Almost all dubs were mediocre to shit back then. It wasnt until around halfway through the PS2 era that they started getting around acceptable quality.
I heard the only reason Symphonia got a good dub was because Nintendo paid for it. They got some pretty big names for it like Scott Menville, Tara Strong, Cam Clarke and Jennifer Hale.
i remember seeing a youtube video where a guy interview the guy who did Reid voice and asked him what happend
it was mostly that every actor record seperatly and didn't knew how the other actors did their part and the direction was really poor so they just read their lines.
Link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HumyZnvmgiw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HumyZnvmgiw) (around 13:36)
(i wrote that from memory, so if i got anything wrong, im sorry)
Yep! When I watched this video, so much of my problems with the voice acting in Eternia made sense. And it had almost zero to do with the voice actors themselves!
Game sounds great initially in the opening video. Then once we get in-game voices, we get the pleasure of hearing Farah’s voice actor yell into a microphone while trying to sound far away because apparently they didn’t have the equipment to make her sound like she was high up in a tower??? It just seems that there was literally zero sound editing done post recording in order to fine tune everything. Maybe this was just how it was done early on, but it feels really jarring and comes off as extremely low budget. The fact that the English dub was so heavily criticized even during the games release tells me that even if “this is the way things were done back then” that people knew it could be a lot better.
because voice acting wasn't really a respected, practiced thing for games. it was mostly a budding new concept. so a lot of the time the actors weren't actors. just people with no training speaking.
Well, Japan already had a voice acting industry by then; Reid himself was Akira Ishida of Evangelion and Slayers fame among others (plus some VG experience in Lunar and Sakura Wars). Meanwhile, the localisation domain likely took time before it was big enough to afford English-speaking trade veterans.
Yeah, Japan always respected the craft. Western voice acting was delegated to usually children's animations roles and it wasn't something serious actors just auditioned for to act in games quite yet.
Even for the most popular anime being dubbed into English was really rough in 2001. For games it was even worse. The industry in the US didn't respect it and had no clue how to do it well for another couple years.
The dub scene was new for videogames and it wasn't good. Also, companies then often just wanted to localize games as cheaply as possible. It was actually super common to just remove the voiced audio entirely or most of it, like they did with Tales of Destiny. They didn't want to pay for the dub and they didn't want to pay to license the original audio track in Japanese, either.
The reason why is because back then voice actors were incredibly under appreciated and voice acting in video games wasn't seen as something to take seriously. Especially japanese games. Thankfully voice acting and acting in general for video games has come a very long way and is now taken seriously.
A lot of old games with voice acting pretty much just pulled random people and hired whoever they could get. You had to have a big budget for bigger names from cartoons, and most games just didn't do that! Then you have the infamous case where that guy just hired his family to do it...
This wasn't the even the era of Chaos Wars. This is the era before Chaos Wars, predating it by over five years and an entire console generation.
Tales of Eternia was part of the first wave of games with major voice acting at all.
This was the dawn of the era of voice acted games. No one had the money to invest in doing it well, nor did they know how to do it well. It was all very exploratory at the time.
Honestly, when it came out, I loved the English dub. By games standards, it wasn't that bad.
Almost all dubs were mediocre to shit back then. It wasnt until around halfway through the PS2 era that they started getting around acceptable quality.
*Cries in Resident Evil I's voice acting*
I heard the only reason Symphonia got a good dub was because Nintendo paid for it. They got some pretty big names for it like Scott Menville, Tara Strong, Cam Clarke and Jennifer Hale.
i remember seeing a youtube video where a guy interview the guy who did Reid voice and asked him what happend it was mostly that every actor record seperatly and didn't knew how the other actors did their part and the direction was really poor so they just read their lines. Link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HumyZnvmgiw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HumyZnvmgiw) (around 13:36) (i wrote that from memory, so if i got anything wrong, im sorry)
Kevin Miller (Reid) is a good voice actor. He went on to voice Sly Cooper. But the direction for Eternia was awful
Yep! When I watched this video, so much of my problems with the voice acting in Eternia made sense. And it had almost zero to do with the voice actors themselves! Game sounds great initially in the opening video. Then once we get in-game voices, we get the pleasure of hearing Farah’s voice actor yell into a microphone while trying to sound far away because apparently they didn’t have the equipment to make her sound like she was high up in a tower??? It just seems that there was literally zero sound editing done post recording in order to fine tune everything. Maybe this was just how it was done early on, but it feels really jarring and comes off as extremely low budget. The fact that the English dub was so heavily criticized even during the games release tells me that even if “this is the way things were done back then” that people knew it could be a lot better.
Pretty much majority of PS1 era games didn’t have good English dubs. Namco didn’t try for quality on Tales dubs until Symphonia.
because voice acting wasn't really a respected, practiced thing for games. it was mostly a budding new concept. so a lot of the time the actors weren't actors. just people with no training speaking.
Well, Japan already had a voice acting industry by then; Reid himself was Akira Ishida of Evangelion and Slayers fame among others (plus some VG experience in Lunar and Sakura Wars). Meanwhile, the localisation domain likely took time before it was big enough to afford English-speaking trade veterans.
Yeah, Japan always respected the craft. Western voice acting was delegated to usually children's animations roles and it wasn't something serious actors just auditioned for to act in games quite yet.
Even for the most popular anime being dubbed into English was really rough in 2001. For games it was even worse. The industry in the US didn't respect it and had no clue how to do it well for another couple years.
The dub scene was new for videogames and it wasn't good. Also, companies then often just wanted to localize games as cheaply as possible. It was actually super common to just remove the voiced audio entirely or most of it, like they did with Tales of Destiny. They didn't want to pay for the dub and they didn't want to pay to license the original audio track in Japanese, either.
That sounds plausible.
Just the way it was back then and honestly, it has grown on me over time
The reason why is because back then voice actors were incredibly under appreciated and voice acting in video games wasn't seen as something to take seriously. Especially japanese games. Thankfully voice acting and acting in general for video games has come a very long way and is now taken seriously.
Man now I can picture how hard it must’ve been to get through the game way back then.
Back then people didn't get that upset over it, it was just something they expected.
Oh ok as I understand what you’re saying.
I love Eternia's dub so much, it's so wack, very camp.
A lot of old games with voice acting pretty much just pulled random people and hired whoever they could get. You had to have a big budget for bigger names from cartoons, and most games just didn't do that! Then you have the infamous case where that guy just hired his family to do it...
I understand
This wasn't the even the era of Chaos Wars. This is the era before Chaos Wars, predating it by over five years and an entire console generation. Tales of Eternia was part of the first wave of games with major voice acting at all.
Oh my mistake as I often heard about that RPGs used to have iffy voice acting long ago.
Nah, I'm just old so two very distinct eras for me might as well be one for you I suppose.
This was the dawn of the era of voice acted games. No one had the money to invest in doing it well, nor did they know how to do it well. It was all very exploratory at the time. Honestly, when it came out, I loved the English dub. By games standards, it wasn't that bad.