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The Kiseki / Trails (of the Sky/Zero/Ao/Sen/Etc) Community Thread: SPOILERTAGS OR DIE

So this happened briefly:

RUFP59J.jpg

Got changed back to the placeholder it was initially on a few moments later: http://trailstozero.com/
 

Ascheroth

Member
HOLY SHIT ASDSDFASDFWALSKDLASDK

I just recently finished up my replay of CS1 on PC.

When I played the game originally on PS3, I was down on a lot of it. The constant black screens when leaving and entering building, fast traveling, and entering/leaving battle added up to a frustrating experience where I just shoved the story forward and ignored talking to students/residents. The draw distance was a big immersion breaker with things only a very short distance away popping into view and made certain areas feel like ghost towns. The limited bonding points were immensely frustrating.

That all changed with the PC version. Save/loads are instant. Traveling is instantaneous, as is entering and leaving buildings. Unlimited bonding points with a simple edit meant that I could actually see the scenes with the all-important Class 7. And Turbo... Turbo changed everything. Thanks to that, doing all the rounds at the school and the residences after every story beat was extremely entertaining

Which brings me to the conclusion that the school segment is easily the best part of CS1. It essentially takes cues from Crossbell and a place like Grancel and morphs the life paths of each NPC to follow a student body in an interesting and fun way. Stripping away all the annoyances of movement from the console release allowed me to fully enjoy the setting of each area and revisit places I totally ignored in my first playthrough.

Class 7 is now a much more fun and interesting class, and Falcom did what pretty much no other RPG or Japanese game that shoehorns in unnecessary middle or high schools is good at doing.... creating a fun and interesting school setting.

Also the replay just made me realize how incredibly unbalanced the battle system is. Almost all the MQ you get in the last 30% of the game is useless! oh well.
Yes, the school setting and the NPCs is easily my highlight in the game as well.
 

ResourcefulStar

Neo Member
The PC ports of Cold Steel were announced on the same day as the release date of Sky the 3rd. I wonder if we're going to get the Zero localization announcement on the day the release date of CS II PC is revealed. It would allow one marketing campaign to smoothly transition into the other and keep the Trails series in the news. /wishfulthinking
 

Loz246789

Member
*HEAVY BREATHING*
Man I don't want to get my hopes up too much, but at the same time I'm ready to be *very* excited at a moment's notice. (And if they localise Zero they have to do Ao at some point, right? Holy cow.)
 
CrimsonFist, can you verify any more info about the page update? If not, I won't get my hopes up. The circumstances behind a potential new PC version of Zero, in English via XSEED, are numerous and sometimes confidential. We all know this by now. XSEED Twitter jokes about no game teases are one thing, but this would be another.

I still think XSEED licensing the Geofront edit of Zero's fan translation for an official release is viable and commercially preferable to doing the hard work themselves.
 
CrimsonFist, can you verify any more info about the page update? If not, I won't get my hopes up. The circumstances behind a potential new PC version of Zero, in English via XSEED, are numerous and sometimes confidential. We all know this by now. XSEED Twitter jokes about no game teases are one thing, but this would be another.

What I posted is pretty much all there was, I've had page monitor on that page for a while, got a ping and saw it had changed to that screen I posted, then got another ping a few moments later and it was back to as it is now.
 

Moonlight

Banned
That'd be extremely disappointing to me considering I don't really feel the screens they've shared have met a reasonable standard of quality I've associated with Trails localizations, especially one I'd be paying for.
 
That'd be extremely disappointing to me considering I don't really feel the screens they've shared have met a reasonable standard of quality I've associated with Trails localizations, especially one I'd be paying for.
Which screens? The ones from this blog post? Even if so, XSEED won't take the Geofront script and insert that as is. They've done a lot of editing on Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection (which should be on your wishlist this fall) using the fan translation as a base. Geofront's also been selectively re-translating portions of the English script they obtained, meaning any weird shit which Zeromonkey ordered Guren and the other contributors to mangle will have been fixed.
 

Moonlight

Banned
Those are the ones I mean, yeah. It's certainly a lot more readable than the original translation, but pretty much all of them read extremely awkwardly. I'm not actually familiar with how thorough the editing job is with the Zwei translation but it'd strike me as a pretty big job to go through all these lines. A lot of the problem for me isn't even specifically that it's not conversational, it's just kind of lacking in character voice. Which is fine for a fan translation, as a product, not so sure?
 
It's certainly a lot more readable than the original translation, but pretty much all of them read extremely awkwardly. I'm not actually familiar with how thorough the editing job is with the Zwei translation but it'd strike me as a pretty thorough job to go through all these lines. A lot of the problem for me isn't even specifically that it's not conversational, it's just kind of lacking in character voice.
I'll agree to disagree, since the lines (especially screen 9) read almost like typical Sky lines. Context makes a big difference in dialogue interpretation; imagine if this situation involved 3rd, rather than Zero, and English players only had FC for comparison. You should get more specific here or contact Supremezerker and Catasplurge (the current Geofront editors) about what pops out in the examples they posted. I'm not sure what's awkward to read aside from Randy's line, which could just be him talking awkward in that situation.

The Zwei edit looks pretty thorough, but I know the fan translator finished Tom @ XSEED's work on the Xanadu Next script around five years ago...her style matches XSEED's fairly close.
 

nivorae

Member
those domains have been up for a long time, i remember there being a discussion on it early 2016 on the xseed forums. They're just placeholders.
 

Moonlight

Banned
"I assure you, I'll continue to work hard to not bring shame upon the MacDowell name." and "it's our duty to expose their grim and revolting delusions for what they are." both got a bit of an eye quirk from me. Those are just kind of awkward to say, and I'm reasonably sure those lines could be rewritten in a way that feels like someone would actually be saying them. Or in a way that doesn't give you a decent sense of how it was phrased in Japanese. Lloyd's line in particular is a bit stilted, I really think you could have picked something other than 'grim and revolting' for that.

Again, it's a great improvement from what we have now, and definitely impressive as a fan work, but I mean, I'd still much prefer something XSEED handled themselves.
 

Mivey

Member
"I assure you, I'll continue to work hard to not bring shame upon the MacDowell name." and "it's our duty to expose their grim and revolting delusions for what they are." both got a bit of an eye quirk from me. Those are just kind of awkward to say, and I'm reasonably sure those lines could be rewritten in a way that feels like someone would actually be saying them. Or in a way that doesn't give you a decent sense of how it was phrased in Japanese. Lloyd's line in particular is a bit stilted, I really think you could have picked something other than 'grim and revolting' for that.

Again, it's a great improvement from what we have now, and definitely impressive as a fan work, but I mean, I'd still much prefer something XSEED handled themselves.

I think the issue is the "grim and revolting". The line sounds like it is part of a short speech to his team. If so, you would want something that is succinct and effective. So just drop the adjectives altogether, or pick something simpler. "sick delusions" sounds more natural.
The line about the Macdowell name is super awkward, but I presume that's the intent, making her look overly formal.
At the same time, the game has probably millions of lines like that, each ideally requiring a lot of thought and multiple passes. Fans, who still have to work a day job, will obviously not get the same results as professionals working on full time.
 

PK Gaming

Member
Nope, can't even be pessimistic about it.

That's fucking awesome news.

Well there's a bit of a worry; are they going to leave Sen III alone while they work on Zero? Not sure Falcom will be too keen on that; they seem intent on getting that game localized as fast possible. They'll probably still rely on Xseed but you never know...
 
Nope, can't even be pessimistic about it.

That's fucking awesome news.

Well there's a bit of a worry; are they going to leave Sen III alone while they work on Zero? Not sure Falcom will be too keen on that; they seem intent on getting that game localized as fast possible. They'll probably still rely on Xseed but you never know...

XSeed on Crossbell whilst NISA releases Sen III around the same time.

The best timeline mixed with the worst.
 

Moonlight

Banned
Weren't they working on 3rd and CS at the same time? I distinctly recall reading somewhere that they started on 3rd as soon as SC released.
 

Loz246789

Member
I'm not too worried about sen 3, I'm sure that's still a high priority for xseed. It's probably similar to how they released SC and sen 1 at around the same time, however they managed to make that work. (For example, maybe they've been working on zero since the third released, and now that sen 3 has been released in Japan, they're at different stages of localisation that require different people. I dunno.)

Edit: beaten, but you get the picture
 

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
The domain registration isn't the news. The news is that a placeholder coming soon page appeared for a few minutes, implying that work had started on an actual website.

That's really tenuous though, depending on how XSEED's servers are set up they could have just as easily dropped it into the wrong place and then fixed it.
 

supremezerker

Neo Member
Those are the ones I mean, yeah. It's certainly a lot more readable than the original translation, but pretty much all of them read extremely awkwardly. I'm not actually familiar with how thorough the editing job is with the Zwei translation but it'd strike me as a pretty big job to go through all these lines. A lot of the problem for me isn't even specifically that it's not conversational, it's just kind of lacking in character voice. Which is fine for a fan translation, as a product, not so sure?
Ouch haha
 

Gu4n

Member
Weren't they working on 3rd and CS at the same time? I distinctly recall reading somewhere that they started on 3rd as soon as SC released.
The translator who worked on The 3rd worked on Cold Steel I and II before that, with XSEED's editing following suit.

Also, thank you for your feedback on the Zero fan translation. In subsequent updates we'll double-check to make sure the screenshots we share work out of their contexts.
 

Moonlight

Banned
Ouch haha
Sorry if I was coming across as harsh! I really wanna emphasize I appreciate what you and everyone else working on the patch is doing, it's just, I'd be more comfortable with a top to bottom professional localization if these games were ever being sold here in a more professional capacity.
 

supremezerker

Neo Member
Sorry if I was coming across as harsh! I really wanna emphasize I appreciate what you and everyone else working on the patch is doing, it's just, I'd be more comfortable with a top to bottom professional localization if these games were ever being sold here in a more professional capacity.

It's fine, I appreciate the feedback. I just want this to be the best it can be, so criticism is always welcome.
 
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