the professionalism of Nintendo Treehouse and my thoughts on Fire Emblem Fates.

Before I start the article, I want to make one thing clear. I do NOT hate Fire Emblem Fates. I have never played it before, and thus do not have an opinion on them. This article is not about how much I hate this game, and that anyone who doesn't is a big, stinky poo poo head, this is just about the horrible localization the game have gotten from Nintendo Treehouse. Another thing, and this is a big one, THIS IS MY OPINION. If you like the localization, then more power to you. Now lets get on with this.


Fire Emblem Fates was a game that I was looking forward to for a while. As soon as it was announced, I followed the game like a hawk, even though I didn't own a 3DS (I still don't as of this writing). It wasn't until recently that I started to lose hope for the game.

Let me give you a background. I love Fire Emblem. I have played every game (save for Awakening) in the series and have owned a copy of every American release of the series. I love turn based strategy and a good story, and Fire Emblem had both. When I heard of Fire Emblem Path of Radiance for the Gamecube, I begged my mom to some how get me it for Christmas, and somehow she got it for me. I feel completely in love with the game instantly. I loved the art work, the gameplay, the characters, that story. I loved how the game punished you if you let too many of your units die, how the difficulty was just right. I loved everything about it. Soon after I got Radiant Dawn, the first game I got for the Wii, and loved it just as much. Soon after I got the GBA games and the DS remake of Shadow Dragon. I've played the crap out of all the games to the point of knowing the stories by heart.


So it'd only make sense for me to follow Fates so closely. It wasn't till recently that I heard of all the bad stuff that was going on with the game. The game was to be HEAVILY censored and edited for both the NA and UK release. The optional head patting mini game was taken out, along with a bathing suit costume. Dialogue and support scenes were either heavily edited, or just removed all together. The game has absolutely AWFUL voice acting that's not aided at all by an equally AWFUL script that's full of MEMES. Hell, the UK version of the game is too remove the same sex marriage options in the game. So with how much I loved the other games, it's easy to see why I think Fates is such a betrayal to hardcore Fire Emblem fans, and just fans of Japanese games in general.


Before anyone says anything about how the games were always censored, I want to make clear that they weren't censored. They were properly localized. The games made sense, the character names made sense, none of the games content was removed for the NA release. Yes, there were characters who personalities were changed, but they were good changed that made sense for the narrative that the games were trying to tell. Fire Emblem has always had a serious story line. Yes, Ike from Path of Radiance had a different personality, but he still had one. That's the difference with a lot of butchered localized games. When they change a characters personality, it's no longer a subtle change. A good example of Fates:

Spoiler

God, I still groan when I see that. Does text like that hint at a subtle change? No it doesn't. It doesn't at all. Speaking of text, lets move on to that.


Does anyone remember the Soleil support controversy? God, that was the only thing floating around about the game for a while, but how many of you know that that translated script that was floating around was poorly translated and falsified?

http://nichegamer.com/2015/07/the-s...em-fates-completely-falsified-gay-conversion/

It got changed, like I thought it would, and the article is still being thrown around as truth. In fact, I'd go as far as to say the changed scene is WORSE then the original scene. Instead of a potion, it's a blindfold. And something else that the localization did that baffled me was that they made Soleil lesbian... but can still only marry MALE Corin. How does that fix the “problem” to begin with? It just makes it WORSE.


Is there more to say about the script? Yes. Yes there is. The games script is full of memes. Changing serious scenes into unfunny memey messes.

Spoiler

Also this.

Spoiler

But the worst, the absolute worst that happened with the script is THIS.

https://twitter.com/mombot/status/701749949122260992?lang=en

There was a Kotaku article floating around stating how this was a translation error and that ...'s were placeholder text. That's not true, though it is easy to assume that since the next support the characters talk about stuff that they never talked about.

https://twitter.com/mombot/status/701858966557437952?lang=en

There are 14 slides in the Japanese version of the support and only about 4 in the NA and UK version. This was not an error. This was a joke. Get it? Because ninjas are silent. Sigh. Another thing that shows just how much was taken out and changed is the amount of audio files in the game. In the Japanese version there are over 3,000 voiced lines of dialogue. The NA and UK version has barely over 1,000, though judging by the voice acting in the NA version, that might not be such an awful thing...


The voice acting in the game is simply awful. Just some of the worst acting ever, and it's not the actors faults. One of the voice actors posted that the reason it was so poor was because all they were given was a picture of their character, a script and a deadline. No info on the characters personality. No info on the tone of the scenes. Hell, they didn't even know the names of the characters they were playing! How does anyone expect competent voice acting? This would all be fixed and made easier if you could change the audio back, but they can't. Unlike Awakening, Fates does not have dual audio meaning that you are stuck with the horrible voice acting.


Is Nintendo to blame for this though? I will say no. Not entirely. Sure the completely optional head patting and bathing suit costume might have been removed if they had a different localization team, but I highly doubt that the games script would be as butchered as it is. No, the blame goes to Treehouse.


Nintendo Treehouse is Nintendo's localization team. They are responsible for the translations that we get as well as all of the changes to games. A few members of the team have made it well known how much they didn't like Fates. How the completely optional head patting made them feel uncomfortable (Really? Head patting?). How the mistranslated support scene was awful and how Nintendo should feel ashamed of themselves. Things like that, and these were not posted to their work twitter account. No these were posted to their personal accounts. Remember how in a normal company, saying bad things about the company you worked for would get you fired? Well not at NOA, and I think the biggest reason for that comes from Alison Rapp, the leader of NOA's PR team.


Alison Rapp is another one of those “You don't agree with me? Well it's blocky time! Go get them my followers!” kind of people. She is very outspoken about how she hates how female characters in Japanese games are portrayed (which is a different topic for another day) and how she didn't like Fire Emblem Fates. Hell, she goes and GLOATS about how because of her, things in games were changed. This is NOA's head of PR. The HEAD of PR. If you were the leader of a company, would you want someone like this in charge of public relations? Also recently she came out saying she was in support of pedophilia, so there's also that. Not only head of PR, but head of PR for a TOY COMPANY.


That's somehow not the worst of it though. Nich Maragos was a huge part of the localization for Fates, and he's another person like Alison Rapp. He over saw a lot of the changes to the games script and censoring of content. He is a very unethical man. Before working for Atlus, and then Nintendo, he ran a video game review site called The GIA. On it he payed for positive reviews of Atlus (who he worked for at the time) and nintendo games (once he started working for them). Even after his site went under, he still payed for a positive review of Fire Emblem Fates.

(The image was going to post as proof got taken down .-.)

And that's not all. He also supports that pateron of the person who started the Soleil controversy. That is SEVERLY unethical. Why? Because it shows conflict of interest. It shows bias. That's the reason why Kotaku forbid anyone who wrote for them to donate to peoples patreons (aside from a few other things which I won't go into). There are other people who are apart of Treehouse, which for the sake of time I won't go into, but are just as bad as these two people when it comes to games.

Spoiler

You are probably saying “But Heizengard! It's a kids game! Of course the games script would be like that! You should change your profile pic from Rick to Mr. Poopy Butthole, because that's what you are! A poopy pants!” to which I say Fire Emblem Path of Radiance. Path of Radiance told a some what dark and serious story. It was funny at times and when it needed to be without resorting to easy jokes, and it was STILL A KIDS GAME. “But that game is rated T Mr. Poopy Butthole!” Okay then what about The Sacred Stones. Or how about Blazing Sword, or Shadow Dragon, or Radiant Dawn? They were rated E and told a serious, dark story. I still can't forget the emotional scene in Blazing Sword where

Spoiler

Eliwood was forced to kill the woman he loved

or the scene in Sacred Stones where

Spoiler

Erika and Ephriams best friend Lyon resurrected his dead father because of how much he didn't want him to die and the horrible things that happened to him as a result

and this was a kids game! Kids can handle mature themes. Yes, there are certain things that should be removed (like anything that are super sexual, no matter what Alison Rapp says), but you cannot tell a SERIOUS STORY with a game that is FULL of MEMES and jokes. You can't. Fire Emblem Fates wants to tell a serious story, but because of the 4kids level of edits it can't. It is a game version of Frankenstein's Monster. A hack job of removed and added parts that is barely alive.


Fire Emblem Fates is a complete and total betrayal to any hardcore fan of the series. It's a betrayal of Nintendo and of Treehouse. Nintendo for letting this happen, and Treehouse for forcing this to happen. It's localization is a complete and total joke, and thankfully someone is working on an English patch for the Japanese version of the game. Once I get a 3DS, you know what I will be getting. It good that there is someone who loves Fire Emblem enough to give it the translation and respect that it deserves.


I don't know, maybe I'm just bitter, but I feel completely betrayed. I can't even have a discussion of this online because people think that “oh you just want the head patting pervert! Blocked!” and it's stupid. Anyway I'm a little bit mad now so I think I'll stop talking about this. Anyway I hope you enjoyed my article, and if you like Fates, then more power to you.

 

EDIT: hahaha look at the size of those images. I don't know how to resize them at all and I thought that they were smaller. Sorry about that.

 

On topic of translations and efforts to localize stuff, this reminds me why I enjoyed the fan translation of the fourth game FEIV:Genealogy or something . Wasn't there implied incest in that one that blond girl and her brother? It was like Game of Thrones before Game of Thrones man. I don't care what the original script said, the idea that she might have had that kind of relationship gave her more characters then half the cast. Then I had to play as her children always wondering if it was really legitimate

Oh and the fact the guy called someone a "You Dastard!"
Till this day I don't know if that was an accident in translation or pure genius due to the moment it occurred

And then there was some incredibly creepy innuendo when it came to that girl you meet early in the game. That mysterious one which the game revolves around?
I don't know man...what the heck were they doing to her?

Anyway...

Sounds like localization fail. It's not that hard to do "implied scenes" and still get the pass for ESRB rating and stuff. How do you think American Cartoons of the 80's and 90's did so well? The English language is hard to grasp and is quite varied. Nintendo should hire people who have mastered it and are willing to translate their out of country games in a way that keeps the spirit of the original title.

Unless this was a deliberate act of sabotage in which I would not be surprised.

 

I love Genealogy of the Holy War. Possibly one of the best Fire Emblem games. And yeah it did have that in it.

 

I loved the scale of the maps in that game and the soundtrack was amazing.

Okay I seriously read through this and a few other articles and had to shake my head on the attempts of censorship here. I have no idea who the target audience was now. As far as I could tell as an American, people view us as sensitive when it comes to issues of sex. Hearing about censorship in regards to that is always annoying but not surprising.

What's new to me is the dialogue changes that would make the game less...violent?

Has NOA been living under a rock for the past one hundred years?
Are you sure these people even live here?
There are kids who talk about guns in schools! They talk about blowing up people with nukes! I know that's a culture shock for many people but violence and the idea of it is so commonplace here.
Sort of how sex and drugs is so easily talked about in other places. (Well they talk about that too but those they keep to themselves...)

I'm not here to talk about the effects that has or anything like that. Go to Hall of Elders for that. I just wanted to point out a culture difference that is relevant to video games.

It's the job of the localization team to understand the target audience. A kid doesn't have to be "protected" by the idea that someone is a killer in a T rated video game. Basically anyone in the schooling system up to high school. It takes a lot to enter M for mature territory at this point. Not even genocide will get there. Since "M" is a magic letter for parants, there's a lot of cushion before being labled as such. Unless it's intense blood and gore (pretty much an auto M), then you'll need a lot of talk about sex, drugs, death, murder, and foul language. And I'm not talking about this stuff being mentioned in passing. It has to be central.

Violence get's the biggest pass here. You can talk the entire game on how "X is killing so many Y's in this world. We have to kill X!" and still get a T rating. So long as it's off screen stuff then it's just...acceptable. I don't know what else to say. Sex and it's themes is a different issue, even off screen mentions get's scrutinized pretty heavily. This is after all the real reason parants look at the ESRB ratings. It's not about violence. Come on, it's sex. While personal interactions aren't really a basis for truth, I'm willing to bet that there are many parants who buy "M" rated games for their children so long as the shop keeper says that game "Doesn't talk about sex. It's just really bloody and violent". Okay I'll buy it!

Double points if it's nontraditional sex themes. Drugs get's big scrutiny too. Excessive language might push it too but most of the time if the writing is for a T audience then very little has to be changed. (I'm pretty sure a random passing F bomb might get the pass. I think...?)

So the fact they changed stuff regarding violence is so mind boggling to me as an American. Don't companies normally pay attention to the demographics? Hell you could make the game even better by making it more violent! (Don't quote me. That's something companies might think when selling in the states)

I wonder what their perception of kids here were? What is the point of that? I can understand fear of backlash in regards to sexual themes. I don't like it or think anyone should feel that sort of fear but at least I can understand it if a company doesn't want to get negative views in the media. Well at least a "family friendly" company like Nintendo.

But killing? Are you serious? This is America! You could dress Mario in an American flag wielding duel Cold .45's taking out suicide bomber koopa's led by a cultist turtle and I swear it will get an E rating and banned in Iran.
(Actually that might be a Mario game I might buy...)

How disillusioned these folks are.
Let's send them Donald Trump and see what happens.

Well I exhausted my built up frustrations today. No more from me regarding this for a while.

 

The Americian version literally only had petting removed... did you read my review?

 

Ladies and gentlemen, a brief summary of my thoughts regarding Nintendo's localization of Fire Emblem Fates in video form.

 

Nintendo Treehouse, A.K.A. Western Political Correctness Branch

 

It has a few costumes removed/replaced as well, aside from the petting. The reason I didn't go over the removed stuff was because, as I said, even if Treehouse didn't localize this game, it would have been removed anyway. This article was about the translation and writing itself, not the removed content. It was also about the staff at NOA and who they have hired there. I myself, while I would like to have had the petting in since it was optional and not "creepy" IMO, don't really care too much about it's removal, though I still would have liked it to have been kept in. As for the removed/replaced costume(s) there was a swimsuit that got removed or replaced, I forget which and don't really feel like looking it up right now.

If you like the game, then more power to you. I never once said that you have to hate it, nor did I try to get people to hate it. The point of this article was to inform people of the changes to the script and content since buying the full game is about 80 USD (100 if you want physical copies of both games). There are a lot of people here, myself included, who want the full experience of whatever Japanese game we play. I am a huge fan of Japanese role playing games, and just Japanese games in general, and I hate seeing needless changes. I want to play the game the way it was meant to be played, not taken apart and put back together with pieces missing and changed. 80/100 USD is a lot of money to put down for a game/s and I wanted to let people know of all th changes, as well as vent about Treehouse.

If you need proof to my claims of other removed content, here is a video on it as proof

Spoiler

I think it's more like 4kids

 

EDIT2: I put the images behind spoilers. That should help with the massive size of this article.