Atlus handling the western localization of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

It's actually kind of doubly confounding, going through this much effort lol.

Maybe they expect more from some subset of fans we haven't really considered?
...
Who knows
Everything about this game is bizarre 😕

its funny seeing some people not buying it because of the changes and others now interested thanks to the localization.
 
You know, getting the VAs to re-record any dialogue they altered in the localization is kinda commendable for the level of commitment that's involved. Between that and creating new images for whatever gravure stuff they had in the dungeon, you can't say they're half-assing it.

Other than what is rumored to be complete removal of DLC without a replacement as of yet, I'd agree with that.
 
You know, getting the VAs to re-record any dialogue they altered in the localization is kinda commendable for the level of commitment that's involved. Between that and creating new images for whatever gravure stuff they had in the dungeon, you can't say they're half-assing it.

It really is insane.

But then again, I was reading people complaining about the mismatch/potential mismatch in dialogue between 17 and 18, so people will pick up on anything.

They can change the ages all they want, but that doesn't keep them from not making other changes due to "age", so I honestly don't see why the effort is warranted.
 
Out of curiousity though, is this the first time in game history that original Japanese dialogue has been re-recorded to keep up with censorship?

If so, that is quite the landmark edit.
 
All this work going into making people mad.

Seriously, at best you're just getting people who "don't care" about the changes. None of this will get positive press, or sell any more copies (not any more than you're losing by pissing off your own niche).
 
Ugh, the changes are one thing, but it appears that character voices during battles aren't subbed. That's the kind of thing that particularly annoys me; I couldn't stand it in Freedom Wars when there's atmospheric dialogue going on that you can't understand because they didn't bother to actually give them subtitles. It really sucks.
 
Ugh, the changes are one thing, but it appears that character voices during battles aren't subbed. That's the kind of thing that particularly annoys me; I couldn't stand it in Freedom Wars when there's atmospheric dialogue going on that you can't understand because they didn't bother to actually give them subtitles. It really sucks.
Yup, DOAX3 has the same problem. All subtitles and menus are in English, but scenes that aren't subbed at all obviously don't have English subs so you can't understand anything the girls say during volleyball (although some phrases I still recognise even with my little exposure to Japanese.)
 
This was advertised as "fanservice" the game with a Persona RPG and a little FE crossover. I wonder why they're going back on it. I mean, I'm the sort of person who wasn't into the pop idol life sim thing and the FE crossover is Awakening/Marth games only, i.e. none of the best characters and some of the worst characters are going to show up :p. I wanted a more 'subdued' RPG with a premise I could take seriously and, say, Jugdral and Tellius characters.

My point is: Getting rid of various pieces of fanservice is not going to reconcile me to the game and would seem to go against what the core audience this thing would have wants. Idk. My issues with the game were the trappings of the fanservice as much as the overload on it. So just toning it down does nothing for me (although it perhaps reduces my 'morbid' curiosity about the ridiculous game it was shaping up to be--so maybe it makes me less likely to buy it?!).

Who are the changes for, then? I guess mainstream Awakening and Fates fans? That is people who want a certain amount of 'anime' but don't want it all? It would be amusing if Awakening sold the soul of Fire Emblem in the direction of a certain vapid, contemporary anime style and now it's instead pulling TMS towards that mean from the other direction.

I wonder if the game had sold better in Japan, would they have bothered trying to make it palatable to that audience? Or is this just brand management and not an attempt to sell this game?

In any case, the games got too many things going against it for me, so the chance that I'll buy it is slim. People saying it's a good RPG has me a bit sad about the whole thing but I don't like J-Pop, I don't like idol culture, I don't like Awakening, etc. Hopefully if they do this again they'll make an FE RPG I want to buy.
 
Christ, the melodrama.
?

That's explicitly what happened with Awakening: it went mainstream in order to regain relevance and sales. In the process, it ditched classic FE character and narrative stylings in favor of more mainstream ones.

That's the paradigm of selling your soul.
 
I got a reply from the email I sent Nintendo, I'm sure it was a copy and paste reply but the thought was nice I guess.

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us with your feedback regarding localization choices. I can certainly understand your thoughts on this matter and want you to know how much we appreciate you sending them in.

I assure you that your comments will be added to our records for localization and will be made available for other departments at the company to review and thoughtfully consider.

Sincerely,

Nintendo of America inc.
 
I got a reply from the email I sent Nintendo, I'm sure it was a copy and paste reply but the thought was nice I guess.

Ha, almost certainly a canned response. Perhaps the intent behind it is genuine, however, and not simply a way to defuse the complainers.
 
?

That's explicitly what happened with Awakening: it went mainstream in order to regain relevance and sales. In the process, it ditched classic FE character and narrative stylings in favor of more mainstream ones.

That's the paradigm of selling your soul.
Anime isn't mainstream.
 
Hasn't FE always been pretty anime? It just sounds like all that changed was what anime was in style at the time. Old-school BioWare and Black Isle, they weren't.
 
let's not act like anime is mainstream in japan either, the FE series would make way more money if they stripped out all the characters and replaced them with pictures of CG Frozen characters.
 
I got a reply from the email I sent Nintendo, I'm sure it was a copy and paste reply but the thought was nice I guess.

It is copy and paste, I got that response during some earlier localization, probably FFV.
I don't think there is a way to make Nintendo change their ways. It is who they are.
 
It is copy and paste, I got that response during some earlier localization, probably FFV.
I don't think there is a way to make Nintendo change their ways. It is who they are.
Copy and paste doesn't mean they just forwarded it to their wastebasket, though. The cynic in me obviously thinks they did, but stock responses aren't just dismissal and obviously customer service reps aren't going to even be able to answer question regarding the motivation behind these changes. At best they can collect these complaints and forward them to the people making the decisions, which is what that boilerplate response says.
 
Yeah, you'll always get some kind of canned answer for difficult questions that isn't linked to your specific copy. I doubt the people in charge get the emails, even after a certain number, but at least they have some statistics/feedback ("hey this month we got X people complaining about content removed").
 
Hasn't FE always been pretty anime? It just sounds like all that changed was what anime was in style at the time. Old-school BioWare and Black Isle, they weren't.

Basically. Just a different kind of anime.

tumblr_mcbzsuEr3I1qhsw7ho1_500.jpg


FE4 for example was basically Gundam: Fire Emblem edition (though quite good).
 
Basically. Just a different kind of anime.

tumblr_mcbzsuEr3I1qhsw7ho1_500.jpg


FE4 for example was basically Gundam: Fire Emblem edition (though quite good).

A lot of the old Fire Emblem art I've come across makes all the males look like Tuxedo Mask. More bishies than an entire convention of fangirls could ever know what to do with.
 
?

That's explicitly what happened with Awakening: it went mainstream in order to regain relevance and sales. In the process, it ditched classic FE character and narrative stylings in favor of more mainstream ones.

That's the paradigm of selling your soul.
I'm not sure what you mean by calling it "mainstream." It arguably went niche-er actually. The main complaint many people had around Awakening (and even FE) was that it seemed to pander more to the otaku crowd.

Of course part of the "anime" conversation always has to do with your perception of modern anime. If you're like me and find a lot of it to be shit, you'll probably find a lot of FE:A/IF's design choices to be shit as well.
 
I wonder if whoever deals with finances are pulling their hairs out over in Japan because of NoA.

That had to have pissed someone off over there. Why wasn't this BS done when the game was being made? They certainly couldn't have continued to design and make this game with just Japan in mind right!?!?!? They had to have known this was going to be released outside of Japan so why not make the changes then or just design the game so no changes had to have been made! I hope Nintendo wasn't that stupid but I know better.

Edit: Ugh. They announced the damn project outside of Japan before any work even started. How could they have been so stupid to create this situation.
 
I wonder if whoever deals with finances are pulling their hairs out over in Japan because of NoA.

I mean, those same guys greenlit this entire concept in the first place. They may as well have thrown the budget of the entire game into a bonfire and gotten similar results.

To whomever they may be: shine on, you crazy diamonds.
 
Fire Emblem styles always change for what is more or less mainstrem and accesible IN anime at the time.

I thought that would have been clear by now if one remember when the series when from the SNES game to the GBA ones.

I wonder if whoever deals with finances are pulling their hairs out over in Japan because of NoA.
But I thought that NoA only does what NoJ says...
 
?

That's explicitly what happened with Awakening: it went mainstream in order to regain relevance and sales. In the process, it ditched classic FE character and narrative stylings in favor of more mainstream ones.

That's the paradigm of selling your soul.

"selling your soul"? dont be silly
 
Out of curiousity though, is this the first time in game history that original Japanese dialogue has been re-recorded to keep up with censorship?

If so, that is quite the landmark edit.

This is actually what I'm curious about too. I've never actually heard of this.
 
This is actually what I'm curious about too. I've never actually heard of this.
I'm kind of wondering whether or not they had recorded a line for that when they were doing the JP audio already. The game was announced as a worldwide release so they knew ages ago that this would be released in the West and all it takes is one person on the team to go "They're gonna age this girl up in the West!" when they were working on the script to make them include an alternative. That's one of the most common changes during localisation of JRPGs, after all.

Main thing against this is that I don't think they were thinking this game will be released with JP audio here. Neither Atlus nor Nintendo usually do that and it feels them trying to save money after the lacklustre sales in Japan. Either way, them actually re-recording that line sounds just as crazy to me, lol.
 
Rerecording lines does also lend credence to the changing story idea since they may have even been able to get the Japanese voice actors back for rerecording a part/parts of the story.
 
So, what *happened* at Nintendo? It seems like during Iwata's tenure as president, pretty much everything made it over largely unaltered, save for a few minor things here and there every few years (Xenoblade X's changes mostly fit this mold, save for the chest-slider being removed *shakes fist*).

But it seems like under Kimishima, Nintendo's localization policies have regressed to what they were in the 90's, and I don't doubt it's long before we see a Pub/Bar changed to a "Cafe" again, amongst other absurdities. What does Kimishima stand to gain here? Because all I've seen is western fans getting burned by large swathes of content being removed (People can call it 'Localization' all they want. It's not localization if nothing about something is translated, and it's cut. It's gutting, plain and simple) with nothing tangible to replace them. The only benefit I could possibly derive from this is cut costs since the face-rubbing thing in IF apparently comprised like 70% of the game's voiced lines.
 
So, what *happened* at Nintendo? It seems like during Iwata's tenure as president, pretty much everything made it over largely unaltered, save for a few minor things here and there every few years (Xenoblade X's changes mostly fit this mold, save for the chest-slider being removed *shakes fist*).

But it seems like under Kimishima, Nintendo's localization policies have regressed to what they were in the 90's, and I don't doubt it's long before we see a Pub/Bar changed to a "Cafe" again, amongst other absurdities. What does Kimishima stand to gain here? Because all I've seen is western fans getting burned by large swathes of content being removed (People can call it 'Localization' all they want. It's not localization if nothing about something is translated, and it's cut. It's gutting, plain and simple) with nothing tangible to replace them. The only benefit I could possibly derive from this is cut costs since the face-rubbing thing in IF apparently comprised like 70% of the game's voiced lines.
I really don't think Kimishima is going to have any effect on any kind of localization policies until NX. Virtually everything in the chamber for Wii U and 3DS was something that was already in development while Iwata was still around.
 
I don't think kimishima is involved in localization choices like this. This seems like something wholly placed on NOA and what they're telling Atlus to keep or change.
 
I don't think kimishima is involved in localization choices like this. This seems like something wholly placed on NOA and what they're telling Atlus to keep or change.

IDK, it's just weird. I can't really name any notable instances of sizable chunks of content being removed in any localizations done while Iwata was still alive. Pretty much every notable post-SNES localization changes of the magnitudes we've been seeing recently have, well, all been recently.

There is, also, another reasonable explanation I began to cover in that post though, in Nintendo's financial difficulties due to the WiiU's failure. Cutting out chunks of content deemed "non-critical" means money saved not translating and voicing said chunks. Especially notable in FE-IF's case with a majority of the game's voiceacting in the Japanese release being in the rubbing minigame.
 
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