Localizing a Dark Ages Quest for the 21st Century German Gamer
Challenge/Task
Our client, a European video game developer, created a masterpiece of an RPG (Role-Playing Game) set in the Early Middle Ages. The world they’ve built is intricate with light-horror elements and complex underlying dynamics—and within it, characters of exceptional depth each walk upon their distinct quest line.
The primary challenge with this RPG localization was a linguistic one: choosing the right words that would make the player feel authentically immersed in circa 5th century Europe, and yet not scratching their head in need of an encyclopedia to illuminate some archaic term.
The secondary challenge lay within the complex story structure itself: which despite its complexity needed to be relayed clearly and concisely, and whose twists and turns needed to be expertly handled to have the intended impact.
Approach/Solution
Here’s what we know, when it comes to gaming localization it simply has to be so: by gamers for gamers. So assembling a team of internal translators who are equal part linguists, equal part gamers was a no-brainer, but the added layer of our selection process was identifying who amongst our team happens to be a secret history nerd…
Luckily, four of our colleagues met the brief and put their triple passion—for language, gaming and history—at the service of the project. Through their linguistic expertise and knack for history studies, they chose language that captured the historical nostalgia the client was going for, without sacrificing modern-day understandability.
Their gamers’ POV enabled them to follow deftly the complicated quest lines and plot structure, translating with clarity and precision, and making sure every twist and turn leaves the player breathless. The team relied on each other for workshopping ideas and triple checking their work.
No detail was too small for consideration, and every effort was made to retell the story in German with all its original intrigue, dark setting and glimmering details.
Benefit for the client
The end result we are genuinely proud of. Most importantly, our client’s impeccable and vast work was perfectly preserved during the transmission into German, and thus a successful DE launch unlocked!
