Mystery of the Emblem’s fan translation history has always been rather understated. FE3 received an early patch in 2008 by RPGuy96 and VincentASM, and then a more updated patch in 2014 by Quirino. This 2014 patch was updated a bit over the last decade by RobertStewart and RPGuy96, but the patches for this game have always been a far cry from the ones for FE4/5/6. FE3 patches have always been constrained by text space, and usually had pretty basic scripts because of this. They also didn’t tend to be the nicest to look at either, with fonts that could use some work.
And now we have a new patch: the Heroes of Light translation/localization! This patch aims to finally bring FE3 up to snuff with the other fan translations we have, injecting some life into the script and improving the text/menu visuals.
The team (the Heroes of Light, one might say):
- @RobertTheSable: created the text editing/compiling tools for FE3, without which this project could not have been possible, and also offered additional technical assistance
- @LoPo : first script pass (initial translation with space constraints), and started the project alongside @flasuban
- @flasuban: made the new menu font, started the project alongside Lopo
- @KrashBoomBang: second script pass (rework and revision without space constraints), testing
- @CedAodh: font and technical assistance (figured out how to get more text space), additional script review
- OhBlock: lore consultant, additional script review
The story behind the patch:
Despite me being the one to write this post and release this patch, I came into the game really late here. Over the past few years, Lopo and Flasuban had worked on this new patch on and off since 2019, but by the time I rolled around, it was only Lopo. It was only three months ago when Ced posted a gif in the r/FE discord showing off the new menu font that I learned about this project, and I immediately came running to see how I could help. I did a quick test run over the next week to point out errors and make suggestions, but that quickly evolved into more active work. Lopo expressed burnout from working on this for so long, so I offered to fix all the errors myself.
Then Ced made two big fixes: first, he reduced the space between letters in the dialogue font, giving more space and also just looking a whole lot more pleasing to the eye. But second and far more important, he showed us how to move text entries around in the rom. Turns out there was actually a lot of extra empty space in there that we could use, which would effectively give us unlimited text space for individual scenes. Previous FE3 patches, including the work Lopo had done so far, were extremely limited on space per scene, since the text entries are normally all right next to each other in the rom. If you go over the space limit of a scene, it’ll start pulling up whatever the next scene is, and make a big mess. But that wasn’t a problem anymore.
With Ced having other responsibilities and Lopo burned out on the patch, I was effectively handed the reins to the patch. For the past three months, I’ve been revising and reworking Lopo’s script to fix errors and rework things overall. Now it’s all done, and ready to release.
Me personally, I worked on Project Exile for FE5 back in the day. I joined that project way back because I wanted to be part of something, to do something big and get recognition, which I’d say was partly how that project carried itself to begin with. I don’t think I need to go over how that all went down. But after ~7 years, I like to think I have a better understanding of things. For this FE3 patch, this is something I firmly believe needed to be done for a game I care about.
Features and general tenets:
- This is billed more as a localization than a direct translation. There are often liberties taken throughout the script of both books. These liberties serve a few purposes: adding information from official localizations, emphasizing ideas that are already present, making connections a bit clearer, or giving characters and scenes more personality where appropriate. Overall, the goal was to make this script fun to read, in a similar vein to things like the FE5 translation, or official localizations like FE11, FE15, and Vestaria Saga.
- Both books are covered in this patch. Book 1 often takes lines and information from FE11 where applicable, or where there is simply no better way of writing something. You can’t really get a better line than “Glory to Marth, our Star and Savior,” for instance. Ultimately, both books try to have a consistent voice and writing style between them.
- A brand-new menu font, courtesy of flasuban. When you look at it side by side with the old menu font, it’s night and day. The dialogue font was also improved by Ced, reducing the spacing between characters. A small change, but it makes a world of difference.
Left: Old font.
Right: New font.
Speaking to a few particular changes:
- Malledus. Malledus is such a goofy character inherently, don’t you think? I do, anyway. In every telling of FE1, Malledus doesn’t show up at all until the end of chapter 3 to tell Marth that he found 10000 dollars in an outhouse. FE11 does have him appear in the prologue on normal mode, but if you skip that, he again doesn’t show up until chapter 3. The only way you’d know about him otherwise is if you read the game manual, which we don’t exactly have. Now, the easy solution would be to simply include Malledus in the opening narration as having gone with Marth, but you still wouldn’t be able to put the name to a face until chapter 3. He would logically have to introduce himself to the player, but that doesn’t really make sense for Marth, who he is speaking to. He’s just an all-around bizarre presence in the story, so I decided to lean into that and give him a bit of a running gag. I was messing around with text colors and found that there was actually another text color besides the usual white, orange, and green that the game uses: this brown color, normally used for the borders of the text box. Now it is used exclusively for Malledus and his little introductions. I found it fitting for a character whose entire existence is somewhat silly.
- Book 2 chapter 9 is the one instance where I deliberately changed the meaning of a scene because I don’t think it makes sense otherwise. For context: at the end of chapter 8, Marth is forced to flee to Khadein ahead of his army, despite his concerns. Jagen gives him a very stern lecture about how everyone is fighting for his sake and that they’ll meet back up later. In chapter 9’s world map narration, Marth specifically waits for each and every one of his soldiers to arrive in Khadein before deciding on his next course of action. Then in chapter 9’s introduction dialogue between Marth and Jagen, Khadein’s troops move on them and they have to start fighting. Jagen tells Marth that they may have to make some sacrifices, but they should charge the temple. In the JP script, Marth reluctantly accepts this. I do not think that makes sense here, and completely clashes with the events that just transpired and the dialogue he has in these scenes otherwise. A man who just waiting for each individual soldier to show up would not then turn around and go “alright maybe we can make some sacrifices.” Marth is just too good of a person to accept that. So instead, I had him refute Jagen, affirming his faith in his comrades and refusing to squander their faith in him. I also used this as an opportunity for some additional gameplay tips, since Jagen’s advice of “charge the temple” is technically a bad idea. If you do that, you skip two astral shards on the right side of the map, which you definitely need. So I had Marth suggest that the path on the right might be safer and result in fewer casualties. This is the one major instance of a scene whose meaning was changed, in order to fit with the scenes around it, so I wanted to point it out.
PLEASE REPORT STUFF! If you find any typos, errors, or things you believe are wrong, please say so! We want to keep updating this patch as needed for review and other fixes. You can respond to this thread, or come visit the FE3 channel in the FE5 Hacking Server, where all of our work on this patch was done.
WE ALSO WOULD APPRECIATE HELP WITH MORE ASM/CODING FOR FONT WORK! The new menu font is great, but still not perfect, as we only have so much room for letters and two-letter characters. If you’d like to help figure out how to get more two-letter characters into the menu font, or otherwise improve the text and menu fonts, please stop by the linked server below, or respond to this post!
PACTHING INSTRUCTIONS: You will need Beat or any other patching program/website that works with BPS patches. The patch download comes with four patches, headered and unheadered patches for v1.0 and v1.1. Patch ONE of these to your FE3 rom, whichever matches its version and rom type. Recommended emulator is SNES9x, as that is what this was tested on.
