Why gunbreaker?

I was just thinking about it today, gunbreaker is a really odd name. Gun obviously comes from using a gunblade, but why breaker?

It honestly makes me wonder if the name is the same in other languages or if this is another case of the localisation team trying to be creative (is it actually gunblader and they just thought that sounds stupid?).

I feel like there are much better names they could have gone with, maybe something like magitek knight, the gunblade looks like it’s going to be a magitek based weapon, much like the machinist guns, using aetherially charged cartridges to power the weapon. And one of the inspirations for the job is Seifer from ff8 who always dreamed of becoming a knight.
Or maybe mercenary, since again the job is based on Seifer and squall who were members of the mercenary group SEED.

I just don’t see how they decided on gunbreaker for the name, it’s not like it’s going to be some anti-ranged tank that goes around smashing peoples guns. I just wonder where that choice came from.

They called it Gunbreaker so they can add a new DoH job in a future expansion called Gunfixer.

It's called "Revolverklinge" in german, which would translate to "Revolverblade"

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

I was just thinking about it today, gunbreaker is a really odd name. Gun obviously comes from using a gunblade, but why breaker?

It honestly makes me wonder if the name is the same in other languages or if this is another case of the localisation team trying to be creative (is it actually gunblader and they just thought that sounds stupid?).

I feel like there are much better names they could have gone with, maybe something like magitek knight, the gunblade looks like it’s going to be a magitek based weapon, much like the machinist guns, using aetherially charged cartridges to power the weapon. And one of the inspirations for the job is Seifer from ff8 who always dreamed of becoming a knight.
Or maybe mercenary, since again the job is based on Seifer and squall who were members of the mercenary group SEED.

I just don’t see how they decided on gunbreaker for the name, it’s not like it’s going to be some anti-ranged tank that goes around smashing peoples guns. I just wonder where that choice came from.

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I think it comes from the fact that the ammo in the gunblade aren't shoot like projectiles but to make the blade vibrate at the moment of impact giving the impression of "braking" the blade.

My 2 cents

They actually explained this after it was revealed. Yoshi P felt like gunbreaker was a good name because to him it invoked the imagery of someone leading the charge and breaking through enemy lines. He felt like it was a very tank like thing to do and the gunblade as a weapon lended credence to that idea.

It could also be an oblique reference to the Riskbreakers from Vagrant story, although GNB's abilities don't really seem to draw any inspiration from it.

It conceptually translates to "Gunblade" in the French and German translations.
Revolverklinge --> revolver/gun + blade/sword
Pistosabreur --> pistol/gun + sabre/blade

Japanese translation is basically "Gunbreaker"
ガンブレイカー --> ガン (gun) + ブレイ (buh-reh) + カー (kah) --> it's literally just gunbreaker in katakana

As to why "Gunbreaker", if I recall correctly Yoshi-P felt "Gunblade" was more the weapon they used and not the job itself, and he liked the idea of "Breaker" as it conveyed the sense of someone who was the vanguard that led the charge into battle and broke through the enemy lines.

The jobs are all a type of person (samurai, ninja, warrior, summoner). Gun blade is just the weapon. Some of the base classes are "person who uses X weapon" names (lancer, archer, etc) which would lead to 'gunblader' which is.....yeah. but when you become a full fledged job you are more than 'person who uses this weapon'. Samurai is a class of people. A position. As is a bard, a paladin, etc. What role does a person who wields a gunblade have? Im not really sure. But gun breaker doesnt quite seem to be it.

If they wanted the front line imagery they could have gone with something like Vanguard or something. But i understand they also want to convey something unique to the class. Samurais and ninja have so much cultural knowledge you dont need to tell someone that a samurai uses a katana or a paladin is a sword n board woth holy magic. Theres nothing so universal for gunblades so they are kinda stuck using the gun as the focal point.

Im not really sure what could have been done better. But i dont particularly like what we have.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

The jobs are all a type of person (samurai, ninja, warrior, summoner). Gun blade is just the weapon. Some of the base classes are "person who uses X weapon" names (lancer, archer, etc) which would lead to 'gunblader' which is.....yeah. but when you become a full fledged job you are more than 'person who uses this weapon'. Samurai is a class of people. A position. As is a bard, a paladin, etc. What role does a person who wields a gunblade have? Im not really sure. But gun breaker doesnt quite seem to be it.

If they wanted the front line imagery they could have gone with something like Vanguard or something. But i understand they also want to convey something unique to the class. Samurais and ninja have so much cultural knowledge you dont need to tell someone that a samurai uses a katana or a paladin is a sword n board woth holy magic. Theres nothing so universal for gunblades so they are kinda stuck using the gun as the focal point.

Im not really sure what could have been done better. But i dont particularly like what we have.

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Vanguard.. Soldier.. Mercenary.. like these are all very bland terms.. that could apply to a number of different jobs. Gunbreaker is unique. It’s different. It’s also something I can very easily picture being referred to throughout the Final Fantasy franchise (yes i know this is the first time the term is being used. But it does have a very Final Fantasy type feel to it.

The only other really intriguing job names that come to mind.. Ravager, Commando, and possibly Sentinel all from ffxiii but none of those really feel like gunbreaker.

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Originally Posted by Darkpaw

Vanguard.. Soldier.. Mercenary.. like these are all very bland terms.. that could apply to a number of different jobs. Gunbreaker is unique. It’s different. It’s also something I can very easily picture being referred to throughout the Final Fantasy franchise (yes i know this is the first time the term is being used. But it does have a very Final Fantasy type feel to it.

The only other really intriguing job names that come to mind.. Ravager, Commando, and possibly Sentinel all from ffxiii but none of those really feel like gunbreaker.

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The female /cpose is Lightning's battle stance, so I guess a reference to her could have been used. She had unique paradigm names in her 13-2 DLC, and some combination of their Japanese names seem like they would've been okay.

Paladin (PLD) / Attack Paladin (ATK-PLD)
Mage (MGE) / Blast Wizard (BLA-WIZ)
Shaman (SHA) / Blast Shaman (BLA-SHM)
Knight (KNT) / Defense Knight (DEF-KNT)
Conjurer (CNJ) / Enhance Adept (ENH-ADP)
Sorcerer (SRC) / Jamming Witch (JAM-WTC)

Blast Knight, maybe? It'd still be weird, but it would be an accurate description.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

It conceptually translates to "Gunblade" in the French and German translations.
Revolverklinge --> revolver/gun + blade/sword
Pistosabreur --> pistol/gun + sabre/blade

Japanese translation is basically "Gunbreaker"
ガンブレイカー --> ガン (gun) + ブレイ (buh-reh) + カー (kah) --> it's literally just gunbreaker in katakana

As to why "Gunbreaker", if I recall correctly Yoshi-P felt "Gunblade" was more the weapon they used and not the job itself, and he liked the idea of "Breaker" as it conveyed the sense of someone who was the vanguard that led the charge into battle and broke through the enemy lines.

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We'll find out more with the job quests, but this is basically it. They didn't want to call it Gunblade, because that's the name of the weapon. And the job originated in Ilsabard with the Hrothgar who were the Queen's personal guard. So it probably has something to do with "breaking enemy lines" or foiling assassination attempts, etc.

Gunbreaker has nothing or at least very little to do with the Garleans or their magitek. The reason why their gunblabes are similar to Garlean gunblades is because the Hrothgar are also from Ilsabard so it makes sense the two neighboring cultures would have similar weaponry. Gunbreaker is also a fighting style that was created by the Hrothgar and is used by their royal gaurd. Now whether Gunbreaker gunblades are based off of Garlean gunblades or vice versa idk.

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Originally Posted by AvenoMatt

Gunbreaker has nothing or at least very little to do with the Garleans or their magitek. The reason why their gunblabes are similar to Garlean gunblades is because the Hrothgar are also from Ilsabard so it makes sense the two neighboring cultures would have similar weaponry. Gunbreaker is also a fighting style that was created by the Hrothgar and is used by their royal gaurd. Now whether Gunbreaker gunblades are based off of Garlean gunblades or vice versa idk.

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I get the point you are coming across here but one thing i would like to point out or just clarify (not saying you personally dont know this but to any passerby that may be unclear)

Gunbreaker gunblades and Garlean gunblades are nothing alike.

gunbreaker gunblades: incorporate a firing mechanism that doesn’t actually shoot any projectiles, the firing sequence is meant to vibrate the blade for increased damage ala Squall’s gunblade in FF8

Garlean gunblades: basically its a gun with a sword attached to it. It is capable of firing stand alone projectiles and slashing. But it is functionally nothing like the gunbreaker gunblades.

Also side notes any time a gunbreaker’s gunblade looks like it’s firing anything it’s an aetherial discharge. Not a physical projectile.

Whereas garleans can’t use/manipulate aether at all.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

Japanese translation is basically "Gunbreaker"
ガンブレイカー --> ガン (gun) + ブレイ (buh-reh) + カー (kah) --> it's literally just gunbreaker in katakana

As to why "Gunbreaker", if I recall correctly Yoshi-P felt "Gunblade" was more the weapon they used and not the job itself, and he liked the idea of "Breaker" as it conveyed the sense of someone who was the vanguard that led the charge into battle and broke through the enemy lines.

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This is dependent on my very limited knowledge of Japanese, but... laying it out like that reminded me that a manga author is called a "mangaka", so is that a general suffix for a person that does a thing?

If so, Yoshida's reason for choosing the name might be one element of it, but it's also something of a pun that resolves to an English word.

Or you can just put it down to Japanese people liking to use English words in things, but not necessarily understanding whether it sounds right to a native speaker. (I assume this is how we ended up with "tomestones", for example.)

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Originally Posted by Darkpaw

Gunbreaker gunblades and Garlean gunblades are nothing alike.

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That doesn't mean there's no connection between them. It's still likely that they were invented by one of those two civilisations, then the idea was taken and adapted by the other.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

That doesn't mean there's no connection between them. It's still likely that they were invented by one of those two civilisations, then the idea was taken and adapted by the other.

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Oh I'm not disputing that at all just clarifying that functionally they are nothing a like. It's very plausible that one inspired the other, or some such. Just making sure people don't think they are the same is all. lol

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Originally Posted by Iscah

This is dependent on my very limited knowledge of Japanese, but... laying it out like that reminded me that a manga author is called a "mangaka", so is that a general suffix for a person that does a thing?

If so, Yoshida's reason for choosing the name might be one element of it, but it's also something of a pun that resolves to an English word.

Or you can just put it down to Japanese people liking to use English words in things, but not necessarily understanding whether it sounds right to a native speaker. (I assume this is how we ended up with "tomestones", for example.)

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Japanese does use compounds like that for many descriptive nouns, for example "jin" added on to the end of a word to to make it a "person of" word it was added to.

As for "mangaka", it is comprised of the kanji 漫画家 which is made of the characters 漫 (man)画(ga)家(ka). "Man" refers the the idea of being aimless, pointless, without direction. "Ga" refers to images/pictures. "Ka" refers to the creation of/creator of images. So "manga" is "silly/pointless/not serious pictures" which is an interesting way to say basically cartoons. "Gaka" is a painter, illustrator, etc. So bring them all together and you end up with "mangaka".

However, I doubt that the "ka" in the Japanese name for Gunbreaker is a reference or play on of the "ka" in something like "mangaka". Such wordplay in Japanese tends to be done around the usage of kanji and how different kanji can phonetically sound the same but have very different concepts attached to them, with a very common way of doing it being taking a kanji in a word or phrase and swapping it out for another that sounds the same and therefore changing the meaning to make a pun.
Gunbreaker in Japanese was solely in katakana which is a phonetic alphabet and not a symbolic alphabet like kanji and is used often to phonetically sound out foreign words, so the chances of such wordplay are pretty low.
Here's a silly little example of Japanese wordplay courtesy of Record of Lodoss War.
Dark Knight in Japanese is 暗黒騎士 (ankoku kishi). Now swap out the kanji for darkness (ankoku) with 餡 which is "an" as in anko or sweet bean paste and クック which is katakana for "kuku" or cook and you get 餡クック騎士 (ankuku kishi) which roughly translates in a pun sort of way to bean paste cook knight.

As for "tomestones" and a lot of the English names for things in the game, those come from a native English speaker, Michael Koji Fox, who is American. Many of them are just obscure references or English wordplay. It has nothing to do with Japanese persons flubbing the English language.
Looking at "tomestones", it is simply the combination of the word tome, a book/collection of knowledge, and the word stone, which creates a word that is a pretty apt description of what tomestones are in the lore, being stones holding ancient Allagan knowledge sort of like magical stone thumbdrives. The fact that it sounds like tombstone is just bonus pun points.

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Originally Posted by TouchandFeel

It conceptually translates to "Gunblade" in the French and German translations.
Revolverklinge --> revolver/gun + blade/sword
Pistosabreur --> pistol/gun + sabre/blade

Japanese translation is basically "Gunbreaker"
ガンブレイカー --> ガン (gun) + ブレイ (buh-reh) + カー (kah) --> it's literally just gunbreaker in katakana

As to why "Gunbreaker", if I recall correctly Yoshi-P felt "Gunblade" was more the weapon they used and not the job itself, and he liked the idea of "Breaker" as it conveyed the sense of someone who was the vanguard that led the charge into battle and broke through the enemy lines.

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Tbh, in french, the "-eur" would be translate to "-er" in english, for Gunblader. Or else, it would be "Pistosabre". The -eur means that the world is for the one who wields the Gunblade. So in french, the weapon's name is "Pistosabre", and the job "Pistosabreur".

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

I was just thinking about it today, gunbreaker is a really odd name. Gun obviously comes from using a gunblade, but why breaker?

It honestly makes me wonder if the name is the same in other languages or if this is another case of the localisation team trying to be creative (is it actually gunblader and they just thought that sounds stupid?).

I feel like there are much better names they could have gone with, maybe something like magitek knight, the gunblade looks like it’s going to be a magitek based weapon, much like the machinist guns, using aetherially charged cartridges to power the weapon. And one of the inspirations for the job is Seifer from ff8 who always dreamed of becoming a knight.
Or maybe mercenary, since again the job is based on Seifer and squall who were members of the mercenary group SEED.

I just don’t see how they decided on gunbreaker for the name, it’s not like it’s going to be some anti-ranged tank that goes around smashing peoples guns. I just wonder where that choice came from.

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Because it sounds badass!

Because when you defend yourself from enemies you break your weapon.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

Because when you defend yourself from enemies you break your their weapon.

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Fixed.
I always took the name to be their purpose was to break firearms, or limit the effectiveness of firearms used against them. More like the "break" in "breakwall".

They took a gun and shoved a sword down the barrel, thus, breaking the gun.

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Originally Posted by Darkpaw

The only other really intriguing job names that come to mind.. Ravager, Commando, and possibly Sentinel all from ffxiii but none of those really feel like gunbreaker.

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Sentinel at least was once an actual class here in FFXIV back in the original 1.0 version though involving the use of shields - it wasn't an actual stand-alone class but more a sub-class that piggybacked on GLA, CNJ or THM when you equipped a shield (only GLA could make use of it's abilities though), yet it still had it's own individual class logo:

https://i581.photobucket.com/albums/...psxhfy2iug.png

However SEN as a class was scrapped when the battle system was redesigned in preperation for the addition of Jobs, and thus shield use became classless and SEN's abilities were given to GLA and PLD by default. So yeah, I don't think SE will ever bring back SEN now anyway.

I still think Ravager should have been a class that DRK upgraded from... but too late now (not sure what GBR could upgrade from - Commando? Soldier?). :confused:

gunbreaker, the breaker of guns

Personally I thought it was ment to show it as a job specifically to fight against the Garleans and there more overwhelming use of gunblades and magitek. It wouldn't surprise me either if 6.0 had Gunbreaker as its headlining job.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

(not sure what GBR could upgrade from - Commando? Soldier?)

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How's Legatus? I like ravager for DRK, or raider too.

inb4 the ff8 gunblade vs garlean gunblade response: nerds

Well Gunbreaker is cool, in French we got Pistosabreur.

Pisto = Pistolet = Gun
Sabreur = Fencer

Immagine how gunbreaker is pronounced in Japanese tones, the name is perfect of this job.