The Hawk Rune Mystery (or What's a Boronda Hawk anyway?)

Questions about the locations mentioned in the series; and those about the backstory not seen in the games.
Post Reply
User avatar
Raww Le Klueze
Global Admin
Posts: 1915
Joined: Sat Jun 26, 2004 1:38 am

The Hawk Rune Mystery (or What's a Boronda Hawk anyway?)

Post by Raww Le Klueze »

So here's a mystery.

In Japanese the Great Hawk rune is オオタカ which reads õtaka. The Boranda Hawk is 大鷹 which reads, get this, õtaka (though read seperately it's dai taka).

So I'm thinking is this a case of higher level command rune? Like Wind -> Cyclone. But then you realize that the two runes do the exact same thing: 0.5 dmg to all enemies. Except B.Hawk can only be used once per battle.

Why? Two runes, same name, do the same thing, in the same game. One is slightly worse but both are kind of useless anyway. Makes no sense to me. Did they forget they had one already?

And then there's the translation. õtaka in either spelling means Goshawk, which is a type of hawk. Bit esoteric so let's settle for Hawk. Fine so far. Now it gets weird.
Going back to reading 大鷹 seperately it comes out 大 = big 鷹 = hawk. We can easily stretch that to Great Hawk. You can seperate the kana one in a similair way too so no clearer there.

So assuming the devs placed some importance on B.Hawk because they used kanji maybe you could go with Hawk and Great Hawk rune, but Suikoden 2 already established the Great Hawk name for the kana spelling. So Great Hawk and Greater Hawk maybe...?

But still, why? Why does Jacques have a unique rune that's the same as a common one?

And what's a Boronda Hawk? As far as I can tell there's no such hawk, boranda, boronda, whatever, all google suggests is that is a place in California. We have enough translation problems without the translators making up words from nothing. Did we really go from esoteric to nonsense and think that was better?
Doctorum Non Urina Singulus.
Antimatzist
Posts: 2770
Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2008 9:48 am
Location: Germany, yeah baby
Contact:

Re: The Hawk Rune Mystery (or What's a Boronda Hawk anyway?)

Post by Antimatzist »

Great question.

Now I find out: The school mascot of Boronda Meadows, an elementary school in California, is a hawk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boronda_Meadows

Maybe one of the translators went to that school?

Suikoden has a strange habit with Kanji/Katakana anyway. Iirc Suikoden Tactics uses different spellings for some runes (I think the Swallow Rune is an example of that).
User avatar
Pyriel
Webmaster
Posts: 1227
Joined: Wed Aug 18, 2004 1:20 pm

Re: The Hawk Rune Mystery (or What's a Boronda Hawk anyway?)

Post by Pyriel »

One of the games I worked on ages ago left various translation notes and even arguments amongst the translators embedded in the scripts and a few other files. I sort of wish they were all like that. Maybe they flipped a coin or had a contest and named it after an employee. Something like Kurt Zisa in Kingdom Hearts.
User avatar
Raww Le Klueze
Global Admin
Posts: 1915
Joined: Sat Jun 26, 2004 1:38 am

Re: The Hawk Rune Mystery (or What's a Boronda Hawk anyway?)

Post by Raww Le Klueze »

Antimatzist wrote:Suikoden has a strange habit with Kanji/Katakana anyway. Iirc Suikoden Tactics uses different spellings for some runes (I think the Swallow Rune is an example of that).
Yeah, but this is the only rune(s) I know of that do that within the same game, you have both Great Hawk and Boronda Hawk in Suikoden III.
Doctorum Non Urina Singulus.
Antimatzist
Posts: 2770
Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2008 9:48 am
Location: Germany, yeah baby
Contact:

Re: The Hawk Rune Mystery (or What's a Boronda Hawk anyway?)

Post by Antimatzist »

Yeah I understand that they needed to somehow differentiate between both in the game, but I really have no idea what it could mean. i always though it was bad romanization of.. ... I don't know. Blonda!? But I didn't know that the names are identical in Japanese.
Virande
Posts: 38
Joined: Sat Oct 06, 2007 5:36 am

Re: The Hawk Rune Mystery (or What's a Boronda Hawk anyway?)

Post by Virande »

maybe they are something like twin rune, which one of them needs some special requirement to get it, like Falcon, you need to earn it... though in falcon case, each users have a slightly different effects, maybe in this hawk rune, it's a coincidence they have a same effect... but it think there must be a reason about this great and boronda hawk created separately...
Wolkendrache
Forum Moderator
Posts: 869
Joined: Sun May 18, 2014 2:43 pm

Re: The Hawk Rune Mystery (or What's a Boronda Hawk anyway?)

Post by Wolkendrache »

Alright, so Boronda is an addition by the translators. Both runes have the same name in Japanese, except that one is written in Kanji, the other in Katakana. We’ve seen this a lot but this is the only case that it happens within the same game, right? So obviously the devs wanted to make a distinction, but what did they have in mind?

1. These are different runes with the same name
The swallow rune is probably an example. Genshu’s (or Richard’s) and Kyril’s runes are totally different. You might say that it’s because the spells in Tactics are different, but don’t forget that Genshu’s rune attack is basically the 2nd lvl spell from the Tactics viper rune, except for the cheesy samurai animation. Suikosource even lists them as 2 different runes. However, I think the two great hawk runes are too similar, so…

2. These are the same rune with different effects
But then, what could be the reasons for them working different? One could be proficiency or physical preconditions like in the case of L.C.Chan’s and Wakaba’s white tiger rune. L.C.Chan, the martial arts master, has only a 20% chance of getting unbalanced from using it, while teenage student Wakaba has 50%. However, it would mean that since Jacques is more proficient, he can use it only once, and that doesn’t make sense (even though according to suikosource his rune hits all enemies while the other rune only hits all enemies within a certain area). Another reason could be the uniqueness of Jacques weapon. His bow gun seems to be similar enough to bows and crossbows so that it’s possible to make the great hawk rune work, but it’s too different to make it work the same way. Finally, perhaps his rune is a modified version of the great hawk rune, I mean specifically modified by some army rune master. This would explain why it is fixed on Jacques, and it doesn’t exclude the above mentioned reasons (character proficiency + weapon uniqueness).
"Within the four seas, all men are brothers" Shuihu Zhuan
User avatar
wataru14
Guide Writer
Posts: 715
Joined: Thu Aug 05, 2010 10:37 am
Location: Las Vegas

Re: The Hawk Rune Mystery (or What's a Boronda Hawk anyway?)

Post by wataru14 »

Wolkendrache wrote:according to suikosource his rune hits all enemies while the other rune only hits all enemies within a certain area
I think that's the key difference. Jacques can hit anyone anywhere, so he only gets one use out of it. His weapon is identical statistically to a regular bow in terms of both damage growth and weight, it's just called a "bow gun" while all the other archers have "bows."
KFCrispy
Global Admin
Posts: 6174
Joined: Wed Jun 30, 2004 3:29 pm

Re: The Hawk Rune Mystery (or What's a Boronda Hawk anyway?)

Post by KFCrispy »

i seem to recall the Great Hawk Rune having a 0.4x damage multiplier but Suikosource lists it as always having 0.5x... hmmm
Post Reply