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With the announcement that Muramasa: The Demon Blade is only going to have Japanese voiceovers, it got me thinking about the importance of accessibility in gaming. While subtitles are a godsend, after playing this game at Run to the Sun, I questioned this choice. I also started to ponder about the general audience that this game would appeal to.
One of the most important aspects to any game, RPG or not, is its accessibility to a wide variety of audiences. Fact is that if a company can provide dual-audio, which I recognize is expensive, then at least it is providing the consumer with a choice. I recognize it is not easy to appease everyone, but there is a reason why most companies choose to go with English voice acting, simply because they recognize that not every person out there wants to sit and read text off a screen.
After talking with Shane Bettenhausen, he stated that Muramasa is a game that anyone can really pick up and play, will enjoy for its visual beauty, and be completely drawn into its fast-paced gameplay. However, he didn't discuss the story with anywhere near so much detail, and with a game like Muramasa being rooted in folklore and mythology, I humbly disagree that this is a game that anyone could merely just "pick up and play", especially after my brief experience with the title.
The game is incredibly simple to play, no questions asked, but it suffers from the fact that it has a very cut and dry translation. The translation does not add any flavor to make the story stand out. While the Japanese language allows the player to feel immersed in Muramasa's world, the dialogue is so bland that I found myself not caring about the story, and instead I found myself just eviscerating enemies left and right. It wasn't fun for me. Part of the problem is that games derived from folklore and mythology should provide some personality to help people engage in the story and understand where it is drawing its roots from, and this is where good localization comes into play. If you look at companies like Atlus, and an example such as Odin Sphere: it takes the translation and gives the text a lot of flare and personality to draw the player into the game's world, story, also compelling the player to care about what the main objective is. Odin Sphere's localization was able to keep the game and its world seamless, something Ignition seems to be have been worrying over if it had imposed an English voiceovers.
There is nothing wrong with keeping an aesthetic intact, and in most cases it's encouraged that localizers do so. There's nothing wrong with adding some personality to the text, and Muramasa is a game that oozes personality through its visuals, but isn't reflected in the translation. I have nothing against Japanese voice acting with subtitles, but I worry that Muramasa will be one of those games that places a language barrier just for the sake of a unique aesthetic. After playing the game, I personally felt as though an English track would actually help make the game more accessible to audiences who might not have the patience to deal with subtitles. I think an English track would also add the missing flavour to the game to make the story stand out, which as it stands right now, is sorely lacking.
What I fear with a game like Muramasa is that it's only going to be marketed for its aesthetics alone and not the rest of its content. I'm not saying every person will agree with me on this, but I couldn't help but feel that this was a game that ordinary gamers won't pick up and exude passion for. If a company wants to appeal to more than just its main audience, then a cut-and-dried localization doesn't cut it. There's a lot of appeal beyond Muramasa's delicious visuals that's not clearly being represented by Ignition, and there is nothing more irritating to a gamer than a company constantly pushing the visual prowess of a game without having a stellar localization to back it up.
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