timetokill
Banned
I know, we're all annoyed that Professor Layton's sequels haven't been released in the US, or even announced for release. Meanwhile they're making movies and starting up a second trilogy in Japan. Salt in the wound for sure. I mentioned me theory regarding this in passing in a previous thread, and it garnered more attention than I was expecting. DavidDayton asked for sources or an explanation, and since so many seem to be wondering where the hell Layton is, I figured I'd give it it's own post.
I'd been hearing from from friends in the development community that Layton was difficult to localize for the western markets, but a lot of the information was a little vague, and understandably so because I don't know THAT many people in the development community and I don't know ANYBODY from Level-5. So to start off I'm going to say that this is obviously a theory, but I think I have it pretty well covered. Obviously if anybody knows anything different, please let me know
And I apologize in advance if somebody had already noted this for everyone, it just seemed to me that most thought that Nintendo was just refusing to release the games stateside out of spite. Anyway, without further ado...
The theory: The reason for Professor Layton's localization delays is not due to Nintendo of America/Europe refusing to release it, but rather that Level-5 is either having difficulties shoring up the appropriate puzzles for the game, or doesn't feel compelled to do it immediately. A significant number of the puzzles in the Layton games are logic puzzles that rely on knowledge of Japanese culture, or are word-plays specific to the Japanese language, or have some other aspect that makes a simple translation impossible.
Let's start with a little background: Professor Layton is a puzzle game, we all know that. The puzzles are actually based on a collaboration between Level-5 and a series of puzzle books called Head Gymnastics, which have sold over 12 million copies in Japan. Level-5's president Akihiro Hino was a fan of the books growing up, and so enlisted the help of Chiba University Professor Akira Tago, the author of the Head Gymnastics books. (source: wikipedia, Famitsu interview)
The books gave Level-5 2,000+ puzzles to work with. However, Hino wanted 30+ NEW puzzles designed specifically for the first game. Tago noted, "When I heard that I was amazed. Its not that easy to create the puzzles I have done for my books." They spent some time making puzzles, and then remaking them, and so on -- with some difficulty coming from the fact that they wanted puzzles that could use the stylus and weren't purely logic puzzles.
Now, let's fast-forward to the American release. Gamespot did an interview with Hino, where a very interesting tidbit is dropped:
This quote lets us know several things:
It doesn't really make sense for Level-5 to make puzzles that are extremely American-specific. For starters, they're a Japanese company and making such puzzles would be difficult. Furthermore, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to make a bunch of puzzles that couldn't be used in other forms if they could help it -- especially considering the difficulty involved in making puzzles. So what is Level-5 to do?
Let's keep the following in mind: Making a puzzle doesn't just mean changing text around. It means new art assets for the puzzle in particular, new dialogue for the Professor and Luke or other characters, etc. It may mean programming some specific stylus interaction (though this is fairly unlikely). In short, it's not something that a localization team may normally do.
So, with all this in mind, what would be the easiest way for Level-5 to get the product ready for shipping overseas? To use puzzles that are more international, and more importantly, puzzles that they already have. Luckily, Level-5 conveniently had another source of puzzles: the sequel! Professor Layton and the Curious Village was released in America on February 10, 2008. Shortly before, on November 29, 2007, the sequel (Professor Layton and The Devil's/Pandora's Box) was released in Japan. Level-5 took the easy route and simply swiped some of the more universal puzzles from the second game and used them in place of the Japan-centric puzzles in the first game. They would have already had the assets finished and the text written, so all that would need to be done is text translation -- something that can be handed to a localization studio. Voilà, now they have a game ready to be shipped to the US.
Level-5 is moving onto the fourth game (and second trilogy) in Japan, and we've yet to hear anything about the second game and its release in the US (besides the indication that the sequel would be coming in the back of the first game's instruction manual). What we could be looking at here is yet another case of Level-5 not having enough puzzles to go around for a second game, and furthermore an even great difficulty in generating puzzles. Why? Well, let's look at Modojo's review of the first Professor Layton:
I can't comment on the reliability of Madojo, but if true this presents a problem for us hoping for a localized Layton 2: the puzzles in the sequel are more intertwined with the narrative, meaning simply grabbing random puzzles from a sequel is less feasible. At the very least, it means that the number of potential puzzles that might be swiped from later games is diminished, because they ostensibly wouldn't make sense in the narrative of the second game. This means they might actually have to make specialized puzzles for western audiences... or they have to wait for more games to come out to widen the pool of potential puzzles to take.
Another piece of information suggesting that perhaps even Layton 3 doesn't offer enough in terms of "international-friendly" puzzles comes from Chris Kohler's impressions of Professor Layton 3 (The Last Time Travel):
Again, we see the strong presence of puzzles and riddles that rely on the Japanese language itself. If the "joke riddles" aspect is true, it could also point to difficulties translating it for the western audience -- jokes or riddles such as that often rely on wordplay as well.
Anyhow, that's it for my theory. Hopefully you enjoyed it -- especially because it's so damn long -- and I hope I provided enough "evidence" to support my claim, at least for the GAF community :lol My hope is that with the release of the fourth game, Level-5 might finally have enough puzzles to make the sequel work for the US and Europe. Unfortunately that means that we might only be finishing the first trilogy when Japan finishes their second (their 6th game makes our third possible) -- and this means we may never see the second trilogy at all. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it... as for now I'd just like to get the damn sequel.
Thoughts?
I'd been hearing from from friends in the development community that Layton was difficult to localize for the western markets, but a lot of the information was a little vague, and understandably so because I don't know THAT many people in the development community and I don't know ANYBODY from Level-5. So to start off I'm going to say that this is obviously a theory, but I think I have it pretty well covered. Obviously if anybody knows anything different, please let me know
And I apologize in advance if somebody had already noted this for everyone, it just seemed to me that most thought that Nintendo was just refusing to release the games stateside out of spite. Anyway, without further ado...The theory: The reason for Professor Layton's localization delays is not due to Nintendo of America/Europe refusing to release it, but rather that Level-5 is either having difficulties shoring up the appropriate puzzles for the game, or doesn't feel compelled to do it immediately. A significant number of the puzzles in the Layton games are logic puzzles that rely on knowledge of Japanese culture, or are word-plays specific to the Japanese language, or have some other aspect that makes a simple translation impossible.
Let's start with a little background: Professor Layton is a puzzle game, we all know that. The puzzles are actually based on a collaboration between Level-5 and a series of puzzle books called Head Gymnastics, which have sold over 12 million copies in Japan. Level-5's president Akihiro Hino was a fan of the books growing up, and so enlisted the help of Chiba University Professor Akira Tago, the author of the Head Gymnastics books. (source: wikipedia, Famitsu interview)
The books gave Level-5 2,000+ puzzles to work with. However, Hino wanted 30+ NEW puzzles designed specifically for the first game. Tago noted, "When I heard that I was amazed. Its not that easy to create the puzzles I have done for my books." They spent some time making puzzles, and then remaking them, and so on -- with some difficulty coming from the fact that they wanted puzzles that could use the stylus and weren't purely logic puzzles.
Now, let's fast-forward to the American release. Gamespot did an interview with Hino, where a very interesting tidbit is dropped:
Akihiro Hino said:
This quote lets us know several things:
- Many of the puzzles in the Professor Layton games are puzzles based on Japanese culture and language
- These puzzles cannot be simply translated to English or other languages and still retain the puzzle
- Level-5 (or a contractor) is responsible for adjusting the content of the games for different audiences
- Presumably, the amount of puzzles that had to be removed made the game feel lacking, or significantly altered the structure of the game. If we were talking 10 puzzles, Level-5 could have theoretically just removed them and let the rest ship. This leads me to believe we're talking about a significant number of puzzles.
It doesn't really make sense for Level-5 to make puzzles that are extremely American-specific. For starters, they're a Japanese company and making such puzzles would be difficult. Furthermore, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to make a bunch of puzzles that couldn't be used in other forms if they could help it -- especially considering the difficulty involved in making puzzles. So what is Level-5 to do?
Let's keep the following in mind: Making a puzzle doesn't just mean changing text around. It means new art assets for the puzzle in particular, new dialogue for the Professor and Luke or other characters, etc. It may mean programming some specific stylus interaction (though this is fairly unlikely). In short, it's not something that a localization team may normally do.
So, with all this in mind, what would be the easiest way for Level-5 to get the product ready for shipping overseas? To use puzzles that are more international, and more importantly, puzzles that they already have. Luckily, Level-5 conveniently had another source of puzzles: the sequel! Professor Layton and the Curious Village was released in America on February 10, 2008. Shortly before, on November 29, 2007, the sequel (Professor Layton and The Devil's/Pandora's Box) was released in Japan. Level-5 took the easy route and simply swiped some of the more universal puzzles from the second game and used them in place of the Japan-centric puzzles in the first game. They would have already had the assets finished and the text written, so all that would need to be done is text translation -- something that can be handed to a localization studio. Voilà, now they have a game ready to be shipped to the US.
Level-5 is moving onto the fourth game (and second trilogy) in Japan, and we've yet to hear anything about the second game and its release in the US (besides the indication that the sequel would be coming in the back of the first game's instruction manual). What we could be looking at here is yet another case of Level-5 not having enough puzzles to go around for a second game, and furthermore an even great difficulty in generating puzzles. Why? Well, let's look at Modojo's review of the first Professor Layton:
Madojo said:
I can't comment on the reliability of Madojo, but if true this presents a problem for us hoping for a localized Layton 2: the puzzles in the sequel are more intertwined with the narrative, meaning simply grabbing random puzzles from a sequel is less feasible. At the very least, it means that the number of potential puzzles that might be swiped from later games is diminished, because they ostensibly wouldn't make sense in the narrative of the second game. This means they might actually have to make specialized puzzles for western audiences... or they have to wait for more games to come out to widen the pool of potential puzzles to take.
Another piece of information suggesting that perhaps even Layton 3 doesn't offer enough in terms of "international-friendly" puzzles comes from Chris Kohler's impressions of Professor Layton 3 (The Last Time Travel):
Chris Kohler said:
Again, we see the strong presence of puzzles and riddles that rely on the Japanese language itself. If the "joke riddles" aspect is true, it could also point to difficulties translating it for the western audience -- jokes or riddles such as that often rely on wordplay as well.
Anyhow, that's it for my theory. Hopefully you enjoyed it -- especially because it's so damn long -- and I hope I provided enough "evidence" to support my claim, at least for the GAF community :lol My hope is that with the release of the fourth game, Level-5 might finally have enough puzzles to make the sequel work for the US and Europe. Unfortunately that means that we might only be finishing the first trilogy when Japan finishes their second (their 6th game makes our third possible) -- and this means we may never see the second trilogy at all. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it... as for now I'd just like to get the damn sequel.
Thoughts?
