With less than a month remaining before the launch of Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, the follow-up to Nihon Falcom’s 3D revitalization of the original Trails in the Sky series, anticipation is building.
Ahead of the game’s arrival, GungHo Online Entertainment America, the series’ international publishers, sat down with Level Up to discuss the localization efforts behind the title.
The executives in question, CEO Fumiaki Shiraishi and producer Matthias Pergams, tackled the topic of AI utilization in localization, a trend gaining traction among developers seeking efficiency.
According to their interview, GungHo opts against AI for translations and has no intentions of adopting it in the foreseeable future. The entire localization process is managed by human translators from beginning to end. They noted that player expectations for human-created work is a primary motivation, alongside the need for consistency across the expansive Trails series. Given the depth of lore and the diverse cast, each with unique voices, the team believes that “that level of detail still requires human judgement.”
The company’s objective is to “ensure every character sounds exactly as they should, terminology remains consistent, and all of those small details carry over from one game to the next,” which underscores the importance of preserving the human touch for the series.
Notably, in a 2024 interview, Nihon Falcom CEO Toshihiro Kondo expressed openness to using AI in the early stages of localization to streamline global releases. However, he also stressed that human oversight would still be necessary for refinement.
Nevertheless, with GungHo’s involvement, Nihon Falcom was able to debut Trails in The Sky 1st Chapter worldwide without AI assistance.
Regarding the simultaneous worldwide release of the 1st Chapter (with the 2nd Chapter following suit), Kondo attributed it to the fact that the Trails in the Sky remake series not necessitating a brand-new narrative. This allowed for parallel development of Japanese and global versions, as Nihon Falcom began collaborating with GungHo on localization from the outset of the remake project.
Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter is scheduled to release on September 17, across PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PlayStation 5. A playable demo is available now.