rippers (enemies)

[Icedfate]

I noticed that there are 2 different kinds of enemies, both called rippers.

one is a stronger version of the spine hounds that breathes fireballs and the other is an insect mantis spider thing creature.

that seems like a weird oversight, like they couldn't think of another name?

I can hear the NPC's telling their trainess "look out for the rippers out there. make sure you know what you are getting into with these rippers, because you see, there are rippers, and then there are rippers. rippers will breathe fire on you and ruin your day, but rippers will suddenly burrow up from the ground and slash you with their sickle claws"


I'm thinking that the insect things should have been called "reapers" because of their sickle claws.
I dunno if this was just a situation of lazy monster naming or if they wanted to call them reapers but somebody just screwed up. . .

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

That is likely, but probably a bit more complicated.

The developers could tell, but they don't participate here. So:

Keep in mind that the original game was developed in German language, and the English localization was done by an outsourcing studio. Germans have a bad habit of using and/or adapting some English words, and ELEX wasn't spared either. The creature names "Slugbeast" and "Ripper" exist in the German game according to https://elex.fandom.com/de/wiki/Gegner
There is no second dog-style "Ripper", because it's called "Reißer", and its closest and obvious English translation is "ripper" as in "to rip", "to tear", "to snap". "Snapper" and "Reaper" would have been choices, too.

Since, as you mention, the game uses these creature names also in various texts and voice-over, translation work would need to touch all occurences (depending on implementation details, but I doubt the game uses links/references to a creature name instead of copying the name) and then do the voice-over. Perhaps the translators had replaced the "Reißer" with "Ripper" everywhere before noticing that it reuses the same name for two beasts. In that case, not really an option to redo the voice-over.

Could be anything like an oversight, time pressure, unimaginativeness, sloppily done search'n'replace work, whatever.

[Icedfate]

yeah, I saw lore in a Sandy Guide talking about the "rippers" , referring to the insect version, it says
"six legs, hard shell, long claws, well you've got a ripper"

this was more me just expressing an opinion that "reaper" would have been a better name for the insect creatures. I suggested the name "reaper" because it sounds really close and they have mantis claws which are like sickles.

they could leave the dog like ones the same.

I know the game is already 3 years old and will likely not get changed.