Japanese Voice-Over Available for Lightning Returns
If you weren’t overly keen on the performances in Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2, Square Enix are offering up the Japanese voice-work for Lightning Returns. That’s pretty cool. Less cool? It’s free for a fortnight after launch and then will only be available as paid DLC.
No word on cost just yet, but expect it to be linked to the size thousands of lines of audio take up on a server.
If you ARE interested in the Japanese voice-over and are quick enough to grab it for free, you’re not going to be disappointed. Square have also included an additional lip syncing track, so that what they’re saying matches up with how they’re saying it. It’s nice to know that, if you want to play it in its original language, you’ll be able to do so properly, without being distracted by (overly) bad lip-syncing.
Whenever a Japanese RPG is localized, there’s always a small but very vocal group that hope the Japanese voice work is included in the international version, and more often than not they end up disappointed. If you ignore the paid DLC part, it seems Square are looking to go that extra mile to get old Final Fantasy fans to buy early.
And here’s hoping it’s a success and that they decide to do the same for future games. Kingdom Hearts in Japanese is crazy!
Article By Mat Growcott
Mat Growcott has been a long-time member of the gaming press. He's written two books and a web series, and doesn't have nearly enough time to play the games he writes about.
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