Dark Souls' English localization studio

MagicSugar

http://www.frognation.com/

http://www.frognation.com/e/fn_news/

Just bringing this up to your attention in case you're into writing and/or voice acting. And apparently, based on Japanese gameplay vids on youtube, Japan version also use the English voice acting (with subs).  I thought that's interesting.  I thought their ingame cutscene npc lips dont move was because of localization factors but maybe it's more of a design decision (i.e., rendered cutscene mouth animations yes but in-game cutscene npc dialogue no).

BTS of voice actors for DS 1 I think (you can auto translate Japanese CC into English in player settings):

Actors show up :51 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E8q7ErXI_k

ZacD

I've heard they use English dialog because it's a medieval themed game, and obviously English voices are more medieval Europe than Japanese dialog. My guess on the lack of lip syncing, the dialog is probably worked on at the end of production, and it would be more work to go back and add the animations after the game is finished, and also it would probably be extra tough for a non english speaking animator to lipsync english speech.  

MagicSugar

ZacD said:

I've heard they use English dialog because it's a medieval themed game,

Yeah, what struck me at first was From Software, the devs, is Japanese (I knew that already) and their English narrative and voice acting for Dark Souls is on point for the genre. I thought they either have Japanese experts in Tolkienesque writing or they have in house western writers.  

Double checking the credits list of the first two DS I saw that they contracted the lore (it seems to me), narrative scripting, and voice casting and acting duties to this British-Japanese company frognation (they also did From's Bloodborne). So it makes sense to me now how they're hitting the right notes as far as combinining genre narrative and Japan style combat game.  It's a cool combination.

Re: lip syncing, I'd expect devs now to at least use a procedural lip syncing tool that provides lip syncing driven by audio files. But not having mouth animations in Dark Souls actually adds to the horror or dark elements to its narrative. 

MagicSugar

DS III Japanese version gameplay.  Obviously if you haven't played yet....SPOILERS ALERT
Opening cinematic begins 1:25, Second video, NPC encounters with dialogue at 4:51 and 6:05 (no mouth anims)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wjENmSr7LE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ONL-WmnPc&nohtml5=False

MagicSugar

Article giving further insight to present day localization requirements at least from Japanese devs perspective.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2011/06/29/digital/local-heroes-take-japanese-video-games-to-the-world/#.Vw1X1jArKUk

“The process used to be more relaxed, and we could play the game before we started,” he says. “Now most titles are aiming to release around the same time worldwide, which means the game in the original language is not ready at all when we start working on it. You usually get a very limited amount of info at the beginning and lots of imagination is needed to work on fragmented lines in spreadsheets.”