You know what bugs me about fantasy and role-playing games? It’s not the flamboyant costumes, the excessive menu navigation, the battle systems, or any of that. No, it’s the stupid made-up words that seem to have no real-world derivation. It’s bad enough that there are tons of creatures pulled from actual mythology with ridiculous names that can at least be traced back to some damned linguist who was on a practical joking spree. We also have to suffer JRPG writers who attempt to make English-sounding words but wind up making pure nonsense.
It’s a lot easier these days to learn correct pronunciations thanks to voiced dialog. We had no such help back in the text-only years. Even “Bahamut,” a word with an extensive Arabic history, is moonspeak to all but the most anal language geeks. A lot of people still can’t pronounce “Ubisoft” correctly, so how would you expect anyone to verbally discuss a game likeFinal Fantasy VIIwithout mangling words like an uneducated hick?
