So, I mentioned before that I play a lot of RPGs. Mostly I play console RPGs, 'cause there's a lot less bullshit to put up with, and the combat is usually of the "two groups on opposite sides of the screen hitting each other on the head 'til one group falls down" variety, rather than the more frenetic up-close-and-personal kind you get in most computer RPGs. And for some reason, American game producers seem to have trouble making good console RPGs. I don't know why this should be, but the Japanese have them beat cold. More and more, recently, games are including full voice, and RPGs, where story is usually paramount, are the best examples of this. FMV sequences are getting more and more elaborate, and there's usually a good chunk of talking going on. Which is why it pisses me off that when these games get imported from Japan, the usually very good voice acting from the Japanese cast is stripped out and replaced with what can be barely called acting performed by the guy who was standing next to the water cooler with nothing better to do and some chick who wandered into the studio by mistake. Even when they get "name" actors to do voices, like Haley Joel Osment in Kingdom Hearts, they usually do a crappy job. Why, why, why don't more game publishers either do like Atlus does and provide bilingual voice, or, if your claim is that there's not enough space on the disk to have both*cough*bullshit*cough*, release a dubbed version and a subbed version? There's a market for it. I, and pretty much everyone else I know who plays Japanese CRPGs, would gladly shell out a few extra bucks(if necessary) to get a game with the Japanese voices intact. This especially makes no sense in the case of, say, Final Fantasy X and X-2, and Xenosaga, all of which have subtitles *anyway*. So it's not like it's some extra expense for them to go and put in subtitles. I mean, in Xenosaga, the FMV sequences are up to 45 minutes long and have three places to save in the middle of them. Me, personally, I love that. That just makes me happy. What doesn't make me happy is having to listen to Wendee Lee the whole time, because she's awful. Her voice is terrible, she's got no acting ability, and she's apparently tone deaf, because she speaks in a monotone. And no, she's not playing KOS-MOS, who's supposed to sound wooden and unnatural; she's playing Shion, who gets most of the dialogue. You know, some people say that it doesn't matter how good a voice actor someone is if they're speaking a language you don't understand, but that's just not true. Emotions come through, no matter what language you're speaking. Delivery is everything, and timing is everything else. The major problem is that when you're making an animated project, you can take the time to make sure that the sound track matches up with the amount of time the onscreen characters are seen to be speaking; you can re-draw the animation if necessary to extend or shorten it, if need be. But when you're translating something, well, each character has their length of screen time, and that's it, and you have to cram their dialogue into that. So usually the actors will have to deliver their lines very quickly, to be able to get the same idea across in the same amount of time in the different language. And sometimes there's the opposite problem, there'll be a 5-word idiom in English that perfectly sums up a three-sentence concept in Japanese, and you have to add extra dialogue to fill the time. But really, I just wish they'd release more games with the original voice track left in. The voices in Final Fantasy X were *so* good(you know, I know that there are options for italics, underlining and bolding at the top of my little edit window, but I'm so used to using asterisks for emphasis...) in Japanese(I have several friends who have the import) and *so* bad in English. *So* bad.
I dunno, maybe it's just me. I admit that I do really love the sound of the Japanese language, spoken or sung(as opposed to German, which sounds great when sung, and terrible when spoken), so maybe that colors my opinion of their actors. But voice actors in Japan are big deals. Many of them are huge stars, with singing and regular acting careers, and video games are a big deal, so whereas here if you're an actor or singer or whatever and you do the voice in a videogame and you suck, hardly anyone will even know about it, in Japan if you do a videogame and you suck, it's like having a movie or an album bomb, and could significantly hurt your career.
If you want another for instance, look at games like the Legacy of Kain series. I mean, sure, the dialogue was purple as all get-out, but the acting was great. Pacing, delivery, emotion, all top-notch. Because they hired good actors(like Willem DaFoe. Willem DaFoe should do more voice work. He's a great actor, but man, he is so frickin' ugly. Ugh, I can barely stand to watch movies he's in. And that one where he was having sex with Madonna all the time? *shudder* Still gives me nightmares. Great voice, though. Good actor.), and because the movie sequences were created with the actors on-hand, so they could be tailored to the voices. So it's not like it's just that American game studios are bad at doing voice in games.
I may expound on this subject more at a later date, but right now I have to get ready for work.
Posted by stirge at May 15, 2004 01:54 PM