You'd say that, but then many people would cite Borderlands as a series in the vein of being a complete conceptual humor failure, and there was no translation involved there; I'd say that rather than attempting to make jokes that "fit all", Borderlands was Humor by Marketing Research.

Where you take a bunch of people who had their humor surgically removed and then ask each other, "Alright, what's the thing that's "in" with the kids today?"

Or worse, "Ahaha! Isn't this mechanic so bad! It's just a laugh that you have to grind this resource like you're in an MMO, right?"

ah, no, off course humor is subjective as well. but people tend to gravitate towards what they like anyway. but jokes that often 'fail' is quite often due to being lost is translation.

I don't think Borerlands did try to fit all, they tried to go for a very slective market share, which is why many do not find them funny. I must admit I did giggle a few times when playing them, so I would not say they fell flat. It is a bit closer to my kind of humor than many other games. There are others who tried a lot harder and failed for me.

edit - oh, does this mean I am 'down with the kids'? Rad!

I think there is a standup comedian in Fallout 2 somewhere that tell terrible jokes.

Can't really say I've ever seen the comedy fall flat in a game. On the other hand horrible writing is common, but all the examples I can think of was in an attempt to be all serious and dramatic, not comedic.

oh? try the Grotesque Tactics series....

Fallout 2 is a pretty bad example for excessive fourth-wall breaking imo. Lots of references to US popular culture that are meaningless for anybody not from the US (and of course by now those references are also horribly dated, so even many Americans probably won't get them).

I do wonder how Fallout's "50s Americana Culture" often ends up just confusing international viewers. Often taking deep lore and cuts about areas most people even within the USA haven't heard of.

It wasn't really the 1950s aspects which irritated me (they're part of the basic background setting after all), rather that there were far too many easter eggs (if one can call them that, they were quite obtrusive in many cases) referencing things like TV shows from the 1980s/early 1990s. Or stuff like those "Hubologists", with the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman characters. Or the Enclave vice-president who's based on Dan Quayle. They went way too far with those contemporary (at the time) references, and the end result is something that really impacts immersion in the game world, but also isn't particularly funny or clever.

No thanks :)
I don't mind a bit of references here and there, especially in very low probability random encounters. As for the rest, as long as they don't feel out of place, I don't really see the harm. However, the whole scientology Tom Cruise thing was a bit much, and I reckon even if you didn't know what that part of the game was in reference to, it would still feel weirdly out of place.

I'd say I prefer 2 overall, because it's so much more expansive. But yes, the vibe and story of the 1st game is way superior.

Well, that's just the whole FFV PSX translation. And a major reason among many why nobody thought of FFV fondly for years.

On SaGa 2: Fan Translations tend to put themselves into this; by either being overtly literal or missing the joke for what it is. Legends of Localization and Tomato has shown very often that even a subtle subtext being missed can completely change the meaning.

Radscorpions, what's so rad about them?

There were quite a few bits in Fallout 2 that seemed weird to me that I later found out were references to things. That did put me off it quite a bit (but it's still one of my absolute favourites).

There was some description of the type of humour that was supposed to be in Fallout 3 I remember reading ages ago. Something like "You blow somebody up and a smiley face appears on the Pip-Boy". Hmm.

And that's exactly why this thread doesn't make much sense. Someone will always disagree.

Perhaps. But I also feel that having seen things like <i>Who's on First?</i> still managing to bring laughter three quarters of a century later, I feel there are at least some universal constants of humor: Delivery, absurdity, timing.

Not nobody. I thought of that game fondly, and it became my favorite in the series, as soon as I played the fan translation. (In fact, I was wishing that the series had followed FF5's direction instead of taking a different direction with FF6.) (Also, keep in mind that there's Japan, where they actually did get to play original FF5 on release.)

The SaGa 2 DS fan translation I honestly think isn't that great. Aside from ruining a joke with grammar correction, they called the "Magic Power" stat SPRT, not to mention that whenever you soft reset (or the automatic soft reset after saving clear data), the game freezes on 2 white screens (and there are reasons one would want to soft reset a lot with some parties, like when trying to get a specific Esper skill from the Dunatis fight, or trying to escavate a specific item from an escavation point). Then, of course, there's the joke they ruined by "correcting" the grammer.

The SaGa 3 DS fan translation is better.

(Worth noting that I've played both DS SaGa remakes in the original Japanese, and while I didn't bother trying to read much of the text, I did pay attention to that specific joke.)

Translation is hard.