Sitting Down With Final Fantasy Head Localizer (ft. Michael-Christopher Koji Fox) | Trash Taste #281

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It's like I do so many different things that there isn't really one. It's not like, okay, I'm an art director or I'm a programmer. They just have me do a lot of different things and localization is one of the main things that I do. Yeah. But hopefully we'll get a chance to talk about today all of the other things. My good friend, Pete, who is a massive Final Fantasy fan for a very long time. I asked, I was like, yeah, we met this really cool guy called Koji Fox. He freaked out. He's like, Koji Fox is a legend in the Final Fantasy community. He was really stoked that we got a chance to speak and I'm really excited. And obviously all the work that we, like obviously we filmed a video with you that will be out at some point soon or maybe now. Hopefully by the time. It should be up in an hour, right? Yeah. And that was a lot of fun and it was really cool getting a chat with you just then. So we were like, we got to have you on the podcast. Yeah. I think obviously it would be great to hear about first what you do. I'll see you've mentioned a bit about it and then perhaps how you got into it. Because obviously being in Japan, it's quite the journey to get here, to work in a Japanese company and for so long as well. Yes. It's been, oh man, I joined Square Enix the day it became Square Enix. So I interviewed with Squaresoft back in 2000. I want to say it was 2003 when the merger happened. 2003 April was when I joined. So I probably interviewed back in 2002 towards the end of the year with Squaresoft. Right. And yeah, it was a matter of basically I was teaching up in Hokkaido. I had, I had actually studied in Japanese university over here for four years in Hokkaido. Got my teaching license, got my certification, was a teacher for three years in a junior high school. I was teaching English, but most of the time I was coaching basketball. Yeah. The first day I came in and they're like, OK, you're going to be an English teacher. You're also going to be coaching basketball. I'm like, any reason? It's like, because you're tall. For him, it wasn't like. You're tall in America. Tall in America. Basketball. Basketball. I'm like, OK, sure. I can try. And it turned out that yeah, like most of it was basketball. Like, every day the school ends. Like two thirty three. Immediately basketball practice. Right. Seven or eight basketball until a point. I played a little basketball. I'm a fan of the Portland Trailblazers. Right. Being from Oregon. Right. I'd never coached before. Right. But so I was learning on the job. But yeah, it was a lot of basketball coaching and teaching English. And I would just go home tired every day and play Final Fantasy 11. Yeah. And I was just online one day checking out if there is, you know, some tips. Forgetting it. And I saw that Square Enix was hiring and I'm like. No. You know. It was funny being in Japan where you were pretty fluent speaking Japanese. Yeah. I mean, I again, being being the teacher, I wasn't like an assistant teacher. I was a regular teacher. That's why I had my own home room. I was going doing parents, student conferences, parent teacher conferences. And and so my Japanese was fine to get through, you know, day to day stuff. And then I saw that they were hiring for localization and they were hiring for Final Fantasy 11 localization. And I'm like, I don't Japanese. Yes, I know English. I'm playing FF 11. I can do this. How hard can it be? Ha ha ha ha ha. But you know, they I had I took the test before you take the test, you have. We had to submit a. A writing piece they had right. I think they asked me to write, like, choose a Final Fantasy character from any Final Fantasy game. Yes. And they are like warped into Japan. Yes. And write like a thousand words on their adventure. So you have to do some creative writing as well. And so I chose the ninja shadow and had him. Yes. And I had him warped into Shibuya and he's just like, he thinks everyone's mercenary, so he just starts going on this rampage and like killing all these people in Shibuya. Somehow they called me back. And then I did a test, a Japanese to English translation test. I had a bunch of interviews and yeah. And they were there again, they were looking for someone to translate Final Fantasy 11. I knew the game. So I maybe they thought, hey, this will save us on training, you know, training because he's already understand the game. Yeah. And it also kind of started from there. And then I worked on FF 11 for a number of years from there. I got to work on usually in the localization department. If you're on an online game, they usually move you to an offline game to get an experience on both because just the way that they're created is so completely different. After working on 11 for a couple years, I worked on Durg of Cerberus. The you're telling us about this. The game. The ill-fated. Yes. The third person shooter in the Final Fantasy seven world starting Vincent Valentine. Yeah. Yes. It was it was an experience. Sounds like peak 2000s. Like this is all that would come out in the 2000s. Yes. It was it was a lot of fun working on it. It was the first game that I worked on that had a full voice for the cut scenes. So I got to go to voice recording for the first time and work with voice actors. And that was a lot of fun. Was that was that nerve wracking when you just had to work with voice actors the first time? Because you're like, I don't this isn't my. Well, luckily, the voice director for the Japanese version came with me. So in the in the studios in LA, it was myself as well as the Japanese voice director as well. And so we were both there in the studio. And of course, that voice director didn't understand any English but was kind of taking my word for it on the acting. Also giving me tips and tricks, especially for like battle voices and things like that that I hadn't done. And what are the best way to do these? And so I learned a lot from the voice director halfway through, though. They they went back to Japan because they had to work on the Japanese version. So I'm like, OK, it's just me now. A lot of interesting stuff in that. Voice actors are a very unique lot. Some of them. I mean, they they're all, you know, everyone that I've worked with has been, you know, absolute pros. Yeah, I'm still voice acting, but they're quirky. And maybe it's also because it was LA as well. So it's got the Hollywood. You get the peak. There was one time, you know, you have the booth, right? And you have the big window that you can see. We're in the control room there in the booth and you can kind of, you know, see them. Yeah. And then when they're standing up in front of their their mics. And so we're in between takes. And all of a sudden I look back and the guy's gone. He's not in the room anymore. Like, where did he get? Excuse me. Are you and then he and then he pops up. He's like, sorry, I was just doing some push ups. OK. I thought of myself. So the dude is just like in there, you know, in between the lines. I don't know. Push ups in a couple of reps. Yeah. That was yeah. Yeah. A lot of a lot of interesting characters and learned about learned a lot about voice recording, what to do, what not to do, you know, what to do better. That's stuff to build on. And then from there I worked on. This game called Code Age Commanders, which came out in Japan and it was all ready to come out in in the West until it released in Japan and didn't do as well as maybe the company thought it was going to do. Right. And then they thought, well, we probably don't need to do this in English. And so canceled the game after I had they're saying you can't talk about this. OK, OK, no. I was thinking I was looking at that code age commander. It was it was a really cool game. It was the first game directed by. He was an art director called now, Rassan. You maybe know his art from like Final Fantasy 7 and lots of different Square Enix games, one of Square Enix's. But it was a boxy that wasn't Final Fantasy. It was a yes. It was a new IP. OK, OK. And it was it was again, it was another action game. So it's in Square Enix is like known for the RPGs. But for some reason, hey, it's the 2000s. Let's start doing a bunch of third person because it was very popular at the time. Yes. And and this wasn't wasn't as popular as they probably hoped it would be. I saw it so sick. It is you already done all the work. And the thing is, like I was on the project while they're working on the Japanese. And this is back in the day when they make the Japanese first and then figure it out after figure out the localization later. And so I had gotten on the project early enough that, OK, I'm just going to start working on it. They hadn't told me to work on it. There's like, oh, just play the game, get used to it. But like, I'm going to do this. And I translated the whole game and literally the next week, they're like, oh, yeah, about that, Koji. Oh, and so there there's a bunch of files on my computer somewhere with the whole script of code age commanders translated into English. So if they ever decide there is a translation out there, they ever wanted to go. Although I'd probably probably go back and retranslate. Right. I was I was young back then. Is this, you know, is this game like a cult classic or people still talk about it? Or is it kind of forgotten? Well, so I did I did mention this when I was in America once and one guy was like, oh, my God, code age commanders. I imported that as a greatest game ever. One guy so far has told me. So there's like five people extremely. Yeah. No, the thing is, code age commanders, it was it was just very it was very difficult. There was a high learning curve. It wasn't a known IP because it was new. I really liked it. I thought it had a, you know, a quirky story. It was all about like DNA. Yeah. And there's like these play it, play it, find it and play it. I just don't have to play station to code age commanders. I'm sure I can find it. I sure I can get a copy. Should be difficult. Is this cool? That's cool. And then obviously after that game, you well, after that went back to Final Fantasy 11, helped out with I think it was the wings of Altana expansion. And then that was about the time when they started talking about, OK, we're going to make the sequel to FF 11 online, which would be Final Fantasy 14. This was when it was still under the director Tanaka Sun's control. It was the 11 team that was going to be creating the new 14, the one point. Oh, the dreaded one point. And yeah, and I worked on that. I worked with the the lore creator, a guy named Kenji Iwo. That did all the lore for 11 also did that original lore for Final Fantasy 14. We were building the world together, you know, naming the races, figuring out these backgrounds. And we kind of did this together. It was the first time I got to do actual like lore work instead of just localization work. It sounds like a lot more than just what people maybe assume, which is just like just pure translation. It sounds like there's a lot more on the creative side that you're involved. That was that was the really cool thing about the Final Fantasy 11 team. And then, you know, those people that moved over to Final Fantasy 14 is that they wanted to create something that felt very international. And so a lot of things that had to do with naming that had to do with the lore and the mythology that they were drawing on, they wanted to do something very Western. You had these this team that wanted to create something that felt Western, but Western through the eyes of, you know, a Japanese death. Yes. And so having me there and having the localization team on site meant that they could come to us and ask us ideas about, you know, is this Western enough? And the thing is, or they'd have these ideas that they thought were Western. You're like that. They're like, no, no, I'm sorry about that. But that's I don't know if that's gonna. I mean, we can we can try to take that. Yeah, yeah. So I can imagine some of the stuff that must have come your way. You like, well, you get you get some terms that are like, like they just open a dictionary. And they're like, oh, this word means this. And I'm like, OK, yeah, it means that. But maybe in this the third definition, you normally know. And so it's just, you know, a lot of back and forth with this team to create this world. But, you know, as one point, no development was, it was kind of a mess of times. So what was obviously you mentioning that it was it was less kind of collaborative and more focused on just Japanese first was what was the push on that? Do you think the Japanese side to maybe try and get more of like a global view on that? I think especially, you know, when you're creating an MMO and it's a global MMO that your audience is not going to be just Japan. Your audience is not going to be just one region. They wanted something that was global. And I think that was that was what they're aiming for back in FF 11. FF 11 was a lot more popular in Japan. I think it's just because of the the PlayStation. Having an MMO on the PlayStation was not something that I think the West was ready for just hardware wise and also internet wise. I know the made it to the PS2 in Western because it didn't ship with. Yeah. I mean, you could you could get the the unit. There was a little thing you could plug in the back that did have, you know, the ethernet plug. It was just not common at all. It was just not common at all. And the biggest thing that was the biggest problem at the beginning of the final fantasy 11's life was that internet speeds were just you have a small country and everyone got ISDN when it came out. And then when you had like, you know, the optical fiber, everyone got it because a small country infrastructure was there. America. It's like, I mean, AOL just like closed like last month. I think people are still having dial up until last month, 2025. And that's back then back in, you know, you know, 2000, I think, what was it? 2005 or six when when the first Final Fantasy 11 came out. No, it was all dial up. It was all like old modems and infrastructures there. No one could play the game. And so it wasn't. But that was the thing. Like they still had this vision of wanting to create this MMO for the world. They looked at like the they looked at the runescapes. They looked at the EverQuests and they're like the ultimate online. They're like, this is what we want to make. We want to make something that brings the world together and does this. And so they always had this kind of, okay, we're making in Japan, but we're thinking about the world. And that's something that, you know, the team has maintained, even though, you know, you've gone through lots of different team members from 11 to 14, 1.0 to 14, what it is now. There are still that ethos of like we're making the game for the world is still there. And that's why I think they put a lot of emphasis on localization. You have a localization team that's in house or not just English, but also French and German. Those versions and, you know, having not just doing localization, but also getting the feedback from those team members. When you have an area that's kind of like based on, you know, old Germany, you have the German team there to give feedback on, okay, what kind of terminology do you want to use here? Or, you know, what's going to fit in the game or not. And always kind of having that back and forth and having us to, you know, it's great for us because we give that feedback, but also us being there means that we're also connected to the team. So if we have any localization questions, we can ask them. And it just keeps, it's a perfect setup for everyone, I think. And I think the world benefits. Yeah. Well, it makes me wonder what, and if you don't know the answer to this, please tell me, but like, what was the creative decision behind Final Fantasy 16? And having that recorded, like, and recorded in English first, as opposed to Japanese, and how is that on your end? Having to coordinate a Japanese company doing what is essentially a, you know, an English story. Yeah. Because was 16 the first mainline Final Fantasy where that was the case, where it was recorded in English first? Yes. The first mainline Final Fantasy. It wasn't the first game that Square Enix did. Yeah. I think we did have one game before that. That was recorded in English first. Do you want to guess what it is? It's not Final Fantasy. Ah, Square Enix. I also give you a hint. There was a dog in it named Torgel. Oh. Oh, not again. I know Torgel. Oh my God. Yeah, I know the character. I know Torgel. Oh, wait, wait, Torgel is, I think he's Clive's dog, right? Yeah. And there was also a dog named Torgel in the game that was also directed by Takaisan. What? I have no idea. Final Fantasy 7 remakes? I don't know. What is it? Okay. I don't know. I give up. Put it up on the, put it up on the screen. Torgel? Torgel. And you're going to be like, oh. So Torgel, type Torgel. Tipe in Torgel. Torgel Final Fantasy. No, Torgel, just Torgel. Torgel dog. Torgel dog. Torgel dogs, Square Enix, not Final Fantasy 16. Okay. Imagine the gathering? No. Oh, is it gonna pop out? Yeah, so 16 now. It's all 16 now. You have to do minus. Oh. Did you see something? Did you see it? Right. My glasses are out. Oh! Wait, what? It's Granny's Tetris number one. That's not sad. That's not sad. That's not sad. Yeah. I don't know. Not 16. Damn, 16 is... People also ask, is Toggle a good boy? Toggle sure is a good boy. Toggle sure is a good boy. I don't know what's the answer. We'll answer. Do we know it? It's not infinite undiscovery, but it came around at around the same time. Toggle. Oh, that's gonna kill me, I feel. You can put in Hiroshi Takai Rex. Oh, you need to remove like... Yeah, you gotta get rid of... ...the true Toggle. Just put in... Yeah, just type in square and he's Hiroshi Takai. Yay! Come on, guys. Yes. Damn. I've never played Last Remnant. You never played Last Remnant? No, I have not. I actually... Hold up, should I play it? Last Remnant is a... It's the most wonderful time of the year. Bookers, are you ready for the drop? Cos on the beach you're dropping... Pooka Pooka! Pooka Five-Star Holiday for 2026 and you get a free loan jagsess book. So get booking now. Conditions apply. Seven-night minimum stay, outbound only from selected airports to six people, subject to lounge availability, excludes cruises after an atoll protected. I had a few of my mates who played it. Really? What's the word type of game? I'm gonna say it was ahead of its time. Okay. That means two things. It could be. It was ahead of its time. But there was a Toggle in it also. It was the first game that Square Enix did that we did the English first. Right. What made you guys decide on that? I don't know. I think that was, again, it was a Takai-san thing. I think... There's quite a big gap between this and... Maybe they were a bit scarred by the process. They wanted to do it again for a while. Possibly. Enough time and password they'd forgotten. Possibly. But you worked on 16 there, right? I did. I worked on Final Fantasy. After so after working on 11 and moving on to 14, moving on to 14 around Reborn with Yoshida-san. And then... Still working on 14 as well, right? Well, I do a little bit on 14. I've pretty much passed off my translation lead duties around Shadowbringers. And that's when I moved over to the core team of Final Fantasy 16. Right. Get that started up. And so while I still am a supervisor on Final Fantasy 14, most of the day-to-day stuff is handled by Paul, who I think you met in the last... Yes, yes, yes. He is the lead now. And he has a team of several people that are in Japan as well as around the world that are pretty much doing what, hopefully, I was doing back then, but they're doing it better. I'd like to think. No, I'd like to think because they are doing it better. They're doing a great job. But around Shadowbringers, I moved over to 16 because that was a full-time thing. What was that entire process like? So... That's a loaded question. I guess the good thing to start was, what was that conversation like about perhaps recording in English first? Because I imagine that must have been done really early on. Yes. So the first thing that when I joined the team and I get a booth right next to my hero-san, and he's like, OK, this is how we're going to do this. We're going to record in English first. There's no discussion. No, there's no discussion. I'm like, OK. And he's like, why? I was like, well, because they wanted to create something that felt like a Western drama. Right. Because they had grown up watching Western dramas. They'd grown up watching Indy Jones on Friday nights on the Japanese TV. Right. They had... This was currently when, I think, the Game of Thrones, either the first or second season just come out. And so they're watching this and they're all getting blown away by this. They're getting... They're playing games like Uncharted. They're playing games like The Witcher. And they're like, this is what we want to make. And we want to do it like this. And we want to have it be, again, like this global type of thing. They want to create something that feels Western. And but they also understand that the dev team is 99% Japanese. And so it's like, well, we have an image of what the West should be based on what we see on TV and movies, kind of like the West has an image of Japan. It's kind of the same thing. But I think they understood enough to know that, like, well, we're not experts on the West. What we think is the West, we understand, is probably not the West. Yeah. So we want it to be legitimate for users in the West. But we also want it to be what our image of the West is. So they want to make it this thing that's not completely 100% Western. It's Western through their eyes, but something that's not going to be so jarring to people in the West that they're not going to want to play it. So it's like this thin line that they're trying to walk. And so they brought me over because I had been with a company by then for about, I don't know, 15, almost 12, 15 years by then. And they had known me from working on 11 and 14 in other games. And they had, I guess we'd built up enough trust that they're OK with asking me these questions and saying, OK, what do we want to do here? How do we want to go with this? And they wanted that feeling of, you know, they wanted to make a game that felt like it was a dub of a Western movie. And so, of course, if it's going to be a dub or not a dub, like a sub subversion of a Western movie, so they want that English version first to do the Japanese after that, like they took a Western movie and then they put Japanese voice actors onto that, you know. And like a lot of the voice actors that they got for the Japanese version were not anime voice actors or game voice actors. They got voice actors for TV and movies that had done where, you know, like I think one of them was like a guy that they had done dubbing work. One of the guys was like he was always Harrison Ford and they got he's the voice of Harrison Ford in a lot of like Japanese. And then they got that person to come in. And so they didn't they wanted it to feel more like a movie because again, you know, if he was like saying that like, you know, this is this game is going to be less a game, it's more like a movie experience. It's like a 20 hour roller coaster where you're watching this, you know, I mean, even just the first two hours of that game, they're pretty I mean, that was a great prologue. Yeah, it might be the greatest like first hour and a half of video game like cut scenes ever. Like it was so cool. I wish I didn't get to play more though. So noise, but I've done the opening twice. So it's a life, but that was so cool. So then I imagine then deciding to do it and all the ideas sounds good in your head. Yeah, that was the thing is like, I think the conversation sounds good. Everyone, I think everyone thought like, yeah, this is going to be yeah, this is going to be a great idea. We can totally do this, but not realizing how difficult it was going to be. And the thing is, like from my perspective, I knew how difficult it was going to be because pretty much my whole career at Square Enix had been the Japanese comes first. Yes, we have to figure out a way to match lip flaps, match timing, yes, quirky motions by the mocap actors. And the whole time you got to schedule time zones as well. And then that means there's only like a limited set of hours a day you can walk with really. Yeah. And I mean, it's there's so many things. And then also just having things change after you've recorded them and thinking, hey, I'd love to do this and oh, we can't do that again. And I mean, just all of the logistical things, just the order of everything that I had already experienced that. So I knew it was going to happen and I tried to let the team know. Like saying, you know, like, OK, we're ready to record now. And is it OK if we record now? Like, because once we record, yeah, that's it. And they're like, and like, oh, yeah, go ahead and record. And oh, yeah, you can totally do ad libs. Like, OK, we went in, we record and do the ad libs. They get the voice files back. Oh, we can't use this. We need to rewrite it. And that's what happened. So the original script was written in Japanese by my hero son. Then we got that script. Then myself and the other translator on the team, John Taylor, who is a veteran of a lot of the Dragon Quest games, basically brought him on because we were going to use British English. I'm an American. Yes, to have a real Brit on me grounded. Our editors were all British as well as John, who is British himself. And so yeah, make sure things are on the level there. Yes. Yeah. And so we took that whole script. We translated the whole thing. And again, when we were told to translate it, we're like, make this as natural as possible, make it sound like it was written in English. Is what we were told by my hero son. It's like, yes, you need to, you know, follow the story beats. But if you need to change things to make them sound more natural, or you think like an order needs to be changed because it was it's more natural to have English flow this way than this. He's like, go ahead and change it. But after we did that, then we went in and we had these meetings where a series of meetings that lasted probably about three or four weeks where we went over every single line in the game and basically told him, this is how we translated it. This is how we did it differently. Anything that was a major shift from what was in the original Japanese. I basically told my hero son that this is how we changed it. And in those meetings, he would either say, OK, that's a localization thing. We're going to keep the Japanese as it is. Or he would be like, OK, if the English is going to be this, I'm going to change the Japanese. You're like most pitching every line essentially and trying to be like, OK, this is why I think this was. And I think a lot of the stuff, especially a lot of like the banter between five and Sid, a lot of that banter. While there was some of it in the original Japanese, there wasn't as much of it. And I kind of saw it as a Nathan Drake sully type of thing where they're just constantly going back and forth, just. As you wish. As you want, if you want. Exactly. And especially if you've got this grizzled old, you know, veteran of many wars, like, oh, you young. Although it's a opening wine in like some, you know, emo generation next kid that Clive is. And so, yeah, so they're just, you know, this whole back and forth is yeah, us suggesting that it would be cool if, you know, Sid could say this in response and having it kind of be this back and forth. Because a lot of times you'll see that in at least a lot of the Japanese stuff that the stories that I had translated up until then, it was like a lot of conversations were one sided. You'd have one person doing, I'm not going to say a Lord dump, but they're just kind of explaining everything. That does happen. That does happen. And then the other characters just like, hi. Yeah. Hi. And it was like, OK, that's that's that's great. But that's not how we have conversations, at least in the West. Yeah. There's a lot of like it's basically you haven't back and forth. It's it's back and forth. It's a little too scripted otherwise, right? Yeah. And you have people, you know, completing each other's sentences, yeah, cutting in, breaking off. And that's I mean, it's a natural flow of the conversation. Right. Right. And while that isn't very Japanese, if they're trying to really make something that feels like it's from the West, then we kind of have to we thought that, you know, we'd have to follow these kind of this conversation. Sure. Yeah. Right. And so we changed a lot of that. And it was really cool. As my hear was like, yeah, yeah, I can hear that. I can see that. Yeah. And he did have trouble kind of trying to make that natural in Japanese because that's not how a lot of Japanese people have a conversation. Yeah. Yeah. But the understanding was that it's supposed to be Western anyway. So. And so they found a way to do it. And I think, you know, they there's a lot of iterations that they had to go through to get it perfect. But once so once we had that back and forth and we had the English locked, then we went into recording. And when we were recording, we did do AdLibs because in the booth there, unlike every project I'd worked on up until then, where the character had already been decided by the Japanese voice actor, no one had decided the characters yet. I mean, we had a vague idea of who we wanted them to be. But they weren't solidified yet. And so it was up to the actors in the booth. Ben Starr, who played Clive, Stuart Clark, who played Dion, all of these great actors were basically told, OK, you've read about your character. You've read all of their lines. You see their arc. Let's make this character. And we spent the first few days kind of. Yeah. Deciding on that character and those voices. So I would say that, you know, the voice of Clive Rossfield is as much Ben Starr as it is me or my hero son. We all contributed to the voice, which was amazing. Yeah. But. Then that voice file gets delivered to my hero son. He's like, oh, none of this is going to work. And then he rewrites all of the Japanese again. So the Japanese had to be rewritten again. Right. The thing was, though, is that the English is now recorded. Yeah. And it's the source and he's rewriting the Japanese. It's like he's localizing. Now he's localizing the localization. And the thing is, from my perspective, is like, yeah, that's what you do. Right. You get the source and you localize it to make it the most natural in the source language. But then you get people like, oh, the English is so different from the Japanese. I'm like, well, actually, there's so many aspects that could be a reason why it changes. I mean, even myself, when I'm talking voice acting, I've been doing lines and I'll say something or I'll say the line wrong or I'll put the words in the wrong order. Actually, that sounds a lot better. Or I'll say something or I'll just split people and I'll be like, let's try it. And then it went into working out. There's a lot of people are so quick to be like the translators, the localizers. It's a lot more collaborative than I think a lot of people would like to give it credit. Yeah. But also, also one thing that you noted that I think was really interesting and you told me this when we spoke last time, I thought it was really interesting is that your job is almost more, more so about writing and being a competent writer and telling stories as opposed to just being a translator. And that's what makes it so difficult. And I kind of stuck with him when you said that. I mean, it is I can I see both sides. I understand. I know that there's the purest side that thinks the translation needs to be as close to the source as possible. Yeah. There's others that like, oh, it needs to be as natural as possible. And I think that, you know, while both have their merits, ultimately, I look at it as I mean, language is different and language carries so much with it. Yeah. So much that you can't see, so much that you can't see in a dictionary. Yeah. Like a word that maybe has been used in a certain TV show will take on a different meaning that's in the dictionary because it's now part of pop culture because it was used in this way. And those are things that you can't know. If you're not, yeah. And so, but and those are things that get conveyed in the word and maybe won't get conveyed in the translation. So they need to be added in different ways. And so what's ultimately the most important, at least from my perspective, after doing all, you know, many years of localization is what was the writer's intent? Was the writer what reaction is the writer trying to get out of the user? Are they trying to get them to laugh, to cry, to feel something? And if the translation, the ultimate localization does not, you know, get that same reaction out of the user, then all of a sudden you have a different user experience. If you have the Japanese users are crying, but the American users are not crying, then something's wrong with the localization, even if the translation is completely the same. Yeah. You need to, you know, bring that in. And I think that to do that requires writing skill as well as because that's how these Japanese writers can, you know, evoke those emotions is because they're doing that with their skill as writers. Yeah, right. If you're not doing that in the English or the French or the German, then, you know, loses all nuance meaning. I think being able to work so closely to the creator helps a lot because, you know, I think when you think about localization, sometimes I think writer intent, 100% is the most important aspect of localization. Unfortunately, not every translator localizer gets to work so closely with the greater to actually. So sometimes they're guessing the intense because it's funny enough. I 100% understand everything that you went through because I had to do exactly the same thing as well because I made a short film that was animated by a Japanese animation studio. So I am the source material, which was I wrote a screenplay written in English, which was translated over into Japanese for a Japanese production, which then I had to localize back into English. And I wanted to ask you a question because during my process, I almost thought of the Japanese characters and the English like characters almost as like two different people, kind of, because they are achieving the same story beats, but maybe how they convey that might be. There's a slight nuance in the differences of how they convey, how they talk or how they convey certain emotions, almost like I think of myself, like I'm, you know, multilingual as we all here are. And like English speaking me and Thai speaking me are two different people almost, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, two different mannerisms, two different way of speaking. So that was like the way that I approached localizing my own work. And I was wondering if you had any similar like philosophy or thoughts around that as well. I mean, I think like again, because you mentioned that the Thai version of you and the Japanese version of you are different. It's because it's the culture that comes tied to those languages. And again, a lot of times we forget that there's so much culture and language and there's so much information behind each word that ultimately there is no exact one to one translation for anything. Because I mean, if yeah, we could do it like manga does and put a little star by a word and try to explain the culture behind it. But when you're speaking, you can't do that. You can't stop to do that every time. And so ultimately then becomes you have a, you have a choice between either just ignoring that cultural beat or changing into something that's going to feel natural for the source language, for the source audience. And ultimately who is playing the game in English? A lot of times it's, you know, people that are native English speakers that maybe live in those Western cultures. And so if the majority of audiences that having something that feels natural in that language and you're getting those beats and you're getting the, you know, maybe it's we're doing a different joke to get a laugh. But if we're getting the laugh, it's more important than maybe getting across the exact same joke in Japanese that's just going to fall flat. Because then the user is not going to laugh. And you've kind of ruined that situation when the author wanted the user to laugh in that situation. Right. Oh, one thing about 16 hours, very impressed with was your use of accents. Because it was one of the first times I played a fantasy game that actually sounded like, you know, with their, there's British accents. But this, this was like one of the first times where I felt like, oh, these are authentic British accents, not just your stereotypical ones that you'd normally hear in like a fantasy title. And it was very surprising to see you come from a Japanese company. Why did they get this right? And so many other companies, I mean, I think it's just because people don't maybe don't place as much importance on it. I mean, because a lot of times it's just British that like British. And that's just for me, you know, being an American, you hear the British accents and you don't think that there are multiple accents. You think they're just British accents. And you don't realize that, no, if you go literally 100 miles this way, you're now in a new different region that has different types of accents. Or if you go, you know, up into the North, you're going to have completely different accents. You don't realize that until. But then, and then, you know, once you hear it though, and you're like, oh my God, they are completely different. I can, like I, you hear the Geordi accent. You hear, you know, the Cornwall accent. You're like, oh, this is completely different. I don't know. How did I ever think that these were the same? How did I think that Dick Van Dyke was a British speaker? A fare on the chimney. But that was, yeah, one thing that we wanted to do. And again, because we at Square, you know, we had tried British accents with Final Fantasy 14 and it was kind of like a mashup of just lots of different British accents. And the thing is for most of the users, it was fine. But the users in the UK, small portion, we would get feedback. This is like, this is not, this is not. And so with Final Fantasy 16, you know, because we had John Taylor again, being from the UK and then our editors, we had this company called Schlock that not they'd not, they don't not only edit, but they've translated stuff in the foreign like Nino Cooney. They worked there, the company that worked on that. And they're based in the UK as well. And so one of the first things that like, they were like, OK, Koji, we need to do accents properly this game. I'm like, OK, I'm all for it, you know, but you guys are the pros on this. Let's do it right. And so immediately early on, we're like, OK, we have these different regions. Let's choose an accent for each of these regions and let's make it make sense. So we have the Northern Territories and like Jordy. Yeah, we have like Rosaria, which is in the West, West Country. We have them like, you know, it's going to be all of the apple orchard farmers making scrumpy in their bath tubs. And then you have like Sambrek, who's like the proper sort of the Queen's English. You know, Domechia, OK, we're going to make them London. And so you have, we decided that right from the beginning. And then we made sure that every single character that comes from that area. We got the data from the team, like which the all the NPCs for all the hundreds of NPCs, like which nation are they from? And then we got that data and then we like, OK, we're going to make sure that our voice actors are going to get West Country voice actors. We're going to make sure we get Jordy voice actors for the or the continent. Lancashire, I mean, like we just we went all out and when we stuck with it. And so hopefully, you know, that the point was to have that if, you know, a British speaker closed their eyes and they heard a new NPC, they'd know immediately if they're from Rosaria, Zambrek based on the accent and yeah. And even if you're not British, I feel like you'd still tell or subconsciously be aware of these different accent shifts and appreciate like it's gone into that. And you know, you hear the Jordy accent, you think the North. Yeah. And so even if you haven't played 16, if you hear like a clip of Gav, like this guy from the North, yes, he's actually in the game. He's also from the North. The first time I heard Gav speaking that accent, I was just like, oh, you're my favorite character already. That's the one who sounds like he eats rocks, right? Eats cigarettes and oil, which was that's it. That's it. Yeah, he's a very famous actor. So a lot of the actors, when I heard them, I was like, whoa, this is like people I heard a lot when I was growing up on TV. Yeah, these are all quite well known actors. Yes, there is a we did did to work with a lot of a lot of people that I was like, oh, I know I know this person from this. I know this person. We had a bunch of people from Game of Thrones from the last kingdom. And then Ralph Inneson was out of all of all of out of I would say out of all, but maybe there's another one, but out of all the characters, the only one that we didn't audition for that I knew exactly who I wanted to play was Ralph Inneson's character. I'd seen him in The Witch, which is one of my favorite movies. I just love that movie. Robert Eggers and that script is just like people. The witch. I want to see what it looks like this. Robert Eggers is good. Well, what else is Robert Eggers done? He's done the Lighthouse. Of course. I love the Lighthouse. It's not for us as well. Oh, yeah. I mean, yes. And he's the father and it's just I hear that booming, ravely voice. Oh, my God. This is amazing. And so I knew that I heard that like, OK, if I ever if I'm ever on a game where I get to choose a voice actor, I'm going to push for that. I heard that when he when he when you sent out the request and it was like, yeah. And to do is like, yeah, because I mean, I had seen he'd worked in worked on Assassin's Creed Black Flag. It is possible. It is possible. He's worked on it. He's worked on the game before and we sent it out to him and his agent was like, oh, yeah, Ralph loves working on games. I'm like, yes. He was the coolest guy ever. Oh, my God. He was so down to earth. I mean, you know, you see him. He's like, you know, movie star. Yeah. But he's in the booth and he's just joking with you. I think during the media tour that we had, he came along and after one he got super drunk and he was just like. I'm like, oh, this guy is the best. That sounds very. He is the coolest guy ever. So, yeah. Oh, dude. Hell yeah. That's so awesome. And I like it's awesome to hear that like how cool an experience that was to work with bigger names as well and gaming and also the gaming's gotten to that point now. Where, you know, we're getting like movie stars. Yeah. It's like they're seeing it as equal. That's right. I mean, yeah, because back in the day, it was just like, you'd get a lot of people that were like, oh, we don't want to do this because it's beneath us. It's a game or they'd ask for ridiculous amounts of money to do it, to do their one or two lines and then they just kind of half ass their way through them because, you know, it's not seriously. Yeah. But now it's yeah. I mean, you've been there for the entire evolution of just the how the public views this as, you know, the medium taking the medium being taken more seriously. Yes, for sure. I was playing Final Fantasy X not too long ago and obviously the dub is iconic in many ways. Iconics. And there are certain points. I felt this when I've played other games as well, but where it is obvious that the actor doesn't get it, but they're delivering their lines. But you can tell they just don't know what they're talking about. But the voice is there and all the things are there. But you could just tell from like a maybe I'm sure you can tell from the you can just like they don't get they don't get what they're talking about. Yeah. They're just kind of delivering it. And again, that there's so many reasons why that can happen. Games have got a lot more complicated than a movie. I think that a lot of times, you know, people that maybe aren't involved with it will just see the final product and think, oh, wow, that's he's a terrible actor. Or oh, wow, that was terrible direction. Or oh, wow, that's a terrible script or what? That's terrible localization. And the thing is, it can be those things sometimes, but other times it's just a mix of so many different things like so many little things have to go wrong. Like, for example, you could have maybe you only have one session left and you have four hours to record 300 lines, which means you only get one take or and you don't get to explain to a person, you know, the background behind stuff or maybe, you know, somebody came in late and they missed a session. So they only really have a little bit of time or maybe there was we did record a great line and then afterwards the Japanese decided to change the cut scene and cut out a big portion in the middle. But we have to use the same line that we have. And so we had to cut it in a weird place or it doesn't sound the same. Or maybe the Japanese went and redid their line, but we couldn't do our line. Or, you know, maybe the actor just didn't get enough reps in, you know, doing his push ups and so he's in a bad mood. There are so many different reasons, so many different reasons. And and again, you know, I will take responsibility for some of the stuff. But a lot of stuff is just like, because there's so many moving parts. Yeah, so many parts. And big. And again, when you're not the source language, there's just so many things that separate you from it. Because again, it's made for the source. Yeah. The visuals are made for the source. The original recording is made to that. The lip flaps are all done for the source and especially between like Japanese and English as well. Like you can't have two languages that couldn't be further apart culturally. Well, I mean, trying to smoothly transition that over in a natural way must be ridiculously well, even that. But like, you know, that the fact that the languages are just so completely different, like grammatically and you have Japanese being, you know, very high context, they cut out a lot of things. A lot of things are implied and there's lots of weird pauses and everything. Whereas English, you have to explain everything because we're lower context. They put more words in there. But if you have the Japanese where they're literally only a couple little flaps and they've said like a whole sentence because it said like five kanji in a row. In English, we need like, you know, 30 words to say this, but we only have five. And then there's a weird pause in the middle. So you get it like, and so I am going to. And everyone sounds like William Shatner trying to do, you know. About this once I saw a study that studied how long was the average pause duration that each language or culture was comfortable with. And English was like three and that's like the most before it gets awkward. I think Japanese is like six. And it's like quite a long six seconds in a long time for at least in English. Right. It's kind of ridiculous. But Japan. But that that that six seconds that pause has meaning to it. There's stuff in that. I found this like even when I was doing, you know, the translations where you'd have a lot of things and in ellipses, like people that read a lot of, you know, along as well, like there's ellipses everywhere because it's the thing that comes after the ellipses that is now on the reader to imagine, oh, this is what goes in that spot. And so I guess they're giving you the six seconds to kind of like process. This dot dot dot means this, this, this, this. It's probably further dramatized as well when it's in fiction, right? Like six seconds in real speaking, it could be like 10, 12 seconds in a dramatized script. Right. So you obviously you've recorded all of them and it went great. I imagine there's probably some headaches on the Japanese side. So it's probably their first time having to essentially kind of work from a localizing perspective of trying to do that. They, they, they went way slower than they usually do. Normally, again, when the, when the Japanese is first, they will do, they will spend a lot of time on each line because it's the first time you're recording it. They want to make sure they get it right. And they're afforded a schedule and a budget that allows them to spend a lot of time on. But once you get the other languages, well, the base is already done. So you don't need to spend the thinking is, I'm not saying this is the right way, but the thinking is it's already done in Japanese. So you just need to use that Japanese. What could possibly be different? You just, you know, you don't need like, you know, three or four takes. You only need one take. And so they schedule a lot more lines in an hour or two hours than they do for that first take. And so in the English, because we were not only recording first, but we were also doing mocap. We had the headcamps on because they're doing facial mocap, always being done in English. And so we were going very slow. We would, you know, sometimes I think maybe we would get on when times that we need to do a lot of retakes and get the line just right, then maybe we'd get like 10 or 12 lines in an hour, not all the time. We were averaging much more during the rest of the project, but there were times when, you know, literally five minutes per line because we had to get it just right because it was the first time. Yeah, and, you know, I've heard tales about games that have taken even longer. I remember when I was doing recording in LA once and the people there were talking about the God of War team and the God of War teams, they do maybe like five lines an hour sometimes because they had to get it exactly right. That's how much of perfection. And you want, you know, you play those games. Absolutely. But that's what they're doing. Whereas like if you do like an anime dub, you know, it's like 80 lines, like you literally like not even a minute per line. And you're only doing one take and going to the next. Yeah, I feel very rude sometimes if I was like, I really want to do that again. But I could tell there was a lot of sometimes, depending on the director, they might be like, you're being a yeah, you're being come on, we pay for the studio. We got to we got to. Because people, you know, they think they sometimes forget that it's not the voice acting that's expensive, it's the studio that's expensive and they've paid for a certain amount of hours and you're paying for the studio, paying for the engineer. You're paying for, you know, the guy in the office director. Everything is cost money. And so they want to go, go, go. And so that was the thing. So because Japanese had usually got the luxury of spending a lot of time on each line and now the English got that luxury and now the Japanese is like, OK, we need you to do this many lines. And then of course, Mahiro-san gets in there, he starts listening. He wants to like rewrite all the lines in the studio. And they're like, yeah. My first time. Yeah. And so I think it was kind of a culture shock for him in the sense that, oh, wow. You know, you have to deal with. And but like it from the end, I don't want to ever do this again. Oh, so you're OK with me doing it again. You just don't want to do it again. OK. Sounds like your culture problem. One other thing though that you do other than localization is you're in a band. It's called The Primals. Oh, yes, I am. How did that come along? Do you explain the primals to me? OK, so the primals are in Final Fantasy 14. You know that the summons are called the primals. Yeah. And so the primals are a band made up of Soken, the music director and composer on Final Fantasy 14. Very cool guy. Three studio musicians, pro studio musicians from other bands in Japan, all of them are, you know, have industry veterans. Right. And then myself as lead vocals. And we we cover the songs for the primals raids. Actually, it's not just primals anymore, but they're of the raid music. We do rock covers of those songs. So cool. In a live venues. That's so sad. Was that just so can being like, I want to start a band. Yes. Yeah. We are like, we are like that sounds like a story. So it was very cool. Yeah. Really cool. Oh my God. So Ken is he is crazy and I have so many stories I could probably tell about. OK, but I probably cannot tell here. I mean, there's so many different things. He's so rock star. So Ken is a rock star. He does feel like the rock and roll lifestyle. He is and it's it's crazy because he is like his dad was like one of the top trumpet, Ters trumpet, Trumpeters, Trumpeters. Yeah, like like first trumpet in the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, what I was like one of the like if you talk about like, you know, in the world of trumpets in Japan, everyone knows Soken's father. And so he grew up like hardcore classical and background. He plays the trumpet. He plays the trumpet in one of the songs in the world as well. So he can still play the trumpet. But as all children that are forced into like classical music, they hit a point around high school or they're like, book this shit. Oh, I'm going to do my own thing. Grab, you know, grabs a guitar, grabs a, you know, a rage against the machine CD and his life has changed. Yes. And the thing is, though, like Soken has still has those classical roots. And I think that's why his music is just so amazing. It goes in the soundtrack of 14, for sure. Yeah, you have these, you know, tear jerking, beautiful, you know, piano, violin, quartet type of classical masterpieces. And then you have these absolute heavy metal bangers on the same soundtrack. And they're both done by Soken. Yeah. It's just because he just has this wonderful background and he embraces both sides and embraces everything in it. And so I think he was making music for 14. And again, because 14, it being, you know, the global game, Soken was like, I want to have lyrics with some of these songs for these battles. Can we do them in English? And he just came to me because I'd worked with him on previous titles. I worked first work with him on Mario Hoops three on three. I was about to say, I didn't know this. I did a little bit of research before this episode. I didn't realize I've been hearing your voice since I was a kid because you voiced black mage in Mario Hoops three. Yes. That is not I mained black mage in that game. What is this game? You don't know Mario Hoops three. It's a Mario basketball game that was developed by Square Enix, I believe. Yes. Developed by Square Enix four and you voice the black mage. Sorry, Michael voice black mage. So I've been using black mage. I did not know this game existed. You didn't do it. I fucking love this game. This is a great game. Awesome. This is a great game. This is like a really underrated Mario sports game. That's so cool. Yes. And so it was one one day a lot of time for a lot of the games that Square used to make. A lot of times there wasn't especially for a smaller title. There wasn't a lot of budget. Yeah. For you know, large cast. Yeah. And so a lot of side characters for a lot of smaller games would be voiced by people in the sound department, people on the dev team or people in localization for the English versions. Yeah. And so for this game, myself and one other localizer got called in to do the black mage and the white mage and the ninja. And so yeah, we did the voices for that. And when we're doing the voices for that, that was the first time I worked with Sokan. And then he eventually moved to 14. I eventually was on 14. He saw me. It's like, oh, you're the dude that I worked with. I'm sorry. I'm still on three. You know English. Can you write some lyrics for this song for me? And I think the first song I did was the Good King Mogglemog. Yeah. The 12th. And I wrote the lyrics for that. And it was like, well, thanks for writing the lyrics. You can you can sing, right? I'm like, not really. It's OK. We've got enough, you know, the power of science. He uses that word so much that we can use the power of science to make it sound like you're amazing. And so he put on a lot of effects and. Have you had to practice a lot of singing as well since then as well? Since. Yeah. It's it's it was supposed to end there. It was supposed to be that kind of one off thing, but the users enjoyed it. So he made another song, Titan song. Like, this time, Koji, we need you to like, you know, just like shout and rap. Oh, don't worry, power of science. We'll make it. And I did this for like three or four songs. And there were some that I didn't sing on either, like some with female vocals, so they got someone else to sing them. But I did it for about four or five songs. And then all of a sudden we have four or five songs and so can it's like. The main album. Yeah. Fan fest is coming up. We want to do something at fan fest. What's a cool way to end fan fest? And so can it was like, oh, you ended on a concert. Everyone's gets all excited. And like, okay, who's going to do the concert? We don't have enough money to, you know, and so it gets like, we can be the band. Sounds like the lack of money is more opportunities for yourself. And then, you know, he's like, OK, and I'll play guitar because I can play guitar and we'll get these hard. These musicians and like and Koji, you can sing. It's like, I thought we were just doing this in game only. Like, ah, don't worry about it, Koji. Power of science. There's only so much the power of science can do. I'm going to be up on the stage. Oh, yeah. And yeah, and we and you know, we did a performance. I've born. Yeah. Before fan fest, we did a we did a trial run with only Square Enix employees at a small little like, you know, all near the Square Enix office. And we invited all the people from localization in the sound department in and they're just like. And then we did fan fest and fan fest. America Fan Fest in Europe. I think it was in London that year and then Japan. And those are in like front of 3000 people and it was just like. But it's quite a big crowd. That's massive. Everybody was just like. And so I was like, OK, we got to keep doing this. And since then, you know, so Ken just keeps creating more music. I keep writing these lyrics. And now we have and yeah. And so last month, Budokan. Yeah, that's pretty cool. You know, yeah, it's like, you know, Bon Jovi, Cheap Trick, The Primal. You know, I just playing the bedokan in front of 10,000 people. Two days. But yeah. And like we had like 20, 20, 20 some songs. You're a rock star. Yeah. Yeah, I don't see myself as a rock star. But it's undeniable. But it's so surreal, though, because. Literally after being on stage and up there and singing and literally the next day I'm in the office. It's got to some of this. That's awesome, though. I love that. It's it's crazy, crazy. So it's like, I just need any excuse to perform. Yeah. Any stage experience, I think it helps so much with any creative field. I feel like it just gives you such a better understanding of like presence and knowing how to like really use the space. I think sometimes online, you kind of forget that that you can kind of just take it for granted that you don't really need to say or do much. Yeah. The minute that you're up on stage and like you have eye contact with like. Yeah. Yeah. You know, 2000 people, you know, I got I got. I got. Yeah. I got saved up. Okay. Into like this mode of like, OK, this is like a completely different mindset. Yeah. I was like, how to try to occupy. And you know, most of the time people are like, yeah, but there's always that one guy that's just standing there like. Yeah. You're trying to convince him. You're trying to convince that one guy. Two hours just. And I was like, OK. And you're like, don't let it get to me. Don't let it get to me. Yeah. And then and then finally you get to like, you know, you get to the end and they're on core and the guy's like. Oh, yeah. I did it. I did it. That's so sick. Oh, man. Oh my God. That's so cool. It's impressive that you joined Square and you've just been at Square sets like talk about just hitting the home run right away. I mean, yeah, like and that's like when I joined there were so many more people, the people that were there that I joined, most of them are gone. I mean, only the legends kind of remain in that sense. And and everyone else is so it's just like it's weird because, you know, it's. And I imagine it takes a lot of mental fortitude and obviously it's everyone already knows that working in a lot of Japanese companies can be quite difficult if you're not used to the culture. So I imagine on top of that with translating and then there's also fan responses and like that pretty adds like a whole another dimension to navigating the office scape that is, you know, the Japanese workplace. It's it's very different. It's very different. And we spoke a little bit off camera about and on camera as well about people who, you know, people always mentioned like, I'd love to work at Square or love to work at the Nintendo or these companies, you know, they're kind of play a massive role in a lot of people's childhood. And I remember asking you, you're like, what is your advice for somebody who wanted to get into doing localization? And it seemed like you're like, OK, there's a giant list of prerequisites that need to be done. And also you're not going to, you know, the pay is not going to be like life changing. Yeah. You know, it's Japan. And the wage is what it is. Yeah. It sounds like it is a labor of love and very difficult because you need to be good at Japanese. You need to be familiar with the franchise of some what. So you need to be a good writer. Yeah. And then communicate. Also know how to translate, which is different from knowing Japanese. It's very like, it sounds like how the hell do you find anyone? It's hard to find people because and on top of that, you know, being in Japan as well, like, yeah, there are a lot of people. And again, with, you know, this is it was different 20 some years ago when, you know, you didn't have Zoom calls and you couldn't work remotely and you had to literally be on site and be here to be able to do those things. Now the world has opened up a little bit. And so I know that on Final Fantasy 14, we have some translators that are in Australia. We have some that are in the West Coast, America. We have for the French and German versions. We have translators that are, you know, in Europe as well. And they're working, you know, in tandem with the team. This is something that, you know, we couldn't have had a long time ago. But I mean, if you do want to work at Square, yes, there's a lot of things. Again, and everyone assumes it's going to be like, you need to know the Japanese. Yes, that's like that's a given. Yeah, that's that's more. And that's because it's not just not just for the translation either. You need to understand the Japanese because you're going to be communicating with the dev teams. That's a big thing with Square Enix is that we get to communicate with the dev teams. That's the whole reason, you know, we have the localization department in-house is because we want the translators communicating directly with the dev team and getting that insight. And so you have to be a good communicator. And that means you have to have that Japanese. But also, like you said, you need to be a good communicator. You need to understand how Japanese people communicate. You can't you could be the greatest at Japanese. But if you don't grasp that communication culture that's in Japanese, you know, knowing how to speak up to someone rather than down to someone, how to, you know, knowing when to not say a whole sentence and where to cut it off so that you can imply things. And yeah, I mean, you, I know, I'll understand that and having, you know, because a lot of the people that you're working with are people that haven't worked with foreigners before. And so they're going to if they hear you speaking Japanese, especially if it's good Japanese, they're going to expect you to act like a Japanese person and not realize that, oh, because you grew up in a different culture, maybe you have a different way of communicating. They're going to expect you to speak like a Japanese person. And when you don't, they're going to be like, I don't want to work with this person anymore because he's the rudest person I've ever talked to. So it's being able to like navigate that communication culture and understanding what you can and cannot say and kind of push down some of the things that maybe you grew up with being able to communicate in a way that is going to be on their level. And so that's very important. Then again, the English is very important. I mentioned, you know, that I had to take that creative writing. Yeah, I think it's a hard skill before going into translation and because ultimately, again, your users are not going to ever see most of your users. Some of your users will, but most of you are never going to see the Japanese. They're only going to see the resulting English and they're going to compare it to other games that they've only seen in English. And so if your English level, the resultant translation isn't up to par with a uncharted or up to par with a disco Elysium. Then people are going to be like, this isn't as good. You know, the writing isn't that good on this one. And so you have to make sure that that source, that final source language, that output is at a high writer's level. And so that's another ask. Not only are you asking someone to be a master at Japanese, not only do you need a major in Japanese, but you need a major in creative writing and a major in communications. Yeah. And you also have to like games and play a lot of games and, you know, have all this background information on these things. And then on top of that, learn all of these things about voice recording. Learn all these things about mocap and all these things about, you know, programming and macros that you're using when you're doing the translation. Working with the team as well. Yeah. That's all. I imagine it's pretty quite hard to, yeah, like you mentioned, find people. Yeah. And then you tell, oh, and also we're going to pay you shit. How about it? So you've been really like this shit. I mean, that's like half of what I read on Reddit is like, I really love Japan, but I don't really want a third of my salary. Yeah. And it's like, I say, I say pay shit. I was like Square Enix, you know, pays well in Japan. It's just that when you compare that to America and then add the, you know, 150 yen to the dollar exchange rate, and all of a sudden you have interns at McDonald's making more than, you know, lead artists, you know, some different country, your companies or whatever. And so. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seems like an absolute. So there has to be love there. You have to love it. Yeah. You have to love it and you have to. But again, you, if you over here in Japan, you're not living in America. You're not living in a Seattle or a San Francisco or Austin. You're not, you know, so you're, yes, you're getting paid less, but the cost of living is significantly lower over here. You know, you can get a sandwich for, you know, still like four bucks. Yeah. Exactly. You go to. And also you have such a good quality of life, generally, like daily, you know, which I think a lot of people, there's not a dollar value to that. I think it was a walk to your, whatever, everything you like and be able to commute everywhere. Exactly. Safe as well. Yeah. And like this. Everywhere you go. Yeah. Like I think a lot of people, they factor in just the, well, I can buy a sandwich like you mentioned, like, and it's like, well, you also have to drive there, pay for the fuel, keep the car, get a horrible loan on the car. Like all these things. And there's a lot more to it that I think people forget sometimes. But yeah. And then, you know, taxes are a mess as well. Oh, you're American. Oh, God. I'm so sorry. Yes, we have to file every year. Which is ridiculous because you have to pay someone, presumably all you get to do yourself, which is time out of your. Yeah. Yeah. What's a fun? I have to ask, and I know you'll hate me for asking this, Final Fantasy 14. I recently obviously played the first around reborn. Yeah. And I'm saying I'm playing the game. And one thing that obviously stands out is that it, you know, that doesn't quite sound as polished as I'm trying to find the right words. I mean, in no effect. No, no, no, no, no. It's an obviously I'm playing this and Final Fantasy 14 is a massive, very dedicated fan base. I mean, if you haven't played Final Fantasy 14, one thing that people have on their cards is that you can put like a little punch in time for when you're going to be online, which is so, I mean, to me, that screams these to the extent of how social and how. It's like community to work. Yeah. Like it's like, I will be on these times. I'm going to raid here or I'll head down and hang out. Like it's a very, you know, the fans absolutely passionate about it. And the one thing that I just kept getting when I was playing it, because I'm streaming it, is that I promise this all gets so much better in the next patch. And it's like, 50 hours in. This is a full Final Fantasy game. And obviously, I, you know, I know there's obviously certainly so much you can say about it and, and, you know, but I'd love to know maybe a bit about. What's the backstory? What's the backstory about? As much as you can tell, I don't want to, you know, I'm not trying to rock the boat or anything. I just, I think we've seen the amazing work. Love to know about maybe sometimes why it doesn't quite work out. The journey. Yeah. It was, it was a journey. It was a journey. It's just like a big team. It was, you know, the 11 team decided to make a new online game. And so that was what 14 would be. We call it 1.0. And it was. There were things that could have been done better. I think they tried to do a lot of things that had worked in Final Fantasy 11. But maybe didn't realize that the world had kind of moved on. And they thought that they could just do maybe the same things. Right. And so there are a lot of things that felt a little bit outdated. You know, the grind, some of the UI elements, level design, things that worked in the EverQuests and the Ultima Onlines and the Final Fantasy and worked in the older generation. But weren't what people now expected because in between FF 11 and FF 14, you have World of Warcraft that it basically taken over and basically set a new standard for how these MMOs were supposed to play out. Like, you know, whether it like, you know, quest progression, character progression, grind, things like that, that they had set a new standard. And 14 was content in maybe kind of playing it safe and doing the same thing that they did with FF 11 while kind of making it powering up in areas such as like graphics or, you know, yeah. But it didn't work out. The game was poorly optimized. There wasn't enough content. There was a little bit too much grind and a lot of players were just like, this doesn't feel as clean as WoW does because WoW lets you do all these things. Why can't we do these in 14? And so and, you know, the performance was bad. There was like characters weren't appearing. You could only get like 10 or 12. You know, it's an MMO, but you only get like 12, 10 or 12 people on screen at the same time. And like it was there were things that needed to be polished. And people were leaving were excited for it, but they were leaving it in droves. And I think the company was like, we need to either we say, OK, that's it. Cut it or we need to remake it into something that's. And Yoshi P comes along and he's like, dude, this is an FF and it's a numbered FF. You can't cut this because that would be admitting defeat. You can admit defeat on maybe a smaller IP or whatever or something. He's like, this is final fantasy. You've got to have your pride. We have to do this. And he came in and he just was like, OK, he came in with a plan. He came in with this massive plan of not only how to make remake the game, but how to keep users engaged while we were making the game. So we have this basically split the team into two teams, the team that's working on the 1.0 version. Oh, wow. Doing updates for more than a year to keep current players engaged while in the background, creating an entirely new game, a realm reborn. That's based off of this game, but it's going to be using a new engine. It's going to be using new assets, but have sort of the same story. Stories complex. The story is complex. And so my gosh. And so, yes. And so you get and ultimately, you know, the two kind of merged together and they kind of resolved into it. But you have basically you have this team that created an MMO from the ground up in like a year and a half, which is absolutely crazy. So you think about it, games take like five, six years to make and that they were able to do that while also updating the original game that now no longer exists. All that stuff, all that work that they did in that year is gone. It's like it's on YouTube. You can watch the cut scenes of it. It's still one of the good, the greatest turnarounds in like gaming really. Yeah. But it's to go from a panned game to kind of really finding its place. It's so being so relevant. And I think it was and it's just you have someone like, you know, Yoshida-san come in with this vision. And that's not to say that, you know, the people that worked on the original version had no vision. They had a vision. Yeah. It's just that that didn't end up working out. Yeah. And then Yoshida came in and understood what needed to be, what needed to happen. And he was, you know, he came in and said like, OK, the first thing you need to do is we need to make it more like, wow, because wow is what everyone expects. So that's our baseline. We get to the baseline and then from there, we're going to expand. Right. Like getting, getting 14 to the same level as wow was the first step. And then from there doing something new, because I think a lot of times developers always want to do something different from the beginning because they have their pride as well. They don't want to be called like copycats. But in this case, it's like, OK, we got to get to the baseline. The baseline. We're going to start with the race race. And so and that's and again, when he came on to the team, it's like his passion was so infectious that you could just people were like, oh my God, this guy, maybe he can he really can do because like, obviously he's like, oh, we're going to take this game and we're going to make it in like, you know, 18 months. And we're just like, uh, are you sure about that? Yeah. But that's a lot of sleepless nights. A lot of us had already put in a lot of sleepless nights to get to 1.0. And when you work so hard on something and then only to see it kind of fail out of the gate, that is so soul crushing. Yeah. But yeah, like, you know, players will pick up a game. Ah, this fucking sucks. Or like the media will be like, oh, this is a terrible game. But like behind every review and every, you know, there is like literally, you know, the lives of 200 people or 300 people or 150 people or however many people on the team. And their lives for like five years, pouring their souls into the game. And each of them having pride in what they did. And yeah, sometimes the parts don't fit and sometimes, you know, things fall. And so when you should be came in and said, I want to make sure that everything you did, all that blood, sweat and tears that you put into that, we want to make sure that you get something from that that the players know. And so we're going to make this good so that you can be, you know, redeemed. Yes. And so we're just like, fuck yeah. And yeah, there was a lot of sleepless nights over those 18 months. Yeah. Like it was absolutely crazy. It was absolutely crazy. But you know, worked out. Turned it around. I mean, when you were in the process for releasing it, was there any inclination or you're like, people might not like this when it comes out? Or you knew, okay, okay. I wonder what the fight is. I mean, it depends on what team you're on. But localization, localization, sound and QA, we're basically at the end of the line. So you could see more of the complete picture. So a lot of times the battle team will only ever see battle or the environment team will only ever see the environments they create. They don't see it put together because they do their work early on. And by the time it's all put together, they're either moved off on another project or they're doing something else. Basically the first people that see everything put together is localization, sound and QA. And so the moment of moment where you're like, oh gosh. And there were some people on the team that were like, that went to the dev teams and were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is, you need to change this. This is going to be really bad. And like the dev team, you know, people would get, again, it was a matter of how you say it. And also probably too late into the process. And so it was, it was just, you could see it. You could see kind of the, the train is kind of going, the bridge is out. And he was like, you're pulling the brakes, but you can do the math in your head. You know, it's not going to be, you're still going like this. That sounds awful. But, you know, it was, it is what it was. And then, but having the opportunity, because most of the time it ends there. That's it. All those people go home, they either let go, they move on to the next project, or the company goes under or whatever. We had the lucky situation that there was somebody that raised his hand, Yoshi P came in and said, I'm going to change this. The company believed in that gave him, you know, the one chance to do it. And then he made sure that it happened. Which is such a rare opportunity. Yeah. When does that happen? It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. I was going to say, like, Final Fantasy 14 is one of the very rare games where, you know, you play around reborn and, you know, around reborn feels old when you play it. And then you look at the newer content and it's almost a different game in title. Even from the localization standpoint, you're playing 14, you're like, this sounds, and it's an older experience. And then you see the new stuff, you're like, oh, wow. Is that, I can't think of another game that has the same characters, but a different voice for the same characters in the same game. Right. Like, I don't even know if that's ever been done. It's crazy because, yeah, like it was crazy. The beginning, yeah. And the beginning, like, you know, again, it was a very kind of rushed experience. I mean, absolutely. You make these decisions, you choose these actors, and then you realize, you know, afterwards that like, okay, maybe this didn't work. Maybe we can do it a different way. A lot of times actors, I mean, the game has been going on for more than 10 years. And so actors, they get old, actors get famous, actors decide they want to go off to Nepal and, like, you know, sit in a Buddhist temple for a year because they want to become one with nature. That's fine. There's lots of reasons. But people come and go. And so you have to do those changes. Like, around Reborn, we did, the original was in 1.0, we had used actors in Hollywood because that's all we thought we had. That was the only option that we thought we had. We didn't think, you know, we had the option of recording in London. But we wanted to do British voices. That was, you know, the feedback that we got from the team. The team was like, well, we should do it like, you know, British voices, high fantasy. And so we're like, okay, but we have to do LA. So you go to LA and it's like, how we need British actors. Like, don't worry, we got you. Like, literally, like the director's like, we got you, we got this, we got this. And they just brought in a bunch of American actors that did British accents. But again, and this is on me, me not understanding that these are not authentic accents. I was just looking at the acting. And while the acting, I think, is solid in a lot of places. It's just the accents are like, it doesn't quite line up. And obviously, as a native speaker, you clock immediately when someone says one word out of place that's like, and that was the thing. And then we realized that afterwards. And then once a realm reborn did take off and we're like, okay, we need to do this right. So we made the decision to, from the next expansion to switch up our recording studio. We went from LA to London based. You know, we cast actors to make that decision. Yeah. The game was still like people, the fans trusted Square and after to do that. Like that's in any other game, I think that would be quite the massive risk. Yeah. It was massive risk. We did it as well. But it was a matter of we knew from after a realm reborn like, okay, this game is serious. It's going to, it's going to last. We could kind of tell that we actually maybe did it. And so if we did it, then we need to be serious about it. We can't keep kind of trying to fool everyone with the British accents of doing LA. We need to do this properly. And so it was a question of, okay, if we do this, there's going to be a skip. People are going to notice that the voice changed. So do we either keep the consistency, but at a level that's maybe not as high as we want it? Or do we just kind of say, well, sorry about the jump, but at least it's way better now. And hope that the users understand that. And we decided that ultimately, because if we were thinking 10 year plan, like you should be had, yeah, if we have a 10 year plan, then yeah, let's just, let's do it. What I want to know is like, was there a moment where you guys realized once a world of Ramly Bourne came out that you're like, oh, we did it. We actually turned things around. I mean, just like the player response, because we had seen the player response at the, you know, at launch and everyone just kind of hammering it. Views, players being like, I really expected this, but I didn't get that. And you know, it was, but there were those fans that stuck with it. They're the fans that stuck with the one point X series. And so they're playing the updated content waiting because they know, you know, in the wings, we've got this thing that's going to come in out soon, a realm reborn. And I think it's, you know, you should be was very open at that stage. So we still have the original version, but you should be was like, okay, here's our roadmap. These are the things we're going to make. These are the things we're going to change. So everybody knew what was coming. And then seeing that leap, seeing first off, seeing people stick with the original version that was very, very clunky and very, very, you know, unwieldy in lots of parts, but people loved it for whatever reasons they love it. That's great. Because we put a lot of effort into that and finding, having their people be out there that really enjoyed it is good for us as well. But going from there and then launching a realm reborn and people being like, oh my God, you guys did it. And like having people say, yeah, that's pretty cool. And you know, like they're going like, I had no expectations for this. And like a lot of people were like, I'm going to wait and see what the reaction is. Yeah. And then the reaction is good. And they're like, I heard the reaction is good. Maybe I'll get it. Oh my God. It's a completely different game. Oh my God. This is really good. Oh my God. They did this and this and this and it's updated and it's, and then just, it's kind of snowballed and it was a slow snowballing. But you get to the point where it's like, oh wow, people really do enjoy this now. And you have that original core group that stuck with 1.0 and they've now come over. And then you have the people that maybe didn't like this and they've come over and they're now all together and it's loving it for different reasons. And I don't know, it was just, again, I think after hitting so low that just any kind of positive especially after putting in, you know, 18 months, I know the massive risk of having to go and home, you know, the last train almost every night for almost a year to get it there. But then seeing just the reaction is like, yes, this is what we wanted. And having people excited about it that you're like, okay, and then from there, the next expansion and people getting excited about the next expansion and just kind of seeing it snowball. And then, you know, then it hits its stride at shadow bringers and end walker and people are just like, it's cool seeing that like community event, even though I haven't played them and I don't play the expansions, but it's cool seeing how excited everyone gets for these expansions. They feel like big milestones and it's just, I mean, Final Fantasy 14 fans are extremely dedicated. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Very, very dedicated. Yeah. A fan. Wonderful. Yeah. I mean, they care. They care a lot about it. And again, when you get in the game, it's very easy to understand why I feel like, because of the social aspect of it is so strong and the cosmetics and you're like, okay, I can easily see why someone would get lost in this world. Like it's done such a good job at managing the gameplay, the story and the social element of it. It's really cool. It's really awesome to see. Ultimately, that social element is what's so important to MMO because, yeah, while you do have the content that you played together, a lot of times it's just spent visiting somebody else's house or it's, you know, like talking with your friends at a cafe. You're just talking with them in the game. You're still... Yeah, but we just get through the quests and they're like, go here, go here. And then sharing the experiences. We talked a little bit about the primals, concerts before. Like a music concerts, when people go to music concerts, they'll hear the songs and everyone loves the songs. Like if it's like an Ed Sheeran concert or whatever, they all have like their memories of the first time they heard that song and why it's important to them. Maybe it was playing when they broke up with their boyfriend and so it has, it means something powerful, but it's going to be different for every person. One person's experience with the song is going to be different from another person's experience with the song. So you're not sharing, you're sharing Ed Sheeran, but you're not sharing that experience with the primals concerts. All of those songs are linked to a raid or a main scenario quest. So everyone has experienced the same thing. Everyone cried at this point because there's this emotional beat and this song plays and everyone cries or everyone, you know, spent, you know, eight hours fighting this guy and they finally on their 20th try defeated them and that song was playing the whole time and everyone has that experience. So you have a hall that's filled with five, 6,000 people that all have the shared emotional experience with that song. And so it's completely different. And I think that's what it is. Is that like all the people in this final fantasy 14 world in Eorzea that are there in this community, they've all shared the same experiences. And so that's a stronger bond than just, you know, than anything else I think. And so that's why, and that just brings everyone together. And that's why everyone feels like, you know, they're your brothers or sisters or whatever. Damn. That's cool. Everything I know about 14, it just makes me want to get into it. It's yeah, I've had to, I've had to fight the Oshiz because other than 11 and 14, I've pretty much played every single mainline final fantasy game because it's just one of my favorite gaming series of all time. But the MMO aspect and the time sink of those games, because I know I'm going to be into those games is the only thing that scares me as a 31 year old adult that has other shit to do. But I've had so many of my friends just being like, so you're going to play 14. I was speed running through. And also I want to ask who the hell keeps making me return to the waking sands, by the way. I want to come say to this person. We got to talk. I have so sorry. The waking sense. I pray tell to the way pray tell to the waking sense. Shut up. I don't want to go back to the waking sense anymore. I take no responsibility from him. Who do I have to talk to? I want to know. I want to know. Psychopath. It's like 40 hours to get through a realm reborn. And I'm playing this and everyone's like, yeah, that's the part you just got to get through. I'm like, no other game in history is there a 40 hour part we got to get through. We have been streamlining. We have added features recently. It's changed a couple of times. I'm not just one where they're, where they've cut out the amount of quests you have to do in the early game. So it's been we've streamlined those early parts because they understand that because that's a big thing, especially with, you know, an MMO that's been going on 10 years and you want to get new players in. But to tell them, OK, we have this new expansion that has all these wonderful areas, but you just have to play 200 hours. That like that's not going to sell. And so you we are looking into ways. The team is always looking into ways. And with each expansion, we add new things that basically they cut down on the amount of time that you can, that you need to play those earlier quests. They've condensed them down into only the most important ones. You can skip other things and streamline through that. So you can still see the story, still experience the characters and the emotional beats, but not have to put in as much time. The problem is, is that there's 10 years of content. So no matter how much are cut out, there's still going to be 10 years of content. So on the side, class as well. Yes. So one thing I'm curious about as a professional localizer is we had a discussion a while ago about, you know, when I grew up, professional translation, leasing anime was everything needed to every word needed to be translated, even if there was some, you know, Japanese sayings or Japanese words. And I see the evolution of localization where I'm not sure how it is in gaming, but especially in anime, there are some words that are slipping through the crack now in terms of, you know, maybe sensei or senpai, or san being left in like not only the subtitles, but even the English dub for some shows as well. What is your take in terms of, do you translate over a Japanese word? Where do you think that line should be? I mean, it depends on the game, I suppose. It depends on the setting of the game. Imagine, I can't imagine, you know, if the setting of the game is supposed to be, for example, like in, you know, 16th century Poland, you don't want to have a, he's my sensei. I mean, yes, probably he's a great, he knows a great swordsman and he was your teacher, but I don't know if you'd want to put a sensei in there. I think there's an anime in 1600 Poland, orb. Orb, yes. It's about the like Catholic Church, Church in general. It's by heliocentrism. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, the thing is though, is that, you know, language does evolve, you know, we do borrow words. That's, that's the thing with English. English is just the borrower of all languages. I mean, you look at the lexicon of Japanese, they say that it's probably around 80,000 words. When you look at English, it's like 400 to 500,000. It's because we just borrow so many different words and they just become, we just keep adding things. And so if the game is taking place in a modern setting, then you would imagine, yes, if, you know, the kids are using senpai, then yeah, then they would be used senpai in the game as well. But I would just say that, like, again, words do carry that cultural background that you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't hear the word senpai in a 1930s gangster movie from America because that wasn't in the lexicon back then. So if your game is taking place in 1930s America, probably shouldn't use the word senpai. But Oh, there's a part of me that really wants to hear. Well, I mean, Tony Senpai. Tony Senpai. Tony Senpai. Tony Senpai. Tony Senpai. Tony Senpai. Tony Senpai. We're the yakuza. I mean, that would actually be a great game that I'd love to play. But I mean, it depends on what you're going for. And so I think that there is room for all of that. Yeah. It just, it's just, you have to choose because it could bring you out of that immersion. It's because it's all about immersion. Like, you know, whether it's anime or manga or games, especially games that you're playing yourself, it's about immersion. And so you're going to want to think about how do I keep the player immersed in that world? And so knowing that terms will sometimes be the wrong term. And it doesn't even have to be a Japanese term. And you know, you could use a term that's too modern. Like for Final Fantasy 16, we had a, in our style guide that I created is that we wanted to make sure that we used most terms had to be 18th century or earlier, right? That we didn't want to use anything that was too modern, that like all different terms of phrases. But in addition to that, we didn't want it to sound too hardcore and be inaccessible. So basically it was just that a lot of the words that we use now are pre 18th century. It's just that a lot of like set phrases can be modern. And so it was about avoiding set phrases that are too modern and finding maybe older equivalents to those. Or if the older equivalents are just too like cryptic, then just find a different way to say it, but not use modern term of phrase, terms of phrases, because we wanted to maintain this feel that it was, you know, it's a period piece that takes place in a like a more medieval setting. So we don't want to use modern terms of phrases. How much research did you need to do for that in terms of? We got a subscription of the Oxford English Dictionary. And when we were using new terms of phrases or words that kind of felt modern, I would go into the OED and see when was its first use. If the first use was like, you know, 1920, then we're like, oh, we can't use this. It sounds old, but actually it's from 1920. So we can't use it. And we kind of did the best to avoid stuff that was too modern sounding. I just played Final Anti Tactics. It was amazing. And the whole time reading this, some of these words I've never heard of. And I'm perhaps that's a mix of me being stupid and not educated, but also obviously, you know, a great deal of research. And I was thinking like, is this just a guy? Is there a guy on standby they have who's like the guy for older English? They call him up and they're like, all right, Smith, we need you in here. I mean, they're just like a linguist. Yeah. We do have, again, we do have editors that are specialists in older English as well. And so the translators, again, do a lot of research on their end. I know the Final Fantasy Tactics, War of the Lions remake. Sarge. And, you know, this version iteration, the people that worked on that, like Joseph Reeder and Tom Mills, they have a lot of knowledge in that high fantasy language. They've done a lot of research, done of reading in that, and they're very well versed in that. And so they're comfortable creating that. And then we have editors, again, over in the UK, the editors that worked on Final Fantasy 16 also worked on the same guys were involved with Final Fantasy Tactics as well as their voice recording. And so they're there making sure that things are consistent with things that, you know, we don't have two modern terms of phrase, or we don't have a lot of times with those British based like British voiced games, we try to also avoid Americanisms, like terms that are American and not British, we'll try to find, make sure that we're not saying autumn and we're saying fall or things like that. Oh, yeah, I didn't think about that. Because I've been like just completely ruined by all this, I guess, being all over the internet and living in Japan. And I don't know which words I have that are, I'm like, is it depot or depot? I forget which one I say. Or like some of these words, I'm like, which one do I say again? I don't know. And then I'll talk to my mom and she'll be like, how dare you. But it's so cool. It's interesting. But and then it's a good point that you mentioned about, you know, sounding too old as well. Because I remember I took an American friend of mine to the Globe Theatre to watch Shakespeare. And after the show, they were like, wow, it's so cool. You must have been able to understand everything. I was like, I didn't understand anything. But I know Hamlet. So it was okay. Yeah. The words they were saying, I did not understand. Or even the way they're phrased. Well, that's also like poetic as well. Sometimes it'll be a sentence that you might say, but in all the wrong order to make it sound more dramatic or the word, it's like when you sometimes can see online, you can see Bible verses that have changed throughout history. Obviously, that's why the references that's been around for a long time. And you can see like, okay, like 1600, I kind of can get it. And then 13, you're like, what could they say? Yeah, it doesn't even look like it. But obviously historical context and what's happening at the time. And, you know, I have the Norman showing up yet. All this kind of stuff really, you know, changes. And, you know, that's kind of when it starts to get into like, oh, that's the English that I start to recognize. And again, I mean, there's always the, okay, we want to make it unique. So we want to go super hardcore and we want to get maybe we should. But then that's the thing is like, you know, I am guilty of it as well, especially like when I first started out and we're like, okay, we're going to do this high fantasy. Okay, I've read George R. Martin. I need to throw in as many archaic things as possible. People don't need to understand this, this, this, and this. And it gets to the point where it's just like, yeah, you know, maybe there's a handful of people that are like, oh, yes, I know this word from the 13th century, but everyone else is just like, I don't know what it means. And I think the biggest, like from 14, the biggest one that always pops up is that must needs. I must needs do this. And that's the thing is like, it's used in, in, you know, the song of ice and fire novels a lot. And so I was like, oh, well, George R. Martin uses, I can use it too. And then they put it in and then every probably like two or three months, there's a forum post that says, oh, this should be, this should be, you just must, there's an extra needs in there. And I'm like, I knew actually. But then, but then you start thinking about it. It's like, wait, so if 90% of the people are like, this is a mistake, then maybe I shouldn't just be using this anymore. And then there is language. And so that was the thing with Final Fantasy 16, like learning from maybe going a little bit overboard on Final Fantasy 14. For example, there's this character, that goes way overboard. He just ye old English, Grenfair, hardcore. You don't know what he's saying. The thing is, that's his character. He's a scholar that he's speaking above you in this scholar. It works for his character. It works for his character. But the thing is, we went way overboard on that. I apologize. It's been a little fun though. I'm like a creative standpoint. I'm just really fun. It's not fun anymore. No one wants to translate Rael Andjay. Oh my God, Koji, you ruined it for all of us. But that's, you know, so learning from that and then going to 16, like, okay, we're going to do high fantasy again. It's like, well, what is a good point? We want it to sound authentic. We want it to sound like a period piece. We don't want it to sound too modern, but we don't want it to be alienating for a lot of for our players. And so we looked at what, you know, the Game of Thrones TV show did. Whereas, you know, if you've read the books, the books are a little bit more hardcore on the archaic language. But if you watch the TV show, there's it's a little bit easier for the masses to understand. Yeah, the same thing with like the last kingdom. They use a it takes place in again, 11th century Great Britain. So you'd think it would be super hardcore. They make it feel. Yeah. Medieval. I mean, it's not about the feeling. It's about the feel. And so finding that balance where finding the words that yes, these are modern words, but actually they originated back then. So it's okay to use them. And then finding this balance that feels like it's going to feel natural. So people aren't being like, oh, it takes me out of it. Yeah. Too much of it. That's just really difficult to do. And we were blessed with a lot of time because we were working on the script so early that we could go over many, many different iterations. Whereas I know a lot of games, they'll be like, here's the script you've got like one month to translate the whole thing. And you just kind of get on the page what you can get on the page. And you know, yeah, because it's about polish. I mean, you spend six months on anything. It's going to get six months of goodness if you spend a week on something. Yeah, it's going to get a week. So yeah, this reminds me of not exactly a sad conversation, but a humbling conversation. Because I went back to England recently and you know, one thing that's always in language as it evolves is like slang terms, right? Yes. It's every region has their own slang terms. And so one of my friends is a primary school teacher. And you know, one of growing up in England, one of the biggest things I was proud of was all of like the slang terms that we had growing up. Right? We also have different slang from north to south. Yeah. Yeah. Stuff that you would like, like what? Yeah. And I was I was I was talking to I was like, Oh, what are what kind of slang terms are the kids using nowadays? And she's like, Oh, all of the slag, we don't really have any more many new British slangs I know of now. Everyone just uses internet slang words now like skibody and Ohio and Riz. And I'm like, Oh man, that makes me sad. Because that's like that's like part of our culture identity that just being homogenized. Also like the regional identity. Yeah, the regional identity as well. Like you hear someone say that one term and you're like, Oh, you're from my name. Yeah. Now it's just like, Oh, you are just on the internet. I'm like, Oh man, that's sad man. That is true. It's kind of marginalized slang. Because of the internet, just like kind of like connecting everyone. Yeah. I'm looking forward to the next Final Fantasy game that's going to have skibody in it. Maybe if they make another world's end with you, that would work. But No, no, it's cool hearing about the whole like, you know, the timely language that you guys use because in 16, I noticed that with, and I forget the character's name, the Odin's character. What was his character Barnabas Barnabas when Barnabas does this whole like monologue, it's very like, you know, very poetic. And you know, at first I was kind of like trying to wrap my head around what the hell is this guy talking about? But it was really cool because even though I didn't fully understand the full context the first time through, it did such a good job of like really, as you said, like painting that setting of like, Oh yeah, this character, even though this character does not talk the way that I am used to, it is so believable in this world and it just like adds that flavor and vibe in such a nice way. But at the same time, I was like, shit, I need to get up addiction. I enjoy learning the new words. I did too. I did too. What does that mean? Yeah, but so many times I have to pause the cutscene to be like, what was that word? I mean, that was done on purpose. That's part of his character. I mean, if you get further in the story, you kind of understand from his character why he's speaking like that, why he's different from everybody else because of that background. And we wanted that again, that to kind of be present. It's a story time. It's a story time to his language, his word choice, his timber, the way he's talking is all part of that character, not just, you know, way he looks or yeah. What's an act? I'm sure there's some what is obviously the localization job is so I mean, it's such an obviously omnipresent thing, but misunderstood, I think part of gaming. What is like the biggest misconception that you feel like you see often with your work? That we have a lot of control over what we do. That I think people online, paint it like you just take the rails. You're like, it's mine now. I'm running off with it. I'm just I'm taking the text, putting in all of my ideals and my backgrounds and changing the story. I'm doing whatever I want with them, completely ignoring what's there. And it's not that it's not that it's also that a lot of decisions are not made by Locke at all. They're made by other parts of the teams and whether that be the dev team, sometimes it's the publishing side. You have brand managers that are like, oh, you need to, you know, do something this way. We don't want you to know we've had even on Final Fantasy 16, there were a couple of lines that we were asked to rewrite because they used terminology that was deemed unacceptable. Again, understandable because they're like, we have a Square Enix brand and Square Enix brand, we don't use these terms and we understand your M for mature and you get to say these things as opposed to a teen game. But that said, it's still we have this image to uphold. And I get that from a business standpoint, from a creative standpoint, I'm like, oh, come on, man, let me have some fun. And, you know, I understand. But that's the thing is that there are so many different and the also like ratings and how much that plays into things. So a lot of localization decisions for like, you know, censorship in games. And we this is, you know, a very touch of subject because, you know, you do have that original vision and it's important to keep the original vision. But then you have like a ratings board and a ratings board is going to be like, well, if you keep this vision, we're going to give you an M rating. And the business side, they have all their numbers. They know that, you know, if it's an E for everyone, they can get this many sales. If it's a team, they get this many sales. If it's an M, they can't sell it in these places because these stores don't sell games that are rated M or and, you know, they have all of that data there. And so you have these reasons for maybe wanting to change content because if you don't, then it could get you run a foul of ratings boards, it could get run you foul of other parts of your company, other, you know, distributors and other countries. There's so many moving parts that and all of those decisions are made again, not by localization. Localization doesn't get to decide how many units we're going to, what languages we localize for. That's not a localization decision. Which languages? That's projects, that's publishers. And so a lot of decisions that look like they may be localization decisions are in fact, you know, decisions made by the entire team or maybe even not even the team, maybe the company, maybe not the developers, but the publishers. And so it's a lot more complex than everybody says that like, you know, the localizers aren't just like these people that are at, you know, in this other little, you know, office somewhere. And then we get the final game and we just like cut it and chop it in red markers and here's your game masses. Like it. It's like, that's not what happens. Yeah, yeah. The really popular word that's been online is obviously and and certification. It's been really, it's a word term that's thrown around a lot. And obviously with with gaming becoming quite fast-paced moving in a sense as well with indie games and stuff. And recently, obviously, a silk song had a, I think a Chinese localization that was really, really bad. And you know, that's them getting a lot of negative reviews. Is it because the, you know, the do you feel that because of the internet, there has been more localization, but at the same time, there's also been a bit of a disregard for it in terms of like, we'll just figure it out afterwards. I imagine you, you know, you spent a lot of your time kind of honing your craft at that, doing this and working so closely with Square that I'm sure you probably have a lot of thoughts on localization and the, you know, the industry and whatnot. But obviously, whatever you can, localization is, it's very, I mean, it's a craft, but it's also, it's easy to be put under the microscope just because it's, it's kind of a language thing. And also, I think that it's unlike maybe programming or art or, you know, creating music that are, you know, things that require a lot of skill. Language is something that's so close to everyone. And if you have a dictionary or a Google, then yeah, you can kind of see what's going on in the other language. You have more visibility, I think, in localization. So it feels closer. So maybe because of that, it's easier to pick out, you know, the things because, you know, if I look at, you know, a screen of code, I'm not going to be like, if I'm from a color, yes, maybe I'll like, oh, this is spaghetti code. This is terrible here. But like most of us are just going to be like, eh, yeah, of course. Yeah. But when you see the words on the screen, that's easier to kind of like, and so maybe that just again, because it's more visible, then it's going to get a lot more, you know, scrutiny from the masses. And there's a lot more games now. There's so many games that I can't imagine there is as many like localizes, there are people who want to make games. Yes. Right. So I imagine it's kind of a bit of a tough thing. Yes. And I mean, there is, I've heard this from a lot of people in the industry that's like, they want to have this game that has, you know, a million Japanese characters and they want to translate it. But like, there's literally no one to translate it. Like the localizers are all taken up. Because to translate a million characters, you're going to need, like, if you say that an average person from slow to fast, I mean, you can get super fast people that can do like five, six, seven thousand. Sometimes you can get people that do like 10,000. But on average, maybe, you know, three to four thousand is what you want if you want a good localization. Maybe even less than that. If you want like, you know, super detailed localizations, I'm just throwing out numbers now. But like, even if you do have high end 10,000 characters a day, you can do the math. How long is it going to take to do the million? So you're going to need a team of a bunch of people that are, and then it's the too many cooks problem that, yeah, you can have a team of 10 people doing this to get it done. But it's not going to be consistent. You're going to need to go over it, have somebody edit it, make it sure everything's consistent. That takes people, that takes time, that takes money. And then you have a thousand other games that are coming out at the same time, also wanting to do this. And like, I've had people saying like, we can't find people to localize our game because there are not enough localizers and then like, okay, well, then we could just do it in AI and now you've opened another. I'm very scared about having to just play so many games of writing. Like, what the heck is this? I'm dreading the day. It feels inevitable. I was just with the, you know, the problems you've mentioned. It's like, obviously some of these people are going to have to, you know, they already have a choice. You can't get a localizer. And especially if you want to do like smaller languages, or like, you know, I'm not smaller languages in the sense of languages with a smaller user base. So like you want to do maybe like, you know, a Northern European language. Oh, well, I've done, I've played games that are in Walsh before because I speak fluent Walsh. And there's some Walsh studios that will do it in Walsh, but it's like, you know, that must be more of a labor of love than a... You're doing it for love the game. Yeah. You know, than actually necessity. And I imagine there's probably some government grants or benefits that come along with making that in Walsh specifically. But yeah, not a lot of people are playing this in Walsh. But I mean, it's fun for me because I get to show this language off to people, but I can't imagine a lot of people are. Yeah. And I mean, and all of that, again, it ultimately comes down to, you know, it costs the same amount to translate a game into English that it does to translate the game into Welsh. And how many sales are you going to get from the Welsh version as compared? And so companies will look at it in that sense. And so as they said, because again, it raises the price of the whole game because they're, you know, you're paying for all of those localizations in a sense. And so, but then it's like, okay, you have users on one hand you want to please the users and make sure and create a product for them that's going to be the best product that's out there. But then you have dev costs and games are getting larger. Hundreds of people, hundreds of devs, five, six years of development and adding to all that. I mean, people, a lot of people don't realize how expensive like voicing and localizing the game into each languages. And then you look at like, okay, then you have a low, you localize a game into 10 languages. And all you have the game localized. And at the last minute, they changed one Japanese line. You now have to pay for that 10 more times from all the languages, like just one word can end up costing, you know, thousands of dollars to change or whatever, because, you know, there's so many moving parts that are involved with that one change. And so it's, I mean, yeah, it's but then every day, but I was like, but I don't want to pay $80 for a game. That's kind of where it's coming to now. So you have to, game companies are now going to be in this point where they're forced to like, okay, we need to keep our game prices down. What do we need to cut then to keep the game prices down? Let's cut localization. But then many of you cut localizations like, oh, this writing is terrible. I never got to write this game. Of course, because it's like, you know, that the quality is not going to be up there. So it's interesting time. It's a very interesting time. Things are changing very quickly as well. Very quickly. And I mean, you know, myself as a localizer, I'm like, oh my God. Well, but it's luckily I have the primals. So if well, it sounds like there's no shortage of work is why God forbid. Got to pay the bills. Oh man. But I mean, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. Very, very, really cool. Very enlightening podcast. Is there anything you want to shout out to our audience? Actually, I do want to shout out one thing. This is going to be a shameless pitch. So Final Fantasy 16. We are releasing our first and only lore book official Final Fantasy 16 lore book logos. Damn. It's up for preorder. Now we just released a video of the round of a roundtable of myself and some of the voice actors, Ben Starr, Stuart Clark and Gav, Chris York. They all wrote letters and journal entries for the logos. We had them do actually some readings on this on this this video and that's up. But preorders have begun and it's 360 odd pages of new lore for Final Fantasy 16. The world of Valestia. It's basically a compilation of a lot of the notes that my hero son, the creative director had compiled together for what we call the Bible, which is basically, you know, what we create the game off of the guy that we create the game off of. And a lot of that stuff never makes it into the game. And so we took all of that great information. And then he allowed me to take some other characters and things that weren't fleshed out. And I was able to go in and flesh those out. So we have sick. It's over 90% new content. So it's not just a rehash of what's in the game. It's not just like we didn't take the active time lore and just copy it into book form. This is mostly new content talking about your favorite characters, places, history. We have like the anthems for not just Rosaria, but also the other nations, little bits and bobs. It's absolutely amazing if you enjoyed Final Fantasy 16 and want to know more about its world. You don't need to have played Final Fantasy 16 to enjoy it. You don't need this book to enjoy Final Fantasy 16. But if you've already played through 16, I hope this will make you want to play through it again with a different perspective on a lot of things. You get to understand why Torgall is the way Torgall is. We get a little piece on like Torgall's history. I mean, the lore behind why Torgall is a good boy. Yes, why is Torgall a good boy. And yes, this is coming out. We wrote this in English first. I basically did most of the writing along with a bunch of like the voice actors as well as the people from Schlokk, John Taylor. So everybody that worked on 16 is a part of this. We brought in, brought even one of my favorite fantasy authors, Alex Phoebe, who worked on a book called Mordue, which is one of my favorite books. He turned out to be a big Final Fantasy 16 fan. I got him to write a little bit of stuff for the lore book. So it's a huge collaboration of a lot of different people who was written in English first. Actually, they translated it into Japanese again. So kind of in line with the game English first in Japanese. Unfortunately, because of the printing, Japanese is actually going to come out first because the printing is here in Japan and they don't have to send it anywhere. But the English version needs to be sent to America. And so the Japanese version is coming out in December, I think the English version is coming out in March, but it's already ready for pre-order. I think it's like $44.99. We'll have the link in the description as well. Definitely check it out. And so yeah, that's my pitch. Thank you. Thank you for the change. This was such an insightful episode. I think we're all really stoked that you offered to come on. Thank you. This is a lot of fun. I will come back anytime you need me. I'm really close. I was like, you know, a 10-minute training. But hey, look at all these patrons on the screen. You want to point to your favorite patron? He's been with us in the beginning. But hey, if you want to support the show, then head on over to patreon.com slash Trash Taste. And also every single week over on the Patreon, we have Patreon exclusive content. You guys can go check out a brand new one right after this episode. But if you want to support the show, then head on over to patreon.com slash Trash Taste. Also, follow us on Twitter, send us some memes on the subreddit. And if you've had our face, listen to us on Spotify. And yeah, again, thank you for coming on to the show. Thank you. And we'll see you guys next week. Bye. We're growing super quick. Nice. No, my darlings. This is nice, nice, nice. Try Ionos, your digital partner at Ionos.co.uk.