instead of half of the Agility stat, with the new Stamina stat controlling HP growth as Resilience did in the previous versions of the game; Agility only influences turn order and evasion. Wisdom now determines the growth of spell power instead of each spell being fixed to a static range.
- New spells, such as Moreheal, Zapple, and Zin.
- The inclusion of skills for melee vocations, such as Double-Edged Slash, Mercurial Thrust, Pressure Pointer, and Cop Out [1]. The battle menu lists lists Spells and Abilities separately.
- Boomerangs and whips can now land Critical Hits, though less frequently than single-target weapons.
- The inclusion of additional monsters, such as the frostburn, a new variant of it, and Garboyle, who originally was an unfightable monster in the game's SNES and Game Boy Color intro.
- Battle tactics, available for the first time in Dragon Quest III.
- Three modes of difficulty: Dracky Quest (Easy), Dragon Quest (Normal), and Draconian Quest (Hard).
Censorship controversy
The game has been strongly criticized for the censorship of the female Gadabout and Warrior's clothing prior to it's release, altering the classic designs to expose less skin in order to comply with the Japanese CERO ratings board. The ratings board has grown increasingly strict in it's regulations in the decades since the original release of the game in 1988, with the censorship being mandated in order for the remake to secure a rating of B and be legally sold to children. Fans noted the censorship of the boss troll's lip colour in preview footage shown on June 18 2024, wherein the giant's lips were changed from pink to green and it's nose was altered to be significantly smaller, though the change in the color of the lips were already present in its appearance in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince.
The removal of gendered language during the character creation process has also been criticized. This was first revealed during June 2024 in the 32nd issue of Weekly Shonen Jump where the Hero and Heroine's full art was revealed, referring to the two as "looks A" and "looks B" despite the artwork clearly depicting the two as a man and woman respectively. Matching voice actors were cast for their battle dialogue as well, with Nobuyuki Hiyama and Yūko Minaguchi for the Japanese dub and Toby Laurence and Jenna Sharpe for the English dub. A trailer shown on August 27th would show this peculiarity extending to the party members as well, where their sex was replaced with "appearance A/B". The change was further criticized when it was revealed that the English script still uses proper terms when referring to characters in-dialogue, such as the appearance B Thief Samantha being referred to as a woman by Healizah when giving her a makeover, making the alteration totally pointless.
On September 28 during an interview with Denfamico Gamer's NAZ CHRIS, the ongoing scandal over the censorship prompted her to ask Yuji Horii about the changes directly, specifically for the female Warrior. Horii revealed that the changes were due to the strict age ratings regulations, stating that even just showing too much skin would raise the game's rating and prevent the game from being sold as an all-ages product as Dragon Quest had been in the past. NAZ CHRIS replied by saying the game is simply a work of fiction for the players to immerse themselves into, to which Horii agreed and stated that he doesn't understand what the problem is either[2]. Friend of the series and former editor in chief of Weekly Shonen Jump Kazuhiko Torishima, who was also present for the interview, followed Horii's statement up by pointing out that ratings regulations vary greatly between different nations. Torishima strongly criticized the forced compliance to these regulations to conduct international business in American and the UK, going so far as to call them an "evil disguised as good", and pointed out that it is simply impossible for there to be content that offends no one due to everyone having different perspectives; Torishima asserts that so long as certain absolute taboos are not broken then creative freedom should be unfettered[3]. Torishima drew comparisons between the narrow-mindedness of modern-day age regulations to the religious zealotry of the Puritanical mindset of the past, and highlighted the difficulties of selling Jump magazine in America as an example. The content that was deemed perfectly suitable for eight year old children in Japan was mandated to be marketed as strictly for teenagers and older in America or legal action would be applied[4] Torishima declared that doing business with America was infuriating and even damaging to Japan itself by forcing the smaller nation to comply to such ridiculous laws, which Horii explained as being the reason for the removal of gendered language during the character creation process. Foreign meddling mandated the censoring of the words men and women and forced Horii to utilize the awkward workaround of appearance A/B, despite everything else in the game acknowledging the common sense differences between the two sexes. Horii wondered aloud who on Earth would ever complain about the use of such common words in the first place[5].
External links
Gallery
The Erdrick Trilogy logo created for the game
References
- ↑ Weekly Shonen Jump issue 32, 2024
- ↑ NAZ CHRIS: あとすごい話題になってた。そのコスチュームとか、当時とそのままなのかどうなのかみたいなのがありましたよね。 また... 堀井: まあね、あのいろいろ規制もあってね。露出しすぎちゃいけないとかね NAZ: あそこまあちょっとあんまり深掘りする気はないんですけど。いいのにだってフィクションだけど、その中にあ、主人公ってあなたが入って冒険するっていうことでいいじゃないと思うんですけど、違うんですかね? 堀井: なんなんですかね。よくわかんないですけどね。これについてはね NAZ: ゲームだし、フィクションという自分の中のこうバーチャル体験でのあのノンフィクションだから、楽しくければいいのにっていうふうに思っちゃいますけどね。 堀井: あんまり露出するとね、年齢が上がっちゃうっていうね。 鳥嶋: まあまあね。 堀井: 全年齢じゃなくなってしまうっていうのが 鳥嶋: ルールがやっぱなんか各国違ったりするんでね。広くろうと思うと、一番厳しいところに合わせざるを得ないとか。でも,
- ↑ NAZ: 当時そんなこと思わなかったですね。 鳥嶋: コンプラっていう名のね。やっぱりね、ある種のね。なんだろうな、絶対神と言うべき善の名を借りた悪みたいのがあるよね。あの全員が不快感を覚えないなんてことはないわけだって、株不快はこういうことを覚えるどうこうでもいいわけよ。だって綺麗、汚いとかさ、善悪って人それぞれ感じ方があるわけじゃんで物事はやっぱり。根っこにあるのは、やっぱり絶対やっちゃいけないことだけ。いくつかそれをさえやらなきゃといいじゃないって、そういうのがないわけだから、やっぱりあの欧米英米の方から欧米の方から来てる?
- ↑ 鳥嶋:その宗教的な概念からくるその清教徒の考え方って、アメリカにあるじゃない?彼らのコンプラの考え方って本当ない。狭いうんでだから、向こうでコミックスだけに、全部その年齢で。 あの, 区切ってやらなきゃいけない少年ジャンプの漫画だったらサーティーンアップ13歳以上じゃないと出せない。それは全部見てくれなきゃいけないで、それを訴訟が起きる。そのために保険も入らなきゃいけない。もうこんなね、バカな国とねやるの。
- ↑ 堀井: 主人公もね、男女選べるんだけど、男を女選ぶって書いていけないのねタイプ一タイプ二なのねねえそう男女誰が一体文句言うんだろうと思うんだよね。 鳥嶋: そうそうですね。 堀井: うん, わからない。