Final Fantasy VII Remake: The Importance of Good Dubbing

Back in 1997, when the original Final Fantasy VII game was released, voice acting in games was not nearly as important as it is today.

In the past 20 years or so, the game industry has grown so profoundly that most of today’s last-gen titles feature incredible graphics, and with them, incredible voice acting.

I am a strong believer that games (and movies) should be enjoyed in the language they were created in, but then again, dubbing has been an important part of the film industry for decades.

As games evolve to look more and more like films (Death Stranding had a whopping 11 hours of cut-scenes), it is natural to ask ourselves a question: should games companies try and dub games in as many languages as possible?

Lip sync technology has improved drastically in games since the times of Heavy Rain. Ubisoft, for one, has been using artificial intelligence in their last games to improved facial animation and the results are remarkably real.

For me, Final Fantasy VII’s voice acting has always been synonymous with Advent Children. The Japanese voice of Cloud and Sephirot, respectively Takahiro Sakurai and Toshiyuki Morikawa, were to me utterly perfect for the characters, and would not have changed them for anything else.

I was scared when I first picked up Final Fantasy VII Remake demo. Character voices were only in English, and for how good the voice actors may be, Cloud just sounded weird to me.

I knew Square Enix has already provided some of its last games in multiple languages, even internationally, and a quick web search confirmed that for Final Fantasy VII Remake.

I have started playing the game yesterday, and as I soon as I began making my way through the Mako Reactor 1, something felt different than in the demo.

It wasn’t just the anticipation of knowing that I could play the whole game now (or the whole first chapter anyway), but also the sweet sweet sounds of my beloved Japanese voice actors.