Here's a question for you, are you down for Subs or dubs? This is the sort of query that dons many a forum page for various international entertainment properties and it's definition whittles down to this; when viewing a foreign-speaking product do you prefer to read the subtitles and hear the original audio or listen to the dubbed audio in your native language. Now obviously this whole 'either or' question spawned first as a gate-keeping measure in the more vitriolic circles of the anime fandom community, but I feel that it has it's place in the world of gaming as well. Quite often when games come from Japan, for instance, it'll be with a choice between a Japanese audio track or an English one, and many look to one or the other as being the 'pure' experience whilst denigrating the other. (Traditionally subs are favoured) Thus I though it might be interesting to discuss my experience with this sort of phenomena.
Whilst not explicitly related, my first personal run-in with localisation discrepancies came when I first played Final Fantasy 7, which if you've read this blog you'll know that wasn't actually too long ago. In something of a glowing reflection of the classic, I fell in love with the adventure with no prior nostalgia goading me into doing so, and that was on the strength of the fantastic music, world and characters. Yes, finally I could understand what everyone raved about when they played this old gem, about time! I could finally join in when people swapped stories about their favourite moments between the heroes, Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aeris and- wait... who's Aeris? Well, that's Aeris Gainsborough, the famous heroine of the story! But when I played the game I never met an Aeris, for me my memories were painted with Aerith. Even as the remake was being marketed earlier this year there were grumblings from people about how it was supposed to be 'Aeris' not 'Aerith', and that's how I learned that there was apparently a little muddle-up in the original English localisation.
Okay, maybe 'Muddle-up' isn't the correct term, that makes it sound accidental, but essentially there was a time when the famous heroine's name was sanitised to Aeris in order to- I don't know, sound more palatable to the English tongue, I suppose? The consequence was there was this little discrepancy between what I experienced and what "OG fans" went through, and that's the sort of crevasse that can widen into a divide in the right environment. That's partially the reason why people get so antsy about the whole 'Subs vs Dubs' battle, because people want so desperately for others to undergo the same experience that they did as part of the sharing process, out of some unrealistic desire to have them feel what you felt. This balloons to being an almost delusional ask when talking about video games, because those experiences tend to be so open-ended and/or player dependant that there is no way you can replicate your experience for someone else as you might for a movie or TV show. But that's merely my theory behind why this exists, let me share a more relevant example of how this has effected me.
No too long back I decided that I wanted to finally get a game which would fully to live up to my Nintendo Switch's potential as my dedicated RPG-playing device. As such I ended up picking up the wonderful 'Xenoblade Chronicles 2' and thus embarked on a journey into a new JRPG. If there's one thing that I didn't expect from the game, however, it was that I would be so incensed by the Dub. Now let me be absolutely clear; I'm not the sort of person to get uppity about a dubbing job. Back in the day I watched Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z with dubs, I enjoyed what little of Cowboy Bepop that I watched with dubs, but this just sounded so unbelievably wrong. I think the best way to describe it would be that feeling you get from watching old Bruce Lee movies and hearing the English audio track layered on that fit neither the character nor even the lip flaps. Even when Bruce himself was dubbing, it just didn't work. That was my innate gut reaction to 'Xenoblade Chronicles 2', and it threatened to ruin my play experience.
I think my situation may have been exacerbated a bit by the fact that I could instantly identify a lot of the characters that I met from the moment dot, and so I already had an idea of who they might be from the moment the game started. Rex was your typical gender-swapped Disney princess, living his day-to-day and longing to go out and explore the wider world and discover that big wide something. Gramps was the mythical, implacable sage who's job it was to scold Rex's rash behaviour and essential just be the Sebastian to his Ariel. And Nia was the short-tempered (and heighted) little firecracker with a minor Napoleon-complex mixed in with the odd Tsundere stereotype. These were recognisable archetypes; which is why I find it so weird that the localisation team decided that the extent of their characterisation would lie in making half the cast Welsh.
Now to be clear I have nothing against the welsh people, their approach to naming things does upset me, but I'm sure the people are nice. But when I say that the English dubs of Xenoblade Chronicles are largely notable for being Welsh and nothing else, I mean it. The VO is just so passionless and unenthused that it really does astound me. There's one notable scene early on (Spoilers for the literal introductory chapters) where Rex first meets his ward Pyra in a dreamscape, and the English dubs interpretation to Rex finding out that he was just killed comes across with the same intensity as realising that you misspelled someone's name in that text you just sent. I'm being dead serious. In fact, that scene alone made me quit out the game and seriously contemplate whether I wanted to continue. (I remember commenting something along the lines of "This is F***ing dire!") Then, like a literal Deus Ex Machina, Nintendo sent their customary promotional email headed "Nani! Did you know there's a free Japanese VO pack for Xenoblade Chronicles 2?" (I'm not kidding, it was that out-of-the-blue, like in a freakin' movie.) To which my response to this hypothetical savoir was "No I did not, but arigato Nintendo-sama. Domo Arigato."
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the whole 'Subs vs Dubs' debate is kinda dumb, at the end of the day you should just gravitate towards good voice acting, whatever language it's in. I may understand precious little Japanese, but that doesn't mean I don't get goosebumps during the most intense moments of Yakuza 0, and that's just the power of a great performance, that level of mastery transcends language barriers. I do enjoy hearing some other languages in my games from time to time and do hope that sort of diversity doesn't get stamped out of the industry like Hollywood have done in theirs. Here's hoping for a HD remaster of Jade Empire with Chinese VOs! (I wrote that as a joke but actually that sounds pretty bad ass; I really want that now...)
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