Metal Gear Topics

The Importance of Voice Acting
I have seen time and time again English version gamers complain about Raiden, and honestly could never understand why their reactions toward him were so extreme. Sure, in the Japanese gaming circles, Raiden wasn't all that well received either, but the complaint was never really about Raiden personally. It was always more about the main character not being Solid Snake. In other words, people were angry because we don't get to play as Solid Snake, and not because we got to play as Raiden. Such was not the case in English gaming circles it seems. Many gamers genuinely hated Raiden. And as I said, I was never able to really understand why. Finally, with the release of MGS2 Substance, I got to play the game in English, with the English dubbing, and it all became clear. In the original cast, I say "cast" because that's the way Director Kojima treated his games, he auditioned voice actors as actors in a movie, that is why we always get such a professional movie dubbing cast in MGS games, because Kojima really treated each game as a movie. (Just a side factoid here, Ootsuka Akio 大塚明夫 (Solid Snake) is the Japanese Mel Gibson and Horiuchi Kenyuu 堀内賢雄 (Raiden) is the Japanese Brad Pitt. So in essence, we are playing the game as a Mel Gibson Solid Snake and a Brad Pitt Raiden.) In the original cast, Kojima casted Raiden with the intent of him sounding almost identical to Snake, so that at the beginning of the Plant Chapter, before Raiden unmasked himself, gamers are unable to tell it wasn't Snake. Kojima's original descriptions for Raiden was a young man too mature for his age, both in voice and personality. He is in his 20's, but his voice and personality is already almost an old man. That is why Horiuchi in his 40's was cast for this character in his 20's. The English voice of Raiden was completely different. I never noted who did the English voice casting and who directed the English voice acting, but they sure went a completely different direction. No wonder Kojima said he was disappointed with how the English recordings came out. Yes, I am aware that Kojima said he preferred the English voices in one of the American interviews he did. But what he originally said was that he preferred the game to be in English, in the sense that in accordance with the story, these characters are speaking in English, so having them actually speak in English is the more preferred choice. I don't actually know how this quote of his got translated in English, so I can't comment on it directly. But after the English version promotion period was over, when the Japanese version game was coming out, Kojima said in two Japanese interviews that he was actually disappointed with how the English recordings were done. So I generally go with this view point. Back to the topic at hand. So I finally got to play the game in English. It was not the same experience, I hate to say. I was actually excited about playing the game in English, but I must say I was surprisingly disappointed. Otacon's yells were wooden and insincere, and not really yelling at all. Snake's voice was decent overall, but especially during the scene when Solidus first appeared, right before Raiden fought the Harrier, during that scene, the voice dubbings were especially terrible. You can clearly hear Solid's screams as pretend-screams, the kind of fake screaming we do when we are pretending to yell so as to not disturb our neighbors. It was not satisfying at all. But the worst of all, I must admit, was Raiden's English voice dubbing, with Emma's dubbing a close second. Because of their erroneous portrayals of the characters, the personalities of the characters are completely changed. They are not the same characters as in the original game. They were different, and completely wrong characters. I have never hated Raiden or Emma when playing the game in its original Japanese, but instead actually enjoyed Raiden's role in the storyline and liked Emma quite a lot. But after playing the game in English dubbing, I hate to say this, but not only could I not stand Raiden's presence and was semi-glad to get rid of Emma, I was even quite unimpressed with Snake's presence in the game. Now that is saying something, because Solid Snake is one of my all time favorite and most admired video game characters. And another funny thing, back during the countless times I played the original game, I never experimented much with ways of killing Emma, but in Substance, I killed her more times and and in more ways than I have ever done in any video game to any character, ever. And no remorse either. Finally, I understand where all the hate were coming from among the English version gamers. I can finally sympathize. However, despite how badly the dubbing performances changed the game, that doesn't appear to me to be the real problem with the English version game. The real problem, as I perceive it, was the translated script itself. But that is outside the subject of this topic. So to answer the question, voice acting is indeed important in a game. More so than I have ever imagined. Never did I know the voice portrayals of a character could alter a character so badly. 1.22.03

The Importance of Voice Acting

I have seen time and time again English version gamers complain about Raiden, and honestly could never understand why their reactions toward him were so extreme.

Sure, in the Japanese gaming circles, Raiden wasn't all that well received either, but the complaint was never really about Raiden personally. It was always more about the main character not being Solid Snake. In other words, people were angry because we don't get to play as Solid Snake, and not because we got to play as Raiden.

Such was not the case in English gaming circles it seems. Many gamers genuinely hated Raiden. And as I said, I was never able to really understand why.

Finally, with the release of MGS2 Substance, I got to play the game in English, with the English dubbing, and it all became clear.

In the original cast, I say "cast" because that's the way Director Kojima treated his games, he auditioned voice actors as actors in a movie, that is why we always get such a professional movie dubbing cast in MGS games, because Kojima really treated each game as a movie.
(Just a side factoid here, Ootsuka Akio 大塚明夫 (Solid Snake) is the Japanese Mel Gibson and Horiuchi Kenyuu 堀内賢雄 (Raiden) is the Japanese Brad Pitt. So in essence, we are playing the game as a Mel Gibson Solid Snake and a Brad Pitt Raiden.)
In the original cast, Kojima casted Raiden with the intent of him sounding almost identical to Snake, so that at the beginning of the Plant Chapter, before Raiden unmasked himself, gamers are unable to tell it wasn't Snake. Kojima's original descriptions for Raiden was a young man too mature for his age, both in voice and personality. He is in his 20's, but his voice and personality is already almost an old man. That is why Horiuchi in his 40's was cast for this character in his 20's.

The English voice of Raiden was completely different. I never noted who did the English voice casting and who directed the English voice acting, but they sure went a completely different direction.
No wonder Kojima said he was disappointed with how the English recordings came out.
Yes, I am aware that Kojima said he preferred the English voices in one of the American interviews he did. But what he originally said was that he preferred the game to be in English, in the sense that in accordance with the story, these characters are speaking in English, so having them actually speak in English is the more preferred choice. I don't actually know how this quote of his got translated in English, so I can't comment on it directly.
But after the English version promotion period was over, when the Japanese version game was coming out, Kojima said in two Japanese interviews that he was actually disappointed with how the English recordings were done.
So I generally go with this view point.

Back to the topic at hand.
So I finally got to play the game in English.
It was not the same experience, I hate to say. I was actually excited about playing the game in English, but I must say I was surprisingly disappointed.
Otacon's yells were wooden and insincere, and not really yelling at all.
Snake's voice was decent overall, but especially during the scene when Solidus first appeared, right before Raiden fought the Harrier, during that scene, the voice dubbings were especially terrible. You can clearly hear Solid's screams as pretend-screams, the kind of fake screaming we do when we are pretending to yell so as to not disturb our neighbors. It was not satisfying at all.
But the worst of all, I must admit, was Raiden's English voice dubbing, with Emma's dubbing a close second.
Because of their erroneous portrayals of the characters, the personalities of the characters are completely changed. They are not the same characters as in the original game. They were different, and completely wrong characters.
I have never hated Raiden or Emma when playing the game in its original Japanese, but instead actually enjoyed Raiden's role in the storyline and liked Emma quite a lot. But after playing the game in English dubbing, I hate to say this, but not only could I not stand Raiden's presence and was semi-glad to get rid of Emma, I was even quite unimpressed with Snake's presence in the game.
Now that is saying something, because Solid Snake is one of my all time favorite and most admired video game characters. And another funny thing, back during the countless times I played the original game, I never experimented much with ways of killing Emma, but in Substance, I killed her more times and and in more ways than I have ever done in any video game to any character, ever. And no remorse either.

Finally, I understand where all the hate were coming from among the English version gamers. I can finally sympathize.

However, despite how badly the dubbing performances changed the game, that doesn't appear to me to be the real problem with the English version game.
The real problem, as I perceive it, was the translated script itself. But that is outside the subject of this topic.

So to answer the question, voice acting is indeed important in a game. More so than I have ever imagined. Never did I know the voice portrayals of a character could alter a character so badly.

1.22.03

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