Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
So Wolfenstein the New Order is out and it is the first Wolfenstein game ever to release officially in Germany. However the game had to undergo some changes to get a rating here. Most importantly: No Nazis. Instead you are fighting "Das Regime" which very loosely translates to "The Regime". Gone are all the Nazis symbols, replaced with Wolfenstein logos, random shapes and wolfheads which honestly look much cooler anyway. However this is obviously not the first time this happened.
I don't really know how much of this is known to the Non-Germans here, but I thought it might be kinda fun to talk a bit about the sometimes ridiculous changes that games had to make to get a german release, so we can all laugh at those wacky germans and their censorship. On a sidenote, I live in Austria. Weirdly enough we mostly avoid the german censorship here, although sometimes publishers are too lazy or don't care so we got to wait for South Park Stick of Truth for a month as well.Clive Barker's Jericho though (which I was shocked to find out was developed by Lords of Shadow developers Mercury Steam) which wasn't released in Germany at first since it was oh-so-violent got an "austrian version" complete with german dialoge and text. So hoorah for that, right?
The first time I ever encountered censorship was in Command&Conquer Red Alert 1. Now we all know how incredibly brutal C&C was so it was only understandable that every soldier in the game had to be turned into a robot for the german release. Instead of killing soldiers you now were just "deactivating robots" which sounds much nicer, doesn't it? Nevermind the fact that in one of the expansions for the game the sovjets build a robot factory and everybody acted like this was a huge deal. Which confused the hell out of me cause I had no idea that the game was censored back then.
Now for some reason the german rating board REALLY hates Command&Conquer cause the weird censorship remained. I honestly can't think of another franchise that had it as bad as C&C which may I remind you is an RTS. Censoring GTA so you are no longer able to collect money from dead civilians? Okay, I get that. It makes sense at least. But C&C? Really? Just to give you an example, C&C 3 had some heavy censorship while Dead Space 1 (which shipped a year later) was completly uncensored. Anyway.
In C&C Generals , guess what the soldiers became? Robots of course, complete with new hilarious unit images and a "robotic" voice.
Ever felt bad for the suicide bombers? Well, feel bad no more cause they got probably my favourite change of all time:
Yep, they now are a cartoon bomb on wheels. Thanks, now I don't have to feel bad anymore about blowing up digital buildings!
The suicide bombers in Command & Conquer 3 didn't have it that easy though. They weren't replaced with a bomb on wheels and actually stayed human. However instead of just blowing up, you can now watch them run away to safety after blowing up whatever they were attacking, how nice. Also for some unfathomable reason they decided that "Nuclear bomb" sounded to violent and thus it was changed to "Aurora bomb". Obviously. Red Alert 2 was allowed to use the word "nuclear missile" though since it was a much better game.
Another rather infamous change happened to Half Life 1 (if you are german, you probably saw this one coming). So get this: You know how you cruel and brutal americans (and rest-of-the-worlders) can just kill those lovely innocent scientists? Well, we love science, so killing them is no longer allowed. Sorry. If you annoy them too much with your bullets or grenades they will simply sit down on the floor and start shaking their head in disapproval of your hatred for science. Or, depending on the version you have, just instantly dissolve in front of you (Much like the zombies in Left4Dead who disappear before they even hit the floor). Give Valve some credit though, at least their robots actually looked different from the soldiers.
Also pour one out for the poor Barnacles. Instead of yummy humans, they now just eat electronics and puke out screws. Aww...won't somebody please think of the barnacles?
As with C&C I really got the impression that somebody up there really hates Valve. Cause they had to censor both Left4Dead and Team Fortress 2. Yes that TF2. I'm not sure if this is still the case but when TF2 launched all the classes were replaced with, you guessed it, ROBOTS. As much as germans love science, they HATE robots.
Also instead of turning them into piles of meat and cloth killing the brave soldiers (and scouts) reveals that the TF2 guys actually consist of ducks, burgers, balloon animals, spinach, a dead fish and a unicycle. Give Valve some points for creativity.
Anyway those are just some fun examples I could think of right now. If you know some others let me know, cause I honestly love that stuff. So if you ever are about to complain that your weird japanese porno games are censored here....well....I dunno. Probably shouldn't complain about that on NeoGaf anyway.
I don't really know how much of this is known to the Non-Germans here, but I thought it might be kinda fun to talk a bit about the sometimes ridiculous changes that games had to make to get a german release, so we can all laugh at those wacky germans and their censorship. On a sidenote, I live in Austria. Weirdly enough we mostly avoid the german censorship here, although sometimes publishers are too lazy or don't care so we got to wait for South Park Stick of Truth for a month as well.Clive Barker's Jericho though (which I was shocked to find out was developed by Lords of Shadow developers Mercury Steam) which wasn't released in Germany at first since it was oh-so-violent got an "austrian version" complete with german dialoge and text. So hoorah for that, right?
The first time I ever encountered censorship was in Command&Conquer Red Alert 1. Now we all know how incredibly brutal C&C was so it was only understandable that every soldier in the game had to be turned into a robot for the german release. Instead of killing soldiers you now were just "deactivating robots" which sounds much nicer, doesn't it? Nevermind the fact that in one of the expansions for the game the sovjets build a robot factory and everybody acted like this was a huge deal. Which confused the hell out of me cause I had no idea that the game was censored back then.
Now for some reason the german rating board REALLY hates Command&Conquer cause the weird censorship remained. I honestly can't think of another franchise that had it as bad as C&C which may I remind you is an RTS. Censoring GTA so you are no longer able to collect money from dead civilians? Okay, I get that. It makes sense at least. But C&C? Really? Just to give you an example, C&C 3 had some heavy censorship while Dead Space 1 (which shipped a year later) was completly uncensored. Anyway.
In C&C Generals , guess what the soldiers became? Robots of course, complete with new hilarious unit images and a "robotic" voice.
Ever felt bad for the suicide bombers? Well, feel bad no more cause they got probably my favourite change of all time:
Yep, they now are a cartoon bomb on wheels. Thanks, now I don't have to feel bad anymore about blowing up digital buildings!
The suicide bombers in Command & Conquer 3 didn't have it that easy though. They weren't replaced with a bomb on wheels and actually stayed human. However instead of just blowing up, you can now watch them run away to safety after blowing up whatever they were attacking, how nice. Also for some unfathomable reason they decided that "Nuclear bomb" sounded to violent and thus it was changed to "Aurora bomb". Obviously. Red Alert 2 was allowed to use the word "nuclear missile" though since it was a much better game.
Another rather infamous change happened to Half Life 1 (if you are german, you probably saw this one coming). So get this: You know how you cruel and brutal americans (and rest-of-the-worlders) can just kill those lovely innocent scientists? Well, we love science, so killing them is no longer allowed. Sorry. If you annoy them too much with your bullets or grenades they will simply sit down on the floor and start shaking their head in disapproval of your hatred for science. Or, depending on the version you have, just instantly dissolve in front of you (Much like the zombies in Left4Dead who disappear before they even hit the floor). Give Valve some credit though, at least their robots actually looked different from the soldiers.
Also pour one out for the poor Barnacles. Instead of yummy humans, they now just eat electronics and puke out screws. Aww...won't somebody please think of the barnacles?
As with C&C I really got the impression that somebody up there really hates Valve. Cause they had to censor both Left4Dead and Team Fortress 2. Yes that TF2. I'm not sure if this is still the case but when TF2 launched all the classes were replaced with, you guessed it, ROBOTS. As much as germans love science, they HATE robots.
Also instead of turning them into piles of meat and cloth killing the brave soldiers (and scouts) reveals that the TF2 guys actually consist of ducks, burgers, balloon animals, spinach, a dead fish and a unicycle. Give Valve some points for creativity.
Anyway those are just some fun examples I could think of right now. If you know some others let me know, cause I honestly love that stuff. So if you ever are about to complain that your weird japanese porno games are censored here....well....I dunno. Probably shouldn't complain about that on NeoGaf anyway.