metal gear solid

[Gambit]

Yeah, I based my statement on Debi Mae West's interview. I thought it was the original she couldn't remember. If I'm wrong, then I am wrong. Like you have mentioned before, something must have went down. I don't think they were payed good enough to return and bring some quality voice acting (Hayter split his paycheck with everyone. I'm sure it still wasn't enough).

[Rombie]

^ Yeah, the voice acting noise issue was the original PlayStation title, not Twin Snakes as mentioned by others. There is discussion about it in one of my MGS guidebooks from the PS release. Every other title since has been recorded at a studio. I think this was discussed again in one of the MGS Integral Podcasts during the production of MGS4 where Ryan Payton had some of the voice actors talking about their work through the entire series.

The bigger issue with the Twin Snakes voice acting was the lack of accents on characters (they tried to say Mei Ling's was because of her generational heritage in the US, but that shouldn't always drop an genealogical accent line - but even worse was Nastasha's which obviously should never have been dropped) and then not having Greg Eagles voicing Grey Fox along with his work as Donald Anderson.

I'm a big fan of Rob Paulsen's voice work, he's a very talented voice actor with a lot of credits, but it was just a bad replacement for the quality of work that Eagles provided in the original for the character.

[Vector]

The bigger issue with the Twin Snakes voice acting was the lack of accents on characters (they tried to say Mei Ling's was because of her generational heritage in the US, but that shouldn't always drop an genealogical accent line - but even worse was Nastasha's which obviously should never have been dropped) and then not having Greg Eagles voicing Grey Fox along with his work as Donald Anderson.

I'm a big fan of Rob Paulsen's voice work, he's a very talented voice actor with a lot of credits, but it was just a bad replacement for the quality of work that Eagles provided in the original for the character.

Seriously, Greg Eagles/George Byrd's job as Gray Fox is iconic. This was my single biggest gripe with The Twin Snakes. Paulsen was fine but he just wasn't Gray Fox. Combine the new voice actor with the ridiculousness of the cutscenes and it just didn't sit well with me at all.

[Dracarys]

I never understood the criticisms of TS voice acting, is almost the exact same VAs dong the work with one exception and th quality is the same. The only major change was some characters accent changes, but the same accent changes were carried over to other MGS games where they praise the VA?


Massive double standard, not the only one though, can backtrack this thread a little to find another example I posted.

[Rombie]

I never understood the criticisms of TS voice acting, is almost the exact same VAs dong the work with one exception and th quality is the same. The only major change was some characters accent changes, but the same accent changes were carried over to other MGS games where they praise the VA?


Massive double standard, not the only one though, can backtrack this thread a little to find another example I posted.

You might want to check your facts before you start spouting that off. The quality is definently not the same, most of the actors sound exceptionally bored in TTS and have no real acting quality by compairson to the original game. The fact that this is even funnier given the over the top nature of the cutscenes in TTS where most of the actors have a very monotone slow nature is such a weird but opposite mix.

Additionally the accents weren't carried over, with the exception of Mei Ling's MGS4 apperance - which then contradicts her cameo MGS2 one. And Naomi goes back to sounding more like she did in the PS original, not the GC edition.

I don't think I'm silly enough not to believe there are issues throughout the series, but I don't apperciate being told I have double standards over the series. Feel free to scour back through the 43 pages in this thread to start pulling out more if you really think I'm wrong here though.

[Vito]

really? Naomi didnt sound like MGS1(PS1) Naomi at all in MGS4, at least to me.

[Dracarys]

really? Naomi didnt sound like MGS1(PS1) Naomi at all in MGS4, at least to me.

Both Naomi and Mei ling dropped accents for TS and they did not return in MGS4, he is mistaken. The accents were removed to fit the characters better which is why they are not there in MGS4, it wasn't bored VAs during TS.

[valentinesdead?]

Honestly, I think Twin Snakes cutscenes are pretty good in terms of VA's performance(i haven't watched them in a while), but I remember the VA being pretty good by all involved. It's the codec scenes, however, that really drop the quality for some really weird ass reason. The Codec scenes and the lame rescoring are my two biggest gripes with TS(not counting the *additions*). I really think this had something to do with the whole VA pay thing. Like Jennifer Hale and Paul Eiding where like "F this" since they weren't getting paid a respectable amount they thought there services deserved. But again, the actual Cutscene voice acting is rather darn good--better than the original in quite a few aspects.

But I still very much prefer MGS1 over TTS, thank you very much.

[News Bot]

Most of the voice acting in Twin Snakes is poorer quality in terms of performance from the original actors. The original game still has superior acting in many respects. Dropping the accents was simply a dumbass move they still can't find a decent excuse for. Made the performances a lot more bland.

Also, David Hayter had a cold at the time of the original game's recording according to Jeremy Blaustein. That's why he sounds better in the original compared to any other game in the series.

[Rombie]

I know it's been almost 3 years since I last played MGS4 a few months after it came out, but my memory still seems to recall the voice being closer to the PS original.

So I did however just re-watch some of each version of the Naomi's voice (PS, GC, + MGS4) and I did get it wrong it seems, so I retract my comment in regards to hers. My my comment on Mei Ling still stands. On a further personal note I always felt the variety of accents gave the game a more worldly appeal than the very American-only overtone portraied by having the accents all Americanized in TTS (additionally that it still makes no sense for either Naomi or Nastasha's upbringing) and latterly MGS4.

Also that said what I said previous and what valentinesdead? said as well still sums up my feelings about the majority of the voice work in TTS. They sound flat; bored and unemotional about the a large amount of the events happening. Most of it is in the codec work, but considering most of that is the majority of the work, that's most of the game. There are also instances where certain lines or inflections which I think were key to the characters in the original were missed because no one rechecked the original script/game (or in some cases clearly re-translated of course with the fact Kojima hated a lot of the work Jeremy Blaustein did on the original translation, and were not used).

Unlike most people I don't have issues with the cutscenes, I actually also agree with the comments made earlier about Cam Clarke (who sounds like he's having a blast doing it all again, especially his work as Miller) and Hayter does what he always does throughout.

[valentinesdead?]

I know it's been almost 3 years since I last played MGS4 a few months after it came out, but my memory still seems to recall the voice being closer to the PS original.

So I did however just re-watch some of each version of the Naomi's voice (PS, GC, + MGS4) and I did get it wrong it seems, so I retract my comment in regards to hers. My my comment on Mei Ling still stands. On a further personal note I always felt the variety of accents gave the game a more worldly appeal than the very American-only overtone portraied by having the accents all Americanized in TTS (additionally that it still makes no sense for either Naomi or Nastasha's upbringing) and latterly MGS4.

Also that said what I said previous and what valentinesdead? said as well still sums up my feelings about the majority of the voice work in TTS. They sound flat; bored and unemotional about the a large amount of the events happening. Most of it is in the codec work, but considering most of that is the majority of the work, that's most of the game. There are also instances where certain lines or inflections which I think were key to the characters in the original were missed because no one rechecked the original script/game (or in some cases clearly re-translated of course with the fact Kojima hated a lot of the work Jeremy Blaustein did on the original translation, and were not used).

Unlike most people I don't have issues with the cutscenes, I actually also agree with the comments made earlier about Cam Clarke (who sounds like he's having a blast doing it all again, especially his work as Miller) and Hayter does what he always does throughout.

That's the thing that's always sorta irked me when people go bashing TTS about the voice acting--they just shit on everything without even pinpointing what exactly sucks about it. But I did forget to mention that yeah, I didn't like some of the changed/retranslated lines either. Though, I didn't know that Kojima hated Jeremy's work. I thought it was Jeremy who hated Kojima for the length and wonkiness of Kojima's writing. Though I guess it must have been a two-way street I suppose. Neat fact I didn't know. I think I can provide one example of this off the top of my head.

[REX squashes Gray Fox]

Original:

Liquid: He prayed for death, and it found him!

TTS:

Liquid: When death is entreated, the battlefield is decided!

Honestly, the original translation works and sounds far better there as that's sounds like something a normal person would say. Disregarding Clarke's delivery of the TTS line, that's a really cumbersome Shakespeare-esqse line that's really doesn't fit the context of the scene. There's definitely more lines sprinkled throughout twin snakes that the original script works better at.

[valentinesdead?]

Not to double post. . . .

Most of the voice acting in Twin Snakes is poorer quality in terms of performance from the original actors. The original game still has superior acting in many respects. Dropping the accents was simply a dumbass move they still can't find a decent excuse for. Made the performances a lot more bland.

Also, David Hayter had a cold at the time of the original game's recording according to Jeremy Blaustein. That's why he sounds better in the original compared to any other game in the series.

I don't really think dropping the accents was the problem given MGS4. The problem was just the performances themselves were bland in the TTS codec scenes. Naomi and Mei Ling could have had accents in TTS, but the lack of effort they were clearly putting forth would have made the VA'ing just as boring and life-lacking as what we got.


And lol, Hayter having a cold is pretty funny. There has always been something unique about his original MGS voice as Snake. Always though it was just his first stab at VAing the character. Pretty cool that that wasn't the only factor.

[Rombie]

The info that Kojima didn't like the translation all that much comes from two areas as I recall.

Firstly someone asked Ryan Payton on the podcast back when he was with KojiPro why there was such big difference between the PS and GC editions scripts of the original game. This came up because they at first in a previous episode were talking about a mistranslation in MGS2 in regards to a characters gender which impacted on MGS4 (which ended up being Sunny's).

Basically at first he only said that it was a retranslation, but then later he said further points that it was a translation of Kojima's original script like he planned and not "someone elses" take on what Kojima was trying to say. He seemed to imply that Kojima was much happier with the work done on Twin Snake's translation.

Aside from what you mentioned which he did say, in that major interview a couple of years back (PushToTalk - it's like a massive long IV) Blaustein himself also more or less confirmed that there was rumblings and word back through other people that Kojima wasn't too impressed either with some of the changes he'd made as well once he found out about them.

It's made all the more interesting because back in 2000 Blaustein did an interview that I remember reading where he said that the process for translation was work done at Konami working with the team on the game itself, and he even worked with Kojima on things. So it sounded like it should have been fine.

Edit - Found a copy:

http://junkerhq.net/Jeremy.html

In there he was positive about the work, but then you listen or read the interviews in 2007 and 2008 it's a different thing entirely. However considering Blaustein was outspoken about the changes he made and Kojima's script, I get the feeling he snuck a lot of changes in that he thought were good that Kojima didn't approve of not knowing about them, and didn't find out till well after the fact.

Personally I think his work was decent because clearly when you see some of the changes between MGS and Twin Snakes where some literal translation takes place, it's exactly like the scene you pointed out. And that was his defence but of course on the flip side you can understand a director being pissed finding out his original vision has been changed.

The voice actors and other gave the actual reason for the re-recording of the work done based on the higher quality audio playback on the GC, saying the dirty record done for the PS edition had all the noise from where they recorded it and it wasn't usable. It's the Twin Snake audio also used in flashbacks in MGS4 for the same reason one would think. If it's actually true or not, who knows.

[nemesiswontdie]

I think I can provide one example of this off the top of my head.

[REX squashes Gray Fox]

Original:

Liquid: He prayed for death, and it found him!

TTS:

Liquid: When death is entreated, the battlefield is decided!

Original:

Fox: Every time I look at her, I saw her parents eyes staring back at me

TTS:

Fox: Every time I looked into her eyes, I trembled with fear.

[valentinesdead?]

Original:

Fox: Every time I look at her, I saw her parents eyes staring back at me

TTS:

Fox: Every time I looked into her eyes, I trembled with fear.

Hah--that's an even better example. Can't believe I'd forgotten about that. Yeah, "I trembled with fear" is extremely silly. Makes zero sense why Gray Fox would tremble at the sight of a young girl. the TTS line has zero indication of the obvious guilt implied in the original.

Thanks Rombie for digging up that info. I gotta say, I think Kojima is a little headstrong about the whole translation bit. I mean, the entire point of translating something into an english dub isn't to translate literally, but rewrite while retaining the original intent. I really don't get why Kojima didn't like Jeremy's work. Now, if MGS had no english dub, then a direct translation would be the better option, as more plain dialogue can be read well given the inflictions and acting skill of the Japanese VA, but that's not something you want to do with an English dub, simply because literal translations aren't exactly the smoothest scripting wise.

But oh well--all I can say is--if there totally thinking about remaking MGS yet again in whatever forum--they need to re-record the stuff again, and hopefully, pay the VA's decently so we don't get any half-assed performances. And hopefully keep the script more toward the original.

Also, about the Sunny mis-translation, that happened in MGS1 as well with Dr. Clark. Alot of fans in MGS4 thought that Paramedic being Dr. Clark was a retcon, when in fact, it never was stated in the original japanese version because there are no gender pronouns in japanese. Dr. Clark was simply Dr. Clark. Fun little trivia none-the-less.