Tales of Symphonia: Knight of Ratatosk Game Discussion

[Sety]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

*sigh* In the end, the only update we have are of three antagonists...

I wish I could play the JP version of Ratatosk, but Wiis have region lock... *hiss*
Pointless hope, but I wish the English versions will have a Japanese track for voices. I want to here what they are supposed to sound like. Luckily, Symphonia's dubs weren't that bad...

If you really want you can get a Wii Freeloader boot disc, that'll bypass the region lock.

[Sides]

Ups, i take back what i said earlier this week.
Another Hp update, more system infos (incl. monster details) and couple of new screenshot.
http://namco-ch.net/talesofsymphonia_wii/

There is also a link to the dev's blog.

An alternative to Freeloader is the Gecko Regionfree program, run through the TW exploit, what you need it the Zelda game and a SD card. The advantage is that this method isn't likely to be blocked like the freeloader.

[HayashiTakara]

I just heard about Tales of Fandom, and decided to watch all the videos on it, and apparently Sheena is still in love with Lloyd, I wonder if they'll give us a little fan service in this game... sigh... this is killing me, has there been a released date set for this game yet? For the US that is... I wish there was a data transfer option too... oh well..

[serenade_beta]

Originally Posted by HayashiTakara

this is killing me, has there been a released date set for this game yet? For the US that is... I wish there was a data transfer option too... oh well..

For now, the US release is set for September. Let us hope that it isn't delayed (and the voice acting is good). I hope Marta calling Emil a prince won't sound cheesy in the English version (assuming they translate it directly...).
Most importantly... PLEASE, keep the OP song in!! PLEASE don't replace it with some instrumental! I beg you!

[OceanBlue]

I'd have no problem with them replacing the OP song with instrumentals as long as they have the Japanese opening as an "Extras" or something. [I can find it on the internet anyways, so it wouldn't be that bad.]

I'm hoping we can choose the language voices in the game [But there would be problems of direct/indirect translations...].

[DeotoxSlayer]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

For now, the US release is set for September. Let us hope that it isn't delayed (and the voice acting is good). I hope Marta calling Emil a prince won't sound cheesy in the English version (assuming they translate it directly...).
Most importantly... PLEASE, keep the OP song in!! PLEASE don't replace it with some instrumental! I beg you!

I'm pretty sure they're gonna replace the OP Song with an instrumental version of it because it makes more sense, I mean not all buyers are gonna like the way Japanese Songs sound like you or I do, and I don't think they want to annoy any buyers with the OP, but hopefully they have the original in the extra area.

[krisslanza]

They usually use instrumentals because its cheaper not because people won't like it - since by that logical all anime dubs would just have instrumental OPs and not keep the originals.

[AC-Laguna]

Are you trying to say that it´s cheaper to alter the OP-song (or doing a new one) than using the same? I hope you know that this doesn´t make much sense.

I haven´t played ToS for GC yet but I´m still looking forward to Knight of Ratosk.

[krisslanza]

No its cheaper to just remove the lyrics - they don't have pay for it then. You don't need to pay them royalties or something for the tune.

[DeotoxSlayer]

Originally Posted by krisslanza

No its cheaper to just remove the lyrics - they don't have pay for it then. You don't need to pay them royalties or something for the tune.

But they still have to pay Royalties for the tune because they only replace the vocals with an instrument, the other instruments are still there, and so is the beat, and tune.

[HayashiTakara]

Royalties are dependent on a contract to contract bases, we don't know what the business arrangement is. But making a whole new song for the beginning is much more expensive than keeping the original in.

[Sety]

Originally Posted by krisslanza

No its cheaper to just remove the lyrics - they don't have pay for it then. You don't need to pay them royalties or something for the tune.

I hope you don't honestly believe that.

They usually already have a instrumental version of the opening already done back during development and they just swap out the songs. It has absolutely nothing to do with royalties at all since they would've been accounted into the contract to begin with.

Its simply whether the localization team decides to use it or not. Some just simply see it as the 'professional' thing to do to replace it, I use that term lightly since they almost all the time do an amateur job.

[Kaioshin Sama]

I'm more concerned about the lack of Rie Kugimiya then I am about the opening. If they'd be so kind as to include a dual language audio track I would be ecstatic, but Namco Bandai has yet to deliver on this front.

[krisslanza]

Then I don't know why so many game companies are stupid and take out the original song with the instrumental... Not that some songs have a bad instrumental its just... Why?

Since like I said it can't be because people wouldn't wanna hear it since no dubbed animes have their openings removed (Ok well nowadays anyway. In the ol' days didn't we just make our own? And some anime are exempt to this)

[Sety]

Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama

I'm more concerned about the lack of Rie Kugimiya then I am about the opening. If they'd be so kind as to include a dual language audio track I would be ecstatic, but Namco Bandai has yet to deliver on this front.

Namco Bandai have yet to deliver on too many accounts.

They're not localizing Tales of Innocence for DS despite it being possibly one of the best Tales games created to date.

They never localized Namco x Capcom. (Though a fan translation was completed)

Never localized Tales of Destiny Remake despite it being the best selling Tales game ever over in JP. (Though title goes to ToS worldwide, however they originally never intended to release that either. It was Nintendo who funded it.)

They never released Baten Kaitos Origins in Europe.

Then I don't know why so many game companies are stupid and take out the original song with the instrumental... Not that some songs have a bad instrumental its just... Why?

Only even remotely reasonable excuse is that dual audio tracks requires more disk space. This may be the case for DS games and as such, but its less than believable for home console games since they don't take THAT much space.

[Varion]

Originally Posted by krisslanza

Then I don't know why so many game companies are stupid and take out the original song with the instrumental... Not that some songs have a bad instrumental its just... Why?

In most cases it's because they think people are going to be driven away by Japanese vocal songs. I remember when Atlus did this for the original Disgaea for exactly that reason, but the fans complained about it and they actually listened. Can't say I care much in this case though, because I think the Ratatosk opening song is awful.

And dual audio is a pipe dream, unfortunately. It's just not happening - while they could technically get it all onto a dual layer DVD (I assume this game'll be a single layer - it's not even widescreen by the looks of it which I find really disappointing), no one really wants to use them after the Wii proved it didn't like them very much with Brawl.

[krisslanza]

Originally Posted by Valdra

In most cases it's because they think people are going to be driven away by Japanese vocal songs. I remember when Atlus did this for the original Disgaea for exactly that reason, but the fans complained about it and they actually listened. Can't say I care much in this case though, because I think the Ratatosk opening song is awful.

And dual audio is a pipe dream, unfortunately. It's just not happening - while they could technically get it all onto a dual layer DVD (I assume this game'll be a single layer - it's not even widescreen by the looks of it which I find really disappointing), no one really wants to use them after the Wii proved it didn't like them very much with Brawl.

Yet in Disgaea 2 the OP is STILL in Japanese and you can turn the whole game to speak Japanese?
EDIT:
Or are you saying they thought they'd dislike the vocals and removed them; so then the players complained?

[Benoit]

Originally Posted by Sety

They never released Baten Kaitos Origins in Europe.

To be honest, as a European, I'm not too saddened by this fact. Why? Because Namco or Nintendo, whoever did the PAL conversion, did a poor job with each Namco RPG they released in Europe.

Instead of offering the option between plain PAL and PAL 60 like every self-respecting GameCube game, they instead limited us to 'optimised' PAL. It's regular PAL, but a little sped up so it's almost like PAL 60, as far as I know. In any case, it's inferior to PAL 60. Why they bothered to go through the hassle of having 'optimised' PAL instead of PAL 60 and plain PAL is beyond me.

This is why I bought the US versions of Tales of Symphonia and Baten Kaitos, and got the US version of Baten Kaitos Origins for my birthday a couple months ago (playing through it, great game). When visiting my UK buddy months back, we played Tales of Symphonia together, and I noticed how the game felt a little slower, and sound actually got out of sync at times. Inexcusable.

Baten Kaitos Origins wasn't even published by Namco Bandai in the US; Nintendo published it. So there was a good chance we didn't even get it translated.

[Varion]

Originally Posted by krisslanza

Yet in Disgaea 2 the OP is STILL in Japanese and you can turn the whole game to speak Japanese?

The ending track that plays when the credits roll for the normal ending in Disgaea 1 was a vocal track, but they just used an instrumental version of it for the US version. You could still switch the voice acting to Japanese, but it was optional and the default was English. People complained about them changing it from a vocal track, so for future titles they left the songs as they were. Well, NISA did if you want to be technical, but apparently NISA is some kind of subsidiary of Atlus anyway. Someone chime in if I'm wrong on this, I'm pretty sure they have something to do with Atlus anyway.

[Sides]

Another HP update, now with new PV, found under streaming, and a "comments" section, with features some audio streams by the VAs

http://namco-ch.net/talesofsymphonia_wii/index.php

Btw the blog is updated almost daily atm, some of the entries are quite interesting/informative, i.e. today's one is about the control system and how it feels compare to other Tales titles.