Salutations!
Mojo from Censored Gaming here!
Vagrant Story, the 2000 PlayStation action RPG made by Square, was a title praised by
critics and still has a cult following to this day.
The game is set in the city of Lea Monde and follows a knight named Ashley Riot, as he
pursues Sydney Losstarot, leader of the religious cult Mullenkamp.
In combat, players chain various attacks together to deal massive damage, in a style akin to
a rhythm game.
Vagrant Story is also considered something of a landmark in video game localization.
The website, US Gamer, conducted an interview with localization editor Richard Amtower and
translator Alexander O. Smith and managed to ask them various questions pertaining to
the localization of the game.
This video will be going into detail of the most prominent questions and answers from
the interview.
When asked about the culture of Square's translation team during the early 2000s, Amtower explains
that he, Smith, and Square were based in different parts of the world, frequently communicating
via email to one another.
He also says that the translators had the final say on the text and how he was something
of an advisor, building relationships with the team and hoping they would trust his feedback.
Smith clarifies that the Square localization department was still very early in its own
development, saying they hadn't entirely found the “best practices” for localization
at the time.
He details this further, recalling things such as non-native English speakers being
in the head of translation and how the localization department was, in fact, just tacked on to
the IT department.
Smith compared this to being “a bit of a wild west at times”, but the two men state
that it was all very passionate and driven.
They were also questioned on the original Japanese script and the team adding their
own take on the writing.
Smith says that their spin partly came from the reaction to the pseudo-Medieval European
setting of the story.
He states that there were some things that English tends to do that the Japanese language
can't, citing imagery in wordplay as an example.
He references dialogue found within the game, in which two soldiers are talking about magic.
In Japan, the dialogue is fairly standard, with these two men simply talking about how
one can use magic.
Over in the west, the dialogue is changed to fit the setting better in the eyes of the
team.
The dialogue uses words such as “aye” and “ye”.
The interview eventually gets into how dense the script was, in comparison to the game's
length.
The two were asked if they believed fans may have missed any possible subtleties.
In response, they began talking about the rooms names and how the Japanese names were
so long, that they didn't have anywhere near enough space to directly translate them into
English.
This allowed them to translate the names much more loosely and so they paid homage and added
all sorts of references to mutually beloved things.
Noticing how Matsuno, the Japanese producer, liked to make references to Queen songs, they
decided to add in some Bauhaus references, for example, which also kept with the game's
gothic feel.
Some more examples are the room names "Mineshaft where (someone) spent all their strength for
the one they loved", which was changed to "The Passion of Lovers", and "Stairway where
(someone) danced a dance of joy after drinking cheap wine", which was renamed "Bacchus is
Cheap".
However, generally speaking, the localization didn't stray too much from the original script.
When asked whether they inserted the characters' various quirks, such Merlose bringing up rare
wine, Smith recalls that this scene was also in the Japanese version.
With the exception of the room names, Japanese producer, director, battle designer and writer,
Yasumi Matsuno, deserves all of the credit.
Lastly for this video, the two were asked if there were any major changes to the script
that they would like to talk about.
Smith details that a character refers to Ashley's crew as “terrorists” in the original script
and that he himself wrote around it, without clearing it up with the team.
He explains that this struck him as anachronistic in a bad way, and believes that he would still
make the same choice if he were presented with a situation like that again.
Viewers can find the full interview, which answers questions such as if a certain line
in the game was a reference to “manhood” and what exactly drew Smith and Amtower to
the project, over at US Gamer's website.This has been Mojo, and I hope you all have a spectacular
evening.