Producer Naoki Yoshida has provided a new update on the highly anticipated Final Fantasy XVI during a two-hour live stream, commenting on the voice and motion capture of the next mainline entry in the storied franchise and stating they are prioritizing the English dub.
Yoshida, also known as YoshiP, was present on the YouTube channel WasyaganaTV, a channel hosted by games journalist Mafia Kajita and seiyuu Yuichi Nakamura. The stream consisted of Yoshida playing Final Fantasy XIV with the channel's host. During the stream, the conversation became focused on the dubbing process of Final Fantasy XVI, where Yoshida said that the studio is focusing on the English dub first, with full motion capture being done at the same time as the English voice capture. All translated quotes are provided by DuelShockers.
"We’re using facial capture, so later on, we won’t have to adjust by hand each of the faces during cutscenes. And it’s full capture, as in, the motion capture actors are also doing the voice acting simultaneously. Well, we’re not doing it for every single cutscene though. But anyway, that’s why English dubbing has progressed the most. The Japanese dubbing will start soon.”
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During the stream, Yoshida also touched on his approach to voice recording sessions while producing Final Fantasy XIV and the reason why he sticks to a rule of never attending them.
"I’m a scenarist myself, so I know that if I go, I’ll step into the writers’ shoes. I don’t wanna do that out of respect for them. And I’m both the director and producer of the game. It’ll be confusing if I was there and gave the seiyuu some instructions on top of the writers."
This rule has carried over to Final Fantasy XVI as well. "I’m not attending the recordings either," Yoshida said, "because I’m not the game’s scenarist. During the scenario-focused meetings we’ve had, we already had a lot of discussions like 'this line would be better that way, to show protagonist Clive’s psychology' and those remarks are taken into account during recordings.”
While no release date has been announced, the game will release exclusively on PlayStation 5. You can watch the live stream with Yoshia below