Mars War Logs was released in late April and, if most players who bought the Spiders Studio title liked the game itself, they were disappointed with the narrative element because the English version strayed too far from the original French. The general feeling was that the translation didn’t stick closely enough to the original French story and dialog.
Luc Heninger, Director of Production at Focus Home Interactive, explains:
"Mars contains a vast amount of dialog, even by RPG standards. The plot has numerous strands and the dialog often has many variants to mirror the hero’s changes in reputation. The tight deadlines between the game release dates meant that the initial English translation lacked depth and contained a number of errors; it was then sent to the recording studio, making the job of the actors extremely difficult. The actual game was thoroughly tested and released with very few bugs on PC, but unfortunately the procedures for the audio and text QA failed and allowed many English localization issues to slip through. We realized the extent of the problem after seeing the first feedback from the press and gamers. The result was so far removed from what we usually produce that we took the decision to halt the submission process for the console version, which was due for release only weeks after the PC title. We have re-written the game text and dialog and, of course, recorded the actors again, replacing the sections that weren’t true to the characters in Mars. All these problems will therefore be fixed in the console version. An update is now available for players with the PC game, and we have also incorporated the new audio in the PC versions on the various download sites."
We are pleased to share with you a video showing the first 7 minutes of the game, featuring the new localization and the new English voices present in all versions of the game.
Mars War Logs is currently available on PC and will be today's Daily Deal on Steam, at -33%. The game is scheduled for release on Xbox LIVE and the PlayStation Network in September 2013.
