I wanted to flag something that has recently triggered significant turmoil across the Spanish community since the 11.0.7 go-live, which is the fact that there has been a deliberate exclusion of voice dubbing in Castillian Spanish in the cinematics (not in the LATAM ones). This is not due to a bug, but apparently related to contractual issues for the use of voice-acting rights in future AI application.
It is a recurring topic in this forum how EU is seen as a 2nd tier region: devs only reading US forums, closure of the EU-supporting office in Versailles, or the recent promotions of the red felbike and the violet crown where only US was eligible.
I believe it is a fair ask, as paying customers, to request the same level of quality in the way a product is delivered, particularly if it has traditionally been done in accordance to certain standards.
Particularly curious to get thoughts from other non-English native speakers. Thanks for reading!
P.S: Before anyone feels tempted to say something like “just watch it in English and deal with it”. I have no issues watching stuff in English and been living in the UK for 12 years now. But immersion is a very important part of playing a videogame and certainly having dialogues and cinematics in your native tongue plays a huge part.
This aspect definitely bothers me, feels like we’re just butts on sits as opposed to a valued part of the player base. When it comes to forums, I’ve noticed the US forums get way more official attention for sure. Yes it’s their country and it would make more sense for them to pay more attention to it, but you’d think they’d be a little more proactive with the EU forums too, even if it’s just one or two representatives.
I don’t know much about the VA rights and the future with AI, but I do know that there are so many law difference between the US and EU, UK and even specific EU nations that things can get messy real quick. There’s no easy answer to this and I have the impression these kind of legal debacles are going to become increasingly more common as AI becomes more prevalent and different nations adopt different stances.
English is my 3rd language, when I was kid I used to play in French servers (2nd language). My game was in French back then too as my level of English wasn’t very good, though as soon my understanding improved I swapped to English. I just found the game real cringe in French especially when they started translating official names like The Warsong Clan went from being Le Clan Warsong to Le Clan Chant de Guerre or something like that (literally translating to Chant of War). I found all these naming patterns really off-putting. Nowadays, if I’m watching any international cinema I always watch in the original language with subs.
Dubs just always feel wrong to me, the emotional tone always comes across wrong, and if the lip sync isn’t 100% point it breaks my immersion really easily. I fully appreciate though that if you’re used to listening to a certain voice, having it change can be really jarring, even if the new one is good. In the game Arkham Origins, they got someone else to do the Joker, which mind you was great, but Mark Hammill’s voice is just too ingrained in my head as Mr J.
I have never liked dubs, and English is my third language.
I’m originally from Belgium, and we’re with the Netherlands, one of the few countries that airs media in its original form with subtitles.
I am honestly annoyed and put off when any medium is dub’d and honestly butchers the names of things because they want to translate everything and break the context.
I can understand that for children it’s easier to consume the medium when its in their native language, and that’s fine.
But at a certain point, you really should stop this and consume the media in their native language, using subtitles. It’s in my opinion a far better experience than having everything translated/dub’d constantly.
Yeah trust me, it’s cringe, not because I’m Dutch but let me give you a different example from wow…
All the blue angel smurfs from Shadowlands, Bastion, or whatever their name was. As a native Greek speaker, that was absolute CRINGE central. Pelagos?! Really? We’re going to casually call somebody “Sea” as in you know, the sea where you swim (think archipelagos as a geological definition). That’s the one that stuck out the most but there were a few of these examples from that faction.
Can these sort of reference be done more tastefully? For sure. Pick up any old map of England in Welsh and if you think “why does this feel like Evlish from Tolkien” you’d be right, as he used that language as one of the bases for it.
Makes you wonder what somebody who’s more familiar with Afro-Caribbean language and culture would think about the various Troll factions, the Loas and all that jazz. Mind you they got some Aztec/mayan vibes too, so they’re such a fusion of different cultures it actually works (imo at least).