So, let me (a spaniard) explain you the big deal with the new spanish voice over

[Efore]

I wrote this post on Reddit, and I thought that it would be interesting for some of you to read, so here it is.

Hi there. Im a fellow spaniard Disciple and I wanted to write this in order for you, non-spanish Disciples, to understand how good is the new spanish voiceover, and why is such an big step for Spain, culturally speaking. Sorry in advance for any english mistake.

CONTEXT

First, some context: You got to take into account that, in way too many occasions, a good Spanish voiceover is just not worth the cost. There are good selling titles, of course, but our numbers for non-fifa or non-CoD games are nothing in comparison with other EU countries like Germany or France. Nowadays there are still too many AAA titles that don't include Spanish dub, whereas they do include German or French (FFVIIR or The Witcher 3). The AAA specification is important here, since it is absolutely understandable for indie games not to be able to spare the cost.

As I said, the cost of a good voiceover in Spain can be relatively high in comparison with the benefits it will provide. Therefore, many publishers decide either not to dub the game, or to do it cheap and with low quality, like what happened with Control. (For the records, we do prefer no Spanish voiceover rather than a cheap/bad one). That is why the Spanish voiceover of Metal Gear Solid is a legend over here. It was 1998, and they hired the best cast ever seen (dub actors from movies and tv), to work in a videogame. We had some Spanish dub before, but nothing close to this quality. Sadly, that would be the first and last Metal Gear Solid fully localized.

Afortunately, the time has past and there are big publishers, like Sony, that are totally commited to their fans in their respective countries, and always provide localization with a quite good cast.

HOW GOOD BLASPHEMOUS CAST IS

Now that you are under context, let me go back to this specific game.

When Blasphemous was released there were some people critizing that the game wasn't dub in Spanish, specially since its world is inspired in the Spanish culture. The reason was, again, the cost of it. And, as I said, it is perfectly understandable that they went to the English voiceover before the spanish one, since they had money only for one of them, and the main market of this game (as it is for any other game) was the English speaking one. However, Enrique Colinet (level designer of Blasphemous and aficionado voice actor himself) had this thorn in his side for not being able to provide a Spanish dub in his first Spanish released game, which happens to be heavily inspired by Spain.

That is why, after the selling success of Blasphemous, and with the money to do it, The Game Kitchen commited to release a full Spanish voiceover, with Enrique as dub director.

In this Twitter Thread, he explains the process (in Spanish)
Thread[http//shttps]

In summary, what started with a joke of which famous voice actor would dub which caracter, ended up in (as i said) one of the best casts in our country ever.

One by one

I wont go full CV with every actor, just highlighting their more recognizable jobs.

• Rafael de Azcárraga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81-I1K9guv0&feature=emb_title
  He is a veteran in the spanish videogame dub scene. Now he is recognized for his work as Kratos in GoW (2018), but he was already the voice for several bosses in WoW, including Zul'Jin, 15 years ago.
  
  
• Mario García: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5697zK1t_4&feature=emb_title
  He is Spiderman in the Tom Holland movies, as well as in the game Spiderman for Ps4.
  
  
• aura Pastor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfZkpinx4F0&feature=emb_title
  She is Anna in Frozen and Hermione in the last Harry Potter films, as well as Zoe in League of Legends.
  
  
• Imma Font: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlPkDPU3uCI&feature=emb_title
  She is a veteran in several animation TV shows, specially Dragon Ball, where she dubbed Dende, Chaos or the Fortuneteller Baba. This one is specially important, I will come to why later.
  
  
• Claudio Serrano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y4hH2iKuzE&feature=emb_title
  Is really hard to summarize his huuuge career, but he is basically Batman since the Nolan Films, as well as AntMan. There is literally hundred of shows with his voice, but he has a special place in my heart with Otto, from The Simpsons. Regarding videogames, he gives voice to Tommy (TLOU), Deacon in Days Gone (amongs other games), and every version of Batman, of course.
  
  
• Laura Monedero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL7ZLy4tK40&feature=emb_title
  Another super hero speciallist, with Spider-Gwen or Captain Marvel under her wings and, also, Mipha in Zelda: BotW.
  
  
• Ramón de Arana: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMxoEGZaKTM&feature=emb_title
  This is a young promise, who gave voice to BOY! in BOY! Simulator (GoW)
  
  
• Alfonso Vallés: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9biqiUtpTNw&feature=emb_title
  This is a huge deal, because it close the circle opened 22 years ago. Remember that Metal Gear Solid legend that I said before? He gave voice to Solid Snake.
  
  
• Jordi Boixaderas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzEsAv_v6o8&feature=emb_title
  This one is like Claudio Serrano in terms of career, he is the recurrent voice of Russell Crowe, Dwayne Johnson, Sean Bean and Daniel Craig, so you can imagine how big of a deal it is to have his voice in this game.

These are the ones officially announced by The Game Kitchen, but I want to address a last one that is important for the next section, along with Imma Font.

• Juan Fernández Mejías: https://www.doblajevideojuegos.es/audio-doblajes/audio_doblaje_44091.mp3
  He is the recurrent voice of Vin Diesel, and also used to dub Alan Rickman. If you have watched the Netflix show Money Heist, he appears there as the Colonel Alfonso Prieto.

After this, I think that you can already understand why I was talking about the best cast in the history of spanish voiceovers in videogames. Almost all of them had already done some dub for videogames, but having them all under the same Title? That is something never seen before here.

THE CULTURAL IMPACT

I happen to come from the same Spanish region as the devs, Andalucía.

Historically, our region has been one whose economy was centered in the agriculture. During the Franco dictatorship, all the production industry was moved to the north of Spain, accentuating the south's reliability on the field work. This also made Andalucia, which was already strugling after the Civil War, even poorer. For that reason, many kids had to leave the school in order to help their parents at work. That lack of school education is no longer there, but for the rest of Spain, Andalucia became the land of the "uneducated" ones.

Also, since Andalucia has always had good weather, it has always been very common to spend the afternoons outside, just talking with your neightbours. That meant, old times Andalusians used to spend their free time just talking, and because of that they started to remove certain letters from words in order to talk more efficiently: saying more in less time. Thanks to that, we have a very remarkable dialect, which, by the way, is the most extended Spanish dialect in the world, since the LATAM dialects are children from this andalusian dialect, but that is another story.

Anyway, because of the general lack of school education, our accent became a "signal" for the rest of Spain: this person is funny, but probably ignorant. And this image rooted. For many years, TV-Shows and Films would show andalusian characters as maids, stewards, or just the funny and dumb character whose only role its to make stupid jokes now and then to break tension. It doesnt matter how many important writers, artists, scientists, or Nobel Prices Andalucia gave to the history of Spain, we were always THAT funny but ignorant person. I don't have anything against maids or stewards, just trying to punctualize that it was ALWAYS the same.

This is luckily not the case anymore, at least broadly speaking, but there is still some subyacent clasism for some people who, if you have Andalusian accent, wont take you seriously. We even have a andalusian Minister which long time ago needed to embrace a pure castillian accent when he moved to Madrid in order for many politicians to focus in his words rather than in his accent.

Aaand here is where the two andalusians voice actors, Imma Font and Juan Fernández, come to the point. You may have not noticed, but their clips show that the characters they are dubbing, are speaking with andalusian accent. Having this in a videogame is absolutely nuts, in the good sense. It has never happened before and, as a fellow andalusian, it makes me really proud and happy to see that they decided to go with it. It also makes total sense, since the Spanish inspiration for Blasphemous is specifically, in its most part, Andalusian.

Anyway, thats it. I have summarized a lot the recent history of Andalucia, there is many other aspects to take into account that I haven't talked about, but in broad terms I think is enough.

I hope that this text made you understand why everybody in Spain is so excited about the new Patch, and why is so important for us andalusians.

[Mall Ninja]

Thank you for taking the time to write this. I am actually keeping myself from playing the game, cause i want to do it with Spanish voice and English subs. I feel it is the "proper" way to play this, same as i played the Metro games with Russian voices and English subs.

[CHOO CHOO]

I used to be a freelance translator. Nobody wanted to pay for quality work, though. So I do like seeing someone spend money just on getting good language work done!

[WarBird]

Thank you for a very insightful comment. I'm very much looking forward to revisiting Cvstodia in Spanish! (also reliability -> reliance)

[Nick]

Hey dude this was a very interesting read!
I also was suprised to see a very profesional cast for this dubbing. For a indie game is stunning.

With this update i'm sure the game will reach a wider audience

Greetings from LatAm!

[scythewielder]

I am not from Spain, but I have some Spanish heritage, so this was an interesting read.

Sounds like the cast will be quite fitting.

[Seinekar]

The cast is absoultely deluxe.

[✯ El Juancho]

Cool

[Tenshi]

The game is only playable in english. Spanish os garbo.

[✯ El Juancho]

Originally posted by Tenshi:

The game is only playable in english. Spanish os garbo.

Blasphemous is gonna get a patch with spanish voices you dumb

[Spectrum Legacy]

Nice read, it pretty much sumarises why remembering traditions, languages and dialects is important part of cultural herritage and our identity in times of globalism. I miss days when even some big games had Czech VO (e.g. Witcher1, Mafia, etc), despite being a tiny market in the grand scheme of things. Some indie devs still do VO in their native language outside of English, but it's quite rare to hear. Still it gives the game an unique character (e.g. Sine mora has Hungarian VO and only recently received an English one in the EX version).

I was a bit critical of the original english voiceover at the time of release in my review, but eventually I grew fond of its quirks. I don't understand Spanish much, but I've checked all those VA vids posted during the announcement and from what I gather I would say they chose a really diverse and professional set of actors. Will definitely do a Spanish run with subs, just to get even more of that native vibe out this gem.

Originally posted by Tenshi:

The game is only playable in english. Spanish os garbo.

You are one day early. Just wait for the update first like everybody else.

[Tenshi]

Originally posted by ✯ Juancho:

Originally posted by Tenshi:

The game is only playable in english. Spanish os garbo.

Blasphemous is gonna get a patch with spanish voices you dumb

aw ♥♥♥♥, i'm too early then.

[Griever]

Thank you for sharing this. Very excited for the new update and to re-visit Cvstodia.

[Mr.Door]

Dude, this is Steam forums.
How dare you bring quality content?

[Ereene]

yep i finished the game multiples times but definitely going to revisit it with spanish voices, im glad Spain is getting some love for sure :)

[Totenheim]

Quite a good summary. For spaniards (and andalusians in particular) this is much more than a treat for our ears. Even being from the northernmost part of Spain, I can say that the stereotype persists, even in other countries to a degree.