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Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town (Switch) releases July 10th 2020 in Europe, now includes Gay Marriage.

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ggx2ac

ggx2ac

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Oct 25, 2017
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Trailer:


Official site:

Home - Story of Seasons

www.storyofseasons.games www.storyofseasons.games

Old interview with producer Yoshifumi Hashimoto on gay marriage in Story of Seasons from 2016:
www.polygon.com

Story of Seasons will feature same-sex relationships 'sooner or later'

And Stardew Valley's inclusivity has nothing to do with it
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com

"It's not like we're not thinking about [same-sex relationships]," Hashimoto said. "We know that it has to be there sometime in the future."

"If we have to allow same-sex [relationships], we have to put more characters who are the same gender," he said. "As a game, it's going to be so much more volume, two or three times more. It's going to be a little difficult."

Stardew Valley already includes a diverse set of characters and relationships. Hashimoto is aware of the game, and said he's happy about its success. But he denied that Stardew Valley's more diverse character and relationship features are the inspiration for Story of Seasons' eventual inclusivity.

"It's not so much that we're going to be inspired by Stardew Valley in the future," he said. "We're just trying to build up our plan."

Instead, he said bluntly, Story of Seasons will catch up "sooner or later."
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Sandfox

Sandfox

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Oct 25, 2017
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That's a faster turnaround than I expected after Rune Factory 4 Special.

They even show the male playable character marrying Gray in the trailer.
 
Yoshi88

Yoshi88

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Oct 26, 2017
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Gay marriage in an official Story of Seasons.

My life is complete.The teenage boy in me rejoices. :)
 
Robin64

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Good news!

And wow, yeah:

YUU8M8C.png
 
XaosWolf

XaosWolf

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Looks great and I'm in but its pretty weird seeing Story of Seasons above that subtitle.
 
AlexFlame116

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Awesome! Just waiting for a North American release date now!

And hopefully they announce a special edition for it like Rune Factory 4 Special had!
 
Potterson

Potterson

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Oct 28, 2017
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Man, this and Rune Factory looks so bland in comparision to SV or Animal Crossing I have no desire to even try those games. Hmm.
 
Sandfox

Sandfox

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mazi said:
marvelous said gay rights!
love to see it.

edit: wait, no US release?
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XSeed will probably announce it soon.

Potterson said:
Man, this and Rune Factory looks so bland in comparision to SV or Animal Crossing I have no desire to even try those games. Hmm.
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RF4S is a port of a 3DS game and this is a remake intentionally made to look more like the GBA games. The next original games in both series will be more ambitious.
 
Homura

Homura

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Reminder this is a real Harvest Moon game.
The new HM games are actually made by a different team.
 
StraySheep

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Transhumanism said:
Reminder this is a real Harvest Moon game.
The new HM games are actually made by a different team.
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I actually wanted to ask about that. Original creator is with Marvelous and they have the rights to the Story of Seasons branding and apparently his past work, while an entirely different studio/publisher owns the name Harvest Moon and has been shitting the bed for the last 5 years or so?
 
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ggx2ac

ggx2ac

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StraySheep said:
I actually wanted to ask about that. Original creator is with Marvelous and they have the rights to the Story of Seasons branding and apparently his past work, while an entirely different studio/publisher owns the name Harvest Moon and has been shitting the bed for the last 5 years or so?
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Natsume which used to be the western publisher for Story of Seasons trademarked Harvest Moon.

Marvelous cannot call their games Harvest Moon in the west because Natsume owns the trademark and they no longer need Natsume to publish the Story of Seasons games in the west.

Regarding Natsume, they can keep making games with the title Harvest Moon because they own the trademark but they do not own any of the copyright relating to the Story of Seasons games.

This means Natsume cannot release past Harvest Moon games for example because Marvelous owns the copyright. This doesn't mean Marvelous can't release past Harvest Moon games in the west because as you can see in this thread, Marvelous owns the copyrights and they can just use a title that isn't trademarked by Natsume.

What also occurs is that Natsume cannot make games that infringe on the copyright of Story of Seasons, that means they cannot use any creations that belong to the Story of Seasons series.

So what Natsume does now is they make new games using the title of Harvest Moon but they're not using any specific creations from the Story of Seasons series.
 
Comic Obsessed

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Yeah, this game looks ugly.

But that's fine, I'm currently addicted to Rune Factory 4 Special. That's where this formula shines the most.
 
StraySheep

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Oct 26, 2017
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ggx2ac said:
Natsume which used to be the western publisher for Story of Seasons trademarked Harvest Moon.

Marvelous cannot call their games Harvest Moon in the west because Natsume owns the trademark and they no longer need Natsume to publish the Story of Seasons games in the west.

Regarding Natsume, they can keep making games with the title Harvest Moon because they own the trademark but they do not own any of the copyright relating to the Story of Seasons games.

This means Natsume cannot release past Harvest Moon games for example because Marvelous owns the copyright. This doesn't mean Marvelous can't release past Harvest Moon games in the west because as you can see in this thread, Marvelous owns the copyrights and they can just use a title that isn't trademarked by Natsume.

What also occurs is that Natsume cannot make games that infringe on the copyright of Story of Seasons, that means they cannot use any creations that belong to the Story of Seasons series.

So what Natsume does now is they make new games using the title of Harvest Moon but they're not using any specific creations from the Story of Seasons series.
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Solid explanation, thanks.
 
Sandfox

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The localization for this game will be using the original names of the characters. I'm guessing it's because of Natsume stuff.

This means that Ann will be Ran and Mary will be Marie along with some other names changing.
 
Oregano

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Not keen on the visual style but I'm thinking/hoping that resources are concentrated on Rune Factory 5.
 
Hours Left

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I'm very glad that they're finally including same sex marriage. There is no reason at all not to include it.

It's too bad the character designs in this game are so bleh. Hopefully the next instalment will return to a more appealing art style of the earlier titles. (Animal Parade/Tree of Tranquility remakes please.)
 
Sandfox

Sandfox

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Hours Left said:
I'm very glad that they're finally including same sex marriage. There is no reason at all not to include it.

It's too bad the character designs in this game are so bleh. Hopefully the next instalment will return to a more appealing art style of the earlier titles. (Animal Parade/Tree of Tranquility remakes please.)
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They said if this game does well they will consider doing additional remakes. It did well in Japan, and it should do well in the west, so we'll probably get more.
 
CenturionNami

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They changed the Best Friend system to full on gay marriage? Thank god.
 
fiendcode

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Nairume said:
Unless something has changed, they are able to at least release older harvest moon titles via virtual console type things.
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Yes, Natsume still has publishing rights to all their old games. They could port or emulate the old titles on any platform and have on Virtual Console and Game Archives after the Marvelous split.
 
Robin64

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Yeah, the game is "ugly" but it's just a GBA remake and I guess they wanted to retain some of that simplicity.

In comparison, the other Story of Seasons on Switch looks like this:

Story-of-Seasons-Fami_04-10-19.jpg


doraemon.original.jpg
 
arlu

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Potterson said:
Man, this and Rune Factory looks so bland in comparision to SV or Animal Crossing I have no desire to even try those games. Hmm.
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Really hate it when they go for the chibi style (except for HM 64, that's just classic-timeless look).
I kinda liked the artstyle for A Wonderful Life:
5e2d023f213859699c2df0bca20e47bc.jpg

harvest-moon-a-wonderful-life-2.jpg


Q2Iyl2t.jpg

The Wii games were detailed and clean, but I prefer the "country" look of the PS2/GC games. ~sigh~
 
Rozart

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Yess! Finally a release date! Super happy to hear that they're incorporating same-sex marriages into the game as well <3


arlu said:
Q2Iyl2t.jpg

The Wii games were detailed and clean, but I prefer the "country" look of the PS2/GC games. ~sigh~
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Ughh Tree of Tranquility/Animal Parade had the best artstyle imo. I really want the team to develop another Story of Seasons/HM game in that same vein. :( Don't think it's happening though.

The art is so lovely

7a97cc8d7794dd3121c3d520bf5e773d.jpg
 
Teriyaki Blues

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Sandfox said:
The localization for this game will be using the original names of the characters. I'm guessing it's because of Natsume stuff.

This means that Ann will be Ran and Mary will be Marie along with some other names changing.
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It isn't because of Natsume at all. When xseed first started localizing the 牧場物語 games, they asked for fan feedback about a few things and most of the fans they polled said they'd prefer original names over heavily localized ones, especially if it doesn't make a ton of sense to change them drastically. That's why Cam and Reina were changed back to Kamil and Licorice in Story of Seasons, while Menou (which is just the Japanese name for agate) was changed to Agate. When Trio of Towns came out, they were going to name Lisette something ridiculous like Carolina at one point, too.

For the life of me, I'll never understand why Natsume changed the Mineral Town cast names to begin with, but there's a lot of that going on between Flowerbud Village and the several unique interpretations of Mineral Town. Hopefully using the original names will help add to the extra character distinction provided by this remake.

Good on them for including marriage equality. Fingers crossed the North American branch is taking that track as well, instead of calling what it obviously is under a ridiculous name like "best friends" or "domestic partnership".
 
batfax

batfax

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I had zero doubts they'd simply call it marriage in the localization, especially after Nakano basically said it would happen in previous interviews. Also yeah, using the original names will help avoid some confusion for possible future remakes/cameos, for example, if a remake of SNES or DS happens, there won't be multiple Anns anymore. There were possibly three generations of "Ann" before between SNES, 64/FoMT, and DS, which all had different names in the Japanese versions!

CloseTalker said:
The visuals take away 90% of my interest in this game. They're actively ugly
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Looks and plays better in motion. Decently smooth. It at least feels more responsive and better to play than the GBA version, which this mostly completely replaces. The only major loss is rival marriages =\
 
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