There has been a stronger movement within the western territories on how female video game characters are portrayed. While some gamers may not find any fault or given a second thought on how a character is designed, others can find it to be too offensive thus vocalizing their distraught over the developers design choices. Fearing they would receive an overwhelming backlash on one of their character designs, Square Enix has decided to alter the character Miki for the western release of Star Ocean 5: Integrity & Faithlessness.
Thanks to Niche Gamer who has translated an interview between 4Gamer and Star Ocean 5: Integrity & Faithlessness character designer Akira Yasuda, director Hiroshi Ogawa, and producer Shuichi Kobayashi, we now know why Miki will sport some bigger panties before launching outside of Japan.
Within the interview, it’s clear that Square Enix feels that releasing the version of the game from Japan would eventually cause the team to go back and further tweak the character design. According to Akira Yasuda, the character Miki, in general, is erotic even though she shows very little skin to begin with.
Recently there’s been a trend in games where if you put out a character that shows a lot of skin, later on you might have to make a lot of revisions, ‘although she’s erotic, there’s not a lot of skin showing’ is the feeling you get.
In hopes to avoid any issues with the character design, Square Enix decided to slap on some slightly bigger panties on Miki, a comparison of the two versions can be seen above.
This trend of sexual character designs doesn’t completely abide by characters who may show more skin than others within the game. In fact, Blizzard adjusted Tracer’s pose within the game Overwatch after a complaint was made that her original pose was too sexually suggestive.
As for Star Ocean 5: Integrity & Faithlessness, the game is set to launch within the third quarter of this year for the PlayStation 4 while it’s unknown if the PlayStation 3 version of the game will release outside of Japan.
