Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse’s localization slip-up makes for a good story

A couple of lines made it through untranslated

Tales from localization are some of the most entertaining around in this industry.

Today’s comes from Atlus in light of the recently-released Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, and I like it for two reasons. One, it involves a slip-up. It’s always reassuring to hear higher-profile stories that remind us, yes, we’re only human, and yes, mistakes happen. Two, the pun “Faux Pas-calypse.” Nice.

The setup, per Atlus: “As a bunch of people pointed out, an image circulated this weekend of our English build having some unlocalized Japanese text still in it. I’m not gonna link it here because it’s from the battle at the end of the game and could definitely spoil some details for people. Let that also serve as your warning before you go looking for it. Nevertheless, I asked our localization team about it, and they pored over the game’s text files looking to find out what happened. […] Yep, it’s in there, along with one other instance of Japanese text.”

Apparently, the unlocalized text can pop up in a late-game boss battle (if you don’t mind spoilers, have at it). “In this particular battle, partners will return after three turns, and the errant Japanese text only shows up if you get to a point where the boss gives you a dialogue option WHILE your partner is KO’d. Our testers, who have been with the company for quite awhile, and who are well-versed in all things SMT (I think a few of them also were QA for the original SMTIV) were so good, they never ran into the situation of having an unconscious partner during the fight, and henceforth the dialogue in question.”

With those details in mind, you can likely navigate your way around the error. Or you could purposefully seek it out. That might be an interesting challenge, come to think of it.

Rather than attempt to keep the mistake quiet, Atlus has apologized for the whole situation. “It’s an oversight on our part, and we’re deeply sorry about it. We’ve discussed internally about the possibility of correcting it, and while fixing it is not off the table yet, if it does happen, it won’t be in a timely manner.”

SMTIV: Faux Pas-calypse [Atlus]