Found in translation: the strange tale of War of Genesis: Remnants of Gray's hidden English script
As I already had a chance to outline while discussing Arcturus and Lost Eidolons, Softmax’s War of Genesis series has been a core part of Korean RPG history since the ‘90s, with its third entry on Windows PCs, itself divided into two parts because of its sheer size and incredibly ambitious scope (not to mention its character designs by Hyung Tae Kim, later known for his work on Magna Carta), delivering an epic starting out from local conflicts between medieval-style armies in the world of Antaria and culminating in a sci-fi adventure set hundreds of years in the future.
While a small chunk of War of Genesis III’s first scenario ended up being localized in English for its ill-fated smartphone port, the series has unfortunately been only available in Korean, including its turn-based RPG spinoff, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo-inspired Rhapsody of Zephyr, yet another Korean RPG classic which, at least, managed to get localized in Japan on Dreamcast and PS2.
After a long hiatus, where the series seemed to have been abandoned due to Korea fully transitioning to MMORPGs and smartphone titles (with WoG itself later getting its own gachas), Korean team ReG, a subsidiary of LINE, released a 2023 Switch-exclusive remake of the first two War of Genesis titles (actually, WoG2 was already a remake of the first entry), Remnants of Gray, which, despite initially being set for a Western release in order to commemorate the series’ 25th anniversary, ended up being stranded in its home country.
Developer: ReG-LINE
Genre: tactical RPG
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release date: 2023 (South Korea-only)
Fantranslation: well, this time it’s actually an hidden official translation!
Focused on the wars between the Antarian nations played out in tactical RPG fashion (after all, trying to appeal to the Fire Emblem fanbase was likely one of the reasons behind it being developed on Switch), Remnants of Gray offered a new character creation option allowing the player to choose the protagonist’s gender, not to mention a reworked, more story-heavy scenario with a number of new events, apparently including callbacks to the rest of the series, meaning that a localized version, if it had materialized, could have been a great way to familiarize with this series and its setting.
In the past two years, the few English speaking fans interested in the WoG franchise theorized that Remnant of Gray’s localization ended up being skipped because of its poor Korean sales performance, itself not surprising given that country’s proclivity for PC gaming and the series not being relevant for the past two decades, or due to its apparently poor optimization for Nintendo’s hybrid platform. In fact, the game was such a failure that it allegedly ended up causing the closure of its own development team, which was originally intended to also pursue a War of Genesis III remake.
Then again, just after a fantranslation attempt had finally started at the end of July, an unrelated investigation by user Bánh Mì on GBATemp found out the game had been actually available in English all along, except its localized script was hidden in its game files with no toggle available in the game itself, nor any English screenshot suggesting any translation work had been completed, despite the early hints that a localization could indeed happen. While English-friendly menus in unlocalized Japanese or Korean games aren’t unheard of, having a full script stored away is something almost unheard of, which also explains why it took two years for it to be finally unearthed.
With Bánh Mì being awesome enough to also provide a patch enabling the game’s English script, Western fans interested in this storied Korean franchise can finally give it a try, albeit with a number of hiccups like some skills being still portrayed in Korean and some unedited code and unoptimized text boxes, all issues that could hopefully be fixed by valiant fans. If the stars align, this unexpected development could even build up interest for future fantranslation efforts focused on War of Genesis III and Rhapsody of Zephyr, which would be a dream come true for yours truly.
Given my long-time interest in Korean RPGs, you can look forward to a Remnants of Gray review as soon as I can manage to fit it into my impossibly crowded RPG backlog!