Have brunch with a bunch of Ni No Kuni cutscenes

@Jhoalot

Well, its Namco Bandai so they're off to a hell of a good start already.

@Jhoalot

If they give it the terrible English language vocal treatment that almost every single jrpg with spoken dialogue has suffered from, it could single handedly ruin the game for westerners.I just hope they're smart enough to leave the japanese language tracks with english subtitles in the game as an option.

And before anyone starts rattling off jrpgs with 'good' English language voice acting, just stop. All of them are awful, from Final Fantasy on down the line. 99.9% of the time, the Japanese to English vocal translation renders jrpgs unplayable to anyone over the age of 12. Yet for some reason, the lesson is never learned on the publishing side of the business.

When your game is story focused, it's really important to make the story not simply tolerable, but enjoyable to experience. Few JRPG translators understand this concept, apparently.

The only tolerable English language cast for a jrpg was Lost Odyssey, a game that almost nobody played. And even then, you could choose to play the game in English, Japanese, French, or Spanish.

You should always be given the option to experience a game in it's native language, with subtitles, in one way or another.

I won't play this game if the dialogue is bad. I can't. It just hurts my adult ears too much to endure 40+ hours of hackneyed whining ever again. It just gets in the way of my ability to enjoy anything else about the game.

@docstrange Super agreement +1

@docstrange
Uh... I don't feel the same way.

Most dubs are quite tolerable to me at least.
They're not all great; some are actually good. You can't really dispute that.
It's different, yes; but it's not horrible, in fact, more than passable.

I'm not going to name anything, because I know I'll get shit flung at me for doing so.

Though... I will say that leaving the Japanese audio would probably grab more players than just an English dub.

I prefer the option.

Either way, I must buy a ps3 immediately!

@docstrange

Here we go again one of those fans who does nothing but completely support their precious Japanese VAs because they are "awesome" and English itself "sucks". There has been plenty of English language JRPGs that have been recorded well, we have come a long way from Final Fantasy X and companies take voice recording much more seriously.

Sometimes the Japanese audio is better sometimes it isn't it all goes according to taste. Sometimes its really unbearable to hear a really high and squeaky voice for a 16 year old that sounds like a 5 year old girl from a Japanese VA.

@docstrange
Are you from 1998? English dubs have been fantastic for years. They never skip on quality now. Even Capcom and Sega have decent voice actors in their games.

@docstrange well maybe ghiblis involvement will bring in who ever they use for voice acting..

@Yuutuu
LOL. Well put.

It doesn't matter whether its a Japanese game or a Japanese anime, subtitles mean you are reading your way through and NOT enjoying the art and/or game itself. No thank you. I don't speak Japanese, and if you don't either then the whole argument about Japanese preserving the experience goes out the window. It is no longer dialogue--it's now part of the soundtrack. Just so much background noise.

As for it making sense and translators not understanding how to tell the story.....uhhhhh, who do you think translated the SUBTITLES you love so much? Geeze. The dialogue has to be modified sometimes to fit the length of time a character is speaking sometimes, but the meaning is preserved (and sometimes improved!).