Prepare your consoles for ritual sacrifice. An edited version of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, the adorably disturbing roguelike from Super Meat Boy co-creator Edmund McMillen, is on its way to 3DS, Wii U and Xbox One. This is really happening, despite a few years of uncertainty about the game's fate on Nintendo consoles. Back in 2012, McMillen said that Nintendo had nixed The Binding of Isaac (the version before the Rebirth expansion) on 3DS because of the game's "questionable religious content." It is a game about God compelling a mother to murder her own child, after all. However, Rebirth has since launched on PlayStation 4, Vita and Steam, and McMillen has remained optimistic about working with Nintendo. In July 2014, he noted that a 3DS version was still on the table.
Now, McMillen has laid out some of the edits that make the 3DS and Wii U versions possible.
"Now you know how I am about artistic integrity and trust me when I say I'd never compromise my art to make a quick buck," he writes on his blog. "But after thinking outside the box a bit I came up with a few minor edits to the game that got more than a few suits on my side when it came to getting the green light. I'll list out the edits below and I think you'll agree they are so minor none of you will even notice."
Before we dive into some of the changes, it's worth noting that this blog post was published on April 1st. We double-checked with McMillen that this wasn't all a cruel, cruel joke. "Something's [sic] are true some aren't but I'm happy with the edits we made," he wrote back. Microsoft's Xbox One version will be the same as the PS4 game, meaning no Nintendo-level edits, but it will "feature the green Xbox 'X' carved into Satan's head (a lil' gag to MS)."
On to the edits for 3DS and Wii U. McMillen notes three major areas that Nintendo found problematic: nudity (Isaac is a baby and is cartoonishly naked), use of the word "God" and Christian imagery. To fix the nudity issue, there's now a fig leaf between Isaac's legs, over what McMillen calls "questionable underage dingle dangle." We meant it when we said this game was truly adorable and disturbing.
"God" is now "Dog" in the Wii U and 3DS versions, offering a bit of wordplay and a Son of Sam reference for good measure. As for the Christian imagery, McMillen replaced all of it with another, commonly ridiculed religion: Scientology.
"By switching out one mainstream belief system with a smaller one that's more socially acceptable to mock in the media I turned the tides and created a game that is more socially acceptable but still brings home the strong message the game always had," McMillen says.
There's no release date for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth on Wii U, 3DS or Xbox One, but McMillen says it should be "soon." Overall, he's happy with the edited game on Nintendo consoles.
"A few easy changes to get the game into the hands of Nintendo fans around the globe!" he writes. "An easy compromise that took us longer than a year to do... but was well worth it, artistic integrity intact."
Filed under: Gaming, HD, Microsoft, Nintendo
Source: The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
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