Feb/0924
Japanese games not being kept Japanese
Milling around lately on the great Internet is the news of the new Star Ocean 4 game, coming out this month, having de-animefied the game and changed the menus and whatnot. Also, there's no original dub track from the Japanese release and thus only an awful excuse for an English dub will be available instead. I assisted my housemate in wrapping up his copy of Infinite Undiscovery and returning it to the gamestore. We screamed as the voiceactors in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 opened their mouths. I really, really don't like dubs. And I can't play the non-dubs unless I import Japanese consoles.
For games like Tales of the Abyss, where I have use for the terminology the translators there used, I have soft-modded my PS2 with a networking adapter and a huge IDE harddrive in it. Works like a charm with HDLoader and I play an UNDUB of Tales of the Abyss. I didn't have the need for this with one of my favorite games, Eternal Sonata, where the game itself came with a Japanese language option. My XBOX 360 is European, which means all the games are usually in English since region codes prevent me from getting Japanese games. And because of this, I had hopes for Namco Bandai, who started out so well on the 360 with Eternal Sonata. Come Tales of Vesperia, and the North American release doesn't have a Japanese language option. I hold my hopes high as I wait for the Asian English release to possibly have it - no luck there either. And this game doesn't even have a European release slated yet! With both Tales of Vesperia and Star Ocean 4 probably only having shitty dubs - and both games I would really like to play - chances are I won't even play them. Until I get my hands on a Japanese 360, as these dubs are just plain awful and hurt my ears, and thus also ruin my experience with the game.
So I'm asking whoever's reading this - are there any good current generation games like Eternal Sonata out there - without awful English dubs, that keep the Japanese dialogue? I think Lost Oddysey has kept it, but if there's two games in the pool of many, I'm sad that we're not even being offered the ability to get the original audio as downloadable content at least. I'd pay full price for the game and half the original price on top of that just to get the original audio. Please, Namco Bandai, pretty please!
February 10th, 2009
Chaos Wars Japanese audio ftw. Chaos Wars English audio ftl.
February 10th, 2009
Valkyria Chronicles. The dialogue is a dubtitle instead of a subtitle though. But too bad you don’t have a PS3 to play the best game of 2008 on. =P
I’m also hopeful that the PS3 versions of those RPGs will have both Japanese and English audio due to the capacity advantage that BD offers, whenever they finally get released, but that’s probably a long shot.
February 10th, 2009
yea for PS3 most games don’t have region locking, and also, there are more games with dual audio options, doesn’t Valkyria Chronicles have both audio tracks in it also??
in the end tho, the 360 market in japan is almost non-existant, it’s all PS3 there, and that’s where jrpgs are coming from obviously, so makes sense that most of them are gonna be developed for the PS3. on a side not FFXIII world wide release outside of japan is gonna take so long (almost a year) BECAUSE of the 360, and it’ll more than likely still be better to play on the PS3 cause it was initially developed on the PS3, then there’s Vs XIII, that’s PS3 exclusive world wide
February 11th, 2009
ps3 ftw!
February 11th, 2009
Having played Tales of Vesperia, I can confidently say it does not have a shitty dub. I assume you say Vesperia “probably” has a shitty dub because you haven’t heard it yet. Watch some youtube vids or something, it is well done. It may depend on your taste in dubs; if you simply don’t like how some VAs go over the top, Vesperia does not have that. Maybe Karol, the kid, but he’s a kid. But everyone’s voices are well suited for the characters (especially Yuri) and the acting is great. Some say there’s a few awkward moments, but I never really noticed them. You can tell that Namco America’s poured more of the translation budget into this rather than Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World and the quality shows.
At any rate, do not let this anti-dub mentality get in the way of playing Vesperia. You are missing out on a great game if you do. Watch some youtube vids and if you still don’t like it, that is a shame that you’re letting that keep you from playing it.
February 12th, 2009
You’re mistaking me for someone who likes dubs at all. Notice the “I really, really don’t like dubs.”? Regardless of the skill of the dub, I will detest it because I know there is a Japanese equivalent vastly superior. Every time.
February 12th, 2009
I have to disagree. I’ve spottet Aya Hirano in a lot of the original dubs. Not every japanese equvivalent is better. There’s a lot of pretty good engligh voice actors too. The problem is imho that the game is almost never resynched for the english audio, and things often get a little weird watching.
February 12th, 2009
I can manage Hirano Aya – I can however not manage 10x American failures speaking in the wrong language for the character.
February 13th, 2009
Wrong language? Isn’t that slightly off? First, most of the characters are fictional, meaning that Japansese isn’t more right as a language for these characters than any other. Many of the games take plase in totally different places than Japan. Why is Japanese the right language? They probably wouldn’t talk Japanese in a place inspired by european culture and design. English would be a lot more likely as the spoken language for most characters. A lot of then certainly have English names, don’t they? So why is Japanese the right language for these characters? english makes hell of a lot more sense if you’re using “the right language” as a argument.
And I totally agree with NewWaveBossaNova in his/her post from February 12, 2009 at 9:36 pm.
But that being said, I wouldn’t mind at all if they kept the original dub. That wouldn’t be much of a problem. (Not on the PS3 at least. Hello, 50GB Blu-Ray discs.) In many cases the voicing is better.
February 13th, 2009
I’d argue that the correct language for the character is the right way to point at it, when the character has been designed, directed and built around the voice it has in the original language. Hell, even the lip-syncing will be for the original language. You can’t recreate the same elaborate work around those characters in a different language without changing the game. You can always adapt, but it will never be the same.
February 13th, 2009
Yeah, I can agree to that, but I honestly i feel that a lot of games has a good adaption. For me the biggest problem is the poor syncing of voice and general movement, but it’s getting better.
I don’t really think they design the characters around the voice, but rather the other way around. I guess they would have a certain image of how it should be, but in the end the voice isn’t set untill they cast actors for it.
Since I don’t understand Japanese the lost-in-translation-problem isn’t really a problem for me either, because that would probably apply to the text-translation as well. And because of that the only really important reason I’d like them subbing it and not dubbing the game would be the faster release outside of Japan.
February 12th, 2009
Well, alright, if you really feel that way. Vesperia’s still pretty damn good, dub or not. I could easily say stop being such a weeaboo, but I’d like to think there’s more reason than that. Learn to be a bit more open, because it sounds like you’re still stuck in the 90s when it was easier to hate on every dub. I know a stranger’s opinion doesn’t have much weight with you, so if you’re not willing to give it a chance, then I guess there’s not much more I can tell you. I would like to think you’re a sensible person.
February 12th, 2009
It’s more the fury of a person who could play the games in the native language, who can’t because the consoles are near-impossible to import, rather than the dubs in general. Sure, I can’t stand English voices for one bit, but knowing that there IS a Japanese original out there, is more why the problem is there. Why the need to dub a game, when you’ve already got unvoiced text going already? I just don’t see the sense in doing it any different with the other dialogue, when you are already being forced to read text on-screen. What makes it so different to hear the original dialogue and read it in text, from hearing some cast of badly directed American knock-offs trying to do anything close to the quality of the original? One would think that people would want the quality to be maintained.
February 12th, 2009
It’s not really fair to automatically assume all dubs are bad. That goes the same for assume anything Japanese is automatically good. I would think the basic reason for dubs is obvious, to have things voiced in a language the target audience can understand. It’s not fair at all to assume that a dub will never do as good a job as the original Japanese, or that they don’t even try, it’s just elitist to think that way. It’s insulting to the whole localization staff to say that they are not maintaining quality.
There’s a reason they call them localizations instead of translations, they want translate it in a way that is more suited toward the local, target audience. It’s not about murdering the original Japanese intent, it’s just that some of the audience couldn’t give a damn about Japanese culture details that get lost in translation since they aren’t Japanese and don’t know enough of how the culture works to even understand it if it was there.
Foreign branches of game companies are in it for a business, first and foremost. They want to sell to the largest audience possible. That means dubbing games for the part of the audience that probably wouldn’t buy the game thinking it was just some Japanese shit. They want to lower that barrier of entry, make it easy for everyone to get into the game. Not to mention that a lot of the time it’s cheaper to dub instead of paying for licensing rights to keep the original Japanese dub. In America, it is too much of a niche market to keep the Japanese dub. Circumstances pending, but it is the case for many games that there’s a big audience out there that couldn’t care less about Japanese voices.
A dub should not affect how good a game is at all. Look at Star Ocean 2, one of, if not the most infamously bad video game dubs. Almost everyone who’s played it will say it’s the worst dub ever, but when you ask them was the rest of the game fun, they will say yes.
Unless it was outright obvious that they got bottom of the barrel voice actors for the dub (see Tales of Phantasia GBA), it could not be farther from the truth that all English dubs for games are intended to be of sharply worse quality than the Japanese dub.
In the end, if you just won’t give dubs a chance, then just save up and import a Japanese 360 and be done with it, problem solved. But if it’s near impossible as you have said, then that’s too bad. If you can’t change your circumstances, it’s in your best interest to adapt. Otherwise you’re getting upset over something that’s avoidable.
February 11th, 2009
The sad fact is that Americans (and I suppose Europeans) want to play games that they can understand. This leads to dubbing :\ which we hate.
February 12th, 2009
Well, dubs are all a part of a game getting translated. Granted there are pretty bad dubs, but I’d like to think dubs have generally gotten better from when they first started. Dubs are not going to go away, so it’s good to learn to be more tolerant of them.
February 12th, 2009
It’s not the fact that there’s dubbing that’s the issue. It’s the fact that there’s not an option to keep the original language that’s the problem. Now, if there’s technical reasons for that (ie storage capacity problems), then it’s at least somewhat understandable. But for any PS3 game from this point on to not offer the option for both is just indefensible.
And yes, Valkyria Chronicles offers both Japanese and English voices.
February 13th, 2009
try enchanted arms, if you havent played it, its sort off good
February 14th, 2009
Pray for the PS3 to overtake the 360 for JRPGs. PS3 games are all region free. I think technically, it’s possible that someone could region lock a game, but this hasn’t happened (AFAIK) and Sony’s said they’re not planning on doing it. So, even if there is a game that gets dubbed, you could import the game from JP. And Valkyria Chronicles is awesome, with Japanese voices.
The 360 seems to have a slight issue with space (since they’re using DVDs; see the number of multi-disc games), so that might also be a reason why they aren’t using dual languages that frequently.
The caveats are the PS1 (and PS2 games, if you get a system that can play those) are still region locked and perhaps some of the online features could be region specific (i.e. you’d connect to the servers in the region the game came from; not always going to be the case, but a possibility).
Of course, DVD and Blu-ray are region locked.
For the 360, Blue Dragon should also be dual language (it was in the US). Same with Enchanted Arms. I thought Lost Odyssey had a bunch of language choices, too (not just English/Japanese). Whether those are good games is a different question.
February 21st, 2009
Blu-ray is only region lock to 3 regions still sucks but Japan and America are in one region, =)
PS3 FTW~
February 16th, 2009
I don’t know what consoles you have access to but I have to recommend the Disgaea and Ar Tonelico series (they are all PS2 except for Disgaea 3) always have Japanese language included and both are good otaku fodder. I can’t stand 99.9% of dubs either and I usually just end up turning off the game’s sound and playing music instead.
I think what makes dubs even worse than the fact that the its a remake is that voice acting is very low level job for acting in the U.S. (especially video games). So not only is it a foreign attempt to translate and match syllables/idioms, its done with BAD acting.
February 27th, 2009
I buckled down and just accepted that the only way I was going to play Vesperia was dubbed. I can say that I’m still enjoying the game despite the dub – which is, well, one of the best game dubs I’ve encountered… which still means it’s a step down from the original. After the first few hours, though, it becomes pretty tolerable (unlike, say, .hack//G.U.). I only have to cringe once in a long while.
Of course, a friend of mine imported a 360 and a copy of the game and is playing it untranslated with some other friends (one of whom is fluent)… and that sounds a lot better to me. I’m thinking we’re going to do some New Game Plus action on that in the summer, and I’ll finally be able to enjoy Nakahara Mai as Estelle. I do wish they would provide the option of maintaining original audio, but I guess in at least some cases it is a disk size constraint.
Until then, the game is good anyway.
March 9th, 2009
Lol weeabo
March 9th, 2009
Lol faget
SEE I CAN TYPE MY INSULTS WRONG TOO.
Nice name by the way, fuckin’ dumbass!