– Carpe Fulgur’s Andrew Dice
Localization can be tough — especially when the game you’re working on has more text than War and Peace. In fact, it can drive people almost beyond endurance.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC may be obscure — but it’s beloved by fans, and finally released on PC and PSP last week after years of effort to render its complicated and lengthy story from Japanese into English.
A new story on Kotaku reveals the surprising story of its localization — and the the tremendous effort required to finish the game and get it into fans’ hands.
“When I finally finished it I’d dropped ~10 percent of my body weight and was down to 99 lbs,” localization editor Jessica Chavez tells Kotaku, while Andrew Dice, who worked on the game’s translation until a falling out with its publisher, says he felt like he’d “fucked up” his company by getting involved with the project at all.
It’s a compelling tale of the lengths some projects drive people to, and worth a read.