Article:Klayton Vorlick Interview (2015-04-13)

Klayton Vorlick Interview (April 13, 2015)
So I recently got to come into contact with Klayton Vorlick, the translator of Skies of Arcadia. I intended to contact him just to chat with him, but the conversation had such nice information that it might have well been an interview! There’s some interesting information, such as what kind of hand he had in the development of the game. So without further ado, read below to read my chat with Klayton Vorlick!

Nguyen, Tony: Hi Klayton, are you the same Klayton that worked as a translator on Skies of Arcadia, one of the greatest RPGs of all time? :-O

Vorlick, Klayton: Hahaha yes I am :) how’d you figure that out? And man, that was like 15 years ago…

Nguyen, Tony: Skies of Arcadia is my favorite game of all time… I know the Vorlik Blade is named after you after all and you don’t have a particularly common name.

Vorlick, Klayton: haha there’s a story behind that! I had a cowriter named Chris Lucich (he did the English version of Panzer Dragoon Saga)

He said we should name stuff after ourselves. He recommended Vorlik Blade… and he wanted a creature named after him (Lucich slimes) and then he went around telling everyone I chose the most powerful weapon and gave him the weak monster haha (as a joke, of course)

Nguyen, Tony: Ah lol

Anyway, you guys did an excellent localization, if I do say so myself.

Vorlick, Klayton: Aw, thanks :)

It was my first project i was in charge of, so i gave it my all.

Nguyen, Tony: I played the game in Japanese too and it’s interesting what you guys changed, but it was the meaning that was more important than what’s being translated sometimes after all.

Although, there were some interesting changes, like how Ramirez’s obsession with Galcian was downtoned near the end…

I mean, he’s still obsessed, but he was saying like Galcian’s name like every other sentence in the Japanese version…

Vorlick, Klayton: Yeah. we basically sat down, I did a rough translation of the text, and then threw away the Japanese text. We mapped out the big story beats in each scene, and then just watched the cutscenes and ad-libbed what we imagined each character would say, and then rewrote a lot of the dialog completely.

Nguyen, Tony: Ah

Nice!

Vorlick, Klayton: Haha, yeah. We thought it might be a little creepy for US audiences.

Nguyen, Tony: That definitely makes it sound more natural.

The amount of times Fina said “minna-san” wouldn’t translate very well lol

Or at least it would sound super unnatural.

Vorlick, Klayton: Yeah

Nguyen, Tony: I’m the webmaster of Esoarcadia.org, I know the game like the back of my hand, so talking to you right now is like talking to a celebrity :-O

Vorlick, Klayton: We each took a couple characters and exclusively wrote their dialog so as to make sure they had unique voices. I was Enrique, Vigoro, and Fina, for example.

Chris was Gilder and Aika.

So he did a lot of the humor :)

Nguyen, Tony: O lol

Vorlick, Klayton: Vyse was both of us.

Oh nice!

Haha, I dunno about celebrity haha

Nguyen, Tony: O wow

That’s very interesting :-O

Vorlick, Klayton: A lot of the characters were named after various QA people, etc.

Mabel the Raider was an assistant lead (Mabel Chung)

Nguyen, Tony: Ah!

I wondered why their names were changed!

When they already had very western names!

Vorlick, Klayton: Timmus the Gunner was named after my friend Tim, who was the guy who got me my first industry job Haha

Yeah, we asked the team and they said go for it. That was just a little bonus for us :)

Nguyen, Tony: O lol

I’ll have to sweep the credits and have to add that as trivia on my site someday

Vorlick, Klayton: Nice

Hm. let’s see what other trivia…

Nguyen, Tony: But I was like how did Sharon become Lindsi…

Vorlick, Klayton: Removing cigarettes/cigars, changing beer to loqua, and adjusting some of the female character’s costumes was to reduce ESRB disclaimers and keep the rating low

Nguyen, Tony: Yea

Vorlick, Klayton: Lindsi was QA Lead :)

Nguyen, Tony: oooo

Vorlick, Klayton: Lindsi Kimizuka haha

still good friends

though she’s not in the industry anymore

Nguyen, Tony: Yea, I noticed Bellena’s clothing

Ah

Vorlick, Klayton: Mabel was working at Nintendo for a while, but i think she got out of the industry, too

Nguyen, Tony: Ramirez’s blood too was censored, near the end.

Vorlick, Klayton: Yeah, 2000 was a bit of a transitional year for the industry. people were still hesitant to let things get too mature.

Oh, I had forgotten about that one.

Nguyen, Tony: Yea when I played the Japanese version, I recorded everything that was different…

Like

Vorlick, Klayton: I’m sure there were a ton of various references we threw in the text as well, but I’ve forgotten them all haha

Nguyen, Tony: Gilder’s quote about women being like sunsets.

Originally, it was about doing the things that have never been done before.

But I like the sunset change.

Vorlick, Klayton: That was Chris. I shook my head when he came up with that line haha

Nguyen, Tony: It’s pretty funny! And I think it suits Gilder!

Vorlick, Klayton: Yeah, totally fits the character.

I think my favorite line that he wrote was Vyse’s father in the beginning after he shoots the soldier and says something like “I only see 3 of you.”

In case you couldn’t tell, he’s a huge fan of Joss Whedon’s work and tries to emulate his style of nonchalant sarcasm haha

Nguyen, Tony: Also the sarcasm that was sprinkled into the translation when it was played totally straight in the original Japanese, like De Loco mocking Alfonso about what gave away that there were intruders.

“Was it the sirens? Or the loud noises? What gave it away?”

Vorlick, Klayton: Does it quite well

Nguyen, Tony: O lol

Vorlick, Klayton: haha that one was me

Nguyen, Tony: In the original the De Loco/Alfonso scene was played pretty straight

Ah!

Vorlick, Klayton: Yeah, that game took like 4 months of nonstop work (like 80-100 hour work weeks) to finish.

I think I ended up translating like 2000 pages of text.

Nguyen, Tony: Well it was definitely a labor of love and it shows!

Vorlick, Klayton: It was. Still the project I’m the proudest of :)

Nguyen, Tony: It’s an amazing game, one of these days I’ll send a pic of my nerdy Skies of Arcadia collection, right now I want to collect all of the manga done by Itsuki Hoshi… but all the chapters are in separate Magazine Z chapters…. do you know about the manga?

Vorlick, Klayton: Not really. Wasn’t really involved with them =\

Nguyen, Tony: Aw

Vorlick, Klayton: I still have my limited edition box set of the Japanese version! And I think I have a poster signed by the producer and lead designer (and me and chris haha) somewhere in my garage

Nguyen, Tony: I want to send stuff your way and get your autograph ;_;

The producer and lead designer were Reiko and Shuntaro I believe?

Vorlick, Klayton: Rieko Kodama was the main producer. She was amazing. And Shun Tanaka was the lead designer. He was such a fun guy to work with. He also worked on Valkyria Chronicles.

Nguyen, Tony: Wow!

It doesn’t look like Reiko is up to much these days… last I remember she’s done 7th Dragon…

Vorlick, Klayton: Yeah, Skies didn’t sell too well unfortunately, so she’s mainly been working on smallish projects.

Nguyen, Tony: Do you know if purchasing/selling ships was originally planned for Skies?

There’s a weird “Value” statistic for ships that’s never used for anything

Vorlick, Klayton: Not that i remember…

Nguyen, Tony: Ah

Vorlick, Klayton: But again, it was 15 years ago and i was a relative noob, so maybe it was and I just missed it haha

Nguyen, Tony: Well it could’ve been an early idea that was scrapped and that statistic was a remnant of it

Vorlick, Klayton: Oh! i was also the one that got them to add the press-start-to-skip-animation for spells and stuff haha

Nguyen, Tony: NICE!

I remember

Vorlick, Klayton: Because i was pissed at Final Fantasy not letting me skip haha

Nguyen, Tony: That was so annoying when I played the Japanese version

I was like

Whyyyy can’t I skip these

Vorlick, Klayton: Seriously

Played an early version of the game and that was my first bit of feedback haha

Nguyen, Tony: Good job man, good job, you’ve made a bunch of Skies fans happy!

Vorlick, Klayton: Thanks :)

Nguyen, Tony: Anyway, it was amazing talking to you, perhaps I can cull more information out of you later.

Vorlick, Klayton: Hit me up if you ever have any questions :)

Nguyen, Tony: Thanks! :)

Bless that Klayton Vorlick for suggesting skippable Super Moves!

Klayton Vorlick Interview Update (January 07, 2018)
Nguyen, Tony: A couple years ago I grilled you about Skies of Arcadia, and I recall at one point you mentioned that you named some of the Pirate Isle residents after American staff. Well, now I’m curious about each character’s namesake :D

Vorlick, Klayton: Sorry I missed this email – got lost in the holiday onslaught. Would love to answer your questions!


 * Alan – He was assistant QA lead
 * Barbara – This wasn’t anyone. Just a name.
 * Ben – Same
 * Boris – Same
 * Briggs – Last name of the marketing guy on the project (Rich Briggs)
 * Erinn – My stepsister haha
 * Granny – Just a name
 * Jessica – Same
 * Jimmy – Same
 * Landis – My brother’s middle name (there’s also a monster called a Nairad, which is his first name backwards)
 * Lindsi – QA lead
 * Luke – Just a name
 * Mabel – The other assistant QA lead
 * Martha – Just a name
 * Matthew – One of my brother’s best friends and my roommate in college. Was one of my best gaming buddies growing up.
 * Patch – Just a name
 * Peter – Same
 * Timmus – The nickname of my brother’s other best friend and the guy who got me my first job in the industry translating Japanese news for gamers.com. He works at Riot now as a marketing director.
 * Vyse's Mother – Just his mom
 * Zack – Just a name

Hope that helps!