Newsflash: Working Designs Updates Their Site!

[EightBit]

I really enjoyed the humor in both the Lunar games on Playstation. They really made the characters have personality and I cared about what happened to them. God forbid should a RPG have humor in it.

I was talking about Tales of Symphonia to a friend the other day. They made a refrence to Titanic, but it wasnt so blatant. Nor did it ruin the suspension of disbelief.

Making a pop culture refrence doesnt enhance a characters personality when the universe they are set in has nothing to do with corn flakes or what-have-you. Symphonia is one of the rare games that has humor and is actually funny.

Lunar had some funny moments, and when they were related to the story, those funny moments did help flesh out the characters and give them personalities. But when its lame, its lame. When it has nothing to do with anything and farts in the face of the universe the game is set it, then its worthless. WD does this alot IMO.

[AaronChance]

I really enjoyed the humor in both the Lunar games on Playstation. They really made the characters have personality and I cared about what happened to them. God forbid should a RPG have humor in it.

Last RPG I played, Atelier Iris, had plenty of humor in it... and of course it'll probably never come out in the US.

Disgaea had humor and I think it's a good example of what Diffx is talking about since Altus USA's version isn't a direct translation. 'Dood' wasn't in the original (among other things), but it's basically true to the humor of the original that doesn't translate well into english. So while they didn't completely rewrite things, they did change up things a bit to make the translation less literal, but closer to the feel of the Japanese version.

[Survival Kid]

shidoshi, your avatar is a damn nightmare. Your old one was fruity but at least it was tolerable.

LOL It's a great avatar!

DiffX- Your original impression is right. The only stuff that gets totally redone is the random townspeople, and minor characters can get an infusion of personality they otherwise wouldn't have had. I'm not saying people have to like how WD does it (I actually find a lot of their stuff very well done, obviously) but it's nothing like as extreme as Shidoshi says.

Uh, no. Vic Ireland has stated in the past that they rewrite scripts. Meaning they alter the story to what they feel is good, not just spicing up what NPCs say. So in the end you're not getting the same story. You're getting a heavily WD influenced pile of steaming shit full of jokes about just that, steaming shit. Literally.

I really enjoyed the humor in both the Lunar games on Playstation. They really made the characters have personality and I cared about what happened to them. God forbid should a RPG have humor in it.

No one is saying RPGs should not have humor in them. They should. That's the problem. WD doesn't inject humor into the titles they publish. Guys in cabins jerking off is not funny. Ya momma jokes are not funny. Turning a village into a shantytown full of inbred rednecks that make no sense is not funny. If they used intelligent and witty humor it'd be one thing, but potty humor has not been funny since I was 12.

[Roufuss]

I'm just glad that WD didn't get it's hands on something like La Pucelle, which would have turned into one big "sex with underage girls" joke.

Let's be thankful Vic runs such a shitty company that they can only run one series into the ground every 5 years or so.

[James]

Survival Kid- I'm bored with this so I'll just issue a flat "you're wrong" and call it good. Not 100% wrong, WD does take liberties with the writing as they see fit, but still pretty wrong. Bitter too.

James

[Survival Kid]

Survival Kid- I'm bored with this so I'll just issue a flat "you're wrong" and call it good. Not 100% wrong, WD does take liberties with the writing as they see fit, but still pretty wrong. Bitter too.

James

Yeah, and I say you're wrong, so what's the point?

[James]

I worked for the company for a while and you didn't?

Oh, and you're ugly and smell funny, too.

James

[mollipen]

Survival Kid- I'm bored with this so I'll just issue a flat "you're wrong" and call it good. Not 100% wrong, WD does take liberties with the writing as they see fit, but still pretty wrong. Bitter too.

In the "making of" video that came with Lunar PSX, Vic says that they throw away the Japanese script and write their own. I mean, he says that pretty clearly. One example he brought up was that farting fairy or whatever it was from Vay, if I'm not mistaken.

If Working Designs does not actually do that, then he is an idiot for making it sound like they do.

[Mfkzt]

Oh man, you are digging up some old drama now. If I remember correcetly, didn't Nick Rox basicly shit on Lunar EB in print in the mag?

His beef was with the translation. He wasn't amused by WD's attempts at humor. This caused Victor Ireland to act like a bitchy attention whore on Usenet for quite a while. I was writing for a video game magazine when all of this went down so I obviously empathized with Nick Rox. He got a lot of flak for doing his job as a video game critic.