Your thoughts so far?

[Edda]

Just started the Stormblood story, and have just decided to go to Doma. Haven't actually gone yet; just made the decision.

 

Am I misremembering, or is the English translation getting more and more distant from the Japanese? I noticed this in Heavensward, where Matoya randomly called Alphinaud "Louisoix's granddaughter" instead of the Japanese "Louisoix's grandchild", but it's getting more pronounced as the MSQ goes on.

 

An example during one cutscene (that was shown in the launch trailer) involving Fordola:

 

 

Meffrid (English): Traitor! Kinslayer!

Meffrid (Japanese): But you're Ala Mhigan!

 

Fordola (English): I am no kin of yours.

Fordola (Japanese): I am of the Garlemald Empire.

 

 

It's kind of correct in the broad strokes, but it gives me the impression that the translators just glanced at the Japanese text, got a general idea of what sort of concept it's trying to convey, and then used their own words to express that, marking it good at "close enough".

 

Yeah the English localization team definitely doesn't go for a very literal translation of the text. They sometimes take a lot of liberties, and we generally get much more flavorful and uh... interesting text as a result. Sometimes it works really well for them, other times not so much - but such instances are all a matter of opinion. See: Keeper of the Lake Shenanigans, Haurchefant 2.0, The Cuckold Weed Puller, and many others that I'm forgetting because I'm useless.

 

I typically don't prefer super-literal translations though so I'm not complaining. They have their place but more often than not too much literal comes with a lot of boring. Sometimes English localization teams just know how to spice things up yeah? I mean why would you play Final Fantasy XII with Japanese audio when the superior English dub exists? So long as they're telling the same story I'll take the SPICIER version any day of the week.

[Yian Kutku]

Yeah the English localization team definitely doesn't go for a very literal translation of the text. They sometimes take a lot of liberties, and we generally get much more flavorful and uh... interesting text as a result. Sometimes it works really well for them, other times not so much - but such instances are all a matter of opinion. See: Keeper of the Lake Shenanigans, Haurchefant 2.0, The Cuckold Weed Puller, and many others that I'm forgetting because I'm useless.

 

I typically don't prefer super-literal translations though so I'm not complaining. They have their place but more often than not too much literal comes with a lot of boring. Sometimes English localization teams just know how to spice things up yeah? I mean why would you play Final Fantasy XII with Japanese audio when the superior English dub exists? So long as they're telling the same story I'll take the SPICIER version any day of the week.

 

Personally I'm mixed. I don't mind more flowery language (although sometimes I have no idea what Baderon is saying, much less Jacke), but when the English translation takes certain liberties, I am hesitant to call it acceptable.

 

(Weirdly, based on the Japanese dialogue, I think the character who is the most closely translated into English is Urianger.)

 

The problem comes when the localization inserts nuances and implications that are simply not there in the original, and to no apparent purpose. Going back to the Matoya example, there's no reason for her to either be unobservant enough to mistake Alphinaud for his sister, nor immediately snarky enough to pretend to do so. If there really is a need to emphasize how Alphinaud looks like his sister, the Warriors of Darkness do precisely that later on, so inserting this particular instance just feels redundant.

 

And then there's the creepy and insensitive text of the Wind-Up Moenbryda minion, that is far more tasteful in the original.

 

When the translation is not exact, but still remains in the general vicinity of the original, I don't mind. When it does its own thing completely unrelated, though, then I have to judge it on how the changes contribute to the story. And in many cases, the judgment is lacking. It's not offensive, but merely pointless; changing the text just for the sake of changing it.

 

EDIT: A minor example, from early in Stormblood, involving Zenos:

 

After the first fight at Rhalgr's Reach against Zenos, where he curbstomps you, his katana breaks, and he says "Pathetic".

 

I recall seeing a lot of speculation about whether he's talking about the WoL, or about his katana for breaking so easily. A lot of people were for the latter, to make the plot railroad less irritating: Zenos acknowledges that we managed to break his katana.

 

Except in Japanese, Zenos says "つまらない" (tsumaranai), which means "boring" or "uninteresting". He's clearly talking about the WoL (or at least the battle with them), for not putting up more of a fight.

 

 

So that's an example of how the English translation causes misunderstandings to happen about a character's intent and motivations.

 

EDIT TO PREVENT DOUBLE-POSTING: Just arrived in Kugane.

 

 

 

Please tell me this man has the Echo.

[Shion]

The Far East stuff honestly killed my desire to go through the MSQ and I only just today finished slogging through to 70 because of it.

 

I just had absolutely no interest in Doma, Hien, Yotsuyu, the Steppe, or anything. The only part I enjoyed was Gosetsu, and even then his

survival in that ending scene

made me upset. And in the end it's like everything we did over there didn't even matter considering the Doman army had no presence in the climax. They only showed up for Hien to kill some Garlean robots, something anyone could have done. 

 

Maybe it's just because I'm still new to the game and so Heavensward's story completely blowing me away is still fresh in my mind, but I really think the story suffered by splitting the focus between Doma and Ala Mhigo. For an expansion whose announcement trailer focused on Lyse and was set in Rhalgr's Reach, it feels like the actual focus on Ala Mhigo was lacking. We didn't get a real look at the way Ala Mhigo works like we did the au ra or Domans (now if only I had been interested in what we saw of those).

 

I love RDM though, glad I subbed for it! I'm curious to see where this Omega stuff goes too, and mechanically the quests feel good with things like that new action button. I liked the QTE in Shinryu too, just to shake fights up a bit. Preferably without killing me for failing it next time though.

[V'aleera]

We didn't get a real look at the way Ala Mhigo works

 

What do you mean by "works"?

[Shion]

We didn't get a real look at the way Ala Mhigo works

 

What do you mean by "works"?

The lives of its citizens and how they're handling living under the empire for 20 years. Doma had that subplot about its civilians in Yanxia, with that boy and his little sister and the villagers getting forcibly recruited to work at the nearby castrum. How we got a good long look at Au Ra society in the Steppe. What Ala Mhigo needed was to slow down and look at its society and civilians. The closest that comes to mind is the village with Lyse in the Peaks in the beginning, but it was over much quicker than the Yanxia village.

[Kieron Lohengrin]

Ala Mhigo / Gyr Abania remains the most boring thing about the xpac so far tbh. Loads of stodgy graybrown rock and the occasional out-of-the-way tomb. The best thing it has going for it is the Temple of the Fist, and that's locked away in postgame content.

 

Maybe 4.1-4.5 will make it better. But for now, Azim Steppe and the Xaela > all, just like how the goblins and Idyllshire stole the show in 3.1-3.5

[Kallera]

I came to the conclusion a while back that, while the Garlean representation isn't as bad or the only thing I was taking issue with, the result is I've kinda lost faith in the setting and the WoL character. As if my sense of disbelief has been busted with the MSQ. I don't even know how or if it is possible for a story to get that back, but it has me on autopilot with the endgame content.

 

I'm trying to wrap my head around liking the roleplay, but seeing the game like this.

[Aedan Marceaux]

I'm going to start by saying that I don't think SB is bad, so far... however, I really feel like it's leaps and bounds away from how good it could have been (and maybe still can be salvaged into?).

 

Naturally, I don't know how SE split their resources or time on the project. Maybe they had a Gyr Abania team and an Othard/Hingashi team and those two teams mostly did their own part of the expansion, crossing over only when the MSQ required it. Maybe it was just one team across the whole thing... I dunno. My point here is that I'm not a designer nor do I pretend to be, nor do I consider myself an amazing writer... but SB has felt lacking so far.

 

It really feels like the focus is Ala Mhigo. Which, in and of itself is not an issue, but when the expansion makes it feel like you spend 10 minutes in Gyr Abania, 20 days in Othard/Hingashi, then maybe one more hour back in Gyr Abania... it's hard to agree with that focus. If that makes sense. Everything led back to liberating Ala Mhigo and, in the end, I think that robbed both regions of a much richer story.

 

I'll start out by saying I've never enjoyed the "Asian aesthetic" in MMOs. Was not a giant fan of Pandaria in WoW, Blade and Soul drew no interest from me, and Othard (et. al.) just doesn't really matter to me. That being said, I respect that others DO enjoy such aesthetics and regions and still "force" myself to play through them (I enjoyed parts of Pandaria... and even parts of Othard/Hingashi). However, I feel the split focus robbed fans of "both ends of the aisle" a true, good experience.

 

Take Ishgard/HW for instance. I personally didn't care too much about the "elves of the north". But I feel that with the expansion largely focusing on them and their issues, I came to enjoy and acquire a new found "respect" (for lack of better term coming to mind) for them. I thoroughly enjoyed HW, even though at first I didn't care about Ishgard all that much.

 

With SB, like I said above, the focus always seemed to pull back to Ala Mhigo which, because I once played an Ala Mhigan as my main, I was happy about... but at the same time I was upset, not only for the "true fans", but also for myself not really getting to experience Doma in the "epicness" it should have been. The liberation of Doma really felt like a hand wave to me, and Ala Mhigo honestly wasn't much better.

 

Yeah, sure, there can (and should) be political strife still as people try to settle back in to an "Empire-less" life, but it felt like an extremely hollow victory because there wasn't really any struggle.

 

I feel like 4.x should be Gyr Abania/Ala Mhigo like 3.x was with Ishgard. We fight and fight and fight and at the end (whatever patch that'd be) we just can't quite win it. Make the entire expansion a struggle to liberate Ala Mhigo. Then at the end we do the whole "Hey, maybe we can help Doma so they help us..." which would be the ending MSQ that leads into 5.x which would be solely Doma. Perhaps at the end of that we finally succeed in Doma (and maybe Ala Mhigo), or perhaps make the start of 6.x finally winning in Ala Mhigo and that morale boost being the push we need to finally take the fight to Garlemald.

 

I dunno...

 

 

tl;dr: The split focus, I feel, robbed people of the truly epic experience the expansion could be. Sure there are still plenty of patches and story to come, but I'm not certain we'll get the same experience out of it had the liberations of both nations been drawn out across the expansion.

 

(Yes, I realize they could make it so that the empire comes back and takes over once more but... that just feels cheap and stupid to me.)

[Kieron Lohengrin]

It's true, the entirety of SB was "look at how fucking awesome Othard is oh and here's Ala Mhigo too as an afterthought we guess"

 

My prediction for 4.1-4.5 is "look at how fucking awesome these raids in Dalmasca in Othard are oh and here's some Ala Mhigo MSQ plot too as an afterthought we guess"