So... Merlwyb will be voiced

[Obsy]

Also, I'm a horrible person because everytime you post I spend a good few minutes staring at your sig's cat boobs. T.T

Enjoy them while you can, gender-swap retcon is down the pike.

[Vilhem]

Enjoy them while you can, gender-swap retcon is down the pike.

Nooooooooooooooo T_T Dun switch to a boy cat!! We're already gonna have a mass infestation of them come release ><

[Rowyne]

When it comes to video games, I will always prefer to hear the dialogue in my native language. It makes me feel more immersed in the game to instantly hear and understand what's being said. If I have to read subtitles, it's an added barrier between me and the game world.

For example, the 1.0 Gridania opening with Yda and Papalymo had me in stitches! I don't think I would have found it nearly as humorous if it had been in another language. I still laugh and say every so often, "Oh, Rhalgar take you and your great beyond."

Besides, I can't say that Japanese is always done better. A friend of mine who is obsessed with anime tried to convince me the Japanese version of FFXIII had better voice acting by showing me the scene where Snow proposes to Serah. In what should have been a very intimate moment, he was screaming at her! It was very bizarre. I think your native language will have a better chance of taking cultural differences into account. So, I'll take English, thanks.

Only exception is anime that is dubbed very badly. I can only stand to watch Sailor Moon in Japanese with English subtitles. The English dub is terribly voiced and the plot is all mangled.

[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.

[Vilhem]

When it comes to video games, I will always prefer to hear the dialogue in my native language. It makes me feel more immersed in the game to instantly hear and understand what's being said. If I have to read subtitles, it's an added barrier between me and the game world.

For example, the 1.0 Gridania opening with Yda and Papalymo had me in stitches! I don't think I would have found it nearly as humorous if it had been in another language. I still laugh and say every so often, "Oh, Rhalgar take you and your great beyond."

Besides, I can't say that Japanese is always done better. A friend of mine who is obsessed with anime tried to convince me the Japanese version of FFXIII had better voice acting by showing me the scene where Snow proposes to Serah. In what should have been a very intimate moment, he was screaming at her! It was very bizarre. I think your native language will have a better chance of taking cultural differences into account. So, I'll take English, thanks.

Only exception is anime that is dubbed very badly. I can only stand to watch Sailor Moon in Japanese with English subtitles. The English dub is terribly voiced and the plot is all mangled.

I agree! Yda and Papalymo were the best! I kinda say "Rhalgr take you and your great beyond" to Keith when he acts up xD

As for Sailor Moon..I think everyone can agree unanimously that it was destroyed. But this is something that makes it interesting: the ACTUAL voice acting was great. The characters weren't flat, or monotone. Their intonations and whatnot were excellent. (am referring to the first two seasons only btw: the shit that was the third and fourth season I tend to pretend they don't exist in English >_>)

The dialogue (cheesy valley girl 90s talk) and cuts/scripts, altered storylines are what destroyed the show in the English language adaptation, not shoddy voice acting.

Still, I find Sailor Moon memorable for one reason: The characters. Even though a lot of the dialogue was altered, the ESSENCE of the characters was still there. Serena/Usagi was still a clutz, Ami was a nerd, Rei was a bitch, Lita/Mako was a strong tomboy, Mina was a ditz. In Sailor Moon's case, I watch it in Spanish, since that is the language I saw it in when I was growing up. The Japanese version does nothing for me (and I get headaches hearing Usagi shriek and cry so much with her high pitched voice X.x)

And I agree with you on FF XIII! The only problem I had with XIII's dub was Vanille's accent...or lack thereof in some scenes. It's like the VA couldn't decide whether or not to use her accent for that day's session haha.

[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

[Pwnagraphic]

This is who Merlwyb reminds me of.

[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.

[Keith_Dragoon]

Also for those arguing animations are based around Japanese keep in mind all players of 1.0 had to watch all cutscenes in English with their native language subbed in so I find it hard to believe that the animations were created for Japanese. Even with the new and improved multilingual voice-overs the language won't make much any difference with the body language at least for the English version so that argument is invalid in this circumstance.

It is just people bringing their anime bias into this game because it is developed in Japan, nothing more.

[Abriael]

Also for those arguing animations are based around Japanese keep in mind all players of 1.0 had to watch all cutscenes in English with their native language subbed in so I find it hard to believe that the animations were created for Japanese. Even with the new and improved multilingual voice-overs the language won't make much any difference with the body language at least for the English version so that argument is invalid in this circumstance.

That doesn't matter. Lip movement for games and animation is extremely generic. Basically every language can be easily adapted to it given a decent scriptwriter.

It is just people bringing their anime bias into this game because it is developed in Japan, nothing more.

No. In general it's just people recognizing that some countries have a more solid voice acting tradition than others, creating a very large quality gap.

I'm sorry, but anyone saying that American/British voice acting is generally on par (even more so for games) with Japanese voice acting simply lacks the technical tools to judge. It's a really ridiculous statement.

Some may have an "anime bias", but correlation doesn't imply causation. The difference in quality exists, and it's very visible.