8-4 Removes Ability To Be Female From Game's English Release

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But seriously, how on earth do they get so much business? How little do they charge for their "professional localizations"?

The only thing that could make things worse is if they're the same company that made everyone speak like "AH ME WEE LAD AGH" in the Dragon Quest games.

It's always a relief when it's just incompetence rather than SJW bullshit.

It's too bad there are exactly seven people on the planet who have played BKO otherwise this might have an impact on people's opinion of 8-4

Not that I know of.

There's a lot of weird localization changes out there like Nintendo removing the hero's headband in Custom Robo (There's a logical reason for it in that it is poorly animated and clips with everything, though I'm not sure that's why it was removed) that go unnoticed because the game in question wasn't that popular.

Pretty sure it was something people just hadn't looked into until someone compared both, or something. I'd heard in the past that BKO had a pretty good localization, considering 8-4's odd back and forth of doing quality work on various games and shitting the bed with others. Granted, I haven't played it myself yet so maybe what we did get was generally fine, but the idea of removing an entire gender for the player's role seems pretty lazy on their end and certainly puts the localization quality into a new light. I do have to question what all the "choose your gender" thing affects though, since if memory serves, the player's role is a guiding spirit for the protagonist of the games. Not sure if they have a direct speaking role or anything (even if not voiced), so maybe some other user can say better.

I've heard that as far as localization goes they'd been considered the sort of company localization companies should aspire to in the past, which I assume has helped them find work (and as a company's list of things they've handled builds, it likely builds faith in companies as to whether they should hire them or not). Real issue is whether or not the company hiring them gives enough of a shit to keep them in line and squeeze quality out of them. Namco seems to be able to do so for the Tales localization they actually care about (and given they didn't give a shit to bring Hearts R west until Sony begged them at bequest of fans, I'd guess they didn't care to keep 8-4 on the same leash as they had with stuff like Abyss and Vesperia) and XSEED seems to have been able to as well on the occasions they've worked together.

I honestly hadn't paid much attention to localization teams until the last few years, and playing older stuff and seeing names I've never even heard of before makes me wonder what happened to them; particularly for the games that seemed to have good quality localizations. I mean, did they merge into another company for better or worse, or go bankrupt since companies like 8-4 could get work easier, etc? Some of them don't have much information to be found about them in general.

There's no agenda on this particular case just laziness.
Like remember how the western release of DQIV on the DS had the party chat/skits removed?.

The spirit is supposed to be the player on the otherside of the TV. Removing the option to be addressed as female is a terrible break to the illusion if the player is female.

It's a shame, BKO is a great game that deserved better in the translation department (for that matter so did BKEWATLO. Aqua Burst!)

Yes, send an anonymous email to Kotaku ir Polygon complaining about this and pointing out how "problematic" Nintendo is being by not allowing you to play as your gender.
This will be brought to Nintendo's attention, that's textbook media manipulation.

It's not just lazy it completely fucks the concept of the story for female players.

The Baten Kaitos series is really fucking cool because it plays with the idea of you as the player vs you as the player character in the game and uses that for some really neat plot twists and reveals.

It'd be like if the people that translated Earthbound took out the ability to name yourself at the start of the game.

Great plan you should get on that

ITS OKAY WHEN NINTENDO DOES IT
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tips@please use archive.ism
Lets do this gentlemeb

This fucking bait.

This was before Monolithsoft got out and the game was published by Bandai Namco and they were in charge of western publication.

Nintendo only made the console the game was on.

I see. But does the game actually address the player's spirit in dialogue as being male or female, or is it left ambiguous? I'm guessing that it's direct since it apparently has that much of an impact, but if it wasn't caught until now, it kind of makes me wonder if they kept it neutral in the localization (which might have masked the issue); again, I haven't played the game, so I can't say for sure personally.

Did the first Baten Kaitos have a "select your gender" things as well? Just wondering if there's also a consistency issue 8-4 might have caused (IE: first game had both but Origins would have only had one in the west), or if the ability to have a female spirit was something BKO would have introduced, at least in the Japanese version.

PAL Gamecube owners didn't even get the game out there. I heard it sold poorly in both Japan and the US, probably due to being such a late Gamecube game when the Wii was on the way. Last time I saw a copy around where I live it had shot up past $60 used.

On a side note, has anyone opted to compile a list of 8-4's sins, the way people have for NISA? Just strikes me that it might possibly be of interest, given how much the NISA one makes the rounds and how 8-4's been fucking up a lot recently.

This is from 2006 m8

Yes

Is this believable?

NoA is actually the American publisher for the game.

Linking Nichegamer isn't believable. The videos in the thread would be better.

Well fuck.

From what I've heard in the past, Namco only published the first game here, and they seem to have their name on the front and back of the first game's cover with Nintendo only being listed as licensing it. Meanwhile, Origins' cover seems to make it clear that Nintendo was more involved in it than Namco, with the only mention of Namco being in the trademark section on the back; even the contact information on the back seems to have been changed from Namco to NoA between games.

I'd be curious though as to if the series rights changed from Namco to Nintendo in Japan as well, or if this was just a case where Namco refused to localize it themselves so NoA opted to bring it west. Wikipedia only lists Nintendo as the sole publisher for BKO (though it wouldn't be the first time they've been wrong if that's the case, having listed off the Shadow Hearts had an HD version and was published by Namco at one point last year or so; they've since fixed it).

So they outright caused an inconsistency between both games. Makes me wonder if anyone involved actually plays prior games in a franchise when their company suddenly gets involved to be able to check for that sort of thing and know that it needs to be retained.

I don't see any reason to give a fuck if it doesn't lead to any tumblr sperging.

It's a rare game now, which means it sold like shit when it was released.

Shit like this just makes me wonder how 8-4 still manages to find work. I mean the only way I could see them getting their hands into so many games is if they were cheap, but every single game they are in charge of localizing manages to have a heap of pointless (and likely expensive) modifications.

Can confirm, I liked Baten Kaitos though I was supremely disappointed to see the characters' wings were essentially decoration and was waiting for Origins, but no, never came out.

oh god, they used that in XCom Apocalypse.
that noise meant a Brainsucker is going to jump out of nowhere on my guy who has the most grenades.

NEPOTISM

They're literally a group made up of ex in house square-enix translators that were friends with huge amounts of people at nitnendo and sony when they left. They also are based completely in japan where others are based in US or EU where it's harder for Japs to get into contact with them.

I hope koktaco doesn't dismiss it out of hand because >nichegamer.

At this point we're gonna need a wiki for all the translations of games where the teanslations actually alter the game's content.

that's a good idea, get on that.

GAS THEM ALL

INACCURATE UNLOYAL TRANSLATORS NEED TO FACE THE GAS

Where are the SJWs when they could be useful idiots for once?
I'd assume these guys would've gotten eaten alive by them over this by now.

SJWs only care if it appeals to men in any way what so ever.

Japs are racisss as fuck, they'd pick a terrible all-Jap company over White Piggu Ltd. any day.

It's not all-jap, it's multicultural. They actually made it a big point that they have a lot of people from america working there too.

...

Why did no one notice this earlier? The game has been out for almost a decade.

You are trying so hard to fit in. It's am anonymous image board. Chill out, no need to impress anyone.

I guess that people that can play the Nip version and understand the moonrunes never bothered with the Western release.

Either that or the topic of butchered localizations wasn't that popular back then. I mean, it's not like Nintendo hasn't been doing stuff like this since the NES days.

8-4 has always been lazy pieces of shit and they always will be lazy pieces of shits. This is just like when they removed party chat and shit from Dragon Quest. I never played the game, but didn't they remove stuff from that Azure Striker Gunvolt?

And put in a xir or the like for good measure.

Whoever ignores the ideological angle to this and thinks 8-4 and their ilk only do it for the money needs to have his brain checked.

where did it all go so wrong? someone please name a series that had two entries in one generation that isn't a fucking mario game

they removed 90% of the dialogue purely because they didn't want to translate it.

they removed the gender swapping mechanic that one character used while simultaneously throwing in gender neutral pronouns
the worst part is the gender neutral pronouns actually would have fucking worked for once because no one knew the character's true form

sonic, final fantasy, the endless wave of CoD… shall I go on?

That time is still now.

Pretty sure Japan didn't even use the gender neutral pronouns. they just said their versions of he/her depending on what form they were in.

I freely acknowledge they are a greedy bunch that changes shit only so they can charge more and doesn't bother translating most of the games because they are lazy.

But taking into account all of the above, was there really a reason to put in imaginary pronouns for mentally ill people outside the fact that people in 8-4 and leftists?

No, they wouldn't have. Xir is not a real world.

I have never fit in here.

These people need to be gassed though.

Pump them full of helium.

Wait, that much was removed from DQIV? Is there anyway i can get the full game?.

No, Azure Strike Gunvolt. There was a LOT more mid level dialogue in the game that they simply cut.

IIRC you can use the Japanese version and activate the raw English translation it has on it.

Party dialogue is restored, there are no shit accents, the only problem is that some text is not aligned properly. All in all better than the shit we got released in the West.

Thread like this teaches us one thing:

Start learning jap and don't buy localization.

So how many people have tipped off Kotaku and the likes? I don't want to overflood them with the tips to make it seem unrealistic that suddnely a bunch of people are worried about this one single game.

You're an idiot if you didn't realise this years ago. If anything, this thread teaches us that it isn't a new thing, it's just that we've started noticing it recently.

02106404 00000001
This is the action replay code by the way.

Why not both? You're not going to learn every language in the world so not keeping localization in check will bite you in the ass at some point.

We trust too much on the translators.

Fighting against this requires we become translators ourselves.

Do we have enough motivation to become translators?

I did
Seriously get to this faggots, we have a chance to manipulate the manipulators.
tips@please use archive.ism

t i p s @ k o t a k u . c o m

The game's like 10 years old, would anyone even care at this point?

Wait, this is Kotaku we're talking about, they'd probably consider this a breaking story.

No, it requires that we call out the shit translators and encourage the good ones. There are good translators. You're not going to play every game in its native langauge, that's just not going to happen. Learning a language especially ones like korean, japanese or even russian is an endeavour that will take decades each unless you live in the country for years.

It requires normalfags to give a fuck. Good luck with that.

They actually pay their employees based on the number of articles they can put out on a daily basis and the pay is according to the views of said articles. So yeah, these media outlets love pumping articles out of anything.

They did this with Fire Emblem Awakening you know, right?

The Avatar had a Silent Protagonist option, and all the dialogue was rewritten around you being silent. This was cut in the US version.

Kotaku and 8-4 collude a bit so it won't surprise me of they purposely cover for them. I know kotaku used to host 8-4s podcast.

YOU'RE SHITTING ME?!
I COULD'VE BEEN AN ALBINO MUTE EYEPATCH TACTICIAN LOLI AND THOSE FUCKERS TOOK THAT AWAY FROM ME

Okay. I'm pissed.

I prefer him with the short headband

Also so no one thinks I'm bluffing here's an example of a support with the silent protagonist.

they didn't want misogynistic gamernerdmanbrobabies to objectify her, so really they did it for her own good :^)

I've played this game and from what I can remember aside from pronouns when referring to the "spirit" character it makes absolutely no difference

It already exists:

tcrf.net/The_Cutting_Room_Floor

As bad as localisation is today it used to be even worse.

Localisers were utterly incompetent. They were working with part time translators who got paid peanuts and were on a tight deadline. Anything to make the job easier. And Nintendo probably didn't give a fuck either.

And the Japanese studio made the game for the JPN market, the white piggu gajin were not a priority.

That doesn't track regional differences, it's mostly cut content.

Nintendo doesn't give a shit about jrpgs. Hell Nintendo hates games with stories. It's not a coincidence all their characters are mute.

NoA you mean.

It's Nintendo that was trying to push Xenoblade X and previously tried to push Golden Sun (Both of which NoA sabotaged.)

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And Nintendo is so retarded that they then think that the Gaijin hate those games.
Why are nips so shit at marketing and PR ?

It's NoJ that doesn't want to market those games in the west, but NoA for the US and NoE For the EU.
If you see no ads and shops have only limited stock numbers of certain games, it's their fucking fault.

You are full of shit.

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Atelier had six games on the PS3.

You know, this actually puts a smile on my face this time. Because it makes me feel like maybe SJWs are having less impact than I thought.

He's been full of shit the entire time. Look at his previous posts. Hell, he was fucking told badly here and outright ignored being flat out wrong. He's either a terrible shill or a drone that does it for free.

Another shitty company to add to the avoid at all costs list.

Go onto Tumblr, look for anyone who might be remotely interested in gaming, and send them an anonymous ask giving them the news. Get them pissed beyond belief, screencap reactions, see how they like being made fools of.

NoA did a pretty shitty job with Golden Sun.

Let's see the outrage be blamed on mysogonerds now, fuckers.

Origins goes more into the wings.

my nigger

That's easy. Just repurpose the argument against robot waifus.

What the fuck? This is beyond laziness.

I really liked Baten Kaitos. I wish they had made more, though Originas never came out ehre anyway.

Its a fucking crime that Yasuyuki Honne has been reducded to an asset slave for Animal Crossing.

Tangentially related: when the fuck are we going to hear more about that other fucking Monolith project that people thought was going to be a Baten Kaitos game?

fuck I'm retarded

NoA is just going to fuck it up at this point.

Bump

i'm sure those would have more impact if i the moonrunes were translated

Really a bit hard to know from those images themselves without providing a translation of the Japanese text alongside it. I mean, Golden Sun certainly does have an issue with being rather verbose (at least out here, not sure if it's the same case in Japan), but just posting moonrunes alongside the localized text conveys little for someone that can't read Japanese

Certainly these days, but with their older games it's really a case-by-case basis if you ask me. Some publishers can squeeze quality out of 8-4 and keep their bullshit in check for various games/series (I was certainly surprise to have found out they worked on translating Wild Arms 5 with XSEED, between the western version of the game leaving mention of outright child abuse in it as well as Rebecca jealously speculating her friend Dean has a thing for little girls due to him being nice to Carol) but in the case of other companies (or even franchises owned by the same companies or even various entries in the same series) they don't give enough of a fuck to bother.

In the first one she is apologizing to her dead father, and in the second one there is nothing about eating chips or whatever.

I made a list of changes that 8-4 have made in their translations. Very hard to find information. pastebin.com/4BA9EDPH

Sankyuu

Slight inaccuracy here. The blood is white in the Japanese version, and red in the western version.

The sword will speak in Snake's voice, and comment on Raiden's actions and situation.
The sword was not included in international releases.
Now i'm 200% mad

This is just ridiculous. Just wait until they take out the strong attack or the jump button in a game. There needs to be some pruning in the translation department if this keeps up.

The first Baten Kaitos was translated by Namco-Bandai internally. To my knowledge the translation itself is fine, but some idiot decided to have all the voice acting done by Nippon located English voice actors to horrible results.

They didn't just remove the silent protagonist option in Awakening, they removed all the personality options, of which there were 3 or 4 (forget) that changed all dialog by them.

Fixed some errors you guys pointed out.

Whoops. I think it was the all red blood that messed the hint about sam.

3-4? Didn't know about that. Never came across that info. do you know of any sources that talk about it?

Why is the Baten Kaitos OST (not Origins, it's rehashed, disgusting shit) so fucking incredible? Never heard such a melancholic, amazing OST.

...

I don't mind Sakuraba as much as other people seem to, but when he's not stuck working on Tales (I think anyone would start to get stale after composing for as many entries in a series with similar locales as he has; they should let Shiina compose for a game or two and let Sakuraba get some new ideas) he seems to do pretty decently. I know his work on stuff like Valkyrie Profile seems pretty well liked.

Don't forget

Does anyone have the chart for Tales of Heart R that talks about the poor translation?

I don't recall a chart, but I do recall that Kajitani Eizan guy that had been translating the DS version until the Vita version got confirmed being really pissed off about the official translation quality. Considering he's done a bit of an analysis of Zestiria's localization, it would surprise me if his site might have one for Hearts R as well.

There's one for Zestira? How is the translation on that?

I found the blog. blade2187.com/2014/06/12/you-guys-need-a-localization-director/

He goes on about his gripes with it (which he goes in depth about from a translation and insertion competency standpoint), but still says that he found it enjoyable. Worth noting that the guy's pretty critical about recent Tales localizations, especially Hearts considering he was working with the DS script and could easily see when 8-4 was fucking around.
blade2187.com/2015/12/31/zestiria-a-good-release/
To be fair, I haven't played Zestiria yet myself, so I can't personally comment.

Some other points of possible interest:
blade2187.com/2014/08/25/the-arte-of-arte-naming/
blade2187.com/2014/11/16/a-crash-korse-in-how-not-to-localize/

Good. Fuck female “heroes”. They don’t exist.

I loved his shit in the Golden Sun series, but it didn't hit home for me with Dark Dawn. What a terrible game.

Honestly, with Dark Dawn, I got the feeling Camelot didn't even want to make a third game and only did so because Nintendo heard fan demand for more. So many odd decisions that seem like they were made to anger prior fans (stuff like points of no returns suddenly being all over the place).

I can't remember that much of the music, but I did like the songs at Iceberg Outpost and Apollo Sanctum.

I think I sadly agree. It's best to let it go, instead of adding more to it.

I checked. 8-4 Didn't translate zestria or xillia 2. Hearts R is the last one they are credited to have worked on.

I just thought of this 8-4 localized Nier right? Could they be the reason behind only the 360 version coming out in English? I mean it fits their MO perfectly it's a slight change that changes a bunch of the dialogue. I could see them coming up with some excuse about how the west hates effeminate boys and just convinced them to make both versions identical.

Relese the SJW on them, call them transphobic

If you're checking wikipedia itself, for the longest time it didn't even list XCX or Hearts R there on the list of games they handled. I also don't think it lists any of the DS Dragon Quest games prior to DQ VI, so it may not be the most accurate place to check.

8-4 keeps a list on their website and they keep it up to date. archive.is/9jf3B

The game credits for Xillia 2 does list 8-4 in the "Special Thanks" section for "Translation", though I'm not real clear on if they directly translated the game itself, or if, in borrowing translation elements and terminology from Xillia 1, whoever did still needed to still give credit to 8-4 for their work there. Aside from 8-4 being mentioned, there's some Japanese names early on in the credits marked as being involved with localization (could possibly be people that handled back and forth between the team and Namco, or insertion, or something else), as well as "Namco Label" which has a mix of western and Japanese names under it. The fact that one guy is marked as "Localization Producer / Outsource Lead" makes it unclear to me if Namco Label, whatever it is they handle, actually did the localization work or just outsourced it to some other third party even if 8-4 wasn't directly involved.

Haven't played Zestiria myself so I'm not digging through the credits scenes on that one. Just what I've noticed.

I can't even get mad at this shit anymore. It's just become expected for anything NoA or "localizers" like 8-4 touch to be irredeemable shit.

Isn't it closer to her saying that she has no excuse (as in she did something she believes is inexcusable, and it reflects badly on her deceased father)? It's hard to know the full context without more information.

and then few years later they did just that in fates

But English Nier came out on the PS3 too. Unless you mean Replicant and not Gestalt

Obviously he meant Replicant.

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I've had it.
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: +81-3-5728-8484
Fax: +81-3-5728-8483

8-4, Ltd.
Beverly Hills #302
30-15 Sakuragaoka-cho
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0031
JAPAN

Justin "JJ" Epperson
twitter.com/sprsk
Holla Forumsirgin extraordiare

John Ricciardi
twitter.com/johntv
boss, hydra that loves butchering games

Mark MacDonald
twitter.com/markmacd
pr, whitewasher, expertus

Hiroko Minamoto
twitter.com/hiroko84
sad cucked nipponese, already brainwashed, needs help

all these niggers come from 1UP.com, who is now owned by yours truly
IGN Entertainment, which is owned by
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corporation

>Rockefeller Center complex.
>Subsidiaries: News Corp and 21st Century Fox

Have fun #torrentialdownpour

You mean Nintendo games right? Because there are plenty of developers out there who manage to crank out sequels every year.

correction: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J2_Global

inb4 shills get here, now that I've exposed their names.

It only takes seconds to populate everyone's addresses and contacts.

DON'T USE SJW TACTICS

THIS WILL ONLY LEGITIMIZE THEM MORE AND MAKE THEM THE NORM

your answer is right here:
follow the money

nope 1up.com:

yep ^

tcrf.net/index.php?search=Baten Kaitos II&title=Special:Search&fulltext=Search
also: central server, no DDoS prevention, mediawiki, not ACID
You are asking for failure.

that's why we can replace them.

gitgud.io/users/sign_in

and start self-localizing, for profession

you do, not I.
start above.

like ourselves, or the firm we hire. No one cares if you can't provide competition.

here you go:

because lazy gaijins. also what says.

exactly

you haven't had these guys black listed, to this day?!?

mixed: Mostly it was Square that said no to a lot of things, but 8-4 still was responsible for that shit localization in Nier Gesalt.

16:15:03-16:22:35
7minutes and 32 seconds.
I guess this is a new record.

Oh wow, who edited that thumbnail now?

Nice job.

Man the backgrounds are really beautiful.

On 8-4 webpage, they don't mention xillia 2 or zestria. Unless they are lying about their lack of involvement in such games, I don't want to add them without solid prof.

They are the people who fucked up Dragon Quest. Not even kidding.

I thought it was removed because they spent so much damn time changing what they translated into botch British accents, also, wasn't it the two man team of Plus Alpha that did DQ4?

I thought I heard that this only applied to videos they posted before release of the game, and that the released version has subtitles in battle. Does anyone have any confirmation of this?

That was done by Plus Alpha, wasn't it? I think the only Dragon Quest game 8-4 was involved with was Dragon Quest 6.

Who's the character they're talking about?

You can't play as a woman?

Sounds like Holla Forums's new favorite game, they hate women.

...

To be fair, it wasn't called Baten Kaitos II it was called Origins.

tcrf.net/Baten_Kaitos_Origins

They don't have a very in detail thing about it though, but it does list a case of religious censorship.

if by "fucked up" you mean sabotaged, yes.

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