Cognition Dissemination: The Peculiar Localization Gap for Persona 5 Royal
Atlus announced Persona 5 Royal for every major territory worldwide in a near simultaneous manner in April. This inspired hope that the release gap between the Japanese release and the others would be short.
This version, after all, will be the same as the original Persona 5 with extra content, so most of the text was already translated, localized, and given voice acting. The biggest resources would be dedicated towards localizing the new content, which will include a new playable character Kasumi Yoshizawa and other new faces, along with new scenes involving the existing characters. The first game performed incredibly well outside Japan, and has sold more than 2.7 million copies worldwide as of April; there was reason to think this could be a near-simultaneous release worldwide.
The latest news regarding the western version sadly confirmed that it won’t be. Atlus USA confirmed at the Atlus Art Exhibit 2019: Persona 5 Royal and Catherine: Full Body Showcase that Royal will release in America and Europe in spring 2020. Since the Japanese release is coming on October 31st, the release gap between territories might be similar to the original Persona 5. For reference: That version released in Japan on September 15th of 2016, and arrived in America and Europe on April 4th of 2017.
That’s disappointing. Part of me was hoping Atlus would take the Persona franchise’s newfound popularity more seriously by working to significantly close the gap between the Japanese and western releases; on the surface, having a similar gap for Royal is enough to suggest they’re not even trying to shorten the time period. But this isn’t surprising, considering the gap between the Japanese and western versions of Catherine: Full Body is longer than the original Catherine despite that also being an enhanced port. They’re doing extra work on that game, but the demo showed that a fair portion of the text and voice acting will be identical to the original version.
There’s another part of me that wants to think this gap for Royal is for a good reason. The original Persona 5’s localization was a step down from previous Persona efforts and other titles from Atlus and parent company Sega. The localized text for several lines was too literal, partly shown through the overreliance on the arbitrary phrase “it can’t be helped” instead of substituting that with synonymous phrases. The English dub was also rife with blatant mispronunciations of names, another problem previous titles didn’t have. A detailed rundown of the issues was posted on Polygon shortly after release, written by Molly Lee.
Before you think this is my blind optimism speaking, there’s reason to think they’re indeed fixing up the localization. I’d be surprised if Atlus USA didn’t hear about all the criticism mentioned above. They’ll likely make sure they don’t make the same mistakes for the new content in Royal, but doing that without fixing the old content would make the original work read that much worse in comparison. Since several of those lines were voice acted, they’ll also have to redo them with the cast when they assemble them for the new content. The goofy alternative here would be for the localization team to make sure the new text is as underwhelming as the content from the original version for consistency’s sake, which would be inane as it sounds.
You should note that I’m not confident enough to say the old localized content will be polished in the last paragraph. If a decision is made to improve it, it would be good for Atlus USA to elaborate about those changes on their official website’s blog, since the number of those who thought the original game’s localization deserved better isn’t insignificant. If the old text isn’t fixed, the main assumption will be that Atlus USA either doesn’t value good localizations as much as they used to, or that they’re no longer being given enough resources to create them. Both scenarios will cause fans to doubt the quality of future efforts, which will result in lower software sales for future titles.
If the localization isn’t improved, it would also mean there was no good reason for the release gap for Royal between territories. This would confirm that Atlus Japan doesn’t care enough to dedicate resources towards simultaneous worldwide releases. They’ve done near-worldwide releases with the Trauma Center games, the last of which, Trauma Team, was loaded with text and voice acting. That was notably before Sega acquired them to lend them resources, so they absolutely could shorten the gap they wanted to. There are still several Japanese companies that value their domestic audience over their worldwide one despite it making little sense these days, so misplaced prioritization is too good a possibility.
But I’m going to try and be optimistic here and hope that Atlus and Sega are making sure Royal’s localization is the best that it can be, despite evidence and precedent implying otherwise. We’ll see if I end up getting burned for my expectations — or Agi’d, if you prefer.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
