Voice Acting

[DoubleO_Ren]

Soooo I don't think I need to go into too much detail but...

WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY GONNA DO? Keep it Shenmue style bad and cheesy but has that certain charm that's grown on us? Or are they gonna speak like they've got the voice director of The Last of Us and Uncharted in charge which could be kinda jarring coming out of these characters we've heard speak like robots for the past 16 years.

[Rikitatsu]

are they gonna speak like they've got the voice director of The Last of Us and Uncharted in charge which could be kinda jarring coming out of these characters we've heard speak like robots for the past 16 years.

Yikes, that IS Jarring.
Thankfully, I don't think they will be able to afford "good" voice actors.

[DoubleO_Ren]

I think Shenmue with good voice acting would be weird at first but we'd get used to it. I wonder how monotone Corey Marshall will be in this?

I'll probably play with the Japanese dub if the voice acting is poor for the first time. If it's available.

[Yokosuka]

I'm not a native English speaker but Shenmue I voice acting was well directed IMO. This should be the right level to target. The issue was the NPCs....

[DoubleO_Ren]

I'm not a native English speaker but Shenmue I voice acting was well directed IMO. This should be the right level to target. The issue was the NPCs....

Especially since you bought merchandise...

YOU MEAN THE DAY IT THUNDREDREDREDD!!

[Rikitatsu]

As a non-native English speaker, I also agree with Yokosuka.

Yes, there are weird lines and hilarious accents, but in general, the way characters talk in Shenmue 1 & 2 felt more realistic, than say, Uncharted or TLoU. It probably has to do with the script though.

In Uncharted/TLoU, everyone is trying to outsnark the other, and almost every line is written to sound 'cool"...
In Shenmue, NPCs talk the way I expect real people to talk... No snark, no pretension, people are moderately polite.


That is my take as a non-native English speaker, and I'm sure Native Speakers will disagree with me.

I also think the over the top accents and hilarious lines are part of the fun, and they never ever bothered me

[ChiefNeo]

English shenmue sounds dead and monotone. Non-english natives may like it, but it's not realistic.

That said, at this point it is what it is and I'm ok with it. I really want to be able to choose audio though. I played 2 in Japanese for the first time and its like a different game. In a good way.

[O Rei do Frango Assado]

Keep it Shenmue style bad and cheesy but has that certain charm that's grown on us?

I'm sorry, but I fail to see any "charm" in it. As much as I love Shenmue, its English voice acting was absolutely atrocious in pretty much every aspect. I mean, I already thought it was bad back then, when I was a 15 year old kid, but now, when I listen to it again, I realize that it's even worse than I remembered. I'm not a native English speaker, by the way, but I've grown quite accustomed to spoken English.

With that, I must say that voice acting is one of Shenmue 3's aspects I'm most curious about. I'll be extremely disappointed if we get something like the first two games (or even just slightly better). Nope, not in a world where games like Uncharted, The Witcher 3 etc. exist. It would be unacceptable.

Since I played both games originally on the Dreamcast, I played Shenmue 2 in Japanese and I thought it sounded much better than the English version, but I don't know if it really is better or if it's that's just the impression I got because I don't understand Japanese and so I can't see how bad it also is. Whatever it is, I thought everyone sounded much better (I haven't played in many years, but I remember Ren's Japanese voice being particularly great and one of the main reasons why I liked him so much. When I later played Shenmue 2 in English, on the Xbox, it was just unbearable).

And this is also one of the reasons why I'm praying we'll have the option to play the game with Japanese voices. Besides, Ryo's Japanese, so he should be speaking Japanese. Sure, he's in China now, no one would be speaking Japanese anymore, unlike in Shenmue 1, but, then again, they wouldn't be speaking English either, so that's a plot hole we already have, anyway (or did they ever explain just how Ryo can easily speak with everyone in Hong Kong and South China? I guess we're supposed to assume that they're actually speaking Cantonese, and maybe Mandarin with Shenhua, but, as far as I can recall, Ryo didn't speak Chinese. Or was it simply a matter of him not being able to read that scroll in Classical Chinese, but actually being able to converse in Chinese? But, if that's the case, one would expect that to be mentioned in the game, but I don't recall that ever happening).

But I digress. To sum up, Shenmue's English voice acting is shit and it'd better improve with Shenmue 3. A lot.

[ChiefNeo]

Do we know anything about the volume of spoken dialogue? Voice acting is expensive. I hope they can manage to have it all voiced like in the past..

[O Rei do Frango Assado]

Do we know anything about the volume of spoken dialogue? Voice acting is expensive. I hope they can manage to have it all voiced like in the past..

Oh yeah, couldn't agree more about that. That's one of the things that made Shenmue so special back then. It would be a real shame if they took a step backwards with that.

[jcjimher]

Do we know anything about the volume of spoken dialogue? Voice acting is expensive. I hope they can manage to have it all voiced like in the past..

Oh yeah, couldn't agree more about that. That's one of the things that made Shenmue so special back then. It would be a real shame if they took a step backwards with that.

I hope Shenmue III don't have a situation similar to whathappend with MGS V, where the cost of voice acting was really high (in that case, because they hired a famous Hollywood actor), and to compensate they reduced Snake's lines a lot.

I would put up with with having no voice acting during FREE segments, for example, rather than having the text or the scope of the story or NPCs reduced to have it fully acted.

Aah, and I hope for a Japanese voiceover too...or at least a much improved English one (with the monotonous-ness limited to Ryo, whose character suits it :-)).

[killthesagabeforeitkillsu]

I want popular western videogame voice actors as far away as possible from Shenmue. But I do wish they kept Ryo's and Shenhua's original japanese voice acting.

[Mr357]

As a non-native English speaker, I also agree with Yokosuka.

Yes, there are weird lines and hilarious accents, but in general, the way characters talk in Shenmue 1 & 2 felt more realistic, than say, Uncharted or TLoU. It probably has to do with the script though.

In Uncharted/TLoU, everyone is trying to outsnark the other, and almost every line is written to sound 'cool"...
In Shenmue, NPCs talk the way I expect real people to talk... No snark, no pretension, people are moderately polite.


That is my take as a non-native English speaker, and I'm sure Native Speakers will disagree with me.

I also think the over the top accents and hilarious lines are part of the fun, and they never ever bothered me

I'm a native speaker and I totally agree with you. Sure, you can argue that many of the voice actors for Shenmue I weren't "good" (whatever that means), but they have this comfortable familiarity about them that I've rarely seen in other games. For anyone who doesn't understand what I mean, watch a sitcom and pay attention to how the actors talk. You'll find that it is very different from how people actually carry on conversations.

[punkmanced]

As long as they have a dual language option, I'm good.

[Shenmue_Music]

I thought it was really good. I hope Ryo and everybody else sounds like they did in I and II. If they don't, that for me, would be game breaking. Seriously.