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Why I almost hate Canada Day, and dubs.
Musai | 4:58 PM on 07.03.2009 4 comments


Bit of a shorter update today; I'm completely swamped with games to play since my birthday on the 23rd. Yesterday, I picked up Volition's Red Faction: Guerrilla, which I find to be amazing thus far. Also, my girlfriend was somehow able to secure BlazBlue, which I have been pining over for the past month or so as a belated birthday present. I say somehow because Wednesday was Canada Day, which meant that everything meant to come out this week was sitting somewhere waiting to be shipped, much to my dismay. Having received BlazBlue around 7 PM or so last night, I promptly proceeded to play it for 5 or so hours straight, and that was just the training mode...

However, in a roundabout way, BlazBlue has got me thinking about something that's on the mind of a lot of Japanese gaming fans here in the west; what's the deal with publishers who refuse to give Japanese games a dual language option? When I popped the game in to my 360, and headed to training mode, I was scrambling for the options menu once I heard Bang Shishigami's English voice. Thankfully, there was a dual language option. But, what about the games that don't give us a choice? I think the only rationalization is that it's a condition borne of pure laziness, and more developers need to start adding dual language options (I'm looking at you, Atlus, and your Persona series...)

Watching terribly dubbed anime on TV as a kid, and suffering through terrible voice acting in English localizations of Japanese games throughout my teenage years, I've often wondered why many developers just don't give us the option to choose ALL the time. It wasn't exactly hard to add Japanese language tracks on CDs or DVDs, and now on dual layer or BluRay, it's even more ridiculous to not add a few more MB of audio. I'm afraid I just don't understand why companies can't give fans something that they actually want, or for that matter, why their dubs can't be the same quality as the Japanese. Now, I don't mean to start a subs-versus-dubs debate here, but a lot of dub work we have to put up with is frankly sub-par. Actually, Just the fact that I'm trying to walk on eggshells as to not spark an angry debate about "japanophiles" or whatnot speaks volumes about how we view other cultures, even in this, our beloved gamer subculture.

"But Musai", you say, "People who don't understand Japanese can't hear the difference between a dub or a Japanese track!" Yes in most cases that is true, but that isn't the point. The point is that localizations and dubs as they are now completely rob media of its sociolinguistic context when they don't allow a choice on the consumer's end. Even if one can't understand the language, there are subtleties in accent,intensity and prosodic information that English voice actors fail to capture a lot of the time. This isn't necessarily completely on the heads of the voice actors. I mean, there are bad voice actors out there who don't deliver their lines with enough emotion, but a result of a bigger problem: bad localization. I had assumed that by 2009, that not only would we be in Jetsons-like cars, but that we would be beyond awkward localization attempts. I'm sorry, but having your voice actors, in their best falsetto, run around calling everyone "-san" and "-chan" awkwardly is not my idea of a localization; it's embarassing.

Phoenix Wright did none of this. It somehow retained the humour of the original while relating to an audience that did not necessarily understand the cultural references, or the puns. At a time where the industry is becoming less polarized between Japanese and English developers, can we really afford to force a user to play a game with only dubbing, or a terribly localized game?



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4 comments | showing # 1 to 4

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Elsa's Destructoid Blog
.. with bluray and the disc space available, yeah, I don't know why they don't include language options more often! (though I guess it depends on how much space is used in total... MGS4 was a pretty big game and I'm sure games will get bigger).

(and a belated Happy Birthday!)
Zippyduda's Destructoid Blog
I was incredibly happy with Street Fighter 4 in this sense because the default settings were Japanese (this applies with cutscenes, narration and character voices). I've watched some videos on Youtube of this guy who does fights and he has an American voices, AND HOLY FUCK are they awful. Hearing the animé and Hadouken or Shoryuken in English just isn't right.

I so far have never come across a game that hasn't had the option to change it from English to Japanese, but I see where you are coming from. I watch (and have played) Naruto and don't understand people who have English, except they "can't be bothered reading subtitles". I just think they are missing out on great films, old karate films, animé etc.

Anyway, more on topic :) I still have to play Persona, as it looks like an insanely good game, but it sounds like shame there's no Japanese audio.
perri's Destructoid Blog
YES. I ordered a modem last week and of course they wouldn't ship on the weekend, Canada day slows everything down in the middle of the week- I'll probably end up getting it next week!

blah. People should always work.
Dan CiTi's Destructoid Blog
I prefer "dubs"(which is a dumb way to put it since the japanese version is dubbed to, unless it is live action). Japanese voices usually aren't any better anyway. Persona games especially capture the original voices, tones, etc. very well. In fact Yosuke's english voice actor is fluent in japanese, if that helps.

Some Street Fighter IV japanese voices are obviously better (Ryu, Gouken, Akuma, E, Honda) and some english ones are superior as well(Cammy, Ken, Abel, Dan, Sagat).

As for BlazBlue, my copy hasn't arrived yet but I've heard all of the voices through watching the game on YouTube and livestream and I have no problem with them, I think they are awesome. Especially Tao's, Ragna's, etc. I haven't even heard anyone liking the japanese ones at all until now.


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 about me

Who am I? That's a good question. I'm a 24 year old gamer from Canada who's been playing video games for 22 years - I live and breathe games, and by extension, the industry. When I'm not gaming, reading about gaming or the industry, talking about games with friends or on forums or thinking about them, I enjoy reading, writing, sleeping, music, hockey, or hanging out with my girlfriend, though not necessarily in that order. I've recently finished my BA in linguistics, and I already have a half-BA in journalism that I'll probably never get done, considering I have enough experience to write news stories. Right now, I own a PS2, 360, gaming PC, DS, and PSP, and in the past, I have owned almost every console since the NES, at some point or another. I hope to expand to a PS3 as soon as I can.

I've actually written about the industry before, including an unsuccessful stint with RPGamer in my pre-university days. I was sadly forced to give it up because of a lack of time. I also wrote a gaming editorial column for my university paper, which my editor always wanted to make a "what's a cool game this week" column. Needless to say, they didn't renew me for another semester. Ah well.

I can usually be found playing RPGs or MMORPGs, though recently, I've started playing a lot of games from other genres, including some (incredibly unrealistic) racing games. Although I said I like hockey, I wouldn't be caught dead playing sports games; I just never really liked them.

I suppose if there's anything else you could possibly want to know about me, you can ask, though I can't imagine what you-

Oh, right, I forgot.

Cake or pie?

Definitely cake.

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Takeshi's Profile Takeshi
Fare thee well my big black darling. I'll miss you.


 

 
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