Uh-oh... New Falcom Localization Drama? Xseed Never Owned the Rights??

[@To-To]

To my knowledge, the main translator is freelance, and she's thus worked on every single Trials game except Zero and Azure because they used Geofront's translation, so assuming she works on this one too, which I believe she is, and just corrects some of her old work for it to fit better as voiced dialogue, then it really won't be a big deal. We'll see when the game releases tho. I'm only just finishing the first game myself.

[@thelaughingdragon32]

Why would it not sound right

[@BloodKitten_]

@@thelaughingdragon32 "well frick" as oppoased into screaming something like "WHAT DID YOU SAYYYYY?!" but that is going with the JP lines. there are alot of things not 1-1 because japanese is hard, and some things need to be worded a bit diffrently to flow better, though, i will still never forgive the excuse of changing sword maiden into a literly beauty blade brand name (just google it)

[@XzaroX]

My issue with GungHo is that it is unclear whether the game will be coming to GOG or not. It will suck if they break the tradition.

[@millasgameroom]

The XSEED owning Falcom localisation claim online was always just a popular fan theory, put together by fans who want to fill in the gaps NDAs create because business deals cannot become public. All Tom did was confirm what Japanese licensing deals usually involve publically. Sony and ATLUS having an exclusivity deal for mainline Persona was a similar situation. Tom also replied to David on the video stating that a Trails bible exists, which all localisers for the Trails games have access to and share around. It's safe to assume GungHo have access to it too.

[@innocence6090]

as a newer falcom fan, videos like these are very enlightening, it makes it easier to gain further insight on some of their business practices, their localisations in specific being something ive wanted to learn more about as i delve further into their library. keep up the good work :)

[@Cyrus_Bright]

It is definitely interesting to see more of their inner workings and how they operate on the business side of things. We'll most likely never get the full picture as most Japanese companies tend to be super hush hush in regards to this kinda stuff, but it's still interesting to catch a glimpse when we can. Also I have to ask, since this video is currently unlisted, how did you come across the link for it? 😂

[@innocence6090]

@@Cyrus_Bright i happened to be scrolling one of your playlists and saw the video lmao

[@Cyrus_Bright]

@innocence6090 wait really!? I didn't know that could happen xD

[@km11593]

my monkey brain sees renne in the thumbnail and clicks for the 3rd time talking about the topic itself, I'm glad they're using the original translation, and i hope they do the same with sc, considering the circumstances of that translation, i personally think it'd be a little disrespectful not to use it

[@jmporkbob]

I think the consistency comes into play when you think about just how massive the worldbuilding in Trails is. You gotta have a big database with terms, names, events, etc in order to keep things straight and not retranslate something as a different name later. I'm pretty sure the only reason NISA were able to do as well as they have is because a lot of Xseed people followed Trails. That said, I'm not expecting Gungho to have particular issues here, even moreso because it's technically the first game-just maybe with more allusions to later games. But we'll just have to wait and see.

[@MFMegaZeroX7]

I think you are underselling the importance of good localization. The localization of trails in the sky is particularly excellent. I played the English translation with Japanese voice acting (from the Vita version), and the effort the localizers went through is incredibly impressive. A lot of charm in the Japanese writing, like Estelle's あんですって？！ can't really be translated directly. Instead, the localizers excellently, throughout the entire script introduce some sassy lines that help to give Estelle life. This is true for basically all of the characters throughout all of the original trilogy. Trails has been lucky to have a good localization, in a way that Ys (and many other JRPG) haven't.

[@AdrasAdraki]

Im very pleased that Nis isnt doing the localization for sky remake, not because I dislike them or anything of the sort. IMO Nis should be fully focused on getting kai to the west as quickly as possible so the series can finally catch up, having to do the localization for sky in the middle of that risks having the next trails game come out in the east before we get kai and that would suck.

[@sjstronghold9238]

I think David's point was not about quality of translation but consistency, as an example one word specific to the franchise translated in two different ways between two games would create confusion. I can attest of that because the one game translated in French Trails of Cold steel 3 chose to replace "bracers" by "brazzers" and that's just not something I could handle. It would appear the translation hell from Trails in the Sky SC was also due to this problem, the new guys Xseed hired had a different understanding of the franchise words and it would create an unacceptable dissonance with the first game, hence the huge delay and necessity to redo everything. Granted, so far even with two localisation teams we had a faily consisent lexicon for 11 games.

[@nelsonw9483]

I don't think there should be any issue with consistency as long as the new localizers refer from the works of their predecessors - all the pre-existing spellings, nicknames, spoken dialects, accents, character quirks, etc. For instance, Geofront used to periodically release patches for their fan translations to match NISA's after they released Cold Steel 4 which revealed official spellings for anything Crossbell-related.

[@destiny13777]

If anything I'm more bothered no company stepped up to give us ColdSteel 1 and 2 on Switch if they were being handed translations, I would have really liked to replay those games again.

[@azureknight729]

Cold steel 1 and 2 definitely need the remake treatment that shares the same art style as the sky remakes. Gungho is doing a great job in that front, sky 1 is already looking gorgeous.

[@TheRealMaruki]

​@@azureknight729 They're probably the games that hold up the least. They don't have the charm of the chibi graphics that the Sky and Crossbell games have.

[@shushyshushy6762]

@@TheRealMaruki I've recently been grinding through the Cold Steel series, and yeah there is a lot in the first two games that is pretty cringe worthy. I believe it was Cold Steel IV where they started using Mocap suits for creating animations whereas in Cold Steel 1-3 it was all entirely made via computer software, and having used programs like Unity and such to make animations myself, I can see why and how those games just seem so cringe in the animation department, and why the characters look and act so robotic. Plus, the scenes where they're supposed to be eating, but it's literally just them sitting around a table not moving at all, not holding cups, not actually eating the food, always made me laugh a little.

[@nelsonw9483]

lol The revelation that Xseed doesn't actually own the rights to their scripts completely destroy the commonly spread speculation among the fandom as to why old Falcom games hasn't been ported to new platforms in the West. Their theory is that we will never get old Ys and Trails games on the Switch because XSEED is stubbornly hogging their old scripts and refusing to license them out for any price out of spite towards Falcom 😂

[@ifrit1937]

Gonna note 1 thing not addressed in this video or the comment the video was made off of: Script rights and publishing rights are 2 separate things. Falcom may own the script rights for the localization of that version of the game (combination of script and game assets) but if Xseed owns the publishing rights to said version of the game then yes they can lock Falcom into using them if they want to use it (which may be why they're going with the full on remake...granted it's also likely due them believing a 3D game with modern graphics will sell better too)...so unless David and the other guy mentioned that and said Xseed doesn't have publishing rights to the script then this would have still been an issue for Falcom to get past for a while now. Granted given Oath in Felghana and Celceta Switch seem to be still done by Xseed (can't find any listing of a new publisher as the localizer for them for the US anywhere) it seems Falcom has no problem working with them again if need be...granted in their case they likely just ported all the work they did when they first localized said games so chances are it's more whether or not Xseed felt they could profit/if it'd be too much work to port the games' translation to modern consoles (as when they were doing Sky 2 they had a blog that showed issues they ran into and one issue they had with just porting the text from PSP to PC or vice versa caused a glitch where the screen had a bright white light in the middle of it among other issues so if they needed to do a lot more work to get it from Vita to PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox consoles cause glitches keep happening like in that case it may not be worth what money they think they'll get in the end over taking a faster localization project with far less text to work with). And no I'm not full of shit, I did google if script rights and publishing rights are sperate before making this comment to make sure and that's more or less how it works in the US (and reminder, Xseed is a US company so they'd need to deal with US law to some degree...probably Japanese law too). It's basically not as clear cut as David/the guy talking to David said it is.

[@xNeoGenesis]

An aspect I've not seen being talked about in all of this is port quality on PC. We've gotten accustomed to great ports made by Durante and his team at PH3, that perform great and have great features but now that it's being hanlded by another publisher it's possible it would be a bad port, per usual for Japanese game ports.

[@Taty_Ch]

if Xseed never owned the publishing rights to any of the trails games then why Falcom havent released Trails in the Sky Trilogy OG in Modern consoles and Cold Steel 1 & 2 on the Switch in the West and not just in the East??? they really need to bring those if they want new players to play ALL the games in this awesome series. The BEST RPG Series for me so far IMO.

[@FElord-dw1sy]

This is very interesting. I imagine most of us assumed that Xseed owned the translation, since that makes sense. They published it on behalf of Falcom, so one would think they hold the rights to those games and their assets. Which is the reasoning behind us justifying why Sky hadn't been ported to modern consoles, and same for Cold Steel 1 and 2 on the switch in the west. Hearing that Falcom owns all these scripts is really interesting, and I kind of wonder how the Geofront factors into it since their scripts were the base of the Zero and Azure western releases, but that's more speculatory curiosity than needing an answer. However I am a bit concerned on them jumping around so much. On paper it's not a big issue, but different companies may have different qualities of their translation. I mean with NISA, before the day 1 patch for most of their releases, their script on the disc were very poor, At least from what I've heard, since my NISA orders never arrived early enough for me to see myself. Another thing with this, is I imagine voice actor contracts have to be renewed with each company. So depending on how things go, VAs may change for characters. That isn't something unheard of as some characters do change voices like Laura in CS4, Millium between CS2 and 3, and Osborne in CS4. But overall the VAs tend to be consistent. This is only a slight worry, as in the english version of Ys vs Trails in the Sky's localization announcement trailer, we do clearly hear Estelle's VA, so if she's back for that I imagine she was/is open to continuing to voice Estelle in all things, but still something to keep in mind.

[@cius2112]

Yeah except employees change all the time so just because you stay with one company doesn't mean the quality won't change.

[@OrichalkosTV]

The only exclusive partnership (more so build on trust between the two) has been Clouded Leopard Entertainment given they've been with them for so long to the point where they receive the scripts much earlier than Nisa or Xseed did. But yeah. Long as we continue to get more falcom games over here so long as they do a decent job I'll be happy regard of who is the distributor

[@casualmusicnerd]

Ya I think for a while we’ve known that xseed doesn’t own the license to their scripts for the Falcom games, ever since Dotemu started porting Ys Origin to modern consoles in 2017 with the xseed script. One interesting thing about those releases though is that the title cards for the areas are the same as the Japanese version of Ys Origin. What I take from that is that English graphical elements like location pop ups and maybe some menu elements are xseed owned but the script that is coded into the text boxes for the games is owned by Falcom. As for the choice to go with Gungho for Sky 1st chapter, I imagine that was because NISA is pretty overloaded on Falcom releases recently between Daybreak 1&2, Ys X, and Kai. Adding the logistics of a Sky 1st release and all that would entail to be up to par with their usual Trails releases when they will almost certainly be adding Ys X Proud Nordics to their release schedule sometime soon would just be a bit too much, especially their already packed calendar and the usual baggage that comes with translating the new Trails games they’re working on.

[@orangegespenst5854]

i would say that swapping localization companies would only become a problem if VA's were being swapped out constantly at this point. like imagine if rean va changed like in the northern war anime. i think most people are worried that something similar to what happened to lovely complex's dub will occur, where someone started making massive changes to the story and script because they hated the original story.

[@DiabolicCrusher]

When i saw the title first i thought Nisa fucked up again lol. That said, if this applies to Nisa too then they all the more had no right to do what they did with Zerofield. I'm kinda worried about how pc port's gonna turn out but other than that i'm happy Nisa is not able to just hog the rights to translation of all of their games. As i already said, i'll likely buy Sky 1st remake day 1 on steam and will hope they'll remake the rest and choose GungHo as publisher if it means worldwide/multiplatform releases again.

[@Taffery]

I personally don't think its a big deal they switch localization companies a lot, and that NISA is working on the next titles (Daybreak 2 and Kai as well most likely) so can't afford to divert resources to sky the 1st. Also I felt the different localizations don't affect the games that much like NISA working on daybreak 1 that localization and voice actor choices were amazing in my opinion. I think the game is in good hands and Nihon Falcom has the final say and I think they doing a good job.

[@joaocbcneto]

With the new information I'm guessing Falcom's just gonna wait until the Switch 2 arrives so they have an excuse to report Cold Steel 1 and 2, then those two will probably just shake out like Ys 3 and be published by XSEED.

[@RetroNerdyGamer]

To be honest who gives a crap? I don't think it's really drama per se, just a company doing company things. Hell, when some of Compile heart/Idea Factory's stuff went from NISA to IFI (Idea Factory International) they just used the same Translation as NISA. I think that's how that always works, the parent company ALWAYS owns the rights to any localized/translated material. The games I can think of are Fairy Fencer F, and the Mugen Souls games. I mean honestly they jumped from XSEED to Aksys (Tokyo Xanadu) to NISA for Trails/Ys, and now Gungho for Trails Sky remake. Though I guess I should add there was some bad blood between XSEED and Falcom for a while due to the Tokyo Xanadu stuff, but I guess that sorted out because they're like "Publish Ys Felghana for us". Either way I dunno. Maybe I'm more versed in this stuff thus the video isn't for me but definitely didn't seem like drama, just that they were going iwth a different partner for this 'specially since NISA did Ys X, are doing Daybreak 2 and possibly Kai AND on top of all that Ys vs Sky (though was NISA said to be doing that? I forget). So more partners makes sense. Then we might also have NISA doing Ys X Proud Nordics.

[@musicwarrior3755]

I think this also explains why DotEmu was able to handle the ports for Ys Origin.

[@obake6290]

As long as the jargon gets translated consistently I don't think it matters all that much, assuming competent translators. Though I suppose you really can't assume that, especially these days. I'm also not very familiar with GungHo. I have the Grandia 1 and 2 "remasters" and have played the first one. That was an particularly low effort, low quality job. Couldn't tell you if that's par for the course for them or a low point.

[@alumlovescake]

I am scared about the PC port.

[@jackjohnson8305]

Me too. not having Durante handle it is gonna be painful

[@Stargazing_night_sky]

I'm always hearing people say that PC ports for games are bad or that they are scared about a PC port being bad. Aren't PC's stupidly expensive to get one that can run games well? At this point I'd just switch over to playing games on console. Not trying to spark up a debate between console vs PC, I'm just saying that I'd get tired of being worried about PC ports being bad all the time.

[@jackjohnson8305]

@@Stargazing_night_sky Not the point, the Trails games are very easy to run i can even play them in 4k max settings on my 7 year old PC. The point is Durante not being involved means we'll likely get less features this time like native Ultrawide support, OST Album info popping up when songs play in-game, updated graphics and better upscaling, HDR support etc.. All of these features are given to us for free by Durante and his team, they are incredible, they even added a Co-Op mode to Ys X only for PC its not available on consoles.

[@Stargazing_night_sky]

@jackjohnson8305 ohhh, okay, okay, thank you for the explanation

[@pokeboi5438]

@@jackjohnson8305Ys VIII but yes

[@kitkro4679]

Really dont mind were getting it so it fine not big deal one thing to note falcom knows nisa already got there hands full more than likely can't take on 3rd game think it fine especially for world wide realese

[@Cyrus_Bright]

Yeah worldwide release is really the thing that still shocks me, I hope we get an English trailer at some point because I'm very curious to see how they'll put everything together.

[@kitkro4679]

@Cyrus_Bright same I'm interested to see if we're getting same va or new cast

[@Beny763]

@@kitkro4679 I kinda assume/hope they stick with mostly the same cast. We know Estelle´s VA did the announcement trailer for Ys vs. Trails so I very much assume she will be in 1st if she is doing the dub for that game too. At most I could maybe see Tita and Renne get recast? Not super familiar with their old va´s and not sure if they could still pull off those young characters 20 years later? And their current VA´s sound a bit too old for them in Sky I think. And characters like Olivier and Zin will most likely go with their VA´s from later games, so no Troy Baker or Patrick Seitz and instead it´s Matt Mercer and Vic Chao, which I´m also okay with.

[@RaifSeverence]

As they are a small company in the industry, as far as Im aware they're on the smaller end, (Unlike your Square Enixes or Capcoms) I can sort of understand them not doing exclusivity. If they did, they'd have to do a whole bunch of PR for the localizations of their games if their poor (Ys 8 anyone). And if the localizer starts with the current trend of bashing their customers on SocMedia if the localization has been "updated for a modern audience", well, lets just say not having an exclusivity contract for localization is a good thing.

[@Beny763]

The only thing about "consistency" is with names for locations or character titles etc that could be subject to change within a localization. Like imagine 1st is done by GungHo and 2nd and 3rd remake is someone else and suddenly Bleublanc is called "Phantom Thief B" in 1st but in 3rd he is "Phantom B" For that it´s "better" if one studio handles it, because they would presumably stick with the names they chose. But I´m not too worried either, like the localizations for all the games are fine in my opinion. The way more interesting thing is, that allegedly Falcom could have done things with Sky for years! Like, why was it stuck on PC until now if that is the case?

[@JeannieLove]

Lunar 1 PSP is excellent and Grandia HD is a really well done remaster collection.

[@Cynicz13]

I imagine that no matter who Falcom goes with for localization purposes that they do have a set number of guidelines that these localizers need to follow. If anything my biggest concern is GungHo's PC port because Durante does excellent work with the Trails series with NISA & I would hope they would consider working with him for the PC port. The other big issue I have is Nintendo of America's new localization policies as of recently and whether that could effect the game in any way...We'll have a better idea on GungHo with the upcoming Lunar Remastered but I've been a fan of GungHo since Grandia series so honestly I'm more concerned for Ys vs Trails since we know pretty much nothing of Reflint/Games.

[@creekandseminole]

Well shoot this changes everyone's opinion about the rights issues. Ive heen begging for the XSEED Falcom titles to be brought over to switch and now I have more hope. Cold Steel 1&2 and all rest of the Ys titles. Even the Sky trilogy.

[@eltonbormes]

Japan never cared for international markets, that's why NISA still exists.

[@advmx3]

I mentioned before that what worreis me when another company takes the rails is the consistency of quality of the ports on PC. Overall on consoles they are guaranteed to be good and flawless, but on PC, its usually very complicated. XSEED never did a single good port, every single game they did for Falcom had this out of game configurations window that needs to be set up before you launch the game and every time you want to change something you have to quit the game. NIS was the one who tried to fix it with YS8 and eventually Reverie (since CS3 and 4 are pretty bad ports in my personal view). Everything they have done from Reverie onwards is flawless portwise and I hope this new company does the same level. Because Clouded Leopard does some very bad porting too. But that's it really.

[@Callum5211]

3:31 Cyrus you doofus, Trails in the Sky KSK wasn't a collab, it was fan game. Do you not read my edits on the wiki XD

[@veghesther3204]

About that XSeed did make FC to the 3rd BUT MOST of them Left the company YEARS ago and joined Gungho that's why the FC remake PS5/Switch is using the same company that's also going to make the 2 Lunar remakes of the PS1 games for its PS5/Switch port/remaster for both.

[@alexandrezeddam7817]

How does the first part of your post relate to the second? According to the KZbin commenter claiming to have worked at XSeed, whilst part of the staff had left the company to work at Gungho, they are not working there anymore either and have not worked there for a long time. “MOST of them” as you put it work at NISA from what we know, not Gungho.

[@astrea555]

lmao what a clusterfuck of a series.

[@ColinLack]

I don't think it's an issue and it's really not a big deal. However, Tom's statements, while they offer SOME insight aren't 100% correct. From what I've been hearing (and I'll admit the truth could lie somewhere in the middle) - XSEED did own the rights to the Sky trilogy. But they have a good relationship with Gung Ho. So they had no issue sub licensing the rights to Gung Ho. Because XSEED felt they'd make more money with this business deal than if they themselves distributed the game. The exclusivity deal is also incorrect information. Falcom do sign those. But they have no issues like you mentioned by allowing other companies to do things with their characters in say mobile games or similar.

[@ColinLack]

It's my understanding Gung Ho will cover the trilogy. NISA will cover future Trails games still. As for the AI thing Falcom more used one of their games to show what the tech was capable of. It's debatable if they'd ever opt to go that route.

[@Tnu1138]

NISA were the ones that started breaking the continuity that XsEED had pereviously set so they don't hav ea leg to stnad on here.

[@robbyrobot3303]

As someone who plays with Japanese voice over, I totally agree it's no big deal that they play the market. It allows us to get more games localized quicker. I want to play Tokyo Xanadu eventually so I bought it to support falcom, but I'm glad it didn't slow down NIS from getting work done on Daybreak

[@robbyrobot3303]

But now I'm mad I had to play TOCS 1/2 on an overheating PS3 knowing they could have given the script to someone else to publish switch ports!

[@FieryAnubis]

XSeed stans in absolute shambles! Really, I'm so sick of those people by now. They're as bad as the anit-woke and anti-censorship crowds who don't play games, just obsessively stalk developers and localizers. Personally, I don't care much. I'm just glad SOMEONE localized Sky for us, and that now we're getting the remake(s), and hopefully more future releases that release sooner rather than later. That's it. As long as it's a job well done, and it has been the case so far, that's all I care about. Well, that, and seeing the series' conclusion in my life time. And without weird AI.

[@Nikita_Akashya]

Cyrus, I know you are an American and it makes sense that you gloss over one of the biggest possible factors for why GungHo might have been chosen to do the translation for the Sky Remake, so I will spell it out for you. GungHo is a huge international company. Huge, as in not just North America. Trails in the Sky 1st chapter is getting 2 additional translations. French and German. It is possible that GungHo went to Falcom and just asked them if they want to sell their games in Central Europe and Africa. French and German texts is a huge first for falcom. Only Ys 6 and Origin have ever gotten a German translation. Ys X got French texts, but that is mainly because of Canada. In Africa, a lot of people speak French. Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and probably a few other countries have more people speaking French and German rather than English. So getting the Sky Remake sold to people in these languages will help sales and get a bigger international consumer base. Just like with the Lunar Remaster. I also have a few Rune Factory games and I only know of Frontier having a full German translation. GungHo is releasing an old 90s RPG next year that will have German texts for the first time ever. A lot of people in Europe do not speak English. So Trails being released with a German translation is good for Falcom and now French people can also play Trails in the Sky. There are many amazing games that a bunch of people never played, because it was only in English and not everyone speaks English. I speak English, but my language skills are also better developed than those of my peers. Heck, my English is better than that of the average American. I can understand people through the heaviest accents as long as they talk normally. The Average American can not even understand an Australian that speaks normal English. Anyway, French and German being added is huge news for the international RPG community. North American companies just can not do that, because they only do English translations. I hope Trails gets more languages one day. Italian and Spanish would be nice.