Dragon Quest’s Creator Suggests Localizing to English Loses the Game’s “flavor”: Are They Right?
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- Dragon Quest’s Creator Suggests Localizing to English Loses the Game’s “flavor”: Are They Right?
Takaya Ishiyama, Game Director of Dragon Quest X, and Yuji Horii, renowned creator of Dragon Quest, recently did an interview with Famitsu where they discussed RPGs, adventure games, and their respective careers in the games industry.
While they discussed many fascinating aspects of their careers, the parts we’re most interested to focus on are Text and Translation.
Dragon Quest Specifics
One of the most interesting parts of the interview is hearing how Dragon Quest builds its text. As it’s an RPG, you’d likely assume that the Dragon Quest games wouldn’t shy away from lots of text. But that’s not quite the case:
Ishiyama: “There were some guidelines for writing a scenario, and one that really struck me was, "Try to make it a text to look at, not a text to read."
“When long sentences appear all at once, I inevitably feel a sense of resistance, like "Ugh!", so I tried to make sentences of around 2-3 lines that could be easily understood at a glance. Also, it said to pay attention not only to the use and pronunciation of words, but also to the arrangement of letters. I remember thinking, "Wow, Dragon Quest is so particular about things!" So I thought, "Oh, it's okay to be particular about things! Well, from now on, I'll be more than just particular about things!" (laughs)”
It’s fascinating to see that one of the longest-running RPG franchises has actively avoided large blocks of text, but it makes sense. With games becoming more complex, many players feel frustrated about the volume of text being utilized in certain titles. This also makes translation easier, with smaller strings being faster to translate and work through than verbose text.
Dragon Quest also has some Japanese-specific considerations that are interesting to read about:
Ishiyama “Also, Dragon Quest doesn't use commas in its text, but instead uses spaces.”
Horii “The reason for this is that at first, only hiragana was allowed, but a series of hiragana characters was difficult to read. On the other hand, if you add commas to make it easier to read, it becomes noisy in itself. So, spaces were added.”
Ishiyama “Even though kanji characters can now be used in games, this tradition remains, and I personally think this is a great invention.”
While these kinds of considerations aren’t particularly prescient in 2026, it’s fascinating to see how developers worked around these unique problems in the earlier days of the industry.
Translation
Now let’s talk about Translation and Ishiyama’s thoughts on what gets lost in the process. While discussing his new game Paranomasite File38, he was asked about overseas releases:
Ishiyama “Yes, it supports English and Chinese. As I mentioned earlier, we are particular about the language, but we were concerned that if we were too particular about the words and phrases, the meaning might not be conveyed when translated.”
Horii “For example, when it comes to English, it tends to lose a lot of its flavor and end up being simple.”
Ishiyama “In Japanese, even for a single subject, we use different words like "ore," "boku," "washi," "watashi," etc., but in English they all become "I" or "my."”
Horii “English is a simple language, so I've accepted that it can't be helped. With the introduction of voice acting, I was able to express the character's personality through the tone of their voice and the way they pronounce it, so that was great.”
Ishiyama and Horii’s discussion here is fascinating from a native-English speaking perspective.
It’s rare to hear this coming from the “other side” of localization, simply as so many games are now written in original English. When localizing to Japanese, at ECI Games always request for a character relationship matrix as there’s so many ways to refer to others in Japanese. Some, like “ore”, “Boku” and “washi” are mentioned by Ishiyama above, but there’s so many more that change depending on gender, character relationship, and other factors.
With that in mind, you can understand how Japanese developers may find a direct English translation to be more simplistic or lacking in this natural context that Japanese can feature.
With that said, Horii does go on to say that Voiceover can help rectify this, bringing back more of that character personality that’s lost in English text.
So, let’s break both of these down and analyze them from a Localization and Voiceover vendor perspective.
Does translating to English require simplification of text?
To an extent, yes.
But this is only so far as that it’s a consideration of English that requires linguists to think of new ways of conveying the same information.
While English may not include context within pronouns like Japanese, small additions can still tell players about the dynamic between characters. As a simple example, adding “Sir” or “Ma’am” immediately shows respect from the speaker to the subject, naturally denoting some form of hierarchical relationship. In the same way, “bud”, “bro”, “mate” or similar can do the opposite, showing a more balanced relationship between speaker and subject. These are very basic examples but highlight how English can have this natural context added, it just requires a little creative thinking.
Past these kinds of contexts, English can still evoke aspects of a character through simple word choice. A youthful, rebellious character may speak with lots of lingo, contractions, or vulgar language, immediately allowing the player to understand what kind of character this is. Conversely, if a character’s dialogue is more methodical, formal, or even verbose, players will be able to infer this is likely an older character, perhaps from a time when real dialogue was more typically formal than the present day.
But this isn’t really the point.
The main issue that’s really being focused on, but not directly mentioned, isn’t that English is too simplistic, it’s that localization into English is often too direct.
Direct translations can lack creativity and focus on making sure the text matches the original Japanese (in this instance), rather than focusing on evoking the same feeling in players.
This can be due to developer request but often can simply be down to vendors not asking enough, or the right, questions. Instead, relying on standard processes for every title, rather than approaching each game as a unique opportunity to create a perfect localization.
This can be clearly seen in English dialogue in books; you can evoke a huge amount of character context purely by specifically choosing the way they speak, the words they use, and even accents. Great writing doesn’t need to constantly state “said Character X” because the reader knows who’s speaking solely by the way they speak. There’s no reason that this same level of quality can’t be achieved in games translated to English.
English, while often infuriating, is one of the most far-reaching languages with different forms spoken around the world and even within single countries. You can evoke so much about a character by how they speak. The only thing holding it back is how well localized the text is, rather than how well translated it is. This brings us round to the core of localization, at least that’s how ECI Games sees it:
The purpose of localization is to allow you to evoke the same feelings in players, no matter what language they speak, rather than just simply translating.
But there’s another point to look at here:
How Voiceover takes localization to the next level.
We’ve previously written about how Voiceover enhances immersion more than anything else in a localized title. Hearing your own language is so powerful, especially when players are used to only reading it (with likely just original English VO).
Read our previous article “Localized Games Voiceover in 2025: Are You Reaching Your Players?” to find out more about how localized VO changes the game and how many titles include it.
But as Horii touched on, localized VO doesn’t just heighten immersion, it provides a new avenue for characterization. It can be hard to evoke everything about a character just in text, so adding localized VO can really help bring your characters to life.
It can also help dramatically when you’ve got lots of text or complex dialogue. It’s so much easier for players to follow the flow of a scene when they don’t have to read everything. A great example of this, at least for some of us, would be Disco Elysium. The original release had no VO and while amazingly written, for some that much text bogged the game down and lost the unique feeling that the game world created. Once they added VO for the “Final Cut” version, many of these issues were alleviated and even fans of the original release were vocal about how much the VO improved the entire game experience.
So, what we’ve learned today is that no language is too simple to evoke the things you need, it’s more a question of creative localization and avoiding direct translation. With that in mind, you’ll be well on your way to creating a fantastic, localized experience.
If you’ve got the budget to take it to the next level, localized VO is a strong addition to any game.
These two localization considerations will help immerse global players more than anything else you can add to the game, but it requires time, thought, and a thorough games localization and VO partner.