More X-Change 3 problems.

Visual Novel Community Visual Novel Talk
#1

Hate to bring up an old subject, but I’ve already given the information to Peter Payne and he hasn’t contacted me about it after about a month. Shingo was unable to help, as he did not work on the project.

We all know that X-Change 3 had some… problems in the translation process.

Namely, two issues.

  1. A loli character involved in a maid scene. This was deleted and purged.
  2. A rape scene that had CG edited and dialog cut. This was fixed via a patch from Peach Princess. Kudos to them for that.

Now, the problem is that I started playing the Japanese version of the game, looking for data differences via means I will not discuss here. I got bored and started exploring the memory room. Here’s where the problem is.

There was a lot more dialog deleted then we thought. Not from the rape, not from the loli sequence. No, the dialog deleted was for the two tutoring sessions. A small bit for the first one, a very large amount from the second. Now, I don’t speak much Japanese, but what I did pick up was not offensive, illegal, immoral, or anything I could see being cut for a reason.

The second scene, one major difference is that the boys spend a lot more time looking at Takuya and talking to each other. Takuya also has more comments and thoughts. However, the MAJOR difference is that instead of just going down on the one kid, Takuya actually seems to FLIRT with him for an extended period, talking to him. THEN he/she goes down on him, but even that has cut dialog with Takuya talking and teasing him. There is a LOT of dialog missing from this segment in the English version.

Theories:

  1. The programmers accidentally deleted some of this audio while dealing with the other two problems.
  2. The programmers were lazy and didn’t feel like translating these segments, figuring that keeping the main sex segment was enough.

Shingo has said that the company probably will not revisit the game, and since they are working on other projects right now, I agree. However, I do feel that this should be fixed at some point in the future. I cannot say if any other sections of the game were tampered with, as I can only view what’s in the memory room given I don’t understand the Japanese choices.

Until then, we are left with a game that is not complete. Even ignoring the loli issue, which I am willing to cast aside. This should have been caught before the product ever shipped.

I would like an explanation for the deletions, and any possible chances for a fix.

#2

Good luck.

#3

Bumping this since now I’ve roughly translated the tutoring scene in question.

There is, as I thought, no reason this material should have been cut, unless the translators got lazy. Keep in mind, all of the CG is the same.

Basically, what goes on is the tutoring session turns into a course on sex education.

One of the first things deleted was a reference to the pinkness of Takuya’s nipples and asking if it was true if they became darker with sexual experience. This might have been deleted since American audiences might not understand the Japanese saying, but meh. Takuya is stunned and unsure how to answer.

The same applies when she shows them her genitals. Discussion on darkness, and a sequence of the one student talking about how to make love to a woman. They then talk about the clitoris and are confused as to why they can’t find it.

It’s at this point Takuya becomes a very willing participant. She explains it’s covered to protect it since it’s sensitive, and goes down on him to show how the foreskin is covering his tip for the same reason.

A lot, and I mean a LOT of dialog was cut and removed from the English version. None of it mentions underage activity. Bare in mind, this is just one segment, I haven’t compared the rest of the game yet.

What possible purpose could this have served, other then to rush the product out the door?

I don’t expect a censorship patch, but when we are talking massive amounts of material missing for no apparent reason, I’m wondering what kind of quality control it went through.

Now, I can’t patch it up or translate it well enough to restore this content myself. If anyone from the company could explain why these changes were made, please let me know.

#4

Why don’t you let it sleep? This game is so bad it’s not worth discussing.

#5
  1. I don’t insult your games.
  2. I’m honestly curious why this was changed.
  3. People paid for a full game, not counting the censor cuts.
#6

I’m pretty sure that this was noticed and discussed at the time the game first came out, although it was overshadowed by the other changes. I certainly remember reading about it here before.

#7

Well, I personally find information on random cuts to be more interesting than discussing things that were cut for fairly understandable reasons. I don’t remember if this was talked about before, though, as I probably didn’t bother to read the details of XC3 threads, not being a fan of xchange :slight_smile:

#8

That’s because Ume necro’ed the thread he originally posted about it.

Personally, I didn’t buy XC3, and won’t ever be buying XC3, so I don’t particularly care. But I see no reason to give him grief for posting about it. It’s important to him, obviously, since he went thru the trouble of translating the missing lines. And as far as I can recall, there was never an official response concerning the issue, was there?

#9

I mean, if it was a small bit cut for localization or possibly overlooked, I could understand. But this is a sizable amount of dialog.
At this point, I’m about to play the English and Japanese games side-by-side to fully explore what else if anything was cut, by mistake or on purpose.

#10

It’s possible the dialogue is there but it’s not showing for some reason. I can extract the text files but they are encrypted so I can’t check :frowning:

#11

It could just be a scripting bug. These games typically implement the text, and when to display what images, play sound effects, etc. as a custom scripting language. It is possible that the text got “orphaned” as a result of a bug - meaning it still exists in the game, but the engine skips it by accident. Something like, for example, line 127 of the scene in question said “after playing this sound effect goto line 182” when it should have said 128).

The Planescape Torment restoration patches being worked on have a ton of content like that, where it was written by the game’s original developers, but not incorporated into the game proper. (Because eventually you have to say “anything which doesn’t affect the core storyline is not important anymore - we’d like to do it, but if we can’t, then we can’t” so stuff like broken quests? To make ship date, they a few times just deleted the quest rather than fixing what was broke with it.)

Edit: Of course, we don’t actually know whether the content was cut on purpose or not. So this is all speculation.

#12

If it is a scripting error, then a patch would be a lot easier in theory, but it would have to be fan-made.

I mean, they still haven’t fixed the Scene Recollection in Professor Cherry yet.

#13

After playing through the infamous Lipp section, I have this to say:

Nothing of value was lost.

There were really only a small amount of lines that even involved her, and her character struck me as distracting and redundant in the scenes in question.

I therefore reverse my call, and will say that in the end, it was a good thing that she was removed. However, I do not approve of the way the removal was handled.

I don’t want to seem like I’m suddenly endorsing censorship, and in fact, I still feel ill at ease, since it’s basically like removing a minor character from a book. Sure, they might not matter much, but they were there for a reason.

The Lipp section was edited very well with almost ZERO dialog loss, only around ten lines referring directly to Lipp were removed. So, that’s a plus. I’ll give Peach Princess props for that.

However, that leaves the tutoring section in question. This is the part I’m really interested in, since there’s literally nothing wrong with it to deserve such large cuts.