Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Will Restore Missing Posters In Patch 3

any news of a physical release?

How does one "inadvertently" remove specific textures in a game's files and nothing else? Surely there should have been other examples of missing or changed textures.

I hope people will relax about this now, because it was never a big deal in the first place.

"inadvertently"...? How do you "inadvertently" remove these by mistake, Aspyr, I must ask. Am I expecting it to be an honest mistake?

Yeesh...Aspyr really need to get themselves sorted out big time.

Oh weird, it wasn't an army of Twitter bots clutching their pearls after all? People just built a strawman to put blame on? Do tell. Anyway, good. It's was never a huge thing, just silly.
And now the same people screaming at clouds don't believe this statement, lolol. I really wonder, if Aspyr had released a statement that said "you are right, we removed the sexy posters cause woke mob/Twitter was angry," would people believe them then? It's some amazing confirmation bias that can create a monster, imagine its motivations, and then yell about how it totally was a super dangerous monster when everyone finds out they were crying wolf.

"The programmer who made the mistake was soundly beaten"

@johnedwin Hopefully they'll wait till all the patches are done and these PS1 games are fucntioning fully again, but yes a physical is guarnateed in some form down the line. If not this year from THQNordic, then at the very least from Limited Run in 1-2 years; since under the forthcoming splintering of Embracer, Limited Run will become CDE Entertainment's direct responsibility.

@LadyCharlie Seriously. It was wild how quickly some people jumped to the CENSORSHIP outrage.

@Zeebor15 I'm pretty happy with these remakes. They aren't perfect and I wish they had launched in a better state, but the nostalgia hits me hard. This was a series I used to adore, until they ran it into the ground. Anyway, I'll double-dip if they release a cart with all content and fixes. That would be really cool.

@Thesharkfromjaws But remember:
"cancel culture is wrong" 🙃

@sleepinglion So now you are creating both the reason for their removal and the reason for the replacement? Why do you even need videogames if you are just larping anyway?

They knew what they did and didn't think people would notice.

@LadyCharlie
Censorship, no matter how small, is always a big deal!

I do not understand how you could inadvertently remove two specific images like this. I’m not a professional programmer but I’ve dabbled and based on that (limited) experience this seems strangely precise to be an accident. If there are any real programmers here who can explain how this would be possible I’d be interested to hear, because by common sense it certainly seems deliberate… BUT I don’t see why they would lie about it. It would have been perfectly fine to say, “After receiving lots of valuable feedback from our passionate community blah blah etc”. Why pretend it was inadvertent? Which makes it seem like probably it really WAS inadvertent! But that defies common sense so now I’m going in circles, haha.

This whole situation is pretty odd and funny.

An update that “inadvertently” but specifically removed content that is typically disapproved by “modern devs & tourists”. But oh no, it was a mistake, but only when it gets called out.

Gaslighting at its finest.

What's wrong with those people (the dev), isn't enough to throw that lame warning screen in the opening of the game, now they want to censor the game after people are buying them? I think the only reason they put the poster back is because gamers throwing a fit on twitter and it effect the game sales.

In the end, it's good they put the posters back in, I hope they don't try anything that stupid ever again.

@AnonyQ That's not censorship if its removing actual illegal content such as hate speech directed at real people. Censorship is when perfectly legal speech or content is removed. That said, there's a fine line between the two things and certain countries do use the law to censor people while not "technically" censoring them in the name of "justice"...

Wow they cause an issue only to fix it.

What a story! (sarcasm, just in case....)

Ridiculous all round, as I said before.

This is "the dog ate my homework" tier excuse making.

@Tourtus yeah, thats the thing. with all the recent hemming and hawing about exploitation, this was a purposeful removal. don't believe for a second this was "accidental".

Finally! We can all go back to fighting about equally dumb %#%!

@Diogmites Seriously? What a dumb thing to say. Let's fight.

@WiiWareWave good point well said

“Inadvertently removed”
Yeah freaking right!….

They just thought they could get away with it or the backlash wouldn't have been so intense.

Someone predicted this would be the ultimate outcome and I agreed.

Not saying it's impossible but I find it very hard to believe it was a mistake. Especially when one knows details about their vision for future tomb raider games. Details they have publicly stated.

Whew crisis adverted. We almost had World War 3.

@Tourtus unless these other examples simply didn't draw the responders' attention.😏

@Solomon_Rambling NL and other game newsblogs:

Could have been a rogue programmer.

"We're sorry we got caught."

Oh so they just “inadvertently” removed specific assets huh? Sounds believable..I definitely believe and think that’s a perfectly normal thing that just happens.

Finally, I can get some sleep.

I don't understand how you just remove them without knowing you did.

@WiiWareWave
No, that's absolutely censorship. It's just censorship you agree with. Look the word up.

@LadyCharlie People will make a deal deal over anything it seems these days haha.

It was all just an innocent mistake. . . .

Software developer by trade - if they were indeed mucking about with graphical assets/textures, sure, weirder things have happened. Having a hard coded text reference in one place and changing a file name in another. Messing up changes in your commit (BADLY if it randomly removes files). I dunno. It's stupid and sounds unlikely, but it could happen.

The idea that they would do this in secret to appease groups that wouldn't even find out about it seems an even stranger explanation to me. So given the task options, eh...

Are we getting the butler and T-Rex posters we asked for?

@FatWormBlowsASparky
Yes, but they are in bikinis too!

@Spider-Kev sure thing... You wouldn't mind people specifically targeting you and swearing in your face then?

Good because we can't support censorship at all no matter how small it is. We can't allow gaming companies to do this think its okay look what they did in Stella Blade and in Final fantasy 7 rebirth with Tifa.

Yay low poly uncanny valley soft porn is saved. Huge victory for the gaming community.

@mlt Considering that these are remasters, it does hurt the historical context clarity

This comment section reminds me of Twitter replies.

@Samalik
Yeah no worries you do you.
I don't really have a strong opinion about all this. I was merely trying to emphasize the vacuity of the whole thing. It's a we're better than that sort of comment.

@HotGoomba We only need to have the blue ticks on the side of the users that scream "censorship" at this point. Seriously, every time there is a "controversial" post, the comments section goes from ok to Xitter quality. Love the ones screaming about the "puritans" on Twitter when comments complaining about those "puritans" are much more prevalent (and annoying) over there nowadays.

And the "controversies" from them get stupider every day that passes. I still remember when people went into rants about how Nintendo was "emmasculating" Peach because she looked different on the box art of her game. Nowadays on Xitter there is much more discurse about an apperant conspiracy that is making every women in media "ugly" than puritans screaming about posters.

@mlt "Yay low poly uncanny valley soft porn is saved. Huge victory for the gaming community."

Less censorship in art, a huge win for the gaming community and people who aren't pearl-clutching prudes.

BTW I can't believe anyone is actually gullible enough to believe this was a mistake! It was either a publicity stunt or they u-turned because of the backlash. How did these get removed "accidentally" when nothing else gets removed? Oh come on

Ok, so here's my idea of how it could possibly be called a "mistake".

The removal of the pictures was intentionally made possible during development, due to the potential that it would have to be done for the ratings boards etc.
When the ratings boards gave them the OK to keep them in, then they left them in. But in a patch, maybe they were working from a build that still had them removed, and nobody noticed.

So yes, it's definitely not likely that they were "oopsie we accidentally edited this portion of the map to remove these images lol", but at the same time, I can still see their removal being accidental, if they intentionally made a build without them in "just in case" it needed to be done, and then accidentally used the wrong build.

This is my speculation.

people just want to get Angry.

@jowy_sw Disregarding the facts in this particular case since we can only speculate, I'll just be discussing the principle of censorship in games or other media - I don't think giving power and influence to people who think they should get to decide whether a pair of pixel breasts should be available or not is a good idea. Give censor-happy groups power and we're on a slippery slope. While it's something you and I don't care about much today, mediums of expression get more and more limited over time of people don't push back against it. It's happened a lot across time, and across the world.

I get that people are going to jump at this message and misrepresent its intention instead of engaging with it like adults, but there we are.

@Glasso You are correct. This is an age of outrage and sensationalism. Where clickbait titles get people enraged looking to fight invisible bad guys.

Just look at the recently released 'Steller Blade'. The intoxicated outraged ones were ready for a war. Proclaiming woke journalism will do all they can to destroy the best game ever made because it has a sexy lady on the cover.

Now that the game is released? Well, what do you know it's got a fairly good reception.

However, people who outraged must have an outlet to vent, they need villain, and will look for one anywhere.

So here is something interesting:

Imagine a well known youtuber, and well known website both giving the same praise and criticism. However, since the well known website is considered mainstream, It gets the bulk of the hate for dare scoring this Anti woke triumph a 7/10.

Im talking about YouTuber Skillup, IGN, and their reviews of Steller Blade.

Both share a similar criticism regarding the story and characters not being very good. Both agree the gameplay is the best part.

But, because one is mainstream, and dared to give a 7, IGN gets the hate for it.

This is the times we live in.

@FrillsAran Look, even if I take the whole "all censhorship is bad and every instance of it should be critized" I just can't take plenty of people screaming about censorship online at face value.
I agree with censorship being bad but, just like how the discourse about how women are portrayed in media ended up with an extreme puritan angle, the discourse about censorship in media ended up complaining when any game releases with a women not being conventionally atractive. And if it is valid to generalize one group is valid to do the exact same with the other one.

And, yes, the "anti censorship" group ended up doing just that, Hence the whole conspiracy theory about how women in media are "ugly" now. Plenty of the people pushing that theory started with the whole being anti censorship thing.

There is also the case of hipocresy regarding the games that they complain about being censored. We had cases of videogames with LGBT content being censored, we had entire countries limiting LGBT in media and we had cases of games that tackle LGBT topics being review bombed and attacked online for it but that is, for some reason, usually not mentioned. Why? All censorship is bad, right?

I mentioned in the original article, they were never removed from the classic mode so I found the whole preservation position odd, and seemingly based on misinformation, considering all pictures in the game were altered and replaced for the remaster. They added some new assets, removed them, and are now adding them again. Those lockers are two lockers in a room full of lockers with the same repeating texture, in an expansion that was never on console and probably one that most people never played before.

I cannot see this being a censorship issue, I mean you can 'newly' pose Lara in a bathrobe in photo mode, if you really want to.

They're only restoring the posters because they were facing a class action lawsuit

@jowy_sw That was beautiful. No notes.

I don’t know if this was “inadvertent”, but props to Aspyr to listening to their customers.

@jowy_sw All censorship is bad yes, and in a ideal world we would have had a complete database about censored games, but you can’t expect each individual person to remember every game ever that has been censored. And most people don’t follow games they are not interested in. I remember I saw on Nichegamer, a site you probably would describe as anti-censorship that Spiderman 2 had pride flags removed in Middle East. I remember the guy who ran the thread about censorship of PlayStation games on Psnprofiles did list every game people could prove were censored, including LGBT games. Until trolls got the thread locked. Depending on how often you need it to happen for it to be usually to you, it might not happen usually, but maybe LGBT games are not censored as often as games about other subjects? Of course all evidence I can provide is ancedotal, but I do see the anti-censorship crowd talk about censored LGBT games. More often than the other way around.

@LadyCharlie It was a big enough deal that you considered buying it digitally now instead of waiting for a physical release.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/04/lara-crofts-pinup-posters-go-missing-in-tomb-raider-i-iii-remastered#comment8085960

@StAmbrosius I was thinking something like this too. I don't believe for a second that the removal was accidental, but Aspyr did a good job faithfully recreating the original and didn't make any noticeable changes for "modern audiences" so it was very strange for them to remove things post launch

I'm shocked nobody in the comments has speculated that the removal and subsequent restoration of the posters was actually an intentional marketing/sales technique to garner more attention and sell more copies of the game. Because I guarantee you that has been the effective result of all this, intentional or not.

@FirstEmperor Haha, mate she was trolling the person she was responding to who was upset about skullgirls and tomb raider.

It was a very cheeky response on purpose.

@FirstEmperor Yes! That is true.

@Tobiaku Really? I went to subreddits that are known for screaming about censorship when it was revealed that LGBT content was removed from Spideman in the Middle East and plenty of them were actually happy about it, even making mods to change the region of the game just to play it without that content. Not a fringe opinion either since they got thousands of likes and eveyone saying the opposite got downvotted into oblivion or banned from that subreddit. And I saw the same sentiment in those YouTube channels or zones in Twitter. They were ether ignoring it or even being happy about it.

Besides, like I said earlier, if you are allowed to generalize all the "opponents" to the "anti censorship" crowd to say that they actually don't defend censorship of LGBT content then I can do the same with this side.

Also, LGBT games not being censored as frequently? There are entire countries banning all type of LGBT content. And even in countries where there isn't a ban, there are more challenges to publish LGBT media than you think.

I still remember a small indie game about a gay couple that was published on GOG that was reviewed bombed and had multiple forum threats spreading hate about it. Those people were calling for it to be censored and I'll let you guess what I saw they thought about censorship in cases of anime girls and their huge plot. I hate that hypocrisy and, like it or not, it is really prevalent there. That's why every time I see someone bringing up censorship about women having less clothes I don't really take it seriously.

Uh-huh, sure. I totally believe you.

@jowy_sw I think perhaps they live in an alternate universe. In ours LGBT themes are one the most frequently fought against.

@jowy_sw Yes really. I dug up the Spiderman article I mentioned
https://nichegamer.com/marvels-spider-man-2-removes-pride-flags-in-middle-east-version/
And here is the censorship thread from psnprofiles. Thread got locked due to trolls, and the fight thst ended up getting the thread banned is deleted, but you can still see the entire list as far as the creator had updated it until it was closed. If someone could provide him with proof a playstation game was censored, he put it on the list.
https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/85087-list-of-censored-games-ps5-ps4-vita/

Mods are one thing. Modding your own singleplayer game does not affect other people.

Feel free to tell me what subreddits you frequent, I could do with more subreddits to read than just kotakuinaction.

Yes you can generalize. You could also dig up people calling Hogwarts legacy woke and dump all the haters of that game into the Go woke go broke crowd if you feel inclined to do so.

I think Saudi Arabia bans LGBT stuff, there was some talk about China might be doing so, I know in Russia they get instant 18+ ratings, but most people on the English speaking internet mainly focus on Europe, America and Australia when it comes to these things. And Japan regarding Sony’s censorship policies.

I just ment to say I have seen more anti-censorship people care about LGBT stuff than I have seen people who are not part of that group as you generalize it, care about censorship of for example fanservice.

@LadyCharlie Yet it was a big enough deal for you to make you decide to buy the game to support the removal of these posters. Are you going to ask for a refund, now?

@Solomon_Rambling

Yes, and after many patches Aspyr will have broadcast a secret message in binary (0 for posters removed). This will actually be a subliminal code which activates their sleeper agents, who will immediately go about removing all the posters they can find within a 1 mile radius. Why? Conspiracy reasons!

Or they didn't like the backlash for wokifying a notorious sex symbol? Sounds more possible than just two little texture being accidentally removed.

@dodgeskill100 I think you're talking in the wrong article....

Yeh right....I believe you

@BenoitRen No I won't ask for a refund.

The gamer culture definitely has a creepy incel problem for this to be as big as it is.

The original game was fairly janky, in my opinion, so a remake did not grab my attention much. The missing graphics, removed inadvertently or not, speak to a larger problem in today’s rice crispies society. The rush by inflamed personalities to judge everything solves nothing. Erasing history neither teaches us empathy or moves society forward in a meaningful manner. Obviously we can always learn to do better in how we treat each other but you cannot use blind discipline and punishment to force people to change.

@zidentia People truly must treat each other right and with consideration... rather than be resentful, disdainful and bitter. Only education, understanding and compromise leads to progress. Never domineering, abuse, manipulation and deceptive practices to lead emotive people to a predetermined result. Even if those people try to get their way, society pushes back on too-much too-soon artificially engineered societal diversions within a generation or so.

I did restore this and also wanted to exchange the new Hand with the exclamation mark and psx buttons.
As the file for the later ones is the same, i had to mix the to files, these are simple pictures that you can open with paint.net, photoshop, gimp or whatever you like.
Someone must have exchanged that specific file.

Btw. The lost Artefact is very very very good, much much better than TR3.

"Inadvertently removed" my rear end.
This is thanks to the people that didn't just shut up and bend over.
It's only because of you that this awful decision was reverted.
Remember, this is not about bringing back a couple of bad CGI textures, it's about the principle of it.
Good on Aspyr to make things right, regardless, I wasn't expecting it.

I’m a gamer,
not because I have no life,
but because I make a culture war out of yesterday sexism.

@Spider-Kev Im going to pretend you're joking because you can't be serious.

@Arawn93 You are correct. I have no rebuttal. I say it's no big deal, because it doesn't effect me, or my enjoyment of the game whatsoever.

@nhSnork The company seems to only be addressing the posters in the patch notes, and nothing else texture wise... If there were other textures I'm sure eagle eyed fans would have noticed and the company would also make note of restoring them.

Insert Simpson meme: “wow, I hope somebody got fired for that blunder”

@sleepinglion Yeah I don't believe the explanation they gave either. Seems to me like they deliberately made the change and hoped no one would care or notice and came up with this excuse when caught.

@jowy_sw I still haven’t seen any big movie with an “ugly” woman protagonist. Hollywood still wants to make money after all.

@Spider-Kev Sorry, I grew up in an era of Super Nintendo games that cost effectively up to twice as much as Switch games, so I'm not going to let it bother me if Tears of the Kingdom has a higher price. Nintendo charge whatever they want for their game, and I can decide if I want to pay their asking price or not. There's no need to worry about it more than that. People who feel like they are obligated to follow a certain pricing model or justify their decision have a real entitlement feeling.

@KingMike
I grew up with Atari, NES, SNES.
I remember paying $90+tax for a copy of Star Wars Racer on the N64.
Prices at $50-60 nowadays are fine.
But when Nintendo says that they are making Zelda $70 just because they can and that we will buy it no matter what, THAT is where I have an issue!

@brandonbwii Any woman that can't use her stomach as an ironing board is considered ugly in Hollywood.

Strange that NLife still hasn’t talked about the dialogue change in Paper Mario:TTYD yet.

FYI, they changed the dialogue where in the OG game Goombella gets catcalled.

@brandonbwii Those people literally and unironically use Alloy from Horizon Zero Dawn as an example of "ugly" (a lot of times reusing a photoshopped image of her in order too). I hate how "incely" the gaming community is more every day that passes.

@Tobiaku I never doubted you when you used that example, dude. I simply said that, in my experience, I've seen people that complain about censorship would ignore LGBT censorship or even be happy about it. And it's kinda annoying to me that you are ignoring that and assuming the "anti censorship" side is all perfect and such.

In my case, that game in particular (using that as an example since is the one that made me even more against this) was a little small games on GOG called "Omurice Next Time". A lot of it has been purged by GOG but the reviews were FULL of people insulting the devs calling the game "obscene" and such. The dev had to do multiple posts online calling it out. And after cheking posts people said about this game, I saw people screaming about how "obcene" it was and how could GOG even allowed it on their page while in other comments complaining about censorship.

I'm not saying making mods for a single player game for playing how you want is anti censorship. I'm just, once again, pointing out the hypocresy of being "anti censorship" while also promoting and playing a mod designed to censor the game.

The subreddit I saw the hypocresy the most is exactly that one you mentioned, yeah. That was probably the most extreme example of people that claim to be all anti censorhip but then make comments like the ones I mentioned. The rest was mostly arround the comments on r/Games or other gaming subreddits or tweets.

Also the fact that I can go to other places where those comments don't appear does not mean they are not there. The gaming comunity is FULL of people that are against LGBT content for instance. Even here, just look at ANY news in this very website that mentiones anything related to LGBT and go to the comments.

In my experience, people that claim to be anti censorship basically only care about censorship related to fanservice and anything else they don't really mind (and some other cases would even be happy if they are censored). And plenty of them are susceptable to conspiracies like the whole "women in media are ugly now" thing.

@jowy_sw We clearly have different experiences. I’m just giving my point of view. I’m not saying there are no hypocrites on the anti-censorship side, I’m just saying as far as I have seen, there are more people on the anti-censorship side against censoring LGBT stuff than there are people on the other side who care about censorship of other things, like fanservice. I don’t think the anti-censorship side is perfect, but better than the opposition.

I mainly read about games that catch my interest. If something I’m not interested in gets censored, I’m most likely not going to read about it.
I care about censorship of games I play, while I’m not going to care about censorship of games I’m not interested in, I’m not going to support censorship, or mock those who do care about censorship of those games.

Anyway, have a good day ^_^

@Tobiaku And I'm giving me point of view here too. And seeing what I'm seeing, if you truly think that the anti censorship side is not full of hypocretes then I don't really know what to tell you. I don't want to call specific Twitter accounts because that would probably be against the rules but I find people like that, constantly. The case I commented earlier took me like two seconds to find multiple people like that. It's not like they are hidden.

I just don't get how it is best that the "opposition" considering what I see. This very reason is why, despite being against censorship on principle, I just can't really say it publicly online or participate in it's discourse. Way too people there are way too toxic or hypocritical.

And maybe it is too close to doing what I just said I wouldn't do but there is a retired old bigwig from a videogame company on Twiiter that is the prime example of this hypocritical anti censorship angle. From them is actually where I remember the other example of being anti censorship but praising the LGBT censorship in Spiderman in the middle east version. That's the closest I'm going to be to a more specific example. Pointing out a subreddit is one thing but I don't want to point out specific users.

Would've been funny if they replaced them with posters of scantily dressed bodybuilders.

@locky-mavo I'm more concerned if that was in the gamecube Japanese script or not.
If it was another case of old edgy 2000s localization, I'm not gonna bother caring

@AnonyQ Show me how mean words in a video game threaten anyone's safety.
And that's a smokescreen anyway. People are complaining about being denied sexy women in videogame and journalists calling them perverts who need to grow up (while the same journalists are praising stuff like the bear sex scene in BG3 or Hades 2 Aphroditie).
Imo if there is a new textures/old textures switch there can be a "modern puritian" mode that removes sexy content. Like they did with Bayonetta 3. Give the people who aren't afraid of women an option to have them in their video games.

Here's my hotake if you can't handle this game don't buy it or complain about it? It just means your playing it more then you claim to be. Alot of people seem to have think they have moral high ground but are standing on shaky grounds here. So my advice is stop looking at this game if your so sensitive that way you have no concerns to worry. If those wants it they can buy it it's their money. We like to think people are Adults but from the chatter of this thread is seem not so here.

@SwitchForce Your hotake is the same old “just go away”.

@johnedwin : There's going to be an Evercade physical release (compatible with all models) releasing mid-year.

I suspect that a similar Switch release is an inevitability.

#freestellarblade

@Spider-Kev going by the reddit mob mad at me for calling their BS out, censorship is ok if the individual does it.

@Tourtus that's the issue, though - bias can cloud an eagle's sight at times.😏

@PtM indeed, a civilized person's age-old attitude to entertainment can hardly qualify as a "hot take".

@nhSnork bias can cloud an eagle's sight at times.