Final Fantasy 16 will record English voice over first, Japanese later
Supposedly because of the game's facial capture
In a rare turn of events, it seems a Final Fantasy game has been recorded in English before Japanese. Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has reportedly said that Square Enix are focusing on English voices with British accents for the upcoming action-RPG. If you've seen the reveal trailer from last year, it makes a fair bit of sense. The game is set in a ye olde fantasy setting, and everyone knows that people only spoke in English accents in medieval times. And of course, we can't forget that very English protagonist, Clive.
"This time, English recording is going first. And we have been focusing on British English," Yoshida said during an interview on Washagana TV (translated by Gematsu).
While the Japanese voice acting will come after, Yoshida says that the English has gone first so they can get face capture for the game.
"We can’t possibly hand-animate every cut of a scene. So this time we are doing full facial motion captures and then adding voices to that," he adds. "Those works are not entirely cutscenes though. So this is one of the reasons why the English version is ahead of others. We are going to start the Japanese version soon."
Final Fantasy 16 was announced in September last year, and Katharine was very pleased with the Final Fantasy 15 vibes in that reveal trailer.
"Take, for example, that opening scene of four man pals huddled round a campfire," she writes. "They're all dressed in similar, dark-looking clothes and armour, and there's at least one with a very Ignis-like British accent. In fairness, rather than chowing down on a nice big juicy chocobo burger and flicking through photographs they've taken during the day, they seem to be preparing for an almighty battle against an Icon, which appears to be FF16's name for their summon monsters."
Unfortunately, it doesn't sound as though we'll hear much more about FF16 anytime soon, because Yoshida has previously suggested it's skipping this year's Tokyo Game Show.
It's also worth noting the game has only been announced for PS5 at the moment (despite all the initial footage being capture on PC!), but we expect it'll make its way to PC land at some point.