Xenoblade Chronicles X meme laden localization

December 29, 2015

StewThePoo

Loco Localization!

So this past year I’ve been expressing a lot of worry and doubt over the release and localization of Xenoblade Chronicles X. I’ve become enamoured for the series after sinking over 200 hours into the Wii entry.

Definitely the best title out of the operation rainfall trio

Club Nintendo shall be missed. Hopefully something worthy takes its place.

And after sinking roughly 30 hours into the new title, my qualms were justified! The voice actors do a decent enough job with what they’ve been given (sadly, there’s a lack of British flair present in the original) but some of these lines make me want to cringe in horror!

The people responsible are a Shibuya based company called 8-4. I had directed most of my ire toward Nintendo treehouse mostly because of their inflammatory new hire, but its hard to say what the relation between all these different departments are. 8-4 have had a eclectic mix of clients. The one that stands out the most however is Polygon.com.

A lot of people throw memes, jokes and insults toward Kotaku. But in my opinion, Polygon are far, far worse. They are unashamedly injecting their personal politics into every facet of their work, and I dread to think if they have a fraction of influence on the internal Nintendo department!

As somebody who’s witnessed the damage Polygon have done to the games industry over the past year, I’m deeply concerned. Just think, they would have given Bayonetta 2 a better score if it appealed to their inner puritans. And that’s just terrifying! Goes some way toward explaining the alarming amount of cut content from Xenoblade X.

Has Lin gone Loopy?

So lets have some fun and point out some of the more egregious examples.

So the character Lin has been revised fairly heavily for the English release. Being a 12/13 year old she`s subject to a lot of scrutiny. Japanese attitudes on younger characters are radically different.

Which makes this line all the more confusing.

Steady on love.

And then she proceeds to infuriate our senses with this sickening reveal

Elma’s cringe intensifies

The entire game has a peculiar juxtaposition of people living and behaving like first world brats, despite humanity being on it’s last legs. I cant tell if this is intentional and propping us up for an event or reveal later down the line. Or if the original script/translation is just inconsistent. I’ll have to complete the game fully to find out.

And you thought Fallout 4`s dialogue tree was bad.

Lets not feed into Lin`s unsettling fixation with robots. The fallout 4 community has that base covered. (DO NOT go searching for Nick Valentine FanArt! Trust me!)

Do you even bro. Do you even.

Nothing like crusty, outdated memes to help make a game timeless and appealing. What I wouldn’t give for a Paper Mario or Earthbound quality script!

“Only Earth’s best and brightest”

What do you meme?!

The premise of the story, is that only a select few made it from Earth’s destruction and the bar, for entry to the escape ship, was set very high. (which ties into a couple of tragic back-stories) but given the context of some quests, it seems more like they grabbed a bunch of would be comedians and bumbling idiots.

What in gods name was the original line for it to end up like this.

I cant think of a single time anyone would use legit, unironically! And even less so when stranded on a hostile alien planet. Another immersion shattering blunder…

Some serious 2000-2010 Leetspeak going on in this game.

The choice of phrases and words is simultaneously dated and forcibly modern at the same time! It’s whack bae! Every time something like this pops up in game it pulls me right out of the zone!

You can be certain that this isn’t something that’s animated, only implied.

It’s like we’re going through a haphazard check-list of memes to include. I’m expecting `firing mah lazar` to be an attack and some frog enemy called Pepe to appear.

So as you can see, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a strong argument for fan translators to get involved and for JRPG enthusiasts to learn the language. The game only includes English audio (which given the size of the disc & files is somewhat understandable) but with all the cut content from the game, you’d think they could have squeezed in a dual audio track.

I had to pick up the special edition of the game as I loved the first entry and couldn’t temper my hype for playing with what is essentially HD Xenoblade with transformers.

The artbook included however has a glaring oversight right in the middle.

But I’m frustrated at the way the games been tampered with. Nintendo have always tried to cast a wide net in terms of audience, hence why they tend to stay away from publishing 18+ rated titles. But the localization here is simply off-putting to the types of people who play Japanese RPG`s in the first place! We aren’t averse to all the oddities and quirks of Japanese content, as questionable as it may be.

Next time Nintendo, just give the damn game as soon as possible, as the developers intended. If cutting out content and shoving memes into the game adds so much time onto development, then just give us a barebones sub instead!

Or, ideally, hire the fan translators slaving away over Captain Rainbow and Mother 3. Real fans do your products justice.