Details, details, details. And how I love picking them apart too much.

[chierii]

I got the special outfit in El Shaddai. I am taking advantage of it to watch the bosses...

...and to see if I can place the exact type of sandal Enoch wears, since nothing else is covering his feet with this outfit.

Also: the written language in the game seems oddly...consistent for what I originally assumed was a fictionalized text based on languages from that era and area.

So now I am looking closer at it to see if I can't at least identify it. (I think there is a shift in it between the start of the 300-year-skip and the end, as there well should be, which only makes me want to decipher it further.

And I start...with the stuff on this poster.

Which was doubtless designed by Armaros. Who is flashier than Enoch and his theatrical battling in absolutely every regard. So the letters are obviously stylized and not neat, simple print because that's not the way Armaros does things.

Most I can tell, it's largely based in Aramaic with some elements of modern Hebrew and Arabic.

Well, what else can you expect from a society that's been isolated for 300+ years? It might well be a waste of time, but I want to find that out for myself before dismissing it.

Because I am too into dissecting details.

Comments

[freebacon.livejournal.com]

>inb4 a michael jackson concert reference

[mature.livejournal.com]

Huh, I'd just assumed it was based on Dee's Enochian alphabet as a sly joke. o.O

[chierii]

Barely looks anything like it (though I wouldn't be surprised if there were some elements somewhere, there).

Though these examples don't quite match any alphabet, either - but how much of that is Armaros's stylization? I'll need to screenshot some plainer text somewhere.

I'm just dying to know what that poster says though.

[fluted.livejournal.com]

A-actually! I think it is an actual, made up language based on Japanese sounds/characters. That's why the ending "Enoch, thank you" sentence seems strangely short; it actually spells out "a-ri-ga-to-u".

I remember seeing a key for it somewhere... if you're still interested, I can try to find it again.

[chierii]

They did a damn good job of making it look like the languages from that time, then.

I remember seeing a font someone made on Pixiv that on first glance looked like it - but comparing it to the text ingame it didn't look anything like it at all.

(at least now I know I'll be translating to a language that has more resources available to work with. Phew.)

[fluted.livejournal.com]

YEAH, lol, I was convinced it was a real language for a while.

[chierii]

It really, really looks like Aramaic. XD

If you find that key again, definitely let me know! I'm such a detail nut; I want to know what these things say!

[fluted.livejournal.com]

Roger that! I'll keep an eye out. :D

[fluted.livejournal.com]

'sup!

I found this website that lets you click each character for the Japanese equivalent! Looks like someone already worked on doing this.

I, er, tried taking a look at that poster... but I couldn't figure out what it was saying. I don't know nearly enough Japanese to figure it out, sadly. I hope you have better luck than I do! 8D;;;

[chierii]

Ooh, nice! I'll just abuse the hell out of online resources and try to work something together. I don't know any Japanese either. XD

Thank you so much!

[chierii]

Main text is "Gig (single letter "ku", Google says click/network/clock/disk?) (unknown (kaminomangi)) Armaros"

Lower text is "(unknown (Idan(Eden?))) (unknown(Henoka)) Heaven"

At first I thought "Henoka" had to be Enoch's name because some alternate readings from Hebrew are Chanokh and Henoch. But the devs probably didn't think that far.

Ugh. I know no more about it than when I started.

[chierii]

WAIT NO we know even less about the main text. I misread one.

If that's a rendering of Armaros's name, it's a weird one. Somehow, I don't think "Amomarozu", close as it sounds, quite fits.

Why would they create a cipher and then not use it for coherent sentences? That makes no sense!

Argh. What am I missing?

[fluted.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Armaros' name would be "A-ru-ma-ro-su" (アルマロス)... so maybe it's a different word?

Or they just misspelled with their own cipher, LOL.

I'm sorry I can't be of much help -- earlier, when I gave it a crack, it was all in katakana and I can't make sense of that. If it had kanji or something I might have a better chance, but not straight up katakana. :3;;;

I'll keep another eye out and see if anyone has tried cracking the text in the game. I know there've been a couple attempts, but those were all from trailers before the game released.

[chierii]

I'm just working from a chart without any real knowledge myself.

Which is probably the reason I can't make heads or tails of it anyway.