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FFXIII - Chinese Version includes Japanese Voiceovers and English Subs confirmed(?)

onken

onken

Member
dark10x said:
What makes you say that?
Click to expand...

MGS1 English VA was pretty damn poor, though most PS1 era games were so it's kinda given a pass. The Japanese VA on the other hand was very good for its time.

JP MGS4 automatically wins because Snake's actor didn't try to do that ridiculous constantly-being-strangled voice. Less said about Otacon (and Meryl) the better.
 
D

duckroll

Member
onken said:
MGS1 English VA was pretty damn poor, though most PS1 era games were so it's kinda given a pass. The Japanese VA on the other hand was very good for its time.

JP MGS4 automatically wins because Snake's actor didn't try to do that ridiculous constantly-being-strangled voice. Less said about Otacon (and Meryl) the better.
Click to expand...

Don't really agree. MGS PS1 English VA is great, far better than the GC remake. MGS4 has excellent VA too, Hayter is just the weak link, much like Bale in Dark Knight.
 
J

jett

D-Member
What is this revisionist history bullsheeeeit?

MGS1 English VA has the best voice acting by far in the entire franchise. It also helps I guess that it has the tighter script too. :p
 
B

BlazingDarkness

Member
onken said:
MGS1 English VA was pretty damn poor, though most PS1 era games were so it's kinda given a pass. The Japanese VA on the other hand was very good for its time.

JP MGS4 automatically wins because Snake's actor didn't try to do that ridiculous constantly-being-strangled voice. Less said about Otacon (and Meryl) the better.
Click to expand...
bear-how-about-no-wj9.jpg
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
I can't be the only one who feels a bit of rage when people put a question mark after the word "confirmed".
 
K

Kuraudo

Banned
So is this confirmed or not? Have a friend in Beijing who's been having trouble finding a decently priced English copy and this'd be a godsend for him.
 
D

duckroll

Member
Kuraudo said:
So is this confirmed or not? Have a friend in Beijing who's been having trouble finding a decently priced English copy and this'd be a godsend for him.
Click to expand...

Sure. It's coming out next week. I have no idea about Beijing though. Sony is distributing it in Hong Kong and Taiwan directly at least. I'm sure stores in China properly will carry it, but I'm not sure if it'll be distributed directly so maybe there'll still be markup?
 
L

leng jai

Member
onken said:
MGS1 English VA was pretty damn poor, though most PS1 era games were so it's kinda given a pass. The Japanese VA on the other hand was very good for its time.

JP MGS4 automatically wins because Snake's actor didn't try to do that ridiculous constantly-being-strangled voice. Less said about Otacon (and Meryl) the better.
Click to expand...

Credibility gone.
 
S

StuBurns

Banned
onken said:
MGS1 English VA was pretty damn poor, though most PS1 era games were so it's kinda given a pass. The Japanese VA on the other hand was very good for its time.

JP MGS4 automatically wins because Snake's actor didn't try to do that ridiculous constantly-being-strangled voice. Less said about Otacon (and Meryl) the better.
Click to expand...
I played MGS1 for the first time in about five or six years the other day. The voice acting still outclasses the vast majority of video games released today, let alone at the time. And the writing is actually better than MGS4.
 
W

web01

Member
The MGS1 playstation voice acting was poor, they changed the stereotypical accents in the remake for a good reason.
 
I

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
StuBurns said:
The official reason was that is was originally a mistake.
The real reason is Konami were accused of being racist, and they're pussies.
Click to expand...
Gentle Mei-Ling racist? Why I never!
I love the original dub for MGS1.
 
D

dgenx

Made an agreement with another GAF member, refused to honor it because he was broke, but then had no problem continuing to buy video games.
I hopefully will going to HK this weekend to buy this thing, I knew waiting to get FF XIII was goin to pay!

any GAFFER want a copy?


wait... how would I send it :(
 
M

matrix-cat

Member
StuBurns said:
The official reason was that it was originally a mistake.
The real reason is Konami were accused of being racist, and they're pussies.
Click to expand...

I thought it'd be something like that. I never understood why it's somehow racist to expect a Chinese scientist, presumably raised by Chinese parents, to have a Chinese accent.
 
Synless

Synless

Member
web01 said:
The MGS1 playstation voice acting was poor, they changed the stereotypical accents in the remake for a good reason.
Click to expand...
So was it stereotypical when Olga talked with a Russian accent? No, it wasn't. But when Mei Ling does it, it is a stereotype? Stupid. The original voice acting was leaps and bounds better than the remakes.
 
I

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
matrix-cat said:
I thought it'd be something like that. I never understood why it's somehow racist to expect a Chinese scientist, presumably raised by Chinese parents, to have a Chinese accent.
Click to expand...
Apparently very racist. I thought everyone had appropriate voices that fit their characters well.
 
S

sonicmj1

Member
matrix-cat said:
I thought it'd be something like that. I never understood why it's somehow racist to expect a Chinese scientist, presumably raised by Chinese parents, to have a Chinese accent.
Click to expand...

Unless she was mostly raised in China speaking Chinese, there's no way she'd have that thick of an accent. I don't know any first-generation immigrants who came to America at a young age who speak accented English.

It's not a very realistic choice (and I guess it could be construed as racist or racially insensitive), but the actual voice acting was still very well done. MGS1 also benefited from having a much more natural-sounding script.

Still, changing it was the right decision.

Synless said:
So was it stereotypical when Olga talked with a Russian accent? No, it wasn't. But when Mei Ling does it, it is a stereotype? Stupid. The original voice acting was leaps and bounds better than the remakes.
Click to expand...

Olga is Russian.

Mei Ling is an American of Chinese descent.
 
Alcahest

Alcahest

Member
To the first dude who grabs it, please take a pic of the language setting.
And confirmation US saves are recognized would be awesome as well :D
 
I

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
Alcahest said:
To the first dude who grabs it, please take a pic of the language setting.
And confirmation US saves are recognized would be awesome as well :D
Click to expand...
Well I'll confirm that second part if no one else does, still have my save on my PS3 from when I had to sell a lot of my recent game acquisitions.
 
I

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
Ken Masters said:
Why is the Japanese voice such a big deal? Didn't square do a good job with the the English voice-over ?
Click to expand...
Lightning sounds a bit constipated, and Vanille is a bit too much like her Japanese counterpart, otherwise it was pretty good. I'm honestly just getting this version for the Lightning controller and getting another copy of FFXIII to play with because I had to sell my old one.
 
M

MomoPufflet

Member
sonicmj1 said:
Unless she was mostly raised in China speaking Chinese, there's no way she'd have that thick of an accent. I don't know any first-generation immigrants who came to America at a young age who speak accented English.
Click to expand...

I do. It's really not as uncommon as you'd think. I had a Japanese friend in high school that moved to the US when she was a toddler and retained very distinct accent, yet grammatically had a better grasp of English than the majority of native speakers. It can depend heavily on where they're learning English. If their English tutors have accents it can have a profound effect on how they speak in the long run. I've known people that speak completely fluent English yet have heavy accents because they learned English from a non-native speaker.

I'm not saying the localization team even took any of that into consideration, but it's still pretty presumptuous to call them racist. Culturally insensitive? I don't know, maybe.

Olga is Russian.

Mei Ling is an American of Chinese descent.
Click to expand...

Something tells me that the people who cried racism didn't even get that technical with it. I'll concede to the fact that it was a poor choice if she never lived in China however.
 
S

simtmb

Member
Ken Masters said:
Why is the Japanese voice such a big deal? Didn't square do a good job with the the English voice-over ?
Click to expand...

Yeah, they did extremely well, and i even prefer the overall English VO compared to its Japanese counterpart.

But unfortunately, that's just how it is these days, people going nutso for Japanese voice-acting and giving terrible excuses as to why they prefer it. Example: I'd rather listen to terrible dialogue that i don't understand but will read subtitles about, then to listen to terrible dialogue in a language i do understand but without the aid of subtitles.

I understand that point to some extent, such as in regards to pronunciation errors and so on, but some people can't seem to just plain ol' admit that they just like it in Japanese better. Even seems like an excuse as they're ashamed to admit it (??).

I might have my arguments when it comes to voice acting and the blatant "this VO and nothing else" affair it often spurs :) but in the end, everyone has there preferences and the best thing we could hope for is that we're always given the choice if its indeed possible/available.

So this release is good news for those keen to experience it with its original VO's.
 
T

tmarques

Member
Call me a troll, but bad writing always sounds less silly in a language you don't speak, for some reason. I certainly felt less embarrassed about Ninja Gaiden and Street Fighter 4 once I set the voices to Japanese.
 
K

Kagari

Crystal Bearer
Dynamic3 said:
Did they redo the HUD for this? It looks completely different in the Play-Asia pics. Also, wtf is Vstrike?
Click to expand...

No, those are pics from the original 2006 target render.
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Yeah, a friend was in Taiwan recently and took a picture of a kiosk. It's the same thing - they use the Japanese names for everything (Enhancer... and whatever the other roles were called), but it's the same game.

Although, they transliterated the names rather than tried to translate them. So apparently Vanille is "Ba Ni La" in Mandarin. :lol
 
H

Hellsing321

Member
tmarques said:
Call me a troll, but bad writing always sounds less silly in a language you don't speak, for some reason. I certainly felt less embarrassed about Ninja Gaiden and Street Fighter 4 once I set the voices to Japanese.
Click to expand...
I love bad writing. Makes it so much more enjoyable if I can have bad voice acting to go along with it.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Can someone confirm if this is being released in Korea? An ex girlfriend is sending me a package from there already and if I could get her to send this with it, it'd be a sweet deal...
 
T

tmarques

Member
Hellsing321 said:
I love bad writing. Makes it so much more enjoyable if I can have bad voice acting to go along with it.
Click to expand...

Depends.

The bad writing and acting in the original Resident Evil were infinitely entertaining. Wouldn't have traded it for a story written by Somerset Maugham and acted by Laurence Olivier and Barbara Stanwyck.

Metal Gear Solid 2 and the 2nd half of Indigo Prophecy on the other hand were insufferable. Possibly because you could tell how pretentious the people responsible were being.
 
B

bernardobri

Steve, the dog with no powers that we let hang out with us all for some reason
So, is this version essentially japanese VO plus english & chinese text/menu/subtitles? I might pick up the LE mostly for the DS3 and this particular version (along the "superior" boxart :lol)
 
E

enishi

Member
Alcahest said:
To the first dude who grabs it, please take a pic of the language setting.
And confirmation US saves are recognized would be awesome as well :D
Click to expand...

Just got the game today (I don't need my 3rd dual-shock 3, didn't get the bundle version)

No language setting in the setting menu, and manual does not mention how to set this.
I think it automatically selects the language according to your XMB language setting.

And from the manual, it said you can use Japan, US or EU version save to continue (I can't test this as I don't have any save data from other versions)

======================================

And it is Japanese VO
 
E

expy

Banned
enishi said:
Just got the game today (I don't need my 3rd dual-shock 3, didn't get the bundle version)

No language setting in the setting menu, and manual does not mention how to set this.
I think it automatically selects the language according to your XMB language setting.

And from the manual, it said you can use Japan, US or EU version save to continue (I can't test this as I don't have any save data from other versions)

======================================

And it is Japanese VO
Click to expand...
Are the subtitles and menu's English? (or, more specifically, what is your XMB set to?)
 
I

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
enishi said:
Just got the game today (I don't need my 3rd dual-shock 3, didn't get the bundle version)

No language setting in the setting menu, and manual does not mention how to set this.
I think it automatically selects the language according to your XMB language setting.

And from the manual, it said you can use Japan, US or EU version save to continue (I can't test this as I don't have any save data from other versions)

======================================

And it is Japanese VO
Click to expand...
You should try setting your PS3 to a different language to confirm this. My order hasn't shipped yet, so if I find out I can't play it in English I'll cancel right now.
 
G

GONz

Member
Good call I had by delaying my purchase of the game (be it French or Asian version) due to my excessive backlog :D
that I still haven't cleared
 
E

enishi

Member
expy said:
Are the subtitles and menu's English? (or, more specifically, what is your XMB set to?)
Click to expand...

I am a lazy guy so I use Traditional Chinese as XMB language. FFXIII starts in Chinese as well. Just change to English in XMB and load the game again. It changes to English subtitle and menu.

As I know, US version uses button X as confirm button but in this version, no matter you set to Chinese or English, the system follows Japanese version using button O.
 
E

expy

Banned
enishi said:
I am a lazy guy so I use Traditional Chinese as XMB language. FFXIII starts in Chinese as well. Just change to English in XMB and load the game again. It changes to English subtitle and menu.

As I know, US version uses button X as confirm button but in this version, no matter you set to Chinese or English, the system follows Japanese version using button O.
Click to expand...
SWEEEETTTT!!! :D :D :D
 
I

InfiniteNine

Rolling Girl
enishi said:
I am a lazy guy so I use Traditional Chinese as XMB language. FFXIII starts in Chinese as well. Just change to English in XMB and load the game again. It changes to English subtitle and menu.

As I know, US version uses button X as confirm button but in this version, no matter you set to Chinese or English, the system follows Japanese version using button O.
Click to expand...
Awesome, I prefer using O for confirm due to the Nintendo button layout. :lol
 
B

bernardobri

Steve, the dog with no powers that we let hang out with us all for some reason
enishi said:
And from the manual, it said you can use Japan, US or EU version save to continue (I can't test this as I don't have any save data from other versions)
Click to expand...

You could try downloading some saves from the gamefaqs section.

Thanks for the info, so far it seems like I'll import my second chinese game...
 
E

enishi

Member
Tried to set XMB to French, Japanese and Simplified Chinese; under all these setting, the game is in English (rather surprised they treated Simp Chinese as foreign language :lol )
 
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