In a climactic scene of the original Final Fantasy VII, hero and amateur snowboarder Cloud Strife stands with his fellow adventurers as they are about to face a final, possibly fatal battle. With the steely glare of a polygonal warrior on the verge of killing god, he turns to them and says: “Let’s mosey!” It’s an unintentionally comical moment – an easy-going phrase, as if they’re all going to the shops and not jumping into a big glowing pit at the end of the world.
It’s a result of the RPG’s famously rushed translation. But maybe not in the way you think. A fan translation of Final Fantasy VII has now fixed a bunch of mistakes that were present in the original, and “let’s mosey” is one of them. The fix? Have Cloud say it way more often.
The fan rework of the script is the work of the Shinra Archaeology Department, a group of fans who have combed through the original Japanese with the aim of creating a mod that offers “a full retranslation of the game’s text that fixes mistakes in the original English translation; improves tonal accuracy using idiomatic language; and conforms to the localization choices of the Compilation and Remake trilogy where applicable.”
In other words, they are out to fix that bit where Aerith sees an unwell dude and says: “This guy are sick”. (In that case, they’ve gone with the simple: “The guy in there seems pretty ill.”) For the true localisation nerds among you, the modding team have shown all their working. You can see the full script and all it’s alterations in this Google sheets document.
As for the “let’s mosey” line, the solution is counter-intuitive but it checks out. Far from removing that one instance of Cloud’s casual call to saunter, this rework actually restores all the other moments when Cloud says it throughout the game, as it appears in the original Japanese. In the English version, it was most often simply translated as “let’s go”, making our blond buster boy’s fascination with moseying a kind of forgotten catchphrase. As a result, when he says it in this climactic moment, it makes no sense. To us English speakers, he’s never said it before.
For a fuller understanding of this moment, and why it’s jarring, I recommend this video series by Tim Rogers, former wordist of Kotaku, who also went through the entirety of Final Fantasy VII, pointing out many of the mistakes made by the original put-upon translator. Here’s the moment in question, so you don’t need to watch all those videos (but you could – they’re a lot of fun).
Anyway, if you like the idea of replaying the game with a new localisation effort, you can install the mod using the 7th Heaven Mod Manager, though you will need a different mod manager if you want to make it run on Steam Deck, as PC Gamer note in the article that brought it to my attention. Thanks PC friends!