FF XIII soundtrack changed in the west to R&B singer

as long as character designs and in game story are unchanged it's fine. Personally to me every jpop song sound the same. Some girl with a high pitched voice screeching words I can't undersand to the same obnixious beat.

As long as they don't pull a persona 1 PS1 localization on us I don't care what they do.

 

I guess this is where we differ. I'd feel like that would probably be out of place in a game that looks so quintessentially Japanese. It'd be like putting ancient Arabic in Disney's Aladdin. Each to their own, though, and if the development team had gone ahead and done it I'd have respected that - as long as it worked.

I don't think it's fair to tout your preference as "art" but I'm not willing to get into the "games as art" debate either.

I haven't played it, sorry. If that's the one with Disney characters, though, I don't know. I think I could go either way with that one, it's a wildcard.

Depends if it's any good or not. You're talking to someone who honestly turned the voice volume off in Gears of War because it just got on my nerves. As a general rule I prefer no voice acting at all, but if it's there in English it really has to fucking sparkle.

In this case I don't mind. Most European games don't give the option to localise dubs independent of subs even if the game was plainly developed in France or whatever, but in this case the cultural differences aren't so vast anyway and it doesn't feel so unnatural. I'll still turn the voice acting off if it annoys me - but that's a case-by-case thing, not a principle.

If it looks Japanese I'll opt for the Japanese dub.

Let's straighten this out: one of the reasons I dislike so many English dubs is that the acting is just straight up terrible. If there's a dub there in a language I don't understand, I have no idea whether it's convincingly acted or not. It's just background noise, a voice profile to a face.

Not like there's much choice there, eh? If the development team themselves decide to go with an English dub there's fuck all I can say about it. In those games the voice acting is atrocious, but it fits with the b-movie appeal, which is kind of the whole point of those games anway. I don't really see the contradiction.

I guess the final question along this line of reasoning is, what if a foreign developer decides to put in an English dub in their original local release that doesn't fit with the game's theme at all, like a JRPG set in feudal Japan? I don't imagine I'd like it. I don't play many JRPGs at all, though (about one a year), so one less is not something I'm going to cry over.

I understand that well enough. I remember years and years ago being around some guy's house who I didn't really know, he'd rented a kung-fu movie. Stuck it in and it came up with subtitles. He immediately just switched it off. I'm not sure if this is an adverse reaction to the idea of having to read, but it's not a position with which I can particularly sympathise.

(I was being facetious with the "so don't dub it in the first place", just in case you missed it. I'm aware that's not an option.)

If it's Disney I'll go for the American dub; same rules apply. I'd watch Ice age in Norwegian just for kicks, but in general listening to foreign dubs of American animation is not something that interests me.

If you understand Japanese, why would you need an undub? Obviously learning a language isn't like a binary switch from "not knowing anything" to "fluent", but if I knew enough Japanese to be critiquing the voice acting in a game I'm not sure I'd be looking to play the undub. This probably belies a complete lack of understanding of the process of learning a language with as many characters as Japanese, but either way - not my problem.

If it's there, it's there, so yeah that's fine.

I think you might have me down as some pocky-gobbling Japanophile and I need to dispel that notion right now. I like playing games and watching movies as the creators intended, to the extent that I enjoy them. If I don't, I'll switch off whatever offends me. Seems like a fairly robust system to me.

 

Why are some people lately so desperate to scorn and despise everything japanese just so that people think they're hardcore and not "worthless weeaboos"?

Really, a person can appreciate japanese stuff without becoming a pathetic fanboy. I like my games colourful, my voice tracks in Japanese and my Jpop screechy as hell, and it doesn't make me any less of a man.

If you want generic marketing-friendly western style games, go play them. There are many pretty good ones lately. I have many of them. The fact that you play Eternal Sonata doesn't automatically block your enjoyment of Unreal Tournament.

That being said, let's see how both versions come out. This might even turn out to be pretty cool... The voice acting in FFXII was pretty good, for starters. I like J-Pop a lot more than R&B, but let's wait and see.

I recall a Puddle of Mudd song that sounded pretty cool combined with the Japanese voice track of Ace Combat 5, for example. P.O.M. is very much an american thing and still, it fit the atmosphere spot on.

 

I may have initially gotten such an impression. It does kinda bother me when there are actually people who put plenty of time and effort into a proper localization job and all they get in return is stuff that translates to "Should've been less colorful" (in reference to the translation not being stiff and boring as a log, as they often are when they're just rough translations) and "Not enough Japanese" (Referring to the audio... well... just not being Japanese. Regardless of what it may have been before)

Odin Sphere is a beautiful game, in many ways, but it wouldn't hurt it a bit (besides in terms of marketing, possibly, Depending on reception) if the developers had been willing to fully embrace the sources of inspiration for its creation. Instead, they are almost always just lifting recognizable elements, such as the biggest/common names. More or less just creating "Yet another Asian product that sells itself on trendy names from ____ mythology"

I like the idea of mixing elements and styles, but the fact that everyone is still so afraid of entering the domain languages is pretty annoying.


Also, about your general rule of preferring "no voice acting at all", I find that rather interesting. Personally, I do like a lot of games "extra much" because of how they did not have voice acting. It leaves a lot up to the imagination. I'm a huge fan of the use of simple graphics or non-high detail stuff (doesn't mean I don't love high detail and/or realistic stuff). I love character animation loops/gestures and stuff like that. And entering the domain of voice acting - I actually really like the voice acting in a lot of NDS games, where the audio samples are of really low quality. It creates a weird, almost nostalgic, style. Where the "radio"-like quality of the audio gives it that old radio play and old movie sound; where the voices don't really sound like they should. The characters voices are no longer as well defined as they are if you have higher quality audio samples. Of course, this approach doesn't work so well in games that relies on "realistic" graphics (though, I'd love to see someone intentionally try. B&W/SEPIA filter time! :lol: )

I totally agree. People can have preferences. People can embrace the qualities various cultures/styles has to offer. But as I kinda wrote up above; It really is creepy, borderline insulting, when there are people who "must" have something in a specific format (or else it sucks, by default. No matter what. Regardless of whether or not their alternative even is a candidate for arguably being "better." Heck! Even if they can't really give a proper answer to the question as for "why" they would want it that way... or the answer is about as informative as "Tobacco is tobacco")

 

Don't feed the troll.

Exactly. Give me bad narrative and I can cope, bad voice acting of the same and I'm gone. I don't mind the warbling gibberish found in Banjo Kazooie, Okami etc as well. Just background noise. I'm happier doing the rest in my head.

On a related note, to the extent that I played the 3D GTA games, I found myself easily the most invested in the first character, which is weird because he says nothing. It's probably just because it was the first game out of the three (I barely played San Andreas; the dialogue was shit and the game design had become tedious), but I think there's also a fundamentally different relationship between the player and the character if the developers aren't putting words into your mouth. The mute protagonist thing gets a mixed reception but I'm fine with it.

Isn't this a broader criticism about the creative stagnancy of some Japanese developers, rather than a language issue per se? This ties back to Final Fantasy quite well, as it happens, since it's a pretty predictable affair. That's the modus operandi, though, and it sells. To be fair it's probably unwise to look to a game in its 13th iteration (plus innumerable spinoffs) for innovation.

I'm not sure Odin Sphere would honestly have benefited much from an increased investment in its Nordic theme, anyway. I don't remember thinking "if only this were more accurate with regards to its Norse roots". I was mainly concerned with kicking the shit out of things, mixing potions in jars, and growing sheep on trees; I did not stop and wonder, "what would Thor do?". The storyline was fairly incidental to me, or at least, I can't remember more than the vaguest outline, which is probably also indicative of another problem with many Japanese games - the plots in those fuckers are some of the most convoluted I've ever known. Grim Grimoire, also by Vanillaware, is even worse than Odin Sphere in that regard. Good games, though and I did enjoy the stories, as twisting and manic as they were.

 

This thread just got mega tl;dr

I think I'm going to go read Moby Dick, brb

 

I just don't like screechy JPOP. Normally people don't agree with GoH but I do agree with him on all JPOP sounding the same to me, and it feels out of place in a medieval setting.

I didnt read a lot of this thread, but thats just my opinion.

I kind of liked the main song from ZOE 2 though. I think it was called Beyond the something or other.

 

Final Fantasy is serious Weeaboo Business.

personally I think VI and XI are as good as the series got.

 

For what it's worth, we weren't talking about jpop.

 

I think Im the only person whose favorite FFs were 1 and 5.:lol:

 

FFVI is, indeed, the best one, in my opinion.

And Mr Casual, the song was called "beyond the bounds" - Awesome game, that ZOE2.

 

FFVI's intro theme is the best FF piece of music to date, but what do I know.. I don't like FFs, it bores me.

 

Hasn't that been the FF market since VII?

Ah, poor Final Fantasy. After VI the franchise just got incredibly stupid.

 

FFXII was pretty good, in my opinion. The voices in English were pretty good as well, and the game was very fun.

As long as they don't change the battle music, FFXIII will still be pretty cool.
Does anyone now if the PS3 version is getting both voice tracks?

 

I havent played 12 yet. Aside from Vaan looking like a woman, it looked pretty great atmospherically from what I've seen anyway, and the lack of turn based combat I find appealing for a change.

I'm kind of split on FF7 though...on the one hand I'm incredibly nostalgic for it, on the other, it made it all right to have the main villain be an almost mute bishonen clad in black, as well as having the main character be a mute spiky haired guy.

I swear, every other word Cloud says is "...Sephiroth"

I didnt plan to, but lately my interest in FF7 arose again, and I kind of want to play Crisis Core and watch Advent Children just to see if they're any better, but I'm sort of doubting it.

 

don't forget Dirge of Cerberus, it's part of the VII mythos and it's a 3rd person shooter. Go figure.

 

And by "Don't forget Dirge of Cerberus", you mean "Whatever you do, don't play Dirge of Cerberus", right?

I liked the music in Persona 3, sort of, and it was some weird Japanese pop stuff :shrug:

 

When Square decided to take it to the PlayStation? :lol: