Translation Request 2: There's Still More

[Altiea]

This is sort of a continuation of a thread I made four or five months ago, but I thought it'd be silly to necrobump that thread as opposed to make a new one, so here we are.

Just to recap, there is a series of interviews with some of the minds behind PSO2 about the game's story and characters, but, as usual, it's in Japanese. So I'd really appreciate it if we got an English translation for it!

(Might be out of order.)

[SPOILER-BOX]http://i.imgur.com/TXRU85Q.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hwTZXCH.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HQ3H0xM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/BuuH4Re.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/xdxXSNq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/6maiGq8.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/T9snBSR.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/1kaCtGF.jpg
[/SPOILER-BOX]

(And since I now own the OST Vol.4, I'll post up the interview from that too.)

[sol_trigger]

plox upload ost vol4

[Altiea]

plox upload ost vol4

You mean, like, the interview, or the actual soundtrack?

[sol_trigger]

the soundtrack (music)

[Altiea]

the soundtrack (music)

I have a few tracks uploaded to YouTube (in spoiler boxes), but I have the whole thing uploaded to Dropbox (that I can't link to right now).

[SPOILER-BOX]
https://youtu.be/Aea4j7SclxA[/SPOILER-BOX]

[SPOILER-BOX]
https://youtu.be/t4RiFmbT3ZY[/SPOILER-BOX]

[SPOILER-BOX]
https://youtu.be/dr0D9keVRmQ[/SPOILER-BOX]

[sol_trigger]

youtube reduces the audio bitrate to 128 and that's bad...

[Altiea]

youtube reduces the audio bitrate to 128 and that's bad...

Fine, here's the Dropbox filedump.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ba6wkdsr08xqp5e/AABAXY8-0TdSm9-rlz7YxEHia?dl=0

[sol_trigger]

thanks man :D

[Altiea]

And then I finally got round to looking at that pamphlet.

Vol. 4 Soundtrack -- Partial Interview
[SPOILER-BOX]http://i.imgur.com/RWGHLWd.jpg[/SPOILER-BOX]

[Zysets]

I'd like to know if the song is just called "Unfathomable Darkness" or if they call PD "Unfathomable" instead of "Profound" when translating "深遠なる闇". I mean both are accurate I guess, but having played the PSIV localization, it seems weird to me. Probably just my own english language bias though.

[Altiea]

I'd like to know if the song is just called "Unfathomable Darkness" or if they call PD "Unfathomable" instead of "Profound" when translating "深遠なる闇". I mean both are accurate I guess, but having played the PSIV localization, it seems weird to me. Probably just my own english language bias though.

Personally, I like to think it's the song name.

[Saffran]

[spoiler-box]
Resuming from page 336

Kimura: As far as Elder is concerned, the rough original concept is actually from Sakai. The team leader for the enemy design was Hamasaki, who is now co-director of Episode 4. We gave him and his team only a few indications: the fight would be separated in two halves, and you'd have plenty of smaller enemies that would aggregate and create a huge one. So basically we really only said "first you fight small enemies and they combine into a big one". And apparently, Hamasaki immediately thought of using hands.
-So that's what the Falz Arms are about...
Kimura: Yeah, exactly.
Sakai: And they hold each others and form a train. That's ridiculous ! (laughs)
Kimura: Sakai looked over that and it got to the way it is today. Until PSO2 episode 1, Hamasaki was in the enemy design team of many Phantasy Star titles, but really, he's the type that thinks out of the box. He's the one behind Quartz Dragon. When I told him to think about a sort of stronger version of Vol Dragon, he brought to me the concept of a dragon that flies head first and sticks his nuzzle into the ground.
Mizuno: But that kind of thinking makes the game more fun. As a mater of fact, I made a few proposals myself, like fighting in the remains of a broken arks ship for the Elder fight, or having attacks coming from off-screen. The difficulty of coming up with these ideas makes it worth the effort. That's fun.
Sakai: Speaking of which, naming all those enemies started to get really complicated...
Mizuno: Yes, it got so hard that we switched to a more simple naming convention.

The symetrical conception of Ep2 and Ep3

Judging form the fact that she gets new costumes all the time since Episode 1, you'd think Echo is a favorite of the development team, but....
Uno: But what? We do love her! (laughs)
Kimura: In my mind, we do love her! We give her new outfits every time!
Kimura:[it really is Kimura twice in a row, I don't know why] Plus, she's the only female character that has been present in the game since the prologue.
Sakai: Yeah, that's true.
Kimura: Echo is one of the few female characters where we really wanted to show her character growth, so we wanted to have her also change physically, as the scenario goes further. We do favor her in the story, but also, she's been around so much and we want to acknowledge that.
Uno: As far as the scenario is concerned, I didn't write Echo to be this great character that will get all the popularity. She's more of a plot device... but maybe these words are too harsh and cold. In baseball terms, she's a number 7, second base.
Everyone: Wait, what? Second base but number 7?
Uno: I mean one of those players that you kinda need to have around!
Mizuno: Well, she serves as a guide to the player.
Uno: Yes, I wrote Afin, Xeno(spelling?) and Echo to be guides for new players, sort of showing them around the game. I didn't give them too many specifics in terms of personality.

-Kuna also changes her outfit, and Matoi too. These changes sort of mark some keystones in the storyline. Also, Echo and Ulk seem to have these wardrobe changes too.
Kimura: Well, Ulk doesn't really have a new costume, she has a new color scheme of an outfit that already existed. I wanted to do a little more, but in my mind, her importance had sort of dropped a little. After she fails to become an Arks and starts working more behind-the-scenes, I couldn't decide, until the very end, if we should give her an entirely new outfit or not. I couldn't really find something that would do justice to her (sexy) bodyline.
Mizuno: is that why you chose the All Brink costume? (laughs)
Kimura: It was an already existing costume, but I wanted her to have at least a unique color scheme. So as usual, I asked the item team for a recoloring, real quick.
Mizuno: At first, she also wore a sun-visor.
Kimura: Oh, yeah, right! And she was wearing pink at first.
Mizuno: A bright pink All Brink, with a sun-visor.
Kimura: And then I saw her appearance in *that* scene in chapter 2-5. And I went "come on girl, read the mood!". (laughs)
Mizuno: It really felt like she came straight from a gas station nearby during her shift or something. So we had to drop the sun-visor.
Kimura: In the scenario, her Arks trainee days are a thing of the past, yet I was going to have her on screen in her trainee uniform. But then I thought that we should show that she went another route so to speak, and the old trainee uniform suddenly felt out of place.
Uno: Plus, something like 6 months have passed in the story.
Kimura: Yeah, after 6 months, we couldn't use those, so I had the All Brink recolored. I wanted her to look all cute so we went for pink...
-Mr Sakai, did you see Ulk in the pink All Brink?
Sakai: No, I didn't!
-So it was refused before they could show it to you.
Mizuno: We were creating the event cutscenes and we saw her and we went "stop, stop!".
Sakai: I was present at every post-recording session up until Ep2, but then Ep3 was mostly Kimura having specific ideas for events so I let Kimura and Uno handle them and I didn't have much of an input. I would of course say something if I saw a bit that made me uneasy in the dialogues or so.
Kimura: Yeah, you would look over the promotion videos, mostly... and the boss fights, right?
Sakai: Yes, I would check the introductory scenes and death scenes of all bosses. And I'd comment "It doesn't seem gigantic enough!" or so. I gave ideas about scenes and camera works, even minute details about timing. But we can't keep those scenes too long, so you have to think of how you bring out that feeling that the boss is gigantic or what his specifics are. It's quite difficult.
Mizuno: You always kept telling me "It doesn't seem gigantic enough", I feel.
Kimura: Also, when Sakai got around to checking events, it was at later stages, when we were already working on promotion videos and stuff, at the very end of the pipeline. I saw him sometimes having little outcries as he watched the videos on the desk next to me.
Sakai: Or sometimes I'd be there, crying alone.
Kimura: Wait, what? You cried?
-During what scene in particuliar?
Uno: But, wait, Mr. Sakai, you DO read the scripts, don't you?
Sakai: Of course I do. Let's see, up until EP3... I guess when the second generation Clarisse Klays(spelling?)... er... you know.
Uno: Come on now, I think we can say it openly nowadays, it's not a spoiler anymore. (laughs)
Sakai: Or maybe during the last chapter of Ep2. I felt that this was a great part.
Uno: The players really loved chapter 6, that's true.
Mizuno: I liked the part in 2-5 where the Six Stars draw out their weapons.
Uno: Thank you. That scene almost feels like they're superheroes coming to save the day, I was surprised when I saw the result on screen.
-Chapter 2-5 was long, it feels like there are a lot of memorable scenes.
Kimura: We crammed a lot in there, it's about the size of two and a half chapters, right?
Uno: Yeah, about that. I remember that for this one chapter, the size of the text was really long.
Kimura: I think we mentionned it in the Ep1&2 Artwork book, but originally, we had two chapters and fused it into a single one. Because if we kept it separated, you'd have to get back to the lobbies in the Oracle mothership in the middle of the quest. And I really didn't want that, so we had to make it that way. That's why EP3 has seven chapters, but Ep2 only has six.
Uno: But in terms of length and content, they're about the same.
[/spoiler-box]

[loafhero]

Mizuno: Yes, it got so hard that we switched to a more simple naming convention.

HAHAHAHAHA!!! Very funny, dev team....


Uno: As far as the scenario is concerned, I didn't write Echo to be this great character that will get all the popularity. She's more of a plot device...
At least their honest about Echo's uselessness.


Kimura: And then I saw her appearance in *that* scene in chapter 2-5. And I went "come on girl, read the mood!". (laughs)
They should have just kept Ulc in her ARKS operator uniform that she had when attacked by Winged Darkers in that scene since her Ol Blink outfit was already a mood breaker. Maybe have said uniform torn and burned from having to endure Theo's fireballs and then have her wear the Ol Blink at the start of 2-6.

[Altiea]

They should have just kept Ulc in her ARKS operator uniform that she had when attacked by Winged Darkers in that scene since her Ol Blink outfit was already a mood breaker. Maybe have said uniform torn and burned from having to endure Theo's fireballs and then have her wear the Ol Blink at the start of 2-6.

I'm gonna conjecture that the Ol Blink is more of a trademark for her, thus why they gave it to her in the majority of her cutscenes.

As far as I know, depicting clothing damage involves making an entirely new outfit (i.e. Eucrita, everything in PSNova); they probably didn't bother.

[Saffran]

That's exactly what they explain. She failed the arks training and six months have passed since her disappearance, so it would have been weird if she still had the arks clothes on. But they didn't have time to build an entirely new costume for her. So they went with something that was already released.
Ol Blink, eh? I had no idea how to write it...