Editorial Wizardry's Wild Ride from West to East: VentureBeat on the fate of the Wizardry IP

[Infinitron]

Now reading about the convoluted process Sirotek did to bypass the Greenberg litigation, and what happened to the Stones of Arnhem auction and what Cleve told us, the possibility of a proper (a.k.a. Western) Wizardry 9 and the "legal" non-abandonia option to get the previous games seems impossible.

Reading where?

 

[Suicidal]

Was for the best, japs kept releasing tradicional Wizardry games and kept the genre alive [...]

Indeed. Traditional Wizardrys.

Meh, better this than a Wizardry 9 first person cover shooter with RPG elements that would have inevitably happened.

Also, lol @ the unicorn Harry Potter.

 

[evdk]

WHich is why I'm trying to learn Russian instead. The alphabet is saner too.

 

[felipepepe]

I've been studying for two years now (with RL induced breaks), passed N4 exam, preparing to take on N3 (though most likely in December) AND STILL feel like a baka gaijin when I have to read a piece from any teenage Japanese game.

We'll get there bro... 20 years ago I was doing the same thing with english, playing Betrayal at Krondor with a paper not to write down maps or hints, but important words like SAVE/LOAD, BUY, ATTACK and all that... hell, I beated Monkey Island 1 insult fight by trying out every line and writting down the ones that worked! Just keep the faith.

 

[theSavant]

Meh, better this than a Wizardry 9 first person cover shooter with RPG elements that would have inevitably happened.

Actually I would prefer the Wizardry 9 first person cover shooter.

 

[felipepepe]

Meh, better this than a Wizardry 9 first person cover shooter with RPG elements that would have inevitably happened.

Actually I would prefer the Wizardry 9 first person cover shooter.

Then you are part of the problem.

 

[theSavant]

Well, maybe both are equally bad... the Wizardry 9 duck cover shooter and the Baby-Party blobbers (Labyrinth of Lost Souls). I hope someday the Jap-owners of Wizardry will finally live up to its name and invest more than 2 cents in the game...

 

[Jaesun]

So you have never played Labyrinth of Lost Souls?

 

[Mrowak]

I've been studying for two years now (with RL induced breaks), passed N4 exam, preparing to take on N3 (though most likely in December) AND STILL feel like a baka gaijin when I have to read a piece from any teenage Japanese game.

We'll get there bro... 20 years ago I was doing the same thing with english, playing Betrayal at Krondor with a paper not to write down maps or hints, but important words like SAVE/LOAD, BUY, ATTACK and all that... hell, I beated Monkey Island 1 insult fight by trying out every line and writting down the ones that worked! Just keep the faith.

Shit bro. Betrayal at Krondor was actually my first RPG (the paragon against which all other RPGs are judged, so e.g. Arcanum has never impressed me... same with Wizardies) and my entry to the world of English. I've finished that game with a dictionary on my lap and fucktonnes of notes.

 

[tuluse]

We'll get there bro... 20 years ago I was doing the same thing with english, playing Betrayal at Krondor with a paper not to write down maps or hints, but important words like SAVE/LOAD, BUY, ATTACK and all that... hell, I beated Monkey Island 1 insult fight by trying out every line and writting down the ones that worked! Just keep the faith.

That's pretty hardcore. Sort of makes me want to try it with those German adventure games that get terrible translations.

 

[evdk]

That's pretty hardcore. Sort of makes me want to try it with those German adventure games that get terrible translations.

Due to not having any reliable Internet while growing up and the only copy of Indy IV I had been able to procure having been in Spanish, I was forced to play it with about 12 months worth of lessons and a dictionary. It was fun, everyone should try something similar at least once - the highlights were the absolutely obvious puzzles that stopped my progress for a day because I had mistranslated the item description previously. It was a blast.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I read somewhere that the Japanese company only has the rights to Wizardry VI and further, the lower ones would be in limbo.

 

[Infinitron]

I read somewhere that the Japanese company only has the rights to Wizardry VI and further, the lower ones would be in limbo.

The lower ones are the ones Andrew Greenberg worked on, so they might be in dispute.

 

[felipepepe]

That's pretty hardcore. Sort of makes me want to try it with those German adventure games that get terrible translations.

Due to not having any reliable Internet while growing up and the only copy of Indy IV I had been able to procure having been in Spanish, I was forced to play it with about 12 months worth of lessons and a dictionary. It was fun, everyone should try something similar at least once - the highlights were the absolutely obvious puzzles that stopped my progress for a day because I had mistranslated the item description previously. It was a blast.

Yeah, those things are always funny... my younger brother killed everyone in Fallout 1 & 2 because he simply cound't understand the quests & dialogs .

 

[cvv]

That's pretty hardcore. Sort of makes me want to try it with those German adventure games that get terrible translations.

Due to not having any reliable Internet while growing up and the only copy of Indy IV I had been able to procure having been in Spanish, I was forced to play it with about 12 months worth of lessons and a dictionary. It was fun, everyone should try something similar at least once - the highlights were the absolutely obvious puzzles that stopped my progress for a day because I had mistranslated the item description previously. It was a blast.

My very second game I played was Monkey Island 1. Back then I knew maybe a dozen english words and that was it. I just saw it at friend's place and was immediately transfixed. I finished the damn game six months later, without having NFI what it was all about (come to think of it - I still don't :D ), using the felipepe's trial-error method during the fights. Still can't understand the amount of patience and perserverance I had to exert back then to pull a feat like this.
I wonder, if I was 14 today, would I get bored with a foreign language text adventure after 20 seconds and go blast dem fools in CoD?

 

[Helly]

Yeah, is not that easy, I've been studying japanese for 6 months now, but I still can't even understand Pokémon, and that's a children game with no Kanji...

I've been studying for two years now (with RL induced breaks), passed N4 exam, preparing to take on N3 (though most likely in December) AND STILL feel like a baka gaijin when I have to read a piece from any teenage Japanese game.

Good luck with that, I got my N3 in january last year but it wasn't pretty!
This year I'll try the N2, though the amount of kanjis is scary

 

[felipepepe]

You're already able to do full game translations at N3?

 

[Jasede]

Ah yes, the Codex, where we care more about graphics and clamor more for western visual styles than old-school RPG gameplay faithful to its older predecessors.

Wait, what?

 

[eric__s]

Crazy article, very shady (and very much in-line with what Cleve has told us (not that that means anything??)) of the Siroteks. I think it was ultimately in the best interests of the series to sell it to IPM, who has licensed it to companies that have done it justice. I've only played a handful of the Japanese Wizardry games, but I've liked every one I've tried. The thing I like most about them is that they experiment with and add to the Wizardry formula without taking away the series' core mechanics, much in the same way that Wizardries 6 and 7 expanded on earlier concepts. Check out the topic I made on Wizardry IV: Throb of the Demon's Heart:

They adapted the Wizardry 6 and 7 classes and races to the Wizardry 1-5 mechanics. This is a (good-aligned!) Dracon Monk who would eventually go on to learn psionic spells that worked the same way as priest or mage spells. Notice the stats - they're the Wizardry 1-5 stats, not 6-8.

This is an item shop that shows different categories of weapons, each with different characteristics. Most swords, axes, wands and maces attack from the front row, but poles and bows allow characters to attack from the back row, something impossible in the earlier Wizardries.

Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land on the Playstation 2 introduced a lot of cool and very smart ideas to the Wizardry formula. Players could upgrade spells by using components taken from monsters, which meant that if maintained, low level spells could be effective throughout the whole game, which is not the case in the western Wizardries. My favorite thing, though, is that multiple characters can perform synchronized actions that had different functions (anticipate an enemy's attack to stop it, one character sacrifices their turn to increase the level of another character's spell) that added a huge amount of tactical variety to battles. The dungeons were very well designed and exciting to explore and my favorite thing was that by doing quests, new areas or shortcuts in the dungeon would open up.

I also like the art in Tale of the Forsaken land quite a bit. It was done by Katsuya Terada, the same dude who made the art for the NES Wizardry games and many fantastic Nintendo Power illustrations in the 80s and 90s.

Haven't played Labyrinth of Lost Souls, I don't have a PS3, but it looked pretty basic. I'll play it someday!

As long as IPM and the companies they license Wizardry to continue to make games that build on and refine series concepts, I will be happy. Wizardry is one of my favorite series of games and I would like to see it continue to grow. I'm sure I'll be able to play most of these games eventually, even if it's like 20 years from now.

 

[felipepepe]

Not to mention that they keep the flame of Dungeon Crawlers alive, and many good Wizardry-clones like Etrian Odissey, XTH Generations and even the Shin Megami Tensei games surelly show that.

 

[evdk]

Not to mention that they keep the flame of Dungeon Crawlers alive, and many good Wizardry-clones like Etrian Odissey, XTH Generations and even the Shin Megami Tensei games surelly show that.

That's all Japcrap son, better to have a proper western cover based shooter

 

[Jasede]

I can't wait to pop some moles for XP! Achievement unlocked: Headshot!

 

[Helly]

You're already able to do full game translations at N3?

Yeah, I just keep a dico by my side for when I stumble upon an unusual word, but translating mangas & games ain't THAT hard. Most of them don't use neither hard kanjis nor strange grammar.
N3 is supposed to be the conversational level after all: enough to survive in japan, not enough to read a newspaper or have a business interview (that's N2)

 

[felipepepe]

I'm at N5, which means I can... show one or two cool kanjis or words in a bar talk with some friends.

EDIT: Oh, and last time I tried I've managed to tell Professor Oak that I'm a boy and even write ペペ as my name!

 

[Jasede]

Well, seeing how I am going to have a lot of free time pretty soon for a while ( ) maybe I can manage to get to some minor reading/listening proficiency this summer.