Like A Dragon’s localisation team explain how they bring the series’ singular storytelling to the west

“We love kink-based wordplay here at Sega”

Image credit:Sega

“Ever since the very first Yakuza on PS2, the Like A Dragon series has always tried to capture the cultural zeitgeist of Japan, reflecting and satirising whatever’s trending around when the game comes out. This means that the way people speak in Like A Dragon is constantly evolving to match the times,” says Dan Sunstrum, senior translator at Ryu Ga Gotoku’s localisation team. Keeping things current is, says Sunstrum, “a challenge in some ways but also means we’re justified in using modern English slang to match, whereas such modernisms might feel out of place in a game set in a completely fictional world.”

Sunstrum uses an example from the studio’s latest, RPS Bestest Best winning RPG Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth , where permed protagonist Ichiban Kasuga meets a dating app designer. “The app’s creator goes on a mini-rant about ungrateful, entitled users, complaining how when anything goes wrong they’re quick to demand wabi-ishi ,” slang for free premium currency. “This would have been a tricky word to localise, but it was made easy by the fact that fans of gacha games had already done it for us: they refer to them as ‘apologems’, and that’s what we ended up using in the game.”

Conversely, says Sunstrum, some of the trickiest words to localise are the common ones, since each instance generally needs a creative solution to fully capture the context it’s used in. “One of these words for me personally is amaeru , a verb that has no direct translation in English but which I will roughly describe as ‘acting in a way that communicates that you want someone to take care or dote on you’.” It’s usually used for scenarios like a child asking a parent for a piggyback or a treat, “but is also versatile enough to be used for decidedly adult characters like Kiryu.”

Early in Infinite Wealth, Kiryu drops a personal bombshell, and Kasuga tries to convince him to take it easy, saying: ‘We’re here, after all. You should rely and amaeru on us more.’ Of course, says Sustrum, “Kasuga isn’t suggesting Kiryu act like a fussy baby and demand attention. He’s saying it’s okay to ask for help when he’s struggling. Practically every instance of amaeru needs a translation crafted for the specific context it appears in, and the final edit for this line ended up as: “We’re here too, you know? So share the load… We got your back.”

“There are a lot of factors that affect how to render a sentence – such as characterization, emotion, projection, and timing – to the point where no one would translate or edit something the same way,” says Josh Malone, Ryu Ga Gotoku’s localisation team’s lead editor. “What I like to look at is ‘flow’, the natural progression of dialogue. Are these characters talking past each other, or do their thoughts and words connect in a believable, well-constructed way?” Accurate localisation, says Malone, needs as much context as possible. The team look at a given scene as a whole, and consider how each line affects and is affected by others.

He gives a simplified example of how the process might work from start to finish:

Japanese: ちゃんと仕事してくれりゃチップもはずんだのによ。悪りぃが金は払わねえぞ。……封筒、返してくれや。

Translation : If you’d have done your job right, I would’ve given you a generous tip. Sorry, but now I’m paying you nothing… And give me back my envelope.

Edit: Y’know, if you just did your job, you’d have got a fat tip. But now all you get is a fat lip. Oh, and gimme my envelope.

“This is right after Ichiban fights Tomizawa, a crooked cabbie who attempted to rob him at gunpoint. Does the Japanese line mention a fat lip at all? No. Does the English line still convey the same information while respecting the scene, the characters, and the creators’ original vision? Absolutely.” He continues, “it conveys that Tomizawa’s not getting paid a dime, and is logically consistent with Tomizawa’s slightly bloodied, beaten-up state. Could Ichiban just as easily have said, “But I ain’t payin’ you shit now” in his usual crass way? Sure, but he would’ve sounded like any other trash-talking thug, and this is one of many moments that highlight that, among all the street punks and underworld goons he blends in with, his charisma alone is enough to set him apart.”

“There was a really tricky line early-ish in the game where Kasuga gets arrested for public indecency and is being interrogated by a Hawaiian police officer,” says Sunstrum. In Japanese, the officer says: “I hear the word “hentai” comes from Japan. I guess the birthplace of that word is on another level, huh?” What the writers likely didn’t realise, he continues, is that hentai has a different meaning in Japan, referring to a pervert or deviant rather than porn directly. “We needed to massage this line a bit to make the joke work for our audience. I want to say this line went through three or four different revisions — some of which tried to keep “hentai” in — before we landed on the current version that plays on the stereotype of Japan being ‘weird’: “But hey, your country’s famous for weird shit. Like the anime porn, or the panty machines, huh?”

Most substory names contain some sort of pun, and the trick here is to keep things tonally consistent with the content of the quest. “As much as we love kink-based wordplay here at Sega,” says Malone, it would miss the point for certain stories. “For instance, the substory title “Let It Snow” (Snow Smile/スノースマイル in Japanese) is not a pun, but a song reference that encapsulates the substory’s mood and objective. Perhaps it’s something a husband might hear in his mind as he shares a tender moment with his beloved, ageing wife while the “snow” falls around them,” says Malone. “It wouldn’t have been right to, say, reference a certain man-baby patriarch also featured in the story and call it something like “Baby’s First Snow”, “Here Today, Gondawara”, or “Diapers and Diamond Dust.”

As that substory so aptly demonstrates, Infinite Wealth relishes the series’ trademark tug-of-war between heartfelt and goofy, and perhaps the best example of the latter is Sujimon - a parodic love letter to both Pokémon and Dragon Quest . Like those properties, LAD doesn’t hold back with the pun-based enemy names. Sujimon, says Malone, are “sort of a bizarre thought experiment about what kind of RPG enemies you’d ‘realistically’ encounter on the streets of Japan. Given the setting and story of the Like A Dragon franchise, we’d rather lean into any culturally specific references than shy away from them, though in order to land that perfect name, there are of course some liberties that may need to be taken – liberties that that still communicate the design of the Sujimon as intended by the creator.”

<img loading=“lazy” src=“https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/infinite-wealth-sujimon-nugget.jpg?width=2048&height=2048&fit=bounds&quality=85&format=jpg&auto=webp" onerror=“this.onerror=null;this.src=‘https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe7F7TRXHtjiKvHb5vS7DmnxvpHiDyoYyYvm1nHB3Qp2_w3BnM6A2eq4v7FYxCC9bfZt3a9vIMtAYEKUiaDQbHMg-ViyGmRIj39MLp0bGFfgfYw1Dc9q_H-T0wiTm3l0Uq42dETrN9eC8aGJ9_IORZsxST1AcLR7np1koOfcc7tnHa4S8Mwz_xD9d0=s16000';" alt=“Unlocking the “Munanugget Messiah” Sujimon in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. - 3”>

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Sega

Malone says a good example of this is the ‘evolutionary line’ for the lubed-up enemies in Ijincho. “In Japanese, you’ve got Lotion-Lathered (ローションまみれ), Lotion-User (ローション使い), and King Health (キングヘルス), ‘health’ in this case meaning ‘men’s health’, a euphemism in Japan for erotic massages. Nuanced, no?” Playing the game in English, you’ll encounter these Sujimon as City Slicker, Grease Monk, and Pornogra-Pharoah. “The first two enemies based on slipperiness, the final enemy based on pervert status, just like in Japanese. Kudos to our lead editor John Moralis for divining these strokes of brilliance; we tend to pull him off whatever project he’s on for this specific purpose.”

Given that Ichiban’s imagination is so deeply rooted in the Dragon Quest series, says Malone, the team often use those games as a guidepost. “Dark Santa/ダークサンタ becomes Krass Kringle. Implant Ogre /インプラントオーガ becomes Modgoblin. Needleraiser/ハリ・レイザー becomes Weltraiser.” The Needleraiser is a perfect example, says Malone, since ‘needle’ in Japanese is ‘hari’. It’s “phonetically similar to ‘hell’, and once you see the Sujimon in question, you know exactly where the inspiration came from.”

There are definitely moments though, says Malone, where a joke or culturally specific reference can leave the team deliberating how to render it in English. This becomes especially interesting when slang terms are involved. Malone gives the example of the opening scene of Lost Judgement. The hero, Yagami, is tailing a college kid who heads into a mysterious room referred to as “shikinoma” (しきのま). Yagami overhears this, so without actually reading the kanji, the meaning remains ambiguous.

“Being that the room is restricted access, and run by a shady-looking group, Yagami asks Kaito for his thoughts, and Kaito literally replies with: “Gambling halls are also called ‘shiki’ (敷), so ‘shiki no ma’ (敷の間) could be intended as a code word.” This literal translation, says Malone, is “a bit unwieldy in English”. The final edit ended up as follows:

“Well, a betting man would say he’s gambling. If it’s a members-only building with goons posted on every corner… I’m telling you now, the tatami room ain’t no tea shop.”

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Sega

“We could’ve played it straight, but we decided to read between the lines here and look at the purpose of the dialogue,” says Malone. “What we really needed was a clue about this room that wouldn’t break immersion, something our audience would recognize.” They settled on ‘tatami room’, which are still “fairly ubiquitous” in Japan. The word might also conjure a tea ceremony, “Another Japanese custom known worldwide.” Of course, says Malone, “a cho-han parlour might also utilise tatami to preserve that traditional feel, but again, only a gambler (or an ex-yakuza) would know something like that.”

It’s not only this sort of streetwise awareness the team have to be cognisant of with many of their characters. On top of regular colloquialisms, there are also region specific, and even yakuza specific terms and dialects.

“The yakuza do actually have a good deal of slang/jargon they use – at least in fiction; I’ve never talked to a real one,” says Sunstrum. “When coming into the Like A Dragon series for the first time it takes a bit of time to onboard these terms if you weren’t familiar with them already.” Sunstrum gives some examples: ‘Katagi’ is “someone who is not part of the yakuza; a civilian. Literally ‘upstanding person’,”; ‘Mikajime’ is protection money, literally ‘management/oversight’; ‘Shinogi’ is “a source of income, usually through dubious means; a racket,” literally, ‘something you do to endure hardship’.

“Some of these words we tend to translate one-to-one, like katagi becomes civilian, but others like shinogi have to be handled case-by-case,” says Sunstrum “In some lines we do use ‘racket’ or closely related words like ‘hustle’ or ‘scheme’, but in some cases we also used words like ‘operation’ or even ‘source of income’.”

Fans of Yakuza 0 will know that the story frequently switches between Tokyo and Osaka, the latter of which has its own distinctive dialect, called Kansai. “The most important thing about rendering a dialect is replicating its ‘flavour’ or ‘character’ in English in the same way it might be perceived in Japan,” says Malone. “For instance, Osaka dialect tends to be fast-paced and flamboyant while Hiroshima dialect tends to be slow with a country twang, though how exactly this comes across varies from person to person. We have style guides that lay out the details on how to achieve a baseline for these dialects in terms of word choice and grammar.”

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Sega

It’s impressive to think about the huge chain of talent and disciplines that even a single line goes down before it gets to us. Of course, it doesn’t end with the page. “As for Japanese-speaking Hawaiians, their Japanese resembled the usual Tokyo dialect – it’s the Hawaiian Pidgin and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi that we endeavoured to replicate. This could not have been done without the input of our voice acting talent in Honolulu, whose adaptations of the original script resulted in a vibrant mix of expressions that faithfully represents the local sound.”

Wherever the series ends up going next, though, both Ichiban and the series’ tributes to the medium of games itself likely won’t be far behind. “One example that comes to mind is the phrase 成り上がる (nariagaru), a single verb which when translated comes out to the wordy “to move up in social status,” says Sunstrum. “This phrase comes up a few times in Yakuza: Like A Dragon, notably the scene where Kasuga shares with Nanba his childhood dream of becoming a hero.” This scene, however, had strict timing requirements, so to convey this without getting overly wordy, “we drew a comparison between moving up in life and levelling up in a video game.” It’s something they were only able to pull off because of all the Dragon Quest references.

“We ended up using the same localization in Kasuga’s karaoke song, The Future I Dreamed Of. The chorus starts with “nariagaru ze”, which became ‘I’m gonna level up.”

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Video Game

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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The Electronic Wireless Show S3 Episode 4: Steam Next Fest recommendations and general indie game enthusiasm

We didn’t think there was much news happening this week and then loads did

Image credit:The Bworg

Here at the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we like indie games (inasmuch as “indie” can ever really be a helpful term; as the “good” doctor Peterson would no doubt say, what do words even mean? It’s bloody complicated!) and thus are using the news that Day Of The Devs is a non-profit (what does non-profit even mean? What does profit mean? It’s bloody complicated!) as a flimsy excuse to talk about indie games. Plus: Steam Next Fest kicks off next week, and there were indie game demos a-plenty, so we talk about some favourites of those, too. Plus: we’ve been playing JRPGs! And I was wrong, it’s episode 4. Please ignore every time I say it’s episode 5. I told you my notes aren’t to be trusted.

You can listen above, or on on Spotify , iTunes , Stitcher , or Pocket Casts . You can find the RSS feed here , and you can discuss the episode on our Discord channel , which has a dedicated room for podcast chat.

Music is by Jack de Quidt.

Links We record on a - wait we recorded this morning this time, things should broadly be as you remember them.

This week we’ve been playing Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth , Granblue Fantasy: Relink , and The Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle-earth 2 , for some reason.

Recommendations this week are for the YouTube channel RambleLime , Tank Tested and Tank Tested Two , and the book From Malin Head To Mizen Head .

Granblue Fantasy: Relink

PS4 , PS5 , PC

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Video Game

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king

PC

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