His work on Vagrant Story was phenomenal. Japanese scripts tend to be really boring and samey. Without the work of a good localizer, you’d hear the same twenty anime one-liners interspersed throughout the entire game.
There are exceptionally few puns that can be translated literally. One that comes to mind is from a Lipton Limone advert, where Miranda Kerr says 「おいチイ」, when I first heard it I thought it was just an accent thing, but the second time I realised it’s a pun; Tealicious.
I used to see it all the time when I read unofficial transliterations of manga and the translator tried to make the pun work, they’d include a note explaining the joke. Personally I prefer localisation which keeps the spirit of what was meant but the text/lines flows in a much more natural way to a native English speaker.
It’s a common fan translation technique, and–as far as the criticism sourced in good faith goes–I wonder if it’s the genesis of a lot of the grumbling. Back when fans had to rely on independent, amateur translating to have access to more material.
Maybe some of them would just prefer the “literal with footnotes” approach.
I don't think anyone would've complained if the localization's quality was on-par with AA or Vagrant Story, but it looks to me like that isn't the case.
The complaints are largely, as she says, “sacrificed accuracy for flowery prose.” Japanese games in this setting still often follow in the footsteps of early Dragon Quest and the Final Fantasy games set in Ivalice by not strictly using contemporary English.
I think it’s an interesting conversation when it can be divorced from “removing insensitive language is censorship” crowd.
Hot take: I’m playing unicorn overlord and started it after I read this article a couple days ago. It’s honestly not that bad.
The story itself feels a little shallow, being about 10 hours in. Aside from a certain character being “abducted”, I really haven’t perceived any risk so far. It seems like every decision I make is a no-brainer with consequences only appearing if I make the obtusely obvious wrong decision.
Story and writing wise, it isn’t really the shining example of jrpgs to begin with, so the localisation just seems like a footnote so far.
The gameplay loop is pretty satisfying though, which is why I’m still in it. I’m ready for the writing to mature into a darker game and hoping that this first “chapter” is just a light beginning. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t happen.
To be honest, if I were going to be offended at anything in this game, it’d be the jiggly boobs on half the girl units for no reason and the overtly sexual way that the witch class character just… Stands there swinging her hips? But I’m not one to even care that much about eye candy. But it’d make a better complaint to me than overly-shakepearean localisation.
The article’s right about the conversation turning needlessly toxic. There’s people out there that are fanatics about accuracy for no good reason, even cases where I’ve seen a “TRASH localizer!” video that convinced me the localization was good in that it avoided repeat words, when they were attempting to state the opposite.
These people seriously need to either learn Japanese to play the game how they prefer, or just be silent and stop harassing game devs.
My problem with the pro localization argument, is I’m enjoying a Japanese property for the sake of its own metrics. I don’t necessarily want to have my dialogue match what’s “normal” for my region, otherwise I’d just purchase a game that was made in the west.
Japanese storytelling (and any other culture for that matter) is unique. Why change it? In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, there are some questionable translation choices that I just can’t jive with (eg: majority of Cait Sith’s catlike banter and the casts reaction to it is glossed over.)
Not to mention people thinking the original story is “problematic” and needs to be “fixed.” If you don’t like a cultures games, don’t play them pretty simple.
I’m still gonna play Unicorn Overlord but I’m not happy with these inaccuracies.
“I mean, the three people still playing it are reeeealy playing it, you know? They engaged in our game like no other! Record player engagement everybody!”
We’re pushing AAAA gaming forward, to grow our fledgling AAAA Gamer-base! We are excited to introduce AAAA-as-a-Service. We think you’re gonna love our AAAAaS.
Stay tuned in 2032, when we launch our connected AAAA-as-a-Service-Subscription! Now you’ll be able to get ground-breaking AAAAaSS gaming at an affordable value. Paid subscribers will get even more checklists, even more overwhelming map icons, and an even larger empty world with no payoff to explore to complete in our games! Do you love going here and pressing the A button? What if you could complete those map markers while not only pressing the A button to end the mission, but instead, having to swipe your credit card while timing the press of the A button? We feel this rewarding challenge will introduce a sense of pride and accomplishment in gamers, and introduce more money in our coffers.
Gamers:
Dude, just create new innovative games with new IPs that aren’t monetized to hell! We’ll buy those! We miss the old Splinter Cell days.
Uibsoft:
MoNeTiZaTiOn, you say??!! Splinter Cell as a Service, you say?! We hear you loud and clear!
Didn’t the latest shitty Call of Duty try basically this exact tactic? They cited some sort of record high in player engagement with the campaign, because if you torture statistics hard enough you can make them say anything.
Yeah and right now we’re all raving that Helldivers 2 is great.
The point is that on average these massive conglomerates of corporate shareholder-driven studios are not soulful because they have the soul beat out of them. Devs have tons of soul, but if it ends up in the final product is ultimately a decision of the management, and they have had the souls sucked out of them.
There are still soulful games, but on average the industry is soulless.
As is the case with all media. Nobody remembers Populous or Bill Lambeer’s Combat Basketball on the SNES cuz they were horrible games, but I still hear about Zelda: ALTTP and Super Mario World.
I get what you’re saying, but “the entire video game industry” didn’t make Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m not jaded enough to claim the entire industry is soulless (indies and AA still exist), but the AAA industry is pretty much there, with the rare exception.
I know dozens of people who wanted this game because they really loved the ship combat in Black Flag but substituted Sea of Thieves as it was the only close game out at the time. These are the kinds of people who buy games on a whim, play them for a week and then never again.
Not a single one of them gives a single flying fuck about Skull and Bones. In fact, when it was released everybody had a revived interest in playing Sea of Thieves instead.
Skull and Bones made me want to play a pirate game, but everything points to it being just a worse Black Flag. That’s why last week I bought Sea of Thieves and have been enjoying it quite a bit.
You also have the benefit of years of development for SoT that has brought features, QoL improvements, and invite-only servers.
Originally the game was very super pvp oriented and there was no way for you to get out of the open world. A few years months ago they implemented private invite-only servers where the reward amount was reduced but it allowed players a secluded area to focus on their own thing instead of worrying about being harassed by a maxed out galleon crew coming after them.
It’s actually a really fun game overall, even when you’re fighting people. I used to roleplay as a pirate, and our ship was called the Salty Swallow.
“You’ll never forget your encounter with the crew of the Salty Swallow! Arrrrrrr!”
And then the whole crew dies, because we’re all bad.
Could very well be that recent. It’s been a while since I played and paid attention to the development and happenings of the game.
Either way, it was something we’d been asking for since the start of the game, and I’m really happy new players get to experience it right out of the box!
Damn I had to stop playing because I am not a fan of PvP especially when is on a shitty old 940mx laptop that straight up freezes every minute. Can anyone create a private server for friends or do I have to self host it? Guessing it’s the former but looks like it’s worth another try anyway.
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Aktywne