There’s less than a month left until the release of Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, the second installment in Nihon Falcom’s 3D remake of the original Trails in the Sky series.
In anticipation of the release, GungHo Online Entertainment America (the overseas publishers for the Trails in the Sky remake series)’s CEO Fumiaki Shiraishi and producer Matthias Pergams were interviewed by Level Up about the localization process behind the game.
Specifically, the two company representatives addressed the usage of AI in the localization process, which is a method that has recently been catching on among developers trying to cut corners and accelerate production.
As they told Level Up, GungHo does not use AI for translations, and currently has no plans to do so in the future. The localization process is being handled by human translators from start to finish. While noting that one of the main reasons for manually localizing their games is because “players expect work created by people,” they also emphasized that maintaining consistency across the series’ numerous installments is crucial. Considering the sheer size of the universe and lore of the Trail series, not to mention the extensive cast of characters, each with a distinct identity and speaking style, GungHo believes “that level of detail still requires human judgement.”
The company says its goal is to “ensure every character sounds exactly as they should, terminology remains consistent, and all of those small details carry over from one game to the next,” which is why maintaining ‘the human touch’ is important for the series.
Interestingly, in an interview from 2024, Nihon Falcom CEO Toshihiro Kondo said that he was open to potentially introducing AI into the initial stages of the localization process to make global rollout more efficient. On the other hand, he also pointed out that, even if AI were used for translation, human effort would still be needed for proofreading and editing.
However, it seems that, thanks to GungHo, Nihon Falcom managed to release Trails in The Sky 1st Chapter for the global audience without relying on AI.
As for how the studio was able to pull off a simultaneous international release for the 1st Chapter (2nd Chapter will also be released simultaneously across the globe), Kondo said this was thanks to the fact that the Trails in the Sky remake series didn’t require writing a completely new scenario. This meant that they could simultaneously work on both the Japanese and global version of the game – Nihon Falcom was already in talks with GungHo about the localization as soon as the remake project kicked off.
Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter is set to launch on September 17, for PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5. A playable demo is also currently available.
AI Translations will happen and will eventually become a thing, it’s just not ready for the time being due to massive scripts of lore and dialog in these kinds of games. I will give it two years before they say it can be done.
Nicely done! I’m localizing games since 2020 and can say that translations from LLMs are flat and boring, and I’m not even talking about the hallucinations and critical mistakes. Localization isn’t a sinking ship. Anyone looking for quality above good enough shouldn’t rely on “AI”. Humans understand context, can read emotions, can give voice to characters, can make a game feel human. So, yeah, if you’re ok with good enough, you don’t even need to wait two years. Just throw all your game into an LLM today and be happy (and don’t forget to remove the prompt). We will be happy to have you as a client and fix the slop once things flop and players notice 🙂