#eo trivia

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Diving License

Endless Ocean, Nintendo Wii

(fun fact: i believe this is the only place in the entire series where you can see the flag of the pelago commonwealth! ...or maybe is it just the flag of manoa lai? i'm actually unsure)

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Equipping Gear - Nineball Island

Endless Ocean: Blue World, Nintendo Wii

so this wetsuit's description has a neat little easter egg! ...in every language but north american english, that is...

the "famous designer" mentioned here is explicitly mentioned to be my GOAT carina ortez, a client from eo1 (known everywhere outside of america as marina horta)!!

she's a fashion designer in that game, so it's super neat to be able to wear some of her work in the sequel!

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Ask and you shall receive, anon...

Not too long ago, I made a post referencing the interesting tendency EO1 and 2 have when it comes to picking species. Of course, we all know there's a little developer favoritism at play with how many Japanese species are picked, but there's also several out-of-place Atlantic species as well.

Have you ever stopped to wonder what the North Atlantic right whale is doing in Manoa Lai (a fictionalized version of Palau)? Or who invited the Atlantic bluefin tuna to the Mediterranean? These Atlantic creatures seemed fishy (haha) to me, especially considering how most of these species were altered in Luminous to match their Pacific counterparts... which invited me to to a little digging. The results of which have lead me believe that the developers were thinking of Pacific species this whole time, but due to some goofies, the localizers were given faulty data that led them astray... leading to a few blunders that took nearly 20 years to correct.

To start off, I want you to picture in your head a robin. I'm serious! I promise this is related! Close your eyes and think of that cute little bird with the red breast feathers.

...Aren't you glad I made you do that?

If you're living in North America, you likely pictured the bird on the left, Turdus migratorius. But if you're in Europe, you probably pictured the bird on the right, Erithacus rubecula.

As you can tell by their body plans, these are completely unrelated birds. However, languages tend to prioritize the creatures local to the areas in which people speak that language, giving them short, snappy names so locals can refer to them with ease. And sometimes these names overlap! In the case of the robin, this is because European settlers saw American robins and they reminded them of the little guys they have back at home, and so gave them matching common names.

European settlers did this all the time and I hate them for it. Anyway.

This happens with every language ever, including Japanese! This is why in Animal Crossing for example, the "sea slug" you can catch in-game is just named "sea slug" and not "festive sea slug" when other fish and sea creatures have more specific names. In Japan, the festive sea slug is considered the default sea slug, so there's no need to specify!

...Can you see where I'm headed with this?

In a game like Endless Ocean, where Latin names are provided for each creature, it's not like the developers knew all these Latin names by heart. They usually knew the names of creatures in their native tongue, then just went on Google, searched that name, and picked a Latin name based on what FishBase or Wikipedia have to say.... seemingly with all the precision of a blindfolded child hitting a piñata. This can lead to errors in which a creature's common name used in-game is correct, but the Latin name chosen is incorrect... which spirals out of control when localizing the game, since the localization team chooses which common name they use based purely on the Latin name.

As a side note, for those wondering why the spot-billed pelican was "replaced" by the Australian pelican from EO1 to EO2, this is why!

You can check out this breakdown on its EO wiki page to learn more - I wrote it myself, so I feel comfortable stealing from it lol.

This is also what happened with all those conspicuously Atlantic species. I'll give you an example that we can trace back ourselves, so you can see what I mean!

"セミクジラ" is the name used in the Japanese version of EO and EO2 for the "North Atlantic" right whale. Let's pop it into the Google machine and see what we find, shall we?

Ah okay. That's simple enough!

If we take a look at the Japanese names for all the members of the right whale family, we can see that the North Pacific right whale has the simplest name by far. Its name is the catch-all name for right whales, because it's considered the default right whale over there.

So the developers just biffed the Latin name, and the localizers didn't put much stock into what Japanese common names were used, only looking at that incorrect Latin name. A small mistake snowballs internationally into a bigger one, et voila, we have an Atlantic creature on vacation to the Coral Triangle!

We can do the same background check on the "Atlantic" bluefin tuna:

The only example of an Atlantic species being intended to be Atlantic in EO1 is with the Atlantic tarpon, which while it has an Indo-Pacific relative, the name used in Japanese is for the Atlantic species, and the two are fairly different looking... plus as we know, they definitely used an image of an Atlantic tarpon. They just included it bc they knew it's badass, and wanted to include a cool ancient fish in their ancient ruins. Which ngl... respect!

EO2 of course added some more Atlantic creatures, this time intentionally to populate their Arctic stage. However, they didn't really go out of their way to correct the species from EO1 that were misidentified, and it took until Luminous for these creatures to finally embrace who they were always meant to be.

It's so interesting that we can trace these oddities back to the source though, right? All of your favourite games are held together by duct tape and prayers, and personally, I always find the imperfect human element most interesting about the game-making process. I hope you found it interesting too! :D

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Tool Icons

Endless Ocean, Nintendo Wii

fun fact: the map icon here is unused! it indicates that at one point in development, opening the map would have been done through the tool menu rather than just pressing a button

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Tags

Endless Ocean Luminous, Nintendo Switch

what is the pattern in this eclectic group of creature tags? well... they all have internal memos connected to them which imply they were meant to depict a creature that wasn't included in the final game!

 The tiger puffer tag's memo reads "イソギンチャク", or "sea anemone"

 The Kidako moray tag's memo reads "ウミウシ", or "sea slug"

 The longtooth grouper's tag memo reads "グッピー", or "guppy"

 The Japanese spider crab tag's memo reads "クリオネ", or "sea angel"

 The giant isopod tag's memo reads "タコ", or "octopus"

 The Moorish idol tag's memo reads "ヒトデ", or "starfish"

 The red sea bream tag's memo reads "ほら貝", or "Triton's trumpet" (a large species of sea snail)

 The polka-dot stingray tag's memo reads "ホタテ貝", or "Japanese scallop"

 The salmon tag's memo reads "レアクリオネ(青)" or "rare sea angel (blue)"

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Wreck of the HD-9 - Zahhab Region Depths

Endless Ocean: Blue World, Nintendo Wii

so i didn't figure this out until fairly recently, but my dear friend who's much smarter than me tells me that the hd-9 was based on the real life dsv alvin! it's basically the most famous deep-sea submersible out there... you can't see it in the hd-9 photo, but they both even have the same red thingy sticking out the top!

it's an incredibly important vessel when it comes to scientific advancements in deep sea research, being active for over 60 years, so considering it was around at the time matthias would have taken his... "trip"... it makes sense they would have used it as inspiration :)

...but i do find it a little funny they are basically one to one, meaning jean-eric somehow had the money to get his hands on US navy grade ocean tech

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The Table - Nineball Island

Endless Ocean: Blue World, Nintendo Wii

may i draw your attention to the blue can on the table there. it's "NANCY DRINK"! cute little detail, right?

well what if i told you in the japanese version, it's fucking "NANCY BEER"

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Unused Interaction Particles

Endless Ocean, Nintendo Wii

these were meant to appear in little bubbles when interacting with a creature, with each one corresponding to certain friendship point thresholds!

you can see it briefly in this trailer shown at e3 2007, at 0:23 :)

they also go unused in the files of eo2! though that doesn't really mean anything, bc they left a bunch of eo1 junk in there lol