The importance of voice acting

[abaww]

Hi all, I'd like to point out something that I consider very important and I hope it will be considered this way by developers too. Voice acting.

Voice acting has been a key feature in Shenmue since the beginning; it's amazing to think that EVERY character in the game had his own voice and multiple answers during conversation (and we're talking about a game from 1999).
It is something that has always been missing in other "shenmue clone games" (yakuza, sleeping dogs, etc.), and I'm really hoping Yu will be able to find the money for voice acting in Shenmue3. Reading tons of text without hearing any npc voice would be very sad in a Shenmue game, I can't really imagine it, the whole experience would not be the same.
I would prefer complete voice acting instead of ultra-realistic graphic, but that's just my opinion.

What do you think about it?

[SMDzero]

I'm sure if it doesn't have voice acting the fans would make hack with voices

[Rikitatsu]

Agreed. Moreso since Shenmue 3 is set in villages and small towns, so there won't be as many NPCs as Shenmue 2 for example.

Voiced NPCs is a must.

[ShenGCH]

I'm sure they'll do everything they can to have a fully voice-acted game, so I wouldn't worry. Even if there are problems where budget is concerned, maybe the team could reach out to the fans to see if anyone would like to volunteer their voices for NPCs and such? That'd be pretty cool

[code l name]

I think what many people forget about when lambasting Shenmue's poor voice-acting is that scripting and dialogue play an equally important job than just the performance of the voice-actors.

This becomes even more problematic when you are translating a game written in Japanese into English which is why we got a lot of awkward phrasing and sentences not quite grammatically correct. Even though I will be playing with Japanese language option I hope Sony with their resources can help with the localization process.

I do hope Suzuki and crew work harder on ensuring the Shenmue flair isn't loss but they improve upon the way a lot of the dialogue is structured.

[fittersau]

Voices over typewriter sounds please.

You know what, since the majority of the game is in China, they could hire local Chinese talent to do the voices of the general NPC on the cheap and some of the main characters. Ryo could still be voiced by Matsukaze but he'd be speaking in Japanese to them and they reply in Chinese with either Japanese/English/Other language subtitles. Could be immersion breaking though!

Depending on the local dialect, the voice actors could sound too harsh to the players.

Given Suzuki's fondness for China, I had hoped he allocated budget or put a stretch goal for full Chinese Mandarin voice acting so that people in China could appreciate this game as well about their martial arts and culture. However, that'd be a big stretch to have three fully voiced casts.

[abaww]

Japanese/English voice only would be just perfect. I honestly think chinese voice acting would just be a waste of money and unecessary, after all Shenmue2 was Japanese/English and it was just perfect. I understand the immersion point but even Yu himself didn't want to go deep into the problem when he was asked how Ryo could understand/speak to chinese people. Afterall it's a videogame, a work of fiction..