Request: Limiting the number of blatant Game of Thrones references in future?

I like Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire.

I like this game.

I understand that some members of the story and localisation teams really, really like Game of Thrones and like to let it inspire the setting. That's fine. I like the political plotting and darker tone a lot.

But the sheer number of direct references, winks and cribbed text is starting to get completely out of control and SB has even more of them than ever. It's taking me out of the game with the endless references to GoT lore and phrases.

It's a selfish request but can the team please read some more fantasy titles and mix things up a little more if possible; references are more fun when they are subtle and varied. At the moment I often feel more like I'm playing an unofficial GoT MMO than a Final Fantasy title.

Also please remove Biggs and Wedge. They are a direct reference to Star Wars and i feel like I'm playing a Star Wars MMO.

If it was just one reference now and again it would be different. This is not just one reference now and again. I'm fine with occasional things: we have references to Harry Potter, House, MGS and any number of movies, books, games and characters. The GoT obsession still stands out like a sore thumb.

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Originally Posted by Serilda

If it was just one reference now and again it would be different. This is not just one reference now and again. I'm fine with occasional things: we have references to Harry Potter, House, MGS and any number of movies, books, games and characters. The GoT obsession still stands out like a sore thumb.

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Im joking :p I understand your point

At the risk of coming off as a fanboy/white knight for SE...

Could you list some of these references? Because I haven't seen anything yet that made me go, "that's totally Game of Thrones."

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Originally Posted by Vexander

At the risk of coming off as a fanboy/white knight for SE...

Could you list some of these references? Because I haven't seen anything yet that made me go, "that's totally Game of Thrones."

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There are plenty of script references peppered throughout ARR, HW and SB on top of the usual in-joke quest names etc (e.g. 'A Qiqirn Always Pays His Debts'), but the thing which tipped me over into making this thread was actually the RDM questline. Which I was enjoying for the RDM lore until the abrupt insertion of GoT fanfic took me out of the experience.

I'd personally prefer it if they tried a bit harder to mask the linguistic tributes (the popularisation of 'Ser' and the constant references to 'little birds' from multiple NPCs are classic examples; can we have a more FF-style twist on 'little birds' for fun?), but at least I can tune that stuff out and it's only a reference to people who already know. The questline less so.

Hrmn... guess most of all those references were too subtle for me really. As for the RDM questline, I haven't delved into RDM yet sadly, so I'll look forward to that and seeing what you mean then. Thanks for the explanation.

Sharkfin Soup ...

No, i love them.

When i was doing the RDM quests and it gave me the option to ask the girl "Does a girl have a name", my GoT senses started tingling and when she said she was Arya, i screamed.

I think they work rather nicely. It's not as if they're excessive, either - and it's not like they don't fit. Both settings are similarly gritty and driven by intrigue so they meld together quite well.

I was waiting to level RDM up. With this new knowledge though, I want to level it now.

Never watched game of thrones so I wouldn't know anything about the reference they trying to make.

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Originally Posted by Lexia

Never watched game of thrones so I wouldn't know anything about the reference they trying to make.

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Agreed. I've read the books, which are great, but I heard the series deviates from them pretty strongly as you go along, so I want to finish the books before watching the series. I know for a fact that, 'Does a girl have a name,' reference someone mentioned earlier in this thread is from an interaction between two characters on the show, which doesn't happen in the books.

I have a feeling that many of the things you are mentally crediting as references to Game of Thrones are in turn stolen references used by Game of Thrones, referring to other works that preceded it. In pop culture, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but you may find that what you thikn is a reference to something is actually a reference to something else that pre-dates it by decades.

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Originally Posted by Zeyphr_Darkshadow

Also please remove Biggs and Wedge. They are a direct reference to Star Wars and i feel like I'm playing a Star Wars MMO.

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Biggs and Wedge is a time honored Final Fantasy tradition. Leave them alone.

As for on-topic..... WINTER IS COMING!

i didnt watch game of thrones :P

The localisation team is out of control. There is a side quest called amber alert about child kidnap. So tasteless. That was a real tragedy there's a reason we have amber alerts here in the US.

It's okay for FATEs(pulp culture references in general) but nothing else. +1 agree to you OP

I've not seen the series nor read the books so I have no idea what is or isn't related to GoT. Now if they had named the Enterprise the Millennial Falcon I might have had words with SE.

TBH, this just makes me want to unlock RDM even more. I love me some GoT.

I honestly am more bothered by the liberties taken by the localization team overall.

There are several parts of the dialogue in which the Japanese dialogue and the English text say entirely different things. In Stormblood there are moments in which a line is literally cut in half (in meaning, not just in length) in the English dialogue compared to the Japanese.

It's not Sega-levels of bad, but it is pretty disconcerting is you understand some Japanese.

Huh. If true, that seems like kind of an odd choice to weight the references so heavily toward one particular property. Feels like in 2.0, there were many different shows/games/movies/pop culture things being referenced. On the other hand... no one player is familiar with EVERYTHING they might reference. So if you know GoT well, then those references would stick out, and it might seem like there are more of them then other things, whether there are or not. Hard to say for sure.

Of course, I can't weigh in on the actual number of GoT references, since I wouldn't be able to spot them. I found both the books and the show to be dreary, bloody, overly convoluted, dark-and-edgy-for-its-own-sake rubbish. Didn't get very far before figuring out it just wasn't for me. So most references to it will just go over my head, and I'll have no idea it even is a reference unless someone told me. Until I read this thread, I didn't even know there were any references to it in the RDM storyline.

The Ruby Sea is all little Mermaid songs.

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Originally Posted by Hitsuzen

The localisation team is out of control. There is a side quest called amber alert about child kidnap. So tasteless. That was a real tragedy there's a reason we have amber alerts here in the US.

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Don't forget the "It's not Lupus" one and then the crab called Cancer in Costa.
I dunno, back then it started up a shtstorm, I feel like that one was a little much but yeah.

And I was looking forward to trying Red Mage, too. Not that I don't like GoT, but the endless pop culture jokes inserted by the localization team have bugged me since the start. I could put up with them in side things like Fate titles and levequests, and even in the Hildebrand stuff that's just silly fun anyway, but they really, really need to keep them out of the MSQ.

Though if it were ANYONE ELSE, I'd question whether small things like 'Ser' and mentions of 'Little Birds' were actually direct references, since GoT isn't the first or the last fantasy series to use those terms. Given the team we have, though, they can be anything else. I'd probably keep 'Ser' anyway, it fits well enough, but 'Little Birds' should be Little Moogles or Little Moombas or, I dunno, pick a cute FF creature, it's not like there aren't plenty to choose from.

And Lolorito's minion calling the events of 2.55 the 'Bloody Banquet', on top of Edda's 'Red Wedding' attack really turned my stomach.

I love A Song of Ice and Fire and I pretty obviously love this game, but I completely agree with you.

Every time there is a Game of Thrones reference in dialogue, it makes me cringe.

Here's a list of a few references made by Hillo back in 2015. I am sure it has more than doubled by now...

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Originally Posted by Hillo

*Tam Tara HM boss attack called "Red Wedding"
*Levequest called "Storm of Swords"
*A character named Eddard in the Lancer questline (and an NPC named Neddard in La Noscea)
*Quest "The Mountain that Strides"
*Quest name "Taking the Black"
*Achievement "Stick Them With the Pointy End"
*The Direwolf mount...and its description (found in a litter with its dead mother)
*Halloween NPC said "The night is dark and full of delightful terrors"
*You must say "High as Honor" for an Ixal quest (the phrase of House Arryn)

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Please stop with the "sun and stars," "seven hells," "words are air," etc...I get it, I too have a raging boner for GoT, but

https://ih1.redbubble.net/image.2588...,ffffff.u3.jpg

First Halloween event "For the night is long and full of terrors."

I literally squeed at that cause I thought it was such a clever localization.

I am a professional translator/localizer though so I appreciate those things more I guess.

I'm glad I don't know the first thing about GoT so I'd never notice any of those things.

Haha I didn't even notice many of these things til now, the only one that sprang at me was the "are you my moon" thing xd
Gotta say, some of them are really clever, I like that.

The whole "a bird/little bird/etc. told me" thing existed well before GoT, just saying.

someone sounds butthurt at referances, welp time to axe koji fox someone wasnt happy with his puns,
:P

met him at a fan fest, lovly person. :3

but keep the puns and referances in, for those who know it it is a nice thing, for those who dont it sounds original and clever :D

I haven't watched the show and haven't gotten very far yet into the books, but a lot of the terms people have mentioned here as references are regular enough terms. I'll assume those same terms get some special notice in GoT, but a lot of it may just be people seeing references where there are none. Just because someone in this game uses a common expression that another character in GoT had also used doesn't make it a reference to that GoT use.

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Originally Posted by DracotheDragon

someone sounds butthurt at referances

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I don't think anyone is "butthurt at referances [sic]," nor does it have anything to do with Koji as a person.

A few pop culture references here and there are totally fine - as a senior citizen, I am actually a big fan of all of the 80's music references in FATE names.

When they are used pretty flagrantly in the dialogue, however, it becomes grating rather than endearing.

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Originally Posted by missybee

"seven hells,"

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? The concept of seven hells is thousands of years old.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

? The concept of seven hells is thousands of years old.

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The concept, sure. Using it as an exclamation though?

Even if you strike that one off the list, there is a veritable cornucopia of references to chose from.

They aren't excessive at all. Not sure where this complaint is coming from.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

I honestly am more bothered by the liberties taken by the localization team overall.

There are several parts of the dialogue in which the Japanese dialogue and the English text say entirely different things. In Stormblood there are moments in which a line is literally cut in half (in meaning, not just in length) in the English dialogue compared to the Japanese.

It's not Sega-levels of bad, but it is pretty disconcerting is you understand some Japanese.

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Localization is not translation. Localization is taking text and making it fit and understandable for a western audience. Japanese and English operate as very different languages. English relies more on subtlety and things being inferred, whereas Japanese makes more sense to just spell everything out. If you do that in English, it becomes patronizing and almost condescending to the person reading the text. So honestly, it makes more sense for the English text to read as fairly different from the original Japanese text because of how they want to present the information to the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by missybee

ZOOP!

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and to the person who has not watched game of thrones, or read the book they are going to read past the dialouge with little to no care, and for most who notice the referance (taking this from the discords i am in) they tend to laugh over them,

not only that but like Niwashi has said most 'referances' are olden style terms. and even phrases said now-a-days, hells i recall a thread months ago where people thought the spelling was wrong and the speech is trying to sound to much like a medevil story,


also koji is in charge of the localization for english if i recall correctly, most of the puns if not all go by him XD, thus my reason to mention him :3

Age aside, i find the referances i get to be quite nice, and the ones that go over my head i enjoy the names and phrases used,

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Originally Posted by missybee

The concept, sure. Using it as an exclamation though?

Even if you strike that one off the list, there is a veritable cornucopia of references to chose from.

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Koji-Fox literally said in a panel at Fanfest that he invented "Seven Hells" SPECIFICALLY as a swear because it sounded better than the original "Six Hells" they had designed by the lore team, all because he wanted Stahlmann/Rostnstahl to use it. It had nothing to do with being a reference to ASOIAF or GoT.

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Originally Posted by missybee

The concept, sure. Using it as an exclamation though?

Even if you strike that one off the list, there is a veritable cornucopia of references to chose from.

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We use "hell" as an exclamation all the time in English. If there are seven hells in their world, then they probably aren't going to use "hell" singularly. They'll say "hells" or "(number of) hells" most likely, the same way they refer to the Twelve.