The 'Trails' Series Has The Most Richest Lore In JRPGs

Thread: The 'Trails' Series Has The Most Richest Lore In JRPGs
Cryptek

Cryptek

Japan? I'll pass thanks
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As the title pretty much implies.

I still believe the Trails series has the deepest lore of any Japanese role-playing game and maybe any Western role playing game.

I'm still in awe regarding the amount of detail they put into the series. How much background and how rich the setting is.

Minor NPCs even have recurring appearances in other games and stories behind them. They're not just some random person you talk to and go on your way. Everybody seems to have a story.

There's already 12 games in the series, all taking place in the same world and all interconnected. The first game is over 15 years old already.

According to the developer, the series is only about 60% finished. They still have one or two more "arcs" at least before the series is finished and I wouldn't be surprised they continue with a new series in the same world, a prequel series or even an MMO.

No Japanese role-playing game comes close but as for Western gaming which is pretty good about consistent lore and interconnected games, I would say the Elder Scrolls games are very similar.

Now there are worlds even more detailed than the trails games like the Forgotten Realms from Dungeons & Dragons but that started off as a tabletop game so I'm not going to count that. Same goes for Warhammer 40,000, another series I really love but that started off as a tabletop game as well.

I can't recommend another series if you're looking for a very deep and richly detailed world and backstory as well as an ongoing story that's epic in scope.

Gamerant also claimed it's number one as far as world building and lore out of 18 other Japanese role-playing games.

 
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Taken from the article:

"Trails of Cold Steel III on its own has more written words than all seven Harry Potter books combined"

That's almost unbelievable, even for a video game. In fact, I do not believe it unless someone can prove it. The Harry Potter series has 4,224 pages across the seven books. That means that the writer for this game, Hisayoshi Takeiri, essentially wrote three to four MONSTEROUS books worth for one project
 
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Franky Family said:
Taken from the article:

"Trails of Cold Steel III on its own has more written words than all seven Harry Potter books combined"

That's almost unbelievable, even for a video game. In fact, I do not believe it unless someone can prove it. The Harry Potter series has 4,224 pages across the seven books. That means that the writer for this game, Hisayoshi Takeiri, essentially wrote three to four MONSTEROUS books worth for one project
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It may be an exaggeration but I can tell you that Trails from Zero has tons and tons of dialogue. And I'm still on the prologue.
 
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Franky Family said:
Taken from the article:

"Trails of Cold Steel III on its own has more written words than all seven Harry Potter books combined"

That's almost unbelievable, even for a video game. In fact, I do not believe it unless someone can prove it. The Harry Potter series has 4,224 pages across the seven books. That means that the writer for this game, Hisayoshi Takeiri, essentially wrote three to four MONSTEROUS books worth for one project
Click to expand...
I can believe it.

All Trails games have a HUGE amount of dialog and a bunch of collectible books/newspapers that are all several pages long. The games are also all REALLY long. The Cold Steel games also had a social-sim aspect to the games, which would increase the amount of written dialog.

The number of written words in each game is one of the reasons why they take so damn long to localize.
 
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What is it about and why is it so good? Really hard to get the appeal by looking from the outside.
 
Reading Simulator.

Tbf I did play one as one of my last PS5 games... it was alright. Felt a bit like Persona.
 
Franky Family said:
Taken from the article:

"Trails of Cold Steel III on its own has more written words than all seven Harry Potter books combined"

That's almost unbelievable, even for a video game. In fact, I do not believe it unless someone can prove it. The Harry Potter series has 4,224 pages across the seven books. That means that the writer for this game, Hisayoshi Takeiri, essentially wrote three to four MONSTEROUS books worth for one project
Click to expand...

Trails in the database has a log of all of the scripts for every game.

Trails in the Database

trailsinthedatabase.com trailsinthedatabase.com

Trails of Cold Steel 3 script has 54,921 rows in its database. Harry Potter has 1,084,170 words. If each row in the database averages at just 20 words, it would have more words than Harry Potter. Its possible that the one game has more words that all of Harry Potter as many rows have several dozen words, but there are also a number of rows that just say, "...", which may not even count as a single word. The one thing I'm not seeing in the database is the newspapers and books which could definitely increase the length pretty dramatically.

The count of Japanese characters in the script is 2,053,502, but I'm not sure how many words that actually is.

I'm not going to do a word count, but I'm going to put this claim in the category of plausible. It may not beat all of Harry Potter, but it absolutely beats The Lord of the Rings Trilogy plus the Hobbit (570,000 words) for whatever that's worth.

screen-shot-2015-11-30-at-8-11-22-am.png
 
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I hate games that are overly heavy in text conversations that you can't avoid. At the same time, I love reading the books in Elder Scrolls games.
 
If I had played it ~15 years ago when it came out I probably would've fallen in love with it. I remember playing one on the PSP (unsure if it was a fan-translation or not) but I only got about 5 hours in. It was okay. Felt kinda like Grandia in tone and "epic" scope.

But nowadays I have less and less time/patience for story-driven games. The huge amount of story and interconnected dialogue would be a negative for me, I just wanna dive in and play most of the time. I'll read books if I want a fiction with "lore"
 
nominedomine said:
What is it about and why is it so good? Really hard to get the appeal by looking from the outside.
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It's one of the few games in existence with a huge interconnected story. That may not appeal to everyone but I love deep lore and world building of which this also has.

If that doesn't appeal to you then this may not be your type of game.
 
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The game series even has its own magazine. I would know because this is mine even though I can't read Japan language.

IMG-20221230-195812.jpg
 
Sejan said:
Trails in the database has a log of all of the scripts for every game.

Trails in the Database

trailsinthedatabase.com trailsinthedatabase.com

Trails of Cold Steel 3 script has 54,921 rows in its database. Harry Potter has 1,084,170 words. If each row in the database averages at just 20 words, it would have more words than Harry Potter. Its possible that the one game has more words that all of Harry Potter as many rows have several dozen words, but there are also a number of rows that just say, "...", which may not even count as a single word. The one thing I'm not seeing in the database is the newspapers and books which could definitely increase the length pretty dramatically.

The count of Japanese characters in the script is 2,053,502, but I'm not sure how many words that actually is.

I'm not going to do a word count, but I'm going to put this claim in the category of plausible. It may not beat all of Harry Potter, but it absolutely beats The Lord of the Rings Trilogy plus the Hobbit (570,000 words) for whatever that's worth.

screen-shot-2015-11-30-at-8-11-22-am.png
Click to expand...
I'll keep tabs on this series, they must have hired one of the greatest writers on the planet if he is the only one creating the stories. I only saw one writer listed for the game in question, but maybe he has a team who helps him? Either way, one writer or and entire team, this is very impressive if not shocking work; to know how deeply invested the development team is with the story in these Trails games
 
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Franky Family said:
I'll keep tabs on this series, they must have hired one of the greatest writers on the planet if he is the only one creating the stories. I only saw one writer listed for the game in question, but maybe he has a team who helps him? Either way, one writer or and entire team, this is very impressive if not shocking work; to know how deeply invested the development team is with the story in these Trails games
Click to expand...
It's an incredible series if you are a JRPG fan. The benefit of being able to revisit the same world and characters is just outstanding. Further it gives a great way to view the same world from a number of different views since each Series takes place in a different region. A country viewed as enemies in arc might be cast as the good guys in the next arc. Events in one game might become a significant plot point in the next.

The writing isn't perfect and often leans on typical tropes, but as a package deal it has become my favorite JRPG series over the past year by a long shot.
 
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