Falcom President Comments on Licensing Ys VIII to NISA and How Localization is Handled

Azario Lopez June 29, 2017 6:27 PM EST

Falcom President comments on why they chose NISA to publish Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana in the west.

When NISA announced they would be partnering with Falcom to localize Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana in the west, many fans were excited for the publisher to take on the action RPG title. However, others were concerned with the continuity of the series, since the previous titles were published by XSEED.

After the game’s announcement, NISA has been transparent in how they are approaching Ys VIII’s localization, by openly saying they “want to make sure it’s done properly, appropriately, and it respects what’s come before, while hopefully bringing it to a much broader range of people as well.”

To follow up with these claims and fan inquiry, DualShockers sat down with Falcom president Toshihiro Kondo to ask if he could share why he felt NISA was the right publisher for Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, Kondo-san replied:

Specifically for this title, NISA came to Falcom with a really enthusiastic proposal. Their enthusiasm showed greatly in that proposal and offered things that were new and special that I had never took into consideration before, in terms of how they wanted to publish the game. It was because of that enthusiasm, and my desire to try something new, that I decided to leave it to NISA.

We followed up with asking how Falcom approaches localization and if they play a hand in the process, Kondo-san said:

When we license the game out, we trust that the publisher will do what is appropriate for the game in the region that they are in. That said, we make ourselves available to the publishers in case that have questions about anything in regards to localization and what’s in the game.

It was pointed out that Ys is not only in English, but it is also translated in Chinese and Korean.

NIS America senior associate producer Alan Costa added, “Falcom has made themselves extremely available to us during localization. We’ve always been sure to reach out to them and ask them when we don’t understand something in the script or want to see how it has been done in the past”

Furthermore, NISA is only one of several western publishers working on Falcom games, others include: Aksys, XSEED, and Mastiff. Translation and localization between publishers will not always be exactly the same, whether they are working on a Falcom developed title or not.

From Kondo-san’s statements, he is as confident in NISA as they are confident in their approach to localizing Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, which seems like a good fit for this beloved series.

Stay tuned for the full interview with Konda-san where we discuss the Ys series and Falcom’s approach to game development.