I'm not sure that's true at all. I think your definition of censorship is quite astoundingly broad.

The discussions here on gog about localization and such very much lead me to believe that others here, as a whole, agree with me on this.

"Others here" =/= "most people". These forums represent a small fraction of a specific niche of a particular demographic. I don't think you can realistically generalise from the opinions of forumites to those of people at large.

I'll give you that, that we can't really know. But let's be realistic, now, if I had written a book called Gerald of the River, talking about a boy who was kidnapped by witches and made to drink strange potions so he could go fight monsters for mankind in the name of Christianity, despite being eternally damned for becoming an abomination, it's reasonable to assume that anyone reviewing it even remotely familiar with The Hexer would immediately realizing i'm just making a Christian-style censored version of the original story.

Uh. What would be a character change that is NOT censorship, by these standards ? Bad -> Good = censorship, Good -> Bad = not ? Not sure I get it.

Also, Disney's Hades is artificially evil, due to christian cultures being completely utterly 100% unable to grasp that a god of hell could be, like, not satan at all (mind blown).

That's the point: if it's not your character, you should have respect for it. There's a reason why it's taboo. The pictures painted of the characters' character is important to the story (else it goes entirely unmentioned), so by trying to change peoples' view of a character, you're not just subverting the character but the story as well, and consequently the lessons and issues in the stories. If Jesus' story is about redemption from changing your ways and trying to undo what you've done to others, and that people whom are "perfect" will then forgive you and that you're not eternally judged by nature/society/God/whatever as criminal and evil, then there is no redemption if picture of the "perfect people" changes to "flawed people." The story has no meaning of being able to overcome your weaknesses if you don't have something strong to compare yourself to, or to judge you in a positive (redemptive) light.

That's why characters are what they are: so you can compare yourself to them, to see how you fit in the overarching narrative. Ash Ketchum of pokemon, uses electric types against ground types, but somehow he overcomes. He is so pitiful and pathetic that he is given his rewards. Meanwhile, he idolizes Red, his hero, whom happens to be YOU, who is far more competent than him.

In dragon ball, we have Gokuu, who is so innocent that he has to feel the crotches of people to identify them as either male or female, because he doesn't necessarily judge people's fighting ability, strength, threat-level, etc based on their gender (and presumably race and such). No one can ride the cloud, except him and a few special exceptions, because they are not innocent, and they judge others on those attributes the he does not. Meanwhile, he's always the hero of the show, the strongest of all, because he works hard at what he does, instead of trying to take advantage of others because of their social status resulting from their race, gender, etc.

Then we have JC Denton, who does what he feels is right, but in the end he is in conflict between the ideals of different belief systems. Technology has helped mankind alot, but it also provides a method of totalitarian control, so if you side with the tong, there are no leaders, and anarchy can reign. On the other hand, you can be an open dictator, but benevolent, and you will be the judge of what is right and what is wrong, but in doing so everyone will know who to target if they want to take your throne. Or, you can rule from the shadows, be a half-dictator hiding from sight, thus you don't have direct control over every aspect, but you also become much like those whom you were fighting to overthrow: the shadow government, that is both inept at making good things happen, but not so inept that mob rule occurs. In the end, all 3 are corruptible, and there was even a 4th potential ending.

In Morrowind, you are the reincarnation of Saint Indoril Nerevar, and while you have your own character and decisions to make, you are the reincarnation of someone else with much, much more history, and this is to give gravity and meaning to your avatar's choices and situation. Do you believe the tribune murdered you, or do you believe that they did not? Do you forgive them for what they did to you in a past life, if you believe they murdered you, or do you not? It determines how Indoril Nerevar is painted: was he really a saint fighting for freedom and betterment of the people of the world, was he fighting just for his own power, or was he just a toy of someone else? The lesson is, if you cannot forgive people (vivec) for what they do to you, you'll have a harder time reaching for your goals (ending the blight), but you also have that choice and can still do it without sacrificing your values. You're meant to make both decisions, and you were originally able to sacrifice the whole world for your petty revenge against the tribunal (via joining Dagoth Ur, who became the devil to stay loyal to you), and you'd be forced to live with those choices as you continued after the main storyline.

For the story to maintain it's metaphors and lessons, the story must keep the value, backstore, and meaning of it's individual characters. By subverting a character, you subvert the story, and the lessons of the story. If you want to paint a different lesson, you need to create a new character. Characters throughout the elder scrolls that remain throughout the series have meanings that don't depend on their individual character (ever notice no one ever really states reliably if any particular daedra is good or bad? The fact that their character is ambiguous is important to the bigger overall narrative of TES, which is the constant conflict of those who favor Anu [order/tyranny] and those who favor Padomay [chaos/freedom], and those who are stuck trying to keep the two in balance, trying to stay good, rather than evil). You want to keep your most important characters in a very structured frame, to force people to see the lessons you want them to see, which is usually some story about taking chaos (pure anarchy and freedom) and bringing it into order (pure tyranny/justice/safety), or using chaos to escape the evil of tyrannical order, or using order to punish the evil hiding in chaos. It's almost always a story that's somehow about keeping freedom and justice in a respectable balance. I'm not particularly familiar with Hades, to be honest, but we do know that Disney's not exactly giving us the right picture of his original character.

That's a very recent taboo. Historically people wrote all manner of stories using characters from other works. That's essentially how mythology grows. In actuality, the refusal to give over a character and a story to public domain via an ever-expanded framework of copyright and intellectual property law is quite an odd thing, and has carved out bizarre demarcations about acceptable narratives. Under your definitions, can I call that censorship? The idea that a particular character may only ever be this or that way is very restrictive; applied to your Greek gods example, it's really quite absurd. Myth is tremendously flexible about its details.

Indeed. The thing with myth, though, is that it was frequently accepted that stories were often parables, thus the important features of the characters were all that mattered, and those important features about those characters is why they were selected. I would also suggest that this desire to completely redefine characters for shock value, rather than creating originals, is also fairly new. Often times you see these characters' most defining characteristics being respected, because there are many to choose from, so you pick the one most useful for the story rather than picking one that doesn't fill your need, as that's a hell of alot more effort, since you have to bother explaining why you changed the character so much.

i think the better question to ask, rather than what was originally asked is: Why do we need to redefine characters? They're idolized and set and reduced to their importance to their overall role in the narrative. Why swap roles of aphrodite and hades, except to make a story about how one should play to their strengths? Sure, it could be funny or edgy, but you could do the same thing with Sonic the Hedgehog and Bowser, and it'd be just as effective. Why did Abraham Lincoln have to slay vampires instead of George Bush!?

Notice this sounds more like fanfiction that a proper AAA title? If you want to make a game about David Crockett in the role of Leisure Suit Larry, what do you gain? It'd be far more appropriate dressing Larry up as ol' honest Abe instead, since we wouldn't have to explain why we bothered absolutely changing the whole focus of a particular character. See, Larry has to tell the truth while dressed up as Abe, or maybe all he does is lie to women when dressed as Lincoln. Maybe, as Crockett, Larry can appear manlier than he really is, but it all gets shot down when the cap comes off and we realize he's not who he pretends to be. Want a manly character who gets the chicks? Why use David Crockett when we have Duke Nukem or countless others? Is there really anything interesting outside of a 5 minute chuckle, which a "costume party" or something accomplish just as well, if not better?

EDIT: To clarify, the reason myth is flexible with certain details is because those details aren't important to the story, therefore if you have to change an inflexible detail (Hercules' strength, for example), if loosing that detail or quality is not important to the original narrative you're trying to come up with (Samson looses his Hercules-style strength, only to gain it back again, but loosing it is important to the story, not because Samson was strong, but to say why a strong character would loose his strength, but if he doesn't become weak, then use Hercules), then you've totally chosen the wrong characters for your story.