Hahahahaha, yeah, like jessica chobot, am I right?
LOLOLOL, we have the movies and series here dubbed by great dubbing actors that some of the time even superpass the original voices, and that is THE actor you are watching in screen, not a shitty 3D model suppose to be him, thats most of the time when they try to do that in videogames.
Things are dubbed here ALWAYS (apart from videogames, and those are dubbed also a lot), all media. We have great dubbing actors that are as capable as normal ones, and in my country some of them have their famous voices so linked to famous american actors, and are so good, people LOVE them.
Even like that, videogames are more like and cartoon and it doesnt mean shit theyve get someone to recreate mildly their face for a character, most of the time they dont evn look the same, so having a different voice makes your point moot.
If you dont want to hear voices in the shitty dubs done by you contries play with the original, theres other countries were we have great dubbing actors and we would prefer if the game came dubbed in our language with the option to change it, thank you very much.
As people will allways cry when other people talk about the option of dubbing a game im outta here. You can continue to hate options.
I read this kind of bullshit all the time and no, dubbing is not good.
There are instances where it can be ok, for example cartoons with no complex facial animations, but for the most part, it's just shit.
First of all, the attention to balance of sound is always different (dubbing is often louder and less naturally integrated with the rest of the sounds), lip synch is always off (for obvious reasons) and the actors, however good, are bound to be less well-directed, both for a matter of time (they have less time to study the part and act it out) and logistics (they can't speak with the original director 24/7 while they work, they have to follow another actor's performance etc etc) even in the best case scenario.
I agree that there are some voice actors (i'm from Italy, but i assume it's the same in Spain) that are very good at their job, but dubbing itself is a retarded practice that should die.
There are limited examples i can think of, where the dubbing was better than the original acting (case of particulary terrible actors) but still, there was a terrible disconnect between sound and image, for the reasons above.
This happens less with products (as i said) like say Futurama or The Simpsons, if the voice acting direction is very good, because the facial animations are less complex and the lack of lip synch is less obvious, still, jokes get lost, and you have a direction that however good, it's not the original one, the one closer to the product creatively.
I'd say Max Payne and videogames in general fall in the middle, as they have fairly complex performances and facial animations, but not as complex as movies; that is why dubbing videogames is shit.
Still, i agree that having a choice is always good.. too bad that, often, there are no options due to space limit on the disc, or outright incompetence (GFWL selecting the language for you).
It's the reason why i can't go to the cinema anymore, here 100% of the films get dubbed, it's fucking disgusting.
