The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak (Japan 2021, Worldwide 2024; PS4, PS5, Switch, PC)

[Koby]

The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak is a 2021 role-playing video game developed by Nihon Falcom. The game is a part of the Trails series, itself a part of the larger The Legend of Heroes franchise, and is the first game in the Trails Through Daybreak story arc. It marks the second half of the Trails series and is the first to be set in the Calvard Republic. The game follows Van Arkride, a young man working as a Spriggan, a mix of a bounty hunter and detective.

 

Trails Through Daybreak was released in Japan for the PlayStation 4 in September 2021. A port for the PlayStation 5 was released in Japan and other Asian regions in July 2022, along with a Windows port in Chinese and Korean. A Japanese Windows port was released in March 2023. An English version is scheduled to be released in Q2/Q3 2024, additionally being ported to Nintendo Switch.

 

 

[Koby]

Version 1.1.4 Patch Notes

Today we are releasing an update which includes the following changes:

• Improved a subset of map textures with new, higher-quality sources. Note that this increases the game's storage requirements by ~1 GB.
• Improve the shutdown behaviour of the game in some circumstances.
• Fix some unexpected cursor behavior in camp/tactics menu.
• Fix the "At Bonus" alignment for non-16:9 aspect ratios.
• Increase the safety margin for the "auto" p3a caching option.

As always for our releases, in case you experience any regressions you can revert to prior versions of the game using the Steam "Beta" feature.

 

 

[Koby]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Releases Friday. I'm excited!

[Zemekis]

Can't watch any of this due to spoilers, but what I will say is that I wish Xseed got the series back. It's been so long now that I forget how NiSA got their grubby mitts on it (lower bid?), but I want them OUT. Their localization director is a weirdo who you can tell hates the fans. I don't want to crap up the thread with political seething, so I will re-iterate that I'm super excited for this game as well! But it will be the first in the series I'm not buying physically (or at all). I will play it one way or another "digitally." If it's spoiler-free, can you share your initial thoughts here, @Koby? Previews are very positive.

Edited July 2, 2024 by Zemekis
clarification

[Koby]

50 minutes ago, Zemekis said:

Can't watch any of this due to spoilers, but what I will say is that I wish Xseed got the series back. It's been so long now that I forget how NiSA got their grubby mitts on it (lower bid?), but I want them OUT. Their localization director is a weirdo who you can tell hates the fans. I don't want to crap up the thread with political seething, so I will re-iterate that I'm super excited for this game as well! But it will be the first in the series I'm not buying physically (or at all). I will play it one way or another "digitally." If it's spoiler-free, can you share your initial thoughts here, @Koby? Previews are very positive.

I really don't understand why people praise XSEED and dislike NISA for the way both of them handled the series, because honestly most of the complaints against NISA also ring true for XSEED, and I truly believe that if things had stayed under the XSEED banner, Trails localization wouldn't be a thing anymore. They were slow. Couldn't keep up, skipped some games, was just as bad about taking liberties with translation and character quirks, and were just generally unable to handle the pressure the series put on the company, nor seemed to have the budget to really promote it.

 

XSEED basically couldn't continue the series at a good pace. We went 3 years with absolutely nothing and Falcom had a better relationship with NIS due to NIS Japan or whatever. Not to mention NISA had already taken over doing the Ys series for Falcom at that point as well. So NISA got it and plenty of XSEED people moved over to NISA to work on it. We got more XSEED folks working on it now that previously worked on Trails during the XSEED era than we'd have if it went back to XSEED now. NISA also hired Durante's excellent team, PH3, to continue handling the PC ports (and now Switch ports), who had previously done the PC ports for CS1 & CS2 iirc. And it's not likely to go back. I'm not even sure XSEED would want to take on the series again if it were even an option. Seemed like the decision was mutually beneficial at the time. I personally feel like had the series stayed waiting on XSEED, why may still be waiting for CS4 at this point if CS3 even got released, much less Reverie, and we absolutely never would have gotten Zero & Azure.

 

NISA is simply a bigger company and as such has a larger number of staff and better budgets which allows for quicker turn-arounds and far better marketing publicity, etc.. The series expanded and grew much more under NISA and their ability to better promote it and they managed to get CS3, CS4, Reverie, Daybreak, Zero, Azure, and Nayuta out since 2020? And this is on top of doing Falcom's other big franchise, Ys, which 9 came out a few years ago and 10 comes out in a few months. All XSEED managed to do in like 6 years was re-release CS1 & CS2. We even had the horror stories where working under XSEED for Sky SC nearly led to staff suicides. Now we have reports that Japanese sales for the series has been drastically dying out since Daybreak 1 and the series is largely being propped up by western sales figures under NISA.

 

Kondo has on numerous occasions stated he's happy working with NISA. So they're not likely to get rid of them.

 

Also people often like to blame NISA for certain translation inconsistencies and praise XSEED, yet XSEED was taking tons of liberties with the translation as well. Estelle is like two different characters between XSEEDs translation and the original Japanese for Sky. =P So yes, while neither is perfect, we can't really fault NISA and praise XSEED when every single issue people have with NISA, was still happening under XSEED.

 

---

 

As for Daybreak itself, I played an hour or two of it last year with the fan translation patch... The game was fun. I enjoyed the changes made to the battle system, etc.. Nice to see them try to shake things up and keep improving various things as the series goes on. But the fan translation was... not very good and thus the reason I stopped playing and decided to wait for the official English text. They added way too many edgy word choices like calling characters cunts and whores and other nonsense that isn't in the Japanese text. It's also full of very poor phrasing that often comes across like they didn't have a human involved and just ran it through machine translation, despite claims that that isn't the case. But people who hate NISA act like the fan translation is some holier than thou thing that is perfect as-is and they use it's translation to bash NISA's script seen from the recent demo released. There is a fan patch for Daybreak 2 already now as well but that one is actually incomplete and is actually stated to be machine translated, so I have zero faith it'll be even on the level of Daybreak 1's fan translation... much less be enjoyable to me.

[Dave55811]

If I remember correctly, I placed an order on this game on Playasia.  In mid-May, I think.

 

I didn't watch the videos, but there was something that was brought to my attention, and, well, um.....I hope I didn't fuck up with ordering this game.  I will certainly be playing this game with Japanese voice-acting, at least.

[Koby]

Special Patch Notes - The English Release And So Much More

*The English language support update is scheduled for July 5, 2024, at 10 am PDT.

With Kuro no Kiseki turning into Trails through Daybreak, we are also happy to release all the improvements we made to the PC version while the localization was in development. We might have gone a bit overboard with this, so the full list is... sizeable. As such, we've extracted some highlights to talk about in more depth -- you can find the full unfiltered list towards the end of this post.
 

Highlights

 

Improvements to Previously Discussed Features

As you might know, Trails through Daybreak has been out on Steam for quite a while now in Japanese. Back when we released this port, I posted about various features of the PC version here.

 

This included things like arbitrary resolution and aspect ratio support, support for high frame rates up to 360 FPS, a field of view setting, and various new graphics options for things like increased draw distance, shadow quality and resolution, volumetrics, screen-space reflections and so on.

For the current release, we've further improved the arbitrary aspect ratio support, fixing quite a few corner cases, and also made physically-based animations at high framerates act much closer to the 60 FPS baseline. You can find the full details towards the end of this post.
 

Further Graphics Improvements

On top of everything we included in the Japanese PC release, we've added quite a few new graphical features.
 

Improved Shadow Caching

Let's start with something that benefits everyone, and not just those with GPU power to spare. In this version of the game, with the new default shadow caching setting, you'll see improved shadow quality at no performance cost (or, potentially, even slightly better performance).

 

This image actually shows the same shadow resolution (and performance) on both sides, with the old behavior on the left and the new one on the right.
 

MSAA and SGSSAA Anti-aliasing Options

One issue with the previous release (and all versions of Trails through Daybreak, really) is that there is no effective way to combat some of the specular anti-aliasing in the game, especially in motion. We've implemented MSAA and, in particular, SGSSAA in order to change this.
While these settings require significant GPU performance, they do a very good job in greatly improving image quality and stability in motion.

 

 

The difference is much more extreme in motion than it is in a still image.

Note that I believe that Trails through Daybreak might be the first full game ever to actually offer a hardware SGSSAA option. (Do let me know if I missed something!)

 

Improved Static Reflections

The game features two types of reflections: dynamic screen-space reflections (for which we already offered several quality options in the original release), and static reflections based on cubemaps.

For this release, all the latter were recreated at much higher quality.

 

This results in higher quality even at the new baseline setting, and there is a further improved option available.
 

Better UI Rendering Quality at Low Resolution

This one is especially useful to people playing the game on the Steam Deck or other relatively low-resolution handhelds. UI text is now much more readable on these devices. The improvements also do carry over to other resolutions, but they are basically unnoticeable there.
 

HDR Support

We added native HDR support to the game. Note that of course the content was not authored for HDR, but this allows you to use HDR without any hacks, to set the maximum brightness, and to control the brightness of UI elements independently of the game's overall brightness.
 

BGM Info Display Option

A fan favorite returns with the BGM Info display option. This allows you to have the game display the name of a BGM track whenever a new one is played.

 

 

New in this iteration is the option to only show this information once per unique track played in each game session.

There's more that deserves some spotlight, but I'll stop here and move on to the shorter patch note format.
 

Full Patch Notes

Here are the (reasonably) complete patch notes:

• Miscellaneous fixes and improvements:
  • English localization, of course
  • Fix a potential crash in camp menu when rapidly using direct shortcuts
  • Prevent possible crash when switching the volumetric light option from "off" to another setting
  • Improve auto message advance behavior, and add an option to control the delay
  • Implement default language auto-detection from the platform (Steam, GOG, Windows)
  • Use Steam Dynamic Cloud Sync API
  • Modify physics at higher framerates to be closer to the reference behavior at 60 FPS
  • Add a compatibility warning if the mod "ENGPATCH.p3a" is loaded (This is obviously no longer necessary, but might lead to subtle issues when playing the game)
  • Allow mouse camera movement in some specific situations where it was previously disabled
  • Be more resilient when users decide to remove the .dlls for any platform (Steam, GoG, EGS); the game will now continue to work, and just disable the respective integrations
  • Slightly improve the I/O behavior of the game when looking up assets
  • Don't use scan-code lookup for extended keys; this could cause issues when trying to do things like binding an action to "volume up" (please don't)
  • Fix BGM stopping in specific circumstances in one event
  • Clear gamepad input upon controller disconnect
• Graphics-related fixes and improvements:
  • Implement MSAA, SGSSAA, and transparency MSAA, and add options for all of them
  • Implement HDR display support, including separate 3D and UI brightness options
  • New UI texture filtering implementation for sharper and higher quality UI/fonts, especially at low resolution
  • Change shadow caching behavior, significantly increasing shadow quality; also add a setting to control its behavior
  • Improved baseline quality of static reflections (cubemaps), and also offer a higher quality version of them
  • Fix the light culling compute shader on AMD GPUs (and improve performance due to less lights being considered)
  • Add an option to switch between the old (PS4-style) and new (updated PS5-style) water shading pipeline
  • Scale more 3D UI effect internal rendering resolutions according to the display size and portrait supersampling setting
  • Fix a rare issue that could lead to sporadic black pixels on water
  • Use high-quality resampling for resolution scale (very minor quality improvement)
  • Fix a 3D scene in the game which had minor missing geometry (glass panes)
  • Unlock a small number of animations that were previously limited to 30 FPS
  • Fix display mode changes leading to stars on night maps being lost until the next area load
  • Overhaul all the graphics presets, and add a new "Console" preset
• UI-related fixes and improvements:
  • Add BGM info display feature and an option to control it
  • Add option to always show the turn order in battles
  • Use a separate page for autosaves in the load menu to improve navigation
  • Shorten save titles for better readability in save/load menu
  • Apply the font size setting more consistently
  • Fix button prompts to show message backlog during dialog option selection
  • Fix draw order of close button prompt on alignment result screen
  • Fix button prompt spacing in help message when unlocking voice DLCs
  • Revamp the settings menu and categories to better accommodate new settings
  • Fix button prompt label alignment in orbment/equip screens
  • Fix date format, change character list and add more vertical space in save details in save/load menu
  • Improve mouse handling in the settings menu
  • Allow mouse hovering over guest members in camp/status and shop
  • Make button prompts on event pause screen clickable
  • Play tab change sound when switching tabs in notebook using the mouse
• Aspect-ratio-related fixes and improvements:
  • Fix alignment of character name introduction in ultrawide
  • Fix alignment of message backlog button help in ultrawide
  • Fix alignment/background of connection effects screen in ultrawide
  • Fix alignment of message log components in ultrawide
  • Enable black bars for game-over screen
  • Fix "Arc Dominator", "Pandemonium Ruler" and "Twilight Kiss" craft scaling at non-16:9 aspect ratios

Note that, due to the various increases in asset quality as well as the inclusion of the English translation, the game's storage requirements increased to ~17 GB.

 

[Koby]

Version 1.3.4 Patch Notes

Includes the following new features and bug fixes:

• Add a new setting to customize text reveal speed.
• Improve the safety of the "asset caching" feature across different hardware configurations, and make changes to it apply while the game is running.
• Fix mouse menu navigation when a script is waiting for a prompt or a button upon displaying a help message.
• Disable camp menu shortcuts when text messages or help notes are open, to prevent getting into an unexpected state.
• Fix an issue with saving that could lead to instability over long play sessions.
• Extend error logging in some cases to allow us to more efficiently investigate bug reports.

As always for our releases, in the unlikely case that you experience any regressions you can revert to prior versions of the game using the Steam "Beta" feature.

[Koby]

Really enjoying my time with this one. Not sure how I'd rank it just yet within the series, but it's fun. I'm now on Chapter 3 and it's taken me about 25 hours to get to this point. The story thus far has been great and the characters have been nice. I'm not sure what else to really say about it. Don't want to go into spoiler territory for those reading this thread prior to having played it. Already seen plenty of faces from past games. It's nice to see them show up. Makes the Trails world feel more alive when characters show up in other areas and whatnot like this.

 

Also enjoying the new features of the game. Like colored icons for NPCs that point out if they have anything new to say or not. Blue if they do, Gray if not. Saves a lot of time if you're one of those types that like to read all the NPC dialogue. I'm not, but I find the feature to be a nice qualoty of life feature all the same.

 

The orbment system took a little bit to get the hang of it, but I feel like I've managed to make myself a bit overpowered and figured out a method to be able to spam S-Crafts despite them being less easy to do so thanks to the S-Break requirements. The whole S-Craft uses a flat 100 CP is nice as well as it makes it much easier to utilize two of them back to back from a single character. I feel like I've managed to trivialize some of the boss fights that otherwise should've been tougher and sometimes worry that I should've chosen a higher difficulty option.

[Koby]

Version 1.3.5 Patch Notes

a few weeks ago Valve announced the Steam Game Recording feature, which is currently available in the Steam Beta,
 

Introducing Steam Recording Timeline Support

While basic recording works automatically, this also comes with a very cool timeline interface that allows games to programmatically add more information to the recorded timeline. And with this update Trails through Daybreak becomes one of the first large-scale games outside Valve to actively support this timeline API.

 

 

 

It works like this:

• The timeline mode (which affects its color/shading) is set according to whether you are in a battle, in menus, loading, or playing the game normally.
• The timeline description is derived from the current area name.
• A number of different events are marked, including the start and end of battles, interactions like talking to characters and shopping, opening treasure, S-Breaks and more.

We hope you enjoy this new feature!
 

Further Changelog

In addition to timeline support, version 1.3.5 also makes the following changes and improvements:

• Make the caching of assets in GPU memory safer across a wider variety of hardware and software configurations. This should solve some crashing issues.
• Unify how mouse interactions work with some popup messages. This should now always allow you to dismiss such popups with the mouse.
• Improve the material setting for some reflective materials in the Weston Department Store.
• Fix the Japanese description of the shadow caching option, and improve a few other Japanese PC menu translations.
• Implement some additional error logging to allow us to more accurately identify reported issues.

As always for our releases, in the unlikely case that you experience any regressions you can revert to prior versions of the game using the Steam "Beta" feature.

 

[Koby]

I've completed Chapter 4 and started on the Intermission Chapter now. Absolutely loving my time with this game. The translation has been pretty faithful too despite outcrys from a certain subset of subhumans who've been trying to kill the franchise and spamming up the Steam forums for the past 3 games. Outside of one specific line in Chapter 4 where Van asks whether to refer to Quatre as Mr or Mrs. (or boy or girl), and they instead use "What are your pronouns?"... that line is absolute bullshit, but otherwise there has been nothing else problematic outside of that single line. I don't even have a problem with changing Sword Maiden to Beauty's Blade, because the reasoning behind it is somewhat logical with the jokes/jabs that goes along with it at certain points in the game. In English her reaction to the name doesn't have the same connotation if it was Sword Maiden. So yeah, the public outcry by the extremely vocal minority is drastically blown out of proportion and not set in reality.

 

If you have a problem with that, you'll definitely have a problem with Dragon Quest 3 Remake where they've edited/censored Boss Trolls lips and removed genders entirely.

 

Anyhow, yes, Daybreak is an excellent addition to the series. I'd rank it in my top 3 or 4.

[Zemekis]

Thanks for giving your thoughts spoiler-free. I would have had to skip this thread otherwise. Sounds like a good game! I'm glad to hear that things haven't dropped off yet. This discussion likely belongs on the "Mako Reactor" sub-forum & I wasn't planning to bring this up...but since it's here I'll give my take for what it's worth.
 

2 hours ago, Koby said:

[certain subset of subhumans who've been trying to kill the franchise]

...

["What are your pronouns?"... that line is absolute bullshit]

I'm somewhere between you & the subhumans. You're probaby picked up in a few threads that this kind of thing gets to me quite a lot. I have no intention of helping to kill the series, but I believe that if you give wokalizers an inch, they'll take a mile. My issue is with them, not Falcom or the series. It's difficult to strike precisely enough so that only the SJWs are scared off from making changes and sales aren't too heavily impacted over something small. I don't want to financially support this release directly, so I'll probably borrow it from a friend who bought it or buy it on eBay. That way a copy is still purchased but NiSA doesn't get double-bucks. I'm not going to spend time organizing a hate campaign though. Ultimately, the game is good and that's what matters, but if it's being used as a vehicle to further gender/culture war nonsense I can't support it financially. I'm not going to come after anyone who chooses to buy it, and you can think I'm being silly, but we all have different priorities. I have my reasons.

Am I crazy? Why do I feel like it's written "NiSA" and not "NISA"? I swear I remember that being a thing.

 

2 hours ago, Koby said:

[you'll definitely have a problem with Dragon Quest 3 Remake]
......
[removed genders entirely.]

You may remember my excitement from the DQ thread a few weeks back. You're right, I'm no longer interested. It's a shame, and probably an overreaction, but the fact is that crap bothers me and it's tainted now. It's not even the subject itself, it's the act of jamming it in places where it isn't needed. I'm forced to be reminded of political strife while trying to enjoy a video game. I already have the original on NES, I'll play that.
 

----------------------------------

 

How does the combat system differ from previous games, in vague terms? I heard some initital news that it was action-combat, but I think that was retracted because it was people making assumptions based on trailers. They've just expanded the first-strike system, right? And then combat is akin to...what....Cold Steel? If it's like Reverie I wouldn't know since I've never seen that combat either.

I've also heard about the dropoff in Japanese sales...that's worrying. Over the many times I've visited, it's always painful to see so many people glued to their phones. In any given traincar or metro you can spot a few salarymen swiping away dozens of $ worth of yen on gacha. I watched over a guy's shoulder once as he ran out of "pulls", reloaded 10,000 yen (~$65 today) and blew through it in about a minute. Their AAA gaming/console industry is toast, even if I hate to admit it. It's been going on for a while & it's slow enough that many will pretend it's not happening when something like the Switch comes along & there's a good year, but...it's happening.

Spoiler

I can't even cope by blaming it on anything but the Japanese & their preferences. I could play mobile games or gacha, but I simply don't. Meanwhile, they LOVE it. Within 10 years, almost all big name Japanese series will be made with Westerners in mind first and foremost. Dark.

Are there rumors for the English release of Daybreak II yet? And would you be willing to post your completion time when you finish Daybreak? I've grown curious since grilling Dave in each of his threads

[Koby]

I'm not a fan of the pushing of woke, the indoctrination of school children, and the political pushing in cartoons and television shows. They're so concerned with pushing their agendas that they forget the point is to tell an enjoyable story. You can be gay or trans all you want, but it doesn't need to be shoved in everyones face at every moment. Ubisoft is so worried about the woke message they're now getting trashed because they're rewriting history to make Yasuke a gay black samurai based on a book some nobody wrote with no evidence to back up anything he said but then he edited Wikipedia to source his book for information and then sourced Wikipedia for the information in his book. It's really pissed off the Japanese playerbase. The Acolyte was the worst thing Star Wars ever... it existed for the sole reason of pushing that bullshit with lesbian witches using the force to create children and "all men bad and stupid". But I just feel like thus far the whole "NISA is pushing tons of wokeness in these games" is a big exaggeration. I don't recall anything in Zero, Azure, Cold Steel 3, Cold Steel 4, or Reverie that would realistically fall under this... and in Daybreak it's been a single line that could be seen that way.

 

I don't mobile game nor get involved in gatcha-based games. I play games for two reasons: For the story (jrpgs etc) or to play with friends (gta online, fallout 76, party animals, etc).

 

---

 

Reverie's combat was largely the same from Cold Steel.

 

Daybreak does lean more into action combat for trash mobs, but you have the choice to go into the normal "command" battles, which is what they call the turn-based system. It's not exactly what I'd call action either... it's like the field attacks from the later Cold Steel games onlyyou can now time dodge rolls to avoid enemies attacks. Basically for most trash mobs you'll just field attack until they're stunned and then jump into the command battle at that point for the bonuses. Or you can choose to just keep field attacking them until they die. It's a choice. Boss fights however are command-based only. So in this way it hasn't really changed as much as people initially thought. I think it helps speed up the process and gets you onto the boss fights quicker but at the same time you blaze through the fight segments of the game so it ends up feeling like there is too much time on the story and too little time on the combat.

 

The mechanics of the fights are largely the same and yet somewhat different. It's hard to put into words, but the whole S-Break system and the way the quartz system has become changes some dynamics. It's kind of a mix of the older games in terms of quartz setup and yet borrows from the Cold Steel setup as well. They bring back the lines aspect and building up elements on those lines for various bonuses. Your Arts are determined by your Arts Driver and you can modify them with Plugins. While your S-Break bonuses are based on your Holo Core, which is this games version of Master Quartz I suppose.

 

My gameplay time is always much quicker than others it seems. Some of my Steam friends playing the game were double my time when they were at the point I am. I've currently put around 55 hours into Daybreak.

 

The English release for Daybreak 2 has already been announced for Early 2025 and a Steam page has been posted. I think I also made a thread for it once that Early 2025 date was announced.

 

 

[Zemekis]

On 7/25/2024 at 8:32 PM, Koby said:

I'm not a fan of the pushing of woke, the indoctrination of school children, and the political pushing in cartoons and television shows. They're so concerned with pushing their agendas that they forget the point is to tell an enjoyable story. You can be gay or trans all you want, but it doesn't need to be shoved in everyones face at every moment. Ubisoft is so worried about the woke message they're now getting trashed because they're rewriting history to make Yasuke a gay black samurai based on a book some nobody wrote with no evidence to back up anything he said but then he edited Wikipedia to source his book for information and then sourced Wikipedia for the information in his book. It's really pissed off the Japanese playerbase. The Acolyte was the worst thing Star Wars ever... it existed for the sole reason of pushing that bullshit with lesbian witches using the force to create children and "all men bad and stupid".

Good. We're on the same side here, so hopefully you can consider my upcoming points from the position of someone who overall agrees with you.

 

On 7/25/2024 at 8:32 PM, Koby said:

I just feel like thus far the whole "NISA is pushing tons of wokeness in these games" is a big exaggeration. I don't recall anything in Zero, Azure, Cold Steel 3, Cold Steel 4, or Reverie that would realistically fall under this... and in Daybreak it's been a single line that could be seen that way.

Between this thread, one of Dave's Sky threads, and Lonewolfe's profile, it seems like the issues you have with what we're saying are twofold. 1. We didn't hold Xseed to the same standard and 2. It's likely to affect the sales of the games and damage the future of the series if we stay salty about NISA. Please correct me if I'm misinterpreting you, that's not my intention. I should add that I haven't read Lonewolfe's review because I'm avoiding spoilers. I don't know if he talks about that line or not.

I half agree with point #1. I wasn't aware of translation inaccuracies in the Sky trilogy, but if there were, it likely erred on the side of mistranslation rather than wokealization. I can accept & even enjoy some good Engrish stuff like the original FFVII/Tactics translations. It doesn't need to read perfectly for me to like something. However it does need to be free from intentional "woke messaging" as you put it. I don't need to align with the themes presented in media, nor does it need to have more Conservative messaging applied either. I just want the localizers to leave their own mental illness out of it. I don't have evidence of anything in Cold Steel IV or Reverie, but I do for CS III.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZxvQibUr3I

 

I'm sure you're familiar with this stream from the hubbub at the time (I think you referenced it before). Even if nothing in the game was messed with in the end, you can tell just how bad they want to. It's my opinion that this behavior needs to be met full-force to protect our hobbies. I feel like NISA got spooked by the response to their plans for CS III and waited until now to test the waters again.

 

As for point #2...yeah you're probably right. I can't think of a way around this for most people. I want the series to sell well and continue. That said, I don't think it's fair to make out NISA complainers to be ill-informed, parrots, hypocrites and the like. There are genuine concerns that you're not fully addressing because it might hurt the series. There are also people acting like "sub-humans" as you said, which still makes me laugh  I don't like them either. Please don't take this as anything against you, from the times we've talked or posted together I quite like you & we often agree on stuff. I just wanted to show that I didn't have parrot-brain syndrome and had at least thought things through.

For my part, here's the plan: I can just play the games in Japanese so I'll do that. For the first Daybreak, I'll import my copy. That isn't an option for most NISA haters but I'll put my money where my mouth is and buy a copy to support the release + avoid NISA. I may not be native-level at Japanese, but my wife is. Between the two of us, I'll make it through. If Daybreak II is woke-free then I'll go back to NISA.

Edited August 7, 2024 by Zemekis
Specifying about Lonewolfe's article

[Dave55811]

Given some of the context here that is relevant to my interests, it is with regret that I declare here that my copies of Reverie & Daybreak are NTSC.  Although Reverie was an aftermarket thing and Daybreak was purchased via Play-Asia, I do realize that my money is going towards people who hate we, the fans.  Come to think of it, Trails of Cold Steel III & IV are NTSC, too, purchased via GameStop....but, those are a different arc, so I'll stop here, lest we get off-topic here.

 

After that revelation I had here in my Trails from Zero thread, I decided that I should stick to NTSC, because that will maintain consistency with carrying over data from previous games.  However, I acknowledge that, in doing so, my money is going towards people who are parasitizing the Kiseki series, which is something we shouldn't stand for.  Nihon Falcom seriously needs to wield more of an iron grip with Kiseki; I'm assuming that Kiseki is the company's magnum opus, and if this is true, they should exhibit a greater awareness of entities that are legitimately parasitizing not just our industry, but also Japan's industries, and they shouldn't tolerate it coming into Kiseki.  But, I don't get how that all works; apparently, the localizers were able to get away with something in Reverie (or Daybreak?), because "it wasn't political".  Perhaps it wasn't political, but they could have just translated what the Japanese dialogue said, verbatim, because even if what the localizers put in wasn't political, it still involved buzzwords that many of us aren't necessarily interested in encountering in Japanese media.

 

Maybe Nihon Falcom should do what some others have done and just let some AI program translate their script; at least an AI program won't inject socio-political shit, and an added bonus, I think, is that Nihon Falcom would save money.  Granted, AI puts people out of jobs, so it isn't really the best idea, but so long as these localizers keep trying to sneak bullshit in, as well as continue to act all high-and-mighty, what other option is there besides using a machine?

[Koby]

With the sub-human comment, I was referring to the same specific 3 users (Zekkn, Evangela, Mendax) on Steam forums that have outright attacked users over and over again and gotten temporary banned but keep coming back to insult and attack users with their suspension is up, going off on anyone who seemingly enjoys the games despite everything or doesn't agree with whatever viewpoint they're wanting to push. I didn't mean to infer absolutely everyone who has issue with NISA falls under this category. I've seen these people on countless other jrpg boards on Steam and every comment they make about anything at all is either negative against the game or attacking people for disagreeing with them. We can agree or we can disagree, but that doesn't mean we can't still be an adult and be respectful in our discussions. These three users the entire PC fandom of the series has had to put up with in nearly every thread for the last 3+ years and it gets old.

 

As for the "I'll just play the Japanese version".... On PC there's only 2 versions: NISAs which is the English & the Japanese version.... and CLE's which is the Chinese & Korean version. CLE's build of the games comes out much sooner and the English fanpatches are usually built for them, but their PC porting is abysmal quality... CLE's ports are so bad that Ys 9 got taken down for all of it's issues and I'm not sure if it's been put back up yet or not. But even when they do work like in the case of Daybreak 1 & 2, they're lacking a lot of features and don't hold a stable fps. So people are kind of up shits creek and whether they want to support NISA or not, they have to go with NISAs version for PC for a good experience. The fan patch for Daybreak 1 works on NISA's build too by the way so I assume they'll make it work for Daybreak 2 when that releases in 2025.

 

As for the AI translation... Who do you think they'd have train it? In the event they did go this route, I'd almost guarantee it'd be the people at NISA that Falcom would hire for their "English expertise" and being trained on their work... it'd regurgitate it. Personally though, I enjoy the English dubs for these games and this is something that doesn't happen without Western influence unfortunately.

 

As for going with Japanese version on console and then possibly back to Western version... you'd end up losing out on Save bonuses jumping around regions like that. Also does it work to play other region games without having modded the console? I'm unsure because I don't utilize consoles anymore.

 

I'm hoping that if we get Daybreak 2 early enough in 2025 that we could possibly be Kai / Beyond the Boundary before the end of the year as well. They tend to like to space things out by about 6 months so it's certainly possible.

[Dave55811]

54 minutes ago, Koby said:

As for the AI translation... Who do you think they'd have train it? In the event they did go this route, I'd almost guarantee it'd be the people at NISA that Falcom would hire for their "English expertise" and being trained on their work... it'd regurgitate it. Personally though, I enjoy the English dubs for these games and this is something that doesn't happen without Western influence unfortunately.

Oh, fuck; I forgot that AI translations can be programmed.  I don't know how effective and accurate AI translations are, either, and so I guess people would still be required, but their jobs would just be to fix grammatical errors, like say if a translation comes off as broken English and words have to be put in proper order.....or so I'd like to think that'd be their only jobs in this matter.

 

Basically, what I heard about was that there was a piece of dialogue that got wokealized.  I think it was brought up in the discussion hitherto; in one scene, the Japanese dialogue translates roughly as "Are you male or female?" or something along those lines, but we translated it as "I don't know what your pronouns are."  They were able to get away with this, because "it wasn't political".  Maybe it wasn't political, but it contained what I call "neo-progressive jargon", which has been commonplace throughout the years, and it's been injected in Western translations of Japanese mediums, a result of "creative liberties" that Western translators have the privilege of exercising (or abusing).

The problem with this is that "proper pronouns" wasn't the context of that piece of dialogue.....not that I know, since I've not yet played this game, but I would assume that all this neo-progressive language isn't a thing in Japan (at least for now), and as such I would assume that the way that scene went about would've been based on contemporary Japanese conversational elements.  Not to mention, Japanese language is often "direct", so if you're an androgynous person, they're going to ask if you're male or female....compared to here in America, where an androgynous person will spaz out if given a direct inquiry like that and call the inquirer "rude", "bigoted", whatever else.

 

Then again, I don't know if it's worth the effort trying to make sense of these wokealizers.  There are reasons that explain why they make changes; I think Capcom's website has a page discussing Western localization and they list off how it all works and why localization occurs, but I'm only bringing up Capcom as an example to "reasons that explain why they make changes".  Despite these reasons, though, a lot of those people who work in localizing Japanese media mock anyone who calls out their activities, and some of them actually exhibit prejudice towards Japan.  If I could, I'd advise Nihon Falcom about these issues and encourage them to make appropriate decisions going forward.

[Koby]

This might be slight spoilerish in terms of the character and their identity / history but I'll try to keep it minimal.

 

The character in question about their gender is Quatre, who may actually be trans after all by Falcom's doing. I'm not sure on it.

 

He says he's a boy, but he won't take a spa bath with the group and when he's shown getting undressed to bathe by himself, he's got bandages around his chest like he's had breast surgery to remove them. So I'm starting to suspect Quatre was actually born female. There is also that incident in Sky 3rd where they mention a Quatre was involved in the same stuff that Renne was with the D.G. Cult. It's unknown if this is the same Quatre or if it just happens to have the name.

 

Or perhaps Quatre was a girl and assaulted and abused by the cult and he/she/they transitioned to a boy and hid that past. Or maybe he was born male but the D.G. Cult made him have breast surgery and he later had that undone?

 

I don't know, just theorizing possibilities. If either of this is the case, it might paint that scene is a little bit better light than it initially came across like, but I agree with you that that one line was very jarring when it initially popped up. It is possible that NISA has insight from Falcom as to their intent with the character though and I don't know if further character development is going to address this issue with Quatre in Daybreak 1, 2, or Kai.

 

 

[Dave55811]

I appreciate the spoiler-warning, but I have a feeling that I won't be this far into the Kiseki series for quite a while.  I'm contemplating taking a long break after Trails to Azure, possibly picking it back up when 2025 starts, but hopefully I won't be too busy with Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.....oh, and Death Stranding 2 will be coming out in 2025, so I'll have to plan things accordingly.  But, my point here is that I may forget some of these details in the near future, so long as I don't research any of it in my spare time, so I don't sense any real harm done here.

 

1 hour ago, Koby said:

It is possible that NISA has insight from Falcom as to their intent with the character though and I don't know if further character development is going to address this issue with Quatre in Daybreak 1, 2, or Kai.

Who is to say?  I suppose it isn't unreasonable for Kiseki to explore these things to such an extent.  But I think the issue is how the West perceives it; I think a lot of these Tumblrinas who have pushed their head-canons on others are now of age so that they can get into business fields such as localizing Japanese games, in an effort to legitimize their head-canons.  We've seen this example with Yamato from ONE PIECE; Yamato is considered male, despite the author explicitly stating that Yamato is female.  Yamato is male, not (just) because the Tumblrinas said so, but because our side of the industry (Funimation, Crunchyroll, whoever it is these days) said do.  Maybe this was a poor example.....but, basically, what I'm trying to get at it is that, in the case of Kiseki, Nihon Falcom might portray something like what you displayed in your post, and us Westerners will over-complicate it.  I don't know what Quatre's situation is, but I'm sure he got fucked up by D∴G's experiments, so he is what he is.  Meanwhile, us Westerners will look at this Quatre person and take opportunities to inject some neo-progressive bullshit into it, which will basically shit all over Nihon Falcom's original intention behind Quatre's existence & purpose as a character in Kiseki.

 

You might also notice that there is a recurring thing about how us Westerners are handling these characters, whether it be Yamato or Quatre.  That recurring thing happens to be sexuality.  I guess this hyper-fixation and ultra-defensiveness of sexuality is still going on after nearly twenty years (per my observations), only now it carries on in an official capacity.  Expect things to get worse before they get better.

[Koby]

Yeah the Yamato thing in One Piece pissed me off too. Yamato is female. Crunchyroll insists she's male. They hired a trans person to voice her... Oda came out saying Yamato is female and people started mocking him. Some of Crunchyroll staff even tweeted an image that implied Oda was a smelly old man for not letting them choose Yamatos gender.