Censorship in the game has been a hot topic in the last few days, whether it be the revival of the dead topic that is the Height Slider, Smart Inner missing, altered costumes, Al being given clothes in his first appearance, to the outright removal of Bath Scenes and so on and so on.

Now mind you... this is all speculation, albeit speculation created by looking heavily into specific subjects relating to the Global version and previous speculations done in the same manner ended up being accurate to a degree so... here we go. The main important thing... who is to blame, there are two potential culprits here:

Foreign Classification Boards

Yes, the Global version launched originally in North America and was exclusive to that region... however there were indications that it wasn't always going to be that way. The 'global' expansion wasn't done as a result of demand from the player-base but was rather part of Sega's big plan for the game. This is further indicated by them reaching out to other Classification Boards as far back as the Closed Beta, despite the game at the time being 'only planned' for North America.

With that said, while classification boards like ESRB and PEGI are only there to inform people about game's content, there are other country's classification boards that would have issues with the game's content. I'll be bringing up my own country's, Australia, rating board as an example; the OFLC. The OFLC are quite strict when it comes to how characters that look underage are portrayed. The OFLC would not have had an issue with the likes of EPISODE 4 and the first sets of ratings were automated so my best guess is that Sega edited content they THOUGHT other rating boards would have issues with.

Sony Interactive Entertainment

"But Leon, the PlayStation 4 version isn't out and Microsoft has been spear-heading this release" Yes I am aware and months ago I had my doubts on whether the PS4 version would even launch outside of Japan... but having observed how the Steam PSO2 client works and how the release was handled... those doubts are no longer there, PSO2 Global will be coming to PlayStation 4 eventually either this year or next year.

But what's this got to do with censorship? I'm not sure if anyone here is familiar but... Sony's recently come under scrutiny for imposing censorship in games, including games which are already rated M to begin with. Although the Global version is spearheaded by Microsoft... plans to release the PS4 version outside of Japan could have been made once the Xbox One console exclusivity was over. (MS Store platform exclusivity for the PC version might be what's expired, not so much the Console exclusivity) As such one of two scenarios might have happened:

1. Sega and Sony already work quite closely to handle the Japanese version of PSO2 on PlayStation 4 (and Vita... for now) and could have consulted them beforehand in regards to what content would need to be altered for such a release to be possible.
2. Sega could have tried predicting what content Sony would have trouble with.

Either way it leads to the same scenario, the Global version's content is altered beforehand so that when the PlayStation 4 release came around there wouldn't be much content to alter... after all How awkward would it be if we truly did get everything uncensored from the getgo and after the maintenance for the PlayStation 4 launch, we find out our characters were suddenly made taller, certain costumes were altered, Al's wearing clothes and the bath scenes are gone?

Conclusion

At the end of the day keep in mind that these are just pure speculations and I could be wrong with regards to many of these. I'm against censorship but I maintain that the alterations that Phantasy Star Online 2 received do still come off as quite minor in comparison to how altered certain games have been and don't really prevent me from enjoying the game... and this is coming from someone who had been playing the JP version before coming to the Global version.

@Mattwo7 and @Archetype-Luna , im indifferent as to who is involved with. Both translations have their own quirks and there are things which the Official Translation has which I do genuinely prefer over the Patch team and vice versa.

Honestly... threads like these fail to take into account what goes on in localization. At this point its better that they fix what they have now then it is to go through the trouble of adopting a completely different script or redoing it all... especially given that there's a dub involved and doing so would require outright re-recording lines.

So.... more "please fix these typos and inconsistencies" and less "Falspawn? Gemini? Luther the Fallen? Bahh! Ruined forever" type posts...

@Glitch , some of these can't be helped... names like Klaris Krays, Chroto, Gettemhult, Melfonseana, Pati, Tia and Risa are all Sega of Japan's "Official" name spelling that many official localizations use.

@ImperialOdin217 and @ZorokiHanuke , apparently it seems the text is now able to update to show your timezone cause it shows to me MY city and time as well.

@chrnodroid as many people have noted, that outfit is part of a different AC Scratch Ticket. Do not mistake content not yet released as censorship.

@Lintaur , with all due respect... the roadmap seems to focus 'content' on anything BUT outfits and such. We all knew from day one that there were outfits that wouldn't even be able to make it due to licensing restrictions. Maybe they should have used different phrasing but I always took it to mean that it wouldn't be far behind the JP version... PSU being years behind its Japanese version is still something that people hold a grudge on, especially when Sega repeated the same mistake with the SEA version.

Here's a food for thought.... Sega likes to keep many things regarding PSO2 secret don't they? After all, this 'global release' was kept under wraps with a 'maybe, maybe not' case for some time and the Steam release was promoted as the game coming to 'Other PC platforms' leading to an endless array of people thinking that meant PSO2 would end up on the Epic Game Store in-spite of evidence presented.

What i'm about to say is nothing more than two theories which I could be wrong with... but which present some things to think about. With that said, lets get started....

First potential culprit.... Foreign Ratings Board. There's evidence suggesting that the Global release may have been planned from the start... after all, why include reference to EU privacy laws in your privacy statement? why submit the game to multiple rating boards at the same time? Now i'm not going to point fingers to any SPECIFIC rating boards... but lemme just say, our rating board, the OFLC, has a particular problem with depiction of underage characters in certain situations in media to the point that a topless flat-chester character was frowned upon for some time by the classification board. Did any particular rating board specify or force these changes? Maybe, maybe not... Sega may have reached out to them early to figure out what may need to be changed (unlikely since the first set of ratings were through the automated IARC process) or Sega was trying to 'future proof' the game's content from the beginning to reduce the risk of certain rating boards (not necessarily the ESRB) having an issue with the game's content.

Second potential culprit may surprise many.... Sony! "But Leon! Microsoft is the one responsible for this release and we don't even know a PS4 release is happening"... and indeed, for a long time my stance had been that a PS4 version was unlikely to release outside of Japan. But then I looked at the Steam version and its lack of Xbox Live functionalities... suddenly a PS4 version doesn't seem all that unlikely and could have even been planned from the start but of course... given Sega likes to be secretive about future platforms, nothing will be said until its actually happening (most likely a condition of the exclusivity deal). But what's any of this got to do with the censorship? Well... its no stranger that Sony has some strict censorship policies... Sega of Japan works closely with Sony for the JP version and if they really did plan to release on PS4 since the very beginning they could have consulted them on what would need to be altered to have the game released outside of Japan. As such... the alterations may have been made early on to ensure that all versions were consistent from the start... cause after all, how awkward would it be if we had everything and then after the maintenance for the PS4 version's release happened.... we suddenly find bath scenes from EPISODE 4 missing and the game throws an error cause we have too short a character?

That second one would be the hardest cause there's really no motive for even revealing this. Right now, they can't say that Sony's the reason behind the censorship because then that would accidentally reveal that the PS4 version is coming after all. At the same time, even after the PS4 version releases they have very little reason to say Sony's behind the censorship since... they are close partners for the game's management in Japan after all.

Acquantance of mine got the Light Novels detailing what happened to Pioneer 3 and is in the process of having them translated. In the meantime, an acquantance of him who got the light novels took several pictures of all the illustrations in the book, figured it would be cool to see (Credits to Lutz from the Esper Mansion Discord server for the images):

https://imgur.com/a/0R8TqBt

(Note: Images are uploaded in reverse, beginning to end goes from bottom to top)

@ZorokiHanuke The one thing that has me curious in that rating is this:

The word “f**k” is heard in the dialogue.

Like... WHO!? and WHEN!?

@GuardianWorld Simply put, the profanity filter was something that got carried over from the JP version (though not many know cause the English fan translation patch disables it). Much like everything else... Online R&D didn't want to change that inspite of the higher rating.

@STEPPENWOLF-53 There's more chapters to this EPISODE.