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[Narroo]

I'm wondering if they're any Aksys employees hanging around that can explain what's up with Arc System Works.

For all of you just tuning in, I'll do a quick recap:
Arc Sys (not to be confused with Aksys) is the company behind Guilty Gear and BlazBlue:

Right now, the sequel to Guilty Gear Sign: Revelator, is about to come out.

Anyways, apparently Aksys, the publisher for Guilty Gear, just announced at a thing called Momocon, that there will be no English dub for the new Guilty Gear. At all. Apparently they're removing all the previous English voices.

Actually, stuff like this isn't new for Arc. BlazBlue came out with a bang with a great localization back in 2009 with Aksys. It was one of the few anime games that had a great dub. This continued with the sequel, Continuum Shift.

But then, Extend came out. The released a Blazblue 2.5 called Extend shortly after the original release. Well, shortly being a relative term: Extend released in the US a whopping 2 months after the Japanese version did, despite the original version releasing in the US less than a month after the Japanese version.

Extend was basically a DLC and balance update, with a little bit extra added to story mode. Oddly, Aksys was dropped from the localization and replaced with an unknown company called "Strangely Compelling."

The thing about Extend was that it had pretty much no quality control. The characters randomly break into Japanese for no apparent reason during the story mode. Dialogue has typos, misspellings, doesn't match with the dub...the translators leaving place holder lines in by accident....all on top of a poor translation. But hey, it's a fighting game. Except:

They didn't get all the same voice actors back; several characters ended managing the unique feat of having multiple voice actors at once. In battle. It was interesting watching Hazama talk in different voices.


But hey, it was a quick and dirty DLC update. Apparently, they just didn't have time to do it right?

Then BB:ChronoPhantasm came out. Well, this time, despite coming out 5 months after the JP release, there will still massive issues with the localization. Listen to this versus this:
(Note: I apologize for not being able to provide a better example; Chronophantasma lacked a sound test this time.) This time they couldn't even get the effects on voices correct.

Aside from that, the English version cut content, called "Library Mode" because it would have been too difficult for "Strangely Compelling" to translate. We had, once again, screwed up voice actors. And, poorly translated dialogue, and so on.

Arc Sys really cheaped out on the localization in the end.

Now, let's look at Guilty Gear: Guilty Gear sign had a passable localization. It wasn't really good, but it at least lacked most of the bizarre technical issues Blazblue suffered in the past and didn't cut out content.

The solution to this? Apparently they've decided to completely eliminate English voices in the new release. Sure, the dub wasn't great though, but this takes the cake. Especially since the game has a nice, long, movie mode...and the actual game portion already had most of the English lines done in Sign, anyways.


So, to summarize: Arc System works for their two flagship titles started off with doing proper localization jobs, and then for sequels cheaped out with some unknown company that can't help but put audio glitches, typos, unprofessional place holders, cut-content, an in some cases, untranslated dialogue, that makes even the most barebones localization look good. Now they're cutting the English dub out of a game that already had most of it's dub done.

That was a long recap!

So, are there any AkSys employees around that can possibly give us some perspective on what's going on here? I understand that GG is niche, but I've seen indie games that have better localization than what's been coming out of Arc. The cheapness of the localization seems to be on a whole new level! I would like to know if anyone has any first hand experience with this. Not being able to do QA, among other things, is pretty horrendous.


[Notes] While Aksys does not do localization for ArcSys anymore, they do still do the North American publishing, which causes confusion.

 

[Eolz]

The english dub is cut since the Sign story mode isn't in and the Revelator story mode is not complete yet, even in Japan.
Would add tons of work, I don't mind it, since the rest of the game is fully localized.

 

[NinjaCoachZ]

Sign's dub was really rough so its absence is no loss, really. That BlazBlue stuff sounds inexcusable though.

 

[Deimo5]

Going from dub to no dub across Sign to Revelator is a downer for me, especially when it looks to have improved in most other areas.
Blazblue stuff sounds bad when it has such an extensive story mode.

 

[Ogawa-san]

I remember Patrick Seitz (Ragna's VA) talking about the first BB, how his script was as large as a JRPG's. I mean, it really is a stupid whole lot of voiceover for a fighting game, and every next game had a bit more on top. GGXrd didn't have as much since the story mode wasn't a multicharacter VN but still.

With semi-annual releases and I can see why they they'd stop doing it. And having english voices in combat and japanese on story mode would be weird, so I also can see why they'd go all the way and not have english voices altogether.

Bit of a bummer since I did like BB's english voices, especially compared to SF, but...

 

[HouseDragon]

WHAT? Is this for real? I was going to buy the game day one after how great Xrd Sign was (gameplay aside, it had great presentation), but now I'm not so sure. Coming from a (IMO) good dub in the last game, it feels like a cop out. Shame, really.

 

[cj_iwakura]

I haven't seen any Aksys staff post here in a long time, pretty sure they're in hiding after the Langrisser debacle. I know one who's still frequent here, but I wouldn't expect them to comment on something like this.

It probably all comes down to $$$, though. Hell, most of Chrono Phantasma's translation was contracted.


Have they said they're removing the dub from Central Fiction? That would be a deal breaker, BB's dub is legendary.

 

[SAB CA]

Just one of the cost of wanting to have RPG-size stories and voice work in games that used to just have voiced in-battle dialogue.

One of the first things I thought about when hearing constant vocal lines in BB's story modes was that they might as well just made dubbed anime or something. Even the actors one could get could change depending on the demands: An "A list" actor might be in budget for a few lines here and there, but when you need them to record potential hours of more work, as well?

 

[Delusibeta]

Oddly, Aksys was dropped from the localization and replaced with an unknown company called "Strangely Compelling."

OP has answered their own question here.

 

[Dunkley]

I admit I would be bothered by the drop of an English Dub would it be another company, but yeah Continuum Shift Extend's situation, in particular Hazama's, doesn't really make me that sad about the loss thereof.

 

[Narroo]

OP has answered their own question here.

Not really; I'd like to see someone comment on what happened when Aksys got dropped as the translators.

I do understand that the games are Niche and whatnot, but...that's no excuse for poor QA. Continuum Shift Extend had so many screw-ups it wasn't funny. Chronophantasma was a bit better as far as QA - mainly minor typos and unsysnced scripts, plus one or two oddities here and there. But, they still had some audio issues (in battle, no less!) (Poor Valkhyen!) and the removal of the game's library was pretty inexcusable. I suppose it's a fighting game, but in that case, if you want to remove content, I want a discount.

As far as GG goes; if they couldn't do localization because of story mode, then it's poor planning on their part. While some people love Japanese Voices (and quite frankly GG's dub was lackluster), some people love English voices. If understanding dialogue wasn't important, then why not remove the lines in all languages and replace them with Beep's and boops? It's a fighting game after all.

The funny thing, partly because of all this, the regular crowd keeps telling everyone to import the Japanese version, and they don't rebuy the English version, so it probably is hurting their sales. After all, why wait several months for the English version if they don't want to localize it properly. The funny thing is, is that there are a bunch of odd ball games here and there from japan from much smaller companies, or even indies, that get better localization treatment.




EDIT:

OH BEFORE I FORGET. People do know that before -Sign-, there were "NA" versions of Guilty Gear that screwed up so badly, that they didn't even translate the movelists. The in-game move lists, in at least the PSN version of +R were in Japanese Katakana and Hiragana for a good year or two before a patch. I don't care how Niche a game is, what the heck?!