The Japanese version of the upcoming Square Enix RPG Star Ocean: The Last Hope looks almost exactly the same as the western version. The main difference is in the head shots near the character stats at the bottom: Japan gets little anime heads while the English versions get the slightly less anime-looking CG heads.
On the menu screens, vibrant colors and more detailed manga-ish headshots have been changed out with dark tones and full-body CG (as seen in our gallery). A tipster told Siliconera that even the character portraits that accompany the dialogue have been removed. While the previously mentioned items won’t matter that much, I hope the latter isn’t true. That would suck a little bit of life out of the dialogue, I would think.
I always wonder why companies think that pulling some of the Japanese elements out of a game helps. Especially with this type of game. In fact, I’d say that the target audience would probably appreciate the hand-drawn headshots more. Maybe they think the “cool kids” will appreciate Star Ocean: The Last Hope more.
I got news, Square Enix: they won’t.
