Was the english voice acting necessary ?

I could be wrong, but I don't remember Shenmue 1 in America having the option for Japanese audio. And we only got Shenmue 2 on the Xbox, and I could be wrong again, but I don't remember there being an option to change it. I think on the remaster that was put out a year and a half ago we could, but for me Corey Marshall was Ryo.

I know that the overall voice acting in those games are not of the level that we are accustomed to today, but aside from Metal Gear Solid, Shenmue was the first game of its kind to really have a lot of voice acting, and still remains to this day the only series in which practically every character no matter how small has voice acting, and some kind of response if you speak to them. It would be sad if they got rid of the voice acting, but if they spent a million dollars or more on recording both dubs, that money could be better spent at this time, and we can just read text of every character in the game.
 
I am always sitting on the fence on this topic so I'll commit and say I prefer the English dub purely because of nostalgia reasons.

The Japanese dub is amazing and normally my go to but without question the English dub has made it a truly special experience.
 
SparkThaMetal said:
I edited and expanded my comment so it explains more.


Also, yu said 'baisha is where you will see the real shenmue'. It was cut. Would you honestly not trade Bailu for Baisha?

What about Bailu would you miss? What story part? What action scene? What Character? What location?
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I'd trade the $.5 to $1 million that was spent on a marginal, unnecessary dub for Baisha or any other gameplay improvements. Bailu is where the mirrors were made and Shenhua's home. It's not a place to cut. Honestly, most people seem to prefer Bailu to Niaowu based on my wanderings through the net, so it sounds like you as well have your own 'agenda.'
 
mjqjazzbar said:
I'd trade the $.5 to $1 million that was spent on a marginal, unnecessary dub for Baisha or any other gameplay improvements. Bailu is where the mirrors were made and Shenhua's home. It's not a place to cut. Honestly, most people seem to prefer Bailu to Niaowu based on my wanderings through the net, so it sounds like you as well have your own 'agenda.'
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Unfortunately it is wrong to assume that Yu Suzuki and his team would make more cutscenes for the game with that budget instead of english dub.
Maybe they would just add more mini games to the game and maybe more NPC character models.

Also I don't think 1 million dollars would save Baisha from being cut.(Since that was obviously cut early in development.)
 
mjqjazzbar said:
I'd trade the $.5 to $1 million that was spent on a marginal, unnecessary dub for Baisha or any other gameplay improvements. Bailu is where the mirrors were made and Shenhua's home. It's not a place to cut. Honestly, most people seem to prefer Bailu to Niaowu based on my wanderings through the net, so it sounds like you as well have your own 'agenda.'
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Still didn't answer my question.
 
Also regarding the voice acting, how would you feel if fans of the English VA tried starting campaigns/constantly berated the Japanese VA?
I bet more than half of the kickstarter money came from fans who prefer English VA as that's what they played through the first 2 with.

How do i have an agenda here btw? I made one suggestion about cutting Bailu, i didnt even make a topic on it. Wheres JAp Va fans around the time of HD re release where on every single stream 'you must play in jap Va!!' . On every lets play on youtube 'why are you playing in English, japanese is better'. I'm sure i remember similar posts on the steam page too.

Now its got to the point those same people are campaigning to get rid of Eng VA altogether. F*ck right off.
 
I prefer the english voice acting even though it sucks, it's just charming and it still was in this game.
 
SparkThaMetal said:
Also regarding the voice acting, how would you feel if fans of the English VA tried starting campaigns/constantly berated the Japanese VA?
I bet more than half of the kickstarter money came from fans who prefer English VA as that's what they played through the first 2 with.

How do i have an agenda here btw? I made one suggestion about cutting Bailu, i didnt even make a topic on it. Wheres JAp Va fans around the time of HD re release where on every single stream 'you must play in jap Va!!' . On every lets play on youtube 'why are you playing in English, japanese is better'. I'm sure i remember similar posts on the steam page too.

Now its got to the point those same people are campaigning to get rid of Eng VA altogether. F*ck right off.
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Dude, take a chill pill. It's just a conversation. The VA hasn't gone anywhere even if some of us think there's better ways to spend money on Shenmue. Why are you so offended by someone else's opinion? The language and quality of VA wouldn't stop me from playing any Shenmue game, but I will continue to say that I think money would be better spent in other areas when the budget is so limited. I have a hard time believing a Shenmue fan would abandon the series over a lack of either language track if it meant the core game would improve. Games with 5X the budget don't necessarily have two fully acted language tracks.
 
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RyoIsTheShenmueTree said:
I could be wrong, but I don't remember Shenmue 1 in America having the option for Japanese audio. And we only got Shenmue 2 on the Xbox, and I could be wrong again, but I don't remember there being an option to change it.
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Dual audio in Shenmue 3 was very expensive for the team. Back then, there was even a kickstarter update to warn fans that dual audio was very hard to implement and so they couldn't confirm its implementation in the final version.
 
Well, some fans backed this game due to this that it was going to get english voices.(Otherwise, they wouldn't have done it)
 
Dg1995 said:
Well, some fans backed this game due to this that it was going to get english voices.(Otherwise, they wouldn't have done it)
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but at the time of the Kickstarter there were barely any details regarding the VO right? Because if that's the case then I can't see how some people would have backed the game solely based on it having English VO.
 
I feel like they said Corey Marshall was on board right from the start. I think the game would've done ok without him being on board, though. The idea of SHENMUE 3 was all that mattered back then... at least to me.
 
mjqjazzbar said:
I feel like they said Corey Marshall was on board right from the start. I think the game would've done ok without him being on board, though. The idea of SHENMUE 3 was all that mattered back then... at least to me.
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I thought they hadn’t announced it at the time, but I could be totally wrong. I’m the same as you, S3 existing was all that mattered.
 
Sh3ppy said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but at the time of the Kickstarter there were barely any details regarding the VO right? Because if that's the case then I can't see how some people would have backed the game solely based on it having English VO.
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I think english dub was on the stretch goals from the beginning. It was even the first one.
 
I was about to say, does research not apply to the Shenmue community anymore? The Kickstarter page and l of it's updated and original stretch goals aren't that hard to find.

Corey was an early announcement, but I think both sides are still fairly off...they didn't even confirm full voice acting until much later on. At first, we only knew about Corey and Masaya. There was speculation that nobody outside of a few main characters would get voices.
 
Yokosuka said:
English dub was never a stretch goal. Subtitles in French, Spanish and German were.
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Sry, I wasn't a Shenmue fan at that time.

But I remember that there was a news about it from the beginning that it was going to feature the english dub.
 
Dg1995 said:
Sry, I wasn't a Shenmue fan at that time.

But I remember that there was a news about it from the beginning that it was going to feature the english dub.
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Yes it was, over the kickstarter campaign. Same for his Japanese equivalent if I remember well.

update

There were even rewards implying usage of Corey's voice
"The $1,000 Reward for the Corey Marshall as Ryo Voice Message will include the $500 Reward. The Ryo Voice Message will also be included in the Rewards for $2,000 and up. "

(notice the comments already pushing for dual audio under the article.)
 
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