English VO looks to have begun recording + Actor Speculation and Discussion

Chronologically, two of Corey's Twitter posts about sessions came after Bill Black said they'd wrapped one of the three games he's working on this December.

To be honest with the frequency of behind the scenes photos, I don't think they're going through an approval process either. Companies really tend to drag their feet on stuff like that. I think when Shenmue III wraps, we'll know.
 
9dragons said:
hyo_razuki Maybe the had to do the recording in Japan in the First 2 games because there was not enough money left to hire decent people? And maybe video games were not that main stream back in the day of S1 and 2, and so the real talented people wouldn't bother with video games. I am not a native English speaker and maybe I am missing a point but for the standards of the Day Shenmue's VA was not that bad. Worse than the japanese Version but much better than other productions like the infamous Dub of of the first Resident Evil. Only Deep Fear, also from Sega in 1998 had a worse voice acting than RE .

Shenmue was solid, like the most video games of the day. No Metal Gear Solid quality but still ok.

Today it is common that games have better VA so they hired some better people which is positive.
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Not sure about the "no money left" thing. Back in the day, Yu was one of the hottest game designers on this planet and he had a billionaire CEO who basically gave him a blank cheque to his private bank account. In fact, Isao Okawa poured millions over millions of his private money into Sega as a whole, not just into Shenmue. Also, they held a huge casting in New York, which Corey won and flew him in to Japan from New York which doesn't sound cheap.

I'm not expecting Metal Gear or Uncharted level voice acting this time around, but I'm pretty sure we're getting decent results this for S3.

The 1200 lines Corey did two days ago could have been a lot of different variations of "Excuse me.", "Yeah" and "Is that so" and so on. No reason to get worried about the quality.

On the picture captions from above: Yeah, it could be Minae Koji and Faye Mata are not involved with S3 but I think it's pretty safe to assume Chris Bevins will be. We know from Corey's picture on Twitter that Brianna Knickerbocker and him are working on S3 together. Otherwise I can't immagine Brianna Knickerbocker would be shown S3 footage. And the photo above with Corey, Katana, Brianna and Chris Bevins doing the boxing stance kind of hints at Chris being in S3. Otherwise, why would Bill Black take a picture with him and the S3 cast doing a martial arts pose. Unless Chris happens to be working on a different game which is also martial arts themed it kind of confirms Chris Bevins. Also Corey posted a picture of himself with Brianna and Chris while he was at the studio for S3.
 
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hyo_razuki said:
Not sure about the "no money left" thing. Back in the day, Yu was one of the hottest game designers on this planet and he had a billionaire CEO who basically gave him a blank cheque to his private bank account. In fact, Isao Okawa poured millions over millions of his private money into Sega as a whole, not just into Shenmue. Also, they held a huge casting in New York, which Corey won and flew him in to Japan from New York which doesn't sound cheap.

I'm not expecting Metal Gear or Uncharted level voice acting this time around, but I'm pretty sure we're getting decent results this for S3.

The 1200 lines Corey did two days ago could have been a lot of different variations of "Excuse me.", "Yeah" and "Is that so" and so on. No reason to get worried about the quality.

On the picture captions from above: Yeah, it could be Minae Koji and Faye Mata are not involved with S3 but I think it's pretty safe to assume Chris Bevins will be. We know from Corey's picture on Twitter that Brianna Knickerbocker and him are working on S3 together. Otherwise I can't immagine Brianna Knickerbocker would be shown S3 footage. And the photo above with Corey, Katana, Brianna and Chris Bevins doing the boxing stance kind of hints at Chris being in S3. Otherwise, why would Bill Black take a picture with him and the S3 cast doing a martial arts pose. Unless Chris happens to be working on a different game which is also martial arts themed it kind of confirms Chris Bevins. Also Corey posted a picture of himself with Brianna and Chris while he was at the studio for S3.
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We already know Christopher Bevins is CONFIRMED involved with Shenmue 3.

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The caption of the above picture is

"Cast and Directors, wrapping up for the week. #Isee - with Christopher Bevins, Corey Marshal and Brianna Knickerbocker"

Notice the hashtag?

Now, we don't know in which capacity he is working on the game with it being either voice acting, coaching or tech assist. But he is 100% working on S3.

Here is the list of people we know for 100% certain are with the Shenmue 3 cast and crew.

Bill Black - Director
Katana Marshall - VO
Corey Marshall - VO
Brianna Knickerbocker - VO
Christopher Bevins - Unknown

Notice from all the photos that Chris is the only person we don't know what he is doing, we have seen Bill Black Directing and Corey, Katana and Brianna all behind, or front of (depending on how you look at it) the mic, but not Chris.

Is he VO or does he do something else? Who knows. Not me. But I know he is indeed working on Shenmue 3.

Minae Noji andr Faye Mata were always speculation on my part. I just thought it was very, very, very, likely that they were working on S3 until I read under a new pic that they were working on an unannounced game for Netmarble, which as far as I can tell is mobile only.
 
Yeah, with the caption saying "Cast and DirectorS" it could be that Chris Bevins is working as a co-director or producer for S3. Maybe he will also perform as both a voice actor and a director/producer at the same time. Maybe we're also reading too much into the caption.

But hey, at the very latest we'll find out about that when we beat S3 for the first time and see the credits role. ;)
 
Also, it could be that some of the talent is working on several games at once. Brianna Knickerbocker is also with Faye Mata in the picture that says

"Lionbridge Gaming, wrapping us a US English session for December for Netmarble US Inc for an unannounced game. #NDA #videogamevoiceover #marcgraue"

So technically Faye Mata and Minae Noji could also be involved with Shenmue 3, along with Netmarble and the one other project but I don't think they are anymore. Not enough evidence.
 
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Brianna Knickerbocker says her last session was on the 21st o f December, which was also her last day in LA.

I guess she's done recording for Shenmue 3.
 
Yep. I didn't think they'd wrap in December, so I'm not surprised. I wonder how long they're going into January...
 
S3 VO round 2?!

Wonder if this will mostly be the NPC/side quest VO
And the earlier sessions were mostly essential lines for the main plot.

Either way, my hype has increased x1000.
 
ShenmueTree said:
Either way, my hype has increased x1000.
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Same. Given the rough translation from the article Spaghetti posted I'm not surprised. The game looks to expanded quite significantly from the original Kickstarter.
 
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I think when they finally drop an English trailer, even if they just do the same trailer as the 2017 one but in English as a teaser, my mind will be blown. But then finally hearing Corey Marshall as Ryo again is going to be amazing!
 
I don't believe they'll do the same trailer as 2017. It is possible, but the game is much further along now. I expect a much more polished trailer with gameplay snippets. It is past time for that.

Something regarding gameplay must be shown, as it'll be 5 months before launch--that is still a fair bit of development time, but not a lot. A lot is riding on this upcoming MAGIC, for sure. We've gotten more info in the last few days than months, so it will be a good time to be a fan I'm certain.
 
Well I'm not saying they will, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did it as just a sort of 'placeholder'. i.e. 'we don't have a new trailer ready just yet, but please enjoy the English language version of the recent 2017 Gamescom trailer'. I don't think it's likely either, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility.
 
I'm hopeful for a new trailer with English dub.

From a promotion perspective it would make sense to show something new. If not we know the media will jump on it in an unfairly harsh manner.
 
I am sure there will be both an English dub of the teaser trailer and a completely new one with gameplay, and voiced lines from all of the announced and official cast.
 
Considering the time for manufacturing the discs and shipping them out, they will have to go gold around late June at the latest, I guess. That leaves us with something like five-and-a-half months of development time for the game. I hope they'll wrap up English recording at some point in January or February.

They must have a proper trailer ready come Magic Monaco. Otherwise I can't immagine them making the August release date. Also they need to do some debugging. Yu will not pull a d3t on us, which means the team will do a solid amount of testing.

Furthermore, I expect the character models and (facial) animations we will be shown in the Magic Monaco trailer to be more or less final. It would be kind of too late to make big changes to things like that three months before going gold.

Also a third big delay is not gonna happen. I could see them pushing the game back a few more weeks or months, but delaying it into 2020 is not an option. Any PS4 game still coming out in 2020 will get killed by the PS5's hype, unless it's as big an IP as Death Stranding or The Last of Us 2.
 
hyo_razuki said:
Considering the time for manufacturing the discs and shipping them out, they will have to go gold around late June at the latest, I guess. That leaves us with something like five-and-a-half months of development time for the game. I hope they'll wrap up English recording at some point in January or February.

They must have a proper trailer ready come Magic Monaco. Otherwise I can't immagine them making the August release date. Also they need to do some debugging. Yu will not pull a d3t on us, which means the team will do a solid amount of testing.

Furthermore, I expect the character models and (facial) animations we will be shown in the Magic Monaco trailer to be more or less final. It would be kind of too late to make big changes to things like that three months before going gold.

Also a third big delay is not gonna happen. I could see them pushing the game back a few more weeks or months, but delaying it into 2020 is not an option. Any PS4 game still coming out in 2020 will get killed by the PS5's hype, unless it's as big an IP as Death Stranding or The Last of Us 2.
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The manufacturing and shipping of the discs might begin in late June, but that most definitely will not mark the end of development. The rest of the work, which could very well last until a week or so before launch, will be delivered via a day one patch. Guaranteed.
 
hyo_razuki said:
They must have a proper trailer ready come Magic Monaco. Otherwise I can't immagine them making the August release date. Also they need to do some debugging. Yu will not pull a d3t on us, which means the team will do a solid amount of testing.
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If we start getting into arbitrary "they must" territory for MAGIC, you are leading yourself down a road to get upset later on.

A trailer may be on the cards, or it may be something held back to be deployed at a later date. We've already had a statement of intent from Ys Net to appear at multiple events before release. Saying they won't make August if they decided not to show something like that at MAGIC, it doesn't make sense in that context.

We just kind of have to go with the flow and see how their marketing plan unfolds. In under 5 weeks we'll know details of what is planned for MAGIC anyway. Might as well buckle up and enjoy the roller coaster.
 
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