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How Localizing Return of the Obra Dinn Nearly Sunk the Game | War Stories | Ars Technica

Ars Technica

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  • Presented by Lucas Pope, creator of Return of the Obra Dinn
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 7 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

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317K views7 years ago2 recommendations

Game developmentTools and practicePostmortems and making-ofGame design

Lucas Pope explains how localizing the complex logbook in Return of the Obra Dinn almost derailed the game's development.

Lucas Pope, creator of Return of the Obra Dinn, explains how the localization of the game's logbook put the game in some seriously dangerous waters. Connect with Ars Technica: Visit ArsTechnica.com: arstechnica.com Follow Ars Technica on Facebook: facebook.com/arstechnica Follow Ars Technica on Google+: plus.google.com/+ArsTechnica/videos Follow Ars Technica on Twitter: twitter.com/arstechnica How Localizing Return of the Obra Dinn Nearly Sunk the Game | War Stories | Ars Technica

Why it's here

2 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a fascinating postmortem on the unexpected complexities of game localization and design.

aequitason Hacker News • Recommends

On “Why Adventure Games Suck (1989)”

Pope nailed in with Obra Dinn in how he implemented the detective gameplay and story telling. The game had me with several wtf story moments. This is one of those games that I'm reluctant to start playing as I don't want it to end to soon but can't stop playing once I've started it. Also worth watching are these insights into the game design (and a chance to enjoy the soundtrack again) (spoiler warning): link to this video link

collegeburneron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Cramming 'Papers, Please' onto Phones”

Arstechnica did a war stories with him on Return of the Obra Dinn, combining one of my fave video series with one of my fave gamedevs. link to this video

dale_glasson Hacker News • Mentions

On “Internationalization (i18n) best practices for front-end developers”

…e language out there that requires some other piece of personal info for a correct translation. To make things tricky, try having a multitude of items that you refer to: "You're holding a dagger". Now you need to have a serious discussion with your translators, because this is going to get all kinds of tricky, as the maker of Obra Dinn discovered: link to this video And to make things extra-tricky, allow users to create content. "Alice gave you a banana", where "banana" is a custom object Alice made herself. Most translation efforts seem to give up at this point and resort to something stilted like "Alice: online"…