Script Changes
It has come to our attention that Capcom has decided to restore DGS1+2 as well as Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice to PlayStore and iOS, the latter also getting a refresh of Ghost Trick, which we recommend you to play if you haven’t done so yet. As of the time of writing this, DGS has not been restored on 3DS eShop. Update May 26, 2021: both games have been restored to the 3DS eShop with the same changes.
Both DGS1 and 2 have also received what Capcom calls a “minor bugfix”, but when we looked a bit closer we found something quite interesting. For the first time, an update for either of the DGS games involves changes to the script. Not just small typos, it looks like specific words have been removed, 野蛮 (barbarian) and サル (monkey). Of 13 changed passages, 10 are said by Jezail and nearly all of them are said in a racial context. As the small number suggests, this certainly doesn’t cover all instances of racially charged passages in the game, and one instance of 野蛮 remains in DGS1 in which it appears the context isn’t racially charged but could be taken as such. Many other cases remain in the game, mostly remarking on the appearance, intelligence or honor of Japanese people in an insensitive or insulting manner.
This makes us wonder why they did make these changes. If the objective was to tone down racist rhetoric, then they failed to do their job right, since equally bad or even worse passages remain in the games. Someone theorized it could be a change in certain rating board rules which could force higher ratings on games that feature specific words. We do not know at this point and welcome any input from someone who does.
It stands to reason that these changes will also find their way into the upcoming Chronicles version for PS4/Steam/Switch, which we are very much looking forward to. Hope you all managed to place your preorder on time!
Since only 13 passages were actually changed, we documented them all so you can see for yourself and come to your own conclusions. For your convenience, we added our current translation and a rough translation of the changes.
