As we depart the Magick City of Gariland, we cross over the Mandalia Plain, which triggers a flashback to the dying moments of Barbaneth Beoulve - Ramza's father. This is set in 'the waning days of the Fifty Years War,' so a few years ago. 'Knight Gallant' Barbaneth Beoulve enquires to his gathered sons of the state of the war, which -
"Knight Gallant" in Japanese appears to be 天騎士, which works out as "sky knight" or "heavenly knight". It's just a title, so it's a generic superlative, but it does allude to the four knightly orders of the setting, named after the cardinal directions. The player would be familiar with, say, the Order Of The Northern Sky (北天騎士団), so someone with the title of "Sky Knight", which has a major part of the Order's name in it, is likely to be a Big Deal.
We also learn that Delita is Ramza's childhood friend, and that he is actually common-born, a son of farmers, who was taken in by Barbaneth along with his sister Tetra after losing their parents to the Black Death which swept the kingdom towards the end of the Fifty Years War.
I'm not sure if this will be significant in any way, but a few of the names here in English are slightly different to the Japanese. For example, "Tetra" in Japanese is ティータ, which would be transliterated as "Tiita" or "Tieta". Similarly, Ondoria is オムドリア, which is "Omdoria".
I think this is just another Terra/Tina change, to make the names sound better in English. Not very important, but just a minor trivia note.
Knight Gallant Barbaneth Beoulve is on his deathbed. His military prowess was able to salvage what was going to be a humiliating defeat for Ivalice into an at least nominally equal peace, and he finds consolation in knowing that the war will end with him. His sons complain about Ramza not being at his father's side in his last moments, only for Ramza to barge into the room at the last minute.
Incidentally, Zalbaag has the title of 聖騎士 ("sei-kishi"), which is often translated directly as "holy knight". I'm curious what FFT has translated it as, because we
already have a Holy Knight Job which is written in katakana.
For tangential trivia, a lot of Japanese stories in the standard faux-European fantasy setting calls knight orders 聖騎士団 by default, because the concept of knights is deeply entwined with the trappings of Christianity. Shining knights proudly and nobly defending their lieges, and praying in stained-glass chapels for divine protection, so on and so forth. I'm not sure if this is a Dragon Quest-ism, like the idea of resurrecting party members at the local church. So the knights themselves are just 騎士, and the order they belong to is a 聖騎士団, and it's just the default way of referring to them. I assume FFT doesn't do this because the knight orders already have sufficiently bombastic names like "of the Northern Sky", and adding a "holy" or "divine" in there just makes it unwieldy.
We run into a detachment of the Corpse Brigade, who appear to have just finished wiping out a group of knights. They're just about to execute the last survivor when we arrive, which, oddly enough, prompts a dialogue choice: Ramza can either chose "Our first duty is to defeat the Brigade." or "We must rescue their captive!" Doing so changes the battle objective, either to defeat all enemies or to protect the soldier, known as Argath. This doesn't seem like it changes much - we need to kill all enemies regardless, but we can add ourselves an extra objective if we want to. I go for it, of course, but it makes me wonder if dialogue options and varying battle objectives will play an extensive role in the game going forward. By the very nature of its narrative being told from the future, it seems unlikely that they will have a real impact on the plot.
According to the script site, choices at least have some changed dialogue in the immediate moment. If you choose to defeat the Corpse Brigade over saving the hostage, Delita is not happy, and accuses Ramza of wanting to leave the hostage to die. Ramza counters that they'll be killing all the Corpse Brigade anyway, thus saving the hostage along the way.
For the choice of saving the hostage, Ramza nobly declares that they cannot besmirch the honour of the Order Of The Northern Sky, and so of course they must save the hostage.
I'm also not sure if this has any meaningful difference, for plot or game mechanics beyond this battle. It could be a hidden (or vestigial) Paragon/Renegade thing, or possibly character relationship points. I also don't know if the answer will be spoilery, because I have no idea how FFT works.
Unrelated to all of this, something I've noticed with the dialogue (at least in Japanese) is how characters talk. In the story cutscenes between battles, the characters talk like, well, they're talking to each other. It's in the usual slightly archaic and pompous tone that fits the characters (Barbaneth talks like a lordly old man, the Akademy knight earlier talks like a pompous instructor), but they're still conversing as per normal.
During battles, the dialogue suddenly becomes noticeably hammier. The characters are no longer just talking to each other, they appear to be talking to an
audience. Shorter, more impactful sentences, repeating information to make sure the audience gets it, and using more theatrical phrasing.
This brings to mind my earlier guess about Arazlam's narration sounding like he's narrating a stage play. I don't know if I'm overthinking it, but the dialogue sounds as though it's presented as a theatre stage production. However, this seems to apply
only to the battle scene dialogue, at least for now, so I don't know how long this will last. And I might also be biased due to the whole "Majestic Theatre Troupe of the Prima Vista" thing from the FFXIV Ivalice raids.
Those are Alma, Tietra, and Zalbaag. Alma is Ramza's younger sister, from the same mother as him, which has me wondering about his actual family situation. Zalbaag and Dycedarg are referred to as the "trueborn" sons of Barbanath, which suggests Ramza and Alma are bastards, ie born out of wedlock, though legitimized by their father, but if they have the same mother, it's possible that they might just be the children of a second wife? Alternatively Barbanath just had a long term mistress, or a concubine. It's very unclear.
I'm just taking the information from the profile of Ramza mentioned earlier in the post, which I assume is where the "trueborn" term comes from. If there are any other sources, I'd be interested in knowing.
Taking just that profile of Ramza, this appears to be the English translation reaching a bit farther than intended. Ramza (and Alma, whose profile I also checked) are "half-siblings" to Dycedarg and Zalbaag; more precisely "born from a different mother". Pedantically, Ramza is "half-sibling" to Dycedarg and Zalbaag, and Alma is "half-sibling" to Dycedarg and Zalbaag, so there's the remote possibility Ramza and Alma are half-siblings to each other too, but I'm assuming that's too many potential mothers for the story.
The phrase which the English translation turned into "trueborn" appears to be 出来の良い兄たち. The latter part, 兄たち, just means "elder brothers", so we can ignore that. 出来の良い ("deki no yoi") translates to "capable" or "excellent"; literally "good results". I do not know if there is some cultural implication behind this which I am unaware of, where "capable brothers" has the hidden meaning of "trueborn". But as it is, Ramza and Alma's older brothers are just described as "excellent".
The part after that in Ramza's profile, which mentions his feelings of inferiority, are accurate on its own, but in the Japanese text Ramza feels inferior due to his elder brothers'
accomplishments, rather than their birth lineage.
Having said all that, "born from a different mother" is still also accurate, so possibly the English translation extrapolated that to "born out of wedlock", as opposed to "second wife". The Japanese text does not clarify either way, at least so far.
Wait a minute, you're telling me the Corpse Brigade aren't motivated by money, they're actual anarchists who are specifically targeting the nobility and trying to end its rule?
Yeah. The term Zalbaag uses is katakana アナーキスト, which does transliterate from "anarchist". Quite clear here. Zalbaag says the Corpse Brigade calls themselves 義賊, which is "righteous thief"; the English translation probably expanded upon that because there's no equivalent term, at least without going into "is FFT saying Robin Hood exists in the setting".
Zalbaag then mentions that a spy he embedded in the Corpse Brigade is missing, then laments that a single spy is not considered worth sending men after, and idly comments that 'Guarding a castle grows dreadfully dull… Wouldn't you agree?'
Amusingly, Zalbaag uses a term for "spy" that's a sort of euphemism: "grass" (草). It's a euphemism used in lots of other media, and possibly in RL history as well; the idea is the spy (or ninja, occasionally) is as unremarkable and hidden in plain sight as grass. It's amusing because the Japanese text had to add "ie Spy" in parenthesis after that, just in case the player has never encountered the term before.
So the Siedge Weald could mean 'The Siege of the Forest,' or perhaps more likely 'the Siedge Forest'?
Likely the latter: "Siedge" is in katakana, meaning a proper name, while "Weald" is just "forest" (森). The katakana for "Siedge" is スウィージ, which is one of those collections of syllables that a translator would look at and go "screw it, call it the Sweegee Forest for all I care".
Argath: "Our luck is ill, that we should chance upon fiends such as these in the wood."
Delita: "Some of us prefer fiends in a wood to a dull watch in castle garrets, Argath."
Argath: "And some of us are not so quick to jape in danger's face."
Ramza: "Enough talk. They come!"
Now that we have a bit more sample size to look at, the speech patterns of each character are starting to emerge. Not as clear-cut and obvious as the various verbal tics in FFVIII, but just trends and slight leans.
Argath talks like a hot-tempered, excitable teenage boy, or young man who hasn't mellowed out yet. He's loud and arrogant, doesn't bother with politeness, and doesn't see much further than the immediate situation. Put positively, he's a hot-blooded shounen fighter type. Put negatively, he's a violent thug.
Delita is more laid-back, with a high default of politeness and calm. He's not stuffy at all, willing to tease and banter, but prefers to ponder things thoughtfully and without emotional bias. He's a cool-headed planner, at times going further into seeming cold and aloof.
Ramza is what you get if you write out dialogue, and then remove
every bit of personality from it. He's so deliberately Generic and Polite that even Zalbaag mentions it, back when he was congratulating Ramza's accomplishments. He declares stuff and recites pleasantries, but it all sounds like it's produced by a scriptwriting AI. Given the extra effort put into everyone else's speech, and how characters in the setting also comment on Ramza being Generically Polite, this is almost certainly deliberate, and probably intended to represent something about Ramza that players might psychoanalyze.
Two men are caught in an argument, which swiftly turns violent. The Knight demands to know the location of 'Gustav,' then that of the Marquis; when the Swordsman claims he knows nothing of it, the Knight grabs him by the throat and hurls him to the ground, then threatens him with the point of his sword. Finally, the Swordsman admits that they are in the desert - in a place called the Sand Rat's Sietch, but then, our group enters the scene. The Knight turns around, complains that his luck has taken a turn for the worse, and leaves, leaving only the Swordsman behind.
The Japanese dialogue box labels for these two are "Swordsman-like Man" and "Knight-like Man". Presumably because the player party can only guess at their occupations based on their immediate appearances, and to avoid players reading too much into it and going "oh, he's called a Knight, so that means he's part of one of the Orders! Conspiracy!"
Delita: "I've just remembered! That man - his name is Wiegraf! He commanded the Dead Men during the war - a company of volunteers assembled from the peasantry."
The "Dead Men" is an interesting translation choice, given it uses the same kanji (骸) as the first word of "Corpse Brigade". In this case, "Dead Men" was "Corpse Knight Order". Maybe it's supposed to be "Order Of The Dead Men", like Order Of The Northern Sky et al.
It also contradicts what we've learned so far about knights vs commoners: the Dead Men are, as the translation and the Japanese text says, "a group of strong volunteers assembled from the common people". But their name in Japanese definitely uses the 騎士団 kanji for "knight order". So are these volunteers knights or not? FFT has been fairly consistent thus far in using 騎士団 and 騎士 for actual minor nobility knights, which I assume will be getting more attention given the spotlight on class differences. This Order Of The Dead Men, however, is explicitly stated to be comprised of the common people.
Maybe the Dead Men received some sort of temporary or low-status promotion to knighthood for the duration of the war? I'm honestly not sure if this is actually important, or if the FFT writers just wanted to have Wiegraf command an official "Corpse Knight Order" before his current command of the illegal "Corpse Brigade".
"The atrocities committed by the Order, such as the mass killing of enemy soldiers and the sacking of villages."
Mistranslation. The atrocities like massacring enemy soldiers and sacking villages were acts done by
Gustav, not the Order Of The Northern Sky. Or rather, he did them while being a member of the Northern Sky, but this was seen to be problematic by the Order, so he got transferred into the Dead Men.
I do like that the characters are written as, you know, stupid impulsive teenagers with no real clear idea about what the fuck they're actually doing. Who thought it was a good idea to set a bunch of 16-year-olds loose to murder whoever they like?
Cid Kramer, empirically.
