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How did we go from FF12 quality voice acting to FFtype 0 VA?
- Thread starter Tidus_Great
- Start date
I still don't understand how That Lisp happened.
This is the main reason why I can't listen to the FFXII dub for an extended period of time.
Replaying FFXII recently I noticed the audio quality of the voices was fine in the FMV cutscenes, while the regular cutscenes had the low quality audio. I'm assuming that means they exist in their regular quality somewhere because those audio issues didn't exist at the time they were actually recorded.
Uhh, yes it does...
There were some newer VAs at the time (now they're seasoned), but this is typical of many Funimation dubs. And there were still tons of veterans (at the time).
DarkConfidant
Member
themoney.gif
FFXII's voice acting was fantastic, and was one of the first things that I noticed different when I played it for the first time. This of course, was coming a few years after X and X-2, where the voice acting was atrocious.
Within the spectrum of most Japanese games that I've played in English, Type-0 is not the best, but definitely not on the bottom half.
Does anyone know how much it costs to make the English VOs sound decent, or even better, why Square can't consistently afford it?
FFXII's voice acting was fantastic, and was one of the first things that I noticed different when I played it for the first time. This of course, was coming a few years after X and X-2, where the voice acting was atrocious.
Within the spectrum of most Japanese games that I've played in English, Type-0 is not the best, but definitely not on the bottom half.
Does anyone know how much it costs to make the English VOs sound decent, or even better, why Square can't consistently afford it?
MissDeviling
Member
I actually kind of liked X-2's voice-acting. It worked for the goofiness of the game. For some reason though, the characters tended to pause a little when talking after another character, making the scenes awkward. The voices were fine though. I really liked LeBlanc and Rikku's voices in particular, and Yuna was a huge, huge step up from X.
This is disappointing to hear -- I played FF Type-0 back in 2011 on the PSP and for the most part loved the all-star voice acting cast, even if the dialogue they had to work with was less than perfect. I was looking forward to a FFXII-style quality bump with the English translation; it vastly outshines the Japanese original, both in writing and in voice acting.
The world this game was set in seemed to beg for that game's style: Three regions meant that three different varieties of English could have been used to add flavor: my initial assumption was that Suzaku would get the British, Milites would get the American, and Soryu some kind of Bhujerba-like Indian-influenced English.
With a game set in historical times, translators have centuries of speech styles, registers, and slang words to draw from, which is why games like FFXII and XIV read so well. A story set in a modern-ish or futuristic world is harder because you have to go with a modern speech style (in which anything unnatural or mistaken will jump out at you as opposed to historical speech, where "mistakes" can be gotten away with). This is one reason I like Nier's and Persona 4's translations so much!
So I had been hoping to see that kind of flavorful English coming from the mouths of the Suzaku-ites, but it seems like it's not so. Disappointing.
The world this game was set in seemed to beg for that game's style: Three regions meant that three different varieties of English could have been used to add flavor: my initial assumption was that Suzaku would get the British, Milites would get the American, and Soryu some kind of Bhujerba-like Indian-influenced English.
With a game set in historical times, translators have centuries of speech styles, registers, and slang words to draw from, which is why games like FFXII and XIV read so well. A story set in a modern-ish or futuristic world is harder because you have to go with a modern speech style (in which anything unnatural or mistaken will jump out at you as opposed to historical speech, where "mistakes" can be gotten away with). This is one reason I like Nier's and Persona 4's translations so much!
So I had been hoping to see that kind of flavorful English coming from the mouths of the Suzaku-ites, but it seems like it's not so. Disappointing.
I believe it's not a budget or studio thing in the case of FF12. It's a DVD space thing.
sensui-tomo
Member
Its funny how some people on here say that ffx has bad Voice actors, considering most of them (excluding yuna since i dont believe she does much voice work) are considered top (usa and canada) voice actors, like tara strong, john dimaggio , james arnold taylor( tidus aka also obi wan kenobi since ewon mcgregor never did it for anything outside the movies to my knowledge) and a majority of the cast did work before ffx, hell iirc the person who voiced Rin was in Rocko's modern life as a big amount of the cast, i think jecht was that pig from Garfield and friends, Clasko's voice was whomever dubbed english Tenchi from tenchi muyo,
Werewolf Jones
Gold Member
Speaking of the Type-0 voice cast is there any notable good actors amongst the cast or is it a mish-mash cast like XIII?
sensui-tomo
Member
Steven blum(spike spegal from cowboy bebop, Roger smith from big O, Grunt from Mass effect) as cid, lightning's VA(i cant remember the name of the character she voices but its the female who has that bikini collection), Bryce papenbrook as machina(he has done alot of lead characters in anime lately and was the main character of Dangan ronpa and is guan ping in dynasty warriors 5 and up)
sensui-tomo
Member
I havent play the game that much, and i've only seen her once, and i had the japanese dub on, i looked up cast members a while back but i paid attention to the big names.
Oh and forgot a few but dont know the characters they voiced, Kyle herbert(aizen, adult gohan), Liam o-brien(gaara from naruto, the main character in monster, other stuff great voice actor), Matt Mercer(Chrom from Fire emblem awakening, that guy from SMT IV, not troy baker) ,Travis willingham(bros it up with troy baker too much apparently to some thread we had here on gaf, also roy mustang in Full metal alchemist)
Oh, didn't know that LR was done by someone else (iirc, hasn't Ali Hillis recorded most of her lines in her homemade recording booth in her closet for LR, anyway?^^)
I recently listened to an interview about FFXIII's localization with Jack Fletcher who is basically the main voice director for mainline FFs and took some notes if anyone is interested:
In terms of actual performances I thought Dr. Arecia was really good; she played the mysterious sultry woman angle really well.
Stuff like that and Steve Blum's Cid are few and far between though. The main characters and other students in particular are among the worst in the game but there are some pretty badly-voiced adults as well
edit: Yeah Jack Fletcher was also the voice director for XII, but there were many factors besides just voice direction that made that localization and dub so good
Stuff like that and Steve Blum's Cid are few and far between though. The main characters and other students in particular are among the worst in the game but there are some pretty badly-voiced adults as well
edit: Yeah Jack Fletcher was also the voice director for XII, but there were many factors besides just voice direction that made that localization and dub so good
Okay, apparently LR's Chris Borders is the voice director of FFXV, too. He worked on a lot of western AAA games like Gears of War, Mass Effect, etc.
That might explain the gruff, deep voices and the broody delivery of Noctis and Gladiolus if he's used to cast Bald Space Marines™
That might explain the gruff, deep voices and the broody delivery of Noctis and Gladiolus if he's used to cast Bald Space Marines™
lol yeah it would
For what it's worth, while playing the game I kind of liked the actual voice acting (the acting in the trailers made it seem worse than it really was while playing), but Noctis's weird unfitting voice is still the worst. It was the only comment on the localization I made in my feedback survey
For what it's worth, while playing the game I kind of liked the actual voice acting (the acting in the trailers made it seem worse than it really was while playing), but Noctis's weird unfitting voice is still the worst. It was the only comment on the localization I made in my feedback survey
Werewolf Jones
Gold Member
Ali Hillis is in this again? They're all decent voice actors, must be down to how Square handled it.
sensui-tomo
Member
Funny enough, the japanese voice actress who voice lightning is in this game, i forgot who though
This is actually kind of a misnomer. People in movies, TV, and games just do the British accent in fantasy or ancient settings because it sounds foreign and "old" enough to American audiences. In reality, accents and English in general sounded very different in those times, not to mention we really don't know what colloquial Roman speech sounded like.
From what I understand, it was actually British English that went through greater change over the centuries than American English (particularly after the revolutionary war). All English pronunciation before then actually sounded more similar to American accents, and many scholars actually assert that Shakespeare sounds more historically accurate when performed by Americans.
Oh, this is completely true. You may have seen it already, but there's a video on YouTube about an acting troupe that tries to re-enact his plays in their correct, circa-1600 pronunciation. They make a big deal about how the final /r/ has to be sounded, and to my American ears, I'm thinking, "Well, of course; that's how it's supposed to be pronounced!"
But it's not Britishness per se that I'm praising. I include American slang when talking about historical English -- one great example is in Resonance of Fate when some tommy-gun-toting demi-humans in pinstripe suits tell you, in the beautiful pre-WWII Brooklynese that my great grandparents spoke, that you're going to have "maw holes den a beehive!" The whole aesthetic of the game looks like it was lifted from late 19th-century America and so the translators got to add even more with those kinds of lines. FF13 didn't give the translators such an opportunity because we don't have that storehouse of flavorful English to draw from when we're in a futuristic world like Cocoon. The faux 17th- or 19th-century English we write today might not be totally accurate, but we simply cannot write 25th-century English in any way at all. And so I sympathize with translators who have to work that much harder to write dialogue that really shines.
Yep. What I wouldn't give to get that guy back.
This thread has been a fascinating read, but at the core this is the big offender. No Smith.
I always wonder if any sci-fi story has tried to invent like a futuristic space-English or space creole or something. I'm not talking about post-apocalyptic Cloud Atlas English, but some other dialect that would theoretically arise after generations of isolation on space colonies or martian colonies.
Werewolf Jones
Gold Member
He's Wolverine currently yeah.
Pretty much exactly what I was going to post.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
I like how 80% of GILGAMESH'S dialogue is completely inaccurate to what he actually says in Japanese in the Vanilla version on PSP.
You have me curious as to what he says now. God I loved when he came up.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Well there is no replacing Kazuya Nakai since he did a much better job IMO.
However while the initial scene is alright it does lack the emotional frustration in the original JP voicework.
Plus...
While the flashback scene for the most part was accurate GILGAMESH does not muse on if Enkidu is happy. He is instead asking for his forgiveness. Not so in the HD version. And just seems like a weak performance overall. As stoic as GILGAMESH is he is very loud when he issues a challenge or talks in general. Here it comes off as rather weak.
Makes me wonder if they butchered his remaining dialogue honestly.
Makes me wonder if they butchered his remaining dialogue honestly.
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I'm just finding the original JP cast more high grade then the HD English cast. I shudder to think at what they did to all the historical entries in the Crimson Codex.
wat da fuk... why u in here xe ?!?
Meccanical
Member
Koudelka, a JRPG that came out a year before it and had a much lower budget had better voice acting than X so it has no excuses in my opinion.