Final Fantasy XIII

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Very true ye-roon. If you ever watch adult swim, they use the same cast of voice-actors to dub every anime series they get.
 
Very true ye-roon. If you ever watch adult swim, they use the same cast of voice-actors to dub every anime series they get.
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i dont watch adult swim, cause well, Cartoon network is considerd for kids here and in dutch :p I do know what it is though.

But the bad thing about it is:

In japan they use the same voice actor for the same type of roles. Like kuririn and luffy. Same goes for most other voices. Ishida from Bleach and Sasuke from Naruto for exmaple. Same type of roles, same type of appearance.

But in the US and Holland and prolly evry other non english speaking country. They use the same set of voice actors. But because its "unfair" to the other voice actors they switch around main roles and side roles. For exmaple they could have the voice that does sasuke do ichigo's voice and the one does ichida's voice do naruto. That way both actors have a "main" part in a long running anime and get paid the same amount. Cause main parts are paid better.

Problem is, voices that DO NOT fit the character. But hey, thats just me :)
 
But still if i see something in a japanese style, so anime/manga/cg from FF games. English voices just dont fit. it feels wrong.
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I don't think this is so much because English voices don't fit as it is that for some reason anime dubs don't get the same kind of quality control and good voice directing that other cartoons get. I mean, look at a well done dub, like Cowboy Bebop, I feel it's almost better than the original Japanese. Most of Funimation's work tries to stay fairly true to the original (their early stuff didn't always), and they work with good actors, and the result is good.

Compare that to whatever the hell 4Kids is doing this week, with generic voice acting (I'm not bringing censorship into it, that's a whole different problem). It really sounds like people reading their lines, not acting them. And then there's the US dub of Sailor Moon, which had a startlingly good actor playing Artemis, and everybody else was exaggerated, fake sounding, covered with unnecessary and lousy fake accents, etc. My point is, I think the reason that you and certainly many other people have trouble with English voice acting in anime is probably largely because of bad acting more than the language.

I want to see Andrea Romano put in charge of an anime dub, I'm curious how it would turn out. She was the voice director for most of the WB cartoons of the '90s (the zany Spielberg stuff AND the DCAU stuff), as well as The Boondocks right now, all of which contain exceedingly high quality acting. I think that if she were to direct an anime or video game dub, it would turn out much, much better than what we're used to, and might raise fans' expectations in general.
 
I have a gamepad that requires a soft touch when pressing straight directions, or else it assumes you're pressing a diagonal. I try to play Street Fighter, and I can't move from side to side without randomly jumping and ducking. I'm preparing a running jump in Super Mario World, and Mario suddenly ducks and prevents me from jumping properly, and an enemy hits me and I die.
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God, I hate it when that happens! :x

I certainly don't have problems keeping up with reading subtitles, but a lot of folks do, especially younger people, or people raised in areas with inadequate education systems.
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I went to a phenomenally bad school; its exam results were amongst the worst in the country... (I won't say which school, because that would make it easy for weird people to find out who I am IRL :-P)

And the voice acting thing....

I always thought that better pay, more fame and greater respect for voice acting in Japan was the reason why anime and video games nearly always sound better with the original VO than with the dubs. Besides the actors for the really huge adult sitcoms like The Simpsons, hardly any English speaking animation/video game voice-actors are very well known by anyone but the hardcore fans (I can't think of anyone who compares to, say, Aya Hirano), so it seems natural that a better quality of actor would be attracted to voice work in Japan than in the West. If the pay is low and the role is not prestigious, the only actors you'll get will be enthusiastic amateurs, people who don't care and people who can't do any better.

However, if actors are doing the dubs of all those different anime, I can't see any way for them to have enough passion and dedication to each one to do a good job, no matter how talented they are and no matter how much they loved anime when they started. There must be enormous time constraints preventing actors from getting much time to rehearse their lines or get into the heads of their characters and I can't help but thinking that doing so much work would leave them with a sense of apathy, leading them to not feel much emotion. If English VOs have to work that hard, I feel sorry for them.
 
I have a PS3 and really enjoy the Dual Shock Wireless Gamepad that comes with it. The only problem I have with it really is R2 and L2 buttons on the back of the controller. They seem so slippery sometimes, especially when playing FPS games. That's why I got these things called Realtriggers that you can hook on to the back of the controller to get rid of that slippery feeling. Best 5 dollars I ever spent.
 
Thats why one plays FPS games with a mouse and a keyboard. But thats another story.

I just hope that japanese VA would be a standard. And about the game being split up. They could always make it that you HAVE to install the game on xbox360 so allfiles are on the Hard disk. For Mass Effect you need a Hard disk to play so it wouldnt be the first game.
 

The dub is amazing. I'm really impressed with it. I was expecting crap, but they even changed the lip synching for the english version.
 

The dub is amazing. I'm really impressed with it. I was expecting crap, but they even changed the lip synching for the english version.
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they even changed the lip synching for the english version.
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The lip synching is awful during the cutscenes still [with graphics like that it's a wonder why they've got cutscenes to begin with]. At 0:45, she's obviously not moving her lips (In japanese in that context, you'd probably say "umu" which barely involves opening your mouth). The fact that the graphics are so realistic makes it all the more noticeable. It looks like an old Bruce Lee movie.
That being said...I agree with you that the actual voice acting is good, and it looks really fluid in the actual game.
Also, it would seem that the mid-battle voices are still in japanese (at least in that video, all this might not necessarily be the case for the final version). At 1:53, she clearly seems to be saying "Kierou" which means disappear. If the final game turns out like this, there'll be some serious inconsistencies with the characters' voices.
 
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I believe the PS3 version will be somewhat compromised. Think about it. PS3 has Blueray while XBOX has DVD. I bet they can't fit FFXIII on a single DVD, and if that is the case then something is bound to be dropped at some discs. Other than that I don't see any reason to think the Xbox version will be compromised. The PS3 cpu may have better performance potential, but, as I see it, developers haven't exactly managed to utilize it much more than what you would expect from a 360. And the gpu on the 360 is even better than the PS3 gpu. That the PS3 got better graphics than 360 is in most cases wish thinking or myths (eye of the beholder?). But in the end the PS3 has more potential 'cause of it's cpu.

I think XII was good concerning voice acting. X was quite horrible in many cases; XII was a huge improvement imo. But agree that many animes, games etch. originally developed with Japanese in mind, doesn't sound as good in English. That would be the case with any dub. The original language - the intended language - always gives the best impression.

And, yeah, subs are no problem.
 
And the gpu on the 360 is even better than the PS3 gpu. That the PS3 got better graphics than 360 is in most cases wish thinking or myths (eye of the beholder?). But in the end the PS3 has more potential 'cause of it's cpu.
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Most multiplatform games are developed first for the 360 and then ported to PS3. Even when they're released at the same time, it's usually the result of porting to the PS3 almost as quickly as original development on the 360. As a result, the PS3 versions are usually compromised (just look at The Orange Box). On the other hand, PS3-exclusive games like Uncharted, MGS4, and SOCOM Confrontation usually look considerably nicer than anything else on either system.

FFXIII will be the first major game that I know of to be developed first for the PS3 first and then ported to the 360. But I don't think they're likely to completely cut content in order to make the whole game fit on a single DVD for the 360. More likely what will happen is that they'll split it into two discs, and maybe lower the quality of the textures and sound slightly in the 360 version, to get it to fit in less space. There's pretty much no way they'd compromise the PS3 version because of the 360 version.
 
News is out, March 9, 2010 is the NA release. It hints towards the same date for the european release but not confirmed.
 
The song... doesn't really fit the final fantasy theme...
 
*sigh* I just noticed this. To be fair, the song sounds quite dramatic, the melody might fit with the ending even if the lyrics don't, but how are we to know if we haven't played the game through yet? I'm reserving judgement til then. I quite like the song actually.... *hides*. If you turn it down it kinda sounds like she's singing in Japanese, you can barely make out what she's saying.

Though I agree that the idea of Leona Lewis doesn't really fit with Final Fantasy, the song seems OK. I'm sick of Leona's constant moaning though. Has anyone else noticed that she can't be in a music video where she doesn't stand with her back to the wall and look like she's dying? El rago. This whole partnership is probably the fault of Simon Cowell, that man is the root of all evil. (It's his record label, for those that don't know).

All joking aside, I'm pleased that the game is coming out at the same time here as it is in North America and it looks really good.
 
All joking aside, I'm pleased that the game is coming out at the same time here as it is in North America and it looks really good.
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I wonder what the reason is for it coming out at the same time on both sides of the Atlantic? Have Square started hating Europeans less or have they started hating Americans more? :-D

The English theme song sounds pretty generic and not FF at all. My money says that Leona Lewis had hardly heard of FF before this; it's hard to take seriously
"she was honored to be partnered with such an iconic and groundbreaking video game series," said Tom Corson, EVP/GM, RCA Music Group
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I do wish that Japanese companies wouldn't mess around with the international releases of games, thinking that the baka gaijin will choke on their Big Macs if they see or hear anything that isn't thoroughly Hollywoodised. The Japanese theme song was a little better; still crap, but not as crap. At least it sounds like something that might be from a video game.

BTW, I had a look at a few of the comments on that page ultima espio linked to. Is it just me, or are there now more people who mindlessly defend every change a big company makes and complain about people mindlessly bashing every change than there are who actually mindlessly bash every change?
 
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My guess is someone in Square liked the song, then asked if they use it and Simon Cowell thinks "Final Fantasy = Money" and lets them. :-P

I do like that song though....
 
And the gpu on the 360 is even better than the PS3 gpu. That the PS3 got better graphics than 360 is in most cases wish thinking or myths (eye of the beholder?). But in the end the PS3 has more potential 'cause of it's cpu.
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Most multiplatform games are developed first for the 360 and then ported to PS3. Even when they're released at the same time, it's usually the result of porting to the PS3 almost as quickly as original development on the 360. As a result, the PS3 versions are usually compromised (just look at The Orange Box). On the other hand, PS3-exclusive games like Uncharted, MGS4, and SOCOM Confrontation usually look considerably nicer than anything else on either system.

FFXIII will be the first major game that I know of to be developed first for the PS3 first and then ported to the 360. But I don't think they're likely to completely cut content in order to make the whole game fit on a single DVD for the 360. More likely what will happen is that they'll split it into two discs, and maybe lower the quality of the textures and sound slightly in the 360 version, to get it to fit in less space. There's pretty much no way they'd compromise the PS3 version because of the 360 version.
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Yup, as I said PS3 has more potential in the end 'cause of it's cpu, which also includes better graphics. 360 games are compromised because of it's cpu, not because of it's gpu. I couldn't care less 'bout the PS3 vs Xbox 360 war, but facts are facts.

EDIT: Yeah sorry for being off topic, so I'll add this: Can't say I approve of Leona Lewis either.
 
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