Hi

[RiscaYin]

Voices, will you ever create a English voice over for the game? OK, I get that I can't complain because I paid so much for the game but you decided to release it in NA and you must know that most of us do not speak any of the languages you have in the game so why did you release it here? Must be for money. Cool.

[TigerNightmare]

The market for the game is bigger in Asia. The cost isn't worth the investment, the same is true for a lot of features games don't have. The Yakuza series is more popular than ever these days and they started with an English dub before sticking with Japanese only audio indefinitely. Look at all the anime out there. Most of it is terrible, honestly, but even the quality stuff doesn't have an English dub, only Ghibli spends money on that typically. You don't like it, learn the language or tell them you'll pay them $20,000 (or more if you want actually good actors) to put the dub in the game.

[Meowish]

Xin Dong is a Hong Kong based company. They never did labeled the word NA in their global server, nor did they ever said it's located in NA. The global server is only there to allow the rest of the uncovered region to join their game, so it's not exclusive to NA only. The basic language of the game is actually Chinese.

And not all NA origin games are made in NA as well, for example, The "America Mcgee's Alice" series made by Mcgee's "Spicy Horse" used to have their office located in China, Shanghai.

And then there's the opposite, where Chinese developer ended up setting up company in NA. Example, the LA located company "thatgamecompany" (aka TGC) is founded by the Chinese developer, "Xinghan Chen", origin from Shanghai.

So we really can't judge a book by its cover alone...
Speaking of which... the now famous "miHoYo" used to camouflage itself as a Japanese company at first glance to gain marketing advantages, but it's actually a Chinese company, again, from Shanghai. That's also why you can find Japanese dubs in their games. XD tried to do the same actually, that's why they use the initial XD and not the chinese word Xin Dong in their logo, making it hard to trace its Chinese origin from the first glance.

And on the contra side, "Team Shanghai Alice" (the creators of the famous "Touhou" series) on the other hand, sounded like they are from Shanghai, but they are actually Japanese, Tokyo origin...

Due to the above reasons, it's recommended to make sure you double check if your points are valid before making any claims...

[Blink]

It's like people don't know what gaming was like before voiceovers became a thing

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Blink:

It's like people don't know what gaming was like before voiceovers became a thing

Voice over is there in games before the home PC era, or as early as DOS era as soon as PC speakers are introduced (check out Dragon's Lair from 1983: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRU0TaJq2eA or King Quest 1988), it can been seen as a heavy trend especially on those point and click adventure games remake during the CD-ROM era, so it's nothing new in the gaming industries. Voice over technology itself is there since the old movie era, where every scene needs a voice over after the take to ensure the clearness of the dialog so they don't sound oddly "far away".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_qW-xPanqU

But back on topic, the OP complained that the game isn't "localized" enough for them without English voice over because it's a "NA server" which isn't true due to it's actually a "Global server" and not NA exclusive.

[Blink]

you really gonna nitpick over "the first voiced game" vs "everyone got used to voiceover because it became normal" ?

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Blink:

you really gonna nitpick over "the first voiced game" vs "everyone got used to voiceover because it became normal" ?

Voice over is the "norm" back in the old days story telling may it be cardboard picture or shadow play, the only difference is the "manual" and "auto", going all the way into the projector age in 1600s, and it became "auto" in 1895, way before TV with speakers are invented, way way before video games are introduced... There's no need for a human to get "used to" it since it's part of our everyday life... And like i mentioned above, it's there since the PC88 era, which, is just about the same time as the start of home PC era. It only took a decade for floppy (80s) to evolved into CD (90s) back then, and voice over is "common" in old school story telling based games like point and click adventures, even games back on the 5¼ floppy era before even the 3½ floppy era, and way before PC have HDD as standard hardware (The 1st ever HDD is only 5mb by the way, and before that, PC do not have HDD at all and boot up using floppy disk). The mentioned King Quest with voice over is a 8 x 5¼ floppy disks game (boot disk not included).

[Blink]

I'm not reading all that, but I'm happy for you.

Or sorry for your loss.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Blink:

I'm not reading all that, but I'm happy for you.

Or sorry for your loss.

It's just there to tell you that voice over is there from a long time ago, and if you don't want to admit that, it's your own loss really if you choose to live in a small world with narrow view. And again, it has nothing to do with OP's complain about lack of voice over "because the game is released in NA".

[Meowish]

Localization can't be avoided for voiceover, with the same reason that text have a frame limit on game dialog that limited the original text since the game making (yes, trimming off words started on the original text), and that directly effect the translation after that which are required to fit into the existing frame (depending on the UI designer's code and media size they used to publish the game, some can be really hard to fit)... voiceover which came on top of that is on a higher level of precision since they not only need to match the frame size, but have to fit in exactly to the time frame as well, so adding extra word or trimming off words to fit are often seen in the localization. Where lazy game companies like Bandai will just use random repeated words to put "voice" into the dialog but not fully voiced. Those actually sound worse than voiceless imo...

And like what HG said above, VAs reflected a lot on the characters they did voiceover on. eg, Sugita (the VA of Gintoki from Gintama) will always leaves a vivid impression on the stronger characteristic he acts on (even though he can do up to 6 varieties), the face of certain characters will always show up when you heard his voice in an anime/game. Langrisser for example, have a few characters voiced by him, including Gintoki (Gintama's protagonist) is there as collaboration, though he sounded like a total different character when he voiced Lugner, his voice is still his voice, and the face of Gintoki showed up for some when they hear Lugner's speaking... This phenomenon is worse in English voiceover due to the lack of VA training in the west, and most famous anime ended up getting real actors/actress to do the voice acting to prevent using that same crew over and over again... eg, most older English voiceover on Japanese Anime all sounded the same as Pokemon due to the same crew are being used, only the newer anime with newly trained VAs sound distinctly apart.

[Hanalyd]

Originally posted by RiscaYin:

Voices, will you ever create a English voice over for the game? OK, I get that I can't complain because I paid so much for the game but you decided to release it in NA and you must know that most of us do not speak any of the languages you have in the game so why did you release it here? Must be for money. Cool.

Are you blind that you can't simply read text? Oh wait...

[Rid]

Originally posted by Meowish:

Xin Dong is a Hong Kong based company. They never did labeled the word NA in their global server, nor did they ever said it's located in NA. The global server is only there to allow the rest of the uncovered region to join their game, so it's not exclusive to NA only. The basic language of the game is actually Chinese.

And not all NA origin games are made in NA as well, for example, The "America Mcgee's Alice" series made by Mcgee's "Spicy Horse" used to have their office located in China, Shanghai.

And then there's the opposite, where Chinese developer ended up setting up company in NA. Example, the LA located company "thatgamecompany" (aka TGC) is founded by the Chinese developer, "Xinghan Chen", origin from Shanghai.

So we really can't judge a book by its cover alone...
Speaking of which... the now famous "miHoYo" used to camouflage itself as a Japanese company at first glance to gain marketing advantages, but it's actually a Chinese company, again, from Shanghai. That's also why you can find Japanese dubs in their games. XD tried to do the same actually, that's why they use the initial XD and not the chinese word Xin Dong in their logo, making it hard to trace its Chinese origin from the first glance.

And on the contra side, "Team Shanghai Alice" (the creators of the famous "Touhou" series) on the other hand, sounded like they are from Shanghai, but they are actually Japanese, Tokyo origin...

Due to the above reasons, it's recommended to make sure you double check if your points are valid before making any claims...

I logged in to reply something like "just shut up you entitled crybaby" to the OP, but I'm genuinely curious about what compels people like you to write such an elaborate reply to a moron that just wanted to vent their privileged frustration somewhere and unlikely will read it.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Rid:

I logged in to reply something like "just shut up you entitled crybaby" to the OP, but I'm genuinely curious about what compels people like you to write such an elaborate reply to a moron that just wanted to vent their privileged frustration somewhere and unlikely will read it.

Everyone needs to learn from somewhere (whenever they are ready to learn) and get wiser over time, sharing information like that will reduce those uneducated in the long run as not only the OP have opinions like that when they lack the information needed to improve their thoughts and behaviors. The Earth is flat for some until they learn (and accepted) that it's a globe. In the case here, the "prejudice" is "Global = US/NA server" which isn't true at all, global means it's opened up for global, and the location of the server could be anywhere the game company placed it, it's not exclusive for US/NA.