What are your thoughts on the voice acting?

[IzumiRaito]

JP voice acting is quite nice, but the problem is there is not enough of it.

[Doki]

While I appreciate the edits made to things like quest titles and such to make them humorous puns and whatnot, I do NOT like when they totally change dialog. "Kore wa..." does not equal "Gods forfend..."

[Vilhem]

This isn't a translation. It's a localization. If you don't know the difference, go look it up on Google.

This isn't anime where they're just doing a mere translation.

[Bocajo]

This isn't a translation. It's a localization. If you don't know the difference, go look it up on Google.

This isn't anime where they're just doing a mere translation.

Sometimes it seems rather arbitrary though. I was just playing through the story recently with japanese audio and when they are talking about the 1.0 events the japanese keeps saying "Go Nen mae" or "5 years ago" while the English never mentions how long ago it was during these scenes.

[Jinko]

Sometimes it seems rather arbitrary though. I was just playing through the story recently with japanese audio and when they are talking about the 1.0 events the japanese keeps saying "Go Nen mae" or "5 years ago" while the English never mentions how long ago it was during these scenes.

They do in Gridania.

[IndigoHawk]

The English voice acting is good, and I'm glad to see that FFXIV is doing more voice acting for the story.
I know some people only like Japanese voice acting, but I appreciate both the original and the localization effort.
It makes the game more accessible and shows commitment and appreciation for fans around the world.

[LineageRazor]

This isn't a translation. It's a localization. If you don't know the difference, go look it up on Google.

This isn't anime where they're just doing a mere translation.

If you think they don't localize anime, you don't watch much anime. XD

Pretty much ALL contemporary anime is localized, not just a straight translation. Part of this is by necessity, to better match the lip-flaps of the on-screen characters, but a lot of it has to do with finding local functional substitutes for obscure Japanese culture references.

Whether localization is done poorly or well varies by show (and by your own personal opinion), but it's definitely there.

On the topic of film actors making better voice actors, that's not necessarily true, either. Film actors are used to expressing themselves through facial expressions and body movements, as well as through vocal inflection. For local productions, like Disney films, the animators are free to animate the characters to better follow the film actors' performances. There is no such luxury for dubbed shows - big film actors that sign on for a show like Princess Mononoke (or any Japanese video game) tend to be amatures compared to folks who spend a lot more time in the voice industry, and require many more takes and a lot of coaching to get the job done.

[Arkghyom]

Terrible. Time to hire new people!

[Vilhem]

If you think they don't localize anime, you don't watch much anime. XD

Pretty much ALL contemporary anime is localized, not just a straight translation. Part of this is by necessity, to better match the lip-flaps of the on-screen characters, but a lot of it has to do with finding local functional substitutes for obscure Japanese culture references.

Whether localization is done poorly or well varies by show (and by your own personal opinion), but it's definitely there.

I don't watch anime anymore, but yes I do know some of it is localized (mainly the dubs). It's a necessary process, something people (obviously in this thread) don't understand. There's all this talk about "original intent" etc yada yada, yet they don't speak a lick of JP to reliably tell the difference and rely on "subs".

It also amuses me how these same people claim the JPs do a better job of voice acting, when they're not familiar with the language at all. In the case of FFXIV, all four "dubs" (look I used another anime buzzword!) are horribly produced, but the fault doesn't lie with the actors, its the cutscene designs themselves. Some of this is indirectly mentioned by previous posts in this thread: spoken dialogue not matching body movement, odd silences, lip movements not matching ANY of the audios (not even JP!).

They're reading text-based designed cutscenes, so of course they're VERY limited on what kind of acting they can do. This is producing backwards from a normal pipeline: record voices first then animate characters to fit said dialogue.

Fun-fact: All four "dubs" were produced at the same time, so the JP isn't "original".

[Gaddes]

This isn't a translation. It's a localization. If you don't know the difference, go look it up on Google.

This isn't anime where they're just doing a mere translation.

Anime is localized... perhaps some dub jobs are shit, but the vast majority is localized. One of the best examples I watched recently is the Steins;Gate series, where they localized it to the point where even the jokes and references were adapted to make sense to a western audience, it was very well done.

Back to OP, the weird slang that the characters use in Eorzea isn't totally offputting to me, but the lack of quality with the english voice actors is. It could be a case of poor voice directors, or the actors themselves just aren't up to snuff. Urianger's voice actor is the same as Fenris from Dragon Age 2, and in DA2 he is lightyears better, so maybe the director's also at fault.