secondary125 said: And thus, Dragon Quest IV was ruined forever for western audiences.
But... I liked the Dialects. Tho' it did make Ragnar hard to understand sometimes, It gave the illusion that everyone on the planet doesn't have the exact same way of talking.
kow said: But... I liked the Dialects. Tho' it did make Ragnar hard to understand sometimes, It gave the illusion that everyone on the planet doesn't have the exact same way of talking.
Even then, the original game didn't have such a feature. Neither the Japanese DS version or even the previous western NES localizations. Alena doesn't come from a land called 'Zamoksva' where everyone speaks in fractional sentences and makes bad allusions and puns tied to Russia.
This whole notion of everyone having different accents or dialects is tied to the inclusion of voice acting and British accents in Dragon Quest VIII. They just took it to a whole new level with the DS titles. And it was rather extreme. And in the end, it was also counter-intuitive to the whole point of both Dragon Quest and a localization, which is about simplistic dialogue and for all ages which still connects to people. You even said it yourself, some characters were hard to understand.
The only real people who will find any connection to the recent accent and pun filled Dragon Quest titles in the west are young adults and kids. Which is a sad state of affairs for a series which is enjoyed in Japan by people between the ages of 5 and 95. Few outside of Japan will take the series seriously when characters are spouting stuff like "I can 'ardly muster up the energisms to do anythin' these dasies. I'm so 'ungry!"
secondary125 said: Even then, the original game didn't have such a feature. Neither the Japanese DS version or even the previous western NES localizations. Alena doesn't come from a land called 'Zamoksva' where everyone speaks in fractional sentences and makes bad allusions and puns tied to Russia.
This whole notion of everyone having different accents or dialects is tied to the inclusion of voice acting and British accents in Dragon Quest VIII. They just took it to a whole new level with the DS titles. And it was rather extreme. And in the end, it was also counter-intuitive to the whole point of both Dragon Quest and a localization, which is about simplistic dialogue and for all ages which still connects to people. You even said it yourself, some characters were hard to understand.
The only real people who will find any connection to the recent accent and pun filled Dragon Quest titles in the west are young adults and kids. Which is a sad state of affairs for a series which is enjoyed in Japan by people between the ages of 5 and 95. Few outside of Japan will take the series seriously when characters are spouting stuff like "I can 'ardly muster up the energisms to do anythin' these dasies. I'm so 'ungry!"
First off the point of a localization is not necessarily to create simplistic dialogue for all ages, but let's humor that notion for a minute. If that's the case, and the DS Dragon Quests' localizations are poor, you're saying the dialogue isn't simple enough and therefore doesn't appeal to all ages. So if it's not simple enough, what age group isn't it going to appeal to? Kids. So then, how is it that the DS remakes only appeal to kids if the dialogue isn't simple enough for them? Your whole argument is silly. "a series which is enjoyed in Japan by people between the ages of 5 and 95" is just icing on your "I have no idea what I'm talking about" cake.
And FYI, plenty of people who were not kids or young adults enjoyed the dialogue just fine, myself included.
RadLink5 said: First off the point of a localization is not necessarily to create simplistic dialogue for all ages, but let's humor that notion for a minute. If that's the case, and the DS Dragon Quests' localizations are poor, you're saying the dialogue isn't simple enough and therefore doesn't appeal to all ages. So if it's not simple enough, what age group isn't it going to appeal to? Kids. So then, how is it that the DS remakes only appeal to kids if the dialogue isn't simple enough for them? Your whole argument is silly. "a series which is enjoyed in Japan by people between the ages of 5 and 95" is just icing on your "I have no idea what I'm talking about" cake.
And FYI, plenty of people who were not kids or young adults enjoyed the dialogue just fine, myself included.
Fine, simplistic dialogue may be the wrong word then. But on the note of simplicity, part of localization IS to make translation of a game easy to read, not hard and frustrating. Yes, there is a difference between 'simplicity' and 'well formatted and easy to read'. But the DS Dragon Quest games turned to be annoying and hard to read with multiple unnecessary apostrophes, multiple changing accents and junk like 'YOOOUU ARRRE TOOOOO' trying to simulate voice acting. This isn't a good localization. Its a cheesy localization, which is doing as I said. Trying to focus on younger audiences. Not to mention completely killing the few serious moments in the games plot. This is not in line with the original games objective and obviously they had the DRASTICALLY alter the games characters and dialogue to do so.
And I don't know who these 'plenty of people' you are referring to. They sure weren't enough to make up for the games lackluster sales. A look on any sales site such as Amazon will show that well over half the games complaints are about the 'horrendous or laughable' translation. Even reviews which got 5 stars on Amazon still pointed out the game was hard to understand, to the point of people saying they didn't understand parts of the game.
