Sekai Project Details Changes Made to Baldr Sky’s Western Release “Not Our Preferred Choice”

Sekai Project has posted a lengthy blog detailing the changes made to the English release of Baldr Sky. In Japan, the game was released with adult content, and the main protagonist would become intimate with the female characters. However, scenes with explicit material have been removed from this release of the game.

The publisher makes it clear that “this was not [their] preferred choice.” However, the choices given to them were to release the game with the adult content removed, or not at all. One victory for the publisher was the ability to keep religious imagery in the game unedited, which they were initially asked to remove.

So that we don’t get this wrong, you can read below precisely what changes have been made to the game:

• All explicit sex scenes are cut, usually by fading to black and skipping the explicit details. The lead-in to these scenes is not removed, and sexual encounters are never removed, but simply not presented to the player. In sex scenes that are important for the progression of the plot, the scenes are kept, but shortened and modified so the art shows either no nudity or a black screen, and explicit mentions of genitals and _genital interactions_ modified.
• Outside of sex scenes, the few images that shows nipples and/or genitals are modified to be non-explicit. This is usually done via obscuring those parts, either via objects or light rays, or by cropping (using high res sources). Character standing sprites that are nude are not shown, although the scenes they appear in are not otherwise modified, and the characters still appear shoulder up in the face window.
• Very little text is modified outside of explicit sex scenes, only in cases where characters directly reference explicit sexual details. The mascot (the cute chibi character that is present in the menu screen) has had a handful of particularly questionable lines adjusted, and Noi’s unlockable plugin has had it’s name changed (you know the one).
• Because cutting the adult content results in a somewhat large hole in the title screen where the H-Scene Replay menu would be, we replaced this screen with a Movie Replay, which lets you replay the two opening and 6 ending movies, as you have them unlocked. The records screen will show a count of movies unlocked instead of the h-scene count of the original.

The team also revealed that 3,680 lines out of 87,877 were removed from the script, which amounts to 4% of the game’s lines.

The publisher adds that if they can release the game with the adult content, they would add it in an instant. However, even with the altered scenes, they believe it is a game that is worth playing.

Baldr Sky is a combined release of the Japanese games ‘Baldr Sky Dive1 “Lost Memory”’ and ‘Baldr Sky Dive2 “Recordare”’. The story is set in the future where people and implanted brain chips into themselves to escape off to a virtual work created by AI technology. However, this ends having side effects that no one could have predicted, except for every sci-fi movie about AI taking over the world.

Baldr Sky will launch on PC-via Steam on December 20.