Topic: Pokémon Scarlet & Pokémon Violet

@Ralizah @Pizzamorg As a general RPG plebian, I would like to ask: how does this work when multiple languages are involved? I'd love voice acting as much as the next guy, but with how many languages Pokemon supports nowadays, I'm curious how feasible it'd be. Do games like Yakuza or Xenoblade already do something like that?

Also, love your new PFP Pizzamorg XD (I do love me some objectively better Steelix).

I am not entirely sure I understand your question? Perhaps this is not the norm for others, but I always experience media in their native languages. So, in the case of Yakuza games, I play them in Japanese with subtitles. My lack of understanding for the language doesn't stop me from being able to process, appreciate and enjoy the performances. Is that your question?

I also love this little derpy worm!

@Fizza The Yakuza games I've played have all been Jp-only in terms of the audio.

Which is fine. They're still talking: just not in my native language. Voice performances are still there.

Even some of Scarlet/Violet's advertising has voice acting. But not the game itself. It's silly.

@Pizzamorg @Ralizah When you put it like that it does make a lot of sense. I don't mind it currently because as Ace Attorney addict, I've gotten used to none to limited voice acting but it'd definitely be nice for the future.

@Fizza The difference, for me, is that Ace Attorney games typically feature a visual novel format that works better without voice acting. TGAA Chronicles features very little voice acting, but you'll notice the proper cutscenes did feature it, at least.

And, tbh, the bleeps and bloops in those games is still better than pure silence. There's still some indication that someone is talking.

If Pokemon took this approach, it'd be more satisfying than it is now. Not ideal, but better.

I have never done something so purely out of spite in my entire life.

Mind you, the first time I fought it, it actually Self-Destructed. Thankfully, since saving before a shiny works like PLA, I was able to reclaim it. Would've added even more salt onto the wound if I couldn't....

@VoidofLight What does it matter, its a video game character.

@Fizza some rpgs have one or a couple options for voice acting (e.g. Japanese, English), and some have dozens. The actual pokemon tv show has been dubbed into tons of languages so this wouldn't be particularly different, although inevitably some voice actors are better than others, so listening to Japanese with subtitles in your language is always a good fallback. Given the tv show, it seems especially odd to me the games are silent.

Not to mention that Crisis Core originally didn't have voice acting, but has taken the time and money to do so with this rerelease in December coming up. I don't mind reading, though, plenty of people try to avoid it, unless it's social media. Even then, they just use pictures and memes, rather than construct full sentences lol.

Anyways, back on track; the game does feel a bit silent and empty without voice acting. There's other games that lack VA, that don't necessarily have that same effect. There's something more that's lacking, that I can't quite pin yet. For example: .Hack//G.U. has all sorts of NPCs running around, but still feels empty. Especially since there's supposed to be roughly 10 Million concurrent players or something of that sort, according to the lore. It definitely feels like more than just the lack of VA in Scarlet and Violet for me.

I feel like pokemon games having voice acting could pretty much just end up being a disaster. I don’t trust gamefreak to not make the games sound like the horrid anime dub.

Maybe, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try. Just text is awful, and inexcusable for what should be a triple A modern game.

God I am repeating myself but the fighting type Team Star girl is extremly tough. The difficulty spike goes from "everyone dies to 1 hit" to "you die to 1 hit"

Edit: Just beat her because I got lucky and the AI got stuck spamming Shift Gear... rest of the game is a cakewalk, this is for some reason the only hard opponent. I wouldnt mind having a challenge, but this being the only one that requires any brain effort makes it look like a glitch.

Somehow I managed to spend tens of hours in the game and having finished quite a lot but without ever running into any team star compounds. Finally I accidentally ran into the Fairy compound (level 50) and soon after I ran into the dark compound (level 20). They were both easy, but at least I couldn't 1-shot the Fairy (truck?!) boss so it felt like an actual fight; I like the plot and characters, but clearing the super under-leveled tasks really feels like grunt work. If they make another game like this, they really need to figure out a sane way to do level scaling.

I wouldn't trust most developers/publishers in that regard. I wouldn't mind a little bit of dialogue here and there (particularly the opening cutscene for Sword/Shield, whose grandiosity was greatly undermined by Rose's miming), but with Scarlet/Violet, it completely works without.

It wouldn't hurt to include murmurs and grunts like they do for the Fire Emblem and Zelda games though.

@Pizzamorg If they try and it's bad, then I'm not playing the series anymore. I'd much rather have silence than something like the anime. That's the primary reason I don't watch the anime.

Edit: Also, Gamefreak already stated why they aren't doing voice acting. It's because they would have to dub it in multiple languages, as they aren't content with dubbing it in one or two languages and letting that be all. Not to mention, they wanted to retain the feeling of making your own character voices up.

@Sisilly_G There's some weirdness with SV, given the high fidelity, but I just can't trust Gamefreak with Voice Acting. Not after they've shown time and time again that they can't really even do basic options or toggles for things like difficulty. If they were to add in voice acting, they'd probably lock each dub under the version of the game you're playing, since otherwise "Children would accidentally pick the wrong language for Voice Acting, and get stuck". So if you wouldn't want to hear horribly cheesy english va, then you'd probably be stuck with having to learn Japanese or another language in order to hear the better dub.

Your utter defeatism here is hilarious to me. Why try to make things better when there is a chance it could actually make things worse. What a way to live. I guess enough people must think like you wish is why Pokemon games still release in these terrible states but sell gangbusters anyway.

Starting to train up a Dachsbun for Charizard raids this week.
It's immune to fire and dragon, not weak to the potential solarbeam and I'm not sure what steel or poison type attacks Charizard can learn (in Gen 9) so I'm slightly less worried about those. Probably gonna run something with +SDef and look if assault west is in Scarlet/Violet.

I haven't gotten into the joy of online raids at level 5 and 6 yet but people seem to not be a fan lol
Hope I can do the Zard raids, leakers/playtesters said the lvl7 stuff is actually brutal.

@Dom_31 Meanwhile, I still haven't beat the game yet.

@Fizza me neither haha
But I want to do charizard and I'm a bit paranoid about that potentially only unlocking in post game. I AM on the last battle on the third story rn but afaik there's still a fourth story beyond that and some more hoops to jump through to unlock 6 star raids.