It’s pretty small to be honest but it’s just so confusing to me. Why did they not bother voicing the conversations you have with NPCs by interacting with them? Everything else is voiced, even random NPC chatter in field areas. But this seemingly more “important” dialog isn’t. They actually even went to the trouble of voicing partial lines even! It’s just so weird.
Do you guys think it’s an artistic choice? Seems strange that it would be a budget constraint? Why not cut NPC chatter first in that case? Did they ever talk about this in their interviews?
FWIW this is a JRPG staple. Ever since voice acting was first introduced to JRPGs it’s been a combination of voiced and text-only lines, going back to FFX and that generation.
I don’t honestly know whether it’s a cost control measure, or whether it allows side content to be modified later in the dev process, or what. But I’ve basically come to expect it in any JRPG.
I don’t think they’ve discussed it because it’s not usual for RPGs from Japanese developers to do this, and is very much seen as the norm these days. I think it’s such a norm it doesn’t register as anything particularly noticeable until pointed out. I imagine it’s partially to do with budget and time though, and the sheer scope of the script in XVI - have you seen the photo of Clive’s JP VA with the script ?
Tbh I’d rather that stuff be left unvoiced. Makes it so much faster and you don’t have the problem of always skipping mid sentence.
I wish it would be standard in Western RPGs so we could finally have proper western rpgs again with real player choice.
I was a little taken aback when I first saw this. But honestly now that I’m used to it, it’s not so big a deal. It’s like they get you started with their voice then you can read through the rest quickly (faster than if it were voiced probably).
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