Final Fantasy Resonance, a game on which I worked as editor in 2024, released yesterday, so I eagerly hit up YouTube to see my credit. Not there. I note the supervisor with whom I worked isn't credited, either.
I contacted the agency with which I worked on the project, and the supervisor told me that Square Enix decided not to include us in the credits. No explanation was given; the English localization is instead credited solely to a support firm offering a variety of QA services and what appears to be an SE in-house group.
Oddly, the agency with which I worked is credited for the non-English localizations and in other capacities, so I don't know what's going on here. The game was long in cooking, so I don't know if they ended up changing the script extensively in the interim or what (I don't have time right now to check, unfortunately).
This is just one of those things that can happen in the industry: credits are completely up to the studio & publisher, and they can cut people at will. It hasn't happened to me before, though, and it kills me that this is the project where it had to strike. Like many, I've loved Final Fantasy since childhood, and it was an incredible honor to work on the franchise. I put forth my best efforts for the game, and it does hurt that those efforts weren't acknowledged in the form of a credit. (I'll also note that one of the translators I was editing turned in particularly fantastic work, the best I've seen as an editor, and he deserved to go on to further good things. I hope he has, regardless of this incident.)
At least the Captain Tsubasa credit came through, according to MobyGames.
The burning heart of Kojiro Hyuga will never let you down!
I spoke of this a few days ago on Tumblr, but it merits mention here: I recently attempted to post on r/otomegames regarding the human-translated Angelique patch - I'd discussed the project on the subreddit previously, and some folks had asked for an update - but my post was removed, labeled as "self-promotion." I messaged the mods for clarification, as my previous discussions hadn't run afoul of this problem and no such rule was evidently being enforced against the AI patch, but received no response.
I don't know if there's been a rule change or if some mod has an odd interpretation of the rules or if someone's just an AI hardliner, but the upshot is that updates on the patch project are likely not going to be forthcoming on that subreddit. I've been posting updates under the "translation project" tag on my Tumblr, so that's the best place for the latest info. I'd also recommend that if you're following any human-powered translation, coding, or patch projects on that subreddit (as it was, previously, a magnet for that activity), follow the creators instead on their social media or blog, or reach out and ask if there's another venue where they're providing updates - just in case they're encountering this resistance as well.
Now, I see there's a bit of a conversation going on with several other untranslated games with human translations in progress having low-effort, straight-from-AI patches released for them. I wanted to wait until my own project was done to comment, but given there is a lot of talk currently, I'll add my own experience. This ran a bit long, so I'll put it under a cut.
A kind person alerted me this evening on Tumblr. The creator of the patch seems to be picking dating sims at random and feeding them into AI translation, seemingly producing one patch a day. I am, uh, not exactly intimidated by this approach.
I've given a further response in that Tumblr post, but just to reiterate: this doesn't change anything for the project. These characters, and this game, deserve a quality translation, and, buddy, if the considerable setbacks that have been copiously detailed in this blog have not deterred me from finishing this project, this certainly won't—not when we're so near the finish line.
Uh, Part Two of my response. Not of the article! Though the article may receive a Part Two someday.
Most assuredly with better font work than my MS Paint image edit.
My apologies for the lateness! My attentions were pulled elsewhere, like to Michael Myers bike flips - and my, the original article has even scrolled off the front page in the meantime. To refresh: the author of Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games noted some parallels between the heroines of Lunar: The Silver Star and Lufia and the Fortress of Doom and speculated, as is the manner of the site, that they were references to an as-of-yet-unidentified predecessor. I mentioned that this was likely the megahit Ys and pointed out the ever-popular and universally-beloved article where I detail Lunar's considerable debt to Ys Book I & II but cautioned that I felt that neither game could be described as a ripoff, as the two titles take their common plot elements in very different directions. I promised to explore this at length in an upcoming article. That article is now.
Spoilers for Lufia and the Fortress of Doom and Lunar: The Silver Star (and all other Silver Star variants) immediately below the cut.
Read more: The very different paths of Lunar and Lufia's heroines
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