Ushi No Tane Forum

Oh, I can definitely see it in that last screenshot Kiki, thanks! It still looks bad to me....why change it from blonde to dark brown? And there's nothing wrong with a tomboy, so why make her more feminine? The cast already had plenty of feminine girls. I can get why they would change the darker skinned characters, as much as I hate it, but I can't get the other changes.

Although, if Marvelous really is thinking more internationally now, you'd think they'd worry more about making characters darker, for diversity's sake, not white-wash them. And maybe consider adding same « Chicken Hugging » marriage in. What they're doing actually looks like the opposite of PC, at least from a Westerner's point of view.

I guess there's nothing to do but wait for the other characters, but it doesn't look good. I'm sure they thought a remake of their most beloved game would be easy money, but they forget making changes to a game as beloved as that can be disastrous. Again, I though these games were overated, I'm a fan of the console and the newer 3DS entries, but even I was used to seeing the characters differently. And something is definitely going on at Marvelous.

I think I can see the Doctor from the screenshot you posted, and at least from the back, he doesn't look too different, neither does Elli. But only their portraits will tell. After all, from the back, Rick's model doesn't look too different from his original sprite, but we all know better.

Edit: Also is that Ann in that screenshot...in a ponytail and wearing what looks like a dress? If so, ooohhh boy. And I can't recognize who's next to the doctor. New boy perhaps? If so, it's definitely not Allen. And that might be Kai peeking from the upper right. If so, at least his model is still dark.

Confirmed XSEED will be localizing the game as Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2 ... ca/.148632

ryume wrote:

Ehppy wrote:Anyone else notice this?

Spoiler:

Bahahahahaha. I LOVE everyone’s reactions to my favorite bachelor in ANB!

At this point, if it ISNT Allen, then Igusa Matsuyama (if they're still the artist!) has some explaining to do.

Gothicat wrote: I know we've talked about Cliff's clothes, but Karen is terrible as well. Before she had a tomboyish, almost punkish, style, but now she just looks like a regular feminine girl. Even the expressions we've seen of her portrait so far look so wrong, I don't see a hint of the old Karen in them, and I didn't even play the mineral town games that much.

The attitude from Karen is missing and I'm not sure why. She always had this self confidence (not in the negative way Allen had ) but after seeing the pictures and after translating her dialogues from the pics shared, they really softened her personality which is kinda disappointing. I hope they don't change the personality of other candidates. Please keep them as they were.

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Oh lord, referring to FoMT and its remake will be so hard now that they have same names. This is all similar to ToT and 3OT situation. I'd suggest we use FoMTR?

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EDIT: Barley's design has to be the design with most similarities with the previous design.

No problem

Disclaimer: I am just guessing on all of the following stuff! Please no one take this as if I know something for sure...it's just a feeling I have, that these issues are a part of why they make some of the decisions they make.

This is mostly a reply to Gothicat.

I actually think that these things cause more controversy and outcry in North America than most other places. Like same-« Chicken Hugging » marriage. Most of the frothing I see come up about how THIS GAME IS FOR CHILDREN, and KEEP YOUR POLITICS OUT OF MY GAMES...I think the outcry really comes more from NA than anywhere else. Japan is probably not overly supportive of minority groups, but at the same time, they don't really turn them into controversies or rallying points, either. They're more just shrugged at, from what I can tell...as long as they can fit in at work and be a contributing member of society, they can do whatever they want in their personal time and everyone else will just mind their own business, is the impression I get...while in NA it becomes all 'political' and religious and other crazy stuff.

I see NO reason for them not to include lots of ethnicities, at least, as I think almost everyone wants that, at least here, but here's where I think they might hesitate, if that's what they're doing. Westerners are generally very loud and very individual in their opinions, and everyone wants their own opinion to be listened to. A girl doesn't need to be feminine to be cute, a tomboy doesn't equal 'butch', a geek doesn't need to be dorky, etc. These things are all TRUE, but it's not Japanese people who get angry at seeing stereotypes, imo...it's Westerners. So I think there's a chance they're trying to minimize stereotypes all together (and for all I know, Japan could slowly be becoming more polarized, too...it might not be about the Western market at all, though I think it COULD be, at this point, after Stardew Valley sold millions)

So maybe they don't want to make a clearly ethnic character, give him a personality, and then have people get mad at how 'people of X race aren't like that! That's stereotyping!'

EDIT: Ooh, dpb, thanks for that! Great news!

Kikki wrote:Allen gave me a constant itch to stick out a foot and trip him into the river, but I really do love the absolute disgust so many people are showing at the idea of him being a candidate, lol. It's kind of awesome how so many people have the same, very strong feelings. I know for sure there was one person on FOGU who married and loved Allen, but they loved him BECAUSE he was awful. So even they're like, 'yeah, this guy is the proverbial donkey hat, but that really entertains me'. Heh heh...

Finally getting around to reading the flood of pages after my original comment in this thread, and happened to come across this. Most likely you’re talking about me haha. I think I’m one of the few on this forum that usually ends up absolutely adoring the biggest jerks in these games I just can’t take them seriously, AND their character design is usually very much to my liking

Seeing this game is coming almost makes me want to fire up BTN now! I’m happy our pals at XSEED will be handling the localization as well.

It was either you or...and I'm hesitating here, but...maybe Robinstar? Or both. And yeah, Allen's design was my favourite in ANB. But just his DESIGN, lol. (Though he's really the type of character who made me roll my eyes so hard that I genuinely found him fun, even as I wanted to smack him.)

To Kiki:
I guess as an European, I can sort of see their point. However, it feels like it might cause controversy in America anyways. Because the same people who would cry about there being no PoC characters are the same people who then complain about every facet of a character's personality they don't like and cry racism. And while you have a ravenous set of people who would cry about same gender options because it's a game for children, there's another set of people just as ravenous who would cry that there's nothing wrong with children being exposed to those things (which I agree, but there's going to be crying either way). It's a catch 22.

And since this is a remake, it's double-bad because a set of people can easily say (if Kai is white-washed), 'you had dark characters in the 00's, why not now?' whereas others will go 'Kai was always racist'. I feel like there's always one loud group that will be offended, so they should just keep doing what they were doing.

They should just focus on pleasing the nostalgia-blinded fans with this game in particular, which doesn't seem they're doing too well thus far.

I feel that Marvelous in recent years has focused on trying to please the biggest majority they can and have been toning everything down to achieve that. It makes a lot of things more bland, but does raise fewer complaints, except from those of us who complain about it being bland, lol. (This may be why I think having a horrible guy like Allen around can actually be rather fun. Though he DID annoy me in his events. A lot, lol.)

Just my opinion on what I think may be behind a lot of Marv's decisions when they change things. I'm not saying it's good. I guess I'm not saying it's bad, either. I just think it might be a contributing factor. It's more glaring though, when this is a remake. Because they're not making NEW people...they're taking characters we already know and changing them.

I don't know. I can only hope it all works out for the best. No matter what they do, some people are going to hate this remake. Others are going to think it's great. I can't tell what the balance will be. I'm not a fan of the older games but honestly I think they should aim to please the older-games fans first on this one, but I'm no business expert. Pleasing only the established fans wouldn't help grow their brand much, I suppose.

Horse races are back yaaay

Oh my « Harvest Goddess » Kappa he grew out his hair a lot.

Kikki wrote:And people were saying this policeman character is new?

Spoiler:

They were probably saying he's a new design; Harris was in the original game as a policeman too.

Somerandom wrote:I actually think the silhouette could be Raeger, as he was one of the most popular characters in the original SoS. The head and hair shape seem extremely similar. They might have just changed his outfit like they did for Cam/Kamil in SoS. It could also be a completely new character, I don’t know Japanese but I know a little Chinese and the character for new （新）in both is the same.

If it's Raeger, I'm going to be so torn between him and Cliff speaking of Cliff, just look at this daww >w< As we got a video, at this point I've begun to wonder if they're keeping the original music! I really liked the town bgm

Kikki wrote:No problem

Disclaimer: I am just guessing on all of the following stuff! Please no one take this as if I know something for sure...it's just a feeling I have, that these issues are a part of why they make some of the decisions they make.

This is mostly a reply to Gothicat.

I actually think that these things cause more controversy and outcry in North America than most other places. Like same-« Chicken Hugging » marriage. Most of the frothing I see come up about how THIS GAME IS FOR CHILDREN, and KEEP YOUR POLITICS OUT OF MY GAMES...I think the outcry really comes more from NA than anywhere else. Japan is probably not overly supportive of minority groups, but at the same time, they don't really turn them into controversies or rallying points, either. They're more just shrugged at, from what I can tell...as long as they can fit in at work and be a contributing member of society, they can do whatever they want in their personal time and everyone else will just mind their own business, is the impression I get...while in NA it becomes all 'political' and religious and other crazy stuff.

I see NO reason for them not to include lots of ethnicities, at least, as I think almost everyone wants that, at least here, but here's where I think they might hesitate, if that's what they're doing. Westerners are generally very loud and very individual in their opinions, and everyone wants their own opinion to be listened to. A girl doesn't need to be feminine to be cute, a tomboy doesn't equal 'butch', a geek doesn't need to be dorky, etc. These things are all TRUE, but it's not Japanese people who get angry at seeing stereotypes, imo...it's Westerners. So I think there's a chance they're trying to minimize stereotypes all together (and for all I know, Japan could slowly be becoming more polarized, too...it might not be about the Western market at all, though I think it COULD be, at this point, after Stardew Valley sold millions)

So maybe they don't want to make a clearly ethnic character, give him a personality, and then have people get mad at how 'people of X race aren't like that! That's stereotyping!'

EDIT: Ooh, dpb, thanks for that! Great news!

So I know you said you were just guessing, but I think these kinds of things were something that I could’ve seen about...ten years ago. Not in 2019. There really isn’t much of an excuse anymore. You even brought up Stardew Valley, which has sold far and away more copies than any HM game. It also has gay marriage. And as far as I know, no one raised any kind of stink akin to how you’re describing. Instead people celebrated it, and I saw many people wishing HM/SoS would do the same. But despite SV’s success and even urging from Xseed themselves, we get crickets.

The ball is very much in Marvelous’s court, not NA’s, in regards to this. It’s just frustrating when I look at Fire Emblem, which isn’t even a dating sim, with gay marriage, and Marvelous is still dragging their feet with this. And I know that when it inevitably doesn’t have it again I’m gonna get posts like, “well it’s a remake, what do you expect?! Wait for the next game” As if remakes have never been made to adapt to current times.

But that’s not the only aspect of the game that looks behind the times here. I am not digging the graphics at all. I like cutesy stuff and Magical Melody but this is like the latter but instead it looks bad. I loaded up BTN, and someone mentioned it but I think that’s the style they were trying to go with, not the GBA one. Which makes sense... except it still looks worse than that imo and doesn’t have the excuse of being a PS1 game The character art looks nice though, and I am kind of interested in comparing the Xseed localization with Natsume’s. But at the moment I don’t see much reason to get this. I’m pretty disappointed that we’re 2.5 years into the Switch’s life and we still haven’t got even a JP announcement of a real new SoS game. Makes me wonder if those devs have just been doing this for that long.

I really hope RF5 doesn’t look anything like this, yuck.

Pachi wrote: If it's Raeger, I'm going to be so torn between him and Cliff speaking of Cliff, just look at this daww >w<

If rival marriages are back, I pretty much have no choice, since I refuse to let Ann marry Cliff after I found out she gave him a black eye in 64. I know her character changed, and probably will again in this remake, but I still refuse to. But again, we don't know if rival marriages are back. If new guy is not Allen, I'll give him a shot.

Beedlebud wrote: I really hope RF5 doesn’t look anything like this, yuck.

Me too. I'd rather they keep the same graphics from the Rune Factory 4 remake than this.

Anyone else misses the old "clay" sprites from N64? Big eye characters.

I´m not a fan of the style from the recent SoS. And I see they´re getting that style into this game.

I wish this game looked more like the BtN but with a link´s awakening remake style.

I know not everyone likes the chibby style, but I would love to have it back. (just don´t make them with huge heads like babies).

I´m very exited for this game. I wanted to go back to the old grid based farming, simple barns, huge crop field. And now there are two games coming: Mineral Town and Doraemon.
I can´t wait to see what´s the next mainline SoS game. they had to work this remake to learn how to program on switch.

Another interesting feature I've seen in the trailer has to be the ability to turn on and off the town lamps. The text in the picture below roughly translates to "Examine" so I'm assuming we'll have the ability to turn it off and on

Beedlebud wrote:So I know you said you were just guessing, but I think these kinds of things were something that I could’ve seen about...ten years ago. Not in 2019.

I never said it was a good reason. And I feel like we already know that they ARE behind the times, though, so I still think that the things I mentioned are why the stereotypes are seemingly getting toned down, with Karen being less obviously tomboyish and Rick less dorky-looking, etc. I just think it's still likely that they want to minimize controversy, for better or for worse...I think they're trying to please the MAXIMUM number of people possible and think that this is the best way. (And naturally I could be wrong, and they don't think that at all! It's just my hunch on why things are shaping up this way.) Personally I think it's probably mostly for the worst...making things bland to make them less objectionable to 'this' group of people or 'that' group of people is not a good solution, imo. But this has way too much potential to shoot right off-topic, so I'm stopping while it's still mostly on.

~

I don't think there's any danger that RF5 will look like this. Hakama is making RF5, which means it's probably an entirely, or almost-entirely different team of people. If anything I'd say RF5 is more likely to look like RF4S, though I think it'll be different from that, too, since that's partly a port.