Talk:List of enemies with different localization names

From Dragon Quest Wiki

OK, this page might get a little crowded, but I think it will be a big advantage to have somewhere where all the enemy name changes are listed. Here's a list of why I think this page is needed:

  • Consensus on official names of enemies on this wiki, aka most recent release
  • Consensus on enemy family names, most of which still need to be determined
  • A map for ensuring that redirects exist for all previous localizations of an enemy name
  • Makes it easier to track down what an enemy was renamed in a remake
  • A place to discuss/show enemy relationships across games, right now it's mostly focused on individual games
  • A place to list name localizations which may be the most recent release, but still not the official name (example: Dragon Quest II GBC monster names shortened due to display constraints)
  • A place to see which enemies appear in which games without looking at each enemy page individually

If the page gets too big, then we could probably split it up (A-M, N-Z) or something. Thoughts? --Pagoda 14:16, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

Additionally, there are some things to be decided. For example, which games should be listed? Only main series games? Only official releases (i.e. no DQ5SNES)? Only games where the name is different in some way? If we wanted to do the latter, we could do something like:

  • slime (DQ1NES - DQ5DS)
  • babble (DQ1NES - DQ4NES) - bubble slime (DQ4DS - DQ5DS)

--Pagoda 14:24, March 12, 2010 (UTC)


Triple post! Just wanted to add that I don't think I'm a big fan of listing the games in the form of (DQ4DS - DQ5DS) mainly because you wouldn't know exactly which games the enemy appears in. For example if an enemy appeared in DQ1NES and then doesn't appear again until DQ4NES, you wouldn't know that unless you listed each separately. --Pagoda 18:05, March 12, 2010 (UTC)

Monster families[edit]

It might be better to list enemies by the families indicated in-game (slimes, material, undead, etc) rather than basing families off the palette swaps of what is perceived as the base monster. While the DQ games are a cornucopia of palette swaps, that doesn't mean it would be good to organize them by this. One point is to say this: if you were to base families off of the base monster, barring the dragonlord, than the original Dragon Quest would have 13 families: slimes, drackies, ghosts, magicians, druins, drolls, skeletons, scorpions, werewolves, dragons, knights, chimaeras, and golems. This is more than the number of families in Dragon Quest Monsters 2, one of the highest thus far, I want to say, which I believe are slime, beast, undead, aquatic, bug, bird, dragon, material, demon, and demon lord. I think the game that categorizes monsters using the most families would be VIII.

The thing with using this system, however, would be that some monsters would exist between more than one family. Dancing flames, for example, are elementals in Dragon Quest VIII and Caravan Heart, but are material monsters in Joker. While it would mean having repetition of monsters in a large list containing large families, it would keep things simpler in regards to the number of families present. If I were to go off of memory, than that'd make the families used as follows...

  • Slime
  • Dragon
  • Undead
  • Humanoid
  • Material
  • Elemental
  • Machine
  • Bird
  • Bug (or Insect, I can't quite recall the name used in VIII...)
  • Nature
  • Beast
  • Demon
  • Aquatic
  • Other (demon lords [final bosses/major bosses, etc], enemies not belonging to other familes [Marcello, Evil Jessica, etc], this could also include the Incarni from Joker)

While I can see the point in having families based off of identical monsters, doing so seems a touch obsolete when the Related Monster/Enemies section in enemy articles is there to list monsters that look nearly the same (slime and she-slime) or share close ties (slime and king slime). These are just my thoughts on the matter, though, and it might be worse to use few large families instead of many small families, yo. --PantheonSasuke 02:09, March 14, 2010 (UTC)

Enemy list organization[edit]

Those are good ideas Pantheon. I've been learning a lot as I have been putting together the information so far. Here is what I propose:

We should have one central list which contains links to more specific lists. This list should probably be named Lists of enemies. The specific enemy lists would then be broken up into:

  • Alphabetically, probably have a single list page for each letter
  • By family, following the families you listed above, one list for each
  • By game, the existing list of enemies by game articles would be cleaned up obviously

I can see by the sheer number of "arbitrary families" in the series that naming them all is not realistic. What you suggest is a much better idea. I assume then that each enemy article should be a category matching the family? (i.e. material family)

In addition, all of the lists I outline above would use only the official enemy names for this wiki. I think it will be good to eliminate as much ambiguity as possible. Therefore there would be another list called something like [[List of enemies with different localization names]] which would contain a list of only those enemies who have had various localizations. This would exclude all the enemies which only appear in a single game. This would provide a single place where we can see which enemies have been renamed and ensure that the correct redirects are in place. It would also serve as the only place where names other than the official one would appear. --Pagoda 03:12, March 14, 2010 (UTC)

I think I follow what you're saying there in the last paragraph. Basically, it'd be a page that would have the names of any enemies as translated by fans, right? And sorry for the lateness in replying, various preoccupations going on at the mo'. --PantheonSasuke 01:49, March 16, 2010 (UTC)