sixteen-bit
Member
Hopefully Atlus USA makes Gertsmann playable in the international version. Loved his Persona 4 cameo.
Hilarious.
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Atlus USA announces Persona 4 Arena, Summer 2012
- Thread starter Volcynika
- Start date
Hilarious.
Ultimadrago
Member
Hopefully Atlus USA makes Gertsmann playable in the international version. Loved his Persona 4 cameo.
Almost fell out my chair.
Auron_Kale
Member
Saw the email earlier today. Will preorder tomorrow.
PS3 day one for sure.
PS3 day one for sure.
Hopefully Atlus USA makes Gertsmann playable in the international version. Loved his Persona 4 cameo.
:lol oh man, it's been a while since I've seen that pic. Thanks for this!
NinajHeartless
Member
Hopefully Atlus USA makes Gertsmann playable in the international version. Loved his Persona 4 cameo.
No matter how many times I see this image, it still makes me laugh :lol
I don't know what's to laugh at, plenty of fighting games have dual audio (Street Fighter, Marvel [NOT fully voiced in JP], Soul Calibur, Blazblue). People have preferences, personally I don't like the idea of English accents pronouncing Japanese names of their moves, it sounds clunky and forced most of the time. I don't particularly mind if the way voice cues are changed to something else I.E Guile saying Somersault in Japanese and saying Flash Kick in English, it's changed for the region and it works. Atlus' dub for the Persona games are for the most part, solid with some exceptions so I would expect it would be okay with this game.
I've purchased pretty much every fighter this gen, and I'm not saying I'm entitled to have the JP track and that ATLUS must AT ALL COSTS GIVE ME THE JP AUDIO OR NO SALE. I'm saying it would be nice, because it's almost the norm now. AH3 and KOFXIII have no dual audio, which I'm fine with because I buy fighting games to play them. They are also budget priced which is icing on the cake. TBH I would've payed full retail for KOFXIII because it came with a kickass bonus and trounces KOFXII in terms of gameplay and features. Atlus was giving it at a steal, which I'm grateful for.
tl;dr
I already know I will be buying the game, I would like the option of dual audio, but that will not change my decision on whether I purchase it or not.
Hot Coldman
Banned
We need Ryotaro Caravella too!
R_thanatos
Member
Take it how you want ..if other companies can and they can't , then something is wrong ... There was ample time to "fix" things .. there was several instances of heated arguments on THEIR foroms about this on mant different games localisation discussions ..it's requested since a while..The "not enough space " escuse doesn't work anymore.. if they can't do a job many others can then they are lazy..
sixteen-bit
Member
For.
You have clearly not read any of the other posts in this thread, so I'll not say anything else.
charlequin
Banned
There is literally zero chance that Golden will not be released in the US.
If only other localization publishers would follow their lead.
Adding dual audio to one title just increases the level of entitlement in the fanbase and forces them to waste time and money on it in future releases; a consistent policy of refusing to provide dual audio drives away the small proportion of "customers" that actually consider such an absence to be a breaking point, and free them up to spend their time and money on actually beneficial features instead.
$20, 183 byte unlock key. Make it happen Atlus!
I don't get this point. Why shouldn't I the costumer be entitled to my most wanted feature? Valve should've stopped developing Steam the moment it was good enough. Nintendo should totally continue with its region locking strategy! When has it become cool to be satisfied with the status quo. And what are those "actually beneficial features" a publisher specialized on localization could add. Lip syncing for games that don't have facial movement? More CE swag that doesn't affect the game at all?
I watch movies in their native language, subtitled. I want to do the same with games. End of my argument and wish. I stopped going to the cinema (here in Germany) because they wouldn't provide movies in their original dub. I still buy DVDs/BluRays because they do.
I just hate it that a company that has the intend on making the most out of its IPs doesn't go to the same lengths to satisfy their costumers as much as some pirates hacking together "undubs" that I can't play.
I've never not bought a game that genuinely interested me because of a bad dub but as time goes on, technology gets better I wonder how policies like: "We won't give our audience a feature because we might set a new standard that we would have to follow in the future" can exist. Especially for a publisher like Atlus. And why are Sting games the exception for this "we aren't going to cater to the mouth breathing weeaboos" rule.
They HAVE done it before though, with Disgaea and Odin Sphere at the very least, nevermind that KoFXIII wasn't even given a dub at all apparently. I'm guessing Atlus's policy is if it's hassle-free enough then they'll add dual voices, but they're not going to try to stuff it on a packed DVD or require serious recoding to make it work at all, but I don't think either will be a problem here so it all comes down to licensing.
I know personally I can't watch a live action movie without it being in its original language or if the actors in the movie know how to speak multiple languages. One actor doing a voice over for another actor is super awkward. Video games and animes on the other hand I don't see the issue with dubs on provided the dub is satisfactory at a reasonable level (emphasis on reasonable, not unrealistic fan expectations) considering its just one person doing a voice over for a fictional character without an original voice of its own.
LOL
Oh well, I like English dubs so this wouldn't get bought from me.
charlequin
Banned
Because the feature in question is a niche, boutique feature that takes away resources and budget from a much more important feature: a well-executed localization. Including a second audio track featuring a language the target audience by definition does not speak pulls away resources (especially man-hours and cash) that could otherwise go directly towards the dub, the script editing, the localization QA, and other important jobs that can already easily be given short shrift in a video game localization.
With a fighting game, all this stuff is clearly far less important than it is in an RPG, but I support a single audio-track nonetheless just as a way of continuing to make clear going forward that fans should not expect Japanese audio to be any sort of priority. I am always going to prefer a publisher who looks to maintain as much of the product's integrity as possible (by identifying the most thorough option for localization possible for each individual product and pursuing that option alone) to one who expends great effort on useless frivolities at the expense of the overall product quality.
And I'm glad that as they've improved the quality of their localizations and worked to produce increasingly desirable English-language products they've moved away from doing so.
Personally, I don't care THAT much most of the time, and if I do it's either a movie/show or the dubbing was atrocious and removing full comprehension eases the pain of it. Fighting games I kinda prefer with Japanese VA (or whatever the developers wanted like the case is with Tekken) but it's not really going to matter that much here, if I even used it. Similar to my suspicions on Atlus's policy it's something that's nice to include if it's feasible, but if not then I don't mind, a video game is not as simple as film for including multiple voice tracks.
I don't really see the harm if it's simple enough to implement though, nevermind that both games had pretty good jobs (at the least I thought Odin Sphere had a really good dub). But here I'm thinking of cases where it's literally putting in a voice track toggle or whatever, not ripping the game open and adding a feature it was never designed to function with. Nevermind the instances where, no, there isn't space, so it's either a full dub or a half dub and the Japanese VA cut in half.
I think we must agree to disagree since I just reject the premise. I don't see dual audio as a useless frivolity. And I think that cutting any contend (in this case the language of origin) always produces a lesser product. I also don't know how much additional money and resources a shift from "substitution of audio track" to an "addition of localized audio track" would take and maybe it would render some projects impossible.
I know Atlus will survive without it's "Japanese audio" core just like Lucasfilm will survive without its "unedited original trilogy" core and I will continue to purchase the games I'm interested in. It's "You can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes, well you might find you get what you need" after all.
Unknown Soldier
Member
This is a pretty bad argument when you realize that including the Japanese audio would literally be nothing more than adding a menu option that says "Japanese/English" and all that does is load one set of audio files instead of another one. People make and release undub versions of Atlus's English-only PS2 and PSP titles for free, because it's literally nothing more than replacing the English audio files on the disc with the original Japanese ones. Undubs were also prepared for all the PS2 Final Fantasy titles with similarly trivial effort.
These people are able to make the undubs with a just a few days work, in their own spare time, by simply copy-pasting files from the Japanese version of game to the English version, and you're telling me it's some kind of crushing burden on the official localization publisher which would dramatically impact the quality of other localization work in the game? Come on. It's not rocket science. NISA includes dual-audio in all the Disgaea titles and their various other SRPG offerings, and it must be such a terrible burden which ruins the localization of those titles. Right? Sega offered a dual-audio option in Valkyria Chronicles, and it was such a terrible burden which ruined the localization of that title. Right?
Wrong.
If you didn't check out the Japanese voice track for VC, you missed out on Jun Fukuyama (Lelouch) as the voice of Maximillian. And you really, really missed out.
There ARE cases where the call to not put in a Japanese voice track made a very real difference admittedly. FFXIII and Catherine both had proper lip syncing to English VA rather than trying to approximate (which IS easier to buy admittedly the further from real they are), and on the flipside you have games like ATII and Resonance of Fate that had to cut it in half to fit both in, and I believe it's part of why Atelier Iris was so buggy since sometimes sticking with one audio track instead would avoid crashes at certain points, like when you beat the game. Admittedly in the case of the former you could always go "fuck it" and leave the Japanese track without proper syncing so long as cutscenes ran the same length, but space is going to remain an issue until the space needed for voice tracks becomes inconsequential, and you'd have to have games reliably coded in a way where you CAN toggle tracks without reworking and potentially breaking the game.
The key here I believe lies in what I just said: including a toggle, and having the space. I don't think this will be an issue here, given it's a fighting game running on the same hardware and probably engine as BlazBlue did, and programmed by the same company too so it's probably trivial and should be there if practical, but the same can't be said for all (possibly not even most) games.
toddhunter
Member
You are ignoring the part of his argument concerning resources. If you include the Japanese voices in a title, chances are they will need to pay those people again. Sure modders can do some magic, but it is a bit different for a company with license fees.
This is much more of a consideration then a copy paste job. I realise some people like to hear the Japanese voices, and pretend that scenes like the laughing scene in FFX are not terrible in Japanese as well (because they can't understand it). But trying to pass off that it is trivial or no cost is not necessarily correct. I too would much rather see this money invested elsewhere then satisfying a very small minority.
Yeah, after watching that on Youtube this couldn't be further from the truth, Tidus sounds like a crow with his Japanese VA forcing a laugh. That, and it's wholly inapplicable because laughing (or crying or screaming) is universal, rather than dialogue that requires knowing a language to understand. Of course, you could just feel the foreign VA does those better, but that's something else here and not the main reason people argue about this.
Unknown Soldier
Member
I'm not ignoring that either, and I do know that Atlus in particular has run into the problem where Atlus Japan wouldn't or couldn't license the Japanese voice tracks to Atlus USA because of prohibitive cost. I don't know why this is such a problem for Atlus in particular, when Sega and NISA for example don't seem to ever run into these issues.
There's also the other side of the coin as well, some games simply wouldn't turn any profit if they had to pay English voice actors to dub over the entire game's spoken dialogue, so those games are released only with the Japanese voices and subtitles. These games are super-niche and wouldn't sell many copies anyways but at least they can even be released because of saving money by not doing any dubbing. So it works both ways, and it's understandable when Atlus is unable to include the Japanese voice tracks because of economic considerations but to go as far as Charlequin has and say that no game should ever have dual-audio is absolutely a bad argument.
charlequin
Banned
Stuff like this isn't always straightforward when the game isn't designed for it. Reworking a game to support multiple distinct audio tracks is, at very least, going to take time and effort on the part of developers (and the QA testers), time that has to be budgeted and paid for somehow. Comparing this to what's being done by pirate scenesters who brute-force swap one set of audio files in for another isn't particularly sensible.
NISA's localizations are nowhere near the quality that Atlus have produced pretty consistently in recent years and they're notorious for introducing crippling bugs during the localization process, so it seems pretty reasonable to claim that they're cutting corners somewhere in trying to offer everything on a slim budget.
If the dub quality is good and everything is fine then I don't see what the problem is. If you don't like the product you're free to import the JP/Asia versions. Sure it sucks that they can't cater to everyone but sometimes that's how it goes. I am personally disappointed if this doesn't come with Japanese voices especially considering it's developed by ASW. I was hoping Aksys would be doing this but I knew Atlus was going to most likely localize it.
Difference in contracts/licenses, going for bigger actors, selling cheaper on a less popular platform (like PSP)... There's a lot of potential reasons why something like that was a problem for Atlus (or just a particular Atlus game like Growlanser) but isn't one for those two.
The cases where I would actively least want a dub is when they actually play off the fact some characters speak English and others don't (natively), but I can't think of any games that did that seriously except Tekken, and far as I know Tekken doesn't provide English dubs for characters who weren't speaking English in the first place. Even then it's really only applicable if it's handled sensibly, rather than two characters speaking differing languages and understanding each other anyway for no discernible reason.
Unknown Soldier
Member
Nor is claiming that including dual-audio is automatically going to create such a problem that it will dramatically hurt other aspects of the game's localization. Nothing is straightforward in such an argument and would have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, not entirely dismissed as you have done.
Unless you can prove that not including dual-audio would immediately and unequivocally dramatically improve the quality of NISA's localizations, all other things remaining equal, this argument is essentially impossible to prove or disprove. So I won't bother with it one way or the other.
AgentOtaku
Member
Yay
P4 Golden next please
This was my immediate response when I got the email
Again VF and Tekken are the only ones that have both languages, more so for Tekken with the variety. While VF is mainly japanese or english
I WAS tempted to make a joke of NISA just being worse period... but to answer this seriously WITHOUT an attack on NISA? I know ATII had to cut half the VA in order to fit both English and Japanese in the game, whereas skipping this entirely could've allowed for a complete dub and possibly leave QA free to squash simple bugs like that infamous freezing one, plus I recall reading that Sakura Wars had some issues later on where scenes weren't subtitled or used the wrong names, so that's another case where it may've been a "mercykill" to abandon the plans for a Japanese VA version and go English only, nevermind it DOES make more sense for the setting.
That's what I thought, I didn't imagine there were many cases in games like Eden of the East's first episode or solid chunks of Rebuild of Evangelion where characters meant to be speaking English ARE speaking English in the Japanese voice track. Only ones I can think of are actually not Japanese developed, like Red Steel, though I suppose one of the Yakuzas is a possibility.
I'm sorry but this argument is so stupid and flawed I find it laughable. "Because you can't prove it I'm right." or "Because you can't prove it we're at a stalemate." This is a poor way to argue because it's the last ditch effort refusing to say you're wrong but at the same time saying something else. Every argument has the potential of using these answers but they don't because they're mediocre and everything would be up to stupid uncertainty.
gundamkyoukai
Member
Cool another fighting game to play but if it don't have the JP VA i won't buy it for 60 .
Almost every fighting game has this option i expect them to match what others are doing in the genre.
I have no problem playing fighting games in english but i won't pay full price when they cut stuff that already there that everyone else has given us.
Not to mention this game only has 10 chars and they got many other fighting games to play .
Almost every fighting game has this option i expect them to match what others are doing in the genre.
I have no problem playing fighting games in english but i won't pay full price when they cut stuff that already there that everyone else has given us.
Not to mention this game only has 10 chars and they got many other fighting games to play .
Alright, that's itno more Persona games for anybody who insists on calling him Charlie. I'm officially calling Atlus tomorrow to get this taken care of.
yeah those punk fans and their demands, it's not like they pay money for any of this
self-entitled trash!
I'm playing Yggdra Union on my Vita right now. It's pretty cool. It has Japanese voice acting too. Yet, I don't believe Atlus' quality suffered.
So, what changed between the time they used to do this to currently when they just can't be bothered?
firehawk12
Subete no aware
They believe in their localizations, I suppose. When Catherine came out, they were asked if JP voices would be in the game and their response was along the lines of "it's not a disc space issue". There's no technical reason, so it's (I assume) purely a creative choice.
WrenchNinja
Member
Dude, this is fucking low comparing Atlus USA to Lucas.
Seriously, if you care this much about the Japanese audio, import it ffs.
is it a creative or a financial choice?
if it's the latter I don't think anyone will really antagonize Atlus for it...but if it's the former that's just odd and forcing people to play a game a particular way.
for the record, i'd just be fine with english subs and japanese audio. as someone who's been playing RPG games for most of my damned life more text to read isn't an issue.
does recording brand new english VA really cost less than paying the japanese VA/licensing hub-bub again?
They actually did redo lipsyncing and thus it IS, in part, a technical issue, plus programming isn't so simple it's not a matter of is there space or not anyway. That, and it may've been licensing fees or the fact it takes place in America, or at least has a lot of characters with names you'd expect in America rather than Japan, so it could easily have been a "they wouldn't speak Japanese, why include it?" issue unlike something that at least takes place in a fantasy world where they'd likely be speaking something else entirely anyway.
For something like this skipping English VA for Japanese VA simply isn't an option like with KoF, assuming the story mode is handled at all like BlazBlue, so it's more likely if that extra cost is worth tacking on, being more or less expensive than the English VA may not be that relevant.
gundamkyoukai
Member
I don't think that is true for Catherine i remember they talking about disc space , needing 2 video files because each language would have different lip syncing and some other stuff.
Also i don't really care if there is no JP VA for story mode or something like that but the fighting part it should be there .
Uh...huh.
I'll just wait for confirmation. I don't subscribe to the "At least we get it at all" school of thought as my money doesn't work that way and there are a button of fighters available already and on the way. I doubt the FGC even looks at this game one bit.
I forgot to reply last time (mainly because of THAT response), but I honestly do think the answer is simply "we didn't have a good opportunity". Like I speculated before I imagine they're not going to out of their way to include both unless it's easy to implement and cheap to do so, I remember back with Digital Devil Saga when the question was raised, and shot down because it just wouldn't work.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
It might have been another game, but I just remember having the same talk (here, no less) about the same issue when Catherine was coming out and I was disappointed that we would not get the glorious dulcet tones of Wakamoto here.
I didn't know that they redid the lip-syncing. I thought I saw some weird anime-dubisms where actors would pause at strange times, but that's probably just a trick of my bad memory.
It sounds like you have a problem with these "customers" and are actually happy they are driven away by such a policy and you would love for them to be driven away from all the other publishers as well. Why, it escapes me. It's not like you don't know that not every person wanting dual audio is an idiot professing the superiority of the original voice work without having listened to it or being able to understand it.
BTW Atlus, lower your fucking PSP game prices on PSN would you? You think Class of Heroes is worth $39.99?! Or Kenka Bancho?! Knights in the Nightmare at $29.99? Your Persona games? GTFO with that mess.
Someone get off their asses and make it happen. Tons of lost sales on PSN with the Vita launch guys. Sheesh. =(
With that OT explosion out the way, we continue with The Arena. =)
Someone get off their asses and make it happen. Tons of lost sales on PSN with the Vita launch guys. Sheesh. =(
With that OT explosion out the way, we continue with The Arena. =)
Zeouterlimits
Member
Yeah, agreed.
Wow, I'm kind of shocked at Charlequin's militant attitude regarding this.
Mhm.
How it should work isn't "Wow Atlus thanks for deigning to give us the game, allow me to suckle at thy teet sweet master"
It should be "Damn right you're bringing it over if you want my money"
HouseofGlass
Neo Member
I agree, and I've always felt you had a really shitty attitude towards people who want dual-language tracks, charlequin. For as much as you put on a veneer of "affecting quality" and "detracting from more important aspects of the localization" it's transparently obvious you just don't like or respect the opinions of people who want to listen to a game with the Japanese language track.
I agree that there are cases where adding dual-language tracks has a negative impact on the quality of the localization. I also think that there are some cases where it does not have an impact (a fighting game would be one of those cases). The fact is, it's a complicated issue that as a previous poster said should be taken on a case by case basis. But not only do you think no game should ever have the option, you think even in cases like this where it likely wouldn't have a negative impact, the option should be deliberately avoided just to make super extra sure people who like dual-language tracks don't get too full of themselves.
There's a lot of people who want to play games in a lot of different ways. People who want dual language tracks aren't all assholes, or childish, or unwilling to accept what is and is not possible when it comes to game localizations. They just want to play a game the way they like it, same as you. It might be impossible for people who want to play dual language tracks to get what they want most of the time. That does not mean they should be treated like shit.