I imagine the Death Egg Moonbase approaching Etheirys from space.
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I am all for Eggman appropriating Allagan technology! Especially since many of the nodes are already conveniently egg shaped!
Although, at this point in history, Dalamud has already fallen so he can't use that. But what he CAN do is place his ship in orbit in the same place Dalamud used to be, sending the world populace into a panic.
It was weird that the JP script used him/her for the faries in the first but the western localization turned them androgynous for no reason outside of brownie points. Though the western localization has always been shaky. Wonder when we will get to see the blue blood clan that the song Rise was talking about. :^)
It was a simple response to the original post, agreeing, yes, I welcome politics in game, as long as they stay away from real life topics and debates. I thought what I said was pretty simple and easily understandable. It has nothing to do with what FF has or has not included. The fact remains that it is an ongoing issue in games as a whole. Former series that used to be strictly fantasy, later adopted controversial, too real themes that divided the fans. I don't want that to happen here. No series is immune to the personal beliefs of the creators seeping into their work at too great a level. That's the reason for the caveat portion of my answer. I will be okay with it, until that happens. If it doesn't, all the better.
Can you give an example of politics done well in fantasy which bares no relation to real world politics?
I swear, do you people here just love looking for arguments to simple statements and opinions? I've been here for all of a day and already have people looking for confrontation over harmless opinion. No wonder I was warned away from interacting with the fanbase at all by several people who have played longer than I. There are plenty of fantasy stories with original ideas that have nothing to do with modern, first world political ideas. You are being purposely obtuse.
Why do you need an example if it isn't to attempt to pick it apart to find some loose correlation to something real? That is what this looks to clearly be.
Talk about chasing windmills, lol. Of course RL events can bleed into fiction but people want that fantasy element to mix with the story. It's like the detective Pikachu movie taking a shot at global warming in a world where they subjugate pocket monsters with powers that would render that issue moot. Quit replacing an argument with being obtuse, lol.
That is similar to the opinion I was trying to convey. Loose political things are fine. War in a fantasy game over land, resources, religion etc.. fine. That is something to be expected within almost any setting. But having a group of knights sitting around in a fantasy world, with a development level of 14th century Europe having a chat about "commies" or modern gender theory makes no sense within the setting. I thought what I was alluding to was pretty clear. General politics = fine. Things specific to MODERN Earth, leave to settings that make sense, like those that take place ON Earth or a similar world, with similar populations.
I mean, I can name plenty. Final Fantasy 9 is a good one. It's completely whimsical. Sure it asks real philisophical questions about life, self-worth, identity/ self-purpose, etc.. But those are questions that can exist anywhere, in any setting realistically. They aren't sitting around talking about things like modern race issues, immigration, gender theory, etc. That's what I mean when I say loose political/social philosophies and something ripped right out of modern discourse.
And those topics are very toxic and divisive. I have seen fanbases eat themselves over such things. Dragon Age The Veilgaurd is a good recent example of a series and fanbase that self destructed over modern socio-political issues working their way into a fantasy setting.
I think it is fine to use something as inspiration if its presented in a way that shows competence and understanding of the subject matter.
If its delivered as an ultimatum then it's bad. Love Wuk Lamat or else. How about no.
And its the same with villain forces. Up to DT we were getting pretty thorough and balanced experiences. With Bakool Ja Ja they blazed through his societal trauma and instantly redeemed him. A lot of the themes in DT have real world correlations but they are handled with kid gloves.
IX definitely does not have a class based society nor any allusions to slavery. There's certain no nuclear weapons race in the form of summons. Black Mages don't form a collectivist society after being freed or anything.
Point being IX is political without lecturing you. Perhaps more importantly these subjects touch so many time periods and civilizations its hard to claim it "references a real world event" specifically.
Whereas if you just rip trends directly out of Western news from a specific set of years about a very specific topic and then make it a black and white situation with zero nuance it just makes the writer seem shallow.
I would argue its not an opinion. FFIX may not appear to be political at all if you just weren't looking for it, or missed it, etc. However I think certain people on XIV's own writing team and some of its fans, are in a current political climate where if the politics are not slapping you in the face with an all or nothing agenda that paints the reader as a saint or the devil, then they simply see nothing at all.
"I have an opinion"
"I would argue its not an opinion"
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Q-YL7iythk8/mqdefault.jpg
And therein lies my whole point. You have to dig pretty deep and make some pretty bold assumptions to link anything in that game to a modern political or social talking point. You are correct that there is a difference between loose and generalized topics and putting something extremely specific into a game where it makes little sense. Imagine if Black Mage Village mages started talking about the means of production or how bad capitalism is. Or if some NPC in Lindblum started shouting about needing to tear the system down because the steam powered airships contribute to climate change. It would be 100 percent jarring, odd, and completely out of place, yet that kind of stuff seeps into a LOT of modern fiction where it makes little sense. I just want that very specific, agenda promoting stuff that causes absolute s- slinging in the fanbase to not seep into games I love. That's all I want. I wouldn't even want to see divisive points I agree with being shoved down other people's throats. It's meant to be an escape, after all. Otherwise, I'm fine with all of the stuff you listed that makes sense in the setting that is subtle, invokes deep thoughts, and isn't preachy.
I don't have a problem with that change but as LGBT rep it feels empty when you can say they're not human as the excuse. Especially since they're probably the closest thing we get to trans characters in the MSQ and 7.3's now the third time they've added the creepy queer guy stereotype.
Heck if I know, it's your job to convey your thoughts into words, not mine. So far every time I come across you, you seem to have this issue. :/
My issue is that it was changed from the JP source to this. It comes off as pandering at the least and defacing the source's script at worst.
It's called a joke, I know they are called Blue Hand in the JP script so why change it? Localization doesn't mean you openly change names. (Or perhaps it does since translating seems to be secondary to localizing a work)
You're just wrong. Objectively wrong. The fae being genderless was agreed upon by the entire localization team, not just the EN team.
It's a lore point agreed upon all the writers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre Pasquier from the French team
It was explicitly challenging to translate this lore point into every language the game is played in. And there are plenty of lines that would just be chunky with a direct translation. So knock it off with this stupid "brownie points" talk. You're spreading misinformation and making your hatred obvious.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kate from the EN Localization team
Localizers are not the writers of the JP script, you know, the origin of the game? Glad to know we are on the same page that it was a purely western change for no reason, I assume.
As dead as the forums are, of course you are bound to talk to the same people day in and day out, lmao. Besides, all you do is appeal to emotion and fold the moment people poke holes at your flimsy takes. There's not much to understand tbh. :/
The localizers are just as invested in the writing of the game as the scenario directors. The lore itself is written in part by the localizers. See the "Thal's Balls!" curse that's everpresent in the setting. That's written by the localization team.
And you clearly ignored the bolded part that disproves what you're saying because you don't want to admit you're wrong. So I'll isolate it for you.
Stop hoisting the Japanese script as a Bible when you can't even be arsed to cite actual sources. You either have a source or you're a liar and a troll.Quote:
One lore point is that those creatures are agender.
Kate outright says in her own answer its a deviation from the source material. We knew that already since every voice except English is distinctly female.
As far as the quote from the French localizer, I do not find that statement clear. What is a "lore point" and what does "agender" mean in that context? Whose lore point? As others have said, Kate at least does strongly believe localizers are writers. Only 2 localizers comment on it so it's not unanimous. I would be interested to know what they said in full in French. In other words I am not sure if they were simply saying "we were told making them gender neutral is ok in this case". I very highly doubt Ishikawa was even thinking about something so dumb and proabably told them to just do whatever.
Put another way, Kate's answer ia redundant and even contradictory, if the French translator is accurately stating facts. So they have always been genderless, yet Kate needed to ask to portray them as gender neutral? Hence my skepticism. I think what the French translator actually said "well there was never a rule around this" and Kate said "yeah so we set the precedent in Shadowbringers by asking about it."
So you are cool changing the original script? Good to know. Also, koji is well known to localize rather than translate the freakin' thing. (I get it Mr. fox, galka sasuage is very memey. Ty. :/)
Honestly, my biggest takeaway from all of this is that if Working Designs started a decade later, they would be as big as Funimation, lol.
They don't say "Thal's Balls!" in the original Japanese, so it's not really part of the lore. Just something they invented in the localisation as you said. Much like how they invented "The Lifestream" for the sake of an epic FF7 reference, and in doing so caused mass confusion for expansions to come over the nature of the earth veins and the aetherial sea among the English-speaking playerbase.
Oh, interesting side note on what is said in that quote:
This is an accurate description of the "plant genders" that sylphs are described to have – one produces pollen only (their names have -xia suffix) and the other produces both pollen and seeds (-xio suffix) but then every bit of gendered language from other races just uses female and male and in multiple places gives the "cool fact" that it's the male that produces seeds – when seeds should be a good indicator that they are not in fact (or at least entirely) male. I've wondered whether that's meant to be an in-universe mistake or if it happened at the writing level, so it's good to know that the localisers do know what they're doing and it's the Eorzeans that got it back-to-front.Quote:
We used a male/neutral agreement for the Sylphs back in 2.0
Going from memory, but I believe it did feed back into the lore planning as the reason for separating Nald'thal into two aspects so they can have the characters swearing to Thal alone.
Similarly the Eorzean "seven heavens and seven hells" concept allegedly only picked up the seventh in addition to the six elements because "seven hells!" sounds better than "six hells!" in English.
I don't personally care what the localizers think about nonhuman characters with zero need for gender binary, especially not ones like pixies who are based on children. Why gender binary was ever a large concern, is kind of bizarre. From what I understand, it has moreso to do with deciding how to write they/them while trying to fit the Japanese.
And any localizer who thinks its some kind of political statement, is a weirdo.