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Question of the Day: Valkyrie Profile and the Need for Voiced Dialogue

My backlog is becoming untenable. There are games, games that I started months ago, sitting in a pile that appears to be growing of its own volition. Where the hell did that copy of Pro Evolution Soccer even come from and why is it sitting in the “to play” pile? No one in my home even likes soccer!

The worst of the lot is Persona 4. Rather than hide myself away like some horrid realization of gamer stereotype, refusing to venture into the sun until the game is complete, I’ve been working through Persona since early December, taking it a bit at a time. It’s starting to drive me crazy. A few days ago, I fired it up for the first time since mid-February and was treated to one of its scarce animated cutscenes. Turns out that bear suit made a dude! Yeah, not a dude wearing a bear suit. The bear suit formed a dude inside of it. More startling than spontaneous dude generation was hearing the characters’ voices. I had forgotten they could talk you see. This is because, with very rare exceptions, I always turn off the voice acting in RPGs. Why? Because the voice acting is almost always terrible. Dragon Quest VIII’s British cast and Final Fantasy XII’s gang of breathy stoics are exceptions to the rule. Most of the time, you have to deal with screeching whiners who insist on naming every single thing they do and I’ll have none of it. Honestly though, I wonder why voice is considered a necessity in modern design.

Posted Mar 19 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 3 comment(s)

Filed under: legend of zelda, twilight princess, square-enix, dragon quest, persona, atlus, final fantasy xii, question of the day, persona 4, dragon quest viii, valkyrie profile, eiji aonumal john Constantine, covenant of the plume

The 61FPS Review: Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride

It may have taken 20 years, but Dragon Quest fever has finally hit the United States. True, it'll never be as intense--and, at times, frightening--as Japan's fascination with the series, but we only have to look at the past few decades for a reminder of how Dragon Quest used to be a forgotten and overlooked RPG footnote in comparison to cross-cultural hits like Final Fantasy. We've gone from Nintendo Power giving away unwanted copies of the first Dragon Quest (then known as Dragon Warrior in the States) in 1989, to Enix's American branch closing up shop in the mid-90s, to a small push for the outdated and subpar Dragon Quest VII back in 2001; but in 2005, shortly after the Square-Enix merger, the series was essentially re-launched with the phenomenal Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2. Now, nearly four years later, we're in the middle of a DS trilogy remake, the latest release being Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride. And, just like DQ's last DS remake (Dragon Quest IV, released in September), DQV stands as proof that there's never been a better time for American Dragon Quest fans.

Posted Mar 17 2009, 10:00 AM by Bob Mackey with | with no comments

Filed under: 61fps review, ds, dragon quest, dragon warrior, bob mackey, dragon quest iv, dragon quest viii, dragon quest iv: chapters of the chosen

Remakes I Never Got to Play: Dragon Quest V

The DS remake of Dragon Quest V is out this week, and that's an event worth celebrating--especially considering 1UP's recent beaming review of the game. Dragon Quest V, along with VI, are the two installments in the series we Americans missed out on thanks to Enix's lack of business luck in the States with winning titles like Brain Lord. But V is perhaps the sweetest plum in the Dragon Quest basket due to the fact that we missed out on playing the game two whole times: once on the Super Famicom, and again on the Playstation 2. Continuing the work they had done on the original Playstation back in 2001 with the first Dragon Quest IV remake, the Enix side of Square-Enix employed ArtePiazza, current developers of the DS remakes, to bring out a revamped version of DQV so the Japanese gaming public would have something to do until the release of DQVIII many moons later. I've recently come to discover that the Dragon Quest games work best in a handheld format, but part of me still wants to play the other DQV remake in English.

Posted Feb 17 2009, 12:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: dragon quest, remakes, bob mackey, dragon quest iv, dragon quest viii, dragon quest v

Dialect In Games: It Don't Come Easy

The rules of writing are as cemented and sacred as the playbook for Calvinball. My favourite authors tend to ignore minor grammatical roadsigns like the period and the quotation mark.

Even so, there are two common pitfalls an aspiring writer should avoid:

1) Don't publish a book called “Hitler Was Awesome!”

2) Don't make your characters speak in any kind of dialect unless you know exactly what you're doing.

Mastering dialect is a like harnessing a Tyrannosaurus Rex to a caravan of tanks: you'll kill millions of you fail (and it is very easy to fail), but if you succeed, holy shit, what power.

Dialect has been slipping into more and more games writing, and results have been mixed at best. A good game localisation—indeed, good writing in general—does not require a bunch of funny voices to laugh at, which points at the main problem with employing dialect: many games writers and localisers treat it as a cheap means of adding depth to a character.

Posted Jan 20 2009, 10:39 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: nintendo ds, chrono trigger, writing, nadia oxford, dragon quest iv, dragon quest viii, dragon quest v, chapters of the chosen, dialect

And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Love: Atlus Reprints Persona 2

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I’ve got issues with Japanese role-playing games. I tend to, well, disappear into them. And as much as they make our own Bob Mackey OCD within the confines of their battle systems, item management, and quaint townships, they tend to make me OCD in my waking life. When I start one that really gets its hooks into me, I don’t do much else with life until it’s done. Much like the troubles I had with Dragon Quest VIII back in 2005, Persona 3 ruined me for September 2007. Eighty-nine hours of level grinding, managing completely fictional friendships (whilst ignoring real ones,) and bouncing J-pop that nearly drove my roommates to murder me. It was my first time with the Shin Megami Tensei franchise and I couldn’t have been more impressed, or obsessed, with it.

Needless to say, I’ve been dreading Persona 4. Not because I think it won’t live up to Persona 3. No, I’m afraid of what it’s going to do my brain. And now, for seemingly no other reason than they are awesome, Atlus is making everything worse. The publisher sent out an email today announcing that they are reprinting Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, a Playstation 1 game, “to commemorate the upcoming release of Persona 4 and to thank you for your interest, dedication, and support of the SMT series.”

Who does that?! Who reprints an eight year-old game for a long-dead console? Someone who loves you, that’s who.

Posted Nov 13 2008, 07:15 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, shin megami tensei, love, dragon quest, persona, atlus, persona 2 eternal punishment, persona 4, persona 3, dragon quest viii

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.