I think the analysis is good. I agree with the assessment that the FFXIII engine is hardly advanced, and that trade-offs between the PS3 and X360 implementations will only have marginal differences, with the X360 having better performance in places. JRPGs have always been about the art, not the technology.
Final Fantasy XIII [PS3, X360]
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I think it's fine but it's only a partial guesswork. They won't know for example the impact of storage needs on the 360 version until they have a behind the scene view of how things are laid out -- especially for a content-heavy game. As we have seen before, the audio presentation may be different too behind the versions.
Also, if they want to, Sony/SE can bundle the Blu-ray movie and extras with the game (though this is mostly a marketing advantage rather than a technical one).
[ http://zoknowsgaming.com/2009/08/25/ffxiiidenticalonbothplatforms/ ] ...
It can be more than 3 discs and I've never heard of them speaking about royalty fees , interesting...
I'd think the data layout, replication, packaging and per disc cost would be more of a concern even if there were such a "royalty per disc" deal (which there isn't).
Tim Willits later corrected that...
(Just a heads up to anyone for future reference... a new thread for the retail game would be nice when the time comes since this is thread is just about the demo)
SO4 was on three discs, and is not a MS game.
Yep and hopefully the disk swapping is nothing like that game. I really think they needed 4 disk for that game but I'm not sure of the lay out. 3 disk with that game is ok as long as you playthrough the game straight without doing many of the later side quest but if you do you will find yourself switching the 2nd and 3rd disk a lot. This constant Disk switching leads me to believe that it might have been planned as a multiplat release at one time otherwise they could have structured the quest better to minimize the amount of swapping. I do expect there to be an announcement at TGS to confirm my suspicion.
I don't mind if FFXIII ended up being on 5 disk as long as I don't need to swap as much as I do for SO:TLH.
Even is SO4, you can minimize the amount of swapping by focusing most of your efforts in the appropriate disc. After you finish the game, you can spend most of your time on Disc 2 in Tatroi in the Colliseum and Cave of the Seven Stars, and then later switch to Disc 3 for the Wandering Dungeon and item creation.
I never quite understood why people think Japi voice act is more believable, how can one make it out that its better & more believable if you cant understand one bit of the language, let alone the expressions ? I remember how people point out the Laughing scene in FFX to be the pinnacle of bad english voice acting, but when I heard the Japanese voice acting of that very part I laughed even more harder cause it was that bad. [almost felt like a Crow laughing out loud]
Personally I find it odd when I hear a Caucasian or African male speak Japanese in heavy Japanese tone & females in ultra high pitch voice which the case almost all Japanese games tend to have. Rest aside the voice acting in Star Ocean 4 was horrendous in both English & Japanese, I believe this happens when people tend to have only teenagers as voice actors.
Personally I find it odd when I hear a Caucasian or African male speak Japanese in heavy Japanese tone & females in ultra high pitch voice which the case almost all Japanese games tend to have. Rest aside the voice acting in Star Ocean 4 was horrendous in both English & Japanese, I believe this happens when people tend to have only teenagers as voice actors.
Personally I find it odd when I hear a Caucasian or African male speak Japanese in heavy Japanese tone & females in ultra high pitch voice which the case almost all Japanese games tend to have. Rest aside the voice acting in Star Ocean 4 was horrendous in both English & Japanese, I believe this happens when people tend to have only teenagers as voice actors.
It's not really that complicated. I used to love English novels as a kid, while my native language is Dutch. Very quickly, English to me became the magic language of fiction and fantasy. Sure, I didn't understand it as well as I understood my native language (though that improved fairly quickly of course), but I still liked it better. Why?
There are several reasons for that. Back then I would have replied that English offered me an alternative reality, with its own language that wasn't tainted by every day use nearly as much as Dutch (my native language) is. To give a simple example - to me, the word 'Dragon' would mean an amazing, huge, beautiful fire breathing beast in English. In Dutch, however, a dragon (draak) can also mean 'large, ugly and clumsy'. Of course the story won't describe the dragon as such, but the connotations are there, consciously or subconciously.
But there are more obvious things at work here. In the case of a game, which has plenty of imperfections, having the original language available solves some imperfections and hides others.
Imperfections solved that I am personally very sensitive to are games and movies where the overdubbing has to find an always ugly compromise between making the actual words and their enunciation being mangled to match the mouth movements on screen, or having a huge discrepancy between what mouths do onscreen and what you actually hear. Of course there are also plenty of things lost in translation.
Imperfections hidden include a lot of problems with bad voice acting. You simply won't be able to tell in most cases whether it is bad voice-acting, because you don't know the original language well enough to tell whether the intonation is off, there are unnatural pauses, exaggerated stresses, etc. Now this may mean you lose some information, but generally particularly the acting in games isn't subtle enough for that so there's typically a net gain.
So in short, the original language is in many cases quantifiably better at achieving suspension of disbelief and immersion in the game world.
Yes that may be the case...but for someone who has been with English language since childhood the word Dragon may not have as much fascination as you had when you heard it for the first time....maybe its because its the context in which its spoken is obvious for one who knows english but super exciting for someone who doesnt knows it.
I believe its like, people who can speak Japanese but are unaware of english would like the word "Brother" but for people who know English "Oniichan" would sound nice, simply cause its new compared to just "Brother" ?
I believe its like, people who can speak Japanese but are unaware of english would like the word "Brother" but for people who know English "Oniichan" would sound nice, simply cause its new compared to just "Brother" ?
Acting is more than just saying words. Which would you rather have, a deep RPG (eg. Mass Effect) voiced by Hollywood quality talent in Japanese, or in your native tongue by 6 year olds? If the words are on the screen to read, you know what's being said. It takes hearing the voice to know how it's being said, and to pick up on subtle shifts in meaning. That's the difference between good and bad acting.
If I had to pick in that case I'd pick up the Japanese voice over
But what would I do if I get to choose between 6 year olds in native language & 6 years old in Foreign language ?
See I am not saying I never prefer japanese voice over,infact I've played fair share of games & watched animes with Japanese voice work. What I am saying is it just doesnt make sense to always call the japanese voice work exceptional & criticize the English voiceover even if both are bad [like the FFX laughing scene] or if the English voice work makes slight more mistakes,cause we for one will detect the mistakes in our native language far more easily & more often than a foreign language.
That said I think we are going OT now, so lets end it soon
But what would I do if I get to choose between 6 year olds in native language & 6 years old in Foreign language ?
See I am not saying I never prefer japanese voice over,infact I've played fair share of games & watched animes with Japanese voice work. What I am saying is it just doesnt make sense to always call the japanese voice work exceptional & criticize the English voiceover even if both are bad [like the FFX laughing scene] or if the English voice work makes slight more mistakes,cause we for one will detect the mistakes in our native language far more easily & more often than a foreign language.
That said I think we are going OT now, so lets end it soon
Yes, that's exactly what I mean.
In the new japanese trailer a character said "oneechan" which is either 'sister' or something you say when you know the person or something.
In the english dub of that trailer he said "lightning" which is just saying the name.
There is a subtle difference between those two, not taking into account the (imo studpid) way how the american voiceactor pronounces "sister", that is why i like 'the original' more.
Maaya Sakumoto is apparently a big singer in Japan with a beautiful voice. She is doing the voice of the lightning character. I don't know if the USA equivalent will be as talented...
In the english dub of that trailer he said "lightning" which is just saying the name.
There is a subtle difference between those two, not taking into account the (imo studpid) way how the american voiceactor pronounces "sister", that is why i like 'the original' more.
Maaya Sakumoto is apparently a big singer in Japan with a beautiful voice. She is doing the voice of the lightning character. I don't know if the USA equivalent will be as talented...
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