Well, why shouldn't I trust Falcom, if they made Ys? Or any original developer?
Well, I like Falcom myself and they're pretty good for action games. Any trust I have for them has been developed over the years, same goes for something like SquareENIX. You shouldn't have blind trust in the general sense is what I'm saying as appears to be the case with the purists.
You know, perhaps you missed all the shitty mediocre RPGs over the years that could've used some WD style revamping. Trust is something that is earned, not given freely as is being demonstrated with questions like, "Why shouldn't I trust any original developer?" More like, "What have they done to earn my trust or respect?"
If I like the game, do I need it to be improved?
Assuming you're hardcore, got the import, then bought the US port and saw an "improvement" attempt made on it?
To put it another way, in your question, does "improve" mean something that you yourself would actually find to be an improvement, or what the company thought would be an improvement while you would find it to be a bad decision after having compared it to the original import, assuming you had access to it?
Why translate a game at all if its story isn't worth maintaining?
Well, finding out that the story isn't worth maintaining is a judgment that would be made after translating it. Ditching it totally afterwards though, would be a lot more work I would think, so I dunno how often that's been done. You've got all the events, scenes, context issues, etc.; so many considerations you'd have to take into account and change. You'd have to reprogram the game significantly in most cases, I would think, and localizing groups probably wouldn't wanna go that far if just improving what's already there works well enough.
My "trust", specifically with WD, was built up based on their work, enjoying their products, etc. But then, I wasn't obsessed about the fact that the products originally came from the land of the rising sun, and thus, I just had to know what the original writers exactly wrote for the script.
Now, if I had reason to believe that the original writers were better for whatever specific game we're talking about, than WD would lose points in my book, sure. I want the better script, bottomline. But, nobody's ever made a compelling case to me with what games they did pick, as far as the story goes, that the original writers were better and thus I would've enjoyed a more literal translation. They tell me how much they hate Vic and that pop culture phrases they inserted, that I enjoyed, didn't belong in the game, because yeah, like you, preserving the "creators' intent" is apparently sacred.
Like I said, when Working Designs tried to improve the games they released here through code changes (removing Easy mode, etc.), they usually harmed the game more than they helped it.
The coding changes can be more easily called out as harmful or helpful assuming you track down the import to compare to the US port. I wouldn't care if I didn't know or have the original to seek out and find something like that to carp on. But at any rate, if they did make a bad decision and a majority that knew of the import agreed, well, then it wasn't an "improvement."
How is trying to improve a script by writing something original or off-topic any different?
They don't even come close to being the same thing if we're talking WD. If they made a bad decision in recoding a part of the game, it's a bad decision. That doesn't speak to their script rewriting abilities. You're also again using "improving" as "harming" based on your previous comment.
It seems like you're attacking their credibility on the dialogue work by using the code changes that you found to be bad against them. Seems like a cheap shot to me. I mean, did you enjoy the script or didn't you? Since you can't read Japanese, you obviously can't compare lines and point to examples as easily as you can with coding changes like the difficulty setting you mentioned.
Assuming you've got a good script already to work with, then you don't necessarily need to "improve it," I would agree. But if you think your improvements could attract more gamers thus sell better, make the game far more memorable, and you have the talent to do it (which WD did), then you go for it. Some poor recoding decisions, doesn't take away from the memorable and enjoyable writing that they were known for. For most of us, at least.
Why must it be done? I'm not seeing it...
Well, nobody said or demanded that it MUST BE DONE. It doesn't have to be done (which is dependant on if the source material is already good, an assumption being made in your questioning), but it can be highly preferable, especially if the original writers sucked. I'm not seeing then why apparently there isn't any room in your mind for it to BE done...
Oh, hey, I can ask more waste of time questions like, why must a mediocre story be preserved?? Why must that be done? Because of the sacredness of the creators' intent?? (Anyway, perhaps I'm inferring too much from what you already said. I'm confused cause you said you liked their work in the previous post, except for the recoding, but now appear to be playing devil's advocate for the purist that hates what they do totally.)
From my perspective and the literal translations I've dealt with in my projects, they came out dry, boring, and downright horrible at times. Now, a company wouldn't have to do much of anything to the script if the original writers were that good. Why add more to your costs improving a script that's already enjoyable, memorable, etc. and thus, will likely sell well as it stands? See, cause you're claiming that they're ruining the scripts. So, gimme an example where I would've enjoyed a literal line rather than one that had liberties taken with it, like you did with the recoding issue. That would help. Then I could say, "Yep, bad decision; it would've been better to have used the literal translation in that case."
It's not hard. Simply, I want an enjoyable product and many games that WD localized are still very memorable to me even to this day. Many games that were done in literal style, straight up, have been long forgotten. Ask me why I prefer it being done and not why it must be done and there is your answer.
