|
My favorite part of Final Fantasy XIII was when two characters took a break due to walking through all those exhausting hallways, and one of them mentioned how those big mean space gods are making them so discouraged, so the other one goes on some long-winded speech about how friendship is the best thing ever. They then continue on and the same thing happens like 100 times. I think it was ImpAtom who mentioned playing through the Japanese version of the game, and while it wasn't exactly Anime Oscar-worthy, apparently the scenes seemed to have a bit more levity and emotion behind them. And it's no real surprise, the roles were practically written for the Japanese voice actors. Contrast this to the US version, where even someone as talented as Troy goddamn Baker sounds bored and confused in his role as Snow. This isn't a flaw with the voice actors themselves, more an issue of the game's localization still having a Japanese direction, so all the characters come off as weird asexual aliens. You generally wouldn't have this problem with Final Fantasy games prior to them having voice acting, because the localization would almost entirely be driven by an American team who can rewrite the characters in ways that are more relatable to a western audience. I mean yeah, we'd occasionally get moments where a villain uses the offspring of a submersible driver as a pejorative, but that's a million times better than the goofy-rear end Lightning birthday scene.
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 11:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 19, 2024 10:08 |
|
|
There was more chemistry between Lightning and Snow in that thrown-together Steelguard scene than the entirety of FFXIII proper.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 11:39
|
|
|
Pureauthor posted:There was more chemistry between Lightning and Snow in that thrown-together Steelguard scene than the entirety of FFXIII proper. I looked this up, and christ you weren't kidding. Part of me really wonders how XIII would have turned out if the US voice actors didn't have such awful direction.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 11:59
|
|
|
T.G. Xarbala posted:If Hope made a few bad puns based on his name, he would have been instantly redeemed. Oh man he'd be like Kamen Rider Wizard. "I will be your hope." Now I'm just disappointed that that didn't happen. Of course, the more I read about FFXIII in this thread, the more convinced I am that it was the right decision to not play it. Even if the combat is supposedly good, and FF stories have never been stellar, it just sounds painful to sit through.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 12:38
|
|
|
Eh, it's a pretty enjoyable game for 20 bucks. I bought it at full price and sold it afterwards and definitely don't regret experiencing it. The sequel was a huge pain, though. Having to run through the same environments over and over, the moronic monster training (why hide the monsters' abilities? Was that just to sell more guides? I hate crap like that), the even more nonsensical plot, the semi-random battles, the load times, the amusement park with no attractions (unless you pay for them). I could go on and on about that game but that would just mean allowing to waste even more of my time, so I'll stop. The only reasons I'm considering LR is because of all the callbacks to earlier, better games, and morbid curiosity to see how they will end the story. EDIT: The Academia 400 area is bad enough to put XIII-2 in my "worst FF" spot. I'd rather replay FF2 than playing that area again. Whoever wrote that scenario should never get anywhere close to a game dev-team again. For those who don't know - it's an area that's constructed as a maze that you have to navigate, while enemies are endlessly spawning at an absurdly high rate. To top it off, the music is really annoying and the enemies give you no XP or money. gently caress AC400. Renoistic fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Sep 22, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 12:53
|
|
|
Academia 400AF is incomprehensibly bad design. I have no idea why they did that, was it a programming error that got lost in the shuffle? But this complaint is still absurd: Defiance Industries posted:I'm not a big fan of FF4, but I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a sentence that is as nonsensical as "The fal'cie of cocoon believe that l'cie of pulse were around so they purged them to pulse so the l'cie could not complete their Focus" from FF4. That sentence (is it a even from the game?) isn't difficult to understand at all for anyone more than a couple of hours into the game. It's a straightforward sentence containing a couple of clearly-explained terms for simple setting concepts, and a couple of proper nouns. It is only difficult to understand if you are wilfully refusing to out of resentment at a story you didn't like. Star Wars was not anime because they said 'the force' rather than 'magic'.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 13:10
|
|
|
Mega64 posted:I can't wait for Lightning to get Luso's outfit next (for reference) Oh, christ. Let this happen. Let the pizza cutter sword carry our heroine to glory.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 13:56
|
|
|
Defiance Industries posted:I'm not a big fan of FF4, but I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a sentence that is as nonsensical as "The fal'cie of cocoon believe that l'cie of pulse were around so they purged them to pulse so the l'cie could not complete their Focus" from FF4. FFIV was really dumb. It had moon people space whales its just it decided to hide that poo poo under the guise of more generic fantasy until hours upon hours in. I'm not saying FFXIII was less anime or had a better approach just that the approach taken wherein the characters know about the vast majority of the setting rather than traveling to new places and learning all about them as the player can be more difficult to reach setting mastery. Plus like 90% of the dialog in FFXIII is pure frivolity. I'll say it right now though; The setting of FFXIII is better than the setting of FFIV which might be my absolute least favorite.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 16:35
|
|
|
Tae posted:There are certainly people that hate the notion of voice-acting in any game. I'm not sure about any game, but as far as (J)RPGs go, I sure as hell do; always have, and I suspect always will. It's so much easier to form your own interpretations and attachments to the characters when you have to internally voice them, and it's a lot easier to lose the effect of certain characters or interpretations with poor voice acting. Even with good voice acting, your basically stuck with the actor's, or the director's, interpretation of the character. Just look at FFX, I'll never be able to see, on a gut level, Tidus as anything other than a whiny sack of aggravation, just because of his voice actor. When it's replayed, I'm often surprised that Tidus, in his dialogue and actions, isn't as terrible as I remember him, it's just the damned voice that ruins the character for me. Every time he says anything there's some part of me screaming at him to shut up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 16:43
|
|
|
Barudak posted:I'll say it right now though; The setting of FFXIII is better than the setting of FFIV which might be my absolute least favorite.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 16:58
|
|
|
ConanThe3rd posted:It would be if it wasn't mired in utter incomprehensible drivel. If it's a choice between "Medieval Earth, also Space Whales and Moon" and "World governed by Sorta-Gods that give Humanity tasks via incomprehensible communication with an undesirable reward for completion and zombification for failure but we're going to obtuse all that by replacing every third word with Jabberwocky" then I'll take Space Whales. It almost seems like people react to the huge ambiguity over what exactly a Fal'cie is and the nebulous explanations of L'cie and their Focuses early on and just assume it's down to the impenetrable language, rather than the loving awful script and voice acting that doesn't help one whit.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 17:03
|
|
|
ConanThe3rd posted:It would be if it wasn't mired in utter incomprehensible drivel. If it's a choice between "Medieval Earth, also Space Whales and Moon" and "World governed by Sorta-Gods that give Humanity tasks via incomprehensible communication with an undesirable reward for completion and zombification for failure but we're going to obtuse all that by replacing every third word with Jabberwocky" then I'll take Space Whales. Fal'Cie, L'Cie, Cie'th. You gotta learn three words which are all interconnected in meaning. I don't remember hearing a lot of complaints about nethicite, diefacted-nethicite, magicite, and manufacted-nethicite which were integral to getting the plot of FFXII. The issue is not that the words are difficult to parse (although that ' is stupid) its that the way in which the game introduces them is not the same as previous FF games and it chose the one in general that is less conducive to learning them. Then it has a really lovely script on top of it. Like monstrously lovely*. Its like a cascade failure from top to bottom in terms of plotting and writing but the setting itself is fine and no less intelligible than any others and if anything its more cohesive as a world than previous FF games. I know the FFXIII remaster already came out but what they should have done is add a new voice-over introduction a-la Blade Runner where the narrator cleanly describes and establishes those 3 key terms so that the characters and players are on the same page when the game starts. *There is a goddamn amazing allusion to the current scenario heavily name dropped in Oerba that the game then proceeds to try to ignore the ever living gently caress out of going so far as to make it the only optional non-cieth stone quest in the game. Barudak fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Sep 22, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 17:10
|
|
|
Tae posted:There are certainly people that hate the notion of voice-acting in any game. Voice acting is fine as long as you have the option to skip it. FFX had the worst implementation with completely unskippable voiced cut scenes. Occasionally you could skip a single line of dialogue by hitting X, but it was pretty much random which ones you could skip and which ones you couldn't. Barudak posted:Fal'Cie, L'Cie, Cie'th. You gotta learn three words which are all interconnected in meaning. I don't remember hearing a lot of complaints about nethicite, diefacted-nethicite, magicite, and manufacted-nethicite which were integral to getting the plot of FFXII. The issue is not that the words are difficult to parse (although that ' is stupid) its that the way in which the game introduces them is not the same as previous FF games and it chose the one in general that is less conducive to learning them. Magicite/nethicite definitely have the advantage here in both being a callback to earlier games as well as being based on actual words.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 17:26
|
|
|
Was that Lightning in a Snow costume or was that literally Snow? And that 3-on-1 with the dog headed ax-wielding creatures is that I really hope a late game normal battle in XV will look like.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 17:37
|
|
|
Barudak posted:Fal'Cie, L'Cie, Cie'th. You gotta learn three words which are all interconnected in meaning. I don't remember hearing a lot of complaints about nethicite, diefacted-nethicite, magicite, and manufacted-nethicite which were integral to getting the plot of FFXII. The issue is not that the words are difficult to parse (although that ' is stupid) its that the way in which the game introduces them is not the same as previous FF games and it chose the one in general that is less conducive to learning them. Those three terms are not what's confusing about the game. You'd pretty much have to skip all the cutscenes to not know what a l'Cie is by the time it matters. There's no need to add some banal exposition just for the people who watched Lost every week and got really mad about it. What you really want is an establishing shot of Pulse and Cocoon (assuming a total rewrite of the back half of the plot is out of the question).
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 18:41
|
|
|
Level Slide posted:Was that Lightning in a Snow costume or was that literally Snow? And that 3-on-1 with the dog headed ax-wielding creatures is that I really hope a late game normal battle in XV will look like. That looked like Snow she was arguing with at the end, right?
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 18:51
|
|
|
SolidSnakesBandana posted:This may surprise you but the story is why the majority of Final Fantasy fans play these games. If you ask any nostalgia-fueled gamer about past Final Fantasy games they usually cite the story as being their favorite part. I just can't imagine anyone that puts up with these games because they just loving LOVE the battle system. I liked the Blitz system in FF6 a lot. Also the fact that the game was multiplayer was always neat. I liked the characters more though, plus the story was basically "the heroes failed, now they have to hope they can at least limit the damage before everything's dead" which is a nice change of pace from "heroes save the world at the last moment, yay." DACK FAYDEN posted:Also, while I'm talking about All the Bravest, does every single enemy have a weapon drop? How much grinding can I do here? Yes and a lot. I messed with the game for a few days and it was enough to get level 99, see most enemies, get a bunch of drops, and clear the game. Any time it was a boss fight or one of the rare encoutners like Omega or Shinryu I'd just use Fever, fight until wiped out, and come back 3 hours later to finish it with another Fever unless it was nearly dead, then I'd save the Fever until the next rare/boss. If they'd made an actual game instead I'd probably feel inclined to spend money. e: A couple enemies have 2 drops. Evil Fluffy fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Sep 22, 2013 |
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 18:54
|
|
|
Evil Fluffy posted:Yes and a lot. I messed with the game for a few days and it was enough to get level 99, see most enemies, get a bunch of drops, and clear the game. Any time it was a boss fight or one of the rare encoutners like Omega or Shinryu I'd just use Fever, fight until wiped out, and come back 3 hours later to finish it with another Fever unless it was nearly dead, then I'd save the Fever until the next rare/boss. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:07
|
|
|
miscellaneous14 posted:I looked this up, and christ you weren't kidding. Part of me really wonders how XIII would have turned out if the US voice actors didn't have such awful direction. I have to wonder why in the world Square would actively avoid localization. Like, what were they thinking when they had the director say "act just like the Japanese voice actors."
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:15
|
|
|
T.G. Xarbala posted:Don't spend any money on it. Go ahead and fiddle with clock settings if you must. You can spoof your save file so that it gives you all the unlocks  Don't do it though because it's illegal. Renoistic posted:Well, the DS version of FFIV had decent voice acting. I really can't imagine a voiced FF6 working, though. Yes, I know of Dissidia and most of the voiced lines are awful. Imagine the "thou" scene directed by the same people who made Kingdom Hearts and FF13. Imagine any humorous scene. It's a horrible thought. Actually the voice acting there was awful and melodramatic. Fortunately there are only like 10 cutscenes in that game. I had the same problem with the cutscenes in Tactics. Voice acting is something that I don't think has ever been good in any Final Fantasy game, I think the only way to make it work would be to let the localization teams in North America handle the translation and voice directing without any input from Japan. Instead of finding a bunch of anime voice actors they should just hand everything off to an agency in LA who will then cast real actors who aren't awful and hire someone who is a good director.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:23
|
|
|
1st AD posted:cast real actors Yeah this worked out phenomenal for Kingdom Hearts all the times they did that. 1st AD posted:hire someone who is a good director I agree with you wholeheartedly on this here though, and I think this has always been the biggest problem in the series. People like Troy Baker who voiced Snow are phenomenally talented and hard to improve on with a change of actors, but if the voice direction sucks you're going to run into a mess of problems.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:51
|
|
|
I never beat Kingdom Hearts but iirc they just found a shitload of celebrities to voice the parts instead of actually going through the casting process and finding people who were good at their jobs. Though bad direction still would've ruined it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:54
|
|
|
1st AD posted:I never beat Kingdom Hearts but iirc they just found a shitload of celebrities to voice the parts instead of actually going through the casting process and finding people who were good at their jobs. They actually got good celebrity choices for the most part honestly. Buffy-era David Boreanaz is like the best possible choice for Squall.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:55
|
|
|
Kingdom Hearts is a walking talking playable example of Billy West's clarification between actors and voice actors.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:58
|
|
|
Fister Roboto posted:Magicite/nethicite definitely have the advantage here in both being a callback to earlier games as well as being based on actual words. Plus deifacted is pretty obvious to grasp from simple analysis (deity + manufact(ur)ed)
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 19:58
|
|
|
Billy Zane as Ansem is still the best casting decision in the history of Square.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 20:06
|
|
|
Dr Pepper posted:I have to wonder why in the world Square would actively avoid localization. Like, what were they thinking when they had the director say "act just like the Japanese voice actors." Square in general is incompetent. All the great writers and others are on the Eidos side. 1st AD posted:Though bad direction still would've ruined it. People severely underestimate the difference between a good director and a poo poo one. I would say getting a great director is by far one of the most important things to do first for a voice-acting production, the actors/actresses can be fixed more easily.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 20:18
|
|
|
1st AD posted:I never beat Kingdom Hearts but iirc they just found a shitload of celebrities to voice the parts instead of actually going through the casting process and finding people who were good at their jobs. ImpAtom posted:They actually got good celebrity choices for the most part honestly. Buffy-era David Boreanaz is like the best possible choice for Squall. Honestly, the only really really terrible casting for the first game, is Lance Bass as Sephiroth. The second game seemed to use mostly more anime voice actors, with the notable exception of Christoper Lee(!), and that coupled with a rather half-assed vocal direction made it suffer somewhat. Same for Birth By Sleep, which has the excellent Mark Hamill and Leonard Nimoy, but has absolutely loving dreadful voice direction for the PC characters (Jesse McCartney aside - who is rather compentant).
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 20:23
|
|
|
Mordiceius posted:I wonder if people would have a lesser opinion of pre-FFX games if they were all redone with voice acting. I'm going to go ahead and say yes, if only because of the inherent differences between writing dialogue intended to be read vs. what's intended to be heard.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 20:28
|
|
|
1st AD posted:Actually the voice acting there was awful and melodramatic. It was great though, and of course it was melodramatic, FF4 is all about melodrama. Melodramatic doesn't mean bad.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 20:34
|
|
|
Leonard Nimoy carried the plot of Birth By Sleep single-handedly even though he only appeared in a few scenes. He was AWESOME.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 20:46
|
|
|
Mordiceius posted:I wonder if people would have a lesser opinion of pre-FFX games if they were all redone with voice acting. I'm just trying to think of FFIX with voice acting and even just some of Zidane's lines done in his Dissidia voice would be less interesting. Even Vivi might not be half as adorable if he was voiced.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 20:52
|
|
|
ApplesandOranges posted:Even Vivi might not be half as adorable if he was voiced. He gets voiced in KH2 by Melissa Disney. It's okay, I guess. Not great though. Also, somewhat related, I found this video, where someone swapped Dissidia Shantotto's model for Vivi's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZClYXGIqyk.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 21:04
|
|
|
Renoistic posted:Leonard Nimoy carried the plot of Birth By Sleep single-handedly even though he only appeared in a few scenes. He was AWESOME.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 21:15
|
|
|
Renoistic posted:Leonard Nimoy carried the plot of Birth By Sleep single-handedly The other hand being occupied with milking the giant invisible cow. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 21:17
|
|
|
Kyrosiris posted:Plus deifacted is pretty obvious to grasp from simple analysis (deity + manufact(ur)ed) Right. Magicite means "magic stone" and nethicite means "Dutch stone".
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 21:19
|
|
|
The White Dragon posted:Well, Leonard Nimoy is no stranger to voice acting. Or exceedingly embarrassing roles. After working on something like Caution: Seaman, I'm sure BBS was like Casual Friday for him. I fail to see what's embarrassing in singing about Bilbo Baggins while random women dance around you. 
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 21:25
|
|
|
DACK FAYDEN posted:Also, while I'm talking about All the Bravest, does every single enemy have a weapon drop? How much grinding can I do here? Every enemy has a weapon drop, and some bosses have two weapon drops. This can range from a lot of grinding to no grinding, depending on the RNG. You can use the Map function for random battles until you get the specific enemy you want, but some enemies are rare encounters so that might take a while.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 21:36
|
|
|
Pesky Splinter posted:Honestly, the only really really terrible casting for the first game, is Lance Bass as Sephiroth.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 22:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 19, 2024 10:08 |
|
|
Paracelsus posted:Mena Suvari on horse tranquilizers as Aerith? First game. Mandy Moore wasn't too bad in 1. Mena Suvari was terrible in 2 though, no argument there.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2013 22:17
|
|