Dragon Quest VII is being remastered and released for the Nintendo 3DS in September, and the developers travelled to Pax West 2016 to talk to the fans about making the game and the challenges of localizing it for Western audiences.
Noriyoshi Fujimoto, the producer of Dragon Quest VII, was on hand to talk about the development of the game and share some behind-the-scenes stories with the audience.
This is similar to the Bravely Second developers panel at Pax East earlier in the year, and gave some in-depth insight to what fans old and new can expect from the upcoming 3DS release.
The panel was lengthy, but here are some of the highlights from the panel at Pax West. You can watch the Dragon Quest VII developers talk panel in its entirety at the bottom of the story.
Originally released in the US in 2001 for PlayStation, Dragon Quest VII is making its return for the 3DS in September and with it the original Dragon Quest team and Nintendo decided to ramp up some of the features and systems in the game. This includes the vocation system.
Vocations are a class or job each character can be assigned, which gives them special abilities and attacks.
In the original game, it was possible for players to complete the game after having mastered only around a total of four vocations, even though there were over 50 vocations. The remake of the game sees a rebalancing of this system, meaning players will complete the game after mastering about ten vocations per character.
There were a lot of localization quirks that the Nintendo of America localization team had to combat while bringing Dragon Quest VII to the 3DS.
For instance, when Dragon Quest VIII was in development the glossary of words used for the game was changed completely and the localization structure was changed as well. The remade 3DS version of Dragon Quest VII follows this new localization structure, and an example can be found below.
Dragon Quest VII will release for the Nintendo 3DS on Sept. 16.
So what do you think of the upcoming Dragon Quest VII remake? Watch the entire panel from Pax West below and let us know your thoughts in the comments section.
