So... Merlwyb will be voiced

[Abriael]

I don't mind the choices, and to each his own of course, but those that hold Japanese to some high pedestal really need to examine just why they have a weeabo fascination with it.

Or maybe some (that have actually worked in the voice acting industry) know how to distinguish good voice acting from mediocre voice acting, and recognize that Japan simply has a much more solid tradition for voice overs that the US and Britain do, resulting in much higher quality overall.

Why not praise the upcoming French or German voice overs? What's that? You don't speak those languages, so you don't care? Alright, I can accept the indifference.

Having worked with voice acting in French and German as well (as several of the DVD productions I worked on were tri-lingual for the continental European market), there isn't much praise to be done towards the voice acting efforts normally done in those countries. They have a very strong subtitling tradition, that in turn prevented them from developing an equally strong voice acting school.

Maybe you should just realize that there are *objective* reasons why Japanese (or Italian for instance) voice overs are in general superior to American, British, German or French ones.

When it comes to art (and voice acting is an art) tradition plays a big role, and Japan has a much more solid tradition than the other countries mentioned. Conversely, they have a weaker tradition in live movie/TV acting than the US (for instance) and for the same reasons it shows.

On top of that there's an enormous difference in average budgets and in timings for voice acting (the time allocated to try each line is very important to final quality, and it's directly related to budget), as its given culturally a different importance, contributing to a large difference in technical quality.

There's also another important factor related to video games. In Japan voice acting video games (and anime) isn't seen as a secondary or less important job as it is in the west. When you check the cast of the average game in Japan you'll find a lot of star-level actors in it, because doing voice over for games (or anime) is considered a top-tier job that star-level actors don't shun.

In the west most star-level actors consider working on games beneath their level, so they won't do it, or will require a steep budget increase, which is why in 99.99% of cases when a Japanese game comes to the west star-level actors with a massive experience that acted in the original are replaced with mediocre actors or inexperienced ones at the beginning of their career, resulting in an evident decrease in quality.

Before you go ahead and call it "weaboo!", you may as well realize that you're being much more irrational than the average "weaboo".

For the record, I thought the 1.0 voice acting was done very well. The only two problems I had were the faux-Brit accents (Crispin Freeman/Thancred, looking at you >_>) and the forced cracky lalafell voices of Papalymo and the miner twins. Mind you, the acting itself was great, just not the cracky falsetto-like tone XD

Apologies if this is all over the place, typing from phone. x.x

The English voice acting of 1.0 was rather sloppy, with intentions and accents all over the place. Most probably it was rushed.

[Pancakes]

Having worked with voice acting in French and German as well (as several of the DVD productions I worked on were tri-lingual for the continental European market), there isn't much praise to be done towards the voice acting efforts normally done in those countries. They have a very strong subtitling tradition, that in turn prevented them from developing an equally strong voice acting school.

Maybe you should just realize that there are *objective* reasons why Japanese (or Italian for instance) voice overs are in general superior to American, British, German or French ones.

While I'm generally on ur side, this argument is kina invalid. When I've been in Germany I remember every movie being dubbed. Same goes with France as far as I know. So I'm pretty sure they've got some strong dubbing culture as well ;o

[Abriael]

While I'm generally on ur side, this argument is kina invalid. When I've been in Germany I remember every movie being dubbed. Same goes with France as far as I know. So I'm pretty sure they've got some strong dubbing culture as well ;o

Voice acting culture isn't built in a year, or ten years, or even twenty years. France and Germany pretty much stuck with subtitling for a vast majority of content for a very long period before moving to voice acting.

On the other hand Japan and Italy moved to voice acting very early in the history of audio-visual production, creating a much stronger voice acting tradition over time, for which they reap the benefits now in terms of quality. other countries are playing catch-up.

[Felis]

Having worked with voice acting in French and German as well (as several of the DVD productions I worked on were tri-lingual for the continental European market), there isn't much praise to be done towards the voice acting efforts normally done in those countries. They have a very strong subtitling tradition, that in turn prevented them from developing an equally strong voice acting school.

In germany you find subs only on DVD, Blueray and games .
Every serie, every movie, every documentation is dubbed in the german TV, no matter from which country.

The problem is only that the best voice actors works for the movies, while for animes the studios hire cheaper voice actors.

[Kallera]

In germany you find subs only on DVD, Blueray and games .
Every serie, every movie, every documentation is dubbed in the german TV, no matter from which country.

The problem is only that the best voice actors works for the movies, while for animes the studios hire cheaper voice actors.

Is that why Spanish dubs tend to have voices that sound too similar?

[Abriael]

In germany you find subs only on DVD, Blueray and games .
Every serie, every movie, every documentation is dubbed in the german TV, no matter from which country.

The problem is only that the best voice actors works for the movies, while for animes the studios hire cheaper voice actors.

i'm not talking about nowadays, but a couple decades ago.

[Loggos]

On another note, to be honest I'm hoping for a feature that is not very flattering to SE and their voice acting efforts but I really hope we'll be able to turn of voices but keep the background noises, as we had it in the 1.0-CSes.
I am really sorry that I sound so ignorant here and I do appreciate SE's efforts but with many of the characters being around for a year or more I have already formed quite an accurate picture of them, also in voice and speaking manners.
I don't really want to mute everything (like turning off my speakers) because just having music and background sounds already helped me a lot appreciating the cutscenes. I actually heard all the relevant voices/dialogues in my head.
I'm hoping for this because in some primary cases (when it comes to chars that I like a lot like Merlwyb, Kan-E-Senna, Y'shtola or Raubahn) I already have voices in my head that fit my understanding of the characters perfectly (perfect for me).
Not to have anybody dub them might therefore stabilise my immersion much more than having voice actors. Because if the voice actors - and they might do an awesome job nonetheless - are off too much of how I imagine a character to be then it would just sort of break my image of the character and with this break my immersion (yes, that sounds really comical but as sad and corny as it is - it's true v.v ).
Of course there is the possibility that I love the voice actors but in case that I don't I'd rather have the option to enjoy the story with my own imagination (but not cutting out all the sound - I really enjoy the music and background sound design).

I have no idea if anything regarding this issue was stated. If so, can anyone provide me a source and if not so, could a dev give an answer to this?
That would be really great!

[Rex]

On another note, to be honest I'm hoping for a feature that is not very flattering to SE and their voice acting efforts but I really hope we'll be able to turn of voices but keep the background noises, as we had it in the 1.0-CSes.
I am really sorry that I sound so ignorant here and I do appreciate SE's efforts but with many of the characters being around for a year or more I have already formed quite an accurate picture of them, also in voice and speaking manners.
I don't really want to mute everything (like turning off my speakers) because just having music and background sounds already helped me a lot appreciating the cutscenes. I actually heard all the relevant voices/dialogues in my head.
I'm hoping for this because in some primary cases (when it comes to chars that I like a lot like Merlwyb, Kan-E-Senna, Y'shtola or Raubahn) I already have voices in my head that fit my understanding of the characters perfectly (perfect for me).
Not to have anybody dub them might therefore stabilise my immersion much more than having voice actors. Because if the voice actors - and they might do an awesome job nonetheless - are off too much of how I imagine a character to be then it would just sort of break my image of the character and with this break my immersion (yes, that sounds really comical but as sad and corny as it is - it's true v.v ).
Of course there is the possibility that I love the voice actors but in case that I don't I'd rather have the option to enjoy the story with my own imagination (but not cutting out all the sound - I really enjoy the music and background sound design).

I have no idea if anything regarding this issue was stated. If so, can anyone provide me a source and if not so, could a dev give an answer to this?
That would be really great!

Who knows, maybe they sound exactly how you imagined them! Wouldn't you want to find out!?

[Loggos]

Of course there is the possibility that I love the voice actors but in case that I don't I'd rather have the option to enjoy the story with my own imagination (but not cutting out all the sound - I really enjoy the music and background sound design).

I included this option from the start. >.>;
Of course I can't tell by now what it will be like, neither do I try to. But that doesn't mean that the case of not liking them can't happen to me either.

[Rex]

I included this option from the start. >.>;
Of course I can't tell by now what it will be like, neither do I try to. But that doesn't mean that the case of not liking them can't happen to me either.

I was joking. Yeah, all the power to having options.