Enchanted Arms embraces bilingualism

by Ludwig Kietzmann { Aug 7th 2006 at 7:55PM }

Due for release on 29 August, Enchanted Arms is the fully localized version of From Software's more awkwardly named and rather annoyingly capitalized [eM] eNCHANT arM, the first traditional Japanese RPG to emerge on the Xbox 360. For its American release, the fine French folks at Ubisoft have bravely volunteered to publish the game and translate the gratuitous amounts of Japanese voice and text into something more palatable to a Western audience.

Then again, many localizations turn out be anything but palatable, representing the aural equivalent of vicious food poisoning. The mere memory of Shenmue's soulless soccer kids causes great discomfort and anxiety, feelings that are slightly dimmed by Ubisoft's intentions to include both Japanese and English soundtracks on the Enchanted Arms disc. Excellent news, to be sure, but frustrating in the sense that Ubisoft is one of the few publishers that actually does put a great deal of care into cinematic presentation, generally avoiding talentless talkers who end up in the recording studio through sheer chance. Based on Grandia II, their English efforts might not be nearly embarrassing enough to warrant this feature.

And really, "feature" is a good word to describe it. With advanced compression techniques and new, Blu-tinged storage mediums arriving, there should be no reason for gamers not to have a choice in who they hear blathering about chosen ones and ancient, poorly imprisoned evils. It's about time that publishers and developers realized that poor voice acting is no laughing matter.

[A video involving magical limbs is embedded in the second part of the post.]

Tags: Anime, Dub, Enchanted Arms, EnchantedArms, Final Fantasy, FinalFantasy, Grandia II, GrandiaIi, Localization, Sub, Ubisoft, Voice acting, VoiceActing, [em] Enchant Arm, [em]EnchantArm

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Vazel @ Aug 7th 2006 8:00PM

" Based on Grandia II, their English efforts might not be nearly embarrassing enough to warrant this feature." Ain't that the truth. But regardless, Ubi still gets brownie points for this.

Geist @ Aug 7th 2006 8:01PM

Maaaaan I dunno. It looks like your typical RPG, typical story, typical battle stuff (from what's I see, I may be extremely off-track here,) but maybe that's just what the 360 needs.
Personally, I'm all for the Japanese thing. The acting tends to be better, and often feels more natural for the characters. Some people should just stop being lazy, I'm sick of reviews that mention "But you have to read a lot of text."

NATO_Duke @ Aug 7th 2006 8:16PM

I think of it like watching asian movies. It is just better in their langauge, without the bad dubbing. I hope that the original language material makes the game feel more like it was meant to when made for Japan. Either way, the title looks tight and i can't wait.

Sinergy @ Aug 7th 2006 8:34PM

Original japanese dialog? HELL YES. I wish Square-Enix would do the same.

Russ Stewart @ Aug 7th 2006 8:40PM

What gets me is the whole "stupid Amercians won't understand unless it's dumbed down" thing. True, I don't put much faith in the inteligence level of 99% of my fellow Americans, but they'll never get if they're never given the chance. And we are talking about a console RPG here; I'd bet money that the target audience would get (and thorougly enjoy) it if the translations were as direct as possible.

Momus @ Aug 7th 2006 10:55PM

I watch all my foreign movies and shows subbed. I want the option for my games, too. Now.

kyou @ Aug 7th 2006 11:15PM

Seriously, which games have good Japanese to English dubs? I can only think of MGS, maybe FFX and Kingdom Hearts is probably the only dub that's better than the original. Seriously, I can't think of any others. Also changing Japanese Rock from intros to... techno... or some other crap music is incredibly wrong. Do publishers believe that Japanese lyrics offend people or something?

Azurite @ Aug 8th 2006 12:52AM

Wow, I was hoping this would come to be more common with next gen, seeing as even SoulCalibur had the option. Great news, keep your fingers crossed for other companies to follow suit.

32_Footsteps @ Aug 8th 2006 11:27AM

You know, I'm always entertained by how strongly some people are in favor of the original Japanese voice track. I'm firmly convinced that alot of people prefer subtitles because they don't realize when there's a bad Japanese voice actor, but will always be able to point out a bad American voice actor.

Look at .hack... in some cases (Kite, Lios), the Japanese voice actor is clearly better. But in some cases (BlackRose, Sanjuro), the English is better. And there's a few cases (Helba, Mia) where both are good. But most people I know prefer the Japanese track, perhaps because they can't pick out where it's inferior.

In the end, they should just hire the voice acting cast that worked on Cromartie High School. If you ever wanted to hear a quality dub of anything Japanese, listen to that (it helps that it's uproariously funny).

VampireHunter Z @ Aug 8th 2006 12:33PM

@32_Footsteps

Not neccesarily. I don't think I need to understand Japanese to to have a good feel of how well the voice acting is done. As a big anime fan I can tell you there are only a few English dubs that are superior (i.e. Cowboy Bebop). But if you watched Gundam SEED subbed you could definitely relate to the emotional scenes through good voice acting.

I don't think a lot of care is put into dubs. Not to mention that it's now out of the hands of the original creator. English dubbers just don't seem to share the same vision.

32_Footsteps @ Aug 8th 2006 12:50PM

Vamp, I used to think the same thing. Then I started learning Japanese and got a rude awakening. Among the excrutiating voice acting you'll hear are VERY poorly done Kansai accents (Rachel in .hack is a prime example; this is also mocked in Azumanga Daioh!), overexaggerated "gruff" accents (the worst has to be Tamiya in the Ah! My Goddess! television series), and annoyingly high-pitched female characters (way too many to count).

Admittedly, there are some really talented people working in Japanese voice acting (there's a reason Megumi Hayashibara is in everything - she's that good). But it's not nearly as good as many Americans seem to think. Trust me, study Japanese seriously for more than a couple years, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.