FromSoftware Thread

Gaagaagiins

Or rather, publishers not giving enough time or money to localize well, or probably letting the wrong people make big forward facing decisions like naming it Darks’ Soul’s

fridgeboy

Plot wise I think both Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls could make sense. Discuss.

captain

fridgeboy Can’t speak for Demon’s Souls, but the real dark souls are the ones I lost to deep dark bottomless pits along the way

(I had to look up what the Dark Soul was, I’ve played 1 and 3 and couldn’t even remember)

fridgeboy

captain I think that there was initially one Dark Soul, but lore lore yadda yadda every human has some dark soul alongside their regular soul, and thus there are multiple Dark Souls.

Syzygy

captain
This is more talking about kana than Dark Souls: /-ʊlz/ phonemically is just not a sound that exists in Japanese, between the L / R issue everyone knows about and the word-final sibilant (Japanese permits only vowels and nasals in this position). Which is to say, in spelling there’s no clear way to handle it because it’s ambiguous to a Japanese reader. ソウルズ is used for All Souls College, but also Woody Sauldsberry; and there is the precedent of dropping word-final R in many foreign words, such as サワー or ハッカー.

It is in any case definitely not a translation error, because “Demon’s” has the ズ and ソウル deliberately does not; and ever since the Japanese release they have never once deviated from this spelling in any official materiel. BTW, Demon’s Souls is officially rendered as such but DARK SOULS is always capitalized.

captain

Syzygy Thank you for the detailed reply. Before seeing the official titles I assumed they’d gone with the All Souls solution, but it does make sense that there isn’t an easy answer in how to kana-fy (what is the actual term for this? is there one in English?) that phoneme.

Gaagaagiins

Syzygy BTW, Demon’s Souls is officially rendered as such but DARK SOULS is always capitalized.

This is the kind of stuff I keep coming back to these forums for. Sincerely

Syzygy

And come on, Demon’s Souls is explained in the intro and the titular Dark Souls are literally on your HUD at all times

fridgeboy

Syzygy aint you fancy with your five humanity

Syzygy

I just grabbed the screenshot online and noticed after the fact that it’s watermarked by the VIDEO CHUMS

fridgeboy

Syzygy LOL

Syzygy

There is: transliteration. But except where you need to distinguish transliteration from translation, “spelling” works fine. I speak for most modern generative linguists when I say lol, orthography

captain

Of course! Slapping myself in the head.

And for some reason I thought orthography was distinct from spelling in that it includes punctuation, but that doesn’t seem to be the case after all

tapevulture

personally i’m a big fan of the weirdness of the title “Demon’s Souls.” It recalls the exotic flavor stuff like “Final Fantasy” had for me as a lad. I wish we in English had the setup that Japanese does, where there’s a second language that is broadly readable at least phonetically by the population, but whose rules are flexible such that people come up with stuff like I’M NOT BOY. The meaning is communicated but there are so many ways to get there. Probably the same reason I love the title “Stranger of Paradise”

Gaagaagiins

tapevulture Au contraire,

tapevulture

Gaagaagiins uh…sombrero

Gaagaagiins

Contraire-au esprits

BluntForceMummy

I guess this could also have gone in the Two Versions thread..

Does anyone have strong opinions about the best version of the Dark Souls Remaster to play?
I have played DS2 and DS3 and enjoyed myself. I guess I wasn’t paying attention when the remaster came out (on any of these consoles!).

I am interested in playing Dark Souls 1 for the first time to fight some iconic bosses. From my quick research, it appears that the Switch version is locked to 30 FPS but is visually close to the original intent. The Xbox version is 60 FPS but apparently has some “weird” lighting and texture choices, and changes some visuals that maybe doesn’t meet the artistic vision of the original.

Also, the Xbox version is half the price! And playing Dark Souls on a Switch seems kind of weird! I would probably not play it portably very often, preferring the cinematic experience (the boss should be bigger than me, not the other way around).

So the choice seems clear. Yet, my real priority is Fun Per Second; I’m not a frame geek! And I do want to experience the iconic game the real way. Is one of these copies… definitive ? You tell me!

Alternative: Just keep playing Mario Odyssey, who I know would never hurt me.

treefroggy

BluntForceMummy Tough question. There’s a lot of drama surrounding the release of remastered. Personally, I don’t think you could go wrong with any of them. It depends on what you personally get from the game. Since you’re mostly in it for the bosses, smooth framerate during those battles would be important. If you see yourself playing in portable mode, it can be quite enjoyable to do so. But if you really want the fullest, most immersive and beautiful experience, I’d go with PC or whatever console you have besides switch I guess. Unfortunately it’s debatable which would be the definitive version, due to everything having pros and cons.

fridgeboy

BluntForceMummy I played the PS4 remaster and thought it was great. Very smooth and looked good. I would prefer the PS4 version solely based on the controller - over the PS3 and the switch. Although a switch pro controller would help a lot.

kory

BluntForceMummy I played through DS on the PC, specifically the original unmodded “Prepare to Die” edition, using an Xbox 360 controller. I haven’t played the remaster, but I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and never felt particularly bothered by the 30 FPS limitation or the lower fidelity visuals. If anything, this lent it a “grimier” feel that fit the experience very well. Even the much-maligned Blighttown never chugged badly enough that it really impacted my experience. In fact, the little I played of DS3 (also on PC, using a gsync monitor) felt smooth and polished in a way that just felt a bit off compared to my memories of playing the original game.

But yeah, bottom line is I agree with @treefroggy that it’s probably hard to go wrong with any of the releases, I would go by whatever is most convenient and/or easiest to acquire.

« Previous Page Next Page »