This piece plays only in one whole room which is a shame as it’s arguably the best track in game from this OST (when you complete the Joy Of Life puzzle in the painting room.) Pietoso means ‘pitiful’ in Italian.
FILE: 転生の儀のための覚書 - Reincarnation Ceremony Memorandum
localised as... “Notes on the Transfer Procedure”
Comparing the localisation, the original, and an unused variant
MIRROR - [x] [x]
Any use elsewhere without proper credit not permitted.
There are three distinct variants of this file!
When grabbing the raw data JP text for the files at my request, to save my poor eyes and hands from transcribing manually, the wonderful overseerfear discovered that in the file number markers a file existed in block #54 in Japanese that didn’t have an English equivalent.
To add more to this: it was a reworded variant of a file that exists in the game.
Beneath the cut is a look at the original script, a translation of it, the localisation, then the estranged unused variant that has a few unique changes that bring up a lot of questions.
I’m referring to it as the ‘Reincarnation Ceremony’…
Immortality was a desire which my poor father Spencer clung to in his desperate hope in the later years, but the study of “immortality” ended unfinished.
I took over his research, made technology it’s core, and have been repeating the experiment in order to improve the ‘spirit and memory transfer system.’
While obtaining some positive results, there are many unstable parts.
Known requirements at the moment are as follows:
1. The ‘Vessel’ must possess strong perseverance in it’s new mind and not be overcome with ‘fear’
2. In order to minimise the burden on the ‘Vessel’ it requires a period of stasis for six months after the transition.
It’s not long, but it’s given me time.
We have to complete this as soon as possible…
Official Localisation - Notes on the Transfer Procedure
The transfer will take place soon, and my success is high.
Spencer. You poor, pathetic old man. You spent your final years desperately searching for the secret to immortality. And you died while your research was still incomplete. But I have been continuing that research.
The body will age; this is an inescapable fact. But we can escape our death by transferring our mind into another vessel. All of my efforts have been invested into developing and refining this system.
I’ve had a few successes, but I still have so much more to do before I can consider my work complete.
As of now, I can confirm the following
1. The new vessel must be mentally strong, and be able to overcome any emotion of fear.
2. After the transfer it will take six months before the transferred mind can be stabilized. During this time the vessel should be protected at all costs.
Time is of the essence. I must work quickly.
For a start -- there’s a lot of padding in the localisation. I could even be more floral in my wording, providing more effluence like Capcom USA did, and not come up with that much extra padding! It’s close enough though, which is a small miracle considering everything else this translation project is dedicated toward fixing. But she does mention Spencer as her father, as we know adopted, in the JP and the connotation in how she words things toward him is nothing but spiteful. I don’t know why it was skipped over in English.
Then this comes into the picture and it makes things more... estranged.
It’s less like it was written by Alex herself. Time to take a look at... FILE #54
Spencer has been left behind, technology will lead to immortality.
That is, it allows the transfer of mental and memory mechanisms into another physical form.
It took a long time but I was able to produce the equipment to do this. However, even after experimenting many times using test subjects, it doesn’t work.
The test subjects could not survive the mental strain and would go into a frenzy before the memories could be loaded in.*
As a result, the following conditions were derived in regard to the transition of spirit and memory:
1. They have to have an incredibly strong spirit
2. To minimise the mental load, it requires a period of six months
… In these two, only t-Phobos is needed in order to measure the mental strength beyond the norm.
It would be just fate, that this virus has been created.
* This is the reason the Afflicted exist!
Dare I say it, it sounds almost like Albert’s wording -- the key use of the word fate is something he’s dropped a lot in the series in Japanese while Alex has strayed very far from mentioning anything remotely as such. The other thing of note: the final line is the writer directly stating that t-Phobos is the only thing needed in these two to measure the mental capacity load, meaning that the writer and presumably Alex are physically ready to handle such a transfer bodily otherwise.
