(04-02-2015, 08:38 AM)Clover Wrote: Japanese voices, hands down. Several reasons:
1- Most importantly, it's the original (and therefore, the real) version. The creators wanted the characters to be and sound that way, and nothing really beats the original version of anything. I don't watch Game of Thrones in Spanish, just like I wouldn't play a Japanese game in any other language that's not Japanese. Original voices are sacred to me.
2- It's not just that the original version of anything is better and true to the creators' vision, but also that dubs tend to sound plain bad to me. Many characters just don't translate well in different cultures.
3- Japanese must be the only language that sounds good to my ears *laughs*.
1. Japanese is not the "original" version. They are all made simultaneously, as stated by Square Enix. (And said again at the Lore Panel at the Vegas Fanfest 2014). Lore and Localization share staff at SE, which is why English-made lore is "back-translated/localized" to the Japanese localization. It was already linked previously, but here's Fernehalwes talking about some of it. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threa...ost2804270 You'll notice in the credits, all the voice actors are grouped together for each character. It isn't as if the Japanese is dubbed and a script is handed off to English, French and German. They work on it together in-house.
Fanfest video/transcript:
http://gamerescape.com/2014/10/18/final-...live-blog/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvNpO4gy_Tg
Note: Language preference is all fair and game. Each team has a few characters that I think portray certain characters best. (As in, I cannot stand Minfillia in English, but Japanese and Frech sound pretty good. Urianger is awesome in English, but I don't really care for the other languages. I've heard Moenbryda was great in German, but haven't gone back yet to rewatch). What I am calling out is that the Japense isn't the "original" script. Because it isn't. The lead lore creator is Japanese and speaks Japanese, but he's not the one making the NPC dialogue in most cases. It's the localization teams working together.
