A friend of mine stated that FFXIII would lose the option of Japanese original voices in the European and American versions of the game. This could be a deal-breaker for me, so it'd be great to have this confirmed as a true or false rumour. :)

TIA.

I read it's a compromise to enable them to fit it on x-box discs. Don't know if it's true or not. I think the rumour started here.
http://www.qj.net/qjnet/playstation-3/contrary-to-what-square-enix-would-have-us-believe-ffxiii-ps3-is-compromised.html#comments

Honestly, does it really matter if FFXIII has the option for Japanese voice acting (With English Subtitles) or entirely with English voice acting?

Well, I feel there is a risk of being entangled into this web of weabos, but I will attempt to answer in all serenity. Even if the Final Fantasy series has provided some decent dubs in earlier installments, the Japanese voices adds another layer of athmosphere, which is concealed for those who have not watched an entire anime / live-action series in Japanese (followed by a rewatch with dubs mind you). This fulfillment must be met in order to grasp an understanding, and I believe that many judge unrighteously without it. For those, the difference might not appear vast. For me and countless others though, the difference is in fact not just superficial. Due to history, dubs have ended up being seen as absymal in general, and while some franchises like FF can offer fairly decent voice actors, there is still an eminent quality loss nonetheless.

A farfetched, yet relevant comparison, would be watching a movie at the cinema versus watching it at a bigscreen at home. Both will be enthralling if only the movie is composed well enough, but the cinema will always have the edge in terms of the ability to captivate. Similarly, if you decide to skip the opportunity to buy a ticket to the cinema, you are also less likely to buy the DVD.

I can see your point kazuha vinland, and there are many cases both for and against not just the japanese voicing, but voice acting in the FF games in general (Granted only FFX, X-2 and XII have voice acting but still...).

I could go on about it, but I don't think that'd be worthwhile as we all have our opinions on the subject. My own personal feeling about it is that I prefer the old school text boxes. Having played FF from the beginning on the NES, that's just my preference. It may not be what everyone else is after/looking for, but to each their own.

Japanese voicing, English voicing, w/e... we'll find out when the game is released. Discussing about it like this (And no, I'm not attacking you either kazuha vinland, just making a point.), not just voice acting but other things as well as already discussed in this sub section of the forum, without any other information at hand is open to anyone's interpretation.

That sounds like a fair answer to me. Admittedly, I have only played FFX and FFXII yet, so that's an experience I have yet to go through. Well, thanks for the information anyhow, I sure appreciate it and will keep my fingers crossed. =)

theres a thread in this forum called =Contrary to what Square Enix would have us believe: FFXIII PS3 IS compromised= with a link that confirms that;

Final Fantasy XIII is being multi-platformed to both XBox360 and PS3. Because they want to 'be fair to both platforms' the PS3 version will NOT have Japanese voices on it because the XBox360 doesnt have the storage capacity to handle it.

They've also said that in stead of putting the PS3 version onto a single Blu-Ray disk like what was originally intended, because the XBox360 doesnt read Blu-Ray, both versions are going to be split over multiple disks.

To be honest, the last point doesnt really bother me, I'm used to the PS1 Final Fantasy's anyway so changing disks doesnt annoy me.

HOWEVER!! If they even THINK of downgrading the graphics or gameplay just to 'be fair' to that Microsoft piece of SHIT, I am going to rage!

The Xbox 360 gets no love. That makes me sad :(

theres a thread in this forum called =Contrary to what Square Enix would have us believe: FFXIII PS3 IS compromised= with a link that confirms that;

Final Fantasy XIII is being multi-platformed to both XBox360 and PS3. Because they want to 'be fair to both platforms' the PS3 version will NOT have Japanese voices on it because the XBox360 doesnt have the storage capacity to handle it.

They've also said that in stead of putting the PS3 version onto a single Blu-Ray disk like what was originally intended, because the XBox360 doesnt read Blu-Ray, both versions are going to be split over multiple disks.

To be honest, the last point doesnt really bother me, I'm used to the PS1 Final Fantasy's anyway so changing disks doesnt annoy me.

HOWEVER!! If they even THINK of downgrading the graphics or gameplay just to 'be fair' to that Microsoft piece of SHIT, I am going to rage!

i do mind all of those things. Why the fuck do they care about fairness. that microsoft piece of shit hardware should be glad it's even getting the game.

Oh and the graphics thing... They are reducing the graphics again to be "fair".
if the game was only on PS3 the graphics and possibly many other things would be significantly improved.

Don't get me wrong. I got no problem with the 360 in general. But saying that it's in the same league as the PS3... THAT I got a problem with.

Being rather indifferent about consoles, I can earnestly say that I think it is a good call of Square Enix to put it on both. That in itself will only let a greater number of people play it. Admittedly I do not fancy unnecessary compromises though. It's easy to spot alternate routes that they could have taken. On the Xbox 360 for instance, Japanese language could be an optional, free of charge download over XBL.

I could comment in more detail against 7alentine's and Smarty's comments about the Xbox 360, but I don't want to be the fulcrum on which this thread deviates from the original topic. This thread is about 'Will the European version of FFXIII have Japanese voicing?', not 'Let's flame the Xbox 360'.

If you don't like the Xbox 360, that's fine. You are entitled to your opinion, however don't expect everyone else to share it either. Personally, I'm not overly keen on the PS3, but I have my reasons which I will not go into detail in this thread. Once again, this thread is not about that.

Sony made the fubar move by initially announcing that FFXIII was to be a PS3 exclusive, when that wasn't the case. SE themselves announced that FFXIII was also going to be on Xbox 360, contrary to Sony's claim.

I digress, I've gone off topic.

In almost every game with voice acting, you have the option for subtitles or not. Granted having the Japanese voicing for FFXIII could be a good move, it would also be wise to have the option to change from English voices to Japanese w/subtitles. It may also be a costly one as well, considering all the extra $$$ they'd spend on actor's fees both for Japanese cast and English cast.

Just sit back and wait for when the game comes out, no sense in bickering about it at the moment.

In almost every game with voice acting, you have the option for subtitles or not. Granted having the Japanese voicing for FFXIII could be a good move, it would also be wise to have the option to change from English voices to Japanese w/subtitles. It may also be a costly one as well, considering all the extra $$$ they'd spend on actor's fees both for Japanese cast and English cast.

Just sit back and wait for when the game comes out, no sense in bickering about it at the moment.
As for added costs, I don't think that's true. The japanese release is gonna have Japanese voices anyway, and the English release is gonna have English voice acting anyway. I could be wrong about this, but there should be no added fees considering they are going to do the voices from both languages for the individual releases, anyway. The only thing that they have to do is add them in the English version. No need to do it all over again. So no extra $$$ for them to spend. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think it's hilarious people are getting their panties in a knot over the fact the US and European editions of FFXIII will not include Japanese dialogue when the comparable editions of FFX and XII never had Japanese dialogue options either!

Just because a game is on a supposedly 'high-capacity' format (personally, I think that's just a lot of propaganda from Sony with little grounding in reality), doesn't mean that games released on it will feature added langauge settings for a country the game won't even be played in, all because a few nerds who are used to listening to Japanese language while watching crudely fansubbed, bootlegged anime want it.

Really, if you want it with Japanese dialogue, import the Japanese version and stop bitching about it! It's just that simple.

Importing it poses a significant issue though: you do not get English subtitles! And all we need to actually agree on, is that audio matters. You would not want a bunch of children to voice a Hollywood movie, and I do not desire the monotone voice acting from the dub. As said, you need to have experienced anime in order to grasp the difference.

You basdically want the game to include a language you don't even understand, no matter how sucky it ends up, just because you can't stand the quality of the english ones???

Yeah, because you already know the quality of the dub, since you,ve already played the game, right?


You're a typical weeaboo if I ever saw one.

I don't own either a PS3 or XBOX360, nor have I ever gotten to use either console, so I know nothing about either one :(

But as for the topic, I think having Japanese voice acting as well as English would be a great feature, allowing for this game to have a wider audience here in the US and other parts of the world. I think all FF games should have some sort of option to change the language (as most of them are merely text-based without a lick of voice acting).

As for added costs, I don't think that's true. The japanese release is gonna have Japanese voices anyway, and the English release is gonna have English voice acting anyway. I could be wrong about this, but there should be no added fees considering they are going to do the voices from both languages for the individual releases, anyway. The only thing that they have to do is add them in the English version. No need to do it all over again. So no extra $$$ for them to spend. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The added costs would be for the Japanese voice actors, English voice actors as well as the programmers who'd then have to encode both languages into the final product. Also, all the countries in Europe, not all of them speak English either, so there would be the cost for voice actors for Germany, Italy, France, Russia and more. So there would be extra $$$ involved for them to do so.

You basdically want the game to include a language you don't even understand, no matter how sucky it ends up, just because you can't stand the quality of the english ones???

Yeah, because you already know the quality of the dub, since you,ve already played the game, right?


You're a typical weeaboo if I ever saw one.


Here is an English dubbed preview:
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/rpg/finalfantasy13/video/6231290/final-fantasy-xiii-tgs-trailer?tag=videos;title;10

There is the monotone voice that kazuha was talking about, the Japanese voice acting is significantly better and with proper English subtitles you CAN understand the language, so I have no idea what you are talking about.


On a side note, I can understand Square Enix wanting to keep the games fair for the Xbox users but how about being fair to the many loyal Playstation fans who have been asking for Japanese audio in the FF games for many releases? You would think they would give the Ps3 even that slight edge and as mentioned above, could at least make it a custom download.

Here is an English dubbed preview:
http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/rpg/finalfantasy13/video/6231290/final-fantasy-xiii-tgs-trailer?tag=videos;title;10

There is the monotone voice that kazuha was talking about, the Japanese voice acting is significantly better and with proper English subtitles you CAN understand the language, so I have no idea what you are talking about.

Ahh, but with all previews, they do not always represent what the end result could be like.


On a side note, I can understand Square Enix wanting to keep the games fair for the Xbox users but how about being fair to the many loyal Playstation fans who have been asking for Japanese audio in the FF games for many releases? You would think they would give the Ps3 even that slight edge and as mentioned above, could at least make it a custom download.

Voice acting in FF games has only been since FFX on the PlayStation 2. FFVII, VIII and IX didn't have voice audio. Most of the people who have been complaining about the voice audio/dub for FFXIII have been PlayStation 3 owners. Not one Xbox 360 owner has complained about it, so really, is it crucial to how one enjoys the game?

Nitpicking over something trivial like this, when the game hasn't been released yet, is rather petty imo. When it is out, then we can discuss about it, but at this point in time why bother? It's not like SE is going to read this particular thread on this forum and say:

'Oh no! We screwed up! We're gonna have to delay it another year to do the audio in dual/multi language plus the coding for the subtitles! Everyone call your families, tell them you won't be home in the near future! GET YOUR ASSES BACK TO WORK!!'

You say you CAN understand the language...

No you don't. You can read the English subs. You still don't understand a single word of what they say when you hear it.

And Japanese actors tend to over-exaggerate every single line they act. And with most of them having high-pitched voices, it's annoying at best.

I can recognize the frequently used phrases in the language, as well as a couple of hundred standalone words. Still it would be incomprehensible for me to watch an episode without subs. That is however not the point at hand. If I had known Japanese fluently, I would prefer a raw version. But even when I do not, I really prefer reading subs as I've grown accostumed to it and it's not a factor that bothers me in a negative way.

I agree that the high-pitched voices of some girls and children's roles, are at points emberassing. I do not have any good explanation for them to have it like that, except that it adds to gaining a specific type of frail character. However, the voice of women that are supposed to be strong (in mind), like Lightning, appeal to me a lot. Men are almost without exceptions, flawless creatures vocally. They transcend the dubs by being more vivid in their speech, having more powerful highs and lows, and simply the way they put pressure on each word of a sentence. When not used to it, you might not recognize these patterns that truly make the US voice acting in general, seem absolutely dull in comparison.

Yet, I want to support you in the case about high-pitched voices. While you can grow into those characters yourself, I would be emberassed to show them off to others. Say Death Note for instance. Brilliant anime, but got one of the most annoying voice actors for Misa (one of the semi-main characters).

Yet, I want to support you in the case about high-pitched voices. While you can grow into those characters yourself, I would be emberassed to show them off to others. Say Death Note for instance. Brilliant anime, but got one of the most annoying voice actors for Misa (one of the semi-main characters).

I have to agree with you there. Some anime have the most idiotic voice actors for their characters. Look at Love Hina Again, the character Kanako Urashima. The voice actor for her, took a manipulative goth girl, and pushed her into the light. In short, I did not like the voice actor.

I also despise Cam Clarke, but let's face it... his roles as Kaneda (Akira), Leonardo (TMNT), Ryudo (Grandia II), assorted generals (Kessen II) and many others... ugh...

It's not like SE is going to read this particular thread on this forum and say:

'Oh no! We screwed up! We're gonna have to delay it another year to do the audio in dual/multi language plus the coding for the subtitles! Everyone call your families, tell them you won't be home in the near future! GET YOUR ASSES BACK TO WORK!!'

I lol'd ;) But so true though.