DxEggman said:
I originally didn't know why there was such a high demand for undubs, especially when some requesters don't know a lick of Japanese. I have played games in Japanese with English text, so I understand the thought process and so on, it's just not my preferred way to play, and was wondering why sooo many people were like
UNDUB NOW EWW ENGLISH SUCKS.
Also, I'm curious if anyone else thinks there's gotta be horrible JP voice acting. Have you heard any?
Personally, I go both ways when it comes to preferred vocals. For simple, arcade-type games (e.g. Star Fox), I generally have no interest in Japanese vocals. Those types of games aren't plot-heavy, and the focus is very much on the gameplay rather than the storytelling. With RPGs, this is reversed, and more thought is put into the plotting side of development, so it's easier to view as a creative interactive mixed-media effort, as opposed to say, a "shooting game". In this case I'm more inclined to try out a game with Japanese voice acting, in an attempt to better preserve the creative side of a work, as I would do when viewing a film, for example. It's true that it would be better preserved by learning Japanese and playing the game that way, but as was alluded to earlier in this topic, putting in that much effort to play a game is pretty much nuts. However, I don't think this makes playing with the original language vocals an exercise in futility; it preserves some parts of the game and doesn't preserve others. It sacrifices parts of the original game for the sake of ease of use, and a similar balance is struck for a lot of things in life (e.g. quality versus cost, pirating versus purchasing).
Obviously in the case of video games, a lot of the damage has already been done, because the subtitles by necessity usually mirror the dubbing, whereas films do this less often. To experience this yourself, try watching a foreign film with both dubbing and subtitles enabled. They'll often differ a great degree, because dubs are required to strictly fit with the on-screen timing, while subs can cover more details in the same amount of time as spoken dialogue. Films can afford to do this because you'll usually either watch a dub or a sub, not both simultaneously, so the disconnect isn't there to jar you out of the experience. Video games often display both at the same time, and since the vocal work is the more limited verbally, the written dialogue is usually adapted to match that. As such, with games you can still be stuck with unclear or brief dialogue, so you're still losing out, but again it comes back to balance: preserve the creative work in some ways while compromising the rest for the sake of ease of use.
Of course, dubbing can also be used to preserve a work in other ways; you're no longer distracted from the visual aspect of the film by the written dialogue, preserving the film's flow; this is especially true when the voice acting is of decent quality. This one's a lot more subjective; it's really a matter of personal opinion which preserves the experience better. Whether preserving the experience is important is another subjective matter, and as I stated above, my opinion varies based upon the style of the original game. If the original game doesn't have a focus on a compelling plot and/or acting, or if the original game has bad acting (certainly it exists, but voice acting in Japan is a fairly respected profession, which means a lot of the time more effort is put into it than western voice acting). So if a game's got good acting and a focus on plot in the original, I'll probably enjoy an undubbed version more. Those are the positives and negatives as I see them, and for me the positives fall on the side of undubbing games in cases where the game deserves it.
