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Publisher Focus Entertainment announced on October 18 that the action-adventure game “A Plague Tale: Requiem]was released. Supported platforms are PC (Steam/Epic Games Store/Microsoft Store/GOG.com)/Nintendo Switch/Xbox Series X|S and overseas PS5.
Regarding this work, although it was officially announced in advance that it would support Japanese subtitles, it was not actually supported. So far, there has been no explanation from the distributor, and domestic fans seem to be complaining.
“A Plague Tale: Requiem” is the sequel to the action-adventure game “A Plague Tale: Innocence” released in 2019. The story is set in 1300s France during the Black Death. The main character, Amicia, has started a new life in a southern city with her brother Hugo, who is suffering from her mysterious disease, following her journey in the previous game was targeted by the Inquisition. However, the power of Yugo’s curse reawakens and she is forced to flee once more. She then sets her sights on the island of prophecy, which is said to be the key to saving Yugo.
Focus Entertainment announced the supported languages for this work on September 7th this year. Among them, it was revealed that this work corresponds to Japanese subtitles. On the same day, Japanese was added to the list of supported languages on the Steam store page along with Korean and Arabic. However, on September 13th, it seems that only Japanese has been removed from the list of supported languages on the store page (SteamDB). The company has not provided any explanation regarding this matter.
And this work was launched on October 18th, but as mentioned earlier, it does not support Japanese. Even the Nintendo Switch version, which was distributed domestically as a cloud version, has a note on the Nintendo eShop stating, “This work does not support Japanese.”
However, according to reports from users, at least in the PC version, Japanese subtitle files seemed to exist in the game data immediately following the release. On YouTube, there is also a gameplay video that sets the in-game language to Japanese and plays this work in Japanese.postIt is However, it is said that the Japanese subtitle file was deleted by the update that was distributed following that. In other words, although it seems that the Japanese localization of this work has already been completed, it was omitted for some reason. In this situation, there are users who express dissatisfaction and distrust on SNS.
Actually, something similar happened in the previous work “A Plague Tale: Innocence”. In the previous work, Japanese support was not officially announced in advance, but Japanese subtitle support was posted in the corresponding language list on the Steam store page in advance. However, Japanese was later removed from the list, attracting the attention of domestic gamers.
At that time, the person in charge of the sales agency Focus Home Interactive (currently Focus Entertainment) announced that the PC version will support Japanese from the release date (May 14, 2019), and that the console version will be supported at a later date. However, the PC version was released without Japanese support. The person in charge suggested that there was a problem with the localization quality, and explained the reason for the delay in Japanese support for the PC version (Related article）。
As a result, the PC version of the same work was implemented with Japanese subtitles regarding a month following its release. In addition, the Xbox One version released at the same time will support Japanese in March 2020. During this time, in November 2019, the Japanese version for PS4 was released from domestic publisher Oizumi Amusio.
In “A Plague Tale: Requiem”, Japanese support was announced in advance, and while reservations for the PC version were being accepted in Japan (it seems that the Xbox Series X | S version was also accepting reservations for a while), why is the Japanese language It is not yet clear why it was removed.
Alternatively, there may be other factors involved. In the past, there have been several examples of waiting for the release of the Japanese version for consoles by domestic publishers before making the PC version compatible with Japanese. No such console release is planned for the game at this time, but it may be announced in the future. It is presumed that there is a business purpose behind such measures, but even if this is the case, it is irrelevant to users of PCs and other platforms. If the Japanese localization work has already been completed, it would not be sincere to dare to delete the Japanese subtitles from the game.
We are currently seeking an explanation from the publisher Focus Entertainment regarding the status of Japanese support for this work. If I get a reply, I will add it to this article.
