Article:Klayton Vorlick Interview (2015-04-13)

## Klayton Vorlick Interview (April 13, 2015)

So I recently got to come into contact with Klayton Vorlick, the translator of Skies of Arcadia. I intended to contact him just to chat with him, but the conversation had such nice information that it might have well been an interview! There’s some interesting information, such as what kind of hand he had in the development of the game. So without further ado, read below to read my chat with Klayton Vorlick!

**Nguyen, Tony:** Hi Klayton, are you the same Klayton that worked as a translator on Skies of Arcadia, one of the greatest RPGs of all time? :-O

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Hahaha yes I am :) how’d you figure that out? And man, that was like 15 years ago…

**Nguyen, Tony:** Skies of Arcadia is my favorite game of all time… I know the Vorlik Blade is named after you after all and you don’t have a particularly common name.

**Vorlick, Klayton:** haha there’s a story behind that! I had a cowriter named Chris Lucich (he did the English version of Panzer Dragoon Saga)

He said we should name stuff after ourselves. He recommended Vorlik Blade… and he wanted a creature named after him (Lucich slimes) and then he went around telling everyone I chose the most powerful weapon and gave him the weak monster haha (as a joke, of course)

**Nguyen, Tony:** Ah lol

Anyway, you guys did an excellent localization, if I do say so myself.

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Aw, thanks :)

It was my first project i was in charge of, so i gave it my all.

**Nguyen, Tony:** I played the game in Japanese too and it’s interesting what you guys changed, but it was the meaning that was more important than what’s being translated sometimes after all.

Although, there were some interesting changes, like how Ramirez’s obsession with Galcian was downtoned near the end…

I mean, he’s still obsessed, but he was saying like Galcian’s name like every other sentence in the Japanese version…

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Yeah. we basically sat down, I did a rough translation of the text, and then threw away the Japanese text. We mapped out the big story beats in each scene, and then just watched the cutscenes and ad-libbed what we imagined each character would say, and then rewrote a lot of the dialog completely.

**Nguyen, Tony:** Ah

Nice!

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Haha, yeah. We thought it might be a little creepy for US audiences.

**Nguyen, Tony:** That definitely makes it sound more natural.

The amount of times Fina said “minna-san” wouldn’t translate very well lol

Or at least it would sound super unnatural.

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Yeah

**Nguyen, Tony:** I’m the webmaster of Esoarcadia.org, I know the game like the back of my hand, so talking to you right now is like talking to a celebrity :-O

**Vorlick, Klayton:** We each took a couple characters and exclusively wrote their dialog so as to make sure they had unique voices. I was Enrique, Vigoro, and Fina, for example.

Chris was Gilder and Aika.

So he did a lot of the humor :)

**Nguyen, Tony:** O lol

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Vyse was both of us.

Oh nice!

Haha, I dunno about celebrity haha

**Nguyen, Tony:** O wow

That’s very interesting :-O

**Vorlick, Klayton:** A lot of the characters were named after various QA people, etc.

Mabel the Raider was an assistant lead (Mabel Chung)

**Nguyen, Tony:** Ah!

I wondered why their names were changed!

When they already had very western names!

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Timmus the Gunner was named after my friend Tim, who was the guy who got me my first industry job Haha

Yeah, we asked the team and they said go for it. That was just a little bonus for us :)

**Nguyen, Tony:** O lol

I’ll have to sweep the credits and have to add that as trivia on my site someday

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Nice

Hm. let’s see what other trivia…

**Nguyen, Tony:** But I was like how did Sharon become Lindsi…

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Removing cigarettes/cigars, changing beer to loqua, and adjusting some of the female character’s costumes was to reduce ESRB disclaimers and keep the rating low

**Nguyen, Tony:** Yea

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Lindsi was QA Lead :)

**Nguyen, Tony:** oooo

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Lindsi Kimizuka haha

still good friends

though she’s not in the industry anymore

**Nguyen, Tony:** Yea, I noticed Bellena’s clothing

Ah

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Mabel was working at Nintendo for a while, but i think she got out of the industry, too

**Nguyen, Tony:** Ramirez’s blood too was censored, near the end.

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Yeah, 2000 was a bit of a transitional year for the industry. people were still hesitant to let things get too mature.

Oh, I had forgotten about that one.

**Nguyen, Tony:** Yea when I played the Japanese version, I recorded everything that was different…

Like

**Vorlick, Klayton:** I’m sure there were a ton of various references we threw in the text as well, but I’ve forgotten them all haha

**Nguyen, Tony:** Gilder’s quote about women being like sunsets.

Originally, it was about doing the things that have never been done before.

But I like the sunset change.

**Vorlick, Klayton:** That was Chris. I shook my head when he came up with that line haha

**Nguyen, Tony:** It’s pretty funny! And I think it suits Gilder!

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Yeah, totally fits the character.

I think my favorite line that he wrote was Vyse’s father in the beginning after he shoots the soldier and says something like “I only see 3 of you.”

In case you couldn’t tell, he’s a huge fan of Joss Whedon’s work and tries to emulate his style of nonchalant sarcasm haha

**Nguyen, Tony:** Also the sarcasm that was sprinkled into the translation when it was played totally straight in the original Japanese, like De Loco mocking Alfonso about what gave away that there were intruders.

“Was it the sirens? Or the loud noises? What gave it away?”

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Does it quite well

**Nguyen, Tony:** O lol

**Vorlick, Klayton:** haha that one was me

**Nguyen, Tony:** In the original the De Loco/Alfonso scene was played pretty straight

Ah!

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Yeah, that game took like 4 months of nonstop work (like 80-100 hour work weeks) to finish.

I think I ended up translating like 2000 pages of text.

**Nguyen, Tony:** Well it was definitely a labor of love and it shows!

**Vorlick, Klayton:** It was. Still the project I’m the proudest of :)

**Nguyen, Tony:** It’s an amazing game, one of these days I’ll send a pic of my nerdy Skies of Arcadia collection, right now I want to collect all of the manga done by Itsuki Hoshi… but all the chapters are in separate Magazine Z chapters…. do you know about the manga?

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Not really. Wasn’t really involved with them =\

**Nguyen, Tony:** Aw

**Vorlick, Klayton:** I still have my limited edition box set of the Japanese version! And I think I have a poster signed by the producer and lead designer (and me and chris haha) somewhere in my garage

**Nguyen, Tony:** I want to send stuff your way and get your autograph ;\_;

The producer and lead designer were Reiko and Shuntaro I believe?

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Rieko Kodama was the main producer. She was amazing. And Shun Tanaka was the lead designer. He was such a fun guy to work with. He also worked on Valkyria Chronicles.

**Nguyen, Tony:** Wow!

It doesn’t look like Reiko is up to much these days… last I remember she’s done 7th Dragon…

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Yeah, Skies didn’t sell too well unfortunately, so she’s mainly been working on smallish projects.

**Nguyen, Tony:** Do you know if purchasing/selling ships was originally planned for Skies?

There’s a weird “Value” statistic for ships that’s never used for anything

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Not that i remember…

**Nguyen, Tony:** Ah

**Vorlick, Klayton:** But again, it was 15 years ago and i was a relative noob, so maybe it was and I just missed it haha

**Nguyen, Tony:** Well it could’ve been an early idea that was scrapped and that statistic was a remnant of it

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Oh! i was also the one that got them to add the press-start-to-skip-animation for spells and stuff haha

**Nguyen, Tony:** NICE!

I remember

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Because i was pissed at Final Fantasy not letting me skip haha

**Nguyen, Tony:** That was so annoying when I played the Japanese version

I was like

Whyyyy can’t I skip these

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Seriously

Played an early version of the game and that was my first bit of feedback haha

**Nguyen, Tony:** Good job man, good job, you’ve made a bunch of Skies fans happy!

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Thanks :)

**Nguyen, Tony:** Anyway, it was amazing talking to you, perhaps I can cull more information out of you later.

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Hit me up if you ever have any questions :)

**Nguyen, Tony:** Thanks! :)

Bless that Klayton Vorlick for suggesting skippable Super Moves!

## Klayton Vorlick Interview Update (January 07, 2018)

**Nguyen, Tony:** A couple years ago I grilled you about Skies of Arcadia, and I recall at one point you mentioned that you named some of the Pirate Isle residents after American staff. Well, now I’m curious about each character’s namesake :D

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Sorry I missed this email – got lost in the holiday onslaught. Would love to answer your questions!

* Alan – He was assistant QA lead
* Barbara – This wasn’t anyone. Just a name.
* Ben – Same
* Boris – Same
* Briggs – Last name of the marketing guy on the project (Rich Briggs)
* Erinn – My stepsister haha
* Granny – Just a name
* Jessica – Same
* Jimmy – Same
* Landis – My brother’s middle name (there’s also a monster called a Nairad, which is his first name backwards)
* Lindsi – QA lead
* Luke – Just a name
* Mabel – The other assistant QA lead
* Martha – Just a name
* Matthew – One of my brother’s best friends and my roommate in college. Was one of my best gaming buddies growing up.
* Patch – Just a name
* Peter – Same
* Timmus – The nickname of my brother’s other best friend and the guy who got me my first job in the industry translating Japanese news for gamers.com. He works at Riot now as a marketing director.
* Vyse's Mother – Just his mom
* Zack – Just a name

Hope that helps!

## Klayton Vorlick Conversation (August 26, 2019)

I never posted this conversation I had with Klayton in 2019 because none of the information pertained to Skies of Arcadia, we were talking about other topics. However, there is some interesting information here so I've decided to post this here despite it not being directly related to Skies of Arcadia.

[Small talk about history in the video game industry]

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Well, I think about a couple games I was involved in and some of my stories about Yuji Naka or Yu Suzuki.

**Nguyen, Tony:** Oh, so you've worked with both of them before?

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Well, sort of. I only briefly worked on AM2 titles in small capacities, but I accompanied Yu Suzuki to DICE Summit when he received his lifetime achievement award as his interpreter. Got to go on stage with him during his fireside chat with Miyamoto! That was a highlight of my career, man. He's a big gambler, so he took me out and taught me how to play blackjack properly haha

With Naka-san, I worked on a handful of Sonic Team titles in various capacities, but also during my portfolio management phase, where I attended all of the executive meetings. So got to know him a bit, went drinking with him a couple times, etc.

**Nguyen, Tony:** That's rad being in the same room with two video game moguls like that!

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Sega was an interesting company.

Used to go drinking at clubs all the time with Kikuchi-san of Smilebit/Yakuza fame. We worked on Jet Set Radio, Gunvalkyrie, JSRF, Panzer Orta, and Yakuza together. So we go way back.

I did some of the background character voices in Space Channel 5 as well (Japanese space tourist and one of the new announcers)

Tanaka-san is a great guy. Did I tell you my contribution to Valkyria Chronicles?

They were trying to get the game greenlit, but the western audiences were tepid on it. it was a pure turn based game at the time.

So Tanaka-san came to me (since we were tight) and asked for some advice and guidance. so we did some back of the napkin brainstorming. talked about where we could add in action and real time elements.

**Nguyen, Tony:** Making it semi realtime definitely gave it more a unique identity!

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Though some guided talks, they came up with the idea of doing the real-time movement and aiming.

**Nguyen, Tony:** So that's how of one of the legendary Valkryia Chronicles was born. I really like the battle system, having to manage running in during realtime. Thanks for helping realize one of their most well-regarded game of that generation!

**Vorlick, Klayton:** Haha well, I just provided inspiration, it was their idea.