MysticMask

@RogerRoger Eh, the point that I was making with that question is that it's extremely hypocritical to me for someone to be perfectly okay with mowing down (in both senses of the word) dozens of pedestrians (who also didn't consent to being violently murdered) in something like GTA, yet find this content to somehow be so much worse for some reason. And Sony was perfectly okay with this mode that had been in the past 3 Senran Kagura games on Sony platforms back when they were released in the west, so all of a sudden having an issue with it NOW is also rather hypocritical of them.

To your second point, how exactly is censoring this mode "protecting minors" in any way? That's suggesting that not having this mode censored is somehow "harming minors"? What actual minors are possibly harmed in the making of this game when 100% of the people involved in making it are adults? To say that playing this somehow "normalizes child abuse" sounds awfully similar to the case that Jack Thompson (and others, some to this day even) made with regards to why violence in video games is "bad". If killing dozens to hundreds of innocent people in GTA and RDR hasn't produced hundreds of serial killers, then how is this somehow instead going to produce hundreds of child abusers?

And to the last point...um...you wanted me to instead continue arguing the points where you agreed with me? Or to, I don't know, thank you for agreeing with me on those points? I'm actually not trying to be snarky or anything here, but rather genuinely confused as to how I'm suppose to acknowledge when you've agreed with me in a debate. Thus far your replies to me have come off as quite diplomatic to me, and I quite appreciate it!

@RogerRoger I don't really think I've taken it to the extreme though. The point I'm illustrating is that different people have different sets of morals. Some people see the extreme violence that you can do in games like GTA or Mortal Kombat to be just as reprehensible as you do to what's depicted in something like Senran Kagura (though calling it child pornography is an extreme reach in my opinion). And there are others still that see depictions of LGBT themes to be just as reprehensible. So why is it that we should take your specific set of morals to be the standard of which we should go by? I mean, considering that all characters in video games are entirely fictitious and thus no actual, real-life living persons are ever harmed in them, there isn't really any difference between one virtual immoral act and the others.

And to your last point, you're basically saying that you'd happily give up any game if there's someone that takes offense at it, correct? So that means that in addition to all sexual content, all violent content should be cut. LGBT themes are also cut as that'd cause emotional distress to some of those on the right (and some feminists when it comes to that T part). But then just having straight themes will offend LGBT people, so...no romance at all then I guess? Oh, and we can't to harm animals of any sort in any way of course, as that'd offend the PETA vegan types. Sooo what would that leave us with? Puzzles games like Tetris? Ah, but then that's a Russian-made game, and given how hated Russia is nowadays I'm sure someone will find offense at that too, so even puzzle games aren't safe...

Do you see my point? How being willing to give up anything if someone somewhere could find offense at it is a bit ludicrous once you think about it?

@RogerRoger I'm sorry, but why exactly do we have to "protect those who might accidentally stumble into something"? How about parents instead actually do their jobs and be active in knowing what exactly their kids are consuming instead of making the rest of us suffer, yeah?

There's also a number of people still who think video games in general are all for children and will but whatever their kids ask for. So according to your logic, we should ban or censor all the violent M-rated video games out there, to "protect" those parents from making a bad decision, right?

@KingdomHeartsFan I haven't forgotten about replying or anything, by the way. It's just been a rather busy past few days/week, and my phone is kinda falling apart and in need of replacement. Will get back to you soonish.

@KingdomHeartsFan Yeeeaaah admittedly my last reply to you got to be rather long. It's a shame though, as I actually quite enjoyed this discussion/debate with you. There's no rush on my end so if you do ever get around to reading it feel free to reply back whenever that is. I go a bit more in depth on where I'm personally coming from there, so I think there's some merit to giving it a read sometime.

Actually, it just hit me - Sean Bean aside, it sounds like this will be the first Elusive Target where the target an potentially fight back! That, and given that he's skilled in "faking his own death", it might mean that we'll need to check the body to confirm that he's actually dead or the like. Interesting!

@Gremio108 I don't do it with Sean Bean specifically since I had a friend that said his name aloud often as he loved to make jokes about how he dies in everything, but in general half the time when reading I'll pronounce the name like your friend does, as that's how the spelling looks like it'd be pronounced. I do the exact same thing with "fillet"... >.>

@Danloaded He hasn't died in books as far as I'm aware, though I'm not sure how one would count that. If he does an audiobook for a book where someone dies, does that count given that he's technically playing all the roles? Or do we have to wait until he passes away in real life and we read about it in his biography? I don't think characters in books that he later plays in the movie adaptation counts...but then a novelization of a movie that he's died in might count. Maybe?

@LaNooch1978 So you'd be okay if Sony had censored that roping instance in RDR? Now that's interesting. Being LGBT is still considered to be highly, fundamentally immoral by a lot of people in the US. So if a character was LGBT in a game, and the fact wasn't integral to the overall experience, then you'd be just as fine with Sony censoring that aspect out of said game, yes?

I say that to illustrate that not everyone has the same sense of morality, and that your own is not universal. My main point has been that no actual real-life person is being harmed, thus there's no reason that it should be censored. You first countered with saying that since bad people use that reasoning, said reasoning should be dismissed out of hand no matter how true it could be. And after I pointed out how ridiculous that logic was, you then used reasoning that's suspiciously similar to that used against the LGBT - that it isn't "normal" and that it "represents an erosion" in common standards; a slippery slope of sorts with an implication that it'd lead to actual pedophilia (Of which if this latter point were actually true, you'd think that we'd have seen some of that by now, given that the first game in the series, which also had this mode, was released in the US all the way back in 2013 on the 3DS). And you have ignored other points & questions I've made.

Basically, I believe that the slippery slope lies in allowing Sony to censor to begin with, as it's better and easier to fight it now at the beginning instead of waiting until they censor that you actually object to being removed when precedent has already been set.

@LaNooch1978 And you've refused to listen to any points I've made. Funnily enough it's the exact opposite in the comments section of Dual Shockers, as the vast majority of the comments there think that Sony is in the wrong for censoring the mode. And on Niche Gamer, the comments...devolved into an argument on whether PC or console gaming is better, as far as I can tell. Go figure.

You don't have to keep commenting back if you really want to stop, you know that right? I'm not forcing you to reply. I'll will say though that your comparison of scenes between RDR and Senran Kagura is disingenuous though, as you're comparing a typical bit of gameplay in RDR to this mode. The typical bit of gameplay in SK would be you hack'n'slashing through various opposing ninja and enemies with ninja weaponry. Show that impartial person the bit where you tie up that helpless woman, lie her on the tracks, and as she screams for mercy watch the train approach and eventually eviscerate her (which earns you a trophy, I do believe). I don't think the reaction will be quite so cut and dry then as you seem to think it will be.

@KingdomHeartsFan Eh. Yes the series is rated M (17+ in the US). It being rated that though I'm sure stops teenage boys from getting their hands on said game in much the same way the "Are you 18 years or older?" age-gates stops them from entering a porn site.

@KingdomHeartsFan To be clear, I'm not making that point to argue that it's acceptable by any means (the distinction in this particular conversation being that we're now talking about actual teenagers as opposed to fictional ones in all the other ones in this comment thread), but only to argue the point that biologically speaking it is natural to find someone post puberty to be sexually attractive. Of which the points you made in your first paragraph support more than they counter, do they not? I mean, the knowledge that we have now about girls not being fully developed mentally is most certainly the result of the cultural (as it was learned) and not the biological (instinct). The cultures of the past didn't have that knowledge, and the cultures that do it now tend to be the cultures that aren't nearly as developed or educated as the cultures that don't.

To the porn search data: PornHub actually goes really in depth with their data - I think you'd find it a rather interesting read. I'd link it myself, but I have a feeling that linking to a porn site would get me banned (the page itself is extremely SFW, but the URL is still that of PornHub...it's easy enough to google though). As for interpretation goes though, it's interesting that you separate "teenage women" from "barely legal teens", as personally I see the girls of Senran Kagura to be the former, whereas everyone else here that seems to be against it to be the latter. One of the more popular porn genres is that of the school girl seducing her teacher, and vice versa. Do you find that genre on the whole to be morally wrong? And if not, what differentiates it from this game mode that you find to be so wrong?

Of course, the age of those doing the searching is an interesting point. According to PornHub's statistics, the average age of viewers is 35, with the largest age range being the 25-34 category. Of course, given that the site doesn't (obviously) list any demographic below 18, and those teenage boys obviously would be on the site to some capacity, I don't know how valid these numbers are necessarily (or how PornHub tracks them), so take that as you will. Interestingly the top searched term for the 25-34 and the 35-44 is "Japanese" (which is second for all ages older than that). And given how youthful Japanese women tend to look, and how much Japan idolizes youth, especially in the high school range, well...

But then that does raise another interesting point - that teenage boys are probably also a large demographic for the Senran Kagura games. Would a teenage boy playing that mode be more acceptable in your eyes?

As to the animals part, while it's true that the number of species that try to mate with their young (prepubescent aged), I can't think of a single species that wait any amount of time between when an animal sexually matures and a later point in their life (aka the "teenager" years of that animal) before they're willing to mate with them, like us humans do. And it's that age-range that's at the heart of this discussion, as it's the age that all the Senran Kagura girls seemingly fall into. If you can think of any, definitely let me know. But as it stands, I think using animals as an example actually hurts your thesis.

Finally, to your last point - I'm in complete agreement with you, as I'd love to see those studies. People game for a variety of reasons, and for different reasons at different times. Some do it to fulfill their darker urges but in a safe environment (those that mow over pedestrians). Others do it to roleplay out a different role where they can take actions that won't have a lasting impact on their real life, or are able to do things that they wouldn't physically be able to in the real world. Honestly it'd shock me if those kind of studies aren't already out there.

Meh - alright, one more thing. Personally, with regards to women in fiction specifially, I tend to gravitate toward the younger ones. Why? Because they tend to most resemble normal, natural women to me. Partly because in things like anime or Japanese video games where fanservice has any kind of focus, most women have ridiculously gigantic breasts. I'm actually not a fan of huge breasts - I'd prefer average to smaller sizes myself. And guess which kind of girls are the ones that have that? Mostly though, it's due to height. In real life I'm a rather large guy, coming in at 6'6" (1.98 m). The vast majority of women I've met typically only reach the top of my stomach to the middle of my chest. Very rarely do I come across a girl that comes up to my chin, let alone my nose or even eyes. So in fictional works, where the camera or point of view is typically at a more average height (i.e. a lower perspective than my own), there becomes a bit of a disconnect where the women depicted come off as being much taller than they should be. It's not really something I pick up on consciously, but subconsciously it feels a bit off. Whereas younger girls come off as being the correct height of a normal woman, so they feel more like "real" women. Does that make any sense? Hopefully it does and doesn't sound like complete weirdness. Plus, in a lot of works said character isn't exactly written to be like the age they're stated as, like Yoko from Gurren Lagann, who's actually like 15 at the start of the series, yet if you missed the small part where that's revealed, you'd never think her to be that age, would you?

@LaNooch1978 And the rebuttal to that rebuttal that they proposed is that it's the interactivity part of games that make it different (which is ironic as XSEED says that Sony said that it was the interactivity part of the mode that they object to now). And those very same people would say that something is wrong with your wiring for loving something so depraved as Red Dead Redemption. So what is it exactly that makes them wrong and you right? Bit hypocritical if you ask me. I mean, why does the ability to take a random woman, tie her up, and leave her on the train tracks and watch her get run over by a train exist? What purpose does it serve? Or to be able to stab a person in the gut and watch them limp away, trying to hold their stomach together, and slowly stalk them only to finish them off right when they've found someone that could help them (as you can do in GTA)?

Also, you and a bunch of others here keep calling them "children", with the only reasoning behind it being that they're in high school. I don't see it that way - probably because growing up in the 90's all the movies and tv shows set in high school the "children" were 9 times out of 10 were played by people in their 20's and sometimes even early 30's. So in my mind fictional high school students are kinda seen as adults. Plus, given that in the Senran Kagura series all the girls are also trained to be deadly assassins and can easily perform physical feats of strength and agility that go far beyond what any adult human can do, let alone a "child". So the idea of calling them helpless children seems completely absurd to me. They aren't helpless, and if the touching was truly against their will, then they have more than enough means of taking care of you, so calling it abuse is also a bit of a stretch.

This does make me think of a question though that's only tangentially related - let's say that as a teenager you watched or played some sort of game set in a high school. And let's say that there is a specific character that's around your age in it that you liked - maybe you have a crush on them or just find them really attractive - and so you fantasize about them sexually. A few years past, and you're now an adult. Does fantasizing about that character now make you a pedophile? I mean, with an actual person it wouldn't be an issue since that person ages with you, but since this character is fictional they technically never age and thus would still be considered a "child" to you, so how do you personally reconcile that?

Also, one last question - what does "LN78" mean?

@FullbringIchigo I saw the article written on here before this one that explained it. Apparently you don't even have to open it up - the very act of the PS4 trying to display it in a preview is enough to crash it it seems. Which is a gigantic problem.

So wait, is it just the act of opening one of these infected messages that causes it, or is it opening some link that lies within it? This is the first I've heard of it.

@LaNooch1978 You do know that you're making the exact same argument that people who think that violence in video games is bad and should be removed/banned/censored, yes? That the violence "psychologically damages" the mind of those who play them, potentially causing them to become more violent in real life, and desensitizes them to the horrors of what that violence would actually result in if done in real life? How is your position on this any different than Jack Thompson's was on violence in video games?

@Flaming_Kaiser You do know that there are women with small breasts that are of age, yes? Just because Marie Rose doesn't have gigantic breasts doesn't automatically mean she's a child. Thinking like you're thinking leads ridiculous reasoning, like with the Australian government, where its now illegal to depict any woman with A cup breasts topless, no matter how old she is.

Edit: Also, to your #169 comment, Sony has been a-okay with having this very mode in previous Senran Kagura games in the past, and didn't have any negative consequences because of it.

@JoeBlogs Well, first off, whether I would play a game or not does not correlate to whether I think the game should be censored or banned from being made. If that were based on how certain people "feel", then there wouldn't be any games with LGBT characters for instance.

But to answer your examples, in a nutshell - I might, depending on how they're designed. There's a board game that actually exists (Train, by Brenda Romero) where the main goal of the game is to transport as many Jews as possible to concentration camps via trains. Granted, it's more of a social experiment as who you're transporting is never specifically identified and you don't find out the name of the location that you're transporting them to until the first player reaches the spot, but it's still a game with very familiar themes to what you're suggesting (and its award winning too, I might add).

The torturing puppies game...it depends on how graphic it is as to whether I'd play it or not. There are actually mobile games on the Apple app store that exist with that very premise, just minus the puppy. Instead, it's a little round fellow figure thing (though I wouldn't be surprised if some games allowed you to swap the humanoid with a canine equivalent), where you beat, electrocute, slice, blow him up, etc, using the points you gain from doing such things, which you can use to purchase even more weapons and tools to use on him. It's cartoon-y, and actually kinda fun to play for like 15 minutes.

Can't think of any ISIS games like that off the top of my head, though I'm sure they also exist. Technically you do much worse things in games like Plague, Inc, where you play the role as an illness of some kind and are tasked with starting from patient zero and from there involving to infect and ultimately eradicate the entire human race, sometimes through some rather graphically-described ways. And that game is on the PS4, Xbox One, Steam, and mobile.

I draw the line when actual human beings are harmed in the making of the game, I suppose. But that isn't a thing that happens during game development.

@KingdomHeartsFan Alright, so think that through. What would cause those cultures to be that way, if not for biological urges? I mean, once humans begin developing primary and secondary sex characteristics, would they not become by definition sexually attractive?

Very young children of course wouldn't express sexual behavior normally, as they hadn't hit puberty yet. But as soon as they do hit puberty, are you telling me they don't become super interested in sex?

I think you're conflating prepubescent children with post-pubescent teenagers. I agree with you completely on the former category, but biologically speaking I think it's the exact opposite as far as attraction to teenagers go. I mean, if you look at PornHub's top searched terms for all of 2017 (no statistics for 2018 yet, as far as I'm aware), "teen" is the 7th most searched term (with "hentai apparently being the 2nd, interestingly enough), and the 5th most searched term the year before. So if anything, it'd be the cultural overriding the biological in today's age more so than it was back then.

Also, as general rule, it's always a terrible idea to try and compare human morality to animal behavior, given how terrible some animals naturally act. The mating habits of ducks for instance are based entirely around rape (look it up sometime, though it WILL shatter your worldview about ducks from then on...it gets to be pretty messed up). There's a species of penguin that have no qualms about forcibly mating with young kidnapped from other parents, have have even been documented stealing baby seals away and raping them until death). And that's not even touching on the fact that in most animal species in general, once a female hits puberty she's immediately available for mating, despite still technically being in her "teenager" years.

@LaNooch1978 It was actually genuine confusion, as I wasn't sure what exactly you were talking about. So. Let me make sure that I have your argument from that comment right. You're saying that because bad people have used certain arguments to excuse their bad behavior, then those arguments should be dismissed out of hand entirely? Isn't that a bit akin to saying that the entirety of Islam should be dismissed entirely because a small portion of Muslims use it to justify their acts of terrorism? I think you can see the error in that line of reasoning.

"Members of the BDSM community are consenting adults of the appropriate age." Technically the same can be applied to these games, as everything in them were created by adults that are giving players consent to play the game however they want. But then saying that "no association between children and sexuality for any reason whatsoever" would mean that you disapprove of age play, so apparently you DO then think some portions of the BDSM community are "deviants", no?

And the thing about the high school sex comedies that I mentioned contained actual nudity. There's no reason for that unless it's for the sole purpose of being titillating, as otherwise they could easily have shot the scenes without said nudity. And given the rating on those movies, the targeted audiences weren't fellow teenagers. And while it's objectively true that those movies have fallen out of favor in recent years, the reasons you hint at as to why is purely conjecture on your part. It could just be because the market got over-saturated with them and thus the audience bored with them, meaning that the genre will most likely make a return sometime in the future, as tend to happen with trends. Or, it could also very well be because of easy access to porn on the internet, given that the rise of the internet just so happens to coincide with the fall of the genre...which carries with it certain implications, wouldn't you agree?

@doctommaso Apparently so, though I'd say that if half the comment section disagrees with your assessment, calling the issue "obvious" is a bit of a stretch. But feel free to tell me how some potential unwanted touching is somehow a much worse and more immoral action than murdering innocent people in violent and gruesome ways. Because that notion seems absolutely ridiculous to me.

@doctommaso I'd imagine the laws would work the same as they do to things like theft, assault, murder and various other laws that are "broken" in video games. Things that would get you arrested in real life, when there's real victims that have been harmed by those actions. There are no victims in GTA, and there are no victims in Senran Kagura.

Or do you mean to say that you can't tell the difference between fiction/fantasy and reality?

@doctommaso So you also must think the sexualization of the high school "children" in movies like American Pie and Fast Times at Ridgemont High is also wrong and those movies should also be banned, yes?

@get2sammyb Keep in mind it wasn't just him - it was a whole bunch of Christians and people that didn't understand games and people that thought that violence in games on the whole was a bad thing and could corrupt minds and lead to MORE violence (an argument of which we STILL see come up every so often to this day).

It's the exact same thing, only now its people from the other side of the political isle that would be doing the complaining, for a slightly different immoral action that one could perform in a video game. I say "would" though because in this instance, Sony decided to do it BEFORE any moral crusaders decide to have a go at it. Sony is in the wrong here.

@KingdomHeartsFan A quick point with regards to #128 - it's kinda weird when you say that "violent urges" are natural and attraction to anyone post-puberty (which the girls in this game all are) isn't, when history (girls where considered eligible for marriage at 14 in ancient Rome and as young as 12 in the Medieval ages) and other cultures in the present day (like in the Middle East, the East, Africa, etc) say otherwise.

@get2sammyb So in other words, we're getting a repeat of the Jack Thompson era. Only this time we have an industry giant caving in instead of fighting back. Greeeaaat...

@RPE83 You're quite welcome!

@get2sammyb You mean the movement that was sparked by someone where its come to light in the past couple of months that she's also had sex with a 17 year old kid, and paid him thousands in hush money to keep it quiet? Isn't that about the same age that we're saying the girls in this video game are? Funny how that works out.

@LaNooch1978 ...I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to exactly? Are you saying that people in the BDSM community are immoral people with "deviant sexual desires"? I mean, if that's your reasoning then okay...though I don't know what makes you all to different from Christians that accuse LGBT people of the very same.

Edit: Also, with regards to your comment on #122, there is a difference between "pre-sexual humans" (which I'm assuming to mean pre-puberty) and the girls in this game, which are post-puberty in high school. And the sexualization of high school students has been a thing in our media for awhile. I mean, off the top of my head there's American Pie (with many of its sequels and seemingly endless copy-cat movies) back in 1999, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High back in 1982 - both of which showed straight up nudity of "high school students". And that's not even touching on the endless number of horror movies that involved the sexualization of high school aged characters.

@get2sammyb ...except that Sony had previously been perfectly okay with it (and thus "associated with it") in the previous four Senran Kagura that have released in the west. So it's a bit hypocritical for Sony to all of a sudden change course about it now.

@RPE83 I've spent far too long in this comment section today, so I'll refer you to #98 and #100, where I think you'll get a general sense to my views about the "context" in this regard. Though I will say that your honor-killings comment is a little ironic given how ridiculously lenient certain European countries have been in giving out punishments for certain people with regards to crimes much more extreme and worse than this game mode we've been talking about to actual children, with "cultural differences" being a contributing factor in that sentencing...but I digress.

Trevor's Torture Room - isn't that basically Surgeon Simulator in a nutshell though?

@LaNooch1978 I see nothing wrong with that kind of portrayal when there's absolutely no actual, real life children involved. Because then it's fantasy, pure and simple, and the same level as "wrong" as going on a killing spree in any number of open world games would be.

Moral - In the BDSM world there are kinks, performed between 2 consenting adults, like "consensual nonconsent" and "age play". Combine the two, and you've effectively this game mode but in real life. Are you saying that the two consenting adults playing out those kinks are immoral and wrong? Do they need policing? And if not, then what exactly is the difference between what they both do together and what a person does in the game?

Artistic - Given that literally garbage placed in the middle (or maybe slightly off center!) of a room is considered "art" nowadays, I think pretty much anything can be argued to be art. As far as I'm concerned, the idea of "artistic" has for now lost all value.

Financial - Sex sells. Sex appeal sells. Stuff geared towards a specific kink most certainly sells. How else does a struggling artist survive on commissions?

@DLB3 From my understanding, the "mode" we keep referring to in this game is actually primarily for changing and displaying the various clothes and costumes that you unlock, with being able to touch the girls as an added detail. Much in the same way how Rockstar added the detail of being able to get back all the money you used on a hooker after having killed her. And there's only "consequences" if a NPC witnesses you performing the act. No one saw it? Then you got off scot free! And then of course an argument could be made that getting a wanted level is its own sort of reward, as that means that you now get to experience the gameplay of a filling chase as you try to outrun the cops.

So if an obviously fully matured woman gets depicted in a work of fiction gets labeled with an arbitrary age of like 12 put on her, are we then to treat her as a child and thus consider any attraction to her as pedophilia? Would you call anyone that watches the first American Pie a pedophile, as technically the movie depicts fictional teenagers in sexual situations and in the nude (they're all in high school, after all)? Japan idolizes the youth. In all aspects. How many JRPG and anime protagonists have all kinds of experience and mastery in skills that'd take years and years and years of practice and learning to achieve, yet aren't even 18 yet?

Doing most of the things you do in GTA would be "sure as hell" illegal if done in real life. Sure, depicting the fondling a minor in a movie would be illegal, but that's because we now have an ACTUAL REAL LIFE MINOR involved, who should most certainly not be exposed to those themes in any way. And that's the major difference. The girls in these games aren't real in any way, shape, or form (aside from the voice acting, which I'm 99% sure were recorded by adults). They're codes of line directing a 3D model with an animation skeleton and an overlaying texture. They're pixels on a tv screen. To me, conflating that with child pornography is akin to calling anyone that uses a dildo a rapist because dildos cannot consent. If a girl uses a dragon-shaped or a horse-shape dildo, do you consider that bestiality? Of course not.

And to your comment in #87 about the attachment rate of actual pedophiles to these types of materials, I have a few questions. 1) What kind of materials are they? As in are we talking about stuff with actual kids in them or artistic renders where no real kids were involved? And 2) does wherever you got your information from have statistics of those that own said artistic renders yet have never committed any crimes (harm of children or actual child pornography)? Because if not, then all you have is a correlation, causation. 100% of murderers that used a gun either owned or had access to a gun, yet statistically barely any (probably less than 1%) of gun owners have ever actually shot a person, after all.

(Edit: Forgot to actually @ you yesterday when I wrote this yesterday. Well, technically I did, but I also copied and pasted your message into the reply box so I didn't have to keeps scrolling back up and down every time I wanted to look at your comment again...and apparently erased the @ when I deleted it before posting. The way comment section is set up on this site isn't exactly the most conductive when using a smartphone)

@LaNooch1978 #68 The same can be said about depictions of murder, no?

@DLB3 This game mode is also a thing that you can play through the entirety of the game without doing. So think the comparison is a sound one. But to put it into a more general context, are you telling me that fondling someone is morally worse than killing dozens (or more) of innocent bystanders?

@Flaming_Kaiser In western releases, the ages have been removed completely. And personally, I don't see what makes the girls in this franchise look "underaged" as compared to the rest of anime.

@JJ2 (#22) This very same mode has been in previous Senran games that came out in the west, on Sony platforms and even Nintendo platforms, and there was never an issue then. I don't see why Sony would suddenly need to protect themselves now.

@Rob_230 What exactly makes it "unacceptable" at this time as compared to killing innocent civilians in a myriad of ways across multiple games, which somehow IS acceptable?

@get2sammyb @cashflowx @suikoden @Eternallover21 @Kidfried Okay, so what exactly makes the Senran Kagura girls look like children exactly? Because I don't see it. They're incredibly well developed from a puberty stance, so that can't be it. Is it because they look a little shorter than normal anime girls? That doesn't scream "child" to me, as since I'm really tall in real life, the height actually make them look more proportioned (minus the bust size of course) to real life women to me. So what is it? I'm genuinely curious, because I don't see it.

@Nightcrawler71
As someone pointed out on Reddit, the number of days between it going gold and it releasing is...47.

@Deadlyblack Heh, fair enough. It could have been taken either way!

@Deadlyblack the Switch version actually comes with Fox, the default hero dude, and the Arwing (with digital codes for the default ship that the other versions have instead), so you wouldn't have to pay an additional $15...unless you meant the $15 that bumps the game's price to $75?

@rjejr Well, on the plus side, those characters are already in the base game of Ultimate, so you'll be able to use those Amiibo there!

The game is 100% open world from what I've heard (well, 95% or 99% I guess since you aren't freed to do whatever until you've finished the tutorial missions), and if you don't want to deal with the physical toy stuff then you can buy it all digitally. The physical version also unlocks digital versions (with you only needing to scan in the physical stuff to renew the license so to speak once every two weeks), so if you get tired of swapping the toys out you have the option to not to.

I don't know, I'm kinda enamored in the idea. Or at least interested. There's also the fact that it detects the orientation of the wings and weapons too, so if you put them on swapped around or backwards or upside down then it shows up that way in game, which I thought was nifty.

In the US the starter bundle is $75, so I'm guessing the ships will come to be $15 or $20 apiece, which isn't too terribly bad. Of course, I still have GCU, so that'll be an extra 20% off for me, which sweetens the deal.

@stevenfins I've played the first one and II, but that's it. Started up Brotherhood on the 360 back when it released, but right after booting it up my console RROD'ed, and by the time I got that fixed some other game came out that grabbed my attention more at the time. And since I heard that Brotherhood ALSO ended on a cliffhanger, I figured I'd just wait until the next yearly release came out before playing through both...and just hadn't gotten around to jumping back into the series since.

@Jaz007 I think it's getting to be a trend of Ubisoft, as they did the same thing with Far Cry 5 by offering the remaster of Far Cry 3 in its season pass.

@stevenfins And you'd be correct, unless you want to count the PSP immediate sequel to the first Assassin's Creed or any other portable games that I'm forgetting. I really hope they make and release a remaster of the first (perhaps the "director's cut" PC version that to my understanding adds some more variety to the side missions) soon, as I've been wanting to do a massive play through of all the Assassin Creed games and it'd be quite convenient to have them all on the same console.

So here's a thing that annoys me about the many versions of this game on offer at retail - apparently the Gold version (which is the game plus the season pass, which one would assume to be the "definitive" version) doesn't include the content found in the cheaper Deluxe version. Like...really? Or do I have that wrong by chance?

I know that the 3 pre-order suits can be unlocked in the main game, but does the same hold true for the pre-order spider drone gadget? Because if it is, then I may very well just not use the pre-order code, as I'd prefer to unlock the suits and gadget instead of having them be unlocked instantly.

It definitely sounds like a remaster of some kind, though I'm definitely hoping for a compilation collection!

Any word yet on if these DLC stories take place during or after the main game? Kinda hoping that it's the latter...