What made FFXII's dub so much better than the rest of the series? Its arguably the only example of a JRPG being better in English than Japanese.
What made FFXII's dub so much better than the rest of the series?
What made FFXII's dub so much better than the rest of the series? Its arguably the only example of a JRPG being better in English than Japanese.
They used theatre actors for the judges, overall the direction of dialogue was just good and didn't sound like generic anime dub crap
This, way too many games just have VA's trying to do 'the anime voice' to copy the JP version. If you get VA's who have even slightly more range outside of that then basically any jrpg dub can sound 10x better than it would otherwise.
yeah, i kind of agree-
apparently because the dub actors had specific direction from the localisation directors to go for creative freedom, unlike with a lot of dub VO projects where its purely about tropecasting your voice and fitting the mouth movements.
apperently for Fran they had this idea that they wnated vieras to have icelandic accents and even approached bjork to do the VO,
either she declined or the localisation team brought up the idea with square japan and they said no because it wasnt in the budget,
google it, but it goes to show how they really showed passion for the project.
ff12's dub has a hugely striking comparison to say ff13,
where i saw this interview with the vanielle VO actor who was explaining the various "anime girl" noises she had to make that sounded so artificial and like a copy paste into google translate approach of the original japanese voice track.
wasnt a fan
They got people from outside of the anime/cartoon/video game voice acting world, people who were 1. not tryong to adhere to tropes or character stereotypes and instead tryong to portray people, and 2. a lot of the actors came from a theater background where you speak loudly and authoritatively your project your performance to people siyting in the back who can't read your face.
Also, as aforementioned by , most dubbing studios don't give a shit. The actor walks in, reads their lines and hopes they did a good job, and leaves. Matt Mercer, Rena Strober, Crispin Freeman, and other prominent VAs have said that most of the time they get no direction or context and often don't even get to see the character design. Dubs like FF12 or Xenoblade Chronicles 1 or the first two Trails of Cold Steel games where the people in charge of the English voice dub actually tried to give the actors context are apparently rare. A lot of American voice actors get undue hate not because they are bad, but because they are taking shots in the dark.
>first two Trails of Cold Steel games
really?
Cold steel’s voice acting is rather good, barring some smaller bit parts.
What in specific are you complaining about here?
NTA but why the first two? I remember Reverie's CS cast being weaker, but CS3 and 4 were still solid.
The key problem with CS3 is that a lot of the new characters and the recasts don't sound great. A few new VAs, like Millium's replacement, Michael's, Shirley's, and Rutger's, were good. Some new characters like Agate and Randy, were extremely rough at the beginning, but by the end they had settled into their roles and their voices were good. For Tio's voice, they shouldn't have tried imitating the Japanese VA, as it just comes off as distractedly awkward and stilted in English. The branch campus student VAs which had one off lines were all over the place.
CS4 had very stilted dialogue and voice acting. More recasts where the new actor sounds inappropriate for the character (ie Craig). Some old VAs sound weird. I initially thought that several characters had been recast (Emperor Eugent, Michael, Crow, Rufus), but when I looked them up on BTVA to confirm I found out that they had not. Could be that people were recording from home on differently calibrated equipment in non-soundproofed rooms without the voice director on hand to guide them, so it takes a while for them to regain their character's voice. The actual recasts of Osborne, Laura, Lechter, McBurn, etc, was really unfortunate. They sound inferior to the old versions. The game should have been delayed so they could have gotten everyone back and gotten the voice acting done right.
>they keep recasting VAs throughout the series
Frick, I hate that shit.
It's amazing to me how shit the direction of most dubs tends to be, despite how many supposedly passionate people they get on these things. It feels like most dubs are done for a paycheck.
>They got people from outside of the anime/cartoon/video game voice acting world
Not really, they just had a lot of big names in specifically western cartoons. People like Tom Kane and Phil LaMarr. And say what you want about other aspects of our cartoons, but the voicework has always been top notch.
>apparently because the dub actors had specific direction from the localisation directors to go for creative freedom
In fairness so did X's dub and it was...spotty in places.
They hired talented well known actors and adjusted the localization so it sounded more natural.
Also, good casting.
It's so funny to me that FF14 has better VO and script than FF13, 15 and 16.
Like what the frick are the mainline FF devs doing.
16 has decent enough actors, but a lot of dubs tend to have shit direction. FF12 is one of those cases where liberties with the localization benefited the game, unlike a lot of modern dubs where localization tends to insert modern things that only make sense to the terminally online.
The writing
>dub
>trash game
go back
The localization team had a lot of genuine passion in the project and knew where to take certain liberties, like Fran's Icelandic-inspired accent. The localization team weren't just a bunch of 30+ year olds from LA trying to sound like teenagers.
This. They would also take stiff and gamey lines in the japanese script and try to make them more in line with the world. Ends up as a slightly more sophisticated and dryer Dragon Quest.
Literally JUST finished it and this is the first thread I see.
What a great fricking videogame. Easily one of the prettiest games ever made.
>shitty tryhard shakespearean bullshit
>"automatically elevated" by britbong garbage spew
these two things make normalgays go apeshit they can't help but feel smarter when they experience it. 12's dub sucks shit and its localization is even worse
it's not even just britbong. sure, it can give certain character like it did with xenoblade trilogy, but ff12's voice acting is just GOOD on its own. not to mention accents used are all over the place.
yeah, literally only people from Archades have british accents. cause you know, they're the people who go around conquering other nations and stuff.
>shitty tryhard shakespearean bullshit
god forbid you might actually learn a thing or two about eloquency and distinguished language
Mainly the VA direction which was handled in polar opposite manner of both 10 and 13.
mfw wondering why his accent changed from faux-Indian to posh British until I realized he was a social chameleon changing his mannerisms depending on who he was conversing with
holy frick
>Its arguably the only example of a JRPG being better in English than Japanese.
English dub will never be better than a Japanese dub.
mate, japan-only izjs edition of the game has only the english dub. it is clearly the preferred va as chosen by squeenix.
This is par the course for Square's international releases for whatever reason.
self-loathing weeb who doesn't even speak jap...
>English dub will never be better than a Japanese dub.
Nice joke, even if we disregard the rampant tropecasting (where they don't play a character, but a recycled trope with their VO) script changes and voicework has been done better in English many times for a very long time.
Even so far back as with Metal Gear Solid 1 the script was vastly improved, terms were changed (which was kept and became series standard, like wireless became codec).
Kingdom Hearts. Sure, some of the OC Donut Steel characters and Square ones sound better in japanese, but have you heard what Goofy sounds like in it?
No there’s tons of games that are better in English, especially if the listener speaks English as a native language.
You're a dumb American who thinks British accent = good.
and where do you live to immediately think British accent = pshh theyre trying to make it sound deep
Is that Xenoblade?
>That's Balthier over there!
balthier sexo
I like Fran’s voice
fran turns me on and her voice is a bit factor in that
If this is what jarpig fans consider to be "good voice acting", I have serious concerns about their taste.
Name better JRPG acting
That's like asking me to pick a shitbull that hasn't bitten its owner. Jarpigs have never had good voice acting. In fact, Japan as an entire country is incapable of acting.
This is unfortunately true. Japs literally cannot do subtlety or believable human emotion, even when they're not being intentionally moronic and chuuni like in your webm. They just can't do it, they're allergic to media that isn't as over the top as possible.
It's because of their chinkoid blood.
That doesn't make the acting bad. Brian Blessed has basically one setting and he's a legendary actor for the sheer amount of ham he can bring to the screen while also delivering legitimately fantastic performances.
>Japan as an entire country is incapable of acting.
Please watch their good films and anime first before saying that
Anime as an adaptation of manga is entirely built around extremely exaggerated expressionism. The only studio, certainly the only major animation studio anyways, that bucks that trend is Ghibli and it's because Miyazaki fricking DESPISES the culture of anime and otaku.
I strongly doubt you can give me good examples of subtle Japanese movies, and even if you can, I'm willing to bet those movies underperformed in their home box office because the Japs collectively, as a culture, do not appreciate subtlety or humanism.
It's not an insult, it's just an observation. It doesn't surprise me that a culture that places very little value on individual human experience and generally maintains a very stifled, conformist lifestyle would crave exaggerated over-the-top media.
fran's sexy french accent
XII released in the sweet spot where dubbed media wasn't universally considered cartoony childish trash, but before zoomers who grew up on anime started jerking off to the title of 'Voice Actor' and putting out the most generic self-congratulatory performances ever known to man.
It helps that XII mostly avoids anime horseshit cliches (mostly) so it doesn't turn into a farce like X.
In the Japanese version, you can hear the guy Vaan pickpockets in the intro literally say "Oh shit!" when he realizes his money got stolen.
Receipts
They got real actors instead of the usual pool of anime voice actors