Throughout the early months of 2023, changes are coming to Lost Ark, and one of them is affecting how the new Artist class will look. In the Korean version of Lost Ark, the Artist has a very short skirt. Due to how revealing the class’ outfits are, Western fans have long speculated how the class will be adapted over here in the West.
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When the class makes its way to the West in April though, any skins that have a short skirt will have shorts added underneath, according to the first part of the 2023 Roadmap that was released. In addition, the remaining skins will have their pants lengths or tights adjusted. However, the Artist’s gameplay will remain untouched.
Amazon Games, the Western publisher of Lost Ark, stated, “While our goal is to preserve the authenticity of the original game, we also work with Smilegate RPG to make localization updates to ensure the game feels approachable and representative of our Western players.” The change to the outfits makes sense since over here in the West, both players and the various rating boards have different standards on what is and isn’t okay. If they were to have kept those original outfits, the team may have faced issues with either party.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a company change how a female character is presented in a video game. Tokyo Mirage Sessions and the remaster of Chrono Cross come to mind as the most popular examples in recent memory. In the Western release of Tokyo Mirage Sessions, the female characters had less revealing clothing; meanwhile in Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers, Marcy —who is underage—had her outfit changed to have shorts underneath her dress instead of panties. While some players were upset about these changes, the majority of the community didn’t seem to mind given how little these changes impacted these respective games. It seems that Lost Ark players have come to the same conclusion as there has been very little controversy within the community about this change.
