Working Theory -
August 1, 2001 - Chris Jones
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed
within this column are those of the participants and the
moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the
GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive
material afoot.
Square's just toying with you. Isn't it obvious by now?
Don't say we didn't warn you.
Quick note on the column; after Sunday and Monday's installments, just about everybody still feels compelled to send in their own opinion on obsessive gaming as a good or bad thing. At this point, I don't think there's a lot to be gained from a long protracted debate over who does or doesn't have a well rounded life - let sleeping dogs and entrenched gamers lie, ok?
Onward.
| Hating the quintessential WD |
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Hey Chris!
Working Designs gets credit for re-releasing many
games that many of us too young to seriously consider
buying a Sega CD back in the days could of never
played anyways. The general care they give the game
is terrific, and the voice work is midding to okay but
definitely not DBZ or Resident Evil bad, but there's
one thing in particular that bugs me.
The translation.
Don't think for a moment that I'm against pop culture
references at all...as I adored MST3K while it was on
the air with their constant use of them.
It's just that in a RPG such as Lunar, the game
doesn't need people randomly talking about they're
going to eat their Wheaties to become a Dragonmaster
or Ruby saying blatant "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire"
references in required scenes. It wouldn't bother me
at all if these jokes were funny, but 95% of them
aren't funny at all.
Plus, making monsters level up with you in the Lunar
games was a bad idea. You are publishers, not
developers WD. Don't mess with the product.
One last thing. Jenny Stigile needs to be hit with a
baseball bat for her ditz persona on the "Making Of
Lunar" discs, and maybe Victor Ireland also for being
so full of himself.
Other than that, great company!
~PeaceTalk
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Er, wow, you're pretty much condemning everything about WD that sets them apart from all the other translation houses out there. Fact of the matter is, I can't imagine what Lunar would be like without a Working Designs translation; undoubtedly there are a lot of Japanese-only Game Arts fans who'd tell me the game is brilliant, superb, etc., but I can't help but think there wouldn't be all that much left to Lunar without heartfelt (if somewhat over the top) English performances and a lot of translation riffs. Take the Working Designs out of Lunar, and you're left with... Grandia. The first one.
| Worship the company |
|
I am a regular Working Designs message board member, and someone on the board informed the rest of us that you were asking what the general opinion was on the company and their games. I must say that I was quick to respond to you on this topic. Working designs, in my opinion, is perhaps one of the only American game publishers that really cares about their fans and customers. You can see it in the high quality work that they do. They take the time to provide a nicely packaged product and always include those little extras that the other game companies neglect. Color manuals, soundtracks, punching Ghaleon puppets and cloth maps are just a few examples. They provide a great message board on their web page where you can talk with other people, most of which are very intelligent and insightful about videogames, anime, or even sometimes politics. Often, even the president of the company, Victor Ireland participates in some of the conversation. The company is always interested in their customers. They do a lot of things upon reccommendations of the fans, and even have included poetry and haikus written by message board fans in their games, and even put their names in the credits. All of the games have liner notes with details about development of the game. Besides that, the translations voice acting, AND the games are the best in the business. For all of this I have to commend Working Designs. Choosing a favorite game is difficult, as I have at least a few games for all of the systems that they have published games (I have all of the PSX games except Raycrisis,) but I have to go with Elemental Gearbolt as one of my favorites. I love all of the WD games, but Elemental Gearbolt is incredibly unique, especially for a light gun game. It also has a great story, mood, voice acting, and brilliant anime that really makes the game shine. Thanks, Working Designs, for sharing a bit of magic with us.
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Working Designs has a lot of die-hard fans, so even if a worshipful letter like this doesn't give me much to comment on, it's still worth printing to get their particular viewpoint across.
On the other hand, this letter seems almost too complimentary... hmm...
Mr. Ireland, is that you?
| A grim future, indeed |
| Chris,
My favorite Working Designs game is the original Lunar on the Sega CD. While at the time most rpg translations were lackluster, Lunar stood out because of the strong voice acting and well-written, humorous dialogue. Sadly, while I have tremendous respect for Working Designs, I fear that they are doomed to grow ever smaller in the future. Post-FF7 everyone and their dog wants to bring rpgs stateside, and many of those companies have the resources to outbid Working Designs. Furthermore, since Working Design's localizations are notoriously slow, I suspect that they are very low on the lists of companies that want to bring an rpg stateside. Also, Working Design's translations tend to be light and cheery and filled with pop culture references, which worked for Lunar, but which wouldn't work so well for the darker fare that now seems to dominate the market. Personally, I think Working Designs would be wise to pick up Shadow Hearts and then do a fast (less than a year) and straight (minimal humor) translation, thereby demonstrating versatility to rpg makers. Unless they do something to pull themselves out of the rut they are in (Arc the Lad is their big translation project) WD will cease to exist.
- Mark
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Here we have another letter which seems to think Working Designs would be fine, as long as they stop being Working Designs. I don't think that's the problem so much; WD might not be at the level of, say, Enix or Square as far as buy-on-sight's concerned, but they have a pretty good eye for what is and isn't a good game. Not everything they bring out turns to gold (or is even always that interesting) but a lot of people sit up and take notice of what WD brings out, and you'll generally have a good time with one of their games. Case in point, I wasn't too incredibly enthused about Arc the Lad (and I'm still not) but with Working Designs doing the translation, I'll definitely give it a try.
| Coming soon: the GIA tattoo! |
| Save me agent, my guitar case is ugly.
No, this is not a Double Agent letter. It's a letter of larger proportions, a more important type of letter, if you will. Hell, it's not even a letter, it's a damn email, but what can you do.
On to the important matters. As I have said before, my guitar case is ugly. Your mission, agent, is to offer me GIA swag and stickers so I can stick'em on said guitar case. I get a nicely decorated guitar, you get free advertisment. It's a good deal, I assure you. If you have such items lying around (which I'm sure you do, you citizens just love custom printing) I beg of you to please send me some.
I will not leave my address at this time, for I am a shadow lurking in the night. Lurking for stickers, that is. I await your reply, and when I receive your reply I will inform you of my mysterious location.
Good luck agent, the fate of an ugly guitar case, and possibly the world (because there's just no room in this world for an ugly guitar case) rests in your hands.
J
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As the GIA is primarily a virtual organization, it seems odd that people are so desperate for physical GIA merchandise. (Face it; only a handful of people out there have ever met a GIA staffer in person - for all you know, everyone and everything associated with this site is just AK sitting in his basement, typing like a madman.)
We don't have bumper stickers yet, and definitely not free ones. (And free advertising doesn't do us a lot of good anyway. We like our readers, but too many people downloading content without clicking on banners or making donations is worse than useless.) Still, I can say that the T-shirts are progressing nicely, they're being done with a respected manufacturer and beyond that... who knows? The point is, eventually you will be able to smear the GIA logo all over yourself, and won't that be nice?
Coming soon in 1999 2000 2001 someday |
| It pretty much goes without saying that the Lunar
games on Sega CD and PSX are the best games Working
Designs has ever put out, so I don't feel the need to
expound any further.
One game I do think needs special mention, though, is
Silhouette Mirage. That game will break your soul; WD
went a little overboard in making the game harder.
But, I think everyone should try the game just for
their translation job. The voice actors went NUTS on
this game. It blew my mind when I found out that none
other than Jenny Stigle was the voice of the fish-girl
monster. And the shadow puppet guy made me laugh my
ass off.
Since WD has confirmed that they'll be translating
Lunar 3 whenever it comes out, I'm pretty well
content. Still, one has to wonder how far AFTER the
Japan release will we see it. These days, I'm curious
why WD bothers with a release date at all. It's not
that I mind late games; better the game be late but
finished, rather than on time but half-assed
*coughLEGEND OF DRAGOONcough*. The thing is, THEY know
they're not going to meet the release date, WE know
they're not going to meet the release date. So why do
they still post one?
Officer Jack
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It's another one of those character things - would they really be Working Designs if they didn't delay their products more often than a DraQue player gains levels? And besides, let's assume that they did adopt a more rational release policy, and only announced when they were really, truly, absolutely 100% positive the game was coming out tomorrow. Even if they told the truth, at this point, would anybody believe them?
| Love/hate relationship |
|
I think that after giving 10,000 dollars to that lucky guy who won the Elemental Gearbolt contest, Working Designs didn't have enough money to license any good games, so they decided to license Vanguard Bandits. I have seen tons of rave reviews about this game, maybe it's because they like the anime, maybe it's because they're in denial that they bought a bad SRPG. Let me be the first to tell you: this game reeks like dank ass.
Anyway, I bought the game without renting it (foolish me), then beat it twice and traded it in at Funco Land (Yes, I know I'm stupid).
Look at the maps. Unlike any other SRPG out there for the playstation, they are FLAT and PLAIN. To get the different branching story-lines you have to do ridiculous things that no one'd ever figure out by themselves. Let your main character score every single kill for the first few battles? No one'd ever figure that out without a FAQ. Who tries stuff like that? Honestly? Also, in my eyes, there are only four types of mechs: earth, wind, water, and fire, depending on which crystal you have. Not much variety there.
Anyway, just had to get my opinion out.
-Forcas
Hey Chris,
I'm glad you asked about Working Designs (a.k.a Working Delays amoung some groups ^_^). I have not been a long time fan of WD but I have just become aquainted with them. I bought Lunar: SSSC and Lunar 2: EB after experiencing the incredible work that goes into their translations.
But the game that got me hooked? Elemental Gearbolt (did you see that one comin'?), it's my new obsession. I don't know what it is about this game!!! I CAN'T stop playing it. Maybe I've just been playing too many RPGs. It's not a fancy shooting game or anything, but I just love the whole RPG tone that the game uses. The characters are so mysterious because the game only skimmers the surface of this intriguing story. The anime cut-scenes are done very well, as usual. The music, oh the music.....absolutely heavenly! Rivals a lot of the Final Fantasy stuff (and I'm a big fan of FF music). Check out the tracks "Echoes" and "Solitude" to see what I mean. I don't have a GunCon but that hasn't stopped me from getting to the last boss with my controller! I know, I'm crazy but that's how much I love this game. Maybe I'll beat the game soon.
Thanks for letting me gush about Elemental Gearbolt!
Your friend,
Saint7
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The thing is, I've played both of these games and neither one struck me as all that great, one way or another - I honestly believe the above games are getting the reactions they're getting because they're Working Designs products. At the very least, they wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the exposure they did if they weren't, which says a lot about the company right there.
| More than you needed |
| Hey Chris!
Throwing in WD to stir up some debate, huh?
Well, I'll be honest with you : I think that Working Designs, as a company, is vastly overrated. All they do is localize games for the US market and THAT has to take two years PER GAME?
Now, it is obvious when playing a WD game a lot of thought and a lot of love has gone into the localization. But sometimes I wonder if WD doesn't put TOO MUCH effort into each game : for instance, when they decide the game needs some sprucing up in the way of humor. Now, as I understand it, the Lunar games already had in-party bickering, and for those games, I commend WD for a nicely LOCALIZED (changing pop culture references, for instance) game. However, with Vanguard Bandits they pulled exactly the same trick, and with the Arc the Lad Collection they'll probably do it again. There's only so much macho man to feisty girl - dialogue I can take, see?
And please, mr. Ireland, don't translate any song anymore. While the original lyrics might have sucked as hard as yours, at least I can't understand them.
No, WD is definitely a company for the hardcore-wannabe, with their "we're gonna charge you twice as much for extra stuff you might or might not want"-policy.
Sir Farren, likes to add WD rocks at acquiring good voice talent.
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Good points, all of 'em. Except I don't think WD appeals to the hardcore, wannabe or otherwise; WD fans are their own little niche of gamers that enjoy games too much to be casual, but aren't obsessed with translation faithfulness enough to be truly hardcore. Again, it's to the company's credit that they've been able to build up a fan base like that, although as others have pointed out today, those fans in and of themselves likely aren't sufficient to keep things afloat, and it'll be the next few releases that tell how the company'll do in the PS2-era.
| The things some people will do for a plushie... |
| Working Designs = Coolness. The translations are hillarious, the packaging is always full of goodies, and I honestly don't know of another company that big where the El-Presidente would hang out on a message board. Vic, you rock.
....*Was that good? Can I have a Nall plushie now?*
-Negative Creep
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I'd be more critical of NC for doing this, but I made an ass out of myself at E3 in trying to buy one of those same plushies off of another staff member. Er, it wasn't for me or anything, but there's just something very wrong with any situation where a small stuffed toy has the barter value of a GBA.
Closing Comments:
Here's the deal, boys and girls: I've got to take a week off from the column, and I've asked the staff for a replacement. What I got was two, two, two for the price of one: yep, the respective representatives of the fanfic and fan art sections, Tamzen Marie Baker and Andrea Hartmann will be cohosting tomorrow. As per their request, it'll be a free topic day tomorrow, so treat them nice and enjoy the break. I should be back next Thursday, so I'll see you then.
-Chris Jones, on standby mode
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