It’s not long now until fans of the beloved Baten Kaitos 1 & II HD Remasters will be able to get their hands on both games in one package. Talking in a new interview, the games producer Koji Nakajima talked briefly about the lack of English voice acting in the Nintendo Switch exclusive. It all seems to boil down to the characters expressions, which the team tried to tinker with to match the current era and deiced against it due to technical issues. The interesting thing is that the originals did have an English dubbing, but itseems like it was more work than Bandai Namco has anticipated to make it work. Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster launches on Nintendo Switch on 14th September, 2023. Here’s what was said:
“In developing the remastered version, we tried to make adjustments on some of the expressions to match the current era. That’s why we made the difficult decision not to use English VOs for this remastered version, due to the discrepancies that will happen.”
And now I wont buy it. As much as people say Voice Overs ruin the original meanings and what not. I do depend on choosing which games i buy based on English Voice Work. Its more enjoyable to watch the cuts scenes and the artwork without being distracted buy reading every little line of writing. Its the same feeling i have with movies and tv shows. I enjoy watching asian tv shows that have been dubbed but do not enjoy reading the subtitles when its not. Maybe I will buy it when it gets a deep discount of over 50% a couple years later. Too bad as I was looking forward to it originally.
I hope decisions like this discourage you from foreign media in the future, we need less people that listen to dub engaging in these games/content. So I thank you for choosing not to buy and to not demand it as a vocal minority
I’m so confused by this comment. why is somebody’s choice for a dub over text translation, such an issue for you. Choices mean more people engage with the content .But you’re personally so mad because somebody would rather consume foreign media via dub than on screen translation that you had to type this Petty nonsense.
The audience that wants dub is a rather distasteful one that usually calls for other decisions that most players interested in japanese games do not want.
The unsold copies due to not including a dub is doing far less damage then those people typically bring by catering to them.
Not to mention the money saved by not paying for awful voice acting from a very limited pool of entitled clowns that tour anime cons.
Uh oh, another soft manchild gatekeeping. If you didnt know, video games and anime arent a personality trait
But most translations are false or fully of toxicity by woke translators, who think they need to teach the people rhat can’t speak japanese. Too many series and games were ruined that way.
I fail to see how a preference towards listening to a voice in your native tongue means you want other things. You’re the kind of weeb that should be mocked.
Shut up weeb.
You’re a idiot. People like you are a bane to the fandom. Leave it, and take every other toxic sub elitist scumbag with you.
Take a bath.
I am glad the vocal minority is the ones that do not like dubs. It was a bad few years 20 years back when whiny toddlers pretended reading video was best. Only best because a language they can’t understand was their own poor choice and convinced their small brains “understanding what they are saying is worse”. No dub. No buy. Game will be trash if they can’t even spend the time adding in proper language support.
i think you got the message backwards:
the point of not buying, is not rewarding bad practices towards western audiences from japanese devs trying to decrease costs using bad pretexts. Most people that like the game, will like it with proper voice acting.
is true a game can become less attractive to play when mediocre or bad voice actors are used (ie what many japanese devs do when hiring mediocre american voice actors). But the opposite is also true: when trained actors that also know proper voice acting, sequences will be a lot more interesting to watch (ie the first international version of dragon quest 8).
if the original dubs in baiten kaitos were bad, a remake should be the right place to re-record voices, and hire better actors to improve quality, rather than trying to pull a “fast cash grab” scheme.
if they dont want to spend extra in development, then they shouldnt expect extra in sales. thats how it works.
How sad that grown adults can’t read subtitles and play a game at the same time. Thankfully I know how to do this, I graduated from high school.
I have no problems with it as well, probably because english is not my primary language so i’ve been relaying on subtitles since forever.
Why are you listening to japanese voices in RPG’s? It’s not like anime, you have to actively wait for the person to stop audibly speaking when you’re already done reading the text, there is no animation to accompany the voice, and there’s a good chance the localized text doesn’t match up with the dialogue anyways. I always mute the voice in VN’s and RPG’s if english isn’t an option.
i think is also fair to listen japanese voices when available, specially when bad voice actors are used for english dubs. japanese voice actors hired by japanese devs are usually very good, and try to do a good job at “voice+acting”. when most japanese devs or companies hire american actors to do dubs they rarely care about quality, in part because they themselves are rarely skilled at speaking english, so they trust third parties to hire actors, which usually are mediocre and “act” thinking “cartoons are for children” so they dont care to act “seriously”; thats also why 90s batman broke the mold: actors understood they could be serious when acting for a cartoon, and same goes with games.
But the point is you’re either sitting there waiting for the person to finish speaking when you don’t know what they’re saying, or you’re constantly cutting them off mid sentence as you go to the next dialogue box. I can understand doing it for anime, but games like RPG’s where it’s text boxes and not cutscenes seems rather pointless, especially if there’s a good chance the dialogue you’re reading doesn’t even match with what the person is saying, because game dialogue is more likely to be localized.
For some people it’s not about adults being incapable of reading subtitles. Some people are slow readers by choice whether it’s the sake of leisure (ya know, like gaming as a whole is), or they’ve had a long and exhaustive day and don’t want to read too much.
Personally I prefer subs because I like to hear the original voice direction of the scene- but dubs are made for people who want to listen to the story in their native language, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Even in Japan they’ll dub our cartoons into Japanese so their audience can more leisurely experience them. Gatekeeping voices is very dumb, lol
the issue isnt about reading. everyone that plays rpgs reads: its part of the game design. voices are “plus”: to offer something “livelier” and “fleshed out”. is a bit like improving the quality of graphics with better textures and better models with more polys. the point isnt to replace the original esthetics, but to enhance them when done properly.
Honestly, having the English option with the discrepancies would have been better than no English voice option at all. Removing the option altogether when it was in the original makes this decision rather peculiar.
Not having the English voices isn’t the killing blow for me for not buying this (though I do wish it were in the game), it’s the fact that there’s no North American physical release.
Just say it: running out of money. The budget was about to go over, they got cheap, & they didn’t want to spend any more to fix a cult classic that wouldn’t do as well as most Dragonball games. Should have just HD remastered it with as little to no changes as possible, only really changing what was broken.
keep crying
alright, what did they censor?
I personally don’t mind subs (I generally prefer them), but their exclusion is just penny pinching.
I wondering if it’s a buget thing/lack of time to hire voice actors etc. Im not knowledgeable on the making of a game but couldn’t they just port the games?
I don’t mind it at all but it does sound like a strange decision if the dubs are already done. Sounds more like a budget or licensing issue imo.
That is a horrible reason. The voicework was already done. Who cares if it “didn’t match the remastered expressions”. Leave it in for those who wanted it.
Seriously, between stuff like this and refusing to credit English VA’s in games like Tales of Arise, Namco just has no respect for English voiceovers.
Good
The voice work in 2 is fine, but the original recorded dialogue is AWFUL. That’s probably why. It would get pummeled in the court of public opinion I. 2023.
Better than a butchered and toxic translation by some woke activist. Japanese companies needs to avoid such translation companies to keep their products away from those people.
While I don’t mind reading subs, I would prefer to be able to focus on the graphics and just listen to the voice work (even if it gets panned). But to be fair, I actually don’t care as much about these specific games as I do the fact that they are tied to Monolith Soft and I tend to love their work. But no physical in the USA… and no English voice option … I’ll wait and import or may just track down the gc versions if I really want to add these to my collection.
This just in. The 10 people stuck in the past that pretend to like “the original direction” are happy a game will not be bought by anyone now. No dubbing means no support for lazy companies. Wonder how much they are censoring that they are being lazy to try and avoid good English VAs to force the same 12 JP VAs on you brainlets. Even Miyazaki doesn’t like JP VAs for being samey and uninspired, look it up yourself.
Okay I first read the title I was confused because I remember playing at least one of these games and it most definitely did already have English voice acting so they just didn’t include it? I mean why not just make it optional? I wasn’t buying it either way don’t have a dog in the fight, but this seems like a weird choice because it is already available.