Alex: What's up everyone?
Alex and Daniel here!
Right now, we're joined by Yakuza localization producer Scott Strichart and we'll be talking
to him about his experience with localization leading up to him working on Yakuza Kiwami
2.
How's it going Scott?
Scott: Great!
Good to be here!
Alex: I'm so happy you gave us an opportunity for this!
Yakuza is one of my favorite series, and Daniel's as well, right man?
Daniel: Yes!
Absolutely!
I love the Yakuza series!
It's been with me for… pretty long, now that I think about it!
Scott: That's awesome!
And we all go back, it's fine!
Alex: (laughs) Totally fine, totally fine!
Daniel: I just want to say thank you very much for doing this interview.
It's very kind of you!
Scott: No problem.
It's not like it's taking away from any of my work!
Daniel: I think the best way to start this interview is to ask this question: Prior to
Yakuza, can you name some games that we'd probably find your name in?
Scott: So I've been doing this for 10 years and that list of games is probably 60 or 70
games deep at this point.
A few years ago, I was working at Square Enix and you'll find my name in a lot of the
Final Fantasy titles during my time as a Brand Manager there.
Prior to that, I was at Level-5 working on basically anything they localized including
the 3DS Guild series, which is a bunch of pretty cool games by famous creators from
Japan.
And prior that, I was at Atlus, where I worked primarily on our Japanese titles including
Catherine, Persona 4, 3D Dot Game Heroes, Shiren The Wanderer, and the list goes on
and on and on.
Daniel: You've certainly run the gamut!
Scott: Definitely!
Alex: What I was looking for Scott is Izuna.
I didn't hear Izuna in any of the things that you mentioned so…
Scott: You're right!
And there are people who would be really upset that I did not mention Izuna 2: The Return
of the Unemployed Ninja!
Alex: (laughs) I actually got that game a long time ago.
That was hard, man!
Scott: It is a hard game!
I was both the Editor and QA Lead for that game and I love it to pieces, to this day!
Alex: "To this day!"
You guys heard that right there, okay?
He wasn't not mentioning it on purpose so cool your jets, alright?
(everyone laughs)
Scott: Everyone's like, "What game are they talking about?"
Alex: Exactly!
(everyone laughs louder)
Alex: I'm kinda curious because you do have a storied history with localization, how did
you wind up finding yourself in the Yakuza series or being part of it?
Scott: I credit that to Director of Production over here Sam Mullen.
He and I go back to what we call "our first deployment" here at Atlus, and when they
were onboarding Yakuza over here, he wasn't going to be able to handle that himself.
But then he's like, "I know a guy!" and then called me!
So he's like, "Hey man?
How do you want work on a pretty big franchise we've got going?
He didn't say the name, but I kinda had a hunch.
At the time, I wasn't all that enthused because "Yakuza was a Japanese GTA game"
and that's how it used to be marketed.
It was nonetheless a really cool opportunity and I took it, all to discover that Yakuza
is anything but Japanese GTA, which has been an incredible journey to both teach myself
and the rest of the world that fact!
Daniel: So your first experience with the series proper was working on it?
Scott: Basically!
I had not played it prior to being told that it was going to be my jam!
Alex: So this begs the question: How much knowledge did you have to ingest in order
to be prepared for your first Yakuza project?
What preparation did you have to do?
Scott: My first day, Sam handed me a stack of 4 games and a digital code for Yakuza 5
and he said, "Go!
You have a month!" (laughs)
Alex: (laughs) You have a month?!
Scott: More or less!
I was hired in October and I had until end of year…
I guess more like 2 months... to get through the entirety of the Yakuza series and that's
exactly what I set about doing, which is fine if you're playing it six to eight hours
a day.
I was starting to get pre-production done on Yakuza 0 at the same time, so it's not
like sitting at work playing video games.
But becoming a walking wiki of the Yakuza universe was first order of business for me.
Alex: I bet that was daunting, to have to articulate a series pretty much after playing
five games and be able to be just that authority, right?
Scott: Yeah, but at the same time we viewed Yakuza 0 very much as a series reboot.
We weren't going to be beholden by anything that had come before.
That's not to say that any decision made prior was a bad one, but there are certain
decisions that we're like, "Ok this is how they did that, this is how I want to do
this," and, "This is how they did that, and that's great!
Let's keep it!"
We went and broke the game out and said, "This is how we're going to approach this for
the coming future."
We were more or less looking beyond Zero to Kiwami and 6, which were pretty nebulous at
the time, but we wanted to make sure that there's consistency in the series and deciding
what to localize and how to localize, what fonts to use.
It was a nice benefit to come in at what was technically the beginning of the series, timeline-wise,
with Yakuza 0.
It allowed us to do that reboot.
Alex: Was Yakuza 0 your first project in the Yakuza franchise?
Scott: Yes!
Alex: How were the games previously handled?
Were the localizations done internally or were they outsourced?
Scott: Sega used to work with these cool group of guys called InBound.
They are a great translation agency and we worked with them as well on Yakuza 0 in the
handing off of the titles to moving it internally, for me and my team.
I can't speak highly enough of them!
They knocked it out of the park previously and one of the reasons Yakuza 0's localization
was so great is because it literally got two full editing passes.
They went and did their pass and we went in and added that "Atlus magic" on top of
it!
(laughs)
Alex: (laughs) That's very interesting that you mention that the localization process
over there as having that "Atlus magic."
Not a lot of people still know that Sega and Atlus are two combined entities these days.
It's kinda interesting to think about!
Scott: It is!
It's a really cool thing to think about!
I think Atlus has always brought a lot of expertise to Japanese localization and that's
what we're able to bring to the Yakuza series!
It's really cool!
Daniel: I always felt that with Atlus' localizations they always tended to try to bring out the
spirit and the soul of the source material.
I always felt like Persona 4, for example, it was kind of unabashed in the questions
(in the Quizzes) that was being asked.
Even if a native English speaking player would probably have no idea what some of the answers
to the questions are, the questions were steeped more in a Japanese methodology, and it would
still be in there.
That's kind of how I feel about it, with regards to its authenticity.
I would say that with Atlus, in particular, I always felt that there was something very
authentic about the way that they translated games.
Would you agree with that?
Scott: Yea, definitely!
There's a certain sense of…
I guess, you're right!
Authenticity, is a really good word for that, because Atlus does bring that to the table,
especially with these titles that are set in Japan like Persona, like Yakuza.
We're bringing players to the source a little bit, kind of expecting them to bridge the
gap for themselves, to be like, "I'm playing a game that's not really set in the country
of my origin for me, but that's what's cool about it!"
You get to really experience another culture through these games and that's an important
part of carrying that over in our localizations, because we don't water that down or try
to make that too, "Oh, they might not know this.
Let's make it friendlier!"
That's a constant conversation we have to have.
Daniel: In that sense, I would say that Persona games and the way the Yakuza games are handled
kinda goes hand in hand.
Scott: Exactly!
And I think working on Persona and another game called Attack of the Friday Monsters,
then coming to Yakuza, really gave me a lot of the experience I needed to really kinda
own this, which is really cool!
Alex: That's really cool!
So, what were the challenges of taking over the series given that there's been a lot
of established conventions in the previous games?
Scott: I think what challenged me the most is Goro Majima! (laughs)
Alex: (laughs) Oh, ok!
Scott: That's partly because as I've gone through the localization wringer, I wanted
that kind of challenge!
I really do seek characters that challenge me to write in styles that are not necessarily
my own or to bring out accents and that kinda thing.
Because I feel that's a level of localization that you see in some of the higher caliber
localizations out there, to be quite frank!
And knowing that he had this Osakan accent and seeing how it was rendered prior to this,
I felt like my own interpretation of that and the way that I rendered that in 0, Kiwami,
and 6... to some degree...
Kiwami 2 more so… is a little bit different and I hope people like it!
Ultimately, people do really still seem to latch onto Majima, but I don't take credit
for that.
He's an amazing character and the devs know exactly what they're doing with him and
hopefully I'm just doing him justice!
Alex: That's great actually!
We're going to go into a little bit of the localization process here in just a minute.
But first, you mentioned in previous interviews that you're currently managing a team of
people who work on localizing these games.
Can you talk to us a little bit about why you've decided to go this particular route
versus other methodologies that other companies use?
Scott: We use translators and editors, and I think a lot of companies rely solely on
translators to kinda convey the message, and then the editors do more of a light grammar
and fixing pass.
The target language is what the editors really bring out here.
That's partially what's the "Atlus style" is all about!
We want to make it as approachable as we can without crossing that line to changing it.
It's a constant balance and, I use this term often, between clarity and authenticity.
Make sure it's absolutely clear but we absolutely want to keep it authentic, like what Daniel
was talking about.
Daniel: It does sound like a difficult balancing act of trying to bring out the life in something
without compromise.
Scott: It IS compromise.
Every line is a compromise, to some extent.
Because we will hammer it out and we'll think the line is too stilted… so we have
to bring it in.
Or we'll bring it further out, make it sound better.
And then we think, "Oh it's gone too far from Japanese!
Bring it back in!"
Sometimes that back and forth on an individual line can happen multiple times and, at the
end of the day, you have to finally find that right spot for it.
Daniel: I guess what I meant by compromise in that instance would be compromising the
spirit of the material.
Scott: Yea, I mean no language translates directly into another language perfectly.
At the end of the day, that's what it is.
There's this great quote that went semi-viral in localization circles not that long ago
about how a piano can play a piece built for a violin and still carry the way that it's
supposed to sound, but it obviously has to make accommodations for the fact that it's
a piano.
That's very much what localization is to me, which is translating one instrument to
another while still maintaining the way that the piece is supposed to sound.
Alex: What's the most memorable story you have with regards to localization and consulting
your team and trying to figure out the best possible way to achieve a specific localization.
Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Scott: There's so many!
It's hard to pick one!
I guess one of the more recent things we've worked on the team was Y6 and one of the things
that people really gravitate towards is the live chat!
Alex: Ah yes!
Scott: I didn't handle that personally.
That was all done by one of my editors, John Riesenbach.
Great guy!
Knows his stuff!
He was more than willing to take that task at the beginning and it was him who really
lobbied for making it really chatty, to make it sound like a real amalgamation of a chat
room.
We got the developers to implement the lenny face.
I literally had to put in a request to the developers and say like, "Hey, there's
this icon that happens in the West and we want to put this in the game.
Can you even do this?"
(everyone laughs)
Scott: And they're like, "Yea, we can do that.
Let's take a look at it!"
And, I swear, we must've spent back and forth on that icon for a month just trying
to get it to render correctly in the text, and I can't believe how many hours wasted
to getting the lenny face to work in that chat!
But it did!
Daniel: Wow!
Scott: At the end of the day, there was a lenny face in the chat.
And I told John to use it liberally because of all the work that went into getting it.
Daniel: I remember seeing it and it gave me a good chuckle, so that work was not wasted!
Scott: Excellent!
That's what I want to hear! (laughs)
Alex: Definitely!
Another thing that I kinda noticed, especially with Yakuza 0 moving forward since that was
a PS4 game, is that these games when they arrive in the West they're not blocked from
streaming or recording video… of course, until you get to more spoilery sections towards
the end.
But we know that in Japan, these are all completely blocked.
What changed over here that, all of a sudden, they're not blocked anymore?
Scott: First I should say to clarify that there's a very distinct culture difference
between Japan and in the West with regard to the blocking of content.
When content is blocked in Japan it's usually because there's actually a cultural thing
around it that's like, "Why would I want someone to be able to spoil it for me before
I buy the game?"
There's just very concerned about spoilers over there!
"It's not fair to watch something that I haven't gotten to yet!
If I see that, I'm going to write to Sega and say, "Sega!
How dare you not block this content!
I got spoiled, man!
It's all your fault!" kind of deal.
And in the West, as you know, that's really not the way we think about it.
Yes, we're also very conscious of spoilers of course, but we want the freedom to be able
to look at them if we so desire.
And knowing that, that there would be backlash if we kept it blocked, we approached Japan
very gingerly, mind you, that, "Hey, in the West, we'd like to have content shareable
and we do understand that this is kinda spoiler heavy.
But to be fair, you guys have had these games out for a year and anyone who wants to be
spoiled has already gotten that spoiled for them, so can we do this?"
And they're like, "You know what?
It's your territory, you decide."
Alex: Ahh!
Scott: So we're like, "Great!
That's an awesome attitude!" and from then on, that's kinda how we've handled
it, only blocking the ending because the ending is the part that we do want to protect.
It's the end, right?
Daniel: That makes sense, and I'm really glad that was able to happen because it was
moments like bowling for a turkey and getting a chicken…
Scott: (laughs)
Daniel: ...moments like that, someone being able to capture that easily and then throw
it up on Twitter…
I think it's fair to say that it was things like that that allowed the game to thrive
the way it did!
Scott: Absolutely!
We owe a lot to that damn chicken!
(everyone laughs)
Daniel: Nugget!
Alex: Nugget, you will always be remembered! (laughs)
Scott: We had no idea!
It was just something that happened!
You can't control the internet, no matter much a marketing team would believe that,
"We need this to go viral.
Make it go viral!"
That's not something you can control.
Whatever happens, happens.
The content, you don't know what the fans are going to latch onto!
But there it is!
There is what they latched onto which is incredible!
Daniel: It didn't quite go viral, but I did post a tweet of Kiryu punching the shark
in Yakuza 6, and that got some attention!
Scott: Yea!
I love that whole sequence!
It's actually my background on PS4 right now!
(everyone laughs)
Daniel: I'm sure I sold at least one or two copies just by posting that tweet!
(everyone laughs)
Scott: Thank you!
Alex Ok Scott, I gotta ask you a NJPW question, because we have a lot...
Scott: Oh no!
Alex: … oh yes, "Oh no!"
Because we actually have a good number of fans who actually watch NJPW and they were
pleasantly surprised to learn that Yakuza 6 featured some of the more high profile wrestlers
there.
Now, this is just a personal curiosity of mine because I don't think anybody else
would think this way, but did you and your team have to watch some of their promos to
make sure you got their characters right?
I think Naito's was really spot on!
Scott: We didn't have time to really dig into their characters because, at the end
of the day, they were themselves playing a role in Yakuza.
So it was more important to us to make sure that the role they were playing in Yakuza
was something we got right over their wrestler roles.
But man, it was really tough to make sure that we caught all the references and the
inside stuff!
To this day, I'm not 100% sure we did.
I credit one of our QA testers, Ian, who is a huge NJPW fan who's like, "Yo.
I'm gonna look through all of this stuff!"
Alex: (laughs)
Scott: You're gonna have to change some things.
I leaned on his expertise for sure, because it was awesome to have someone who knew it
like the back of their hand.
We didn't have time to familiarize ourselves with... an entire lore, essentially… for
a mini-game for Yakuza 6!
And Naito, to this day, I'm not sure…
We played up that Spanish aspect.
We're in Southern California, everyone almost speaks Spanish by default here, you know?
(laughs)
Alex: (laughs)
Scott: We brought out a little bit more of those random Spanish words that I think are
prevalent even in English now, so hopefully that did his character right.
At the end of the day, all I can hope to do is make sure to do them a solid!
Daniel: Since Yakuza Kiwami 2 uses the same engine as Yakuza 6, what improvements can
we expect this time around?
Scott: There's a ton of stuff that's new to Kiwami 2!
I think a lot of people felt that the battle system was a little slow.
As a result, for Kiwami 2, the combat definitely got some speed added to it.
You'll definitely feel like it's a bit snappier.
There's charged attacks now that you can weave into your combos.
There's a lot of areas in Kamurocho that were restored, like the Champion district…
Daniel: I was about to say The Champion District!
Scott: Yea, that's all back!
A lot of the mini-games, the gambling is all back, a bunch of new stuff that's been added
to flesh out the Yakuza 2 story like… the Cabaret Club from Zero is back, the Clan Creator
stuff from 6 is back and completely different… it's a beast of a game, quite frankly!
And you're just going to see little improvements throughout the whole thing and it's really
awesome to see how much that engine has matured in the course of…
I mean, to us it's gonna be like 4 months, but it was about a year in between.
Daniel: Wow!
Yakuza Kiwami 2 is a remake of the original Yakuza 2 on PS2.
With that in mind, and knowing that it was handled by a different localization team,
how much of Yakuza Kiwami 2's localization has changed from the original PS2 release?
Scott: Quite a bit!
We have more space, first of all, the windows are bigger in Kiwami 2, and so we were really
able to dig deeper into the characterizations at times.
There's a NPC early on in the game called Kurakawa.
He's my go-to guy for pointing out some of the localization differences.
It's kinda hard to describe to someone who hasn't played the game in a while, because
you're, "I don't know remember some NPC named Kurakawa!"
But if you look him up at the original Yakuza 2 translation, then you read the Kiwami 2
text, it's almost totally different!
And that's partially because we're bringing back things that were written around in Yakuza
2.
Where people were like, "Well, people won't understand this.
Let's just write around it."
We straight up do it!
Like Kurokawa actually explains what his name means in the (original) text.
So that's now back.
"My name means black river!"
In the original English text, he's like, "It's a pretty name, right?"
(everyone laughs)
Scott: And little things like that!
And it's not to say that the original localization was wrong or bad!
We actually kept a lot of it, because it was like, "Oh, this is right" or, "Wow,
this is a really clever way to say that!
Thank God they thought of that!"
Daniel: Please, please tell me you left in, "Peacocked your mom!"
Scott: I wasn't allowed to change that!
(everyone laughs)
Alex: Oh really?
Wow!
Scott: There'd be a riot!
I did that and you'll see what I did after that scene because it's so out of character
with the way we write Kiryu for him to say, "I peacocked your mom," but there's
a little joke in there that follows that now!
Alex: I see!
Daniel: I know that looking back, especially after so many games that, "Yeah, it is out
of character," but I don't know!
It's such a good line!
Scott: It's such a good line!
You can't not "peacock the mom!"
(everyone laughs)
Alex: You heard it here guys!
Scott: You have the other option to pick, "My bad," but no one's going to pick
that! (laugh)
Daniel: People who are dedicated in making sure Kiryu's on the straight and narrow
are still going to pick it!
Scott: Yea, you can't not!
Daniel: With that in mind, regarding the differences between the two versions, what kinds of surprises
can fans who have played the original release expect from Yakuza Kiwami 2?
Scott: I think overall we've been able to make more sense.
That's a lot of things that Kiryu does that doesn't get explained, that don't have
a lot of logic behind it.
Like we've got these objectives where we write Kiryu's literal inner thoughts and
now there's a clear way that you'll see Kiryu's logic for doing certain things that
he does in that game.
He's still very early Kiryu, so there's a certain sense of aloof "badass-ocity"
to him that I think fans hopefully won't be surprised by because, at the end of the
day, that's what's expected of Kiryu at that stage of his life.
There's just all kinds of new stuff to Kiwami 2!
It's gonna surprise a lot of people!
And we've also been able to integrate it more into 0, which hadn't been written at
the time.
There's things about when Kiryu first arrives in Sotenbori, instead of saying, "Gosh,
I'm seeing Sotenbori for the first time!" he says, "Wow.
I haven't been here in ages!"
Zero has now become canon, it has reverberating effects in Sotenbori and is really, really
cool.
Daniel: I also wanted to ask real quick, because you'd mentioned Kiryu's inner thoughts…
are those translated from the Japanese version or is that something that you guys added?
Scott: That's actually us, with Japanese dev team's permission, of course!
In the Japanese version the objective repeats itself in a different way, it'll be like,
"Go to The Grand" versus "Go see what's happening at The Grand."
And when we put that in English, it sounds super redundant, so we asked if we could use
the second bullet point to help explain the objective a little bit better, to go inside
Kiryu's head.
The dev team was very gracious in allowing us to write that and they check them, and
the whole thing of it is that we know Kiryu well enough at this point to just be able
to bridge why he's doing something and I really appreciate their trust in allowing
us to do that.
Alex: I actually find it interesting that a lot of what you guys do, even though you
guys have more space, now you guys are running into more of a UI issue and a "text filling"
issue than anything else!
Just trying to make much of what is given in a small space!
Back in the day, especially during the PS2 days I'd imagine, you had to really be creative
and do things like, "Peacocked your mom" because you really barely had any space to
work with!
Scott: You're absolutely right!
We have a huge dialog window for this!
I worked on a game called Knights in the Nightmare where you had 2 lines of 22 characters and
that would turn a beautiful sentence into a rote, routine sad sentence.
"I walked among the forest and it echoed in my mind."
That line would become, "The forest sure had… an echo."
(everyone laughs)
Scott: That's kind of the sadness of it!
But with the amount of space we have to work with on this game, there's never a reason
why we couldn't fully express what we need to express and that's awesome!
Alex: I think being able to reuse the objectives to explore Kiryu's inner thoughts was actually
a brilliant idea and, man, you guys really hit it off the park on that one I think!
Scott: Oh!
Well thank you!
Daniel: Absolutely!
Alex: But now, let's talk about the future and don't worry Scott, I'll only ask you
one question about this.
Scott: Oh boy...
Alex: Yea.
Be ready!
Can you offer us a small hint as to what's coming next after Yakuza Kiwami 2 that you're
working on?
Scott: What are you trying to do Alex?
You trying to jinx this whole interview?
You're trying to get me to spill beans that I'm not supposed to spill?
(everyone laughs)
Scott: No, I can't say too much!
I am excited about it and I'm hoping that everyone else will be too!
Alex: So basically our takeaway is "Please be excited"?
Scott: I love that line!
Yes, "Please be excited!"
Alex: (laughs) You should just coopt that for Yakuza!
Scott: Ah, Hashimoto-san, you're the best!
Alex: Yes!
Absolutely!
Alex: And that concludes Part 1 of our interview with Scott Strichart!
In Part 2 of our interview, we'll be asking him all of the questions you sent in via Reddit,
Discord, and Twitter, so make sure you Subscribe to the channel and hit that Bell icon so you
won't miss that video!
Also, I just want to give thanks to Jacob over at SEGA for helping make this happen.
Thank you for watching and have a wonderful gaming week!
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