I am alive. Mostly.
My eyes are bloodshot. They are ringed with dark smudges and seem to shine as if spritzed with a fine mist. My left hand spasms open and close, clutching blindly for a coffee that isn’t there. When darkness falls I am happy because then the light outside the curtains can no longer hurt my brain. I used to be an editor. I am now something that scares the homeless man who used to bother me on the bus.
--- Present Time: 02/08/11 ---
I am still alive, and to prove it, I have drafted a new blog entry. Whatever’s in my eyes, however, still makes “Flag-Hat Bob” hiss at me from a safe distance while on the Silverline Express bus.
The blog has been on hiatus for quite a while now because, well, there was The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky and it does to people much like what a duck will do to an unattended crouton. Previously known as Sora no Kiseki and personally referred to as "THAT game," Trails in the Sky (a.k.a. TitS) (ha ha) has been an all-consuming project for the last ~9 months. Many things happened in those 9 months, but I honestly don’t remember much after June because my survival mechanisms kicked in and helpfully blacked out the experience. I’m told I did finish editing the game, but also that I nominated the cat for the “Special Thanks” section of the credits and once ate several pennies off the counter.
Trails in the Sky... What can I say? It's long. It's so long that many companies have avoided localizing it for years (the body count has always been off-putting for some reason). Conflicting reports put the total game text at ~1.5 million Japanese characters, but all 'I' know for certain is that I worked from home 11-14hrs a day, 6 days/week, lost 7lbs, cut off 18inches of my hair and used the XSEED twitter account to further the cause of bacon on more than one occasion. In the end we had to employ a total of 3 translators, 1.25 editors (myself, and Tom had to jump in the last month to help me finish chapter 4) and one or two other helpful Sora no Kiseki experts that didn’t mind spontaneous Instant Messages asking about whether or not certain characters would be at home saying things like, “Lo! I am hoist with my own petard!” I believe all the translators survived mostly intact, and Tom reports cheerfully from my left as I type this that he sort of misses TitS and also thinks he has Stockholm Syndrome. Our manager, on the other hand, does this kind of thing all the time and just laughs at our weakness.
Anyway, aside from the verbal meanderings of an editor gone crispy in the brain, what does this mean for the game? Well, I'm happy to report that 1) we finished, 2) despite the overdoses of coffee, ingestion of small change and frayed nerves, it's in English and makes sense (probably),
and 3) there's a wealth of material to dole out as we wait for its impending release date. So, here you go! Enjoy, speculate and anticipate as more Trails in the Sky news slowly makes its way out onto the Internets. (More blogs, Q&As, screenshots and facetious tweets to come!)
P.S. If you’ve enjoyed our suffering even a little, please pre-order the game! Did I mention that it comes with a shiny replica Bracer Emblem? ^_-
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Pre-Order!
GameStop: Premium Edition
Amazon: Premium Edition
Premium Edition passionately red innards!
