Community MetaSteam | April 2024 - Definitely there's no rest for the wicked.

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rickyson33

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from the sounds of it maybe it's a good thing that Eiyuden came out before the Suikoden 1+2 remasters and i'm going into this without really having any particular expectations rather than the other way around like I originally hoped, other than a few bugs and qol things I don't really care much about most of the complaints people have with it seem to be specific ways they feel it doesn't match up to Suikoden 2

only an hour in so i've barely started but so far so good
 

crimsonheadGCN

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For some odd reason, I received a potential copyright infringement on Reddit for sharing a link of a Twitch streamer and I'm not sure why. I only shared a link to her Twitch channel on my Reddit profile, so I can get others to discover her. Now I'm contacting her to figure out if it was her who sent it the copyright infringement or someone else doing it.
 

Alextended

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I mean, what else could it have been, realistically? They had announced it'll have VR support just like the Myst remake but even without that bit, it was obvious.
 
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toxicitizen

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I mean, what else could it have been, realistically? They had announced it'll have VR support just like the Myst remake but even without that bit, it was obvious.
Wasn't aware of the VR support being announced. But idk, if they were scrapping everything and doing a full remake from scratch then taking over the fan project doesn't really accomplish anything unless they just wanted to kill it and/or hire the devs.
 

Alextended

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Wasn't aware of the VR support being announced. But idk, if they were scrapping everything and doing a full remake from scratch then taking over the fan project doesn't really accomplish anything unless they just wanted to kill it and/or hire the devs.
They had already said it's a full remake and clarified what the starry expanse folk had to do with it (not much) in 2022 too.
Q: Is this the Starry Expanse Project?

A: No, this is a from-the-ground-up remake of Riven from Cyan. However, the Starry Expanse team did assist in kicking off this project. See our blog post here for more details on that.
 
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Alextended

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Some of the greatest localizations are super different to the originals, or did people think Vagrant Story's people spoke ye olde English in the Japanese game? And how do people think a western game with flowery language like that would be localized for Japan instead, surely they'd have to go for a completely different twist and a theatrical style that can be appealing in that language instead. Obviously nothing like the infamous Ace Attorney stuff.
 

Li Kao

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Yeah, no. Regardless of good intentions, I can’t fully embrace this recent concept of localization, which could take whatever liberties it sees fit to adapt a work for another market. I’m a simple man, with simple needs, give me a professional translation and let me deal with the original intent.

I hold the act of translation in high regard, there is a deceptive simplicity and plenty of finesse to it, but it’s certainly not ‘throw whatever shit sticks’ and fuck the morons who just wanted to understand the original.

Let’s put it another way. Translation to me could be said to be a ‘faithful betrayal’. The big issue is that too many people seem to favoritize one over the other. This is an elegant balancing act, motherfucker.
 

thekeats1999

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vagrant Story was such a great game. I think it was the first game set in Ivalice, same location as FFT, FF12 and the Stormblood Alliance Raids in FFXIV.

It’s a long time since I played it, but I remember you had to constantly swap weapons to different damage types to enemies such as blunt to skeletons, piercing to humans and so on. Only ever completed it once so never saw any of the NG+ content.

The game is probably quite clunky nowadays. But I would still love to see a re-release/remaster of it.



For me the problem isnt localisation but the localisers and editorial staff. A localisation should only ever have one purpose, make what is being said and the concepts understandable in another language. It should never harm the intent. It should never harm the politics or characterisations that the creator wanted.

so when you end up with a localisation of that one particular Dragon Maid. Or the abomination that is the most recent translation of Evangelion both sides can burn for that.

No piece of work should ever have its original authorial intent mauled by either a translation or localisation.
 
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Cacher

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Mentioned this game in the VN thread before. Many Japanese people believe Persona 3 was heavily inspired by this game from Alicesoft. Now the remaster is coming to Steam in English.
 

ezodagrom

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Yeah, no. Regardless of good intentions, I can’t fully embrace this recent concept of localization, which could take whatever liberties it sees fit to adapt a work for another market.
This is not a recent concept at all, games localizations used to be far worse than they are now when it comes to taking liberties, after all in some cases even games names were changed.
 

Le Pertti

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Poor original creators who localizators respect their original work. XD
/s

Gladly in few years localization companies will be a thing of the past thaks to AI. And some game movement are tracking companies who use companies like sweet baby and other consulting companies, like deidetected dot com.
Now those are some words that are sending the biggest red flags.
 

Li Kao

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This is not a recent concept at all, games localizations used to be far worse than they are now when it comes to taking liberties, after all in some cases even games names were changed.
I meant recent as in seeing this as a good thing. There is indeed a rich 'history' to localization.



People championing machine translation have no idea about the art and craft behind it.
Machine translation is at best literal translation, it is barely a translation, it is the very first draft of a translation.
 
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prudis

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I hold the act of translation in high regard, there is a deceptive simplicity and plenty of finesse to it, but it’s certainly not ‘throw whatever shit sticks’ and fuck the morons who just wanted to understand the original.

Let’s put it another way. Translation to me could be said to be a ‘faithful betrayal’. The big issue is that too many people seem to favoritize one over the other. This is an elegant balancing act, motherfucker.
Ultimately, IMHO, it's all about accepting that the Japanese language is built upon culture, traditions, habits, and sensibilities that are just completely different and unrelatable from the European/American ones.
Localizing Japanese in English is practically impossible, as it's impossible to satisfy everyone's expectations. Even the folks working on Yakuza/LAD, rightly praised for the quality of their localizations, take a great deal of liberties in their work!
I would say there is whole long TRANSLATION vs LOCALIZATION vs ADAPTATION vs INTERPRETATION debate ...especially between the languages with big cultural, structural ,.... etc differences and sensibilities

This debate has been decades even centuries long even as far as Gutenbert goes .
And randomass online ranters wont solve it ...

And now bringing Machine translation into it ... is one whole another can of worms
 
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Li Kao

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I would say there is whole long TRANSLATION vs LOCALIZATION vs ADAPTATION vs INTERPRETATION debate ...especially between the languages with big cultural, structural ,.... etc differences and sensibilities

This debate has been decades even centuries long even as far as Gutenbert goes .
And randomass online ranters wont solve it ...
What is your point ? Apart from lowering the value of some people's opinion by painting it as irrelevant.
What are you saying ? That debating the topic is useless ? That only some people can participate in it ?

And now bringing Machine translation into it ... is one whole another can of worms
That part is easy. See the long white line ?
This was not intended as a continuation of my post. It was a pretty obvious callback to a poster's views.
 

thekeats1999

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This is not a recent concept at all, games localizations used to be far worse than they are now when it comes to taking liberties, after all in some cases even games names were changed.
I think the biggest perpetrators of this where Working Designs. From what I remember there games where heavily meme based translations. Dating them even around release. I also never forgave them for making games harder than the originals as well.
 

prudis

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the what now?
no need to attack over me for not "micromanaging" thequotes .... maybe calm down a bit before posting

i was just saying that most of it is differnce between translation /localization / adaptation ... is a debate thats been a thing for centiries
And the point is that its not clear problem with clear obvious solution
 
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Li Kao

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the what now?
no need to attack over me for not "micromanaging" thequotes .... so i will just leave it now until you people calm the fuck down

i was just saying that most of it is differnce between translation /localization / adaptation ... is a debate thats been a thing for centiries
And the point is that its not clear problem with clear obvious solution
I readily admit I felt included in 'randomass online ranters' and didn't appreciate it.
 
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Durante

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Regarding the localization discussion, I think there is a lot of nuance, especially as it relates to the setting and style of a game and how that (should) affect localization decisions.

People often seem to be categorically in favor of either literal translation or full-on localization, regardless of external circumstances. I think that is a mistake. Rather than discussing all the the underlying reasons for that (which I don't have the time for right now), I'll just provide two examples to make my point:

  • Persona. In this case, I am in favor of a more literal translation. These games and especially their dialogue are directly based on how characters in a Japanese school settings interact. E.g. localizing honorifics has only two possible outcomes: either you end up with unnatural verbiage to try and transport the meaning of a particular choice of honorifics; or you lose part of that meaning, which might be significant.
  • On the other end, I'll choose Final Fantasy XII. This is still my favourite localization of all time in JRPGs. Here, we are not dealing with a particularly Japanese society or related social cues -- if anything, this fantasy setting is probably closer to (an idealized fantasy version of) renaissance Europe and the middle east. As such, there is no issue with going heavy on the localization and expressing concepts in fundamentally distinct, but setting-appropriate ways.
Without having played it yet, I would put Eiyuden very firmly into the latter category -- of course, I don't expect it to reach the quality of FFXII's localization, but basically nothing does.

Anyway, people whining about these things often lack the mental capacity for any sort of nuanced analysis (of this or any other topic :p).

This seems like a minor wording fix to something that was clearly intended anyway, so I'm sure someone somewhere is losing their minds over it.
 
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thekeats1999

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Regarding the localization discussion, I think there is a lot of nuance, especially as it relates to the setting and style of a game and how that (should) affect localization decisions.

People often seem to be categorically in favor of either literal translation or full-on localization, regardless of external circumstances. I think that is a mistake. Rather than discussing all the the underlying reasons for that (which I don't have the time for right now), I'll just provide two examples to make my point:

  • Persona. In this case, I am in favor of a more literal translation. These games and especially their dialogue are directly based on how characters in a Japanese school settings interact. E.g. localizing honorifics has only two possible outcomes: either you end up with unnatural verbiage to try and transport the meaning of a particular choice of honorifics; or you lose part of that meaning, which might be significant.
  • On the other end, I'll choose Final Fantasy XII. This is still my favourite localization of all time in JRPGs. Here, we are not dealing with a particularly Japanese society or related social cues -- if anything, this fantasy setting is probably closer to (an idealized fantasy version of) renaissance Europe and the middle east. As such, there is no issue with going heavy on the localization and expressing concepts in fundamentally distinct, but setting-appropriate ways.
Without having played it yet, I would put Eiyuden very firmly into the latter category -- of course, I don't expect it to reach the quality of FFXII's localization, but basically nothing does.

Anyway, people whining about these things often lack the mental capacity for any sort of nuanced analysis (of this or any other topic :p).

This seems like a minor wording fix to something that was clearly intended anyway, so I'm sure someone somewhere is losing their minds over it.
this is a more eloquent way of saying what I was trying to say. The only area I would disagree with is in the Persona example. I heavily agree with the societal, school and personal sides leaning towards more of a translation. But when you get to the dungeons/monsters they are a hodge-podge of just about every religion and fantasy character available and can lean more heavily towards localisation.

same goes for Metaphor. This can probably play it both ways. With any political plot and related characterisations leaning more towards translation and the fantasy elements going for a more localisation setting.

as to older translations, a lot of the translation issues also stemmed from limited character spaces, especially in the NES/SNES days. Even ran into the early PlayStation days.
 
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Arc

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Steam started charging sales tax in my state. It's Joever. :crying-face:

Really though, I'm more surprised it took Valve months implement it as the bill passed January 1 and I was already getting sales tax charges on other services.
 
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STHX

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To give a more serious answer to the localization discussion: for me, I'm fine with Vagrant Story's "ye olde english" but also fine with more literal Persona-like translations. I also don't mind a possible extra joke (unless it's Working Designs or Esty "NISA" Dee). The most important element in my opinion is putting whoever plays the game on the same plane, regardless of language. So if I somehow meet a japanese (but it can also be any other country) person online, and we both played a specific game (me in italian, he in japanese), I want to be albe to discuss the game with him in english without issues, even the smallest parts
Most localizations are like that but there are some cases when a translator went overboard. I for example didn't agree with completely rewriting Advance Wars: Days of Ruin because it creates a chism against every other AW Dark Conflict player in the world. But you know what, that game was 2 generations ago, and in the end the series is dead dead so it's not like there will be big issues. In the current generation however with games getting various rereleases and updates, but most of all with the world being more connected than ever and budgets going through the roof there should be more care in localizing games. I like Ace Attorney localizations as much as any other member of this forum but come on it's obvious that legacy is the biggest roadblock the series has today. The first game tried it's best to pretend the game was set in america, changed every name to keep the jokes and it honestly did a pretty good job at that. The problem is that (outside of how making something originally japanese less japanese always has a small tint of casual asian racism or implies people can't accept something outside of their comfort zone), future AA games became more and more japanese, culminating with the ridiculous "village of japanese immigrants where everyone still has a fully american name" in AA5. Playing that case was the first time while playing AA I said to myself "nah, this is getting stupid", and I'm not surprised for Great Ace Attorney Capcom went with a more literal translation while for AA6 they simply set the game in a different country. Also, the more changes you have to do, the more editing passes are required, inflating budgets even more. Fire Emblem has a similar issue but it's usually limited to one or two characters in a game with 40. But with Fire Emblem Heroes some of these issues are getting more noticeable and will add more localization work for whoever came later. Donnel in Awakening is a funny guy right? You loved the little farmer. Except he wasn't a funny guy in japanese, we was a literal boring cardboard cutout. The developers even commented during an interview on how they were surprised at how popular he was overseas, because they didn't know he is a completely different character. Effie in Fates is even worse: a gentle and kind giant in japanese was turned into a roided up bodybuilder in english. But hey if it was simply an issue in Fates no problem (even though in the end we never got the last dlc in the west), Heroes exists and this change is still haunting whoever is translating that game, adding more work for absolutely no reason
As I said before, most of these issues (like the AW case above) don't exist in the italian translations I play, and ironically if a japanese game is only in english it also means the localization budget wasn't very high, meaning it's less likely to have spiced up dialogues (and actually I'm fine with that, if I have to mentally translate a game with weird made up terms while I'm playing it then I'm fine with my brain not going into overtime)
 
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Line

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Just to add some thoughts before Eiyuden devours me;


It's a nice little platformer, but it reminds me a lot more of Donkey Kong Country (especially the not-barrels) than other drilling games like Drill Dozer, it's pretty light on puzzles, and they tend to be more on the execution side rather than the thinking side, so it's quite different than I expected.
Also you can't use your mouse for anything in the game (except duct taping it as a virtual joystick somehow, but that's not a good idea), so that's annoying, I wanted mouse movement...
 

Stone Ocean

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The problem is that (outside of how making something originally japanese less japanese always has a small tint of casual asian racism or implies people can't accept something outside of their comfort zone), future AA games became more and more japanese, culminating with the ridiculous "village of japanese immigrants where everyone still has a fully american name" in AA5. Playing that case was the first time while playing AA I said to myself "nah, this is getting stupid", and I'm not surprised for Great Ace Attorney Capcom went with a more literal translation while for AA6 they simply set the game in a different country. Also, the more changes you have to do, the more editing passes are required, inflating budgets even more.
Great Ace Attorney still had to do a lot of localization work, between making the script sound more british and changing character names for puns that english speakers can understand.

Ace Attorney is infamous due to the whole country change bit but it's also a great example of a game that would be really really really hard to simply translate, every single character name is a pun in japanese that most of the time simply won't translate and you can't just stop the game every time a new character shows up to go "this character's name uses kanji that is meant to imply he's an annoying otaku" instead of just calling the guy "Sal Manella" to imply he's gross.
 
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Line

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You like Eiyuden ?

Do I need to play the sorta prequel ?
No I will start it later today, after all those years :pleasedblob:
You really don't need to play Rising, except if you really want a bit of lore on some characters. Plus the game was aggressively mediocre, very grindy for what was a lesser party-Ys with some town building, the pacing was quite bad because of it.
 
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thekeats1999

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I would say, if you are looking for the single best localisation ever done (as far as I am concerned) you need to look at the (British) English localisations for the Asterix books. Each one is translated in such a way that the jokes and puns are non destructive of the original intention.
 

Li Kao

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I would say, if you are looking for the single best localisation ever done (as far as I am concerned) you need to look at the (British) English localisations for the Asterix books. Each one is translated in such a way that the jokes and puns are non destructive of the original intention.
Interesting. It must have been hell.
Similar case to the Discworld French translation, I don't envy the translators.
 

rickyson33

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as much complaining as i've seen about Eiyuden encounter rate bugs with high refresh rate monitors I gotta say i've been feeling kinda envious of it as someone with a 60Hz monitor getting the unbugged rates

i'm ~4 hours into the game now in the middle of some fairly long dungeon and i'd love having my encounter rate cut in half right about now having gone through what feels like dozens and dozens of random battles
 
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Line

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If a game doesn't have visible encounters, it should have togglable rates. Like C'mon, we've had that for a long time now (and the Bravely games actually removing the option is just :huhblob:).
 
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rickyson33

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If a game doesn't have visible encounters, it should have togglable rates. Like C'mon, we've had that for a long time now (and the Bravely games actually removing the option is just :huhblob:).
that or some sort of limiter whether that's something like having a certain amount of encounters that can pop up per area or something more involved

i've never played it but for example Fantasian has some item thing where you can essentially absorb random encounters and then fight multiple in one go instead of having it interrupt you all the time when you're walking about

another interesting idea that comes to mind that I always remember because i've never seen it used elsewhere is what Exit Fate(a Suikoden-like RPG Maker fangame) did where every time a random encounter is about to trigger there's a button you can press where you can cancel it if you want to by "bribing" them(paying like a third of whatever amount of money the encounter would have given you or something like that), a bit thematically weird bribing something like bats or some other non humanoid creature but a system that feels pretty nice in practice
 
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