Hello again! This is Marco Bombasi, Localization Director on Monster Hunter Generations. Summer is here, so the game’s release isn’t too far away! Have you started thinking about what weapon/hunting style combination you want to try out first? Let us know in the comments below!

In the meantime, I’m back again to share more of our team’s adventures in localization.

There are a lot of new places and features in the game, so today I’d like to touch upon the names of a few that you’ll be seeing often by giving you some background on how we came up with them. And, of course, we’ll get into more of the monster names towards the end!

Bherna Village

This highland village is the newest location in the Monster Hunter universe, and your starting point in MH Gen. Its design brings to mind alpine villages and pastures in locations such as Switzerland and Tyrol, and the backdrop is quite the sight to see. I can’t wait for you to experience it in-game for yourself!

You can almost smell the fresh mountain air!

When coming up with the international name, we tried romanizing the Japanese name first, ヒルナ [ be-ru-na ], to see how it looked and think about how it would be pronounced. With the lack of proper R and L sounds in Japanese, the katakana character ル can be romanized as either  ru or lu , which gave us two options to start with: Beruna and Beluna. But, after we tried saying them aloud, most of us stressed the second syllable (be-RU-na / be-LU-na), which made them sound quite different phonetically. Personally, they reminded me of existing words in English (I had “Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take you to Beruna, Bahama…” stuck in my head, and “Beluna” made me think of beluga whales). We liked the word stress in the Japanese name ( BE-ru-na ), so we took out the U to drop the syllable count to two and put stress on the first (BER-na / BEL-na). Considering the Swiss-inspired design of the village, “Berna” was too on the nose, given that the capital of Switzerland is Bern. In fact, Berna is even the actual name of the city in some languages, so we couldn’t have gone with that spelling anyway. But, we preferred the R variation over Belna, so we added a silent H so we could to keep the same pronunciation without the name looking overly similar to that of the real-world location.

The Wycademy

While you’re in Bherna, you’ll hear a lot about something called the Wycademy. Now, I don’t want to say too much (I’ll leave it to the Bherna Chief and Chief Researcher to tell you all about it), but for the purposes of this post, I’ll need to share a little bit to be able to explain how we came up with the name.

The Wycademy is an organization based near Bherna Village that conducts expeditions around the world to survey and research monsters in their natural habitats. It comprises researchers and hunters, both Wyverian and human, though more Wyverians are in key positions since they naturally have longer lifespans (the Chief Researcher himself is Wyverian). Knowing this, we decided to use the  Wy-  prefix in the localized name. In Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, we began using this naming convention for certain facilities that are primarily managed by Wyverians, such as the Wyporium and the Wyceum.

But why not just translate the Japanese name into English? Of course, we always consider this first, but it didn’t work out in this case. The organization’s Japanese name, é¾æ­´é’¢ [ ryu-reki-in ], would literally translate to something like “dragon history institute,” but we knew any variation of that would end up being excessively long. It would take up too much space in text boxes for item descriptions, NPC dialogue, etc., limiting the space we’d have for other text. Taking the  Wy-  route would keep it short—to one word, giving us more elbow room to keep the text quality up. Now we just needed to fill in the blank: The  Wy- what? Seeing as they are an institution for the advancement of monster research, “academy” seemed to fit well and had a nice ring to it, so we went with that.

The Hunters Hub

Another location you’ll be visiting often in the game is the Hunters Hub. Though this is most likely the first time you’ve seen this term, veterans of the series will be quite familiar with the location—it serves the same function as the Gathering Hall from previous titles. But why change an established game term that has been with the series for so long? Believe me, we didn’t want to! Wherever possible, we try to keep legacy terms consistent when carrying them over from previous titles. The last thing we want to do is confuse long-time fans of the series by changing up names of terms, especially if they’re terms that you’ll come across often in the game. However, we had to make an exception in this case because, well, see for yourself:

As you can see, the Gathering Hall is not exactly a hall in MH Gen. The Japanese term, 集会所 [ shuu-kai-jo ], remained unchanged since the kanji character 所 can be interpreted as either an indoor or outdoor place. Unfortunately for us, “hall” has a more definitive meaning. So, rather than carrying over the term from previous titles for the sake of consistency, we opted to change it so it would work in the context of this game.

At first, we thought of calling it “Gathering Camp,” but were afraid it would get confusing since there are already “base camps” for hunters when they’re out on quests. We preferred to keep the second word to four letters or less, so it would be no longer than the legacy term and we could avoid potential character limit issues. After trying a few other words on for size, “hub” felt like a good fit, and someone suggested replacing “gathering” with “hunters” to throw in a bit of alliteration. We ended up with a term that was shorter than the original legacy term by three characters and could be abbreviated without being confused with other existing game terms (lifesaving when dealing with strict character limits), so in the end “Hunters Hub” worked out both logistically and contextually for us.

Hunting in Style

One of the new gameplay features you’ll get to experience in MH Gen is being able to hunt while utilizing one of four unique Hunting Styles: Guild, Aerial, Striker, and Adept. Yuri’s already written a  post  introducing these in case you want to learn more about how each of them work. In this post, I’ll just focus on the naming of each style.

Localizing Guild, Aerial, and Striker was a piece of cake because even when translated literally, the names still summed up what each style has to offer:

ギルド [ gi-ru-do ]：Guild – conventional method of hunting

エリアル [ e-ri-a-ru ]：Aerial – very acrobatic in nature

ストライカー [ su-to-ra-i-kaa ]：Striker – focused on utilizing powerful Hunter Arts

The name for Adept Style took us a little longer to settle on. The Japanese name, ブシドー [ bu-shi-doo ], originates from the concept of æ­¦å£«é“ (pronounced the same), which is the code of moral principles that the samurai lived by. To put it simply: Bushido is to samurai as chivalry is to knights. A few of the principles observed in this code were courage, self-control, and martial arts mastery, so the name was befitting for a style that requires such technical and precisely-timed attacks.

There was only one problem: Bushido is a very Japanese concept, and while it works well in the Japanese version of the game, from a global standpoint we were afraid that some people wouldn’t be familiar with the term or the values behind it. Early on, we went with “Shadow Style” for a while, but once we got a chance to actually try it out in-game, we felt “shadow” was too ninja-like and didn’t really encompass what the style was all about. We went back to the drawing board and eventually arrived at Adept, which allowed us to keep the intention of the original name while making it easier to grasp for those not familiar with Japanese culture.

Gammoth

The second of The Fated Four I’d like to talk about is Gammoth, a mountain of a beast that you’ll find in frigid regions such as the Arctic Ridge and the Frozen Seaway. It’s the most gentle-looking of the new flagship monsters, but don’t let that fool you—it won’t hesitate to crush anything it deems a threat! It can dish out powerful smashes and wide sweeping attacks with its large trunk, and even suck the air to pull in enemies into its attack range. Oh, and did I mention its trunk has FANGS on it? Because it does. And it’s not just its attacks you have to worry about. Gammoth can cover its legs in snow, which acts as a thick coat of protective armor. It can then flip this defense into offense by stomping its feet with enough force to scatter the snow in all directions, inflicting nearby hunters with Snowman status.

It’s an indomitable force to be reckoned with, and we wanted to make sure we captured that in the international name. Fortunately, naming Gammoth turned out to be a lot simpler than we had thought. The original name, ガムート [ ga-muu-to ], is derived from the name of the Hindu deity, Ganesha, and the genus name for mastodon, “mammut.” We kept that overall theme since it suited the monster’s almighty appearance, but replaced mammut with mammoth to give the name an even more colossal feel to it.

Malfestio

When you’re deep within the Jurassic Frontier, keep an eye out for this bird of prey. Malfestio isn’t one of the flagship monsters in MH Gen, but it’s a fearsome monster all the same. It has special attacks that can inflict Sleep and Confusion, leaving hunters vulnerable as it swoops in to attack. Hunters who aren’t careful will find themselves waking up back at base camp wondering if it was all a bad dream.

For the localized name, we decided on something quite different from the Japanese. In Japan, this monster is called ホロロホルル [ ho-ro-ro-ho-ru-ru ] (say that ten times fast!), which is derived from the Japanese onomatopoeia for owl sounds, the word “chloroform,” and Koropokkuru—a race of small people in Ainu folklore. As much as we liked the meaning behind this, it was just too long to romanize for the international version (not to mention it’s a bit of a tongue-twister). We always try to avoid making names too long—it could spell disaster when translating material names and such. Plus, there’s always the possibility a subspecies could show up in future installments, so we like to think ahead and leave a little space to work with just in case we happen to need it later.

With romanization out of the question, we came up with other ideas based on the monster’s characteristics. A few of our proposals included Sonotus, Strikkua, and Notrios, which were all derived from words like “sleep” and “sorcery” in different languages, as well as various scientific owl names. In the end, our top pick was a mix of the words maleficus (Latin for wicked), jester, and asio (a genus of owls). We felt “wicked” was a good word to describe the monster’s spellbinding capabilities, and visually, it sort of looks like an owl wearing the cap ‘n bells of a jester, so we thought this name fit the monster quite nicely.

Moofah

Lastly, Moofahs are small, sheep-like herbivores that you’ll find on the Deserted Island. In fact, you’ll find a couple of them wandering around Bherna Village as well, including a baby Moofah named Moofy! The localized name is basically a romanization of the Japanese, ムーãƒ-ã‚¡ [ muu-fa ], which comes from the words “mutton” and “fur”. It had a fluffy sound to it that went well with the overall appearance of the herbivore, so we didn’t see any reason to change it.

That’s all I got for this round. Thanks so much for reading! I hope you found this informative. Next week, we’ll talk about more good stuff and go into detail about localizing the all-new Deviant Monsters! 

Summer’s here, and Anime Expo is just days away! Capcom will be there with demos of Monster Hunter Generations (3DS) and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice (3DS), plus fun events, special guests, panels, and more for fans and cosplayers too at Capcom’s boot in the South Hall, Booth #505! Hit the jump to see everything we have planned for Anime Expo this year!

Events, Panels, and Gatherings

• Producer Signing Sessions
  Friday, July 1 ^st and Saturday, July 2 ^nd at 1:00 PM for 1 hour only at the Capcom Booth
  • Meet the game’s producer, Motohide Eshiro, at one of the two signing sessions. Don’t forget to bring something special for him to sign! Make sure you get there early because we’re also bringing a limited quantity of cool posters for these signings.

• Crunchyroll Ace Attorney Anime Screening
  Friday, July 1 ^st from 6:30 PM – 7:45 PM in the JW Marriott Platinum Ballroom (Video 2)
  • Catch a few episodes of the Ace Attorney anime, showing the start of Phoenix’s career in a whole new way! There will be a special introduction from game producer Motohide Eshiro who also acted as supervisor for the anime’s script. Stay for the show, as some lucky attendees will walk out with a few prizes! Make sure to get there early for a chance to win!

• Objection! Go Behind the Courtroom of Ace Attorney
  Saturday, July 2 ^nd from 9:45 AM – 10:45 AM, Room 403 AB (Live Programming 2)
  • Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at the newest game with two special guests visiting all the way from Japan, producer Motohide Eshiro and localization director Janet Hsu. Get the latest scoop on the art, characters, and more from the upcoming Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice !

• Ace Attorney Cosplay Gathering
  Saturday, July 2 ^nd from 2 PM – 3 PM at the Capcom Booth
  • Meet with other Ace Attorney cosplayers and take your picture at the witness stand photo op in the Capcom booth. The game’s producer will also be in attendance to see all the great cosplay!

• 4^th Annual Monster Hunter Cosplay Gathering
  Sunday, July 3 ^rd starting at 12 PM at the Capcom Booth
  • Celebrating their 4 ^th year gathering at Anime Expo, meet with hunters of all kinds to celebrate all things Monster Hunter! With nearly 50 participants last year , this gathering is sure to be a (Brachydios) blast! Cosplay is encouraged but all hunters are welcome to meet, talk, and hunt together, so bring your favorite mobile device. The group will be meeting at the Capcom booth at about 12 PM before heading to Gathering Site 2 at around 12:45 PM. Happy hunting!

Oh, and one last thing – although the Capcom Store won’t be at Anime Expo this year (you can still check out the online store ), we have an exclusive treat for Mega Man fans from our friends at Good Smile Company! The Metal Blade variant of the super popular Nendoroid line of figures will be on sale as an Anime Expo, exclusively at the Good Smile Company booth (South Hall, #1100) for $50.

We hope we’ll see you on the airship – or the witness stand!

The announcement of Resident Evil 7 at E3 2016 generated a lot of excitement from fans hungry for a new entry in the series. With the surprising reveal came a wave of questions about the new direction for the franchise. We spoke with RE7 producer Masachika Kawata and director KÅshi Nakanishi at E3 about some of the big lingering questions after the initial reveal.

How are you feeling after the big announcement?

Kawata-san: It was a lot of work to get to this point, obviously. First of all, we’re super relieved that we’re able to talk about the game and show it to everyone. Now we’re just interested in knowing what everybody thinks and what the reaction is to the announcement we made yesterday. I’m looking forward to seeing that.

What is your development history with the RE series?

Kawata-san: I’m the producer on the game. I’ve worked on previous titles like Resident Evil 5 and [Resident Evil] Revelations. I’m going to try to use my history with the series to bring out the horror feeling out in this title. I want to bring a new kind of horror to players.

Nakanishi-san: I’ve been on the series for quite a long time. It’s been a long history of taking on new challenges. Every time we have new hardware coming out we’re putting a new Resident Evil on it and doing something different with the series. Like Kawata-san said, we’re looking forward to doing something really new for everyone on the current generation of consoles.

The full name of the game in the West is “Resident Evil 7 biohazard” and in Japan it’s “BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil”. Can you please explain this interesting new international naming convention?

Kawata-san: Obviously you can tell we wanted to merge the two titles we’ve had. As fans may know, the game has been called Biohazard ever since the beginning in Japan, and it’s been called Resident Evil in the West. We really want to have the big, impactful feeling of the series being in one place right now, and having one future it’s heading towards. To do that, we brought the two titles together into one with Resident Evil 7 biohazard. It’s the opposite in Japan, it’s BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil.

In your own words, what are the core differences between Resident Evil 7 and previous games in the series?

Nakanishi-san: The demo, just to be clear, isn’t a slice of the game. We really want to focus on what concepts we want players to understand about the game with the demo, and that’s horror. This is a tonal preview of what to expect in the game, rather than a little bit of game content you’re getting in advance. In the 20 year history of Resident Evil, you know that the key pillars of the game are fear and horror, exploration of the environment, puzzle-solving elements, resource management, and combat against enemies. Those are all in this game, but we wanted to start off with the first two – horror and exploration – and get you experiencing those two pillars up front. If you’re thinking that because those other elements aren’t in the demo, that they won’t be in the game, that’s not the case. We’re focusing up front about the message of horror coming home in this demo.

Looking back at the history of the series and thinking “How do we get people playing today to experience the same fear that they felt in 1996 with the first game? How do we bring that up to date and bring that emotion back?” That question and the answer is what led us to make the gameplay system as you see in the demo.

Why did the team decide to shift RE7 into a first-person perspective?

Kawata-san: Both myself and the director, Mr. Nakanishi, felt if we want people to experience horror and experience it in the most direct, visceral way possible, then literally putting yourself in the position of seeing what the character sees is the best way to do that and so it was our motivation for the first-person camera change.

Nakanishi-san: Of course it’s a big change, so first we got a prototype working and we put first-person in place and we wanted to see if we could make Resident Evil work in first person. As soon as we had it up and running we were really confident that this was the way to move forward. We were really happy with the way that Resident Evil feels in first person.

Resident Evil 7 is built from the ground up in Capcom’s new proprietary RE Engine. Can you share a little more about this?

Nakanishi-san: Our artists, programmers, and the whole team are just all really fussy people. We all want to get exactly what we want out of game development. If you’re using a third-party engine or one created by another company, it feels like there are places that you have to reach to scratch an itch compared to when we design an engine ourselves. We want to know exactly how to find our way around an engine. We decided the only way to make the game with the highest quality possible was to make our own engine for it that was dedicated to making this amazing experience. It’s really a sign of the team’s dedication as artists to not only make a new game but a new engine as well.

Pictred above: Masachika Kawata, producer of RE7

What character(s) do players control in this game?

Kawata-san: Just to confirm – it isn’t an existing character whose eyes you’re seeing through. I think one of the places we got in the series up until now is you’re kind of playing these superhero characters. They’re fully equipped, powerful people who go into these survival horror situations but they’re ready for them. They can take it on. To bring the horror experience right to the player, we thought now that you’re in first person you’ll feel like you’re there. You can’t be looking through the perspective of a macho, hero character because that’s not you at home. Or maybe you are macho, I don’t know [laughs]. It’s sort of a powerless, ordinary person you’re playing as. We’re not really talking in too much detail about who they are right now, but they’re an ordinary person stuck in an extraordinary situation. I think that really brings the horror right to the fore. You wonder if this person you’re playing as – or you – will be able to cope with this situation. That’s a real feeling of helplessness that helps the horror stand out. If you try the demo that’s out on [PlayStation 4] for [PlayStation Plus subscribers], you’ll see.

Is RE7 a reboot?

Nakanishi-san: It’s not a reboot and we’re not throwing away the series’ canonical storyline. It’s the new numbered title in the series and it’s a sequel to the existing mainline series titles. After I say that and you try the demo, you may say “Really?”, because it looks nothing like any of that, but trust me. We need to have a bit of mystery in survival horror, so we’re trying to make you wonder when you play it how could this possibly be connected? That’s part of the appeal.

Can you tell us more about the VHS aesthetic and found footage taps featured in the Resident Evil 7 Beginning Hour Teaser?

Kawata-san: Things have gotten so digital in the modern era that we wanted to bring an analogue, grungy feel to this horror. If you’ve already played the demo then you’ve seen this VHS found footage motif going on. You play them on a big, old, cathode-ray TV. There are also going to be audio cassettes appearing in the game as well. That sort of thing has a certain atmosphere. Almost like it could be set anytime, could be the ‘80s, it could be now.

RE7 is fully playable in PlayStation VR Mode. Tell us about the impact this has on the game.

Kawata-san: I think VR is a really good match for horror. When we first got it implemented we were all so excited to try it out, put on the headset, and get into the horror experience. You have to try it out for yourself to figure out how immersive it is and how you feel like you’re right there in the room.
Is the game content the same between PSVR and a regular playthrough?
Nakanishi-san: Yes, the content is the same, but of course for VR we need to optimize the experience to make it comfortable and as immersive as possible. But the game itself is the same, whether you play in PSVR Mode or play it regularly.

Is there ever a concern that the development team could make Resident Evil 7 too scary?

Nakanishi-san: [Laughs] You take responsibility if you choose to play in PSVR Mode. Whether you think you’re ready for it or not is up to you to decide. We certainly did have feelings at some points where we thought it was possible to push it too far in VR with horror.

Why did the development team decide to focus the setting of RE7 to a derelict plantation mansion?

Kawata-san: Resident Evil 6 and recent entries in the series have had this massive, global scale to the horror and the threat, and we figured if we brought it down to a more intimate, personal scale of horror that would make it easier for players to experience the fear that we want them to experience. I hope that fans will enjoy this “bringing it back to basics” feeling we have where it’s just one person in one location with a lot of fear. By not having a huge, broad scale of environments it also lets us focus on the details. [The mansion] is this one place you are [exploring], so I think Capcom has some expertise in our DNA over the years of bringing one area to life, like in the original Resident Evil. By focusing on that I think we’re able to bring our expertise to bear on this really great, singular experience. That’s not to say that this house you can see in the Beginning Hour Teaser… the game isn’t set in a series of corridors in and around this opening area. Again, I can’t go into too much detail, but there’s a little bit more to it than that.

Would you like to deliver a special message to the fans following the reveal of RE7?

Nakanishi-san: I want to give a reassuring message. I’ve seen from initial reactions of what we’ve put out that people are getting the impression that we’ve taken Resident Evil and turned it into some sort of supernatural, occult, ghost story. I think you can look at the trailer or the demo and get that impression, but don’t worry, we haven’t just thrown out Resident Evil as it exists and turned it into a ghost story. It will all make sense in the end. I know it’s frustrating holding back on what we can show fans, but this is really the best way to let you enjoy the game to the fullest when it finally comes out. We just have a trailer and a demo at this moment, but watch this space in the coming months and we hope you look forward to the game. We’re going to do our best to make the best game we can.

Kawata-san: I’ve been talking with the Capcom R&D group back in Japan, including my boss Mr. [Jun] Takeuchi – fans might know who that is [RE, RE 2, RE 5] – and we really want to be able to bring everything we can and all kinds of experiences to the Resident Evil series going forward. We hope you look forward to and enjoy what we’ve got in store for you with Resident Evil in the future.

Also I just want to say one last message: There will be no Quick Time Events in Resident Evil 7 [laughs]. I know there are a lot of people who will be relieved to hear that.

Resident Evil 7 is coming to PlayStation 4 (featuring PSVR Mode), Xbox One, and PC on January 24, 2017. Head over to our announcement post for pre-order details and incentives, which include immediate access to the most brutal difficulty mode and a helpful Survival Pack.

It’s the first few days of Summer, and you know what that means – time to stay inside and play some video games! The great outdoors aren’t that great anyways. Steam just kicked off their Summer Picnic Sale, and it’s a great opportunity to save a ton on all sorts of Capcom games! Rise up in Street Fighter V , dive right in to the zombie horde with the Dead Rising Collector’s Pack , or survive the scares of the Resident Evil Deluxe Origins Bundle ! These sale prices will be available now through July 4 ^th , so hit the jump for a full list below!

Hey everyone!

We’re back with another developer blog update on Street Fighter V as we wanted to share some great news surrounding matchmaking in the update coming next week.  The server team has been hard at work making improvements to the online experience of the game, so hit the jump to see what to expect.

Improvements to Matchmaking Preferences

Since launch there have been issues where matchmaking preferences have not been working properly for some users.  This includes hardware preference settings, connection quality settings and being matched with other players far outside of your League Point range. These issues have now been resolved.

Matchmaking Speed

In some cases, player’s League Points weren’t synchronizing across all servers which resulted in longer than expected wait times to find a match. With this fix, users should start seeing matches at a more rapid pace than before.

Smarter Matchmaking

Matching logic based on League Points has been improved and players should now be matched with other players of similar skill more often.  There are also additional improvements to location based matchmaking, along with an increased range of qualified match candidates.

Improved Quality of Matches

Improvements were made to the connection range settings (1-5) and should more accurately reflect the quality of incoming matches.

That’s all the news for today but stay tuned as we have even more info surrounding the latest update coming next week! For the latest updates follow us at @StreetFighter on Twitter.

Monster Hunter Generations  gets one more rad piece of special collaboration gear, and it is…