So in some videogame related news, Atlus just announced and posted a trailer for a remake of Persona 3. Pretty normal gaming news right? Yet the response I've seen on reddit and elsewhere has literally been batshit crazy.
They announced that it was gonna be a straight up remake and not include any of the portable content (Which added a female main character route). This has people I guess losing their fucking minds calling it misogynistic and "heteronormative" or other crap about how they're gonna boycott Atlus and not buy the game and yada yada yada.
Like who cares? It's a remake, they can make it however they want. Not to mention the female mc they're creaming over was only in the portable remake and never mentioned in any of the official works. Yet these people are foaming at the mouth over it? Have videogamers always been this crazy, like is a portable spinoff character from 14 years ago worth to sperg over? I just don't understand it and wonder if I'm alone in it.
For those wondering, the ENTIRE cast is being recast in English, not just "certain actors deemed evil by progressives."
So it's not just Vic Mignogna then.
Who, of course, is taking the classiest route possible by congratulating his replacement on getting the role.
God, Vic's awesome.
Karen Strassman would've been another issue. She appears to be conservative.
I don't think they were in the game, but Chuck Huber and Wally Wingert are also confirmed conservative.
I've never played a Persona game before.
Karen was Aigis. The robot girl and basically FACE of P3.
I have always wondered why remakes do this so often. Is it like a government agency trying to justify their budget? Generally the quality of voiceovers isn't what needs to improve. Now in cases like System Shock some of the original voice acting was atrocious and redoing everything is a good idea. For something like Dead Space why can't they literally use the same audio clips? Are people going to criticize them for that? Another one that comes to mind was Metal Gear The Twin Snakes, the remake of MGS for Gamecube. I thought the original voices were fine.
The Twin Snakes was an interesting case. From what I recall they revoiced it because when the original playstation recordings were brought to hd standards they found they could hear literally everything in the recording booths or something so it makes sense why they wanted a re-recording.
They retranslated the script so some lines were different.
Hideo Kojima has famously hated essentially every single English localization for his games. For MGS he had no sway so the US team played a bit loose with the script arguably punching it up overall and contributing to the games smash success (kojimas writing by comparison is fairly dry and matter of fact.)
There's lots of articles out there but as the series wore on and Kojima gained more influence he took more direct control over translation and voice acting, pretty much battling it out with everyone in the process.
Ah in that case you would need to redo them. You could probably get away with not bringing them to "hd standards" too and I'm not sure anyone would notice.
I agree but from what I recall and again this was years ago I read it, the Playstation I guess helped smooth over the outside noise whether it was the compression needed or something with the sound processor. When they tried moving it to the gamecube it just didn't work.
I remember royalties were an issue in the Silent Hill HD Collection, which is why Konami tried to recast everyone. Good on Guy Cihi for sacrificing his money to "do it for the art," but it was a wasted gesture given how dogshit the port was.
If I had to give the most charitable answer, I'd say its because remakes, unlike remasters, often have a need for at least some new lines. Rather for new content, new translations, or due to coding fuckups.
Which means either leaving those completely unvoiced, drawing huge attention to it, or having a new actor for only certain lines, drawing even more attention to it. All of which are bad.
Especially as I'm fairly certain they'd have to pay the original actors again for using those clips, so why bother with the trouble?
The amount of screaming over the MGS 3 remake I saw for using the same dialog leads me to believe a ton of people actually want it. That's just the screaming I came across trying to learn about the mouse cursor showing on Ground Zeroes. I haven't looked up anything specific on that remake, I'm not even sure I'm interested in it.
It could be anything from the actors now being under some union to actors being fucking dead.
I think this is better than just replacing Vic and Karen, in my opinion. Better they change everyone than just the controversial ones. (They also haven't had Fuuka's original VA since P3 Portable, and I don't think Wendee Lee fits the character...) I won't hold my breath for soundalikes, though.
It was either all of them or none of them (without explicit consent). They can't clearly take a side in sociopolitical issues, they know there's real diversity among their consumers, and the past few months have shown that a not-insignificant amount of actual consumers can and will boycott if you do stupid shit.
Considering the performance she brought to the game, I hope she hasn't had work at all since then.
How they managed to get the literal worst VA of the bunch, and made her the most talkative by making her the battle narrator, I'll never understand. Its not like this was a game where everyone was bad, everyone else is doing just fine with her noticeable standing out.