Compile Heart and Idea Factory announced that Arc of Alchemist is coming to the Nintendo Switch in Japan on October 10th, 2019 later this year during the fall. The announcement came via a tweet and a trailer, which revealed the playable character and content in the upcoming Switch release. Unfortunately, the trailer reveals that the Switch version of the game is the same as the censored version of the game that came out for the PS4 back in February of this year.
The tweet kept things short and simple via the Compile Heart Twitter account on June 26th, 2019. You can check it out below.
『アークオブアルケミスト for Nintendo Switch』
公式サイトにてSwitch版の情報を公開しました！https://t.co/b8uSDK7ltw #アークオブアルケミスト #アクアルhttps://t.co/7vk0jUh42n— コンパイルハート (@CompileHeartWeb) June 27, 2019
It links to a trailer over on YouTube featuring just under three minutes of gameplay, along with a look at the various cast of characters who will appear in the Switch version of Arc of Alchemist. Just like in the PS4 trailer that was released back in November of 2018.
You can check out the trailer below.
If you notice at the 1:51 mark when Sharon is on the screen, she’s wearing the white shirt underneath the black bikini strap instead of just wearing the black bikini strap as she was originally intended to wear when the game was first announced.
If you’re not familiar with the censorship of her outfit, here’s the original comparison below so you can see what was changed.
This change occurred around the same time that Sony was enforcing their censorship policies, which was almost universally squelched by the major media outlets.
As a way to comply with the policies Compile Heart slapped Sharon on a white undershirt, which is a somewhat ironic color swap of the black undershirt that Nomura had to give Tifa in the Final Fantasy VII Remake at the behest of the Ethics Department.
As you can see in the image below, Sharon – even on the Switch version, where there is no censorship policy – is still sporting the white undershirt that she was given on the censored PS4 version of the game.
This was one of the major fears that a lot of gamers had back when the policies started to become more widespread and known within the weeb communities; that Sony’s censorship would eventually bleed over into the releases on other platforms because it would just be cheaper to port the censored version rather than making two versions of the game.
If this keeps up then it means that the default versions of each new game will be the censored versions, assuming they’re made for PS4 first and ported over to PC or Switch. We saw that exact scenario play out recently when Spike Chunsoft’s censored version of Zanki Zero: A New Beginning from the PS4 was ported over to the Steam version on PC,. When gamers complained about the censorship, the threads were locked.
In this case, Compile Heart and Idea Factory are sticking with the censored version of Arc of Alchemist from the PS4 for the Nintendo Switch. What’s really sad is that Compile Heart scrubbed the game’s web page of all the old images featuring Sharon in her original outfit. All the new images show her with the white undershirt. However, an old archive of the web page shows the original images of Sharon where she was in nothing but the tiny little black bikini top, as pictured below.
Her original art was also featured in one of the earlier trailers for Arc of Alchemist from back in October of 2018.
While her in-game model wasn’t on display, the bikini-clad courtesan was still quite visible in the trailer at the 55 second mark where you could see her original artwork.
If you’re unable to view the trailer there’s an image of her original design captured from the trailer that you can view below.
All of this is to say that Sharon had a very different look originally, but due to the censorship policies Compile Heart made the change. Instead of reverting the change for the Switch version they just copied over the assets from the PS4 version for the Switch port.
It’s a sad turn of events, but now it’s becoming the standard procedure for how a lot of games are being handled after being negatively impacted by Sony’s censorship policies.
(Thanks for the news tip Red)
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