Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest Day 2 : Talking Lore & Localization with Koji Fox

15 Oct 2016
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Day two of the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest!

Click ahead to read a quick summary of “Talking Lore & Localization with Koji Fox”!

With little much ado, here’s a quick run-down of Talking Lore & Localization with Koji Fox!


Between Two Fernes

with FERNEHALWES
and BAYOHNE

 

 

Lore book. Lore book. LORE BOOK!

EN Localization Lead World Lore Creator Koji

After some issues with sourcing a Fern, the section begins with our Lead World Lore Creator, Michael Christopher Koji Fox! Now with more titles under his belt!

Aside from the new titles he’s been working on, what has Koji Fox been working on?

 

I AM THE LOOOOOORRRREEE – Stallone

5The Lore Book

It’s very lore-y!

Statistics:

  • Smells like Lore™!
  • 304 pages and 2.8 lbs. hardcover LORE!
  • Huge! Cockroaches, small vermin, small puppies! Lalafels!?
  • Too thick to use as toilet paper! (Editorial note: What?!)
  • No Square Enix logo!
  • 400k JP Characters, English has 1.24 million letters / 205k words! 680 words per page. A patch or patch-and-a-half of content!
  • Average word length of six, better than the US presidential candidates…
  • Maybe not puppies
  • Font style was based on which letter Q looked the best and fonts based off of fonts from the 16th century!
  • During the Apocalypse, the pages are too thick to be used as toilet paper.
  • 80% of the books content was written, not necessarily new information but newly written.
  • Not just for hard-core people, but for everyone who wants to get into the game to learn about new things. (A gateway drug?!)
  • 5 Translators, 3 Checkers and multiple QA testers
  • Took 5 months to complete
  • 1000 Bugs? Drinking and editing is not good for you!

 

7 Hells?

The origin myth and 7 hells… Funny story! Back in 1.0, there were only six hells. Six elements, six hells. At the same time, Koji was translating the voice script for Rostnsthal, a pirate. Pirates swear. Profusely.

Arr, six hells.

Six hells?  SEVEN HELLS! Now that sounds better! After consulting with the Lore Guy [Banri Oda], Koji was able to add a seventh hell just so Seven hells can be used. Seven hells definitely rolls better off the tongue!

Thalls Balls, we need more expletives!

Nald Thall was originally one Deity, but was split into two just so they can use the expletive “Thalls balls!”.

Imagine getting paid to do this!

3.4 Soul Surrender

A lot of fun to work on!

  • Deep dungeon
  • Aquarium
  • That Moenbryda help text…
  • Urianger, you dirty dog.
  • Ga Bu
  • Soken’s Music!
  • Cock…?

Soken’s Music

  • 15-2Cruise Chaser was more repetitive/Trancy/Underworld and
    not too hardcore
  • The rap for Alexander’s final turn combined the style of Pitbull and
    the lyrical genius of Vanilla Ice with a hint of Illuminati.
  • Just Soken Things. Soken pings Koji to write lyrics for Sophia’s theme just before
    Koji was heading home from work. Koji wrote the lyrics for Soken that same night!
    Ayumi then sang and recorded the song Equilibrium within an hour the next day!
  • The lyrics are based on a story about a young Myracidian girl’s prayer to a Goddess (Sophia) as she stands on the edge of a cliff.
    “When your father died, it broke the balance in your family. Your mother is no longer balanced. To restore that balance, you must kill your mother.” “Now that you have killed your mother, you need to die.” The girl then takes the final step off the cliff and the balance is restored, but leaves an empty hearth by the sea.
  • Sophia is a Neutral God. If there is too much Evil in the world, she will help the side of good to help the balance, and vice versa. Sophia is not an angry God. She needs Equilibrium.

Ga Bu

  • Everyone loves Ga Bu!15-1-2-3
  • Apparently the localization time likes him so much that an entire white board was dedicated for him!
    • The Electric Boogaloo
    • Anime is not real.

Cock.16-2

Koji Fox, talking about the Year of the Cock.

You read that right. Social media exploded with screen shots of this, we’re sure. But I digress.

No, really. Cock. According to Koji, if you Google Year of the Cock. Probably shouldn’t do that…

He’s totally talking about the animal of the year right? Right? Pretty much everyone thought it was gonna be a problem.

What Koji (briefly) referred to was the Heavensturn, which leads us to…

Red Cock Kabuto.

It’s been changed, so… let’s move on!

 

From Crimson Liberator to Stormblood

 

How did they get to this title?18-2

Guren No Ribere-ta- (紅蓮の解放者「紅蓮のリベレーター」), or Crimson Liberator[s].

Roughly translated to Crimson Lotus Colored Liberator [s] since there is no plural in Japanese.

Patch titles between English and Japanese often don’t line up, and are just a little bit different.

Example patch: (EN) Dreams of Ice – (JP) Frozen Fantasy

 

Between Koji, Oda-san and Yoshida-san, Koji is given a word to work with such as Defenders and Revenge, or he is given a theme to play around with. Most of the time, Yoshida-san wants the English title to be simple so non-English speakers can get a feel of the patch title.

For Soul Surrender, one of the early suggestions from Koji was “Air Inherent”, but Koji heard the word Air and misheard it as Hair and was worried that everyone would mistake it for hair. Something more straight forward, Soul is used commonly in video games and movies, and ended up with Soul Surrender.

For Heavensward, something more impactful and would fit the game world. 19-5-2
Heavens for Eorzea’s multiple heavens.

They wanted it to be one word, a compound word that can be read easily without the word red.

It’s not read “Storm bloooood”, but it’s a great title. Not as good as Deliverance, but good nonetheless!

 

The Q&A section is in a different post, found here!

 

Shishikura & Ritsku

Edits: Words, and more words!