Was the english voice acting necessary ?

I’m not worried about the series’ respectability. I just think it’s weird to prioritize two complete dubs, one which is particularly bad even if some fans like it, when the game has a minuscule budget. There are so many other areas they could focus on, like the animations and play testing the impossible QTEs. Things that actually make the game good. I guess I have trouble relating since I have no issue with subtitles. Don’t really have much to add now so I’ll bow out.
 
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Personally speaking, I could live without the English dub. I wouldn't be too bothered if they cut it in favor of spending the money else where to make the game better.

I don't hate the English dub, I don't care if people think it's a "joke"...but I do care more about spending the money to make a better game and if that means sacrificing the dub to put more resources into other areas then I'd take it.

The dub is what it is, it's Godzilla-dub levels of cheese. On one hand, I kind of love it for what it is, but on the other, I'll take the Japanese dub any day of the week over it.

But anyways. I could live without the English dub if need be.
 
As much as I agree there are parts in all three games.es where there is cheese and some script/localization issues, I don't need to be patronized every time I turn around for liking something that is apparently objectively really bad. It's a lazy criticism, and one I promise I will take to task if anyone actually wants a discussion. For the record, I agree with the sentiment that the money for an English dub could potentially be better spent should it get cut.

If you were to play through the game, hitting mostly story beats, you would get a range of at least decent to really good voice acting. Again, yes there is some stuff to have a chuckle about, but objectively bad? Go watch the introduction to I, the meetings with Master Chen, the meetings with Zhu, any interaction with Ren, any interaction with Chai, etc. Is Shenmue I's slow pacing objectively bad? Don't fall into that same dumb mindset. It's lazy and has no legs to stand on.
 
I suppose some performances are decent for a game from 1999/2000, but I don’t think it’s that controversial to say the voice acting generally ranges from horrendous to average. I don’t believe people tend to criticize the voice acting because they watched a Jim Sterling video. I think most of the worst voice acting comes from the NPCs, to be fair, rather than the main roles. And yes, the localization is the biggest culprit. You can’t really convincingly deliver lines that don’t make much sense to begin with.
 
mjqjazzbar said:
I suppose some performances are decent for a game from 1999/2000, but I don’t think it’s that controversial to say the voice acting generally ranges from horrendous to average. I don’t believe people tend to criticize the voice acting because they watched a Jim Sterling video. I think most of the worst voice acting comes from the NPCs, to be fair, rather than the main roles. And yes, the localization is the biggest culprit. You can’t really convincingly deliver lines that don’t make much sense to begin with.
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Meaning, if you play through a game and hit mostly story, you won't even hear them. I can agree the cheese comes from mostly NPCs. And what does that even mean, decent from 1999/2000? Acting got that much better since then? Evolved into another stage? Just like the "outdated controls" argument. Or the "outdated HUD" argument.
 
One problem of Shenmue is that they need to voice like 100 different characters per game. Adding an extra language is more expensive compare to other games.

As for Shenmue 1, I've read somewhere that the main reason that it had bad english voice acting was due to this that it was done in Japan which forced them to hire anyone that could speak english.(Instead of hiring good voice actors in USA )
 
mjqjazzbar said:
I suppose some performances are decent for a game from 1999/2000, but I don’t think it’s that controversial to say the voice acting generally ranges from horrendous to average. I don’t believe people tend to criticize the voice acting because they watched a Jim Sterling video. I think most of the worst voice acting comes from the NPCs, to be fair, rather than the main roles. And yes, the localization is the biggest culprit. You can’t really convincingly deliver lines that don’t make much sense to begin with.
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I actually felt the opposite about III. I’d agree with you about the first two games that the main characters sound better than the NPC’s. But with III? I felt some of the NPC’s were better than Ryo and Shenhua.

I can only be honest and say I was largely indifferent for the English dub. The first time I played Shenmue on DC, I remember thinking it was cool that everyone was voiced, but couldn’t help but compare it to Metal Gear and think “it’s not as good as Metal Gear.” Granted I now know way more and realise a lot of it has to do with the stiffness of the translation more so than anything.

Then when I got my hands on II and heard the Japanese dub, I knew instantly it was gonna be hard to ever go back to English.

I mean I have no hate for the English dub and I do have some nostalgic fondness for it, but for me, the Japanese dub is superior in every way. Always has been for me, always will be for me. It wouldn’t bother me if it was cut, but on the same token, I’m not demanding it be cut either.
 
mjqjazzbar said:
I’m not worried about the series’ respectability. I just think it’s weird to prioritize two complete dubs, one which is particularly bad even if some fans like it, when the game has a minuscule budget. There are so many other areas they could focus on, like the animations and play testing the impossible QTEs. Things that actually make the game good.
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I think they can cut corners in other ways to polish up the QTEs and animations in future games (e.g. does Shenmue really need a hunger system?), but the dubs are essential parts of the budget: English draws in the meme lovers and Corey Marshal fans, while Japanese draws in those same fans wanting a more authentic experience. More dubbing options will widen your appeal and please more preferences in your already very niche audience.
 
I chose the Japanese dub for my 1st playthrough. Now I'm playing through the game again with the English dub.
They both have their pros and cons imo, but I'd be happy with either.

500k per dub is quite an expense if true, but, with this being a crowd funded game you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
 
I think it's something they should drop for S4.

Japanese VA only, English, Chinese, French, Spanish, German and Korean as subtitles. That's enough. Hell, Yakuza 0 went with English subs only and that revived the franchise in the West.
 
I liked hearing the English voice of Ryo for nostalgic reasons but as stated above, Shenmue II on Dreamcast only had Japanese voices and it worked fine. Now when they clearly didn't succeed in expanding the audience in the West, they don't need English voice over in Shenmue IV. I played A Plague Tale with French voices (much better than the English voice over), it's not like a game has to have English voices to work outside Japan.
 
ManoTemple said:
How about drop the Japanese dub, since the game appeals to Westerners and not the Japanese market?
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Well that would suck. It'd sound horrible and would certainly piss me off (and many other fans I'd bet). Unless they plan on actually paying for decent performances for the English dub... Because 1-3's are terrible.

Ruffles said:
I liked hearing the English voice of Ryo for nostalgic reasons but as stated above, Shenmue II on Dreamcast only had Japanese voices and it worked fine. Now when they clearly didn't succeed in expanding the audience in the West, they don't need English voice over in Shenmue IV. I played A Plague Tale with French voices (much better than the English voice over), it's not like a game has to have English voices to work outside Japan.
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Exactly where I stand on this as well. I actually didn't realise Plague Tale had a French dub until after finishing the game and I was really annoyed at myself, that would have absolutely been the way I wanted to play the game, oh well at least I know now for a future replay of the game. I was quite happy that Sekiro had a little prompt on start up telling me it'd defaulted to Japanese language, which again for that setting is absolutely the way I wanted to play it (though I will say, some of the English VA in that game is unintentionally? hilarious)
 
Ruffles said:
I played A Plague Tale with French voices (much better than the English voice over), it's not like a game has to have English voices to work outside Japan.
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I thought A Plague Tale was better in French as well, but as has been mentioned, some people don't like reading subtitles.

For example, not to pick on Italians, but in Italy, the majority of foreign TV programmes are dubbed, rather than subtitled. In the UK, we tend to favour keeping the original language and adding subtitles. (In the US, they usually make the programme again themselves from scratch, e.g. Forbrydelsen/The Killing).

For the Shenmue series, the ideal would be each character speaking their natural language, but this would be more time consuming to implement. Having everyone speak either Japanese or English also glosses over the fact that in real life, these people might not understand each other. In reality, Ryo would have been walking with Shenhua back to Bailu village not having a clue what she was rabbiting on about.

A more realistic game would have had Ryo meeting with a translator upon his arrival in Hong Kong, who travels with him throughout the rest of the series, maybe even double-crossing him at a pivotal point in the story :D
 
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ManoTemple said:
How about drop the Japanese dub, since the game appeals to Westerners and not the Japanese market?
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I don't think that's gonna happen. They're not going to make an English dub in Japan again like they did for S1 & 2 and with YS Net located in Tokyo, they will make the game's original dub in Japanese again.

II'm not against dropping the Japanese dub, I'm just against wasting money on two different dubs, but with YS Net being in Japan and Yu not even speaking English making the game with English dub only just seems so impractical.
 
ManoTemple said:
How about drop the Japanese dub, since the game appeals to Westerners and not the Japanese market?
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Because the Japanese dub is actually a good one as opposed to the cheesy english one. But sure, let's drop one of the qualities of Shenmue, once again. Shenmue 4 should be english dub only, forklift and sailors.
 
Like it or not, but this is part of why a large number of people are fond of Shenmue. The memes, the jokes, the forklift T-Shirts, Koch Media tweeting "I see", Corey Marshall pranking people with "Excuse me. Where can I find some sailors?" - this has all added to Shenmue's charm and likeability. Just casually peruse Shenmue 500k, perhaps the largest worldwide Shenmue following, and you'll see an endless appreciation of this type of content.

I'll never understand this "I don't like this particular thing so it must be vaporised from existence even though a sizeable amount of other people enjoy it" mentality on the Internet. I mean sure, let's actively incite for all this to be abandoned and ignore those who celebrate Shenmue's retro-style charm in an already very niche fandom. I'm sure that won't hurt our numbers or anything.
 
shadowman16 said:
Well that would suck. It'd sound horrible and would certainly piss me off (and many other fans I'd bet). Unless they plan on actually paying for decent performances for the English dub... Because 1-3's are terrible.


Exactly where I stand on this as well. I actually didn't realise Plague Tale had a French dub until after finishing the game and I was really annoyed at myself, that would have absolutely been the way I wanted to play the game, oh well at least I know now for a future replay of the game. I was quite happy that Sekiro had a little prompt on start up telling me it'd defaulted to Japanese language, which again for that setting is absolutely the way I wanted to play it (though I will say, some of the English VA in that game is unintentionally? hilarious)
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Here we go with unnecessary and false broad strokes again. Everything English in all three games is horrible. Point to specifics if you're gonna make the argument.
 
24Nathan said:
Here we go with unnecessary and false broad strokes again. Everything English in all three games is horrible. Point to specifics if you're gonna make the argument.
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Fine. Every NPC over every game. Better now? I don't have to blindly like everything in the series you know. Kids sound like nails on a chalkboard, old people sound hilariously bad and certain characters (lets take Noriko for example) sound bored out of their mind. Wang in Shenmue 1 sounds slow (as in, he's speaking at half speed) and Ine San ain't much better. Only characters I can stand in 1 are probably Tom, Chai and maybe Lan Di. The rest either crack me up or do my head in. For 2, I only played in English once and my same points stand, except for maybe Ren who I seem to recall was at least half decent.
For 3 - same thing especially with old people and kids.
Also - "false" is definitely an opinion, I don't have to like the voice overs, and in all three games I'd find it hard playing them in English ever again, certainly don't want 4 to ignore a Japanese dub as it'd hurt my enjoyment noticeably. But hey, I also don't ask them to remove English VA either, because I get for whatever reason some people actually like the "charm" of it.
 
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