InPieces.RIP
2026-06-16

you get what you deserve.

Me? I don’t get what I deserve, I get less.

I’m kidding. Everything is terrible, as it should be.

Btw, I hope you’re feeling well.

Here’s what I just did:

I combed through the transcript of Dragon Quest VI for DS. And I noticed something really, really strange.

Nothing was making me sick to my stomach.

I searched the script for “nun”, for “church”, for “priest”: and every single time, I found the characters treating them with respect, even admiration.

How is this even possible?

Well, it turns out the company that did the English version of VI, called 8-4… ONLY did VI.

IV, V, VIII, and IX were all done by the trash company, Plus Alpha.

Plus AAAAASS.

Anyway… also iirc, Shloc worked with them as well on one or all of them. Idk if there’s any difference between them, the work I’ve sampled from both of them just disgusts me.

Now, VI still uses stupid pun and joke names. Like renaming characters like Rudia after fucking Simpsons characters. Or, there’s a dead kid who gives you a flying bed from his dreams, and they changed his name to Matt Tress 😒 Hilarious.

But overall? It uhh… doesn’t seem as bad as… well, as bad as all other post-NES entries.

It’s awful seeing people defend it. “I like it, it’s funny” it’d be funny if you – I’m sorry. Shit taste can’t be helped. I guess they probably grew up with the “““funny””” localization. WELL I DIDN’T. I was told the TRUTH as a child: His name is LOTO.

I’ve literally seen—on the DQ Wiki, the terrible localization DEFENDED with “However, the Japanese version also has puns!”(real fucking impartial btw)

So because the Japanese version has a few jokes peppered throughout the game, it’s okay for the ENTIRE ENGLISH SCRIPT to be one long joke.

Incredible. Kinda like how traitors are worse than enemies, localization-apologists really are worse than the localizers themselves.

There was one other thing I wanted to mention to you… what was it? …

Oh yeah, you know how people(literal fucking retards) defend the ridiculous accents that Plus Alpha and Shloc use with uh...

“Erm, it’s supposed to represent the entire world, and all the different cultures and languages.”

Okay great. Here’s the problem. If “Ragnar McRyan” is Scottish, presumably *he* understands Scottish. When you unnecessarily transcribe an accent, for the English human being playing the mother fucking video game, you are now creating a level of separation between them and the character they’re playing as. Of course Ragnar understands what “Oi wei don beli def in ina da weids an deit be enuf ti mi meitre an ya, ey, Ryan?” means. The player does not. In fact, do Scottish people even understand that? Do Scottish people read books in English, or do they read books that are written in “English with a Scottish accent”?

A TINY bit of flavor isn’t so bad. “A wee bit of luck” is fine. Maybe even “A wee bit ‘o luck”.

When you write “Ai wee bita liok” you’re really fucking pushing it.

You’re playing as a Scottish man? Then you, the player, should be able to read the “Scottish” dialogue as easily as you’re reading this right now. If it really means that much to you, you can use your fucking imagination to give people accents, when it’s *written in*, it’s AAAAAAAAaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

btw these are the exact, THE EXACT same fucking people that are always going on about “accessibility” in video games. Then they turn around and do shit like this, while REAL English literacy is already plummeting.

anyway, lemme stop kvetching for 10 seconds…

actually no LOL: I started playing Lufia for DS. Half an hour in, a character hits me with the “Erm, gods need people to believe in them and fear them in order to exist 🤓”

😭i literally cant fucking escape this slop.

I’ll play something else :’) maybe Soma Bringer… or idk, just Rune Factory 3. you just know it’s freaking fun. AND it has waifus? AND it’s a Rune Factory game before the English localizers forced everyone to be rewritten as bisexual, turning everyone into romantically-sterilized genderless robots?

It’s probably great, but idk if I have the energy to commit to a vidya waifu rn…

I uh… played 10 minutes of RE: Revelations. I like it a lot, but my computer sounds like it’s fucking dying whenever I play anything that didn’t come out 20 years ago, so . Idk, kinda a bummer tbh. I can’t put a headset on because I’ll literally die from the heat. I kinda feel like it’s *just steam*, but I—I’ll check another time.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz… whatever, see if I care.

Im gonna go… ...maybe start… ...D...DQVI? Maybe. I really was pretty impressed. I mean, I went through DOZENS of instances of the words “nun” and “priest”, and ALL of them were like… fine. Pleasant. Lemme show you some examples:

Milly: I actually wanted to be a nun when I was a little girl.

Milly: That nun is as sharp as you'd expect…

Nevan: I sympathise deeply with the nun's sentiment.

Amos: I hope the world's one day as pure and wholesome as that nun.

Amos: She's not wrong – peace is the most important thing! Along with eatin' your veggies and sayin' your prayers!

Nevan: I pray that the blessings of the Goddess are with the people of Scrimsley.

Amos: It's always nice to have a priest givin' you some blessings!

Terry: This guy's got a real priestly feel to him…

Nevan: We really shouldn't interrupt a private confession to a priest.

Ashlynn: Good thing we talked to that priest, huh, Hero? He reminded us there's always hope!

It’s just wholesome. I’ve nev—I’m tired, boss.

Anyway, I did see ONE THING that triggered my weak, little sensitive heart. At one point, a character does say, “No offense to the priest, but things here have gotten a little too serious for faith and prayers alone.”

But the context, IIRC is a king literally summoning a demon to try to save his kingdom. The demon, of course, destroys the kingdom. And uh, they were right, the priest should have tried to stop the king instead of just praying to the Goddess that the demon would be a Nice Guy😮‍💨 AND, AND, note how she adds “alone” rather than just entirely dismissing faith.

There’s a section of the game that’s *ripe* for anti-religious quips in English, where demons trick people into boarding a flying island to escape to a “paradise” instead of fixing up their own town, only for them to get eaten. The message basically being uh… help yourself. Which isn’t incompatible with any meaningful form of Christianity, or probably most religions. Christianity doesn’t teach that life is sunshine and roses and if you pray, God will give you whatever your gay little heart desires.

It’s certainly a story against like… prosperity gospel shit. Which is a good thing.

anyway, I think the dozens of other innocent or good interactions kinda easily balances all of that out. You know what I mean?

So, maybe. Even if they use the horrendous Schloc naming scheme, the rest of the translation doesn’t seem like a complete clownshow

And yeah, sometimes there really is something in the original script that’s a little… silly. In DQ4, there’s a priest flirting with a girl by a fountain at night even in the original NES game. Psh. I don’t even know if these guys are required to be celibate in the first place, MAYBE HE’S DOING NOTHING WRONG by flirting with her. Either way, that’s like one single goofy interaction in a precious rare JRPG series where the Church is overwhelmingly depicted as good.

You know, when the script is being followed faithfully(get it?) instead of like, changing a nun’s line from “I dedicated myself to God.” to “Preaching makes me feel powerful! Heheheheh!” which is like, fucking ridiculous. That’s really one of the nastiest examples I’ve ever seen in any game and people who defend this utter slop should be ki—sry, I’m hungry or something. I’m gonna get some pretzels…

anyway that’s all I think… right?