Talk Silently
Final Fantasy XIII arrives tomorrow, and I am ambivalent.
It's not a case of console envy. I don't mind that my machine of choice won't be able to render individual reflections on Cactuar needles, or whatever. I'm sure I'll be able to endure these supposed visual abominations without therapy.
It's not the silly protagonist names either. Lightning, Snow, B.A. Baracus: these are the characters I’ve learned to expect and embrace since first exchanging promise rings with the Final Fantasy franchise in middle school.
It’s not the characters. It’s their voices I can’t stand.
For me, Final Fantasy games have always been about reading the dialog, pressing a button to quickly feed text to my impatient eyes. I enjoy the little typos, the quirky bits of timelessness that translators like Ted Woolsey can add to a story. I like dwarven accents that I can repeat in my head, tally-ho.
Growing up, it was satisfying to show in-game conversations to adults who had stodgily suggested my time might be better invested in a novel instead of skull-sucking video games. They were always surprised to encounter a game that not only promoted literacy, but slipped beyond technological limitations of the time to address meaningful themes and moral dilemmas. And text was the vehicle.
Now voice audio is the vehicle of choice, and it's a bit like replacing a functional sedan with a suped-up Honda Civic. The Civic is flashier and has a gigantic spoiler bolted to the back, but quite frankly it just comes off as embarrassing.
Yes, I said it: embarrassing. I am embarrassed to play modern JRPGs. Nothing ruins a deliciously clichéd evil plot more than having it spoken aloud by a ten year old girl. Nothing makes me wince like hearing a crew of wide-eyed teenagers wax philosophical after they beat the crap out of a giant mushroom beast. Declarations of love are ruined when they awkwardly trickle out of a speaker.
I don't mind reading the words, but for some reason hearing them is insufferable. It's even worse when other people are in the vicinity of the television, enjoying my discomfort and hinting that I may be some sort of strange pedophile.
Am I older or more critical, unwilling to dally with recycled story tropes returning in their shiny new clothes? Has the Japanese preoccupation with preteen protagonists finally become too weird, as technology drags games closer and closer to the uncanny valley? Or do these English voice actors just straight-up suck?
It’s hard to tell for sure, but I assume speech will be a serious snag as I try to enjoy Final Fantasy XIII. If JRPGs were once like a book, they're now a book-on-tape as read by Dora the Explorer. How is a grown adult supposed to come to terms with this?
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Certis wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:
<+katisu> Q-Stone is an internet genius
I've never quite thought about it like that, but sure enough, that's exactly how I feel. To video games: Please shut up and stop using voice if you are going to sound so embarassing and don't come back until you are ready to put together a worthwhile package. I'm perfectly happy reading text if it comes to either text or what you've passing as dialoge.
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EDIT: Double post, but at least I didn't try to say it out loud.
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I would really prefer text as well. It is not the voices or voice acting that is the problem, though they are generally fairly atrocious, and I have come to expect the teenagers and kids in the cast. I was a kid when I started playing these games myself, and FF comes with a certain amount of nostalgic forgiveness as a result.
For me, it is more of a practical issue. JRPGs are usually slow in pace, and very wordy. I read far faster than the characters speak, like most people, and the old method of being able to digest several sentences of dialogue in a fraction of time than it takes for them to be spoken is a benefit in my book. The subtitles that tend to be available are not much help, as they detract from the cinematic experience, but don't really speed anything.
Games like mass effect let you skip the speech, but then you end up with a staccato of single syllables. Again, not ideal.
I don't mind spoekn cut scenes, but the need to voice every interaction just draws out the experience unnessarily.
I have just started FFXIII, and am givent to understand that there are fewer NPC conversations, but more exposition between teammates. We shall see how that works out.
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Jonman wrote:
All I will hope for is this: that FFXIII has subtitles and if I don't like the voice acting there's the mute button. I mean sure I might lose the music, but that's the point of going to YouTube and getting the song there....
But again I do understand what you mean, I was listening to a Conference Call that was handling the topic of voice acting in a question. Voice acting can either make a good game better or a decent game bad. It's a dual edge sword that we play with nowadays and from what I've seen of the Unskippable series on The Escapist, voice acting is a key thing in JRPGs.
But the one thing that I cannot get out of my mind is how serious and straight they play this. I mean at work I saw the international trailer and I couldn't help but laugh for the whole Four Minutes (I blame Unskippable for that, but maybe I'm just not a serious kind of guy). So when I play through the real game, will I be sympathizing with the characters or will I be busting a gut during cutscenes for just how funny I find their seriousness.
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I've always thought that when I read to myself, I sound like one of the great orators of our century. This illusion is generally shattered anytime I read out loud.
Irongut pretty much nails it. Everything seems to sound better when we read it in our heads. Now, of course, good voice actors can enhance this, but that seems to be a rare thing indeed among games. If it's bad, it just ruins it, especially when you're dealing with a dramatic scene, as is often the case in RPGs.
I agree; text is often MUCH MUCH better. However, you also end up losing the cinematic component tied to the discussion, argument, oaths of love/revenge if you get rid of the voice component. So how do these highly cinematic games like FF (which I admit I have never played and have zero interest in) handle these scenes if they're all in text? It also strikes me as awkward to have gesturing folks, lips moving, and no sound.
I think that one of the main reason I didn't enjoy FFX was because of the voice acting...regrettably I never got past the first 40 minutes of XII which is why I'm just now picking it back up again. It seems that Squeenix hasn't done as good of a job with FF's voice acting/directing. Maybe it has something to do with the age of the characters...
If I remember correctly, they did a pretty decent job with the voice acting in Kingdom Hearts. Yet again, the protagonists there are children. They had a reference point with the entire Disney catalog there though.
If I had it my way, I would just turn off the voices. Maybe it wouldn't take them so long to get us the finished product then
Save all that money they spend in the recording booth and get us the game a year earlier with having to record a Japanese dialogue track and then an English one.
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As a full-blooded geek, I wish the PS3 version had left in the Japanese voice tracks. A lot of the voicework traditions that developed in Japan feel very natural in that language, but sound ridiculous when modified for English (the whiny characters, the tsunderes, etc.)
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It's not like the voice work and dialog in Western RPGs is any better. Dragon Age was downright painful.
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I really like the voice acting in Persona 4. (Especially for some of the side characters like Nanako Dojima, who can break a heart with a single line of dialogue if you'r guard is down
) Probably the best voice acting I've heard in a JRPG. Lost Odyssey was pretty good as well, although I mostly played that with the japanese language track and subs.
That most recent Star Ocean game though...well, I'd recommend grabbing the 'international' PS3 version, switching on the subtitles/japanese track and never, EVER loading the english language version if you value your sanity. KAY!
Never finished 12, but I quite liked the way they did Fran's voice and the han-solo rip-off she hung around with who's name I forget.
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I can count on one hand the number of games I've played that I felt had decent voice-acting throughout, Western or Japanese in origin, in any genre.
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I've never played a Final Fantasy game but would be interested in trying one. But yeah, just looking at the trailers causes me to cringe with thoughts of my wife's potential reaction if she walked in... It'd totally kill any enjoyment.
Wow, really? I thought Dragon Age had exceptional voice acting, particularly from Alistair and Morrigan. And the in-party banter between various characters was hilarious.
The dialog I've heard from FF13 in trailers, though... wow. And yet I'm excited anyway.
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I think that Mass Effect 2 has some great voice acting...ironically the weakest character voice work comes from Shepard...you'd think the main character should have the best...
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I take it you were a male Shepard, because the female Shepard's voicework is phenomenal.
Hmmm...yeah I was the male Shepard. I'll have to replay it with a female Shepard. Bioware tends to do a pretty good job with voice acting even if the dialogue gets cheesy.
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At first, I'm right there behind Clem, pitchfork-wielder #1 to his mob-leader, if you will.
However, then I started thinking how much I enjoyed the performances in Mass Effect 2. Would Mordin's song have been anywhere near as awesome had it been presented with white text in a blue box?
Thinking back to FFX, where the voice-work wasn't matched with mo-cap'd performances, I agree that switching to subtitles didn't lose any of the experience. But now we've got full performance capture, motion and voice, replete with (rudimentary) lip-syncing and diving headfirst into the uncanny valley. If you were to switch to subtitles, you lose that performance, and are left with weirdly gesticulating avatars, pausing for undermined times mid-sentence to wait for the player to push a button, or leaping from animation-to-animation as our speed-reading player is spamming the same button.
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LarryC wrote:
This is why I like the new trend of including Japanese voice tracks on games. I tell myself it's because the original seiyu they hire are better than the American voice actors they hire last minute to dub the localization, but if I'm being honest it is also in large part to provide that separation from the material that allows the clunky things they're saying to not make me cringe. This is the only way I survived Valkyria Chronicles.
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My memory of the game is a bit fuzzy. Sometimes I get the voice acting mixed up with the tortured and constantly long winded exposition. Either way, I found the whole dialog experience painful.
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What? Someone with a Teddie avatar liked something about Persona 4?
I agree, but it bears mentioning that the whole game isn't voice acted. Even the major characters often speak in plain text. And the camera is back far enough so that lip synching doesn't become distracting. I hate bad voice acting, but what I really can't stand is distracting mouth movements and arbitrary gestures.
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Agreed, I literally LOL while playing The Witcher because the voice acting and the out of sync arm movements are hilarious.
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Switchbreak nailed it. QFT, This, What-He-Said, ad nauseam.
It works for anime as well; that's why --with few exceptions -- we're so insistent on watching things in Japanese with (well-translated) English subtitles. Watching it in English just confirms our deep, dark suspicion that what we're enjoying is actually aimed at twelve year olds. =\
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I'm playing the first Mass Effect, and the voice work in there is impressive. It definitely adds to the game, and listening to them is faster and more dramatic than if I read it myself.
What's the issue with Final Fantasy XIII exactly? Is the voice acting just awful?
@ Tanglebones: You would think they would at least have the option for Japanese language, given that the thing comes on bluray. The extra voice would take up minimal space. Especially if you understand some Japanese, you definitely get that extra dimension playing a Japanese game in Japanese. And yeah, stuff that sounds normal in Japanese (esp contextual dialog and voice pitch and intonation) can be very difficult to translate into other languages, nevermind something as completely different as English.
@ michaelar: Exactly. Naruto (blushes) sings in Japanese, but in grates in English. How on earth can you translate dattebayo?
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Heavy Rain says hi. So does every game voiced ever by Nolan North that isn't Uncharted.
whatever, I can't effing WAIT to play this game.
Kind of lost track of time, I saw the title of the article and thought "holy crap! It comes out tomorrow?!"
Nth'd for GREAT justice. Even the best localization can be really bad. And the contrast between American voice acting and Japanese can't be quantified. I enjoyed Lost Odyssey more in Italian than I did in English.
I hope like heck it comes out as DLC like they did for Naruto: Rise of a Ninja.
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