How come every Japanese game has shit writing? It's always the same overused tropes over and over again.
They make some decent movies so I can't see why it's so hard for them to translate that to video games.
Is it a translation thing?
all video game writing is shit
you're talking about a medium where a conversion of an old AD&D module is held up as the pinnacle of writing
>>320895949
0.00001/100000000
Koreans make the best movies
>>320895949
While a lot of it is plain bad, it's definitely also a translation thing. Dialogue in Japanese games is very often badly translated and the English voice acting is even worse.
In the case of Valkyria Chronicles I'm fairly certain it's also an issue of the game being rushed. They clearly dropped the ball in the second half. They probably couldn't afford their high profile Japanese voice actors they hired any longer and had to cut content.
play a yoko taro game. it's not fantastic writing but it is very different.
>>320895949
The Japanese have no concept of subtlety. Everything has to be in your face and obvious. That's why they just re-use the same concepts over and over, because people easily understand it.
Partly translation since most people who translate games aren't the most qualified, partly games rarely if ever getting skilled writers because if you want to tell a story why tell it through a game and not just write a book or movie and if they hire a skilled writer it'll probably be half-assed
Because your playing games aimed at japanese kids, try something like strange journey
>>320898486
>what Drakengard 3
nah
>>320899132
>try something with an excuse plot
>>320898486
whacky=/=good
daily reminder that just because yoko taro got drunk as fuck and wrote the games doesn't mean that they're good
the only good thing he wrote was NieR
>>320899132
>smt
>story
God you people are a joke
>expecting good writing in an rpg
RPGS are nothing but adventure tales. Low tier fantasy, scifi, action,etc. Why would you expect good writing?
>>320898281
>>320898839
Maybe they should make their game in fucking english then like the rest of the world.
>>320899496
Nobody in Japan speaks English, not even well educated people.
>>320898496
This
The translation got pretty terrible with them trying to inject LOLSORANDUMBXD shit into every other line. There are a few lines where half of the information is completely lost, and when you're sacrificing content for tone, you have failed at translation.
>>320895949
I imagine alot of dialogue has to be rewritten because the Japanese seem to love making wordplay jokes that only really work with the original Japanese characters. Hence why we get shit writing.
>>320896449
This. I've seen JRPGs and other Japanese games have much better writting than that garbled piece of shit. Hell, even the Persona games are far better written that planescape.
>>320898496
This isn't just in regards to videogames either, but every aspect of Japanese culture.
>>320898496
>The Japanese have no concept of subtlety
I'd been thinking the same thing for years. At first I thought it was just an anime thing, but then I watched some J-drama and the storytelling is almost indistinguishable from anime.
>>320899851
>I've seen JRPGs and other Japanese games have much better writting than that garbled piece of shit.
fair enough
> even the Persona games are far better written that planescape.
>mfw
>>320899997
>I've never played Persona 2
>>320898496
I've read some Japanese novels that weren't so in your face, but in general this is very true. It's not necessarily a bad thing though.
>>320900185
>I've never played Persona 2
Only those with an extreme tolerance for pain have done so.
>>320895949
Its because the Japanese have a different perception when it comes to individuality and homogeneity compared to the west. People are brought up in Japan taught not to stand out and fit in as much as possible and their media reflects that. To a western audience, this has a negative effect but the Japanese literally can't get enough of that shit.
>>320895949
Western RPGs:
>ancient evil awakens
>only you, the charismatic gary stu, can convince all the factions to rally up to have a chance of beating this ancient evil
>ends with epic showdown of those factions vs the ancient evil
How come every American game has shit writing? It's always the same overused tropes over and over again.
They make some decent movies so I can't see why it's so hard for them to translate that to video games.
Is it a burger thing?
>machine translate hrpgs
>every single game has a least once instance of "i hope to get along with you"
>you will never be able to play and enjoy VC 3
fuck my life
>>320900380
That's mostly just Bioware.
>>320900253
The PSP remake of Infinite Sin is tolerable by modern standards, as in the mechanics are smoother than rubbing sandpaper together. Unfortunately for Eternal Punishment you still have to play the PS1 version, which is a shame because EP was the most interesting entry in the franchise by having characters in their mid twenties go through what is usually seen as teenager drama.
>>320899851
>Implying P2 has bad writing
But really how could you write a game worse than P4 that is still popular?
>>320899861
Japanese culture is all about subtlety, except they're as unsubtle as possible about it, if that make any sense
Honne and tatemae and all that
>>320900528
I find that speeding up a ps1 emulator makes a lot of stuff in those games palatable
>>320900536
I've been praising P2 though.
>>320900253
>pain
more like boredom as the entire thing is an auto battle sim, although Planetscape has a shit combat system as well so there's that
>>320900454
That's like getting upset at English games because "nice you meet you" shows up a lot.
>>320900380
I think this is why I respect Ultima 4 so much. The world's been saved, there's no major threat to worry about. It's just about becoming a good role model to set a standard for people to strive for during a stagnant era of peace.
As crazy as Lord British is, I can't help but respect him for being so experimental throughout his game career.
>>320900536
>But really how could you write a game worse than P4 that is still popular?
Persona 3.
>>320900380
Not OP, but I'd argue that writing is less important in western RPGs since there is more to them than just the story. JRPGs are primarily a storytelling medium and in that regard the games rely heavily on the plot, while western RPGs are an interactive storytelling medium. Even a bland plot can be interesting if the player is the one who pieces it together.
Also, there are plenty of titles which don't follow that pattern.
>>320900626
Being able to speed up PS1 RPGs is a godsend. Seriously my experience with JRPGs has improved tenfold.
>>320899295
its better than persona
>>320895949
its a video game those aren't expected to have great writing
It's a fucking video game. Fuck your writing. It only needs to be entertaining.
Blame the translation job. Valkyria Chronicles actually had more nuance to its plot that the translation didn't do justice for
>>320898496
>That's why they just re-use the same concepts over and over,
like what exactly?
>>320895949
and its still better than westernshit
>>320901127
Power of friendship
Awkward, stilted relationship between main guy and girl
>>320895949
>How come every Japanese game has shit writing?
Hint: Western games are guilty of the exact same thing. They just use different tropes and cliches that Japanese games do.
What is "good writing"
Breaking Bad is hailed as the ultimate in fictional writing but I see absolutely nothing special about it whatsoever
>>320901385
that stuff usually only happens in the shitty stuff
I swear most of you fuckers in this thread need to read some fucking books.
>>320901565
any recommendations
>every Japanese game has shit writing
>implying
And besides this, I also like to point at Nier.
>>320901639
50 shades of grey
>>320901671
999 was pretty good
>>320895949
>How come every Japanese game has shit localization?
Because no talent faggots like to think they're writers.
>>320901448
It's a multifaceted aspect really. Stuff like rhythm, tone, prose structure, the choice of words itself, sentence length, there's really a lot of factors and most are dependentent on each other and there's no right answer for all scenarios.
>>320901639
Not him, but I like Alas, Babylon and The Golden Compass.
>>320895949
The memories in Lost Odyssey have some of the best writing I've seen in games. It's a shame no one played it since it was a classic JRPG exclusive to the 360.
>>320901759
wasn't that really shitty?
>>320901565
>reading
fuck off nerd
>>>/lit/
>>320901808
>The Golden Compass.
My nigga, that was a good series too
it can't be helped
>>320901639
Fuck man I don't know, I'm reading Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe right now, it's pretty good so go read that I guess.
>>320901671
Now this nigger right here knows what's up, this is literally the only game I've ever seen to get "Shakespeareanesque" dialogue right.
>>320901847
Shit, I've seen it at my local games store for 50 bucks, think it's worth it?
>>320899265
>good thing
>nier
lol, nice trash opinion
that game's dialogue is fucking terrible
>>320901916
FFT WotL was pretty decent as well, can't speak for Vagrant Story though
anyone else here like dune?
>>320901916
>this is literally the only game I've ever seen to get "Shakespeareanesque" dialogue right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9769vztXW4
>>320901671
I live for that political subtlety
>>320896449
What's your favourite book, anon?
>>320902064
>Balthier's face whenever Cid is brought up
>>320895949
But that's great writing anon.
>>320895949
Probably translation errors
>>320902054
>that rhythm
>every sentence is just as long as it should be
>characters have different forms of speech given their personalities and social background
>they aren't overly verbose when it's not needed
>that oddly above average delivery by the VAs
The themes, characters and plot of FF12 may not be the most interesting things I've ever read, but holy shit it is so smooth and competent I can't help but love it.
A lot of people really don't understand just how different Japanese and English are.
There's no such thing as a good translation of Japanese, because it will always sound incredibly awkward. Many common turns of phrase have no natural English equivalent. So the best you can hope for is a decent localisation, which entirely depends on the writing skill of the editors, who are underpaid and often working on half a dozen titles at once.
If you want better writing, learn Japanese.
>people who don't know what good writing is talking about good writing
stop this "vidya is badly written" meme because it doesn't make you sound smart, quite the opposite
>>320902529
A lot of localisation teams don't understand that the people buying Japanese games generally don't mind the more direct odd translations. We know it was made by foreigners, you don't have to Americanize everything for us. Doing so never gains any additional sales, it just pisses off the actual fanbase.
>>320901639
I'm reading pic related, and it's pretty fun so far.
The setting was originally made for an MMO, and it really shows.
>>320895949
Because in Japan, video games are a niche market. And that market largely consists of autists with no concept of taste or subtlety.
That is also why most anime is terrible.
>>320902740
Speak for yourself. You seem pretty confident in that despite not having any proof I can really think of.
An English release of a game should strive to convey its contents in a manner that is understandable and comfortable to English speakers, just as the Japanese release conveyed itself understandably and comfortably to Japanese speakers (presumably).
>>320902894
Anime has a lot of good shit too tho, simply because it's, for better or worse, where a big chunk of a generation of Japanese artistic talent was deposited.
>>320902054
Alexander O. Smith is one of the few translators that you can't go wrong with.
Tactics Ogre
>>320902894
Yeah, television, film and novels have much more sophisticated audiences.
>most popular novel 50 shades of grey
>most popular tv show Game of Thrones
>most popular film The Avengers
I've never played Call of Duty, but I bet even it is better written than those three.
>>320902809
This is actually a pretty good book. If you prefer Fantasy to Scifi, The Blade Itself seems pretty good so far. But I'm only a small ways in.
>>320895949
Writers there are just hired to flesh out very short ideas. The ones coming up with the concept check out pretty early.
This wasn't always so. Sakaguchi had a big hand in FF and liked to inject mature themes or situations. Like Aeris dying and what that meant being his way of coping with the death of his mother. Was it legendary stuff they'll discuss in 300 years? Nah. But it was significantly better and more thought out than most of what you see today.
Go play Lost Odyssey. Once you get a few hours in everything gets very good and some situations are hands down the best Japanese game writing ever written. And I'm not talking about the short stories either.
>>320903083
I remember the Front Mission 3 being pretty bad honestly, but it seems he really improved a lot over time.
>>320903170
game of thrones is alright even if its overrated
>>320898496
>The Japanese have no concept of subtlety.
It depends on the demographic. If they are aiming at just mainstream appeal, then sure. Otherwise they are the best at subtlenes.
Video games in geral have terrible writing.
People here are in love with the last of us/dragon age inquistion/fallout 4 despite those games having horrible writing.
>>320902740
A lot of weebs don't understand that if you don't "Americanize" everything, you wind up with absolutely terrible dialogue. Nips often insert things like word puns to break up the flow of text, which can't be easily recreated in English.
You've got gags based on a misunderstanding that have to be translated into garbage like "Oh, he's using THAT".
If you had a list of localisations you actually enjoyed, I can guarantee that the team took a lot of liberties. It's hard to explain to monolinguals, but imagine a direct translation as like trying to talk to a European with a very tenuous grasp on English.
>>320902665
this
>86 posts in
>No one's mentioned No More Heroes yet
What the fuck are you doing, /v/?
>>320903397
Bakemonogatari is extremely popular for everything you mentioned that's a problem when translating to English
>>320903383
very few people on /v/ praise those games for their writing
>>320903531
It's also shit.
>>320903383
>People here are in love with the last of us/dragon age inquistion/fallout 4
What? Peolple here hate those games specifically because they got terrible writting. Maybe not The Last of Us, but that's just emotional entertainment, the The Walking Dead and some of the Marvel movies.
>>320903013
I'm right, you're wrong. Localize that, faggot.
>>320899496
>>320899597
Maybe they should start hiring foreign english speaking VAs and writers instead of making games for japan foremost, failing financially and then having become mobile gaming shitkickers (who also fail).
>>320903776
that isnt helping English readers in the slightest
>>320903620
But you're wrong.
>>320903898
mgs 5 splatoon and bloodborne did really well
>>320903776
Anon...
>>320899496
>like the rest of the world.
Exactly! Because everyone in the world speaks english, you redneck faggot.
>>320903776
>>320903898
>hiring English "writers"
Do you know how completely devoid of talent the entire western industry is these days? In the 90s, maybe, you could have found a writer.
Now, the only people working in gaming for writing are complete morons who utterly failed in every other avenue, from screenplays all the way down to writing news stories for the local paper. Absolute bottom-of-the-barrel morons.
>>320903397
I wonder how horrible a literal translation for the Mario RPGs would be.
>>320902740
The problem is that even if you do the bare minimum, it's still radically different from what was in Japanese. English requires a minimum of a subject and a verb for something to be a complete sentence, while Japanese only requires a verb. You could just drop your subjects from the sentence, but doing so likely creates a much different tone from what was in the original text.
Considering that and the fact that Japanese basically treats the omission of mutually understood nouns as its own form of pronoun, even a literal translation is losing or adding information. How do you translate 僕 or 俺 or even 我輩? They all basically mean "I," but interchanged in a sentence that's otherwise unchanged, they can all add different connotations. Funnily enough, that's why at least some light rewriting is needed to be more accurate to the original sentence's tone and intent, even if the accuracy to the words themselves gets somewhat lost.
There's no such thing as a perfectly accurate translation. If you want the creator's full intent, you need to learn Japanese, so you can hear it from the horse's mouth yourself.
>>320903397
In most cases, those sentences don't even have explicit pronouns in Japanese. You can get away with not mentioning a specific noun at all a lot more easily than in English, without it sounding stilted at all.
>>320903531English Monogatari fans have low standards, so that shouldn't be used as a justification for anything.
>>320895949
>>320904265
>Is it a translation thing?
Yes, very much so.
>>320898496
This. They always have to spell everything out in the most detail whether people were wondering or not.
It's just all the same shit given some fancy Jap Mythology or random butchery of another language title for something that already exists.
That's because the most japanese devs fail to understand that the best way to tell the story of a game is through the gameplay itself. Western devs also fail to realize that.
>>320904117
>Game that sold on it's brand and is conspicuous for its use of high caliber translators and hollywood VAs.
>Game with no dialogue or story.
>Game with virtually no dialogue.
What point are you trying to make here?
>>320904419
If that SE edit is because of Drakengard 3, the logo needs to change to 8-4's. They did the localization for that.
>>320904265
I thought Xseed was one of the good ones. Or was TiTS a rare good translation from them?
>>320904295
I said more direct, not literal translation. Which has nothing to do with completely changing a line or two of dialogue to "fit in" with X culture.
>>320895949
>How come every game has shit writing
>>320904789
I dunno about him, but XSeed's translation for Pandora's Tower and for Solatorobo: Red the Hunter were top notch. I think he's just referring to Akiba's Trip, which was a parody game with 2ch memes in it to begin with.
>>320904789
>these pictures endlessly parroted by the same people do not actually make accurate points, if even any points at all
What a shock.
>>320904996
It's from Senran Kagura, and most of their games do have memes.
>>320904267
>Do you know how completely devoid of talent the entire western industry is these days?
And yet, these people would still be more talented at writing than the average translator.
Also, don't try to pretend that writing in the 90's was different. If anything it was WAY, WAY worse in the 90s because you usually had programmers and game designers writing dialogue themselves. The only exceptions are a few WRPGs and even then...
>>320896449
I'm pretty sure that Torment is an original story and wasn't converted from a module. Only the setting and rules were adapted.
>>320896449
That is because it cost significantly more time to write a good store than it does to program a good game. Usually good stories are written by 1 writer and he can spend years on his work. Coding can on the other hand be distributed among multiple programmers. Once a game is done being coded and tested, no gaming company worth their money would delay the release for the writer to perfect his work.
>>320904860
I think we might actually agree, then. What I'm saying is that the creator's intent is king, and that losing yourself in the minutiae of specific word choices often makes you lose sight of relaying what the original author wanted to convey in a way that feels natural. That's all still technically localization – just very light localization that's arguably necessary, for better or worse.
Inserting memes where they don't belong will always be shit, though.
>>320904860
NoA translations were good for a while (at least for the Mario RPGs), what changed these last few years?
>>320905425
Some of their translations are still good. At least, Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon turned out okay. But I think its Treehouse that's the main issue with NoA right now.
>>320905425
They kept doing the exact same shit they've been doing for decades, but suddenly people started kicking up a stink because dumb pop culture references are bad when they're memes, but great when they're lines ripped from movies.
>>320905395
Yes. I have no problem with fixing up the wording so it makes sense. The problem is that localization teams of late have taken it too far in some cases.
>>320905425
My guess would be the same thing that happened with Atlus USA. The writers developed an unfounded sense of hubris on top of a possible persecution complex that makes them drown out all criticism without checking to see what the complaints are first. They're forgetting that they're working professionals and not fans doing things for fun, but they're still serving their own interests first anyway.
>>320901126
I don't believe you. The game is anime incarnate.
>>320900185
Everyone in this thread is awkward. Awkward at living.
critics forget that people who play jrpgs are all spergs. spergs are bad at interacting with people and hate new things. this is why characters in jrpgs always over emote and follow familiar patterns. jrpg fans also have no friends, which is why they usually have friendship as a theme. why do normies think they can judge things that weren't made for them?
>>320907073
>why do normies think they can judge things that weren't made for them?
I don't know, why do you?
>>320907073
Because we play games for the gameplay, and weebtrash is garbage in terms of gameplay?
>>320907571
>weeb trash is garbage in terms of gameplay
>>320902740
Not translating the dialogue directly because it would make the characters sound not even remotely like actual human beings isn't really comparable to pointlessly changing sushi to hamburgers and otherwise westernising all Japanese cultural references, which is what I'd consider "Americanising" something.
>>320907651
>QTE baby tier button masher "RPG"
>With literal fanfiction tier writing and aesthetics
>>320907764
You're pushing for an argument over semantics now you faggot.
>>320907883
I thought you didn't care about writing.
>QTE button mashing
I didn't post the original version of KH2 anon. Critical mode in the FM version rebalances everything. The game is all about challenging boss battles where you must learn enemy attack patterns and when the best time to attack is and how to best dodge and block attacks and even when is it best to use what Drive form and so on. It has QTEs yeah, but they aren't necessary in a lot of cases and aren't instant win buttons. Some of them you have to be in very specific situations in order to cause.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erhpBhLHLUw
>>320908339
>Takes two tries just to make a baby tier game with "rule of three pattern generic action weeaboo combat"
Oh boy, two tries and it still fails to be shittier than what the West does in one try.
>>320908631
There are no modern AAA Western games with good gameplay
>>320907571
but the complaint is never just "the gameplay in x sucks." there's always a value judgment attached to it, like "jrpg devs are trying to trick people into buying bad games with cute girls" or "why do weebs think anime plots make up for bad gameplay?"
>>320908791
What is Assassin's Creed and Batman Arkham? More sophisticated combat than your shitty Yakuza will ever be.
>>320908791
AAA Western games are shitty yearly rehashes. Luckly the west has so many developers that the AAA ones are irrelevant. Also the Japanese only develop 3 genres, JRPGs, ARPGs, and platformers, with a heavy weight toward JRPGs. When will they learn that there are more than those genres? Also Dating sims and other casual games don't count because those aren't real games.
>>320908185
I'm just saying that things like making changes to the script for the sake of more natural sounding dialogue isn't just changing things for no good reason, and is probably the best course of action in a lot of cases.
No translation will ever give you the original experience, especially not a direct one which ends up sounding completely different due to introducing a degree of awkwardness that didn't exist in the original script.
If you want a pure, unfiltered experience then learn Japanese.
>>320909747
Read the thread
>>320901125
Ok but when it gets to Valkyria Chronicles levels of predictability then something probably needs to be worked on.
Japanese games sell and rate better if they're predictable.
The audience like to say "And here's the climactic moment where the boy says "I love you" to the one out of the entire 500-girl harem who's stuck with him this whole time" and be right, every time.
>>320909747
>If you want a pure, unfiltered experience then learn Japanese.
Don't do it. You will be wasting your time learning Japanese and I still guarantee you will still be disappointed.
>>320909703
>bait
Anyway
>SRPGs
>Fightans
>Metroidvania
>Roguelikes
>Horror
>Racing
>Rhythm
>Visual Novels
>And lots of other random shit from Doujin gemu
>>320910115
I learned Japanese and I've never been happier.
