I feel like this is entirely a localizer-added thing, and the original Japanese version was very different. I could be wrong of course, but this is just my gut feeling considering the time TYD released (and honestly it isn’t too much better nowadays).
Now, people can argue whether drastic changes like that are good or bad (I would say it is a massive “it depends”), but personally I would really prefer localizers stick to something as accurate to the original as possible while still being understandable in the target culture, and then include an altered or changed version as an option.
Like being able to choose between the ADV or Netflix dub for Evangelion.
I don’t mind if someone wants to add their own spin or whatever, as long as that doesn’t become the singular defined version for an entire region as is all too common. The original creators had a vision, and I want to see that vision, not the one a localizer is adding on that the original creators didn’t have.
For example, in a culture that doesnt have bread cakes, but they do have rice cakes, I would want a localizer to say characters ate “a food similar to rice cakes” or “an exotic food.” As an absolute last resort “a rice cake” is okay, but certainly not “the characters ate a big feast of pork and jelly donoughts.”
I never played the Japanese version, but I live in Japan and I have worked with various game localization companies. It’s a pretty fine line on how they handle these kinds of translations, and it is often the developers who give the direction.
A good localization firm will take the original intent, and then culturalize it for the target market to make sure it has the same intended “vibe” rather than an actual 1:1 translation. The first company I worked at here did the localization for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. They were using a lot of old Japanese in that, and they specifically DID want us to get as close to 1:1 as possible, while ensuring that the intent was still very clear. Another game that I cannot say was more free saying “please make sure that the jokes land with the US”, and quite a bit of the actual dialog was re-written, but once again, to match the vibe and intent that the developer was searching.
Each project is different. Each player is different. You aren’t wrong for your wants here, but developers aren’t wrong for trying to make something be more culturally appropriate for their target market, often which will sell more copies than their local market.
Yeah, that’s kinda what I mean. I think we agree. It’s just that recently there has been more attention on more… questionable… changes that localizers have been making to entertainment media, some I agree with and some I don’t.
In the 80s and 90s, it was common for overseas versions to change names to be more Western sounding. Personally, I don’t mind this kind of change. It usually doesn’t effect the overall story much, but sometimes a character might have an exotic sounding name in the Japanese version, I would hope that they also have a similarly exotic sounding name. However, it was also common for the entire story to be altered pretty drastically, even with the entertainment itself being chopped up into something entirely different. Which I don’t appreciate. I want the foreign media because it is different and from a different culture, changing it to match my own culture defeats the point of me wanting to engage with it.
Sometimes though, entire conversations are completely removed or changed entirely from their original versions. I mean, completely different, the difference between a character saying “I love you” and “You will always be my dearest friend.” I believe the Fire Emblem series (which I haven’t played very much so I have only minimal experience with) has had a few of these kinds of changes. In those cases, I believe that is a malicious change the developers may not have known about or may not have fully understood when they approved or signed off on the localization. Or the localization agency may have either thought they had more creative license than they actually had or deceived the original creators to push their own version instead.
Jokes are a bit different IMO, since humor is pretty different between cultures. Jokes in entertainment often rely on an understanding of the local pop-culture, so naturally jokes or geographical/historical references may need to change. It is understandable in those cases.
Lots of people just hate it (because blizzard or microtransactions or whatever) and can’t understand that people like different things. Ignore the numbers, you got some decent discussion!
It’s confusing because it doesn’t make sense, what is it the left/right third of? There is no feature on the controller that has any amount of sequential things. There is no identifiable “first” or anything ordered anywhere. That’s why these buttons should be called LS, LB and LT for stick, button and trigger, which is still not perfectly intuitive without knowledge of the layout, but better than 123.
The general population has no clue what a button or a trigger is most of the time and also have no clue what LB,RB,LT,RT even mean. You have to sit there and go “hmmm okay I see it’s right but now I need to remember what T and B mean” and it’s unintuitive, only makes sense to those who know it already.
Whereas numbers people actually know how they work and when you just say L and R people pick up on it easier. They can just figure out that top is 1 and 2 is bottom. Even helps them understand L3 and R3 better.
I have almost never seen someone new to games understand the stick button prompt easily with Xbox. Whereas a lot of PS controller sessions taught me that people who are new can even figure that out before I jump in to help them. Plus the icons are better. Shapes are less brain work than letters for a lot of people I know.
7 year old me which didn’t know English was way more confused about the Xbox controllers. Plat station’s were way easier to understand. The problem with L3 and R3 is that I didn’t even know the sticks could be used as buttons, once I learned that, L3 and R3 made a lot of sense.
I know the L-R of Xbox were buttons, I just wasn’t able to understand which was which. Sony being a Japanese company, imagine if they named their buttons some random japanese characters. That’s what Xbox buttons were to me.
I was worried Subnautica 2 would be just a sloppy cashgrab, but seeing that dev-vlog with the awkward devs describing their work actually gave me hope that they’re actually putting some soul in this game.
7 year old me was playing with keyboard, and years later i graduated to keyboard and mouse. the only reason i touch a controller is to give it to my kid.
Yeah, I’d travelled to Asia, had a bunch of jobs, and left university by then. Time flies eh.
Edit - probably my age is why I can’t abide games with the pixelated retro style graphics. Having grown up with that stuff I have no desire to return to the days of terrible blocky graphics. Though it’s nice if it enables younger ppl to enjoy older games.
Great Article AS always! There is probably one big new you missed. Mario Kart 64 got a Nativ PC Port including stable fps, higher resolut and a map editor.
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