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Final Fantasy XVI Team Recommends Japanese Players to Play with English Dub (on a second playthrough) Because of No Japanese Lip Sync

Crossing Eden

Crossing Eden

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Oct 26, 2017
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Source: https://noisypixel.net/final-fantas...ese-players-english-dub-no-japanese-lip-sync/

During the latest Final Fantasy XVI pre-launch stream comprising the following staff, the team addressed feedback only applicable to the game's Japanese audience or those who simply prefer the Japanese dub
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The Japanese audience critiqued the title's lack of proper lip sync for their language since Final Fantasy XVI's development utilized the English dub at its core. The staff replied that they could not make it work since the facial movements are based on facial capture data with those who performed the English dub.

Unfortunately, AI tools would not work adequately, so the team has recommended Japanese players try the game with the English dub since the lip sync is outfitted for that language.
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Yoshida said:
"Now, moving on…ah, yes. English voices! Do try playing with English voices on a second playthrough, perhaps. I have a feeling that you can really appreciate the realism conveyed by the English voices."
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Interestingly enough FFXV's team utilized performance capture in Japanese but used procedural tools for English lip sync.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7vj61fZsBw

So it's interesting that they felt that procedural tools for Japanese wasn't working.
 
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Sargerus

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Weird, doesnt FF7R have lip sync, and adapted cutscenes for both languages? so I wonder why CBU3 could not do the same for XVI
 
Sanox

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User Warned: Lazy dev rhetoric
How god damn sad... one of THE household Japanese series and the Jp dev tells people to play it with En dub and can't be bothered to put in the effort for Jp lip sync
 
J_ToSaveTheDay

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Strange omission considering the technology and effort put into this in the past in other titles.

Communication surrounding this game is just weird. It debuted with a suggestion that it was near enough to content complete to release "soon" several years ago; the reasoning given for the lack of racial diversity among the cast really did not need to be as harmful as it was (literally a better response would've been "We just didn't consider that for this game"); and now they're recommending Japanese players use the English VO because they didn't make the effort to lip sync the Japanese dub even though that effort has been made in other prominent titles from the publisher??
 
hobblygobbly

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Sanox said:
How god damn sad... one of THE household Japanese series and the Jp dev tells people to play it with En dub
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It's not a dub, it's the original

in the end it's the same anywhere else in the world, in europe all our games are also made for english first whether it's a german, swedish, belgian, polish game

in europe only back in 90s and early 2000s were european games made for original language, nowadays even the biggest rpgs out of europe are in english first. FF being one of the biggest games of japan doing that now isn't too surprising
 

Atom

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Jul 25, 2021
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Shame. Always thought it was nice that XIII and XV had good lip sync in both languages. E: And 7R for that matter yeah.
 
ghibli99

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I had originally set the demo to Japanese, but when I saw the strange lip "sync" I immediately switched back to English... and thankfully the English version is quite good, but this is still very strange.
 
OP
OP
Crossing Eden

Crossing Eden

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Sanox said:
How god damn sad... one of THE household Japanese series and the Jp dev tells people to play it with En dub and can't be bothered to put in the effort for Jp lip sync
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The english audio isn't a dub. It's the language they recorded first using performance capture.
gamingbolt.com

Final Fantasy 16 Performance Capture and Voice Recording is Prioritizing British English

Producer Naoki Yoshida reveals that English voice recording and performance capture has progressed the most, with Japanese recording yet to begin.
gamingbolt.com gamingbolt.com

AuthenticM said:
could they not use the software that syncs lips to voices like they did with VII Remake?
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Please read the OP. 🥺
 

Chuck795

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Sanox said:
How god damn sad... one of THE household Japanese series and the Jp dev tells people to play it with En dub and can't be bothered to put in the effort for Jp lip sync
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Actually it was later elaborated that in Japanese movement of the mouth is leas expressive than on English, so that was why the recommendation was given. Way to just outrage at the misleading quote though.
 
Noog

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Honestly incredibly interesting. They're clearly targeting western audiences with the Game of Thrones infouences (even though I'm fully aware GOT is popular in Japan as well)
 
Ovvv

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Sanox said:
How god damn sad... one of THE household Japanese series and the Jp dev tells people to play it with En dub and can't be bothered to put in the effort for Jp lip sync
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In this instance the JP is the dub though lol
 
Fart Master

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FusedAtoms

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The article was updated because they got the quote wrong and they actually said Second playthrough , which you even highlighted. The title should probably reflect that lol they still want them to play it in Japanese but said to maybe give the English dub a shot on a second playthrough
 
criteriondog

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Should update the title to mention they recommend English for the second playthrough, even your quote in your OP states that, so the thread title is slightly misleading
 
Sanox

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Crossing Eden said:
The english audio isn't a dub. It's the language they recorded first using performance capture.
gamingbolt.com

Final Fantasy 16 Performance Capture and Voice Recording is Prioritizing British English

Producer Naoki Yoshida reveals that English voice recording and performance capture has progressed the most, with Japanese recording yet to begin.
gamingbolt.com gamingbolt.com


Please read the OP. 🥺
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Doesn't change a single thing. It should be there and its embarassing that its not present especially sfter the Remake team tried to do their best with the help of ai
 
OP
OP
Crossing Eden

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Lopez said:
I would imagine dev time plus the different engines made this difficult to implement.
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Sanox said:
Doesn't change a single thing. It should be there and its embarassing that its not present especially sfter the Remake team tried to do their best with the help of ai
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Given the series history if they're saying that the results they got with methods other teams have used were inadequate I believe them.
 
HeavenlyE

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Sanox said:
Doesn't change a single thing. It should be there and its embarassing that its not present especially sfter the Remake team tried to do their best with the help of ai
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They said in the live stream they tried using AI tools and it wasn't turning out well, I imagine they also tried their best it just didn't work out this time
 
hobblygobbly

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Sanox said:
Doesn't change a single thing. It should be there and its embarassing that its not present especially sfter the Remake team tried to do their best with the help of ai
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the devs went for a conscious decision to go the way they did, it's because they also really liked the casting of the english actors especially the main character clive who they found the best representation in the actor for the character they came up with. it makes perfect sense
 
808s & Villainy

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I wonder what kind of issues they had using the procedural tools. FF16 isn't the only game that uses performance capture with multilingual VAs
 
crimilde

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Sanox said:
Doesn't change a single thing. It should be there and its embarassing that its not present especially sfter the Remake team tried to do their best with the help of ai
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They tried to do their best too, and it just didn't work out for their project. It's in the article and the OP.
Also, not the end of the world.
 
Fart Master

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I don't understand why the weird obsession with Japanese VA. They had vision and they stuck to it. Plenty of Japanese games have Japan centric VA.
 
crimilde

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Sanox said:
So fuck it. Don't give a shit about their own home country or the fact that Japanese va is popular all around the world
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Square just shot themselves in the foot.
I don't know how much the rest of you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Japan, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the japanese public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase FFXVI for PS5, nor will they purchase any of Square's games. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Square has alienated an entire market with this move.
Square, publicly apologize and cancel the English dub being the original or you can kiss your business goodbye.
 
DjDeathCool

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I mean people on this very forum criticized both XV and VII:R for "anime cringe" in dialog delivery. CBU3 went to great lengths to mitigate that through the process of their English script and prioritizing English performances.

For what it's worth, I have at least two friends who have expressed interest in this game that otherwise are uninterested in Final Fantasy specifically because of the presentation of the dialog. So we'll see if it pays off in sales or not.
 
J75

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Time's really change. FFXV had some multi media stuff like the Brotherhood anime that AFAIK didn't even get an English dub and now XVI is primarily done for English, lipsync and all.
 
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OP
Crossing Eden

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Sanox said:
So fuck it. Don't give a shit about their own home country or the fact that Japanese va is popular all around the world
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You're attributing malice to a situation that lacks it entirely. They literally say that they TRIED to do it. But it was a combination of it being too much work to get good results and the procedural results not being adequate. FF games actually have really high complex facial rigs. FF13 needed a team SOLELY dedicated to facial animation.
 
Valcrist

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What do JP AAA console game sales look like? Ones that aren't on Switch.
 
Yam's

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As someone who always go for Japanese dubs in Japanese games, I must say that after trying both the English dub was simply better.

I won't be able to use the French subtitles however as they used the Japanese script and it was just too distracting.
 
criteriondog

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crimilde said:
Square just shot themselves in the foot.
I don't know how much the rest of you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Japan, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the japanese public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase FFXVI for PS5, nor will they purchase any of Square's games. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Square has alienated an entire market with this move.
Square, publicly apologize and cancel the English dub being the original or you can kiss your business goodbye.
Click to expand...
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omfg this LOL
 
MayorSquirtle

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Does anyone have examples of games that do full facial performance capture (not just mocap) and still adjust lip flaps for other languages? I can't imagine that's a trivial task in any way. Pretty sure most games just do standard body mocap and then handle facial animation separately, no?
 
megamanofnumbers

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crimilde said:
Square just shot themselves in the foot.
I don't know how much the rest of you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Japan, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the japanese public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase FFXVI for PS5, nor will they purchase any of Square's games. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Square has alienated an entire market with this move.
Square, publicly apologize and cancel the English dub being the original or you can kiss your business goodbye.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Forgive me master, I must go all out... ONE LAST TIME
 
J75

J75

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Sep 29, 2018
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crimilde said:
Square just shot themselves in the foot.
I don't know how much the rest of you know about Japanese culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Japan, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.
What this means is the japanese public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase FFXVI for PS5, nor will they purchase any of Square's games. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Square has alienated an entire market with this move.
Square, publicly apologize and cancel the English dub being the original or you can kiss your business goodbye.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


image.png
 
Bambi Is My Dad

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Sanox said:
So fuck it. Don't give a shit about their own home country or the fact that Japanese va is popular all around the world
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They literally tried. The result was not working out for them. They felt it wasn't best for their Japanese audience to attempt what would result in the end, a sub-par lip syncing.

You can be unhappy with the choice that Square made with this game, which is doing it in English in the first place. But it's harsh to question that they 'didn't try'.
 
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