FF Topics

FINAL FANTASY XVI
Localization Team Interview! Part 1

FINAL FANTASY XVI just celebrated one year after its release on June 22, 2023, and the FF Portal staff got some time with the game’s localization team to see what working on this title was like! Learn what made FFXVI’s localization unique, including how item descriptions and other background lore were localized, characterization choices between languages, regional dialects within the game and more in this special interview!

Interviewees:
- Michael-Christopher Koji Fox (Localization Director)
- Eve Chauviré (French Localization Director)
- Manuel Gutierrez (Castilian Spanish Localization Director)

Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today! To start off, what was the localization process like this time overall? Were there any significant differences compared to other localizations you’ve participated in?

Koji (Localization Director):
I’ll start and then let the others answer after me, because I think it was probably a little bit different for each team. For English, I joined a few months earlier in the project before the other localizers did, but it was pretty much already decided who was going to be involved at that point. The first thing I did was the script, after which it was a process of back and forth with Kazutoyo Maehiro-san (FFXVI creative director & original screenplay) adjusting what we had.
The big difference with this project compared to any other that I’ve worked on in the past was that, when the team approached me, they said for this game we want to do English first - recording, facial capture, even the motion capture we want based off of the English script rather than Japanese.
This is something I had not experienced before at SQUARE ENIX. The Japanese was always done first, and then we’d take that and try to mold our translations and localizations to fit what is already there. In this instance, however, myself and John Taylor (FFXVI English translator) translated what we had of the main scenario at the time and then had these sessions with Maehiro-san where we went back and forth discussing almost every single line - how we had translated to English to make it feel more Western, because that was what they requested. They wanted it to feel like a Western drama such as Game of Thrones, as if it originated in English.

So, we did a lot of moving things around to make it feel more natural in English. Some of those Maehiro-san thought were great and he would take the Japanese and adjust it to match. Other places, he would say “no, actually I’m doing this for this reason, can we move it back?”. So it was a back and forth process.
From there, we went on to voice recording, where we did everything including facial capture in English first. Then, based on that, the Japanese team would readjust the Japanese to better match the English. And once they’re in the studio, they’re making more changes on the fly. You’d have the Japanese voice actors listen to the English lines and say “oh, can we change this line like this?” or “this might look better with the lip flaps like this”. And that’s kind of what localization has already been doing on other projects all along. Sometimes things we’d come up with work and sometimes they don’t, but then you just change it in the studio, and that’s what the Japanese team was doing this time. But for a lot of the people working on the Japanese version, it was their first experience with this. They really seemed to be having a hard time with it, and I was like “welcome to our world, guys, we do this on every project!” [laughs]
So I think it was a good opportunity for the Japanese dev team to get an understanding of what goes into localization. When you’re the second or third language translating there’s a lot of extra things that you must do, but this time I got to be that first language so there was a whole other set of responsibilities and tasks. But again, that was just my experience.
From there the English is done and it gets handed off to the other teams, who then will take that and the Japanese and do their magic with it. I’ll let my other two colleagues talk about that.

Eve (French Localization Director):
For French, the main difference was that although the script was written in Japanese (with some Localization team feedback inserted like Koji explained), the Japanese voices were recorded last, after French and the other languages. That made for kind of an unusual process for us because it meant we would not use the Japanese voices as a reference during recording. Although it was decided from the start French would be translated from the Japanese, we had to match the English animation for lip sync in the cutscenes, as Japanese did not have lip sync.
Another thing that was unusual was that the development team gave us completely free reign in choosing voice actors. Usually, on other projects, the director or producer wants to check and validate the main roles, but this time they essentially said “we trust you, you may do what you want”. Having this much freedom is great, but it also meant the responsibility was entirely ours. As we had a strong relationship with the studio and voice directors Stéphane Bollaert and Nathalie Sionneau, who did a fantastic job, we told them which sort of voice we wanted for each character early on and were also able to call specific voice actors that we had in mind to the auditions, which is not always possible - that was a very positive point, as we were able to cast a few fan-favorite talents.

Regarding the voices, in some aspects, it was a little like working on an original creation because some roles were not cast or delivered in Japanese/English when we chose the French voice actors and recorded. In such cases, we worked solely on our own image of the characters rather than using the Japanese voice as a point of reference as we would usually do.

Manuel (Castilian Localization Director):
This project was completely different from the rest I’ve worked on. Previous projects were basically translated from Japanese, but this time we were told from the very beginning that English was going to be the original language and we should translate from that. Because of this, we had the English team always supporting us, operating like a middleman between us and the Japanese team.
We had access to the provisional Japanese text that the English was based on to write up the item descriptions, so when comparing both texts I was really thankful that the English team could add their flavor, because that made for much more fun world-building. The lore was expanded greatly, like in FFXIV. It was considerably more satisfying to work this way.

Koji (Localization Director):
To give a little background on that, Maehiro-san actually gave myself and John the opportunity to write some text of our own. I remember Maehiro-san had already been asking me to help name the items because he wanted to have the base for that be in English. We were right in the middle of development when he came over saying “okay, now we’ve got to write the item description text and I’m kind of busy – Koji, could you just write that and we’ll get someone to translate it?”. My first question was “do you have English to Japanese translators?” and he goes “no we don’t but we’ll figure it out, don’t worry”. [laughs] So John and I did all the help text, given free rein to write about 100 words of interesting flavor text for every item. John and I both had experience with that kind of text from FINAL FANTASY XIV, and it was interesting because the FFXVI UI team had provided us with auto-scroll so we could write as much as we want. So, we went a little bit crazy on some of them and wrote a lot, since it was a lot of fun making up random stories about all these items.
Then, when they decided to back-translate it into Japanese, Maehiro-san decided that, aesthetically, he wanted to have all the text be in just the one window with no scrolling. So I got worried that we’d have to cut down the text in English too, but Maehiro-san was ok with leaving the English UI as is, and they ended up cutting out a bunch of the stuff in the Japanese to make it a little bit tighter and dryer.
Of course, players kind of recognized that and you have Japanese players asking why the English help text is so much longer with so much more information than the Japanese. Maybe in the future we’ll get an opportunity to go back and put that in, but that was an interesting thing about the two different ways that English and Japanese approached things. Just an example of one way we got to go in and do a little bit more than just localization this time, at least for the English team.
One more thing, about the bit where the moogle Nektar who’s at the hunt board talks about his adventures – we were approached asking to write those in a similar way, since nobody had done that yet. So we’re the ones who came up with those strange stories about him finding himself after jumping into the big hole and Dzemekys and things like that. [laughs]

We very much enjoyed a lot of the flavor text and the background info ourselves! So much of the lore in FINAL FANTASY XVI requires you to seek it out and make a point to read it, which really rewarded thorough players. How was it for the other languages?　Did you stick to the English/Japanese or were you given more freedom?

Eve (French Localization Director):
We adapted them in a way that was a mix of the Japanese and English. We discussed with the team and they gave the Localization team the green light to create text of its own, so while most of the text is a localization of the Japanese/English, some of the text is original to the French version, which was an unusual process, though we are sometimes asked to create lore on some games. The texts are not fundamentally different in the way that they carry the same meaning and intent; we just tried to stay consistent within our own language's writing style and generally the way we built the world within the game. There are some details sometimes that are only present in one language, especially for the item descriptions for instance. This is something you will see in FINAL FANTASY XVI, because, as Koji explained, the development team wanted the localization team to be involved, create their lore and do their own worldbuilding.

Koji (Localization Director):
Yeah, it’s amazing the amount of freedom we were given, and I think that came from both myself and Eve and a lot of people that were on the team this year having worked with the FINAL FANTASY XIV team in the past and building trust with them. They trusted us to take what we had and make it good. I talked with Maehiro-san a lot, and his ideas on localization are some of the most open of any of the people I’ve worked with. Basically, for him, as long as you maintain the original intent, mood, and that overall feeling that we’re trying to get across, then the means by which you do that should be whatever’s best in your language. That’s why the core is so important - you’re not going to get different stories depending on which language you play but you’re going to get a different feel that fits the cultures that are using that language and it’s going to feel very natural. We’ve seen that in the feedback we’ve gotten from fans from all over the world. No matter which language version they’re playing they’re saying how it feels so natural, and I think it’s because Maehiro-san, again, trusted us so much.

Manuel (Castilian Spanish Localization Director):
We basically just translated the item text from English because not only were they thorough, in-depth descriptions but they were really entertaining – basically for the items, we felt following the English was the right choice.

To expand a little on that, I personally played with Japanese voices and English text, and I definitely felt differences in the dialogue between those two, to the point where it feels like the energy between characters in some scenes is almost a little bit different. Was that a purposeful choice or something that happened naturally? What were the reasons for incorporating those kinds of differences?

Koji (Localization Director):
Well, I can tell you that, because we did English first, it was the Japanese team that decided whether to match it or not. [laughs] Normally, in a position where you’re translating into a second language, there is always that decision whether to tonally match this to the T or to deviate in some places. It’s always a difficult choice, but again, it came to that literal back and forth we had with Maehiro-san - we spent more than a month just looking over every line in the main scenario. I was meeting with John once and we were kind of acting out the characters, discussing, for example, how we envision Clive delivering a specific line, then we were getting feedback from Maehiro-san on tension and energy and so on before we went into the studio. The thing is, though, once you go into the studio, if you have voices in another language available the actors are going to fit their acting to what’s already there by default. But because we didn’t have anything in the English, the actors were like “I get to create this character!” and so they just went all in on that. I think a lot of times the characterizations that we ended up using – for example, Clive’s characterization by Ben Starr - was the voice actor making the character while we’re in the studio. Cid’s character, that’s Ralph Ineson in there. We gave him a little bit of a seed of what we want, and he took that and made it into what it ended up being. So when it came down to the characterizations, at least for the English version, I can’t take full credit for that. Half of that goes to the actual actors who were there for months learning everything about these characters, embodying them, becoming them, and so Clive is every bit as much Maehiro-san and me and John as it is Ben Starr.

So, it was a really collaborative creation process, that’s awesome. Anything from anybody else?

Eve (French Localization Director):
For French, we have been frequently asked whether the source was English or Japanese. As for other FF titles, we worked directly from the Japanese, which allowed us to proceed in parallel with the game's writing in a timely manner while matching the writer's intent. And while we essentially translated from Japanese, we also sometimes incorporated elements from the English version, as we were often checking that version in parallel to see how it would be adapted. English was however the base for the facial motion capture and lip sync. So the source language is Japanese, but it is not such a simple one-to-one process.

Manuel (Castilian Spanish Localization Director):
As I mentioned at the beginning, we had access to both the English and Japanese scripts, and we primarily translated from English because we could understand the reasoning behind everything. Most of the English text aimed at a Western audience also worked for a Castilian Spanish-speaking audience. There were a few sporadic phrases that we felt might not fit the Castilian Spanish audience, in which case we translated from the Japanese, but they were so minimal I could count them.

Could you give us any specific examples of dialogue where you chose to translate from the Japanese over the English?

Manuel (Castilian Spanish Localization Director):
I remember there is a scene where, without giving any spoilers, a certain character shouts “fiend!”, and that doesn’t work so well in European Spanish. We’re actually closer to Japanese in terms of shouting character names like you might see in an anime, so in that case instead of “fiend” we went with the name.

Very interesting, that makes a lot of sense [laughs]
Moving on, Koji did mention Game of Thrones. Were you really focused in specifically on that series, or did production start off with a stylistic intent leaning more toward Western fantasy in general? How did you all approach influences for FFXVI’s world?

Koji (Localization Director):
Yes, right when I joined the project, Naoki Yoshida-san (FFXVI producer) and Hiroshi Takai-san (FFXVI main director) and Maehiro-san all said “we’re going for Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire, they resonated with so many people and that’s what we want”, so you have the cutscene team directors and everyone working with Game of Thrones in the back of their heads. That meant, at least for me, that it’s a question of how to incorporate that Game of Thrones feel in the localization process.
I think the Game of Thrones TV show did a great job of feeling like fantasy but not being overwhelming to viewers who aren’t familiar with the heavier, more archaic language that George R. R. Martin uses in the books, and so that’s what we aimed for as well. We wanted to avoid using thee’s and thou’s and old words and sayings, as only a small portion of users would understand and appreciate that. Everybody else would wonder what’s being said and find it difficult to follow, and the minute that they think it’s too difficult they shut it out and they’re not going to listen to the performance anymore, which is definitely what we didn’t want.
So we set aside a bunch of rules for ourselves. We didn’t want to use any super archaic language but we also set a limit where any turn of phrase that is after the 18th century we tried to avoid. That said, any pre-18th century terminology we included had to still be in use today, as there’s a lot of pre-18th century sayings that no one understands anymore. We aimed for stuff that originated and felt older so we can maintain that fantasy feel without making it too modern, which is what I think the Game of Thrones TV show did.

Other than Game of Thrones, the English team also took a lot of inspiration from The Last Kingdom, especially the choice to make the Waloeder knights be Scandi, which followed The Last Kingdom’s decision to have the Vikings speak in a Scandi accent. That kind of proved that situation was possible, where you have the British pronunciations and then other characters come in with a Scandi accent. So yeah, those were some of the fantasy inspirations for the English localization team.

Great! I’m assuming Game of Thrones is popular in France and Spain as well, but if there was anything in particular that your teams aimed for as an inspiration then please share.

Eve (French Localization Director):
We saw the Game of Thrones inspiration from the start and pondered how much we would want to align with that to keep a good balance. In the end, rather than Game of Thrones itself, we took a lot of inspiration from actual historical and medieval terms. One aspect to consider is when you are working on a voiced game it is difficult to be historically accurate in terms of language - first of all, it is a genuine challenge linguistics-wise, but also there is a risk of sounding somewhat silly and resembling medieval comedies such as the movie Les Visiteurs. So, the choice we made for the audio was to make the characters speak in a mostly modern tone and pronunciation - being truly medieval would have been a hard sell.
In the written text however, what we did do was incorporate a number of archaic words for locations, occupation names, as well as old adjectives and expressions in the lore, especially the flavor text. We tried to use historically accurate names for weapons, materials and other specialized vocabulary as a part of the lore building. That was the core of our inspiration on that aspect, for French.

Manuel (Castilian Spanish Localization Director):
We delved into several manuscripts from the 11th to the 15th centuries to infuse a historic flavor in the medieval Spanish used in the game. It was intriguing to see the reactions in media coverage of FINAL FANTASY XVI – some people said they had never encountered the terminology we used. I even witnessed some streamers inquire if it was Portuguese.
Additionally, when we were informed that the team sought inspiration from Game of Thrones, I immediately recognized it as a fantastic influence. While we certainly immersed ourselves in those books, I also dedicated time to the entire Witcher series. I wanted that influence to be there as well, especially in dialogue. The Spanish translation of the Witcher books is really well made because it takes a good middle ground, and we followed that kind of speech.

Okay, thank you so much! Koji mentioned reasons for why the Waloeders were given a Scandinavian accent. What other examples are there of how accents were chosen for different regions and characters? Especially in languages outside English.

Koji (Localization Director):
We wanted dialect to be a central focus when doing our localization. I think a lot of times, games will declare they’re going with British dialogue and then it’s just this mishmash of various kinds of British. A lot of Americans and people who aren’t from the UK will think it sounds British, whereas people in the UK hearing it will go “wait a minute, why is a person here speaking North Country but this person is speaking West Country, and this is obviously from Wales?”. They can tell, and it sounds really fake to them. I understand that – it would be kind of the same thing as a TV show that takes place in California but then you have some guy speaking in a New York accent, some guy with a Boston accent, another with an accent from Mississippi and Texas, and then they all claim to be from California. Us in America would say “no way, that guys from Boston” or “he’s from New York” and that’s kind of the same thing with the British accents as well.
The many different kind of British accents are all linked to areas and also histories, so when we were choosing accents for the different nations in FINAL FANTASY XVI, we wanted something that was going to be consistent throughout and that would contribute to characterization and get across what type of people they were. But also, if someone were to just hear the voices, they would immediately know whether they’re from Rosaria or Sanbreque or wherever by the accent that we chose.
So, we did go out of our way to choose different regions in the UK to represent the different regions on the Twins, with Waloed as the exception, them being on a different land mass. We imagined that you have one land mass with the languages all deviating naturally depending on where people are living, but then you have this one that’s separated by a strait so they’re going to be more far removed and you’re going to get further deviation that takes them in that direction. So that’s how we approached that.

Eve (French Localization Director):
Like in Japanese, we chose not to add regional accents in the French version, first because that’s a little bit delicate to handle and not something that is commonly done in French voice acting. That said, players may have noticed a lot of the names from the different regions of the game are all related to real life languages, like the Dhalmekian names are all based on the Czech language and the Sanbrequois names, on French. In that aspect we made a great effort to try to properly spell and localize all those names to try and sound authentic. There are also names inspired from the Old Norse and Gaelic languages.
For the Empire of Sanbreque in particular, as the inspiration was France, we tried to create authentic French names that could actually exist, especially for place names. That’s something we also discussed with the other teams – how to spell the names and so on, or how to make them sound like authentic French. We focused on having a realistic consistency in terms of place names and character names for each region in the game.

Manuel (Castilian Spanish Localization Director):
Sadly, European Spanish lacked voice overs, so there wasn’t much we could do on that front. However, we did add some characterization. For instance, Goetz's character is conveyed in the way he speaks, and Charon uses plenty of old-fashioned curse words.

Interesting! That sounds similar to the Japanese voiceovers and characterization, as regional dialects in Japan don’t allow a lot of reasonable variation that would work within a fantasy setting either.

That’s where we’ll cut things off for now - thank you so much for all your insight into FINAL FANTASY XVI’s localization process!

Next week, don’t miss part two of our time with the FINAL FANTASY XVI localization team, in which we take an even deeper dive with a look at the Active Time Lore system, Eikons and more!

FINAL FANTASY XVI on sale now on PlayStation®Store!

Check details below:
PlayStation®Store: finalfantasy.com/news/2672

DLC Available Now!

*To enjoy this DLC content, you must have the FINAL FANTASY XVI base game installed. An internet connection is also required in order to update the base game to the latest version. Items included in this Expansion Pass are also sold separately. Please be sure that you do not already own either of these DLC before purchasing.
*For details visit the FINAL FANTASY XVI official site.

Free demo for FINAL FANTASY XVI available now!

Players can experience the beginning of Clive's epic tale and learn about his ambitions and goals for free, by downloading the FINAL FANTASY XVI Demo on the PlayStation™Store at:
https://store.playstation.com/product/UP0082-PPSA13802_00-FF16DEMO00000000 (NA)
https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/product/EP0082-PPSA10665_00-FF16DEMOEU000000 (EU)

FINAL FANTASY XVI is rated M (Mature) and is now available for PlayStation®5 and PC via Steam® and Epic Games Store.

FINAL FANTASY XVI introduces players to an all-new story in the FINAL FANTASY universe, an epic dark fantasy that takes place in the realm of Valisthea – a land blessed in the light of the Mothercrystals, and where peace falters as the spread of the Blight threatens to destroy their dominions. The fate of the land is decided by the Eikons, mighty summoned beasts and their Dominants, men and women who have been blessed with the ability to call upon and wield them. This is the tale of Clive Rosfield, a warrior granted the title “First Shield of Rosaria” and sworn to protect his younger brother Joshua, the Dominant of the Phoenix, Eikon of Fire. Before long, Clive will be caught up in a great tragedy and swear revenge on the Dark Eikon known as Ifrit, a mysterious entity that brings calamity in its wake.

Characters

Clive Rosfield
The firstborn son of the Archduke of Rosaria. Though all expected him to inherit the Phoenix's flames and awaken as its Dominant, destiny instead chose his younger brother Joshua to bear this burden. In search of a role of his own, Clive dedicated himself to mastering the blade. His practice pays off when, at just fifteen years of age, he wins the ducal tournament and is dubbed the First Shield of Rosaria—tasked to guard the Phoenix and blessed with the ability to wield a part of his fire. Alas, Clive's promising career is to end in tragedy at the hands of a mysterious dark Eikon, Ifrit, setting him on a dangerous road to revenge.

Joshua Rosfield
The second son of the Archduke of Rosaria and Clive's younger brother by five years. Joshua awoke as the Dominant of the Phoenix soon after his birth. Despite his noble upbringing, Joshua treats all his father's subjects with warmth and affection—none more so than Clive, whom he deeply admires. Joshua often laments that it was he, the frail and bookish younger son, who was granted command of the firebird's flames, and not his stronger, braver brother. While Clive will gladly throw himself into any danger, Joshua quails at the sight of a carrot on his dinner plate. But carrots become the least of his concern when he, too, is swept up into the tragic events that change Clive's life forever.

Jill Warrick
Born in the fallen Northern Territories, Jill was taken from her homeland at a tender age to become a ward of Rosaria. The Archduke insisted that she be raised alongside his sons, and she became as much a part of the Rosfield household as Clive and Joshua. Alas, fate was not finished with her yet—it saw the three torn apart, and the bone-chilling power of the Eikon Shiva awaken within her.

Torgal
Another outcast from the Northern Territories taken in by House Rosfield, Torgal was found alone in a snowfield during one of Archduke Elwin's expeditions to the freezing north, and gifted to his sons upon his return. After somehow surviving the disaster that nearly ended the Rosfield line, he was reunited with Clive over a decade later, and now serves his master with the same fierce loyalty he did when he was but a pup.

Cidolfus Telamon
Known to his friends as "Cid," this soldier turned outlaw strives to build a place where persecuted Bearers and exploited Dominants can die on their own terms. A man of science, he also conducts research into how one might live in the deadlands—as he and his band of fellow heretics must. Cid is also a Dominant—the power of the Eikon Ramuh having awoken within him shortly after he landed on Valisthean shores. No doubt it was this power that saw him rise through the ranks of the Royal Waloeder Army—where it would seem he crossed paths with a certain Benedikta Harman...