Does Shenmue 4 need any Voice Acting ?

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Dg1995

Joined
Dec 19, 2019
I think it doesn't need it. Instead, they can spend that voice acting money on other and more important aspects of the game.(Such as Combat)

Doing any voice acting(Either Japanese or the English one) doesn't help this game at all since:
1. The open world nature of Shenmue will force the developers to hire more than 100 voice actors for every dub. (Which costs a lot of money)

2. Even if they add voice acting, people will just bash it for having bad or mediocre voice acting. So, in order to actually make it better, they'll have to spend even more money on the voice acting. (Hiring better voice actors, spending more money on localization process, getting a better voice director, etc)

3. With every passing year, voice actors ask for more and more money for voicing a character in a video game. So, I'm pretty sure that Shenmue 3's voice acting would cost more money this year than the time it cost when it was done.

No voice acting hasn't stopped me to enjoy games such as Shining Force 1, Final Fantasy 7, Another World, and Okami so, I really don't mind it if S4 doesn't get any voice acting.
If something, lack of voice acting allows players to imagine a perfect voice for every character in their mind which is far superior to having a bad or mediocre voice acting.

I also believe that originally Shenmue 1 wasn't supposed to have any voice acting when it was supposed to be released on Sega Saturn.
 
I don’t think they would need to have a lot more money to get better voice acting, the voice actors they have are fine. It’s just bad voice direction and translation of dialogue. These can be easy fixes through re-recordings and altering dialogue once it’s put through a translation to make it sound natural (like many English dubs do)
 
For cutscenes, yes it does. But for NPC's and general gameplay I'd say not if it meant more money into the combat etc
 
I don't know how I'd feel about a voice-less NPC. But more importantly: I really don't know how I'd feel if there was a Shenmue game which was presented in a way like Final Fantasy 7.

FF7 not only was "of a different time", but it was kinda what they were going for: it's a traditional RPG, a JRPG nonetheless.. which I agree, the lack of voice acting for me at the time didn't make any difference at all.. but I don't even think that crossed my mind back then.

Last time I checked Shenmue tends to focus on the minutiae of life and gradneur in terms of its world design & story telling. I think the NPCs at least "having a voice" would be almost something of a requirement due to that.
 
To be honest, I would want it to be the last one so I think they should have it be consistent and have voice acting in the last game.
 
I can see your point and I understand that voices isn't important to some people.
Maybe some would accept having only the more important character voiced. However I personally feel that one of the most important factors of the Shenmue universe is that it has characters with personality and depth to it. And voices has so much more to say than text. For example, the tone and emotions behind the voice.. Voice acting cannot be replaced with texting. In order for Shenmue to grow to its full potential I belive consistency is important and to protect the core of what makes Shenmue a Shenmue game. I really don't want it to be Japanese-only either. I like both languages and can't imagine Shenmue without Corey Marshall.
 
Shenmue without voice acting IMO would hurt the series. As bad as the voice acting is the community has grown to love it. Also most of the voice actors are just as passionate as we are about the series. If it was announced that Corey Marshal would no longer do the English voice over for Ryo I would be mad as🤬.

If voice acting was scrapped I would still support the series but the quality wouldn't be the same.
 
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I think the game being fully voiced is a necessity. If the reality of the budget makes that difficult, I would rather they voice the game fully in Japanese than only voice main characters in Japanese and English (or any other scenario where the game would be partially voiced but dubbed in multiple languages).

A big focus on the series is interaction, so removing voices would take away too much from how the game feels. If they can't afford to record any voices, then they're already working on a shoestring budget and at that point I would question if making Shenmue IV is even worth it. At the very least, if they cut VO they would have to drop the game down to a "AA" price of $30-40 instead of $60.
 
Tomato Convenience Store said:
I think the game being fully voiced is a necessity. If the reality of the budget makes that difficult, I would rather they voice the game fully in Japanese than only voice main characters in Japanese and English (or any other scenario where the game would be partially voiced but dubbed in multiple languages).

A big focus on the series is interaction, so removing voices would take away too much from how the game feels. If they can't afford to record any voices, then they're already working on a shoestring budget and at that point I would question if making Shenmue IV is even worth it. At the very least, if they cut VO they would have to drop the game down to a "AA" price of $30-40 instead of $60.
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Wouldn't it make more sense to voice the game in English and use Japanese subtitles? I hear that Shenmue is a little more popular in the West.
 
BruceWayne911 said:
Wouldn't it make more sense to voice the game in English and use Japanese subtitles? I hear that Shenmue is a little more popular in the West.
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I believe it is indeed more popular in the West from what I've heard as well. However, my thoughts for using Japanese VO is that you don't lose anything in translation (literally and figuratively) since the writers and directors would be able to keep the intention of the performances closer to what they envisioned since it's in their native language. There are also the logistical issues where it will take more time to get English VO translated, recorded, and implemented into the game, and now you'd have English only VO in a game created by devs who primarily speak Japanese.

Also, if you only record English VO, then you're at the mercy of a third party outsourced loc company to make an interpretation on how it should sound with no Japanese VO for reference. That, and in my opinion the English VO has had more of a negative influence to the games reception than a positive one, especially with how high the quality bar has been raised during the past 5 or 10 years for acting in video games.

The only way I think an English-only voiced game would work is if somehow Sega came onboard and allowed Atlus to handle it. It would just have to be done very well to justify it.
 
Yes, it does for cutscenes, but not for NPC's. Yakuza games are great illustration how good dialogues can be without being fully voiced. Of course, fully voiced Yakuza 6 is much better, but if Shenmue 4 got more story, better animations and combat system I'd say fully voiced doesn't need.
BruceWayne911 said:
Wouldn't it make more sense to voice the game in English and use Japanese subtitles? I hear that Shenmue is a little more popular in the West.
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I think we need to get both. I prefer to play with Japanese VO and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
 
I know that we all like the Shenmue games for different reasons and so many of you will disagree with this, but for me, removing the (English) voice acting would be worse than them removing combat from the game.

The games ability to immerse the player and make them feel like, through Ryo, they are a part of the living, breathing world that has been meticulously crafted is what made me fall in love with this series and become so heavily invested in Ryo’s quest for vengeance. The moment you start adding text boxes to that, all of that immersion goes out of the window.

Moreover, if Yu’s aim is to appeal to a casual audience, removing something that has more or less becomes the industry standard seems somewhat counter-intuitive.

It seems possible that some difficult decisions may have to be made in regards to gameplay elements being cut to make Shenmue 4 a reality - but if that’s the case, I think a fully-voiced cast should be one of the last things to go.

What I wouldn’t be at all against would be smaller areas with fewer NPCs.
 
Yes, much of the immersion is the actual audible dialogue between characters. I've become less and less patient over the years will games that have excessive text.

The only way I would kinda sorta be cool with it is if was Yakuza-esque where long cutscenes have voice acting and shorter instances where much doesnt need to be explained have simply text.

As far as bad voice acting, that's been an intentional choice. Resident Evil has always been clowned for its voice acting because of it's somewhat campy tone, but it's never been considered terrible and has always been tolerated. Yu Suzuki simy has to knock off that borderline brain damaged dialogue Ryo has with other NPCs.


Ryo already has a bland personality. Making him voiceless will just make him more uninteresting. And at this point, I'm ready for something really emotionally engaging moment to happen in the game. Some sort of tragedy or just anything that will give me that same feeling I got when Nozomi was kidnapped, or even Wong. I wont get that with all text.
 
I am in the camp of people that wouldn't mind having the English voice-acting removed. It would be interesting to see if there are any geographical differences between the consensus of whether this would be a good thing or not.

Being from the UK, I played the first game in English and then the second game in Japanese with English subtitles, as that is how they came on Dreamcast. I wonder if the American audience feels more strongly attached to the English dub as that is for the most part how they experienced the games?

I think it would be sad for Corey Marshall to not complete the journey as Ryo Hazuki, as he has been such an asset to the community and seems like an all-round good guy. However, I am more concerned about a high-quality product being produced, and if removing the English dub would increase the quality (more focus on the story please), then I'm all for it.
 
No voice acting at all would be a bit jarring, but I'd be ok with voices being limited to cutscenes only.

And no English dub, of course. Two voice tracks are out of question and YS Net being a Japanese company, recording the game's only voice track in any other language than Japanese would just be so impractical.
 
hyo_razuki said:
And no English dub, of course. Two voice tracks are out of question and YS Net being a Japanese company, recording the game's only voice track in any other language than Japanese would just be so impractical.
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I don’t really see how two voice tracks is out of the question (they’ve done it for three games now), nor do I see how an English dub would be particularly impractical.

You make it seem like cutting the English dub is going to save time and money, but even if they were to do so they’re still going to have to get the script translated and rewritten to better resemble natural English dialogue for the games subtitles.

At this point whether or not they record the English dub or the Japanese dub seems fairly inconsequential in terms of the amount of effort required. As for cost, the likes of Masaya Matsukaze and Haruka Terui are for more established voice actors than anybody used in the English dub and so I’d imagine the Japanese dub sets them back a lot more than the English dub.

This discussion all seems to come down to a matter of preference, but outside of the hardcore fan base, - and certainly to the average gamer in the west that Yu seems to be hoping to appeal to moving forwards - an English dub would likely be the preferred choice if they need to limit themselves to a single dub.
 
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BruceWayne911 said:
Wouldn't it make more sense to voice the game in English and use Japanese subtitles? I hear that Shenmue is a little more popular in the West.
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I find the English voice acting an aberration and play always in Japanese and honestly it would be extremely hard to play listening to that unnatural dialogs otherwise.

tomboz said:
Moreover, if Yu’s aim is to appeal to a casual audience, removing something that has more or less becomes the industry standard seems somewhat counter-intuitive.
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It is not an industry standard though, JRPGS and point and click adventures most non relevant NPC do not have dialog, in open world games you can not speak with almost any NPC.
And another point about immersion, according to Ubi people, 60% of people leave subtitles on even if they are english which means that having text does not break that much immersion as people seem to believe. Also I will leave here a link to the narrative accessability blog were I read those numbers in case someone is interested https://gamasutra.com/blogs/AlexDriml/20200713/365145/Improving_Narrative_Accessibility.php

If there is a English dub it need to be upgraded to not be something from 1999 otherwise is money thrown to the bin as will drive non-fans to criticize the saga and stop potential sales.
 
Creward said:
I find the English voice acting an aberration and play always in Japanese and honestly it would be extremely hard to play listening to that unnatural dialogs otherwise.

It is not an industry standard though, JRPGS and point and click adventures most non relevant NPC do not have dialog, in open world games you can not speak with almost any NPC.
And another point about immersion, according to Ubi people, 60% of people leave subtitles on even if they are english which means that having text does not break that much immersion as people seem to believe. Also I will leave here a link to the narrative accessability blog were I read those numbers in case someone is interested https://gamasutra.com/blogs/AlexDriml/20200713/365145/Improving_Narrative_Accessibility.php

If there is a English dub it need to be upgraded to not be something from 1999 otherwise is money thrown to the bin as will drive non-fans to criticize the saga and stop potential sales.
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Certainly there are open world games in which not every npc can be spoken with, but in instances where the player can interact with an NPC, they are voiced more often than not.

60% is a lot higher than I would’ve expected, but considering that in most games the default option is for subs to be on, I think in a lot of those cases it’s more the immersion not being broken enough to warrant the effort needed to go into the menu to turn subs off or the player not really caring too much about immersion. Personally speaking, needless text on screen bothers me and in games that are trying to build a sense of immersion, I find it to be very off-putting.

I agree that an English dub would need to be tweaked if they ever want to shake off the ‘shitty dub’ label, but I really don’t see this as being an incredibly difficult task. All they really need is a native speaker to look over the script for obvious errors and to point out any instances of unnatural phrasing. You don’t need to hire Steven King or Dan Brown for that.
 
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