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Episode Transcription
JETT: [In Korean] Aww, sorry!
WRAITH: Tell Death I said hello.
ALE: Hi, guys! Today we will be talking about culturalization in some of the most successful first-person shooters out there.
FLOR: Yes, that’s right! Specifically, we’re going to talk about Valorant and Apex. Each of these games has a very distinct lineup of characters from different nationalities.
ALE: Now, let’s start with Apex Legends. For this LocFact, we have some interesting insight from one of our previous guests, Yuhei Nasu. This game celebrates cultural diversity and even in some cases, characters have a catchphrase in their native language that is intentionally left as is in the Japanese version as well.
FLOR: Yeah. For example, Octane will say “No hay problema,” Wattson will say “Merci,” and Crypto will say “Josimhae.” Also, characters will sometimes mention foods or even items that are specific to their cultures.
ALE: Exactly! It is beautifully done. Like when Horizon says…
HORIZON: Air strike! Keep moving or we’re haggis.
ALE: Most users will not know what “haggis” is, and it would have been easy to just say “Air strike! Move if you don’t want to turn into minced meat,” but this would have taken away from the character’s heritage. Leaving the word “haggis” leads to users asking, “What is haggis?”, right? So this creates a curiosity for a culture that they may not have even known if it were not for Apex.
FLOR: Yeah, I definitely had to Google that one, and now I want to try haggis.
ALE: Yep. Same.
FLOR: So yeah, thank you, Yuhei, for that insight. So now we want to talk about Valorant. Do you want to share more details about that, Ale?
ALE: Yeah. Let’s take a look at the character Skye to start. This character is all about Australia. Her animal skill Guiding Light is designed after a brown goshawk, a bird native from Australia, and several other Pacific Islands. For hunting down her enemies, she can also summon a Tasmanian tiger, which is an animal that inhabited the same region and is now believed to be extinct.
FLOR: Her accent does not go unnoticed, that’s for sure. She’s as lively and expressive as any other Valorant character. And also, another character worth mentioning here is the robotics genius Killjoy.
ALE: Yeah. This character certainly brought a lot of debate among German players in terms of cultural representation, since Killjoy does not drink beer, nor does she go around the maps eating Bockwurst or Weißwurst. After all, it is clear that she was not designed after your typical German stereotype.
FLOR: And… Yeah, absolutely. Here we all agree that cultural representation is not something that is easy to achieve. But we would definitely love to hear your comments on this and learn from your favorite characters in Apex and Valorant, and maybe share more details on some cultural aspects that you may have considered that were spot on.
ALE: Thank you very much, guys! See you on the next LocFact.
FLOR: Hi, everyone! Welcome to a new episode of Open World. Today, here we have with us Ivan Lopes. Ivan has been working as a professional translator since 2009 in several fields such as literature, video games and audiovisual translation. He graduated in Japanese language and literature from the University of São Paulo, where he’s based. And he has also studied the Japanese language in Japan, where his appreciation for the ancient culture grew even more, of course. In his free time he enjoys riding his motorcycle across Brazil. That sounds really exciting. Hi, Ivan. How are you?
IVAN: Hello. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. It’s an honor to be here with you all.
LORE: Good to have you.
FLOR: We’re super excited to have you here. So we want to start with your background, because we know that you studied translation and interpreting, but people from outside the industry might not see a big difference between translation and interpreting. But we know that there are actually very different skill sets for each task, right? So do you think that having experience in both translation and interpreting helps you in game localization in any way? Because you know that you’re often translating written text with the end goal of it being spoken aloud, right? So from your experience, did any of those fields ever connect or make you improve your work somehow?
IVAN: Absolutely. Completely connected to each other. They are distinct and very different, but also very similar, right? When you are translating something, you have time to go on a dictionary to search for a certain word, and to read and read again and read a third time and read a fourth time the same sentence.
ALEX: A more paced kind of work.
IVAN: Yeah, like, you read it until you have it by heart, you know? But you can improve. Whatever you are saying, you can improve. This improvement will, in my opinion, in my experience, will be mostly guided by readability, you know? If it’s easy to understand, if it’s not that easy to understand… if it’s natural, you know? People, in my case, the people from Brazil will read that sentence and relate to that, and they will feel like someone is actually talking to them, because that’s pretty much what video games are, right? You have either a machine talking to you, teaching you how to play the game, or characters behaving like in a movie. So it must sound natural in any circumstance. Well, interpreting is the same as translation, but you don’t have the time to do anything, you know? You’re gonna hear and you’re gonna speak.
FLOR: It’s like, go, go, go, go, every single time, right?
ALEX: Your first try has to be the best one, the very first time. And you don’t have a second one.
IVAN: Well, sometimes, because there are mainly two types of interpreting, right? You can be a consecutive interpreter or a simultaneous interpreter. When you are a simultaneous one, like the people on the Oscars, you know? They are talking and you are talking at the same time. This is harder, way harder. But when you are working consecutively, you still can talk to the person who is talking, who is speaking, and ask something or add something. I remember this time I forgot… It was a course, right? It was a technical school and I was interpreting a discourse. I completely forgot how to say “sandpaper.” And…
FLOR: What did you do?
IVAN: That’s the thing. He spoke in Japanese. I understood what he was saying, what he wanted, but it didn’t come to my mind, and I was like, “Oh, come on, I know what this is.” And then, you know, you become human. You may mimic, speak to people like, “Hey, that thing you use to do this. You know. You use it like this.” Yeah. My interpreting teacher told us… He was a great, great interpreter, and he said, “Well, there’s this… There was this time I was in a conference, and the person who was speaking made a joke, like Americans usually do, right? At the beginning of the speaking, they make a joke. And it was a very American joke. And he told us, “Well, you have two choices. Either you always have one joke ready to tell them, or more than one, because the joke can be longer or shorter. So you have a set of jokes. Or you do what he did, which was, at the end of the joke, you just tell the audience, “Well, he just made a joke. It’s very hard to translate. Please laugh here.”
LORE: I love that option.
IVAN: Yes. I think at the heart, that’s what I do. That’s all it is. When translating…
FLOR: I think that’s a great way to build rapport with the audience and for them to be empathetic of the work of an interpreter, because it’s really hard, especially when it comes to jokes, right?
IVAN: Yeah. Exactly. Well, it turned out very nicely in this course, because there was a lot of very specific materials for that. And after that first one, “sandpaper,” I felt free to start doing that whenever I didn’t know what something was. And after that, I was called by the same company, the same people, to work for them several times, so they enjoyed it. It worked, somehow.
LORE: It worked out.
ALEX: It worked out.
LORE: And as an American, I will say, if any of you are interpreting for me, I give you blanket permission to just go ahead and use that option B. As long as I come across as funny, I don’t really care about how it happens.
IVAN: Excellent.
LORE: I have another one for you here. We were a big fan of some of the text that we were reading on the BrazLoct website, so much so that we thought it was important to quote this one word for word. “People shouldn’t be deprived of culture because of their status, social position, or educational level. And as humans, we fight where we can to help people the best we can.” Could you tell us a little bit more about fighting the good fight?
IVAN: Well, I wouldn’t call that the good fight. I actually call that the human fight, you know? And that’s because when we came up, when we were writing this, we were thinking about ourselves. In Brazil, less than 5% of the population, of the total population, can speak English. And less than 1% can actually speak English. Because there’s a difference there. You can understand, you can say something, and you can actually read a book or read something that is heavy, that is very big. There’s a difference there. There’s a very low amount of population that can actually [direct access for their cultures 11:49]. And we are speaking of English, right? It’s not even Japanese or Spanish. Surprisingly enough, there’s even less people talking Spanish in Brazil, although we are very close and the languages are very similar. And, well, not being able to speak or understand another culture makes you separated from that culture. Even though you have access to a lot of series, a lot of movies and games, but if you can actually understand what’s happening, if you can actually get a grasp of what they are saying and what’s behind that, you know? Because the language is… there’s several layers for a language, right? So, when we are speaking, we are expressing our culture there as well. And it’s very sad that people can’t reach that. And us at BrazLoct, we all came from… All of us came from a very humble social layer back there from the beginning. And we either struggled through or had contact with a lot of struggles to learn to be better, to learn new skills, to learn about the world, to understand that the world is bigger than it seems. And, well, personally speaking, I first became a translator because of one book I read. It was a Japanese book translated to Portuguese. And it was so beautifully translated. And in the preface of it, there was a very nice description of the translation work done in that book.
ALEX: Nice.
IVAN: And that was the moment I looked at that and said, “Okay, this is what I want to do in my life.” And, you know, but I am where I am right now because of that moment, and that moment would not happen if that book wasn’t translated. We never know what will touch people. Sometimes we say, even with friends, we can say something that is very natural, very normal for us, but for that person, it’s life changing. I bet everyone here has a moment like that, when someone come to you and say, “Hey, what you told me this day was life-changing.” And it’s amazing. So what we are trying to achieve at BrazLoct is to bring this experience, the best way we can, to people in Brazil. Of course, we are a very small studio and we are starting right now. But this is our main goal, to bring a great story to people so people can enjoy them, learn with them, and maybe, who knows? Be saved by that.
ALEX: Nice, nice. Well, for those of you who don’t know, Ivan here and his studio has worked on the localization of Disco Elysium, that we have the director’s cut now on Steam, I saw earlier this week. But I love what you just said about saving someone or getting to them, right? But what can you tell us about your experience translating this game that has won so many awards? And also, how did it feel from your side, right, from your perspective of localizing it when the game started to gain all the recognition that it has today?
IVAN: Well, Disco Elysium is a very unique game, and I think everyone will agree with that. It’s so deep in so many senses. Well, when I started working with it, I had already played the game as a gamer, you know? I love RPGs, and Disco Elysium promised to be like the experience, the tabletop experience. So yes, I was very, very curious because something that was very frustrating for me from the beginning, from the first time I played Chrono Trigger, I was like, “Well, okay, this is nice, but this isn’t RPG.” Because I was used to D&D and to Vampire in order to go together with my friends and throw the dice, you know? And be free to do anything. Then I remember, it was by chance I saw an ad, it was a rather long video talking about Disco Elysium when it went into its first launch, because it was translated after, you know? It was launched in 2019 and it was translated in 2020.
ALEX: Right.
IVAN: So I got the game and that was… like my mind was blown, you know? Because that was a tabletop experience, a genuine tabletop experience right there. So I was very happy with the game, I played it. And then, at the middle of 2020, I was called to translate it, to help translate it. It became very quickly one of those, “Oh, this is a dream gig.” And it became very, very, very quickly a dream gig. But I didn’t think it would happen, actually, because it’s too big, you know? Disco Elysium is like “The Lord of the Rings,” all three books of “Lord of the Rings,” plus “The Hobbit” times two.
LORE: Wow!
FLOR: That’s a lot of content. A lot of stories.
ALEX: That’s a lot of words.
FLOR: A lot of worlds also.
ALEX: Worlds. Yeah.
LORE: Words and worlds.
IVAN: I like saying it like this, because when you say, “Well, it’s more than one million words,” you say, “Wow, that’s a lot.” But still, no, it’s a number. But when you say it’s “Lord of the Rings” plus “The Hobbit” times two, you get the idea, you know? You get, “Oh, wow.”
ALEX: You get the whole spectrum of it.
IVAN: Exactly. And so it was a huge task. Talking about the operative side of the thing, it was a huge task. Because I don’t know if you’ve played the game, but when you’re playing, the thing is, it’s a tabletop RPG, right? Whatever NPC you meet, you have like four to six different options of answering them. And it can go anywhere. Like, you he says to a lady on a wheelchair if he can ride with her to fight crime, you know? Like Batman and Robin. So yeah, it’s like this, you have a lot of a lot of different options. And whatever you choose will affect not only your relations with the NPC, but also the relations between the NPC and other NPCs.
ALEX: Right.
IVAN: So when you are working with something like that, consistency is a huge concern. It’s very hard.
ALEX: The importance of those processes to be consistent all throughout the game. Such a big game.
IVAN: Yes.
FLOR: And how do you handle that? I mean… I probably don’t want to break any NDAs, but probably there’s a style guide. Is there a huge term base that you connect to? Yeah. How do you keep consistency in such a huge project?
IVAN: Well, the studio ZA/UM was very helpful. They gave us tons of reference materials, and that from the beginning was very helpful because the world in Disco Elysium is a world very similar to ours, but still slightly different, different and not to make you think, “Wait a second. There’s something strange going on here.” You know? But it’s still very similar. Yeah, but still very similar so you don’t think you are in another world. So it feels like you are here. It’s not Earth, there are no continents, it’s another world. But it’s very similar and it’s very political. It discusses feminists, it discusses politics in a huge specter. It discusses alcoholism, it discusses drug addiction, it discusses a lot of very deep, very serious… Depression. It discusses a lot of very deep, very serious things. And having reference material for that was crucial for work. And then as a team, BrazLoct was born during this collision process because we created a bond… Because, you see, if any of you go… There was no term base because the game wasn’t translated, right? So we created the whole glossary, we created pretty much everything. We had to create new words because they did that in the original one. And we had to understand the game like three, four layers below the surface so we can come with the translation. And in some parts of the game, we were given a lot of freedom to create as well, as long as the team was not changing the game, right? So when coming up with terms like names, character names, we got a lot of freedom. But we wanted to make… As I said, you know, since our purpose, our goal is to deliver the cultural material, the culture to the people here in Brazil, we must be very loyal to the source. We are completely against putting a lot of slang in the game when not necessary, or cursing words were not necessary. Of course, there’s a lot of them, of both of them, but we were not like forcing that. Sometimes we see in some games that people force this to make people laugh or to gain, you know, a younger audience, like, “Well, let’s put a meme right here. Let’s insert this something, you know, because it’s so cool, it’s so nice.” And we had some arguments in our team. “Hey, what do you think if we put this one right here?” and then the answer was always, “Okay, let’s check the game.” “But the game doesn’t bring this funny stuff right here, so I won’t use it.” “Oh, but it’s funny.” “No, we won’t use it.” And then. So it was very discussed. And everything that we took a leap forward in order to translate… “Okay, let’s make this… Let’s adapt this so people will understand it better, so people will get the meaning, the real meaning of that,” we were always in close contact with the studio and asking them, “Hey, can we do this? Is it okay if we do this? It’s what the game wanted to say.” And then we would only proceed if they said, “Yes, go ahead.” If not, then we would go back to the project table, you know, and think again. Think something else and go with that. So there was a lot of talk. Answering your question about how we did it, it was a lot of talking between ourselves and with the studio so we could get things done. And afterwards it was only, you know, the usual process of having a glossary and of being their glossary. For me personally, it was, well, it was a dream come true. My name is in there, so to have my name in a game that was so… that became so famous is an honor. I feel really proud, and I feel very good in this place of my career right now. And everyone in our team, everyone in BrazLoct team shares the same feeling. We feel proud because, you know, there was a lot of compliments in Twitter about the translation of Disco Elysium. And when it was launched, we were like… everyone had diarrhea, you know? Everyone was…
FLOR: I bet! I mean, did you sleep? No. How did you…?
ALEX: How did you manage the nerves?
IVAN: I did translate some big franchise before, but under NDA. No one knows I did. I can’t tell anyone I did. So it’s, again, I still go and check, you know, what people are saying about the translation, but I’m not expecting anyone to come to my door with stones on their hands and say…
ALEX: “It’s your fault that the game is so crappy translated!”
IVAN: “[indistinct 26:24] it’s ruined because of you!” But in Disco Elysium, everyone knew who we were, and there’s already this huge fanbase and they are very passionate about it. And now that it went to PS5 and PS4, people are actually fighting on Twitter, you know, because some people didn’t like the game because, “Oh, too many words, I don’t want to read. If I want to read, I go read a book.” And the people that like the game are like, “Oh, you’re stupid. You don’t like to read. You don’t know how to read.” You know, they’re actually fighting over it.
FLOR: Big debate.
IVAN: Big debate. It was a huge thing. And then we spent the next week after the launching both for the base game and for the final cuts, we spent the whole week watching Twitter.
LORE: Not overthinking it at all.
ALEX: Chilling.
IVAN: Not at all. Chilling. Relaxed, thank you.
FLOR: The stakes are really high. Your name is in there. Your friends know that you did that, right? Like it’s not…
LORE: You care about the game personally.
FLOR: Because if you sign an NDA, all you can tell is your mom, like, “Hey, I translated this amazing thing that you don’t care about, but hey, here it is!”
IVAN: Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, we were actually, especially on the first game or the first base game… Because it was a year-long project. A lot happened during that one year, right? So there was a lot of problems. And we were waiting for people to notice those problems in the translation and, you know, come back to us because of that. But no, but no one came. And we also, in our Twitter, we put a form for people to fill out whenever they saw a bug or a problem in the translation, so we would know about it and correct it.
ALEX: That’s smart.
IVAN: Well, people were, well, are still being very, very helpful. I keep receiving, you know, feedback from people. There’s this person who keeps… He told me, “Okay, I’m not playing this game as a gamer. I’m playing like a reviewer,” because he works…
FLOR: That’s the best thing that can ever happen, right? Like…
IVAN: And pretty much every day he comes, “Hey, this part right here does this thing you may want to look upon.” And of course, sometimes he’s right. Most of the time he’s right. Sometimes it was [indistinct 29:18] because the word of this [indistinct 29:19] is a little bit weird. There are things that people look at and, “Oh, this is wrong.” But no, it’s right. This is actually…
LORE: Promise.
ALEX: No, no, no, he’s right.
FLOR: I checked.
ALEX: Trust me, he’s right.
IVAN: No, no, no. There’s one line. We received a lot of feedback on this one line because this character says something completely strange. As you told me I can curse, I’m gonna curse here, but I’m quoting the character. He says something like, “Can I have a fuck with you?”
ALEX: Okay.
FLOR: Okay.
IVAN: It’s very strange, right?
LORE: Interesting.
ALEX: That’s an interesting proposal. Interesting question. Can I?
IVAN: He actually comes to a lady [indistinct 30:05] and then… No, you can have… She says something, and then you have to answer, right? And depending on your answer, you can go straight and forget that’s ever happened and just go on with your life. But there’s one option when she will actually laugh at you because she asks you to say that again. Yes, she asks you to say that again. And then you can just say “No” and go ahead or change the subject, or goes something like, “Say what?” And then she tells him, well, “Say again what you just said.” And then he says the same phrase, but in the correct way. And then she goes like, “No, you didn’t say that. You said this one.” Right? “This thing right here?”
FLOR: Oh!
IVAN: “That’s not how people talk,” you know?
LORE: That’s interesting.
IVAN: If you watch only the strangeline over there,you think it was a mistake, you know?
ALEX: Yes. Context is everything.
IVAN: Exactly. And in the game, you only know that was really meant to be that way if you choose this one option.
LORE: Have faith in your translators.
ALEX: They know what they’re doing.
FLOR: But that fanbase? Yeah, but also like having passionate fans that know the story as much as you do and can help you improve it, that’s amazing. That’s priceless.
IVAN: It has also been great to be in close contact with people that are actually consuming our translation, right? So we can know what they want, what they think, what they feel like, you know? One of the best things I ever heard was, “Thanks to you, guys, I could play this game.”
LORE: Aww!
IVAN: That’s really heartwarming.
ALEX: Yeah. That’s why you do it.
IVAN: Yeah, exactly.
FLOR: Ivan, now that we’re getting more and more into gaming things, and I know that you gave us a couple of hints here and there of what your favorite genre is, but I wanted to know what you’re playing. Are you playing any games, or are you just focused on work? Because I know that can happen also.
ALEX: That can happen.
IVAN: Now it’s funny because I can be with a controller in my hands and tell my brother, “Hey, I’m working.”
FLOR: Yeah, right?
IVAN: But yeah, I’m playing something. Don’t judge me here because I never learned how to say this game’s name correctly. But I’m playing NieR:Automata. “Near Automata,” “Naier Automata.”
ALEX: I think it’s “nier,” like N-I-E-R, right? Automata. Yeah.
IVAN: Yeah. N-I-E-R Automata.
ALEX: A Square Enix game.
IVAN: Yeah. Great game, but very difficult. It’s very hard.
FLOR: Oh, is it?
IVAN: Yeah, well, it’s an RPG. But the thing about Nier which got me really surprised was that the very first section, let’s say the introduction of the game, the prolog of the game, you have to play it whole. You don’t have any save points. The game doesn’t save automatically. You have to play like one hour without dying… A very difficult game. Fighting one boss, and then you can save. No, you must fight one boss and then you can save. And it’s not an easy boss as well. So this came as a surprise. I don’t know why Square Enix did that, you know? Anyway, so… Yeah, I’m having fun with that. Great graphics. Extremely nice story. And in a more relaxed vibe, I’m playing also Hollow Knight, which is…
ALEX: Is it really relaxing to play Hollow Knight?
IVAN: It is for me, yeah.
ALEX: It’s a very hard game too, man.
LORE: Listening to my husband play it, I’m gonna say it’s not super relaxing.
FLOR: Oh, no, it’s not. It can be very frustrating at times.
IVAN: Yeah, well, comparing with Nier, I think it’s a little… it’s considered more relaxed than Nier.
LORE: So relatively. Okay.
IVAN: Also, I was playing Cuphead.
ALEX: Again, not very relaxing. Again, not very relaxing.
IVAN: Not at all. No, Cuphead is not relaxing at all. But if you compare Hollow Knight with Cuphead and Nier, then yeah, you have like… It’s pretty much, you know, one of those animal crossing or something like that.
ALEX: Yeah, well compared to that.
IVAN: Yes. So I’m playing those. And I’m also watching the gameplay… I don’t have a PlayStation right now, so I’m watching the gameplay of Final Fantasy VII Remake.
FLOR: Oh, yeah, that’s a good one.
IVAN: Yeah. I kind of have mixed feelings about the remake at the moment because I’m a big, huge fan, hardcore fan of the original one. But we’ve got to understand that the time has passed, right?
ALEX: Yeah.
FLOR: So we want to go now to our meme section, because we always like to end our show with a meme round. And we asked you, of course, to share with us your favorite memes. I’m going to share my screen now.
LORE: That gives me anxiety.
ALEX: That can look like any MMORPG ever, right?
IVAN: Yes. You know, I felt like… I actually translated, I started my career translating an MMORPG. And when I went on to look at the translation, the implemented translation, this is what I saw. This is pretty much what I saw. I was the one translating it and I couldn’t find myself in there. And then I would, you know, I would think, “Well, I’m getting old indeed.”
FLOR: Oh, yeah. Same happening here. Like, where do I start? What do I have to pay attention to?
IVAN: A lot of things happening. And, you know, sometimes if you have like three or four things on the screen, it’s already difficult. And then you look at those games that got a lot of menus. And then there’s this small chat. If it was not enough all the menus, all the messages and all the buttons, there’s this small chat window over there.
ALEX: Another chat.
LORE: Oh, boy.
IVAN: Come on.
FLOR: Oh, my. That’s a lot for my short span attention.
ALEX: Yeah.
FLOR: Short attention span. Oh, this one.
LORE: Painfully accurate.
IVAN: Yeah.
ALEX: This happens quite often. So this is pretty accurate.
IVAN: Yeah, I couldn’t resist this one. I couldn’t resist it, as well, because it’s pretty much the same. Any game you play. Any game. Well, I play RPGs, there’s always a desert.
ALEX: Always a desert.
IVAN: There’s always a desert. And there’s always this kind of song playing on the desert, you know?
LORE: Sepia filter to let you know that you’re in Latin America in any TV show or movie.
IVAN: Exactly. Sepia filter. Exactly.
ALEX: It’s painfully accurate.
FLOR: Yeah.
ALL: Oh!
ALEX: I believe we all have this type of moment.
LORE: Yeah. That one hurt a little.
IVAN: This was me,this was my face playing The Witcher 3. This was me playing The Witcher 3.
ALEX: Don’t spoil it for me because I’m currently playing it right now. I’m currently playing it right now.
IVAN: Oh, I would never. But play as much side quests as you can.
ALEX: They are so fulfilling. They are so fulfilling the side quests.
IVAN: Exactly. For me, they are better than the main quest, you know? For me. But you know what? This is a polemic opinion. I think that the side quests from The Witcher 2 are actually better than The Witcher 3. The Witcher 3’s side quests are more complex, I’d say. You have to go to several places and talk to a lot of people. There are longer and more complex. But nothing beats the troll side quest in the beginning of The Witcher 2. Nothing beats that. Nothing.
FLOR: Hmm, interesting topic. We would love to hear what everyone thinks about that also.
ALEX: Yeah.
FLOR: So this one.
ALEX: I played Dark Souls on Bloodborne, and this is real.
FLOR: Oh, yeah?
IVAN: Come on, man, you hear it in Latin. Come on. It’s the end of the world, you know? Like…
ALEX: You’re gonna die.
IVAN: The angels are coming announcing the apocalypse and that’s what happens. That’s it.
FLOR: All the drama.
LORE: Immediate spookiness.
IVAN: Come on. Music starts playing, and the music has lyrics. It’s already frightening enough. If it’s in Latin…
LORE: It’s going down.
ALEX: It’s going down. Yeah.
FLOR: I know. Yeah. Armageddon.
LORE: Save button. Save button.
IVAN: You see the save icon showing up there and it starts playing in Latin. It’s over. Oh, this one! I saw a very nice tweet about this one recently. They are saying that it’s very important to have a Busy Adult Mode for every game.
ALEX: I saw that one.
LORE: Yes, please.
FLOR: Great advice!
IVAN: Because you go back to the game months after, weeks after, you don’t remember anything anymore, and you need a mode that will tell you where to go, what you did, because you forgot about the whole history. And if the game doesn’t have some kind of journal, you are lost. And what you must do and anything else.
LORE: Game devs, listen up. Busy Adult Mode suggestion.
ALEX: BusyAdult Mode log, please. “You were in this quest. You need to go here. Remember.”
LORE: Help us out.
IVAN: “This is what happened.” A very short story of what happened.
FLOR: Exactly.Like when you go back to a new episode of a show that you were binge watching and then you suddenly stopped for some reason. And you go back to where you were, and you have a preview or something.
ALEX: We need that in games.
IVAN: It’s like waiting for… It’s like, you know, Game of Thrones. If there wasn’t the series, if you were waiting for the next book… Come on, that’s already ten years.
FLOR: I know.
LORE: I already can’t tell what happened in the books and what happened in the show. I’m gonna need somebody to go through my brain and, like, separate what happened and what didn’t happen in the books.
IVAN: Exactly.I was thinking, well, when it’s close to be launched, I may read everything again. And now it’s like, man, I don’t have time to read things. I have to read.
FLOR: I know.
LORE: It’s a lot of reading!
FLOR: You can always blame the Mandela effect, right? Just your imagination inventing memories of Game of Thrones.
LORE: And blocking out memories of Game of Thrones.
FLOR: Yeah.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah. Especially from the TV series.
LORE: Little bit of both there.
ALEX: It’s on selective mode. Selective memory.
IVAN: That happened. That didn’t happen. So if I don’t remember, it didn’t happen.
FLOR: Exactly.
IVAN: This one…Have you ever played The Messenger? It’s a platformer, just like Ninja Gaiden.
FLOR: Oh, no, I haven’t.
IVAN: The Messenger is a very cool game. If you like Ninja Gaiden, The Messenger is the right choice. And whenever you die, comes this demon-like figure and start insulting you. Things like, “Are you playing with your feet? Or…
ALEX: That’s not very nice.
IVAN: You can always say you are testing something, you know? I used to do that with my brother when he comes insulting me. That’s how I felt. This meme is how I felt whenever I died in The Messenger.
FLOR: Oh, the feels.
IVAN: Yeah. I never switched [indistinct 43:57].
FLOR: I can tell that you like challenges. Well, that was the end. Ivan, it was a pleasure having you. I cannot believe our time is up already.
IVAN: That felt really fast.
LORE: It really did.
IVAN: I talk a lot, I’m sorry. I told Alex I talk a lot.
FLOR: Oh, but we love to hear you talk.
LORE: That’s why we want you here. We want to hear all your thoughts.
IVAN: Thank you. Thank you for the invitation. It was really a pleasure talking to you.
FLOR: Oh, please. Thank you for your time and for sharing your wisdom on video game localization. I hope to see you soon. Everyone, stay safe, and see you in our next episode. Bye!
ALEX: Bye, everyone!
LORE: Bye!