Censoring The ‘Dragon Quest III’ Remake Is Just Silly And Unnecessary

In a new video interview with Kazuhiko Torishima and Yuji Horii about the Dragon Quest III remake, they very rightly criticize unnecessary Western game censorship.

The interview is quite long and nicely handled by the team at Denfaminico Gamer, but the main chunk that covers the situation with Western censorship of the Dragon Quest III remake is shown below.

The short version is that some of the characters have had their costumes changed to fit in with what is supposedly more acceptable in the West. Despite the fact that these character designs were from a game that was already released back in the 80s.

What’s especially interesting here is that gaming has had a long history of age certification related censorship that is tied to specific cultural norms, but that was recently streamlined and unified.

To explain, in Germany, the USK rating system didn’t like having games with red blood or people getting killed in them. So the blood was turned green and the people into zombies or robots.

That’s just one of many examples of age rating related censorship, and to be honest, 15-20 years ago, getting a game through age certification was a complete nightmare because every region had different requirements.

The reason this is interesting is because back in 2013, IARC was formed. The International Age Rating Coalition tried to unify the age certification setup for games and create a single framework for game companies to get their games age rated.

Now, IARC tends to apply more for digital releases, which would affect Dragon Quest III as that will be going physical, but a unified age rating framework has broadly existed for the last decade or so.

Unless Dragon Quest III was suddenly rated as a mature or adult game, which it hasn’t been, then these changes aren’t at all necessary and are coming from a place outside of the age rating setup.

This is why to have both Torishima and Horii express their frustration over these changes for a Western audience is entirely justifiable. It should no longer be necessary, at least from an age-rating standpoint.

For me, the fact that Dragon Quest III was released back in 1988 and we’re only now seeing changes to the game’s character designs is just stupid.

As for the remake itself, it’s entirely great. I played it at this year’s Tokyo Game Show and will absolutely be picking it up on its release.

If you are also interested in the origins behind the Dragon Quest series, then make sure to check out my interviews with both Kazuhiko Torishima and Yuji Horii.

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