Dan Bruno @danbruno@xoxo.zone

@christinelove also I’m so glad we have that FM synth soundtrack now, holy crap

Guess I should have done that a bit more mindfully because this character looks like garbage. Cheekbones like she’s a squirrel who ate a yield sign

You ever just absentmindedly start a new game of Dragon Age Inquisition at one in the morning

🛏 https://www.resetera.com/threads/a-collection-of-every-bed-from-final-fantasy-vii.94459/

My weather app says today’s low is 15° and tomorrow’s high is 13°. I don’t like that

@darius I did this a couple years ago to a teen with a Homestuck shirt in a Barnes & Noble. Teen mortification solidarity

@davemakes I bet you could legit pitch this term if you had a Metroidvania with an Etrian Odyssey-esque mapmaking mechanic

Yeah you better BELIEVE I spent an hour watching the video of the NISA panel at PAX South

They more or less gave the reassurances everyone hoped they'd give. (I was right about Avery being involved!) No Q&A, but the person who runs Falcom fan site Endless History said she interviewed someone from NISA after so I'm looking forward to that.

Hope y'all are ready for this thread to have periodic updates for the next nine months

I understand NISA has a panel tomorrow at PAX South so maybe we'll learn more then. I hope someone (politely) holds their feet to the fire about what they've learned from Ys VIII.

I am cautiously optimistic about all this! Frankly, I'm also glad it's coming out at all—Trails is a relatively niche series, and every game seems to sell fewer copies over here, so it was never a guarantee. Fingers crossed!

This has been your Falcom news minute

James Galizio from RPG Site says that NISA and Falcom are discussing what to do about the Crossbell games. (Two games from the middle of the Trails series were never localized, and they become especially plot-relevant in CS3.) Would they seriously consider bringing those over, almost a decade later?? That would be WILD. There are fan translations if not, but I would love to see official ones!

Sean Chiplock, the voice actor for main character Rean, is back. (Are the others back?) He said on Twitter that he was working with same booth director as before when recording trailer VO. Was that…former XSEED producer Brittany Avery, maybe?? She would be a huge get for NISA; she was the most visible Trails fan while she was with XSEED, and I bet having her along would go a long way towards easing fans' anxiety.

That said, there are reports that NISA is working with "certain English localization staff" that worked on the Trails series in the past. That sounds promising! To be honest, there is just so much text in these games that I can't imagine _any_ company could do a good job without help from someone with previous experience, or at least access to their lore bibles and such.

Anyway. Trails fans are apprehensive about NISA because of Ys VIII—a translation job so bad they issued an apology and then redid the entire thing. (I'm kind of surprised they're even getting another chance here, honestly—I guess they have connections at Falcom?) The eventual final product was fine—better than Aksys' job on Tokyo Xanadu, but still not at the level of an XSEED Trails localization.

DAMN

So the big news is that NISA is publishing, not XSEED. I'm sad because XSEED has done a great job so far on Trails, and they're sort of the scrappy underdog here so it's hard not to root for them. They also recently hired Derk Bramer, who was lead editor at Atlus, which I hoped meant they were ready to bring their A game for CS3. I guess instead the Senran Kagura games are gonna get Yakuza-quality localizations now?

@caraellison 👋

this must be a hell of a day to be doing PR for NIS America

I got a cold last week and had to use chapstick—maybe because I was breathing through my mouth at night?—but now it seems like I can't stop without it feeling weird and I'm going to have to keep using chapstick for the rest of my life

I replaced a broken toilet seat just now, which I’m pretty sure gives me enough Adult Points that I don’t have to do anything else for the rest of the evening

I was going to have a sandwich for dinner but my neighbors were making something that smelled so good that I went out to the supermarket to get stuff to cook. Thanks neighbors

@darius Ooh that should be fun! I listened to a bit of that on YouTube and they sound awesome.

I would almost rather play CS1 a third time than finish any of the half dozen JRPGs I'm in the middle of right now, hah