Game News Ash of Gods delayed to March 2018

[Infinitron]

Tags: Ash of Gods: Redemption; AurumDust

Back in May we reported about the Kickstarter campaign for Ash of Gods: Redemption, an impressive-looking Banner Saga-like currently in development at Russian studio AurumDust. With such lavish production qualities, it's not surprising that the campaign was a success, and it even reached two stretch goals. But it didn't reach the highest stretch goal, which would have expanded the storyline for a character in the game named Lo Pheng. Apparently that's something the developers just couldn't let go of, and for that reason they've decided to delay the game's release from the end of this year to March 2018 in order to complete it. In the meantime, Ash of Gods has gotten its own Steam page for you to wishlist. There's no new trailer yet, so instead I'll post this hour and a half of gameplay footage that AurumDust streamed on their YouTube channel back in September:

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What do you think, Codex?

 

[Sneaky Seal]

Yay, thanks for the news. I will try to answer any questions you guys might have to the best of my abilities.

UPD: Also, here's the Steam store page we've launched recently, the game will be avaiable in March, but you can add it to the wishlist of follow the page to get the news/updates.

 

[Pope Amole II]

That gameplay looks really, really overcooked. I mean, first and initially, Banner Saga was a casual storyfag game. Yeah, it could've been tricky at the highest difficulty, but I kinda doubt that the majority of the players ran it in that mode. Second, I'm just not sure that adding a ton of abilities with somewhat complex descriptions and choices actually makes sense here. Saga was good and popular for its semi-boardlike quality (for the lack of a better description) where everything was fast, smooth and simple. Here it's the contrary.

The combatfags might be happy, ofc, but for the combatfags there's too much chit-chatting. Like, the vid says gameplay, but there's not that much gameplay in there. I'm just not sure what the target audience is.

 

[dmonin]

Art and animation are really cool. Can not compare it with Banner Saga because I haven't play in it but anyway I think you done great work, guys!

 

[Sneaky Seal]

That gameplay looks really, really overcooked. I mean, first and initially, Banner Saga was a casual storyfag game. Yeah, it could've been tricky at the highest difficulty, but I kinda doubt that the majority of the players ran it in that mode. Second, I'm just not sure that adding a ton of abilities with somewhat complex descriptions and choices actually makes sense here. Saga was good and popular for its semi-boardlike quality (for the lack of a better description) where everything was fast, smooth and simple. Here it's the contrary.

The combatfags might be happy, ofc, but for the combatfags there's too much chit-chatting. Like, the vid says gameplay, but there's not that much gameplay in there. I'm just not sure what the target audience is.

I see your point - we get feedback from both the camps, varying from "combat's too hard" to "there is too much talking". We are trying to tackle it by streamlining both of the aspects: we're working on improving combat UI, making it more intuitive and clear, as well making some rules simpler or applyed automatically. On the other hand in the dialogues we're thinking of highlighting/marking dialogue choices to distinguish those that will progress the player through the story from those that will give him just some extra info/lore. We hope to get something balanced all-around to please both the "fag" groups.

Art and animation are really cool. Can not compare it with Banner Saga because I haven't play in it but anyway I think you done great work, guys!

Thank you, we do put a lot of effort into it, glad to see it pays off.

 

[dmonin]

Just want to ask rewards are still work for new backers? Thanks!

 

[Infinitron]

Sneaky Seal In response to what norolim said in the Developer Diary thread, I want to repeat something I said last year:

Between Eisenwald and this, I'm beginning to suspect that European indie developers are getting taken advantage of by unqualified translators.

 

[MRY]

You mean, in comparison to the unparalleled translators who bring U.S. games like TTON to Europe?

I spend a lot of time talking with a Polish translator -- as a fifth job he's Fallen God's factotum -- and he sees this all the time: he's hired to "proofread" translations from more expensive branded translation companies, only to find that they're just Google translate or idiotic. I assume a big part of the explanation is (1) that there is an beaten-down acceptance of crap translations (note how often we just roll our eyes at the translations of European RPGs) and (2) the nature of the beast is that you often can't judge for yourself the quality of the translator's work.

The thing that's absurd is that volunteer translators (whether of jRPGs to English or RPGs like AOD to so many languages or adventure games like Primordia into Spanish, French, German, Russian, etc.) actually do great work. It seems like the problem is that it looks like (as with much in the world), there are skilled amateurs willing to work for free/love/fanatacism, but within the professional field, the only really qualified people charge so much that it's out of the budget of smaller projects, so they hire lousy alternatives.

I haven't watched the video (I glanced around), but given the spectacular visuals and solid gameplay you've shown before, you really shouldn't cut corners on the localization. What I'd recommend is that you hire a native English speaker to do an editorial pass. There are several I could recommend (including Codexers) who I'm sure would be delighted to take on the work. Like sser for example. Let him do a "voice" pass over the text for some modest honorarium and I'm sure it'll move the story for "good but a little awkward" to "very good."

 

[MRY]

What I mean is that if you're hiring someone to translate, you typically can't judge the finished product for yourself. If they have suitable testimonials -- as basically any contractor seems to be able to generate, if you poke around -- I imagine it would be fairly easy to be duped. Also, while I take for granted having friends who are native speakers in just about every European language (a fringe benefit of scouring the world for low-cost geniuses), I suppose many clients wouldn't. Otherwise I agree that a reasonable kicking of the tires would be to hire someone to translate a sample text and then run the translation by a bilingual friend.

 

[norolim]

In this case the problems lie much deeper than bad translation. Watch the video. Read the dialogues and narration. Translation might have added to the problem, but I don't think it's the source of it.

 

[hivemind]

who?

 

[Bohrain]

I assume a big part of the explanation is (1) that there is an beaten-down acceptance of crap translations (note how often we just roll our eyes at the translations of European RPGs) and (2) the nature of the beast is that you often can't judge for yourself the quality of the translator's work.

Sounds like the latter, it's a classic case of information asymmetry. I guess devs could do better if they knew someone in advance that knows the language so they could at least tell if they are getting crap in a sack.

 

[norolim]

who?

What are you asking about? Who should watch the video? Everyone that wants to help and offer their opinion.

 

[Sneaky Seal]

Just want to ask rewards are still work for new backers? Thanks!

Yes, they are still avaiable via PledgeManager.

Sneaky Seal In response to what norolim said in the Developer Diary thread, I want to repeat something I said last year:

I think the translation is OK, the issue might be with things just not translating well into English, thus we need to rewrite them rather than just do the translation. I will share this feedback with the writer and localiztors to see how we can improve it.

 

[Sneaky Seal]

It's important to remember that this isn't just translating contract legalese or ad copy, this is high fantasy prose. It's not enough to know how to turn X into Y like a 1:1 function. Some artistry is necessary, and perhaps some artistic license (i.e. a "rewrite") is needed to preserve the original meaning/intention/emotion. Just be careful you don't end up losing it instead.

Yes, probably that is what we should and will do.

 

[Flint]

The game looks so strikingly similar to Banner Saga that it gives a weird feeling of $5 Gucci knockoff.

 

[Morality Games]

Problem with that theory is that the production values here are better than the Banner Saga.

 

[Sneaky Seal]

The game looks so strikingly similar to Banner Saga that it gives a weird feeling of $5 Gucci knockoff.

Man, it's your third post, and you're already going around bashing people. You will fit just in.

Problem with that theory is that the production values here are better than the Banner Saga.

Yeah, they've raised $700k on Kickstarter, and we did $80k, so it's a bit of a struggle, but writing is crutially imporant to an RPG, especially a story-focused one, so we're ready to invest time and resources into it.

On a related note: I am happy to announce that Ash of Gods will support German language, and we are already started to work on it with community.

Community also helps us to translate the game to French and Italian, and we are very grateful for that. So if you're skilled in languages and want to help us and see your name into the credits section, please let me know.

 

[Flint]

Sorry, I didn't intend to be hostile. The game looks very good for such a budget, don't get me wrong. It is just eyebrow-raising for me to see the aesthetics almost copied to a T.

 

[norolim]

Sorry, I didn't intend to be hostile. The game looks very good for such a budget, don't get me wrong. It is just eyebrow-raising for me to see the aesthetics almost copied to a T.

Stop apologizing. He was actually praising you. Now, you will never fit in and will have to be be excluded from the hive.

 

[sser]

Banner Saga's style is not unique to begin with so it's kind of a nonstarter.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Sneaky Seal In response to what norolim said in the Developer Diary thread, I want to repeat something I said last year:

Between Eisenwald and this, I'm beginning to suspect that European indie developers are getting taken advantage of by unqualified translators.

Won't speak for the entire Europe, but I encountered 3 scenarios so far:
1. The entire dev team skipped their English classes and hire someone who's less awful than them.
2. The dev team has no $$$ to get professional translation services (or prolly unwilling to spend it on anything but vodka), so they hire fresh graduates without experience in the field to work for peanuts (or beg to work for free and promise to pay once the game starts making $$$).
3. The whole text is dumped into a Google Translate and then someone is hired for peanuts and gets a short amount of time to fix this mess.

This is not limited to videogames, btw. Same shit happens with software and web stuff pretty regularly.

 

[Sneaky Seal]

Won't speak for the entire Europe, but I encountered 3 scenarios so far:
1. The entire dev team skipped their English classes and hire someone who's less awful than them.
2. The dev team has no $$$ to get professional translation services (or prolly unwilling to spend it on anything but vodka), so they hire fresh graduates without experience in the field to work for peanuts (or beg to work for free and promise to pay once the game starts making $$$).
3. The whole text is dumped into a Google Translate and then someone is hired for peanuts and gets a short amount of time to fix this mess.

This is not limited to videogames, btw. Same shit happens with software and web stuff pretty regularly.

Well, translating a technical text, or an interface is probably easier than a fiction writing though. With fiction I think one has to pretty much rewrite the whole of it. And with this sort of writing - it's also more difficult to judge the quality of the work, as well as the quality of the writing vs how close is it to the original.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Won't speak for the entire Europe, but I encountered 3 scenarios so far:
1. The entire dev team skipped their English classes and hire someone who's less awful than them.
2. The dev team has no $$$ to get professional translation services (or prolly unwilling to spend it on anything but vodka), so they hire fresh graduates without experience in the field to work for peanuts (or beg to work for free and promise to pay once the game starts making $$$).
3. The whole text is dumped into a Google Translate and then someone is hired for peanuts and gets a short amount of time to fix this mess.

This is not limited to videogames, btw. Same shit happens with software and web stuff pretty regularly.

Well, translating a technical text, or an interface is probably easier than a fiction writing though. With fiction I think one has to pretty much rewrite the whole of it. And with this sort of writing - it's also more difficult to judge the quality of the work, as well as the quality of the writing vs how close is it to the original.

Depends on the content as well as how far you're willing to go, pal. Also getting a native speaker to proofread/edit the whole thing would be a nice decision.