"...Muahahahaha..." When Localization Blows The Mood

I feel for those tasked with the job of localizing video games. I really do. I know their job is hard. They're afforded a miniscule part of their game's budget and very limited tools, talent and resources. They're saddled with so many limations it's a miracle that their dubs and translations come off as well as they do. It doesn't help that the source material they're working from is frequently trite, overwrought and not all that well told. Thing is, we know their job isn't impossible. The writers and translators behind many Nintendo games excel at writing smart, funny onscreen dialogue. And Capcom's Phoenix Wright games are spectacularly penned, maybe even the best in games. So some folks are getting it more than right -- they're shining.

I'm working on reviews for both Star Ocean II and Valkyria Chronicles this week, both to see print in the near future. I'm not going to name names, but one has a fantastic story. The other is less than hot. 

But both games fall prey to the same pitfalls that foul most games imported to our shores from Japan. 

• Elipsis abuse: I absolutely hate the way JRPGS use "'..." to communicate the fact that a character isn't saying anything. The practice has become so commonplace that its ingrained, nearly impossible to excise from contemporary JRPG story-telling. Even though its usefulness is all but gone. Now characters are rendered in enough detail that we can tell that they're staring wistfully off into space, or looking longingly into their lovers' eyes. Even worse, though, is the excessive use of the elipsis at the ends of sentances. Read a conversation in a JRPG and every other spoken line trails off. Can't these people complete a single thought? Are they actually communicating or just blurting out duelling soliloquies?

• The literal spelling of interjections: Grh. Gah. Urg. Muahahahahahahhahha! heh Waugh! When was the last time you read a novel and saw a grunt, laughter or scream described this way? Those who write the onscreen text for video games should look to closed captioning for the ideal way to handle these moments. On television they handle such actions fairly tastefully, with a parenthetcial or italic "cries" or "screams" and allow the viewer to fill in the blanks. One of the two JRPGs I'm playing now undermined severally well-executed dramatic moments with distracting literal spelling of anguished tears. Whatever pathos the storytelling had managed to mine was immedately lost -- a real fumble.
• Irregular punctuation: This probably only bothers bothers writers like myself, but I found myself disappointed by irregular application of commas in one of the JRPGs I'm playing. And that's because the game was, for the most part, grammatically correct. The other game was so busy throwing an elipsis between every breath that there was no opportunity to actually use a comma, or God forbid, a boring full-stop period. I harp on this point because we're always going on about how video games are a burgeoning art form. But if we want even a little respect we have to earn it. And a good way to do so would be to adhere to even the most basic rules of punctuation. Besides, I've met more than a couple kids my junior who claim to have learned to read play old Final Fantasy games. We owe it to future gamers to get the basics right.

I'm picking these particular nits here because the two reviews I'm working on will likely gloss over these details. One of the aformentioned games will likely be a rave. It's one of the better written Japanese games I've played in ages -- with interpersonal conflict and storytelling chops that put the turgid self indulgence of Metal Gear Solid 4 and Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core to shame. The other falls prey to all of the typical genre vices. One is weakend only slightly by localization, the other further debased. More on both soon.