The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III was announced for a PS4 release in the west by NISA just recently. In their PAX South 2019 panel they talked about how they were handling the game’s localization, and revealed just how big the game’s script is.

For those who have played a Trails game before known how content heavy the games are. Each has multiple dialogue options plus there’s a ton of story in each game. Localization these games is a big challenge, so it was certainly good to hear that key members of the original localization team who worked on previous games were returning of Trails of Cold Steel III.

In the panel they detailed how they’re using proper glossaries and focusing on maintaining accuracy of the series lore. They mentioned how the team were fans of the games and they have an idea of what’s going on in the game, as there’s nothing worse than a localizer who doesn’t understand the context of what’s going on especially with a language like Japanese.

NISA also explained the challenge in front of them, explaining how big the games are that they work on compared to forms of other media like books or even other games.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, to provide context, will be the biggest game NISA has ever worked with the script totaling in at just around 1.1 million words.

Get how massive the game is? I mean bigger than The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which if you’ve read the books, are extremely detailed. Then there’s all the 7 Harry Potter books. Just crazy. All the best of luck to the localization team, we’re rooting for you!

If you’re interested in getting into the Trails series, or the Cold Steel sub-series in particular, PS4 re-releases of the first two games are coming very soon with a ton of bonus features. Also check out our review of the second game here.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III releases for PS4 in the West during Fall 2019. You can pre-order the game now to get the Early Enrollment Edition.