Fire Emblem: Fates will ship stateside without its original Japanese audio, Nintendo has confirmed to Polygon. When they launch, all three versions of the Nintendo 3DS game (Birthright, Conquest and Revelation) will have English voice acting only.

We first discovered the lack of dual audio during our livestream of Fire Emblem Fates' earliest chapters. Although not all previous Western Fire Emblem releases offered varying language options, Fates' immediate predecessor Fire Emblem: Awakening did include Japanese audio.

In Awakening, the Extras menu available on the title screen included an additional voice language option.

This differs from Fates' Extras window, which lacks such a menu.

Viewers of our livestream first noted the difference in the menu options, vehemently expressing their disapproval in the chat window.

When asked to clarify why the company did not include dual audio in Fire Emblem Fates' overseas debut — or whether it might be introduced later on as downloadable content — Nintendo declined to comment further.

The company has made several changes to the localized Fates, which launches on Feb. 19. Nintendo confirmed that a scene in which the player character seemingly "drugs" a team member would not be included in the Western version of the game. Various encounters involving petting the faces of other characters — referred to by the fanbase as "skinship" — have also been altered; while players will still see the original animations from those scenes, the actual touching has been completely removed.

Well, I couldn't careless about it

Is that true for the european version too? I don't really see why they decided to not include that feature, it's not like they have to redo all the voice-acting. It's done and finished already.

Apparently from people on Youtube and other sites on the comment section. There was a Japanese VA in the game which had a very strict agency. And somehow they couldn't get the right to include it in.

I heard somewhere it was because the Japanese version had a licensed song or something Nintendo would have to pay for or something. I'll check up on that much much later if anything because I don't feel like it now.

I worry somehow people will go on a "cut content" rampage.

FE Fates is getting a lot of controversy: two versions, day one DLC with the third campaign, no japanese voice-acting, cutting parts of the dialogue and features like the face-touch... Nintendo shouldn't toy around with this IP, specially because it's only really popular after Awakening, and it could turn off a lot of new fans if they keep annoying the userbase.

 My question also.

Day one DLC and two versions? Completely bad on Nintendo's part and should be very heavily criticized for this. No Japanese voice acting doesn't even seem like a valid complaint. That's a bonus feature if anything. Do the Japanese get English voice acting? IS anyone in the US complaining they won't get French voice acting? The dialouge thing you're referring to is what I'm assuming to be the whole alleged gay conversion controversy? That issue was taken out of context and proportion since it was in Japan to the point Nintendo felt the need to very clearly write it in a way that misconceptions were avoided. The face-touching thing I literally do not want to touch because if that is a point of contention for anyone getting this game, then you literally must have either never played a FE game before or have huge misconception of what goes on because that was never in the series before and literally doesn't affect the game. That is a very shallow complaint.

I will play with no voices at all then.

I know most of these are small, even shallow complains, but when they start to build up, it makes the game look bad. This game appears more on the media more times for bad news than for good news, and that gives this game a bad image, when it probably is one of the best FE games (obviously haven't played it yet).

Also, when you take away one feature that was on the previous game, you can't really avoid criticism by saying that that was a bonus feature to begin with.

Sorry, but what you said here is really stupid.

PPl want the japanese voices because it's the original, which are 90% of time much better than Us voices in jap games.

(and they were here in awakening)

Same for Us games, if you couldn't get the original Us voices, it would annoy a lot of people too.