Final Fantasy XVI’s Japanese dub does not feature lip-syncing

The Final Fantasy franchise has a huge following across the entire world, with fans hailing from all regions of the globe. While the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI will offer multiple language options, the game’s lip-syncing has unfortunately only been tuned for the English voice over – with the studio suggesting that Japanese fans try playing the game in English.

With previous Final Fantasy games, we have seen the team use a range of techniques to achieve accurate lip-syncing across multiple languages. For Final Fantasy XV, the game was developed using Japanese performance capture, with procedural tools being used to adapt the lip-syncing for English. The Final Fantasy VII Remake meanwhile used a combination of procedural tools alongside keyframing to achieve a similar effect. It is therefore interesting to see that XVI will not use any such technologies.

Speaking on why there is no Japanese lip-syncing during a recent pre-launch stream, the team said “we argued back and forth about it, but in the end it would have been too much work,” adding that “most of the lip movements are based on facial capture data.”

Furthermore, the team “recorded the actors’ expressions as well as their voices” making the use of the aforementioned tools much more difficult with the team confirming the fact that “using an AI tool to adjust the lipflaps didn’t produce the right results.”

Speaking to Japanese fans and those who planned to play the game in Japanese, the team concluded by saying (as translated by NoisyPixel) “Now, moving on…ah, yes. English voices! Do try playing with English voices on a second playthrough, perhaps. I have a feeling that you can really appreciate the realism conveyed by the English voices.”

While it is a shame to see a regression in the way multilingual lip-syncing works (or does not work in this case), hopefully the English performance makes up for it. We won’t have long to wait in order to find out.

KitGuru says: What do you think of the team’s statements? Were you planning to play the game in Japanese? Does lip-syncing matter to you? Let us know down below.

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