CH: How did you first start working in the video game industry, that then lead to you working at both Capcom and Sony?

EB: I’ve always loved games since I was a kid. My brother had a Commodore 64, so that dates me! The reason I got into programming was because of loving games. After collage, because I was in Japan with Japanese translation skills, I found a job as a localiser at an outsourced company working with video games. And from there, I worked on was Onimusha 3, and that’s what got me to Capcom, where I worked on Resident Evil 4 (Separate Ways), Resident Evil 5, and The Umbrella Chronicles. From leaving Capcom after Resident Evil 5, I went to Sony as a Game Designer. So with Sony I was on the development team itself, starting with Siren Blood Curse, then Gravity Rush, Puppeteer, and Gravity Rush 2.

CH: Were you a fan of the Resident Evil series prior to joining Capcom?

EB: Absolutely. I started with Resident Evil 2, I was in college and some Japanese students brought their PlayStation and wanted to see how I would react to this game. I played through it that day, and we also watched the Japanese version of the movie Ring, so I had nightmares for a week! Someone had Resident Evil on Sega Saturn, so I played through that, someone lent me a PlayStation for Resident Evil 3, and I picked up a Dreamcast for Code Veronica. Props to the out-source company, because Code Veronica other than RE2, really stood out, it was breathtaking when I played it on Dreamcast. That I didn’t know it was not Capcom, instead it was out-sourced, is props to the team that made it. The last one I played was Resident Evil Revelations.

CH: You worked closely with Project Siren, formed by members of Team Silent, a dev team within Japan Studio. What was that experience like, and prior to becoming a Game Designer for Siren Blood Curse, were you familiar with the first two Siren games?

EB: Oh, yes! I was a huge fan of the first two Siren games (‘Forbidden Siren’ in PAL regions), so when I got a chance to work on Siren Blood Curse, I had to take the opportunity. The TV advert for Siren is absolutely frightening, but when I saw it, I fell in love, and had to get a PS2 just to play Siren!

The advert for Siren was so over the top in Japan, it was taken off-air, and censored!

That’s why I bought a PlayStation 2, and when Siren 2 came out, I jumped on that right away. The first two Siren games are difficult, the things fans like about Demon Souls, and Dark Souls games are in Siren, where it’s just really difficult. It’s the challenge, and the thrill of beating a stage when it’s very difficult, that makes those games so addicting.

CH: Siren Blood Curse is immensely creepy, the peculiar way the enemies move sent shivers down my (BSAArklay) spine! There appears to be strong vibes of the film Evil Dead?

CH: I (BSAArklay) researched that the village in Siren, was based on an abandoned village in Chichibu, Japan. The shacks look almost identical, possibly textures from the game, and that village has a backstory involving a landslide with many houses collapsing, that’s also part of the lore in Siren 2. The villagers thought it was a demonic curse destroying the village. Keiichirō Toyama wrote the script for Silent Hill & Siren, and Silent Hill is based on Centralia, Pennsylvania; he sees these real locations and inspirations for his story.

EB: It’s not Siren trying to pick the history, but more the atmosphere. Project Siren team often goes to abandoned places & facilities for source material, and inspiration. So that village could have provided a lot of inspiration, this is the kind of town that would scare people!

Siren scenario writer, Naoko Sato, creates the plot, materials, and the overall vision. She’s very familiar with a lot of source material, both western & Japanese, including occult & tabloid, she has a wide range of interests. A lot of Siren archives come from her knowledge. I wouldn’t be surprised if she found that village and thought it a good setting.

CH: Some of the biggest Japanese franchises are based on real locations, Siren with Chichibu, Silent Hill with Centralia, the Fatal Frame series based on the real Himuro mansion, and films like The Grudge, those are based on Japanese spirits, that’s often a Japanese theme?

EB: Yes, that’s very traditional in Japanese horror and everything else in Japan, because they have a long history, a lot of dark history too. Whether it’s good or bad energy attached to a place or things, so not so much a psycho killer or a maniac, but a place becoming evil.

CH: With RE2 remake, the textures on close inspection are blurry, you expect details about the R.P.D, but you can’t read anything. With Siren, Naoko Sato’s archives system explains items, gives a director's commentary, and a behind-the-scenes explanation of each item. I (BSAArklay) got tons of lore, something which Resident Evil is missing. Were these and other development aspects challenging to design & translate, due to Siren having an unusual blend of Japanese culture and western characters?

EB: It wasn’t so bad overseas, but many Japanese fans were confused why the third Siren was a remake but with western characters. It was why they brought me in to try and make sure there wasn’t anything that was too odd for a western character that a Japanese person may come up with and wouldn’t seem very natural, especially with Siren, because it has that live action look, it’s more realistic. So you have to have people behaving the way people would be. So having a western character written by a Japanese person probably wouldn’t work so well.

For keeping track with the series, that’s where Naoko Sato being in charge of scenario throughout, helps Siren stay consistent. Although there hasn’t been a Siren game since Blood Curse, there’s still a huge fan community in Japan, they have events showing artwork and fans queueing out the door! The fans, myself included, would love to see another Siren game. If publicised right, there are enough gamers wanting to play a scary game, Resident Evil 7 is proof of that. Thanks to Resident Evil 7, maybe there’s more of an opening for Project Siren to promote a new Siren game.

CH: In the director's commentary for the archives, you're credited for writing Melissa Gale's digital videotape script, and Bella Monroe's diary artwork. In that file, it mentions she suffers from premonitions. Do you know how she was able to have those premonitions?

EB: Bella’s diary had to look like it was drawn by a little girl, and because my art skills are terrible (laughs) I got the task! The Bella Monroe character might have taken inspiration from Danny Torrance, in the film The Shining. It feels like there's some of that background there.

CH: I (George Trevor) loved how Siren’s gameplay depicted the enemies perspectives as they hunt the player. When hiding from enemies, we see their perspective, not just their viewpoint, hearing the insanity in their mind, I almost felt empathy for them, feeling what they’re going through.

CH: Siren is unashamed Japanese Survival Horror. Do you think Resident Evil should take more influence from the Siren series, and if so, what game mechanics from Siren Blood Curse would you like to see in the next Resident Evil game?

EB: That’s a great question, and tough to answer because they’ve gone in different directions. Resident Evil 4 and beyond have moved into an action direction, until RE7, and is probably what allowed Resident Evil to be popular with more gamers, as opposed to games like Siren, Fatal Frame and Silent Hill, where it’s more horror dependent and fewer players wanting to play those kind of games. At least until recently. So Resident Evil 4 moving in the direction it did, was the correct choice, at least from a business perspective. Even though I would prefer scarier games like Dead Space and Outlast, anything that’s scary is a game I love. So as a player, I would prefer Resident Evil go in a scary direction, but in terms of getting popularity and helping Capcom the way it did, they made the right decision.

In terms of elements from Siren for the next Resident Evil game, if they could do something that would put you into the perspective of the enemies, that would be great. Even if you’re playing the enemy, just a short sequence, that that might be a cool way to go.

CH: How did you approach the writing for Resident Evil 4 Separate Ways, and how much influence did Capcom Japan hold over you?

EB: The lead writer interfacing with localisation, Shinsaku Ohara, worked closely with me, so I had all the information I needed for the translation. In terms of how much influence Capcom Japan held, Ohara-san has perfect English, he’s able to look over the script and if he spotted anything fishy he could get back to me. So it wasn’t Capcom Japan trying to influence the translation, it was very helpful to have him there, and Resident Evil 4 was a great project to work on. I started with Resident Evil 2, and Ada Wong has a special place (laughs), so Separate Ways was a nice start!

CH: Why was the Separate Ways narrative chosen as Resident Evil 4 DLC? Some suggest it was to tie Resident Evil 4 closer to the series.

EB: With Resident Evil 4 moving from GameCube to PlayStation, having extra content to justify its existence is part of what got that extra content green-lit. And in terms of choosing Ada, the Leon connection going back to RE2, bringing Ada back, is behind that. Yes, to make it more relevant, to bring what Wesker and Ada are doing while Leon’s doing his RE4 stuff. It makes sense as a content decision.

CH: What were your experiences working on the Resident Evil 5 script, did the extensive story make it especially challenging, and what plot points interested you the most?

EB: Oh, so many things! The fact it ties in so much of the series and tries to set it in a new direction, that was great. I liked that it tried to move in a new direction, moving away from just zombies, trying to expand that. I’ve always been a big Wesker fan, so Wesker being featured, and things that would come up with him and Chris, that excited me. It was a huge game in terms of what it was trying to do, it was ambitious.

The script was challenging because it’s mixing in new stuff with all the old, and covers so much series history. Making sure we don’t slip up and erroneously translate something that’s existed before, or add something new that was decided differently earlier was challenging. But in terms of trying to balance that, even more so than Resident Evil 5, The Umbrella Chronicles was more difficult because it covered a lot of the same ground at the same time, and you couldn’t use the translations from the past, so trying to find that perfect balance in Umbrella Chronicles was definitely hard. With Resident Evil 5, it had a lot of history but the game itself wasn’t covering the same ground, so you could more reinterpret it.

In terms of how little context you have from Japanese to English, you don’t use subjects ‘I/we/they’, and nouns don’t have number, so in Japanese you might have the character for car, but you don’t know if it’s one car, two cars or one hundred cars, none of that gets conveyed. That’s why it’s very important to play the game with the translations in there, able to fix those things as they come up. We had a good amount of time to work on it, and discuss it back and forth with the development team. So I’m happy with where we got the Resident Evil 5 script.

I actually liked the action focus, especially the co-op, even if co-op takes away from the survival horror and the scary aspects of the game, but as a game, being able to play that online with other people, was fun. I enjoyed RE5 quite a bit. I love the original games, but if something with the original controls or even RE4 controls was released now, it would be a tough sell.

CH: What were your experiences from translating Resident Evil The Umbrella Chronicles?

We tried to follow the original Japanese as much as possible. Again, because there's a lot of history involved we’re trying to make sure that we don’t do something different, trying to keep fans of the original Resident Evil games in mind, without just copying original files & text. If you go back to the original source material and just repeat it, then what sounded bad at the time, will sound even worse now. But also, you don’t want to ignore what happened in the past. So it’s a balance that had to be struck with making sure we acknowledge the source material existed, and some translations acknowledge that, but at the same time, make it clear in a modern context, and not just a mistranslation on our part.

Until The Umbrella Chronicles, I played every Resident Evil game, even the Gun Survivor games, so I knew all the source material. In terms of more detailed stuff, that would be the editor, Brandon Gay. He was most familiar with the source material, making sure Umbrella Chronicles stays true to that, he’s a super fan too, so would have wanted that connected as much as possible to the original games. If you’re a fan of what you’re translating and something is unclear, it sends a flag up in your mind, prompting you to find the answer because it will matter. It adds that extra push to talk to the dev team and find those answers, whereas if you aren’t familiar with the material, you may just translate it and move on.

CH: Did you work in a team with Japanese writers, or were you left to your own devices? Did this differ between productions of Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5, and Resident Evil The Umbrella Chronicles?

EB: It definitely depends on the project. Capcom's localisation team has changed in recent years, they’re more embedded with developement teams now. But during my time, localisation was still its own department, so once the Japanese script was close to getting wrapped up, that’s when they would start feeding us translation work. So in that case, there wasn’t too much we could do to change the original script, but at least the development teams were available, so if we had questions, we were allowed access. It’s better than the far past when you would send translations out to another company, with no context or information they did what they could and send it back! As I mentioned, Japanese compared to English is a very abridged language, leaving out subjects, so you don’t know if it’s a ‘he/she/they’, so the context is very important.

CH: How does translating Siren, based heavily in Japanese mythology, compare to Resident Evil with its more western setting and characters?

EB: It’s much more difficult! For a game with a western setting & characters like Resident Evil, you can rely on what sounds OK in Hollywood films & games, and it translates better. When you have the final results in English, it makes sense to many gamers. But for a game like Siren, it’s tricky striking a balance between something that makes sense to a broad audience, and something that preserves the original source material.

When I was at Capcom, they do keep a western audience in mind. Their themes are more action based, so it wasn’t too hard to translate, but after moving to Sony, with the Siren series, that was very hard to translate. The Siren scenario writer is very literate, she’s consumed lots of books & movies, very knowledgeable and has a very literary style that can be very deep. Just one Japanese character, the way it’s used can have a lot of meaning. That’s very difficult to translate into English. Just in general, Siren was tough (laughs)!

Siren is so Japanese influenced, taking place in a Japanese village, with curses & folklore, you can’t westernise it, as it wouldn’t make sense as a game. You have to protect that Japanese heart. How you do that in a way that still makes sense to gamers playing in English, without that background, is tricky. For Siren Blood Curse, we struck a good balance. Whoever translated Fatal Frame would have similar issues. The ghosts that come at you, why they’re scary is rooted in Japanese folklore, so it’s creepy. Obviously, wherever you go, a ghost is going to be creepy, but with that extra background, there’s a different layer of fear to it.

CH: Some fans consider Resident Evil to be erroneously translated, especially game-files from the earlier games, what is your feeling on this?

EB: I understand because I started with the Resident Evil games and thought... (laughs), very interesting! When I first played Resident Evil & Resident Evil 2, it didn't stand out as jarring, because video games at that time, the quality of writing wasn’t as high as it is now. In Japanese game development localisation wasn’t seen as important. Most video game companies didn’t have a localisation team. Capcom had localisation people, but it was only when Ben Judd stepped in and made a localization team that it was taken seriously. A lot of Japanese companies felt if they made a good game, that was enough. That’s where Capcom were at for the original games. I think Shinsaku Ohara and other people who could speak English and talk to the Japanese dev teams, were the ones saying we’ve got to up the quality or we’re going to become viral videos!

CH: On a recent Capcom Confidential podcast with the localisation team, they discussed how some translations are changed for a more universal script. A sentence in Japanese will not have a direct comparison in English, so the wording is changed, focusing less on a pure source translation, for one that makes more sense to a western ear. But this veers away from the original source material, much to the anger of some fans.

EB: Yes, that’s a definite line that every translator runs into, and everyone has their own place where they fall. Especially literary translators who want to protect the source material as much as possible. Whereas in video games, it’s not so much protecting the original source material, but making a game that makes sense for gamers overseas. I definitely understand Capcom’s current approach, I’m going to fall on the same lines. But if protecting the original Japanese as much as possible makes something that’s only just a little awkward whilst not noticable to the average gamer not interested in the nitty gritty details, it’s going to serve greater gaming good. A lot of translators do fall on that line, staying a little more literal.

Some companies want to bring across the original Japanese as much as possible, others are more flexible, and Capcom have always been flexible. During my time at Capcom, we tried to fall on the border that makes things less awkward, even if it distorts source material, but we tried to keep as close to the original as possible, to respect the writers. The main thing is making sure the game doesn’t feel too Japanese for a western context.

CH: On the same podcast it’s stated the games are originally written in English and then translated into Japanese, which goes against everything the community has always believed, that the script & files are first written in the native Japanese, and then translated by localication teams?

EB: Around the time I left and Peter Fabiano joined localisation, the team started getting onto the development teams more, and all that trust we’ve earned over the years started to pay back, with the dev teams giving localisation more access and decision making. So maybe they give a plot direction in Japanese and then the English script comes first. Or maybe they have an original Japanese script translated into English, and if there’s anything weird, the English gets corrected, and then maybe reflect those changes back into the Japanese script.

Having an English scriptwriter do the first treatment, could be the way they’re going now, especially because Resident Evil is such a big game overseas. (The Japanese market for Biohazasrd has been dwindling fast over the years, to the point of now making up less than 10% of global sales). Giving that priority to the English version now makes a lot of sense.

CH: When translating source material and you have to change a line due to a language barrier, how does Capcom view this? For example, in Resident Evil 5, the English version suggests the number of Wesker project test subjects was 13, yet the Japanese version suggests more, and in Umbrella Chronicles Wesker’s ‘phoenix’ line only features in the English version. Which one takes precedence in terms of canon?

EB: Usually we would try to be as close to the source material as possible, especially when it comes to numbers & names, because if you translate something wrong and it gets used somewhere else, then that link gets broken and things stop making sense. So we try to protect that. In terms of canon, because the writers are Japanese and they are working on the Japanese version, the safe way is to treat the Japanese version as canon, because the source material is Japanese. So in terms of which one’s being protected as canon, I think the Japanese version.

In terms of a series canon, I know they tried to protect it as much as possible. Writers & translators change over the years, but for localisation, there were glossaries for how each character must always be named & spelled, and how certain things should be referred to; the RE dictionary existed. The major details are written down and kept track of, but maybe minor things that original writers thought of, do get lost over the years.

CH: Who are your favorite characters from the Resident Evil series?

EB: I started with Resident Evil 2, so any character that showed up in that game! Leon and Ada have a special place, and a character from throughout the series I love, is Wesker, he’s just awesome. Bad guys are fun (laughs), they get to play with the biggest toys and make the biggest trouble, because they’re the ones that get to make the messes, heroes just have to clean it up! The problem with Chris and Leon is that you’re playing them so you know exactly who they are. They’re thrust into the situation, they’re not behind it. So they’re boring compared to someone like Ada or Wesker. With Ada it was interesting because you never know what she’s up to, why does she help Leon sometimees and go against him other times? And that stokes the imagination, like Wesker too, why is he doing all this stuff in the first place, what is he really after? It stokes the imagination. Whereas with Chris or Leon, they’re just shooting bad things and fixing stuff, so you know what their motivations are.

CH: And as a translator, they must have more interesting scripts?

EB: Yes, absolutely (laughs), that's what was great about Separate Ways, Ada is a fun character. In the Japanese script too, was the playful back-and-forth with Leon, it’s not something that just appeared in the English. It was always in her character, especially from Separate Ways. And that might be the influence of Shinsaku Ohara and other people who are more western minded, having a role in that too. And in Resident Evil 5, more than the Chris lines, it’s the Wesker lines that both me and Brandon Gay had the most fun with!

CH: Regarding a more western orientated approach, a game prior to Resident Evil 4, which I (George Trevor) think brings more series improvements and inovative gameplay changes than Resident Evil 4, is Resident Evil Dead Aim. The western protagonist Bruce McGivern, based on Brad Pitt’s character in the film Seven, enjoys a flirtatious back-and-forth relationship with co-protagonist, Fong Ling.

EB: Yeah, I like that game, the atmosphere, the story and everything else was creepy. The characters were well done, the story was interesting. I was surprised that it got knocked as much as it did, I enjoyed playing through that game. Resident Evil Revelations hit that similar place for me. When I played through that game I wasn’t really expecting much, but I really enjoyed it because it took me back to Resident Evil where it was more creepy, more scary, as opposed to having a rocket launcher and blowing stuff up!

CH: What do you think of the live action Resident Evil movies and please remember we have a no swearing policy?! If you were writing a reboot, what would your approach be, survival horror, or a more action focused narrative?

Yeah, I promise not to swear! I’ve seen all of them in the theater, and enjoyed all of them, some more than others, some a lot more than others! The first one I really liked, great soundtrack. That opening was awesome when soldiers are charging in and you’ve got the theme music, the base cranking and soldiers breaking into the windows and the descent down, everyone getting sliced up by the queen! Oh, I loved that, because I do understand that movies have to be different from video games. Just the fact that it was a good scary movie was enough for me.

That’s what disappointed me with the second movie, because I was expecting the first movie’s scary tension to keep going. Maybe they started to take too much fan feedback into it, because Jill showing up in that cheesy video game costume, no one in real life would wear this kind of uniform. Too much of the game stuff was forced into the movie and it felt really awkward. The original character Alice they developed mixing with the video game characters just felt weird. There's stuff you can do in video games and stuff you can do in movies, and they don’t mix (laughs), and they try to do too much stuff that you can do in video games, it didn’t feel like it fit.

It’s unfortunate, and this goes into what I would do to keep the series more horror oriented or less live action. You have these great characters, Jill, Chris, Wesker, Barry, these great characters that if you reworked them a little bit, you could make them into very deep movie characters. But if you just take them straight from the video game, it's going to be a hard translation to film. Across the series of movies, the characters that were introduced in the first movie and then the non-Wesker ultimate bad guy introduced for it, those were the characters that were done well, but when they relied on the video game characters, were the ones where they slipped.

CH: What is your favourite English and Japanese word?

EB: Wow (laughs), ‘simulcra’, the concept reality has been copied so much that there’s no original reality left. That philisophical concept and word really had an impression on me. The question if something is real or not real. That concept is awesome and the word sounds cool too!

A Japanese word that sums up the culture shock, if you come to Japan, ‘Shouganai’ (しょうがない'). It translates to ‘It can’t be helped’, a very Japanese concept, not this sense that you can always fix things. In American film, there’s often a feeling you can fix problems with guns! But in Japan, endings are just dark, and nothing can be helped.

Siren is one example, there are forces of nature, forces beyond your control, things don’t always go the way you want, you have to accept it. It’s a word central to the cultural difference. And thank you for all the Siren questions, it’s a game I wish more people would play…

[Not to be reproduced (c) Crimson Head Elder 2019]

SPECIAL THANKS: BSAARKLAY, USS COMMAND, GEORGE Trevor