Siren

[ElAlcesDiablo]

I can see why Sony would want to have localised dubbing, having
foreign dialogue is a major turn off to the mainstream. Horror
isn't exactly an obscure genre no-one's interested in, I guess
they feel they can get returns on some cheap ****e dubbing.
They don't want to spend too much though like, it's not gonna
sell bucketloads. Why can't they include it as an option?
Perhaps they've gone and filled the disc with various european
languages now and there's no space.
What about a special edition then? They can charge a little
extra put it in a vaguely fancy (but cheap to make) cardboard
cover and label it as the authentic original version. I'm
sure they could make their money back on that. I'd buy it.
I don't care what they feel they need to do to pander to the
mainstream, surely it's worth their while to produce a
respectable version for us? The market can't be that small,
it's not like it'd cost anything much to produce.
That or maybe some enterprising hacker could swap the japanese
back in and we can all pirate it.

[Concept]

I'd agree with you. Normally it would make commercial sense...

Until you consider it's apparently SCEE who've done the dubbing, and a game set in rural Japanese countryside seemingly features cockney English voiceovers.

Oh, and that SCEA are using this dub for the American release.

One can't help but think this isn't exactly going to help Siren's cause worldwide. Like Brodie (who has a UK preview copy) put it in another thread, it's the videogame equivalent of watching Ring or Dark Water with EastEnder's playing in the background.

That for me, has the potential to destory a very delicately built atmosphere, especially when you conisder that many of Siren's voiceovers occur in-game.

Considering the rest of the game's immense (and stylistically raw) production values, we could have had a seriously unique and brilliantly judged 'arthouse' psychological horror. Had the original cast been kept in, sound-wise.

Imagine, frightfully and timidly exploring an abandoned school. Everywhere is bleeding a dank, cold dark. You can barely see in front of your face, yet you just know that the corridor you're in stretches out for miles, possibly hiding untold horrors waiting to be discovered. Hardly a sound can be heard apart from your character's own breath...

Then all of a sudden, you feel your heart leap, for out of the shadows an infected zombie teacher races towards you at incredible speed, shouting:

"Oi Oi Mate!! Whattcha hidin' in the shadows for, eh?"

Yes. Exactly. This is what such voiceovers could do to Siren's atmosphere. Constantly destroy something otherwise carefully constructed.

SCEE... Why, why, why?

Such a sore spot for me with regards to Sony's handling of a potentially superb game in Europe.

[Che Musashi]

Dubbing is what turned me off of Onimusha 2. At least in 1 you could select the japanese option.

I'm sure the game was still good, but I'm lost on the idea of a game set in Japan with English voices. But then I play something like Dynasty Warriors and I end up entertained by the cornball voice acting.

[Concept]

Dubbing is what turned me off of Onimusha 2. At least in 1 you could select the japanese option.

Guess what?

That option was taken out of the European version of Onimusha, as was the US Japanese language/subtitle option in the PAL version of Otogi, another game with a premise set in ancient Japan.

It seems a lot of companies think we simple Europeans won't be able to grasp the fact a game based in Japan might (heaven forbid) use that country's language too.

[Square]

It is a shame, but there is always the Japanese original. Best game I bought last year, bar none.

[Square]

This game continues to amaze me.

The nature of the gameplay means that the more you play, the less scary the scenarios become (as you get used to the locales and the different types of shibito), and so the focus shifts from survival horror to pure stealth gameplay.

But then it all changes again.

I've just finished Naoko Mihama's first scenario, and teh tension that built up was incredible. This scenario requires that you escape from a train yard completely unarmed, and puts you up against a sniper, who is guarding your only way out.

You spend so long creeping around, and then you realise that the only way past the sniper is to ring the alarm, which in turn alerts about 8 shibito, who all come shuffling into the yard. It's then a mad panic to exit the scenario before they all return to their usual patrols.

My heart has never beaten so fast in my life!

[Fibber]

I watched the official website and found that the English subtitles didn't really match the Japanese. It didn't capture the mood nor translate properly. Subtitle is better but only if they do it well.

[Concept]

That may be the case, but it still doesn't make the regional dubs look anymore attractive. I say this because it's highly unlikely SCEE paid two various teams of English translators, to convert the Japanese into different versions for use in the dub or a subtitled version. It wouldn't make much sense.

It's a high possibility, any Japanese dialogue featuring English text in the trailers will be using the same script as the final UK build.

Which means, if you're correct, not only now do we get a wholly inaccurate translation, but a wholly inadequate bunch of voices bringing that wonderful script fully to life.

Wow. SCEE have really paid the team behind Siren great service.

Personally, I still don't understand the logic.

English.
French.
Spanish.
Italian.
German
Mandarin.
Japanese.

The game's had separate voicetracks for different regions across the world, which obviously indicates that a lot of money has been spent on localisation, showing Siren is an important game for Sony this year. To be fair to SCEE, it sounds (in light of the Mandarin dub) that the decision to change the audio in all territories seems like one made initially from SCEI... But that just means they should have pushed harder to change their minds. Yet, despite all countries getting the game in their own region-specfic dub, the US is the only country (that's perhaps the most important for economic success), where this doesn't happen to be the case. This for me just highlights the inconsistancies in such an expensive strategy, and shows SCEA aren't exactly overly bothered with localisation issues. It also sends out mixed messages internationally on how Sony is handling the game, revealing SCEA must have some form of control if SCEI hasn't told them to convert the audio soundtrack for the American market.

When the majority of feedback on such varied and logistically complex dubwork has been vastly negative, almost to the point where the changed voicework has been said to harm the game, you have to ask yourself, what's the point? You've just spent lots of money to make your game atmospherically worse overall. Smart move.

Due to Siren's content and offbeat nature, it's likely never going to be a high chart rider for all that long, so why Sony has chosen to go for such a convoluted conversion strategy I'll never know.

I had to get these thoughts out in the open, even though I've told myself not to get worked up by the continuing swathes of mishandled conversions for stunning games.

In the end, there's little point.

[toy_brain]

Right, my local independant stockist had this game on sale today. I've literally only put it on for a couple minutes to check the voice acting and general PAL-related stuff, so no gameplay opinions I'm afraid.

Voice acting - all in English, no menu options for any other languages (yes, that's right - no Japanese track, which is odd because the manual credits the Jp VA's but not the UK ones). Quality of voice acting seems a little low - possibly only a couple notches above Dynasty Warriors 4 - but thats only based on the first couple lines of dialogue.

50hz display only. Small borders top and bottom (think Dynasty Warriors - again). Not sure about how it affects the game speed, but the FMV seems to be free of judder so I'm guessing that the game should be running at more-or-less the right speed.

I'm gonna try and put a couple hours in tomorrow night. If anyone cares I'll post some thoughts.

[toy_brain]

Meh, well I dunno if anyone still cares or not - but here are my opinions based on a couple hours worth of play on the PAL version(Well one hour according to the game clock, but there were plenty of restarts).

I'm not sure why everyone keeps going on about this games graphics, they look bloody ropey to me. Characters have a fairly basic polygon count and the faces look very odd. Think of an old PSone game, only with a higher-res texture slapped over the polygons. Mouth movement looks wierd when they speak (and I dont just mean that the dub is poor) and faces are generally devoid of any emotion. Silent Hill 3 this most definately is not.
Environments are decently detailed though the subject nature of the game dosent allow for much flair, so everything looks sutibly dull/dark and washed out. I cant see any display issues arrising due to the PAL conversion, though I havent seen the NTSC code first hand to compare the two.

Right, now onto gameplay.
Now, I'm a pretty big fan of survival-horror games. Heck, I even had a moderate amount of fun playing Chaos Break (Taito's PSone stab at survival horror), but Forbidden Siren just seems to piss me off to a stupid degree. Partly because of the combat which (early on at least) is so clunky it makes Silent Hill look like Tekken, partly because the game makes rookie errors like characters getting stuck on scenery, and partly because the game is frustratingly cruel to the player.

OK, first the combat. I'm used to Silent Hill levels of combat, so flailing arround with a stick is almost second-nature to me, however, whereas an iron pipe could get you quite far in SH, in Siren things are a lot trickier. Enemies have a tendancy to 'grab' you even if you are swinging at them with a pipe, and for some reason, being grabbed by the shoulder is deadly .
That said, there are some stupid gameplay mechanics you can exploit to swing the battle in your favour. For example, if you are being persued by an enemy with an axe/pipe, all you need to do is find a moderately high ledge, then clamber up it. The enemy will follow and begin to clamber up as well. At this point, drop back down and hack at his feet - instant victory!
Also, if you manage to catch one of them with a side-on attack, you'll have a massive advantage.

Characters getting stuck on scenery - well its happened once so far. Its annoying when you have to go back to fetch someone just because the CPU can't manuvure arround a friggin signpost.

Really frustrating bits - Well I've just started on the level where you first get the rifle. I sight-jacked everyone, thought I had my bearings, wondered through the tunnel - then got shot dead. This was frustrating for 2 reasons.
1) You have no Idea where you will emerge from based on what the enemy can see. Its a nondescript tunnel after all. the only time you'll know is when you get shot and find out where the enemy was looking.
2) When you do get shot and see through the enemies eyes, its blatantly obvious that there was no way in hell he would have been able to see you from that distance. You sure as hell cant see him either!

Also, the short 'Misson' based structure of the game is hurting my sense of immersion into Siren's world. I dont know if missions get any bigger as the game progreses (I'm guessing that they do), but its annoying to suddenly jump to a totally different location just as you were getting a feel for your current surroundings.
Also, Its stopping me from actually getting attached to any of the characters and caring about them (the dodgy dub isnt helping either).

Is it scary? Well I'm not in the best position to comment as my playing time has been done at work (yay for quiet night shifts) not alone with the lights off, but so far there have been no shock moments. If anything, being able to sight-jack and therefore get some idea of where enemies are removes any shock factor. You know that an enemy is close, you even know what he/she is armed with, so when you do get pounced upon its no big supprise.

Just one final comment on the dub. Though it is bad during the cut-scenes (ever heard a Japanese girl with a cockney accent - well you will here), its not that intrusive during actual gameplay. Does it detract from the games atmosphere? Well yes, probably. Then again, I remember the first Resi game being scary as hell despite awful dialogue and acting.
The cut-scenes are also not helped by the fact that they use in-game character and scenery models (which are rough-looking as I've already said), so no ammount of white noise and scratchy sound effects can disguise the fact that what you are looking at is below-average FMV. This makes the game look cheap, and detracts greatly from the overall feel of the game.

Well, that all sounds rather negative. Nevertheless I'm going to stick with it a bit longer as I love survival-horror games in general, and I like anything that does something differently. Mabye it'll grow on me, mabye I should stop playing videogames while I'm at work, or mabye I'll trade it in if things dont improve after playing another few stages in the comfort and darkness of my own home.

(Holy crap that was a long post)

[PeteJ]

Nice post, though it is probably the most negative thing I've read about Siren.

Regarding the graphics, I couldn't disagree more. In my opinion the cutscenes feature some of the most atmospheric graphics in the genre. Extremely cold and distant, while the very odd mouth animation is, for me, incredibly effective. The graphics are quite basic, especially the character models, but they are believeable. When immersed in the world you do actually feel like you are peering through the trees in order to get a better look on things.

The AI can be a bit suspect at times, but it is still a great challenge. Combat is understandably poor, but it is no worse than Silent Hill. In fact i'd say it is actually better due to the automatic lockon.

I don't know your working situation, but I'd have thought that playing a game like this while working would seriously harm the atmosphere and overal effect it is trying to create. How can you settle down into the experience when you are always keeping an eye\ear out on work situations? I say play it at home with the lights off

Stick at it though, it's a great game.

[toy_brain]

Well, I've played the game some more - this time in the comfort and darkness of my own home, and sadly, my previous complaints still stand.
The game is simply not scary to play. Yes Its dark, yes it foggy, yes there are zombies moaning in the background, but has the game ever shocked me? has it ever placed me in an environment as creepy as those offered by Silent Hill?
No.
So unless Siren is saving al that untill much further into the game, I'm still decidedly unimpressed.

Anyway, it should be out on general release in the UK now, so hopefully we can get some more comments from other people who have played the UK version.

[Square]

Toy_brain: I really couldn't disagree more. As my previous posts in this thread will attest to, this is far and away the most scary game I have played (and that includes SH1 and 2, and the Biohazards).

The alien nature of the environments, coupled with the complete helplesness that you feel when starting a new scenario/area really made this a standout title for me. Quite apart from that, the sight jack is problably the most original gameplay feature I've had the pleasure of discovering (indeed, it was voted so on this very site ).

Still, I guess that different folk will get different experiences from this game.

[Hodge]

I`m in agreement with toy brain that this game isn`t scary in the slightest. Silent hill is far superior and far more tense to play. I would put resident evil (GC) ahead of this as well especially for when you encounter the speed hunters for the 1st time. Also is it me or does the sight jack seem kinda gimecky? It`s that half of the time you don`t even know where there looking and just seems easier to peg it through the level just to see where they are and die. Then decide how to avoide/get by them on the next runs. The story seems interesting at the moment and is only the real thing that is keeping me playing. Sorry but scary or tense this is definately not.

[Concept]

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Just saw another English-based trailer of Siren on this month's PSM2 DVD, with Japanese voiceovers still left in. And the way it was presented...

The acting, the music, the style, the whole vibe...

All of it absolutely stunning. Gobsmacking in fact.

I really want this game. But I can't pick it up with a dub that's going to destroy everything I'm in awe of atmospherically after seeing that trailer.

If SCEE has any respect or awareness for European gamers holding out on this (which I'd imagine it may be reaching into the thousands with many dedicated players), then in a few months they'll release Siren on Platinum along with a Japanese soundtrack option back in.

But then that'd cost money, time and resources... And the content in Platinum titles usually isn't modified at all, so yes I do realise this is a miserably depressing pipe dream...

Apart from that, I won't go near this.

Watching that trailer and seeing how stunning Siren looked, I just refuse to have a dodgy dub completely ruin the full game for me.

Yes, I'm a gaming snob, but every time I see that title, I can't help but feel it could have been something so special over here.

Another ICO. A real jewel for Sony...

It was torture walking past GAME and not buying a copy, but I'm not having this deliciously wonderful game being spoiled by a thoughtless localisation.

It'd be a shame.

Well... I hope all you PAL gamers who picked Siren up today are at least enjoying the experience.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

I've got a bad feeling this game is going to be one that'll forever remain ellusive to me.