As long as it doesn't change the fact that Star Ocean is coming out, I'm good. Though I am a little bummed about the whole thing.

Ugh, I hate when they do this. The type of people that play Star Ocean are also probably going to be the same type of people that appreciate, or at least know about anime.

Fine by me. Don't really care for the whole anime look at all so the less pronounced it is, the better.

Yeah, I don't really like JRPGs or anime in general, but even I agree that the hand drawn is better than crappy CGI.

Less anime=fail!

haha it's a very smart idea though. Anything to actually get westerns to play it.

If there's no portraits in the conversations, that's damn stupidity. ESPECIALLY as that screenshot seems to indicate that the emotion of the character is mostly conveyed through that portrait.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again. What the hell is the problem with OPTIONS? Is it that hard to just include both? The art assets already exist, so just leaving them in and adding alternatives MUST be easier than replacing them. The fans again suffer for the sake of marketability.

On the plus side, this is just the US release, so no word about how they'll handle it for the EU. And at least these things can be patched ala Naruto and its japanese voice-overs.

If they want westerners to play it, they should probably just go ahead and make it an FPS and be done with it. Or at least a third person cover-based shooter. And replace all of the characters with steroid-injected chunks of muscle with tiny heads.

I despise when localization teams do this. What's the point? I know the stuff they change is (for the most part)minor, but fans of the games(i.e. the only people who will buy them)will not appreciate it at all. Is it just pressure from the publisher to sell as many copies as possible?

What was that one game that was released with two versions for either CG or hand-drawn cinemas?

Square are getting paranoid and losing their touch.

Have they learned nothing from Persona? It seems not, because those anime illos give the characters more life during dialogue sessions.

Square still think CG is the end all be all, and can do no wrong.

This is awesome news!

I hate it when companies release Japanese games and leave their aesthetically pleasing artwork and easy to read menu systems intact.

Srs, as a North American gamer I can't stand games that look good and have menu systems that aren't distracting and difficult to look at. I'm glad we have someone in our corner who's clearly looking out for our best interest!

For a while I was afraid they would really drop the ball on this one. Good looking out SO4 localization team!!!

*thumbs up*

Thats a very strange move that makes no sense to me. Do they think more people will play this game now? Thats damn silly. If this is an attempt to appeal to a western audience that has pretty much written off jRPGs, whats the point? Those kind of gamers aren't going to play the game either with or without anime.

I wish I knew why this was a big deal.

But did they make the main character less of a whiny bitch? That right there is the one thing they should take out if they want to better cater to the Western market.

I want the animu. :(

Damn it, Tri Ace's CG models this generation are creepy enough, no need for even more creepyness.

Where was the point in doing this?
Don't tell me they think Anime-Characters don't appeal to western audience, because that's acutally nonsense!

I saw that earlier today. My god, people get ape-shit over anything these days. While changing the UI and all that jazz is pretty stupid, what's even more retarded are the numerous comments over at Siliconera from people saying that they are canceling their pre-order over something as retarded as that.

I personally prefer the CGI pictures and the UI over the Japanese versions.

Srs, how can we ask them NOT to do it?

I don't think it's dumb to cancel pre-orders for a product that has let you down.

As a consumer the only power we have to affect any sort of change is by using (or in this case not using) our money.

The only reason reason garbage like this occurs is because western gamers have allowed it to happen. They do stupid shit and we respond by forking over our money anyway.

I don't necessarily see it as something to get pissy about, but it's not an improvement, in my book. One of the reasons I gravitate towards games like this is the artwork.

That being said, removing the expressive portraits during conversations (I'm assuming a system similar to Persona 3 and 4) could hurt the presentation a bit and might make in-game dialogue trickier to understand. The Japanese UI might be easier to read on standard def TVs, too.

Why not give the player a choice? How hard could it be to cram that onto the disk?

They're cutting some other content as well, some risque scenes.

Changing the menu and stuff seems so stupid, its something so minor and the anime faces looked a lot better as the CG makes them look like glassed eyed dolls.

@Cowboy

What do you mean losing their touch? They lost that years ago and this is tri-ace who haven't made a good game in years, seems they peaked with the PS1 era.

I wasn't gonna get this in the first place due to tri-ace's record of shit this just assures I won't.

It's always annoying to get media localized by foreigners in an attempt to match our sensibilities.

The people who say that the new English interface is better than the Japanese have bad taste. The Japanese menu looks like graphic pop art, which has nothing to do with anime. The English menu looks like a crappy web interface someone would make on deviantart.

Changing the portraits from animated to CG, as far as I can tell from the screenshots, severely alters the tone of the overall product. The animated portraits makes the game seem like a character driven story; one that I would care about. The CG portraits make me think the game is going to be overly sci-fi, because who could possibly care about those characters? The CG might look good in motion, but in stills it looks ridiculous. It pisses me off that a bunch of Japanese folk have decided to make the English version different. I don't see how the new interface and portraits could possibly appeal to more people than the originals.

I pray we have the option to choose the interface, but probably not. Square Enix has failed to publish a good game since Grandia III and I'm starting to wonder why I even care anymore.

JRPGs are dying, not because the genre is antique, but because Japanese companies just can't stop fucking up.

Frankly, I feel slightly retarded when I see little anime faces on the interface. It's why I don't play Persona 3/4. I might love the games, but the anime is the devil.

Seriously, anime existed for the sole purpose of creating Cowboy Bebop. After Cowboy Bebop, it should have just committed ritual suicide.

Obviously the best way to do it would be to actually animate the character models to have emotion (or just make the writing better), but we all know that such a step is going way too far.

It doesn't really matter to me in this instance(I do want the game though), but I thought people stopped making these silly alterations back in 1994 or some shit. Why did they decide this was necessary now?

While this is not that big of a deal, I was already leaning towards not getting SO4 so this pretty much pushed it into the "maybe when it's $20" cattegory.

This news is slightly saddening. I prefer my JRPGs, or games that I play in general, to be as un-filtered as possible and hopefully have as much of the original art direction/presentation intact through a localization process. The fact they are supposedly removing the portrait art for dialogue windows is infuriating to me personally. I'll still get the game and play it, but not playing the game how it was intended leaves me with a sour taste.

I can care less what they do the the UI as long as the game is fun. If it means that someone new to jrpgs is willing to give them a try because of these UI changes, then more power to them. The more non-jrpg people are willing to give them a try, the better it is for us jrpg fans.

The devs of the game surely chose to remove the anime faces. The removal was intended. Don't act like it WASN'T tri-ace who chose that.

Kyousuke Nanbu "They're cutting some other content as well, some risque scenes."

What? WHAT? I seriously hope that's not true. Not that I want to fap to some slightly risque animu scenes (Although I actually do), but I don't like to be baby sat. Like I said before, I didn't think that publishers were still making these pointless cuts/alterations in this day and age. And in a Squeenix title no less. Have they totally lost it?

It doesn't make sense to me to invest time and money to change it. But I dunno maybe they did a focus group and found US audiences like the CGI heads better. Why they would do that research in the first place is another mystery unto itself.

I'd prefer the anime heads, but the change won't keep me from buying it.

Now if they would fix the camera placement during battles so you could see what the fuck was going on, that would be something worth talking about.

I had read a while ago that they were going to make it an option for the player, which I think is a better move. That would make everyone happy right? Does it really take up that much extra space?

Super lame.

@Maxx

Man what is with this "OMG SO ANIME" trend? Jesus christ and how can you like one anime and hate every other? Have you even watched anything beyond Cowboy Bebop? There's some good stuff there, really good stuff, seriously your post is one of the dumbest things I've ever read here.

Its even worse that you're willing to ignore Persona 3 and 4(2 of the best RPG's in recent memory) because its "so anime", fuck the story right? You're to insecure to look past an animated face.

@Heavy

That's what I read, one scene in a bathouse with a nude character(not showing anything, you know risque) was cut out and I think some other stuff.

Grimspoon - hahah great comment

Kyousuke Nanbu - high five for anime defense

What what WHAT?! This is absolutely fucking ridiculous! Part of why I even LOVE Star Ocean (other than the awesome battles <_<) is the art style of every single game! This is such a completely, utterly, fucking mental change I...don't even know where to start.

Do I want to cancel my order? Just about. I don't even know, I might. If I wanted some CG bullshit I'd pay for any number of other shitty looking sci-fi games. Way to fucking fail, Enix. Fucking. Fail.

not a deal breaker, but what a bummer nonetheless.

hopefully there will be a menu option or something to change it back to anifaces.

Christ, why even have it on the HUD if it's such a pistake?

@Kyousuke Nanbu: I think somewhere around the time that the "OMG ANIME SO KAWAII DESU =^.^= LOL >_>;;" trend started. As you can probably tell I'm a fan of Bebop though it's hardly the only anime I've seen, although it is my favorite. I've tried to get back into anime in recent years but as many shows as I tried watching, none of them were all that intriguing. Maybe them problem is that I'm going for all the popular ones. No, not Naruto or Bleach (although I did watch those at some point for a short period), but shows like Code Geass and Death Note. Those shows were terrible imo, (Death Note to a much lesser extent than Code Geass, but I digress.) And shows like Lucky Star make me want to hurl.

If you can reccomend me some anime that doesn't feature 12 year old girls with huge eyes, or a whacky plot created by someone with approximately the same IQ, I would be thrilled to try it. The last anime I remember somewhat enjoying was Fullmetal Alchemist but nothing comes close to shows like Bebop, Neon Genesis, Samurai X/Rurouni Kenshin, oh yea, I did really enjoy FLCL.

Don't ask me what it is but over the last couple years I have been getting so turned off by modern anime and it's fanbase that I actually find myself getting sick by some of it, as in this case. I think the anime style can look really cool in some cases but in this case it looks really cartoony and seems like it's appealing to the lowest common deminator. ...and remember, this is from someone who used to watch it all the time as a young teen. I just feel like I've grown up and anime and it's fans in general haven't. Again, it could be just the anime I've been choosing to watch but I'm open for suggestions here.

That sucks! Ok, because of this change I'm now going to change when I buy this game. I'll go through the first three games first. Or unless the games region free I'll wait until the price of the 360 has gone down enough that I can import the console with the game. This is my way of protesting these type of changes small or large. Simply, unless there is an option to change this Square will not be getting my money any time soon.

Btw, I enoyed Persona 3. I didn't care for the anime look there either but it surely didn't stop me from enjoying the great game that it was. If you could reccomend me an anime similar or on par with it's story, I will give it a shot.

While it's not a deal breaker it does suck to hear they are changing poraits and the UI.... Am I the only one who thinks that the menu background looks like a XBL theme?

Kyousuke Nanbu: It sucks to hear they are going to cut some content just because they consider it "risque".

How depressing. The anime art looked better...I hope there is an option to change it back.

Tales of Hearts Anime sold way more than CG version, didn't it? Would the same apply here? Most likely, though it doesn't help that the CG is outright ugly from what I've heard.

I'm not really too affected, but this reminds me of the "ZOMG IT'S ANIMU IT SUCKS" from the Castlevania DS games...

Oh hell no. Haaayull naw.

I dislike it it, personally. I play JRPGs to satisfy my inner weeaboo, and losing minor stuff like this doesnt seem to serve any real purpose except to annoy jrpg purists

I wish people weren't so butthurt about zoh mah gawd animu Japanland does everything bettar. 'Specially when the anime faces are just as generic as any other anime face in any other Japanese RPG.

Actually, as a graphic designer, I'd argue that the flat faces look out of place on the screenshots. They're not trying to hurt gamers' fragile little girl feelings. It's not even a "lol anime is stupid" thing. The people buying the game are most likely anime fans as well, if not familiar enough with it that they're not spiteful towards it (otherwise, if they hated anime, they'd probably steer clear of the game).

Christ almighty, people whine about the stupidest shit sometimes.

It would have made more sense if they had just included the option to change between the two, even if they had made the CG the default. That way everyone wins...

This is EXACTLY like what they did with the Tales of Hearts intro movie. The US version is all CG and the Japanese got a hand-drawn anime version. (see here for details) I just love how the Disney-fueled stereotype "cartoons are for kids" still runs rampant in this country... >_>

Infinitys End: There is no US version of ToH(at least not yet). But Japan got 2 versions of Tales of Hearts, the CG version and Anime version.

Tales of Hearts doesn't even have a US release, man xD; They just did CG and Anime for the sake of trying it.
And this honestly sucks ass, I don't want that CG shit.