For those of us who prefer the Japanese VO.

At least it wouldn't be as bad as someone trying to learn English with this game.

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Originally Posted by Kiara

I agree as well. I love the Japanese Dialog w/ English Subtitles option. :) Much better.

But as Rice mentioned, a more realistic solution might be requesting SE considers:

* Improving their Lip-Syncing System, to match the VO spoken.

I remember hearing about some games that have created systems where the Lip Syncing is changed on the faces / lips depending on the VO being spoken (so it makes it a better experience in various languages around the world). That right there, even with the creative license and not-completely-literal Translations that we get, would alleviate the problem you say.

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I, uh, don't think that's what he's particularly complaining about in this situation?
It's a fair issue, and I do believe that in localisations more effort should be put into re-syncing lips to match voices so that they're not so constrained, but the OP is talking about how what he hears is sometimes not matching what he's reading, because theyboth stem from different languages and thus aren't going to be exactly the same.

It's not a big issue at all.

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Originally Posted by ServantNaoya

At least it wouldn't be as bad as someone trying to learn English with this game.

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Lol I was going to mention that, too. I can only imagine....

I'm not native in Japanese nor in English so I used to see a 2nd choice of translated subtitles in many foreign films or animes. This, however, might require a lot of additional work so I fully understand why SE doesn't make it. I agree with Alberel that sometimes it will cause slight diffrences between the Japanese plot and the English plot, even some may lead to different understanding of characters:

(2.4 spoiliers inside!)

after Moen died, the JP voice of Minfilia said that she feels so sorry because it was kinda because of her. In the English text, she was rather looking forward and appreciating Moen's efforts.

This interests me because it somehow shows what kind of experience are players with different cultural backgrounds expecting (such as how the story plots go on differently comparing WoW with FF14).

Btw, though lots of the JP VAs in this game are my favorite, I must say that I appreciate English text more for those "large" scenes because the Japanese version is just... too "Chuu-ni".

Japanese voices don't match the lip sync either :(
Way better matching though, yes.

Even understanding the reason for the changes, it's always jarring when you hear the JP audio mention someone by name and it not show up at all in the NA translation text.

While literal translations carry over meaning faithfully, it is nothing but a jumbled up mess because the context/culture is different. You'll get awkward and clunky sentence structures that don't fit very well in long speeches. A good translation is one where the text seems as if it's originally written in your language.

The English versions add a bit more variety and oftentimes produce a slightly higher sense of eloquence than what the Japanese text can do. Take Alphinaud's speeches for example. The localization team did a great job making sure that he speaks like high royalty, twisting his words like skilled diplomats do. That's something that the JP version is unable to deliver.

It would be much better if you learnt Japanese (with FFXIV, it is definitely N2 and above). You'll get the best of both worlds!

Looking at this thread, I became curious and decided to watch a couple of cutscenes in all the languages to see what all the fuss is about. By the way, these were the cutscenes that I watched:

The Black Wolf's Ultimatum #1
A Wild Rose by Any Other Name #1
A Hero in the Making #8
Lady of The Vortex #8

And this is how my preferences went (keep in mind that I don't know enough German or French to make a good judge of acting, so with those, I just went with how I thought the voices fit the characters):

Merlwyb: ENG
Kan-E: ?
Nanamo: JP
Raubahn: FR
Minfilia: ?
Yda: JP
Papalymo: ?
Thancred: JP
Y'shtola: ENG
Urianger: FR
Tataru: FR
Alphinaud: ?
Alisaie: JP
Cid: ENG
Gaius: ALL (that helmet forgives pretty much anything)
Lahabrea: ENG

Normally, I have it on English, and will probably continue with that, but I agree that there needs to be better lip-syncing (especially for French and German, at some points they were speaking with firmly closed mouths).

As for subtitles, there are a few places where it's pretty different, a few places where it's different but the spirit is the same, and a very few places where it's very different. Personally, I believe it would be pretty hard to justify the extra work to add the option of literal subtitles, especially as the current ones serve pretty well most of the time.

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Originally Posted by Aphel

The English versions add a bit more variety and oftentimes produce a slightly higher sense of eloquence than what the Japanese text can do. Take Alphinaud's speeches for example. The localization team did a great job making sure that he speaks like high royalty, twisting his words like skilled diplomats do. That's something that the JP version is unable to deliver.

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This is also the reasoning for the localization choice on most of the characters using a lot of Middle English words. It's meant to give flavor and lore to this being Eorzea and not "Earth with a slightly fancy coat of paint over it."

Waste of resources.

I never saw the appeal of japanese VA as well, but that's just me. Maybe if I actually spoke japanese and could understand what they are saying I'd be fine with it, but I'm not sure why some people prefer to listen to a language they can't understand. Especially when english sounds perfectly fine in this game.