What's in a Name?

by Robert Szkotak

One of the biggest complaints that gamers in America and elsewhere have is with translation. RPGs which had the potential to be hits were never translated. Those games that were translated had scenes removed because the companies didn't feel they were appropriate outside of Japan. Even with the totality of scenes, there were still shoddy translation jobs. Yes, companies such as Square and Enix have not done very well in the translation department - not ten years ago, not five, and not even today. As the players of these RPGs, we most certainly have the right to complain - because games only improve if we do.

Unfortunately, some of us have decided to complain a bit too much. We demand that everything that comes over here be exactly the same as it is in Japan... even so much as a name or a sprite changed causes a fury among some role-players. The most inconsequential things have become the focus of their attention. With the Final Fantasy Anthology being announced, I've noticed an increase in people demanding exact translations; I'm sure some of you have as well. And it is this that I wish to address in this editorial.

The prime example that I hear about is Final Fantasy 2, or 4 if you wish to number them in the Japanese order (which, for the rest of this essay, I will). Now, I don't claim to be an expert on every single change that was made. After all, I speak not a word of Japanese, and neither do a majority of the gamers in America. But I know enough that I can talk about them here. One of the main things people talk about are FF4's missing skills. Cecil's Dark Wave, Rosa's Prayer, and Tellah's Recall to name a few (all names are taken from the J2E translation of FF4). Why were these skills removed? Well, for the most part, all of the skills removed were basically useless. Take Dark Wave for instance. Dark Wave takes away some of Cecil's hit points and does an attack against all the enemies on the screen. While relatively useful in the beginning of the game, by the time you get to Damycan, it is all but useless compared to his normal attack. The same applies to most of the skills that were removed. A second point of contention is when Cecil and his friends rescue Rosa - she is going to be killed by Golbez. In the Japanese version a scythe hangs over her head; in the American version is a large metal ball. How does this affect the storyline in any significant way? Rosa will still die - it is plain when you play through the American version that she is going to die. As a matter of fact, the ball might be more gruesome, because she'll be crushed into a pulp rather than simply beheaded. And later on in the scene, in the Japanese version, Rosa and Cecil kiss, where as they hug in the American version. I think we all got the general idea of what was going on here - they were happy to see each other. It's just a matter of pixels.

And really, the question I put forth earlier really summarizes the basis of my argument - "How does this affect the storyline in any significant way?". We don't play RPGs for they're battle systems or menu systems - if such a game existed sans story, we wouldn't play it because it would be frightfully boring. Storyline is the main factor in any RPG. If a change is made that doesn't affect storyline, usually it isn't all that big. Admittedly, there are some changes that don't involve storyline that have a rather large impact - the Remedy in FF4 for example, instead of individual items to heal status effects. Even this change however is minor, because yes, the game may be a tad easier (at least, I found the game to be only slightly easier with Remedies than without). Does this change the fundamental basis of the game - not really.

To cite an even more absurd example, I urge people to look at Final Fantasy 6. Did anyone, when they played through the American version, find anything wrong? Well, apparently some people did. The names. Terra instead of Tina, Cyan instead of Cayenne, and Sabin instead of Mash are the examples that come to mind of names changed when it was ported to America. Again, ask the question, "How does this affect the storyline in any significant way?". The answer is, of course, not at all. We still can identify who is who throughout the game, without any difficulty whatsoever. Why then do people compain about this? I won't lie to you all, this annoys me a lot. Especially when the name changes were good ones. Terra wasn't much of a change at all from Tina. In Sabin's case, Sabin just plain sounds better than Mash, which makes Sabin sound like a muscle-brained idiot. As for Cyan, well, I'd rather have my character named after a nice shade of blue than a spice. Especially since his character sprite is blue. And on the topic of changes with Cyan, in Japan his class is listed as Samauri, instead of whatever it is in the American version. Not that it really matters, class doesn't come into play at all throughout the game.

My point here is this: we should spend less time worrying about the little changes and more time trying to get fixed what was wrong. After all, look at some of Square's recent works (and I hate to pick on Square, but that's what comes of being the biggest RPG maker in town) - Final Fantasy Tactics was atrocious in every way. Xenogears has good grammatically, but their use of the dashes was out of control and the storyline was a tad convoluted in the beginning. Saga Frontier suffered from a lack of cohesion. These are the things we should be ranting about. Or, on the topic of the upcoming Final Fantasy Anthology, the lack of FF4 being included, or the translation of FF5. All you have to do is before you start to complain,ask yourself - "What's in a name?"