I love this thread. For many years I’ve appreciated the work the localization team does on XI. You guys do a fantastic job. I could list many examples from story moments and character dialog, but I’ll stick to one of my favorite elements: artifact, relic and empyrean equipment names.
The names of artifact and relic equipment were a way to imagine my character graduating to the next level of his discipline. Through hard work and study I was promoted from a Red Mage to a Warlock! And then a Duelist! It was like getting a fancy new title at work, but with a more badass name. Just as important, it reminded me of the famous class evolution of FF1 that I’ve loved since I played the original on the NES decades ago.
Artifact and relic names were mostly familiar to anyone with a fantasy background. This wasn’t a bad thing; they evoked nostalgia along with that feeling of graduation to the next level. However, when the Empyrean armor sets came out, you guys took the title promotion up another notch with obscure references that were totally fitting, but also new to many people. I actually spent a few hours one night researching all of those names. Some of them were good but obvious, like Creed and Savant, but I had a blast with Goetia, Orison, Estoqueur, Mavi, and many others. Once again Final Fantasy was teaching me something. Excellent job on these!
I was happy to see this become a trend. When reforged armor was announced, my secret hope was for new titles, and not just bland “Duelist’s Tights +3”. I was ecstatic to see more interesting names used in all three reforged sets, as well as the GEO and RUN armor. My favorites are Arbatel (which I had never heard before but enjoyed reading about) and Azimuth (which I actually vaguely recalled from my college days as a math major).
Now for my questions:
1. What exactly is Vitivation from? I can make sense of vitiation, but not vitivation. I have to admit though, vitivation actually rolls off my tongue better.
2. I know absolutely no Japanese. Are the JSE names translations of the same word in Japanese or do you guys come up with your own “new titles” for us?
3. I would love to know more about the process of deciding on these names from empyrean to reforged sets. I think it’s fantastic that you watched YouTube Waltzes for hours to decide on Contradance. What kind of research went into Arbatel and Azimuth? Where on Earth did you pull Estoqueur from? By the way, I still find it funny that Duelist and Estoqueur sets have no melee stats on them while the Warlock set does, but the names themselves sound great