Daria Morgendorffer
Member
Doesn't seem like a big deal, but the way they explained how it happened makes it worse, you should QA test on all experience levels.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
SMT IV Apocalypse has unlocalized lines, QA too good, might not be fixed
- Thread starter Eolz
- Start date
hosannainexcelsis
Member
I think the presence of the untranslated lines themselves isn't a big issue, but as others have said, Hardin's explanation for the oversight raises questions about whether Atlus' localization process is sloppier than it should be.
This is my favorite part. As mentioned, the pic was already circulating, so word was already going around about that, but it seems you almost never see this quick and actually human-sounding PR response from companies.
eyeball_kid
Member
Shouldn't the developers be providing a branching story script or something to the translation staff? Why would this even fall on QA? If you have 1000 lines of dialogue to translate... translate them all? There must be some problems with their dev process, and I don't really see it as QA's responsibility to find bad translations. Though it is a problem that QA didn't even know that particular scenario existed.
Even then I wouldn't say that necessarily matters in this situation. You can't heal your AI partner character and only a few of them have the ability to heal themselves. For them to be out of commission at that precise moment is nothing but luck.
I wasn't buying it until it hit $25 regardless.
Gai Murakumo
Member
Untranslated text is quite a big oversight. If it was something minor like a few misspelled or misplaced words in a heavy text based game I would understand because I see it all the time.
Nah, then I'd have to mute the game because I don't want my ears to bleed.
And the SMT4 English VA was quite good, with all four of the main classmates being notably good. Navarre was some of my favorite delivery of voice lines in years.
That's how I feel with the dub. Luckily someone already figured out how to undub it, I'll buy the game after I finish DQVII. Playing two lengthy RPGs at once is too much for me.
Hearing the English language spoken on a daily basis must be a crisis for you then.
Nah, only in Japanese games; especially ones that are super Japanese, set in Japan and actually leave honorifics in the dub and text like Persona. I don't want Japanese voices in American games, or English voices in foreign games, period; I played the Metro games in Russian because hearing Steve Blum for every third male NPC got old quick.
Pretty obvious they're just fishing for likes on Twitter.
"Atlus you're such an amazing company for really caring about us gamers. Fuck Treehouse!"
That's because Liam O'Brien is awesome.
Shame he couldn't be in this one, probably too busy doing commercials for Cat Litter. or Pistachoes
cj_iwakura
Member
You always have to do this, don't you?
Well, I do indeed like this type of PR or company communication.
TheRazielim
Member
3 untranslated lines? Seriously? God damn it, this game doesn't deserve a single cent! Bunch of incompetent idiots!
thelastcrusader
Banned
This. QA is supposed to test negative cases as well as the positive ones. I managed QA for a few years for websites and applications
Edit: but 2-3 lines who cares.
I wouldn't have if the person I was replying to hadn't started with me in the first place, or if Atlus actually included dual audio like pretty much every other publisher does these days. I don't want dubs removed from localizations, people enjoying them doesn't bother me at all. I just want the choice to have the original audio and not have to pay $50 for a dub-only release. If the game actually was dual audio I wouldn't mind paying the extra as much.
Huw_Dawson
Member
WAT
There should be no lines of Japanese text left in the localisation file when you ship!
There should be documentation or a ready explanation from an original developer to cover when each line of text is supposed to be displayed!
And your QA should be exploring a wide variety of circumstances!
Your QA isn't too good! It's totally failed!
That's on Atlus Japan though for not knowing how to run a proper business.
ShadowSoldier89
Member
they admitted they made a mistake and made a joke about it. I'm not seeing the problem. Clearly they understand their was a failure in their QA approach as they admit they are making changes for the future.
I'm not sure how it is with atlus games. But from what I know, you usually have a excel sheet full of dialogue and items and a lot of it is completely unused in game. So rather than waste time translating things that arent used, you translate what is and QA testers help find the items that werent properly marked in the excel sheet and still need translated, or worse, werent in the excel sheet at all
sir_kevith
Member
I just beat IV in anticipation of this so hopefully i'm also too good at the game and never run across it lol.
That's because Liam O'Brien is awesome.
Shame he couldn't be in this one, probably too busy doing commercials for Cat Litter. or Pistachoes
Ah, so I was right, his voice was different in the trailer. I searched but couldn't find anything on a VA change.
That sucks. He was amazing.
All large games have errors in the masters, just like pretty much all first-run novels and textbooks have errors. Some are genuinely inevitable for large works. Games benefit from patches, books benefit from second editions.
These are the types of things that are fixed by the dozens/hundreds in what are usually mandatory "day one" patches, with minor fixes bundled with the larger and more vital ones.
Checking "dub" in your post history, you have about 117 instances, almost all of which are you complaining about dubs in some way. That's without even accounting for "subs", "Japanese", or "English". So he's right, you do it A LOT.
You're wrong. QA are there because mistakes will always be made dev side. I'd agree if you said that it isn't just QA's fault tho.
Unknown Soldier
Member
This explanation doesn't even make sense. You don't test a translation's completeness by playing through the game. You have access to the game's text files, you look at the text and replace JP test with EN text. After you have replaced all the text, then you play it to see if text fits in the box and stuff like that.
The best part is that it's Atlus so dub-only. Yay!
The best part is that it's Atlus so dub-only. Yay!
Wow, somebody was bored.
Like I said, you're not going to find me in threads for games that have dual audio shitting on dubs, because I just won't be listening to them. People enjoying them doesn't bother me at all, I just want the option for Japanese voices that nearly every other publisher provides whenever possible.
The Hermit
Member
I agree. And they were very straight forward.
Btw, if you see the text, imagine it says"you suck"
R_thanatos
Member
Ar tonelico 2 had the same problem . The only difference is that instead of showing japanese text , the game crashed.
Same problem in both cases ,i remember in AT2 case the localisation team played with characters so overleveled , they didn't see all the possible outcomes of the final boss.
That's Poor QA , in BOTH cases.
Oh now that i remember , AT2 also had 3 instances of japanese text at least within the game.
This is certainly on par with AT2
cj_iwakura
Member
That doesn't give you leverage to come into dub threads and shit on dub only games, does it?Wow, somebody was bored.
BuckRobotron
Member
I don't want to see this kind of mistake repeated, but a couple of untranslated lines certainly wasn't going to get in the way of my supporting a new SMT title and the generally excellent Atlus Eng dubs. Game is already on the shelf ready to go.
Can you point out where I've done that? I'm sure the dub is fine if you like them. Plenty of people go into threads for games that only have Japanese voices and driveby shitpost with the whole "no dub = no buy" thing. I'm pretty sure I even posted in that BlazBlue thread saying I thought the game should have a dub for people who wanted it. I'm not shitting on this game, mind you, I'm just lamenting the fact that it's dub only. I'm still going to buy the game, it's just a hassle having to deal with the whole process to undub it rather than just putting the cart in and playing.
Xenoflare
Member
True, but it doesn't make this less expensive for us. Regardless of reasons we are paying more when we check it out
Sega is.
R_thanatos
Member
Considering this isn't the first time an atlus localisation ( P3P , P3FEs, soul hackers ) this happenned , i guess they know , you won't care, and probably why they don't even promise a patch to correct it.
Who knows if it's the only mistake in the game ?
But i guess the mistake repeat itself , game after game and people still buy the games....
afreaknamedpete
Member
You should play the spiritual successor to Ar Tonelico, Ar Nosurge.
On release they had a glitch where practically all of the NPC dialogues were wrongly assigned to the NPC itself. You get shit like people in the starting city talking about an city occupation that had yet to happen, NPCs across the room talking to each other, old people talking like the young, even the main support cast would have shuffled dialogue.
Yeah, that was one of the biggest localization fuck-ups I've seen. Can't believe that made it through QA.
BuckRobotron
Member
Never ran into anything playing through old favorite FES and only part way through Soul Hackers, so this might have been the first one I run into. It won't ruin my day IF I run into it.
Spiral Insanity
Banned
Yes it is. Them not wanting to patch it is a big deal. People paid $50. Just fucking patch it.
Wouldn't having the QA and translators actually play the game make sense though? I mean context is important to localization and translation.
Regarding patching the issue, how is patching on the 3DS? It's been awhile but isn't the process a bit convoluted due to how Nintendo set up the system? I can only think of a few games that have patches and they are all Nintendo games. Maybe I'm totally off base here though.
Regarding patching the issue, how is patching on the 3DS? It's been awhile but isn't the process a bit convoluted due to how Nintendo set up the system? I can only think of a few games that have patches and they are all Nintendo games. Maybe I'm totally off base here though.
charlequin
Banned
Again, there's no indication whatsoever that this would be a unique testable scenario within the game. I feel like there's a lot of people blaming QA in this thread without a solid understanding of how problems like this actually intersect with the Quality Assurance process.
Good QA staff don't just do completely random stuff on the off chance there's something interesting to verify; they target swathes of gameplay in well-understood areas and make sure they function as expected to a variety of inputs. Given the situation here (a line of dialogue that would only trigger if a self-reviving NPC happened to be dead exactly when a line was said, only on this one boss) nobody should have been looking for this unless it was actually documented as a situation with unique dialogue by the developers.
QA have a very specific job that happens within specific parameters, they're not a magical bug-finding service. QA staffers on any software product are dependent on useful communication from developers and producers/PMs about what functionality exists and what possibly wonky areas should be examined to do their job; if they miss something because it wasn't identified as a target area, that's all on people upstream from them.
I mean, that is correct that people won't care about this because it's an extremely insignificant problem that has been present in all kinds of localized games before and which people who are particularly angry are mostly using as a proxy for their real problems with Atlus (3DS game price, European releases, dual audio.)
Storm Chamber
Banned
I'm not gonna lose sleep over it but when you charge a $10 premium, you're going to be judged more harshly than others.
Atlus has no one but themselves to blame.
Atlus has no one but themselves to blame.
ShinRPGamer
Member
That's because Liam O'Brien is awesome.
Shame he couldn't be in this one, probably too busy doing commercials for Cat Litter. or Pistachoes
Wait Liam O'Brien isn't Navarre anymore? Who did they get to replace him?