(to the topic) I command you to rise from your grave!
Never did make my more coherent post. (I made my initial posts to this thread right after I got back from Acen…I was kind of exhausted).
After looking at more of the titles, I have come to the conclusion that yes, a lot of the games DO feature quite young characters. Too young for me by a long shot. So oddly enough, I oppose censoring them for the English market but can only play the censored versions.
I have no real problem with censoring the titles as long as it doesn’t negatively affect the story. The only real thing I can offer here to elaborate is an analogy.
Take H.P. Lovecraft. One of the most famous authors of horror ever. Is one of the few people to publish in the pulp magazines of the era who is still even widely recognized, much less acclaimed. His fiction has shaped all of horror since his work was rediscovered.
He was a racist.
His stories frequently have racist undertones. Several of them in particular deal entirely with “degenerate”…well, subspecies of the human race. And then there’s Call of the Cthulhu. It is a major plot point that there is a cult that worships this being, and that the cult exists because of the psychic emanations of said being. The “weaker” races are more susceptible to this; there is at one point a reference to “degenerate Eskimos”.
Now, you couldn’t remove the offending racial slurs without materially changing the story. And in this case Call of the Cthulhu went on to found…well, the entire Cthulhu Mythos.
I will be quite interested in seeing how this Hirameki International thing turns out.