Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XXVII

[Kage]

kage made the wrong thread. Place holder! here is the right thread's lore dump post.

 

Michael-Christopher Koji Fox Delivers!

 

Hello All!

 

First, I’d like to say thank you to everyone who stayed up late on Friday Night/Saturday Morning to catch the Kagoshima FATE Producer Letter Live. We were monitoring the Twitch feed and were blown away by how many commenters there were despite the ridiculous hour. I’d also like to extend my gratitude to all the fans who were helping out in real time with translations, as well as those guys who spent time after the fact to post translations. We here at SQEX appreciate it, and I know the rest of our fan base does, as well.

 

Now that the PLL is through, Matt and his crew will be working on a full recap for release sometime soon, but while I have some time on the flight back to Tokyo and everything is still fresh in my mind, I wanted to get you guys a play-by-play of what I talked about during my 50-minute portion of the session. This isn’t going to be a word-for-word transcript, but more of an overview of what I said, possibly with some clarification that wasn’t offered during the actual filming.

 

I apologize in advance for any typos or weirdness in the formatting. Rather than have something super polished, I just wanted to get something up ASAP so you guys wouldn’t have to wait too long.

 

I also apologize for the length. This one’s a monster...

 

So without further ado, here’s the outline:

 

After a quick intro that involved an afro wig, a poorly hummed intro to Kenny Loggin’s “Danger Zone,” and a sad tale of how 20 years ago I was once mistaken by a couple of high school students for a 90s J-Pop DJ named Marc Panther, we segued into talking about the 3.2 patch title—The Gears of Change—and the logo artwork.

 

As you now know, the artwork features Minfilia and the Mothercrystal, and I discussed a bit how those two things play a major role in the 3.2 story.

- After being missing for so long, in what manner will Minfilia return?

- While she was missing, what was happening to her?

- How did she “change”?

- What role did the Mothercrystal play in that change?

- Based on how Minfilia has changed, how will the Scions of the Seventh Dawn change?

- Will the path the Scions walk in some way change?

 

So yes, as the patch title states, “change” is one of the main themes of 3.2’s story, the other being “gears.” In a machine, there are many gears. When one begins moving, all of the ones nearby also begin moving, and all that motion ultimately sets the entire machine into motion. And once things begin moving, they are difficult to stop. In other words, change begets even more change, and this, in a sense, can be compared to the wheels of destiny—which ties us into the Japanese rendition of the patch title—運命の歯車 (unmei no haguruma), or the “gears of destiny.”

 

However, FFXIV’s patch titles are usually multi-layered, so the “change” mentioned here is not exclusive to the Minfilia branch of the story. It also ties into the Dragonsong War branch as well. As we saw in 3.1, following the dramatic rescue of an Ishgardian by a dragon, the people of Ishgard have begun questioning their heretofore violent relationship with the Dravanians. They have begun to think that a change towards peace may be possible. In addition, the other regions of Eorzea have also detected a change in the winds, and are now beginning to re-evaluate their stance on the conflict...possibly considering action themselves.

 

However, when there is a hard push for change, there are always those who oppose that change, and will do whatever they can to stop it.

 

Finally, you can’t talk about “gears” without mentioning machines...and you can’t mention machines without mentioning the biggest machine in Eorzea—Alexander. So, the third layer of the “Gears of Change” patch title deal with the continuation of the Alexander story and the second “leg”—the Midas sector.

 

From there, Bucco shifts the conversation to how in addition to working on FFXIV’s localization, I also work directly with the Main Lore Creator, Banri Oda to devise the backstories to the game’s various content—one example being the new instanced dungeons (the Antitower and the Lost City of Amdapor (Hard)). I start off this leg of the PLL by talking a little about how the Antitower got its name.

 

Dungeon naming usually starts with design documents from the dungeon team based off of ideas originally submitted by Oda-san, Yoshi-P, and others. At this time, the dev team already had a working name (逆さの塔 Sakasa no To – lit. “the upside-down tower”) and Oda-san came to me for ideas for an official name—they were thinking of going with a English word for the Japanese version as well. The backstory for the area involved a Sharlayan scholar’s work on researching the Lifestream and the Mothercrystal, so I suggested something that had a slight academic feel to it—the Antitower, rather than going with something straightforward like “The Inverted Tower.” When I suggested this to Oda-san, he was worried that the Japanese users would get the wrong impression from the name. In Japanese, the term anti- (アンチ anchi) is used somewhat often, but does not carry all the meanings that it does in English. In Japanese, it basically only has a negative connotation—when you opposed to something: anti-freedom, or anti-union, etc. I tried to explain to Oda-san that while it can be negative in EN, it can also simply mean the reverse of something. Like in anti-toxin—something that reverses the effect of poison, or anti-aging—flipping the aging process upside-down. After hearing this, Oda-san—while convinced that anti- could mean more than ‘oppose’—was still unsure that Japanese players wouldn’t misunderstand. It was at that time I asked him if there was anything wrong with the working title they already had...and he was like ...”no, it’s actually pretty good isn’t it?” And so he took it to Yoshi-P for final approval, and the rest is history.

 

From here, I also talk about how naming posed a challenge not just for the name of the tower itself, but also for the area’s boss. The boss for this dungeon happens to be a legacy character from an early Final Fantasy. Since the boss name’s original translation, the spelling has since changed, which posed me with the dilemma—which spelling to use. The reason this problem sometimes comes up is because before there was a localization department at SQEX, there was only chaos. Teams would use different people for different projects and data bases weren’t managed...or even saved. This resulted in a lot of discrepancies. Once the Loc. Department was formed some 15 or so years ago, we began work documenting translations, as well as unifying spellings and cleaning up mistranslations/misinterpretations.

 

As we get a lot of characters, names, etc. from legacy Final Fantasies, choosing one translation over another is always a tricky job. One of the reasons the legacy characters are used (especially in FFXIV) is to incite feelings of nostalgia. However, what happens when that name which was nostalgic, was actually a mistranslation? Do you maintain the error for nostalgia’s sake, or do you fix the error to get the text back to a state closer to the writer’s original intent. One example that comes to mind is Chupon. Chupon, while a faithful phonetic rendition of the Japanese katakana, was unfortunately not the correct translation—it should have been (the Greek) Typhon (Tuphon), as this was the original writer’s intent (and in fact was updated in later translations). So, when the character’s revival was announced for XIV, I find myself with a choice. I understand that for a lot of players my age who played the original when it was released, Chupon was who we remembered. On the other hand, newer players remember him as Typhon—the name that the original writer intended anyway. Do I go with nostalgia or do I go with intent? GAHHH! Ultimately, we decided to go with Typhon, as we deemed intent more important in this case.

 

Here, Bucco asks about the second instanced dungeon, The Lost City of Amdapor (Hard)...and I tell him I forgot to bring any information on this one. Oops...

 

But I did have some background on the striking dummy content that Yoshi-P introduced earlier—mainly regarding why we decided to name it something decidedly abstract: “Stone, Sky, Sea”.

 

When Oda-san came to me with the content and asked me for an idea, the first thing I envisioned was one of those old Kung Fu movies with the wispy white-haired hermit training on some mountain top. What if we made the guy in charge of these battles a master fighter from Doma who left his homeland and sought the seclusion of an (at that time) abandoned Dravania to train in peace. The location being the side of a massive “stone” cliff, situated so high up that one only need to reach out their hand to be able to touch the “sky,” while overlooking a never-ending “sea” of clouds. And from there—Stone, Sky, Sea. Think of it like three kanji characters written in calligraphy, hanging in the dojo: 石空海.

 

Oda-san liked the idea, and thus the place was named (the JP version name is also Stone, Sky, Sea in katakana) and the background story of the hermit was also added.

 

And that ended the first half of my section of the PLL. From there, we moved into answering some questions that had been collected from the forums.

 

The first question was a basic one from the Japanese players asking what exactly it is the Localization team does. Simply put, we handle the translation of the JP text into English, French, German, Chinese, and Korean. However, our jobs are not that simple, and there is a reason why we are called the Localization department as opposed to the Translation department. It is our task to translate in a manner that fits the cultural “location” of our target audience (the “local” in localization), and to do that we must, at times, make minor adjustments and wield a slight amount of creativity. If a Japanese client user finds something in the game to be cool or interesting, then only when an English, or Chinese, or Korean, or French, or German client user finds the same thing just as interesting in their version can we say we’ve done a good job.

 

But localization is not always about making things interesting. Making sure things are easy to understand is also important, especially when a lot of words overlap between language clients. One good example of this is the PvP “Danger Time” brought up in the first half of the PLL. Yoshi-P wanted to go with the English “Danger Time” for the Japanese version because both danger and time were words that most Japanese users would know. I mentioned that Danger Time might be considered over-simple or even silly-sounding by some users, especially in a PvP system where we already have many abstract terms (The Feast, The Claws, The Fangs, etc.). There was a lot of reciting of the Top Gun theme “Danger Zone” during this discussion. Yoshi-P was not against the imagery of the Culling Hour suggestion I had first proposed, but was worried that Japanese players would not get the meaning of culling (a word not known to most Japanese players). In the end, we decided that we would maintain the word Time across the two languages for symmetry, and allow for the difference between Danger and Culling.

 

Basically localization is having to make decisions just like these...but in the hundreds, or maybe even thousands each day. When faced with so many decisions, there will always be times when some will not produce the best results, leaving us and the players thinking in retrospect that we could have done better. We are human, and will miss the mark every now and again. But we learn from each and every one of those mistakes, and combined with the feedback we get from the users, are able to take that experience and use it to grow as localizers.

 

There was also a question from our DE and FR forums about which language the French and German translators translate from. All of our in-house DE and FR translators are fluent in Japanese, and therefore fully capable of translating directly from the JP, which, for the most part, they do. However, our translators are also fully functional in EN, as well, and as such will sometimes translate from the EN—most of the time when it is the EN text that is the source (like item names or player actions).

 

Finally, some users asked how long it took us to translate Heavensward (3.0) compared to a normal patch. Well, Final Fantasy games have always been known for their copious amounts of text, and FFXIV has been no exception. As localization is done alongside development (to ensure simultaneous release dates for JP, EN, FR, and DE) the amount of text can sometimes make our jobs a bit crazy. Each section of the dev. team wants to create something that is exceptional—meaning that if they have time to polish, they’ll want to polish right up until our data fix. The thing is, Localization gets text not just from, say, the Scenario team, but also the crafting team, the gathering team, the battle team, the dungeon team, the item team, the minion collective, the programming team, the UI team, the Lodestone team...which means if people are brushing up right to the deadline, there really is no time left for us to localize (let alone QA to check for bugs)! This can make things very chaotic, especially when working on an expansion that had more than 1,500,000 Japanese characters needing to be translated, localized, and then checked for style consistency. To put it in perspective, this was about the same amount of text that the Witcher III had...and we localized it in about 2 and a half months with a language teams of 7-8 people. We got so worried towards the end that we wouldn’t make it, that Yoshi-P had to call the directors of Bravely Second and Dragon Quest Heroes to ask if we could borrow their EN translators for 2 weeks. (Thanks Yoshi-P!!!!!!!)

 

However, since that time in hell, Yoshi-P has reworked how we approach patch development, and in 3.1 and 3.2 we have had ample time to get our work done, without forcing the JP team to compromise their quality. And for that, the Loc team is extremely grateful!

 

Next, we moved on to a question that we received from both the JP and EN forums and that was how monster and player actions were translated.

 

Normally, one would assume that, as a game developed in Japan, all of FFXIV’s names would start out in Japanese. However, FFXIV is different than most Japan-developed games in that I work directly with Oda-san in naming these, and when it comes to most of the in-game naming—from actions to items, to NPC names, to monster names—is a product of a joint EN-JP effort.

 

The flow is as follows—the battle and monster teams provide us and the effect team with the type of actions they are considering for their monsters. Oda-san takes that data and does a first pass. At the end of this first pass, he’ll send me the file. The file at this time consists of:

 

1. Direct name suggestions

2. A general idea, but no concrete name, that needs expanding on

3. A blank cell and a request for an idea from me

 

I take this list (usually a few hundred per patch) and then spend the rest of the day researching on the Internet. You’d think with all the time I spend on Wikipedia and other sites, it’s about time I donate my 700 yen. (Yoshi-P suggests docking that 700 yen a month from my salary...)

 

Once my research is done and my suggestions solidified, I knock on my booth wall (I sit right next to Oda-san) and we begin the “localization” process—trying to come up with something good in both EN and JP. There is a lot of back and forth here discussing how we should each localize the names. A couple of examples include:

 

The tonberry action: Scourge of Nym. This is a case where the Japanese came first—呪いの言葉 (Noroi no Kotoba lit. “words of cursing”). I mentioned to Oda-san that we had already used the word “curse” in a lot of other actions and statuses and that I wanted to go with something a little bit more abstract...that implied the curse without straight up saying it. He agreed that ‘scourge’ would get across the meaning he wanted to imply with “curse=noroi,” and therefore allowed me the deviation.

 

On the other hand, an example of the EN coming first and the JP deviating arose when we had to decide on a name for a Cerberus action. In EN, there is an action called “Hound Out of Hell” which consists of a quick, damage-dealing charge. As the monster was Cerberus (imagery tied to hell), and he was moving fast, I wanted to do a play in the idiom “like a bat out of hell.” Oda-san liked the imagery, but unfortunately that idiom does not exist (in the same form) in Japanese. Add to that, when rendered into katakana, hound out of hell becomes long and confusing (ハウンドアウトオブヘル) and Oda-san did not want that cluttering up players’ log windows. So, we decided that the main focuses here were ‘hell’ and ‘moving quickly,’ and as long as those were kept in the JP, we’d be okay—hence the decision to go with ヘルチャージ (hell charge).

 

The main take-away from this is that both Oda-san and I decide on a main “focal point” for each name, and work to make sure that most of the names include this point. Another example of this is in the title for Aymeric—Aymeric the Blue. The Japanese title is 蒼剣のアイメリク(Soken no Aymeric lit. Blue Sword Aymeric). This even came up as one of the questions for this PLL. What happened to the ‘sword’ in the EN? This also had to do with Oda-san and I deciding that “blue” was going to be the focus of the title. The reason that Japanese didn’t just remove the 剣(sword) and go with something like 蒼のアイメリク falls under what looks better in Japanese. In titles like these, it is often considered better-looking when it’s a 2-kanji word as opposed to a 1-kanji word (most all the titles in the JP version of FFXIV have 2 kanji). Oda-san added the sword portion to complete the compound word, while maintaining that focal point we had decided on.

 

So, what about katakana word localization—words that are completely made up and do not exist in any Earth language? Is there anything special we do when Romanizing those? One example that came up in the questions posted on the forums was EN’s “Haukke Manor” versus the JP’s ハウケタ御用邸 (Hauketa Goyotei lit. Hauketa Manor). Where did the “ta” sound go? Well...in fact...this was just a mistake on our part. The person who translated this (a guy, we’ll call him Mr. S, who is no longer with the company) probably just misread the katakana. That was back during 2.0 when we were extremely busy, and it just slipped under the radar. We only noticed it a few months after release, and by then it was too late...so...

 

(This was followed by a light-hearted exchange between me and Yoshi-P about how he had heard nothing about this and had always thought there was some deep reasoning behind the missing ‘ta’. I tried to reassure him that there weren’t many of these in the game, which he took as meaning “not many = there are still some more” to which I decided to ask Bucco to change the subject!)

 

From here we move to the next question about FATE and achievement names and how the JP and EN are completely different, with the EN being filled with cultural references and bad puns. I start off by explaining that we have two rules regarding style for FFXIV. If the character IN EORZEA can see the text, it needs to follow our Eorzean style (which we loosely base on GRRM’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”). However, if the text is exclusively for the PLAYER on EARTH, then we can play a bit with the titles like a lot of western games do. Here’s where we get stuff like “Smells Like Tree Spirit” for the FATE in which you fight a tree spirit 怒れる守護者「グレートオーク」(Okoreru Shugosha Great Oak lit. The Angry Guardian Great Oak). Or “The Orange Boxes” for the FATE where you collect boxes filled with oranges 上には上がある (Ue ni wa ue ga aru lit. there’s something higher than the top fig. There’s always someone better than you). The same can be seen in achievements. Here Yoshi-P mentions the Shiva achievement “Let it Go” and I mention the Lv. 50 Dragoon achievement “Dragoon Age” and am about to mention the Lv. 50 bard achievement when Yoshi-P tells me to stop, as we’ll probably get sued.

 

Here Bucco says we are running out of time, so we have to skip a few questions (I was going to talk about how that because EN began adding cultural references and puns, the Japanese version has recently decided to follow, and while in 1.0 there were almost none, in 3.x, a good portion of quest and achievement names are now puns based off of Japanese cultural references. Also, I was going to talk about balloon text and the Miqo’te strumpet who asks a Roegadyn merchant about his golden “scepter”).

 

The next question is about getting more information on the Au Ra. Luckily I have an answer that I received from Oda-san before the PLL. I first talk about the Xaela and how they mainly reside as nomads in an area known as the Azim Steppe (which, in relation to Doma is to the immediate northwest). Azim is the sun deity and it is believed that it is her light and blessing that allows the grass to grow that feeds their herds. Now, astute players may recognize a similarity between Azim the sun deity and Azeyma the Warden...also connected to the sun... However, the Au Ra do not worship the Twelve...nor do most other people living outside Eorzea, as belief in the Twelve is pretty much restricted to Eorzea. That is not to say however that somewhere in the past the two gods were... (and Yoshi-P cuts me off).

 

Now, whereas the Xaela are made up of dozens of small tribes lead by khans, the Raen are mostly stationary and live near Doma or in the Far Eastern islands across the sea from Doma. However, due to the invasion of Othard by the Garlean Empire, a lot of Raen have been displaced and now flock to areas where they can find safety—like Eorzea (as was the case with Yugiri).

 

Now, as for how the Au Ra are regarded by others living in Eorzea, while there was racial tension in past ages, recently with the onset of the Age of Adventure and an influx in the amount of people of all races flocking to Eorzea, there truly isn’t any form of heavy discrimination towards the Au Ra (it also helps that because very few Au Ra ever visited Eorzea before, there is little deep-seated hate stemming from historical conflict). However, because they are new to Eorzea and there is much mystery surrounding them, a lot of native Eorzeans are still a bit wary (even if they don’t really know why).

 

Finally, I mention that in addition to the Xaela and Raen clans...there are rumors of a different, much older clan. (and...this is where Yoshi-P cuts me off).

 

The next question had to deal with the functionality of the Garleans’ third eye (a question that a lot of people ask me personally at Fan Fests and game shows). Oda-san had an answer prepared for this one as well, so I read what he gave me. This pretty much stated that the third eye is believed to considerably improve the race’s capacity for spatial recognition. Because of this, the Garleans have a decided advantage over other races when it comes to navigating aircraft or firing weapons. I then bring up Cid’s bandana and the legatii’s helms...but Yoshi-P says that armor has been designed not to interfere with the workings of the 3rd eye.

 

Next we move to a question from the JP forums about how in the JP version all servants of all primals are called ‘tempered’ but in the EN version there is a different word for each one. Here I explain that back before 2.0, when the scenario team was led by Kazuya Niino, they were using the term 信者 (shinja lit. Believer) internally. Niino-san felt that this term was a bit too weak, and wanted something that sounded more exotic. They saw that in 1.x, the EN team had used ‘tempered’ for the servants of Ifrit, and liked the exotic sound of it, so they decided to use the term in Japanese as well. When we told them that in EN we were planning on using different terms for different primals (tempered, meaning ‘hardened in flame,’ didn’t really work for the water-themed Leviathan) Niino-san was fine with Loc’s decision, be decided against using different words in the Japanese, as having the player try to remember more than one ‘made-up word’ was deemed too much of a burden. And that’s why when the EN uses tempered, drowned, touched, etc. The JP sticks only with ‘tempered.’

 

And finally, we get to our last question, which asks—Japan has Famitsu and Dengeki to relay to them all that cool lore information about Thordan and his Knights Twelve and whatnot. Why isn’t that translated for the west?

 

Good question! If I was in the same shoes as the English-speaking fans, I’d be just as upset. The problem is, lore books are lore books. Unlike art books, they are extremely text heavy and game-specific. To translate that text would take time, and that would mean pushing back in-game text localization...and that’s something no one wants. It would be great if Famitsu could do that translation, but they lack the resources as well...which means if it were to be done, we’d have to do it. Or in other words...I’d have to do it.

 

But, it’s about time that we got our own lore book. You guys have had to wait far too long. So, I told Yoshi-P that I would translate a book, should there be one. And he said we’d make it happen...and that we’d try to get it finished (JP and EN) before the Fan Fes in America...so that means October! I’m still trying to figure out if that’s possible...but I promised, so I guess that means I’ll just have to find a way to make it possible.

 

Yoshi-P then threw me a curveball and told me to tell everyone watching on the stream...in English. Now, I’d just spent the last 9 hours in pure Japanese mode—I’d switched off all the EN sectors of my brain to conserve RAM and allow for 100% of my processor power be allotted to Japanese...and Yoshi-P says “ENGLISH GO!” Man... talk about a mind going blank. I literally had to restart my brain, and still only ended up being little more than a string of words... “Uh... Lore...Book...Make...GOOD...”

 

But yeah. Long story short. OMG! WE’RE GETTING A LORE BOOK!!!!!!!!!!111!!!1!

 

Here, I thought we were done, but Bucco decides to pull out the big guns—poorly crafted Hildy and Nashu plushies. The crowd gathered at the hall went wild while Yoshi-P kept talking about how terrible the plushies looked...until he mentioned that the Hildy doll had started to grow on him and I mentioned that I’d pay at least $15 for one. Bucco asked if this meant that Hildy was coming back...and I said that Hildy was DEAD...or not. HILDY NEVER DIES! And, he’s BACK IN 3.2! Though I wasn’t able to go into details, I did mention that the two main points will be “in what form” Hildy returns, and who he will bring back with him...

 

Alrighty! That was it...and whoa. I’m up to 5000 words. It’s time to wrap this up.

 

Thanks again everyone for tuning in or catching up in the recap. The questions I didn’t answer, I’ll try to field here on the forums over the next few weeks (once 3.2 work is in the can). See you again soon!

 

Fernehalwes

[Erik Mynhier]

Fernehalwes' Original Post

 

Read the whole thing or just skip to the end.... My fellow RPers, we are getting our lore book. From the sound of it in October.

[Parth Makeo]

now comes my issue with lore books... Will it screw up a ton of our RPs or will it end up being Non-cannon like the wow RPG book that people use to base RP on until they clearly said that the WoW RPG books were NOT CANNON?

[Unnamed Mercenary]

Thread with duplicate news has been merged in. /janitorbucket

[Warren Castille]

now comes my issue with lore books... Will it screw up a ton of our RPs or will it end up being Non-cannon like the wow RPG book that people use to base RP on until they clearly said that the WoW RPG books were NOT CANNON?

 

A lore book being done by the lore team is outside of the realm of novels done by contracted authors. It might throw off RP, but I expect it to clarify a lot of things we just don't know: Who the Heaven's Ward are, and those kind of things.

[Parth Makeo]

now comes my issue with lore books... Will it screw up a ton of our RPs or will it end up being Non-cannon like the wow RPG book that people use to base RP on until they clearly said that the WoW RPG books were NOT CANNON?

 

A lore book being done by the lore team is outside of the realm of novels done by contracted authors. It might throw off RP, but I expect it to clarify a lot of things we just don't know: Who the Heaven's Ward are, and those kind of things.

Yeah i worded that wrongly. My bad

I just hope there is more about Allagan in there.