inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
Nobody's talked about the English subtitles (dubtitles) for the Japanese script. Do I really need to air out that laundry again?
In a nutshell: The "subtitles" are in fact a transcript of the English dub, which is a problem, because the dub is comically inaccurate and literally changes characters' personalities at times. The entire thing has to be redone by somebody who isn't prone to inventing speech from thin air or tweaking things to their own personal sense of perfection. It's not just one or two things. It's effectively the whole darn transcript.
I will now copy+paste my analysis of the first significant conversation that takes place in the game. Most have already seen this, but since my thread is buried and this is the official item, I am behooved.
Japanese: ジーベル! やっぱりあなたなの? どうしてこんなこと? Translation: Gebel! So it was you? How could you do this? English script: Gebel! Tell me you didn't do this. It doesn't make any sense!
(Get used to this sort of "restructuring", because it is the literal majority of cases.)
Japanese: 「どうして」? 人間達が俺達にしたことを考えるなら分かるだろう? Translation: "How"? Considering what humans did to us, you should understand. English script: How does it not? After all the sins humans wrought upon us?
Japanese: 十年前の出来事なら、ヨハネスから聞いた。 Translation: If you mean the incident from 10 years ago, Johannes told me about it. English script: Johannes told me what they did to you.
Okay, fine, sure, leave out half of the dialogue. It was unneeded fluff anyway. I'm sure nobody playing the game in Japanese with subtitles will catch on to the fact that Miriam sure seems to be saying a lot more than what the given translation suggests. (Also: Everyone in the English cast pronounces Johannes with a "J", making them more or less unique among people who use that name. The Japanese cast gets this right.)
Japanese: 「人間ではない」っか。あなたからその言葉を聞くとは思わなかったわ。 Translation: "Not human." I never thought I'd hear those words from you. English script: What...? I never thought I'd hear those words from you.
Here the most tangible issue, beyond the routinely arbitrary decision to replace one sentence of dialogue outright, is the fact that Miriam is maintaining her stern expression during this moment, so the interjection "What...?", which is a raised-eyebrows-surprised sort of expression, is absolutely not a match for the given facial expression. And this disconnect in turn subtly redefines Miriam's personality.
Japanese: 覚えてる? それは昔、私があなたに言った言葉よ。 Translation: Do you remember the words you spoke to me long ago? English script: I was the one that came to you broken, convinced I was a monster. And you told me--
Japanese: そんなことは-- Translation: That matters not-- English script: This is nonsense.
Japanese: どうでも良くない! Translation: It does matter! English script: You TOLD ME!
Japanese: 生きる希望を失っていた私は、あなたの言葉に勇気付けられたの! Translation: I had lost the will to live, and your words gave me courage! English script: Our power doesn't make us good or bad. Our choices do.
Japanese: 「力そのものは善悪はない。力の使い方に善悪があるんだ」って。思い出して、ジーベル! Translation: You said, "It's not power itself that's good or evil, it's how one uses that power." Please remember, Gebel! English script: I'd given up on my humanity, but you restored my hope. Don't you remember!?
Let's break this down.
Japanese: Do you remember the words you spoke to me long ago? | That matters not-- | It does matter! I had lost the will to live, and your words gave me courage. You said, "It's not power itself that's good or evil, it's how one uses that power." Please remember, Gebel!
English script: I was the one that came to you broken, convinced I was a monster. And you told me-- | This is nonsense. | You TOLD ME! Our power doesn't make us good or bad. Our choices do. I'd given up on my humanity, but you restored my hope. Don't you remember!?
Here are the problems with this reordering and restructuring, beyond the basic lack of necessity of moving lines of dialogue around like this:
1: Gebel is now the one who interrupts Miriam, instead of the other way around. And Miriam's response to this interruption makes it look like she got snippy at being interrupted. Right off the bat, we've reordered personalities, changing which character is likely to interrupt someone talking in order to make a point.
2: There is nothing in the original dialogue at this moment that provides that Miriam had "given up on her humanity" or that she was "convinced she was a monster". She had "given up on living" -- nothing more elaborate than that. The extra details given in the English script were, at most, intended to be derived conclusions left up to the player to interpret, but here they are spelled out for us, which in turn signals a change in Miriam's personality where she is willing to belabor the specifics of her painful past.
3: The change made to the quoted words spoken by Gebel is an unneeded truncation which drastically steals from the importance of the given sentence.
4: The last line of dialogue has been changed from specifically Gebel's quoted words to the explanation of what those words meant to Miriam. This is an important distinction because the last sentence in this line is a plea for Gebel to remember. So in the Japanese, she's specifically asking Gebel to remember the words he spoke, and in the English, this specificity is thrown out the window and the plea to remember is either generalized or is asking Gebel to remember how his words gave her hope. Further, in the original Japanese, this section of the dialogue specifically begins with Miriam asking if Gebel remembers the words he spoke, but that introductory component is totally gone in the English script.
5: The final plea to remember has been changed to an accusation. Just another personality tweak to add to the pile.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jul 10, 2019 9:58:27 GMT -6
Going to use this opportunity to once again underscore the travesty that is the English subtitle script, which, rather than being an actual translation of the spoken Japanese dialogue, is regrettably a transcript of the English dub, which takes unceasing, unnecessary and generally arbitrary liberties with the meaning and tone of the original dialogue, reliably to the point of redefining characters outright, as I elaborated in an earlier thread.
The OP here notes that using this strikingly inaccurate English script as a base for other translations was an execrable mistake. Somebody must have lied to the team and insisted the English dialogue was faithful or something. That's really the most forgiving interpretation of the results we got. This is an area that is absolutely GOING to need to be revisited.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jul 8, 2019 13:28:35 GMT -6
The word optional was never uttered in this thread until you showed up. Forcing me to conclude that it's too much to ask to assume people automatically understand the implications of the word "mod", as seen in the thread title. Something tells me I'm going to run afoul of my incautious supposition again in the future, though.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jul 8, 2019 9:22:23 GMT -6
Ah! The classic “but my immersion!” line. Buddy, it doesn't hold a candle to the time-honored tradition of fighting tooth and nail against the inclusion of optional features because they don't sit well with you personally.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jul 2, 2019 16:21:14 GMT -6
This makes me question even more why the Switch version seemed to be the least of priorities to the team. Switch was the least of priorities because the only way to make it a priority at all would have been to make it the actual development platform, at the expense of all three other platform iterations, because the Switch is more than a whole console generation removed from the PS4 Pro, Xbox One X and PC. They had a choice. 1. Cancel the Switch version like they did the Wii-U version and hand out refunds. This action would have upset many more people than the handful in this forum claiming it would have pleased. 2. Release an unavoidably drastically inferior Switch port. 3. Develop two completely different versions of the game -- literally as different as if developing for both PS3 and PS4 -- with one of those being entirely for a single platform, despite the fact that the custom Switch version would be a very close match for a much easier direct port of the PC-originated version. Oh, and delay the final release by about another year to make this happen. There's a very good reason why the Wii almost never got versions of even the most popular games on PS3 / Xbox 360, and that reason is the basic need to create an entirely separate version of the game just for the only platform people still use that's that weak.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jul 1, 2019 0:32:08 GMT -6
Zero crashes on PC in about 70 hours of play. I use Nvidia. I have a feeling that will turn out to be the major difference. I am not a fan of Nvidia by any means, but I am a realist, and if there's one thing I don't like, it's encountering the scenario where some esoteric app is needed to get a particular game to work in a particular way, and the app only works for X because most people, including the maker of the app, use X. That's the reality that decides what brand I use when it comes to GPUs. (Well, that and my 290X literally died without warning, forcing me to buy a replacement at retail, which I absolutely did not appreciate. And it probably died because AMD happily lets their GPUs run at 80+ degrees stock, which is probably actually desperately overclocked and they just pretend it isn't.)
The point is the game absolutely does have a crash-free life on some systems, meaning crashes people experience are not necessarily the fault of the game; one could theoretically achieve just as crash-free an experience by replicating the specs of those who have no issues.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 29, 2019 5:00:21 GMT -6
There are no model nodes to support the physics (I strongly suspect). A clever modder might conceivably highjack the engine that's in place for clothing / hair (FO4 style), someday, although I'd be surprised if the results proved all that convincing. You could stay in Lili mode. The nodes are there, but the physics are fake -- baked into the animation and I think limited to idle / walking.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 21:01:03 GMT -6
Awesome. Since they require starting a save file with a specific name, you can only get one of these in any given game. Bummer. I feel like I'm being denied the option of being a completionist. A few of these are things I'd use all the time, like the space helmet that was definitely grabbed straight out of Fallout New Vegas.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 20:47:57 GMT -6
I was afraid that portraits might affect the atmosphere while playing, but everything seems to fit pretty well! The vintage clothing and portrait painting look of the photos definitely helped. But there were a few instances where I have to disagree. In particular, one woman's mug you see early on while moving up the cathedral. I almost couldn't believe my eyes. If I hadn't already mostly finished the game, I figure I'd have dived into the game's paks and conducted some diligent censorship. But I gather there are mods for this now. I'll have to look into it. I'm a very old hand with making mods for Bethesda games so I have a bit of interest in investigating the possibilities with this game.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 20:40:20 GMT -6
This is the bug I reckoned would stick on every reviewer's radar and prevent the game from getting the high scores it deserved. And it really, really should have been fixed. It should have been easy to fix.
The truth seems to be the following: The bags' physical descent is halted but this fails to register as hitting a surface. It tends to reliably occur when a bag finds itself halfway stuck in the side of a wall. Leaving does not cause the bag to be collected. The bag is programmed to rot 15 seconds after appearing, but immediately before rotting, it first finally "lands" if it hasn't already. This presents the only opportunity to collect a previously stuck bag. As long as Miriam is in appropriate contact with the bag -- which depends on what shards are enabled -- on the frame of its decay, she collects it.
A temporary "fix" of forcing the bag to "land" after, say, 30 frames would have solved the issue perfectly adequately, and I don't think anyone would really have complained about bags seeming to occasionally be halfway stuck in walls. They could get the problem sorted out better later if it really mattered. I feel like this is a solid case of poor priorities. I know I wasted at least an entire hour waiting for bags to unlock during my time with the game.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 17:57:39 GMT -6
Are those medals somehow differentiated from the ones to be had on Hard mode? Nah, they're the same. Just saying I got them on the hardest setting for bragging reasons. I skipped hard to Nightnare on my NG+ using the code. Grunt. Didn't know there was a code. Will probably still do both for the sake of completionism and legitimacy. Not like it matters. Playing the game after maxing every single thing is indistinguishable from a speed run.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 15:05:23 GMT -6
I suspect the OP meant to take that for granted. Might as well also qualify, "The one that doesn't randomly self-detonate while you're playing it."
Objectively, however, you can't knock playing the thing at a rock solid 60fps in 4K, with the lower-input-lag setting on. My vote would go to that.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 13:18:21 GMT -6
Aside from getting all Boss Medals on Nightmare mode Are those medals somehow differentiated from the ones to be had on Hard mode?
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 11:52:18 GMT -6
When you've 100-percented the game, there's really not much left to do but to wait for the DLC. I'm impressed with the game for giving me 60 hours of continuous enjoyment, but it's too compelling a game for me to find something else to do just yet.
I already got nine of every shard that can be accumulated on a single playthrough, and of course raised each to rank 9 as well. That much isn't covered by item completion for obvious reasons.
But item completion doesn't account for the two upgraded sets of the 20 backer weapons. So that's one thing to get. (Even if I already did it.)
I only somewhat recently learned about boss medals, so that's another thing to get.
Is there anything else?
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 10:40:24 GMT -6
Best Ending Wishlist: Step 1: Zangetsu will give you a paper charm shard after the train section, which prevents Alfred from escaping during the boss battle (must use it to successfully hit him). You can then talk to Johannes who will agree to meet with Alfred at a position where Dominique cannot follow you. Step 2: Fight Zangetsu and he will still give the sword to you. Board the train and you will find the two Alchemist there as well, who will devise a plan to save Gebel. Step 3: Go find O.D., who will claim he don't know if he wants to betray Gremory and test you. The boss fight ensues with the same difficulty as the Glacial Tomb one. Then Johannes will come in and spend a bit of time in the Library. Step 4: Head back to the red moon room, where the three will set the trap for Gremory. Step 5: Go fight Gebel, which then cause Gremory to appear. Slash her with Zangetsuto. Johnnes will remain here to tend to Gebel. Step 6: Gremory will escape to the trap which you will be both sucked into the Den of Benemoth. You must fight a giant Gremory. Hopefully you have crafted High Jump. Step 7: Dominique tries to sneak attack Alfred but was wounded by Zangetsu instead. Step 8: Gremory uses her last breath to pull in a weakened Dominique into the Den of Benemoth, and a horde of giant demons are about to pour out, which you, recovered Gebel, Zangetsu and Alfred will repel. Step 9: Alfred then heads back to the village with Johannes and scold him for inexperience. Many new recipes are opened up and Alhest costs significantly reduces. Gebel is also here resting. Step 10: Chase Dominique through the Den of Benemoth into the Glacial Tomb. She will be used as a sacrifice and the fully powered Beal is summoned into this world, (a chamber directly below the centre of the Garden) and he is absolutely massive. Step 11: You find a weakened Dominique, and only Johannes is willing to save her. However O.D. shows up and heal her. However, his real goal here is to recover the book Miriam didn't return, and said Demons do not enjoy being summoned against their will. Step 12: The two Alchemists send the entire castle back, and Dominique survives but broken, both physically and mentally. Zangetsu reclaimed his sword and said he is going to mercy kill Dominique, but got stopped but the trio who had a change of heart. This probably won't happen. I, too, hope for and ending that leaves Alfred and Dominique alive. And if I may go out on a limb, I actually half-expect that this will happen. Call it a hunch, based on the character design of the latter. I just feel like the devs would find a way to keep them alive, that it was planned all along, and that the ending we have for now was never intended to be canon.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 8:15:55 GMT -6
You guys are overthinking this.
Bring out the almighty chisels. Don't fuss with positioning.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 8:13:19 GMT -6
Other people have pretty much covered this, but here's my take. The whip is situational, like most of the weapons. I found two or three spots where the whip gave the most convenient and efficient solution to what I was trying to do -- particularly within the context of grinding away shards. A good example of a different weapon fulfilling this role would be the Swordwhip, which, uniquely in the game, allows one to hit things more or less instantly from almost fully across the screen, potentially without pause, and I've found a few scenarios where that was useful.
It's worth noting that the reason why the whip functions the way it does -- a wide and unusual attack arc with an almost excessively large windup -- is likely because the developers were conscious of making the whip too similar in behavior to how it manifests in real Castlevania games. Anything besides what they ultimately came up with would probably have been essentially no different from whips in those games. Maybe a little overcautious, given the considerable direct parallels between Bloodstained and Symphony of the Night, but still understandable.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 6:42:44 GMT -6
According to the Kickstarter page, Virt will be composing two of the themes for Classic Mode I completely forgot about that. All of the content that has yet to be released reaffirms my suspicion that the poor developers are going to be stuck working on this game for just as long as Yacht Club Games has been stuck with Shovel Knight.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 5:57:52 GMT -6
PC is almost always the superior technical choice for multiplat games. Unless the game has a bad port (which, unfortunately, is frequently the case for japanese ports of some companies like Koei Tecmo) and/or you don't own a gaming PC, there's no reason to not play a multiplatform game on PC. In my experience, even bad ports are usually sorted out by the community ( Dark Souls being a strong example) as long as the game is popular enough. That said, I will note a conspicuous exception. I picked up One Piece: Pirate Warrios 3 on Steam. It has a framerate problem where it drops one frame every ... 40 frames or something (I'd have to double-check). There's nothing that can be done about it. Pretty distracting. It's a tough choice between the (probably) solid framerate of the PS4 version of that game, and the 4K60 I can get on Steam. The community probably could fix the issue but obviously a game like that isn't going to inspire the same level of interest as Dark Souls.
|
|
inherit
1631
0
Jul 10, 2019 19:51:49 GMT -6
58
asterra
96
Jun 30, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
July 2016
asterra
|
Post by asterra on Jun 28, 2019 5:51:10 GMT -6
Unfortunately there seems to be no way to view the credits from the start menu yet. Unfortunately, the credits do not provide that kind of specific information. You can find them on Youtube. (If you want to spoil it for yourself, that is.) As an aside, I backed at a high enough tier to receive the physical soundtrack CD which hopefully mentions which artist composed each song. Once I have it in hand, I will gladly indicate which pieces Virt contributed. The thing is... None of the music in the game sounds like something Virt would compose (aside from the vague possibility that it was the retro tunes, which I now understand not to be the case). The tunes Michiru Yamane composed are generally easy to spot as they mostly have a richness of melody that is characteristic of her style... even though I personally feel that she was not able to provide many pieces approaching what she created for Symphony of the Night or even Lament of Innocence. And while Ippo Yamada's contribution seems to have been mercifully limited, I still readily recognized his derivative, generic touch in the tower level and of course the fire level. Nothing said, "Aha! Jake Kaufman!" to me. Now, it's entirely possible that Virt took exacting pains to emulate the sound of his peers and I was simply not able to hear past this -- he is a genius, after all, and it's definitely the kind of work he could pull off -- but the truth is that I strongly doubt there's actually any music from him in the entirety of the game.
|
|