r/JRPG • u/Marinebiologist_0 • Apr 27 '25

News Clair Obscur has achieved the highest concurrent player rate ever for a JRPG on Steam.

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Incredible numbers, this doesn't even include the Xbox Gamepass player count. The last time I remember a JRPG getting this level of attention was Persona 5 and NieR Automata in 2017. It'll be interesting to see how massive Persona 6 will be, if it launches day 1 on all major platforms.

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299

u/REDNOOK Apr 27 '25

The French people with British accents kills me. I'm utterly addicted to this game though.

132

u/FireVanGorder Apr 27 '25

It’s got a certain 90s Hollywood “foreign” movie charm, where any movie set in another country just gave everyone British accents to make it sound “exotic”

It’s goofy but the game is so stylized that it works imo

32

u/andrazorwiren Apr 27 '25

Shit, try 2020s Hollywood, Gladiator 2 did that shit too (among others)

16

u/BaroqueNRoller Apr 28 '25

Ridley Scott does not give a shit about accents and it's frustrating. Sometimes he gets away with it (The Duellists) and other times it's another reason the movie isn't great (Napoleon).

19

u/SirWigglesVonWoogly Apr 27 '25

Except for Denzel. They were just like, meh.

12

u/The-Hammer92 Apr 27 '25

According to Denzel that decision was made to show he wasn't from Rome and was a foreigner who rose up

3

u/moffattron9000 Apr 28 '25

Which is why him as the villain did not work at all.

5

u/LedsFolly Apr 28 '25

That movie has got to be one of the worst things I’ve ever watched. Genuinely felt like I wasted my time.

2

u/andrazorwiren Apr 28 '25

If I had watched it alone or with one other person and expected a good movie, I’d probably have a similar opinion.

Thankfully some buddies of mine went on a whim while it was in theaters and that made it totally worth it. Clowning on it with a group of people was awesome. Some of Denzel’s line deliveries were just…incredible. And the CGI was shockingly dated.

But yeah, definitely the stupidest movie I’ve seen in a long time, and I saw The Accountant 2 today haha

1

u/shamshire Apr 29 '25

I'm curious as to what cgi you're referring to? I just watched it last night and I thought it was pretty damn good albeit a little long (didn't see the first gladiator)

1

u/andrazorwiren Apr 29 '25

The whole movie is a CGI fest where they might’ve been better off focusing their huge budget on a couple of big scenes instead of spreading it through the entirety of the movie, but the most egregiously out of place scenes were the monkey fight and the naval battle, particularly the sharks which honestly felt like they came out of an early 2010s/late 2000s movie.

Taste is subjective so if you liked it then that’s all that matters, but I put “gladiator 2 cgi” into google for the first time just now and the predictive text showed me that my friends and I were hardly the only people bothered by it lol

1

u/shamshire Apr 30 '25

You should watch the corridor digital video on it! It's what got me to watch the movie in the first place. The boats at the beginning and castle were all physical sets, and so were the boats at the naval battle! Unfortunately they couldn't use real sharks, that would be a bit dangerous lolol

22

u/IAteTheDonut Apr 27 '25

It's funny reading this as a British person. I feel like you guys are only noticing it like that because to you "British" is a different foreign accent.

If they localized it with American voice actors would you guys see that as a "neutral" accent?

3

u/Paige_Michalphuk Apr 28 '25

No, they’d be French characters speaking French sometimes in an American accents.

1

u/ChaosKeeshond Apr 29 '25

Purely from a production POV, the characters being voiced by Brits makes total sense too. A game developed in France can either source its talent from the other side of a glorified river or... another continent.

1

u/Threat_Level_Mid May 05 '25

Yeah, if it was all RP then I'd get the criticism, but accents are quite diverse and cover a lot of UK regions, hearing a lot of Yorkshire, Scouse, Irish in the audio logs.

2

u/FireVanGorder Apr 27 '25

Oh yeah it’s for sure a very American-centric bit of charm, but if it was like a generic American accent with French words tossed in I don’t think it would sound that weird at all to me since I grew up with people throwing around random Italian words in conversation all the time

1

u/claybine Apr 28 '25

They could've done French Canadian actors then.

1

u/jadeismybitch Apr 28 '25

lol no ??? It’s not even the same language

-2

u/claybine Apr 28 '25

It's the same language. It mixes an American accent and French pronunciation for the game, it could work

3

u/jadeismybitch Apr 28 '25

lol buddy, I’m French. Trust me it’s not the same language. A LOT of words and expressions are different and the accent is massively different. It wouldn’t work at all.

3

u/Gahault Apr 28 '25

That's not what "not the same language" means, l'ami. The word you're looking for is dialect; Canadian French is a dialect of French, but they are very much the same language.

1

u/jadeismybitch Apr 28 '25

That’s just not true ?? They have the same roots yes, from the 17th century, so 500 years ago … that French it’s based on is not anything close to current French. It’s like saying French and Spanish are dialects of latin

1

u/Le_Nabs Apr 28 '25

Je suis québécois, arrête avec ça. C'est du français avec un accent différent et quelques expressions spécifiques, mais c'est la même langue -_-

EDIT ; That dude's weird, Québécois French is French with a different accent and some regional specificities, idk what the fuck they're on about to say it's not the same language...

0

u/claybine Apr 28 '25

I'm aware, but some tweaks doesn't make it a different language. That's like saying the English and American versions of English are different languages. It would work better than them providing English voices, just a suggestion.

2

u/jadeismybitch Apr 28 '25

But that’s my point , that is NOT a fair comparison. French and French Canadian are much more different than English vs American. It would be a good alternative for Canadians, and people who think the two languages are in any way close. Any native French speaking wouldn’t want that

-2

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '25

This is how accents work, yup :-)

13

u/IAteTheDonut Apr 27 '25

Right...but what I'm getting is that the British people sitting here playing American accented localized games of JRPGs aren't like, "Woah, so quirky! This character is Japanese but the voice actor has an American accent, so strange!

Like, yeah, one of the English speaking accents would have to localize the character saying "I'm Yosuke Hanamura from Inaba."

It just always seems like Americans take our accents as a sort of quirky made up language. Or a gimmick.

There was a lot of confused discourse around Xenoblade's localization (and a bunch more since it seems British VA's are getting a lot more work these days) from Americans. Like saying the British accents took them out of it for some reason. But us over here in Europe have never complained about the English localizations all being American.

5

u/thrilldigger Apr 28 '25

Like saying the British accents took them out of it for some reason.

That's crazy talk! The British accents really made that game's VO work for me.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '25

I think you're right about that, and I'd guess it's to do with American culture being hegemonic, but also cultural perceptions of Europe / England and their accents.

Souls games do the same thing: almost all their VA is British, and from a North American perspective (and maybe Japanese idk) it gives the characters a kind of 'old nobility' or 'lost medieval aristocracy' vibe that adds to what those games are going for, which is kind of funny from the perspective of a British person (and of course it's usually a pretty subtle kind of Londoner/southeast accent, and the perception would be uhhh very different if they used VA from Liverpool or something :P)

2

u/Argh3483 Apr 28 '25 edited Apr 28 '25

That’s not 90s Hollywood, that’s today Hollywood too, it fucking pisses me off, particularly when some characters always turn into British McBritface

-1

u/Felagoth Apr 28 '25

Maybe it is because American voice actors don't want to go in another continent to voice for a new videogame. It makes more sense for a little French studio to have European actors, and, in Europe, those who speak English are the Brits

Maybe I am wrong and maybe it was to feel exotic for the Americans idk, but I like this other theory

1

u/FireVanGorder Apr 28 '25

I mean… most of Europe also speak English. You’re telling me they couldn’t have found a bunch of French VAs to speak English with French accent?

My comment also wasn’t suggesting anything was done intentionally. Just mentioning what it made me think of when I started playing

2

u/najustpassing Apr 28 '25

Yes they could but then I would not have Shadowheart once again.

2

u/Argh3483 Apr 28 '25

Most of Europe does not speak English well enough to work as anglophone voice actors

A large percentage of Europeans can hold a conversation in English, but that’s not the same thing as being fluent

1

u/Felagoth Apr 28 '25

I think the english speaking world wouldn't like to hear French people speaking english. French voice actors act in French in general, they have no experience in playing in english, and the audience would certainly prefer to hear native speakers (and it gives them actors they know, which is good for the promo)

12

u/Illustrious_Donkey61 Apr 27 '25

Just like Jean Luc Picard

3

u/Mr_Pogi_In_Space Apr 29 '25

The most British Frenchman in the 24th Century

15

u/Atralis Apr 28 '25

The key thing to realize is that the French don't hear a thick foreign accent when they speak to eachother.

The plot has the main characters speaking to eachother in their shared native language.

Do you want that to be shown on screen as French actors speaking to eachother in thickly accented English?

Do you want that to be shown as English speaking voice actors hamming it up with their best fake French accents the whole game?

Or do you want the dub to be native speakers of whichever language is being dubbed simply speaking to one another in their own language without hamming it up putting on a foreign accent?

4

u/Thrasy3 Apr 28 '25

But all actual Japanese RPGs dub their games into English with thick Japanese accents right?

8

u/arsenics Apr 27 '25

it's annoying cause I like the english voice actors quite a lot but all the random french expletives take me out of it so much; it just sounds ridiculous

4

u/excelsis27 Apr 28 '25

Doubly so if you speak French. I've never played a game in French because it always felt off to me, but I ended up switching to the French dub because of that.

9

u/OGBRedditThrowaway Apr 27 '25

It's even more ridiculous in the French dub since the subtitles are the same between the two. So you've got French profanity written verbatim. It's definitely a weird choice.

21

u/AkaT27 Apr 27 '25

I don't understand how is that weird to hear French people say French insults?

9

u/OGBRedditThrowaway Apr 27 '25 edited Apr 27 '25

What I mean is that because the two dubs use the same subtitles, there are many instances where the French dub will use profanity and the subtitles just show the French word instead of translating it.

I don't know if you've ever heard French people talk, but they're very...colorful. I just think it's a weird choice to randomly censor profanity in a game that's intrinsically French.

6

u/AkaT27 Apr 27 '25

Oh ok sorry I misunderstood

1

u/sagevallant Apr 27 '25

I am a little bothered they're put the French accent on B names but not on the curse words.

2

u/iknowkungfubtw Apr 27 '25

Yeah it was the same thing in Assassins Creed Unity (Both from french speaking developers). I don't get why they don't simply have the characters have french accents. It's as if they are ashamed of it or something.

13

u/Firaxyiam Apr 27 '25

I mean, what people call "french accent" is usually the "yeah, I'm not even gonna try to pronounce that shit correctly" accent and is often exagerrated to the point of caricature, so I'm good with thzt myself

1

u/annanz01 May 01 '25

And actual Native French accents are much stronger than those you here in films and tv made for an English speaking audience. If they were to speak English with their natural accents many would find it incomprehensible.

5

u/bauul Apr 28 '25

Reminds me of the Chernobyl mini series. Mostly English cast speaking with English accents despite all playing Russians and Ukrainians.

The logic the show runner gave was that you're likely to get better performances out of the actors when they don't have to worry about putting on an accent that isn't there's. Plus it avoids the issue of having some good and some bad accents across actors making for an inconsistent experience.

1

u/AlexHD Apr 28 '25

There's a few things at play. There's the trope of British accents being used to indicate 'historic' or 'exotic' compared to American accents which we have become so accustomed to in historical drama and fantasy that it would have sounded weird to have French accents (yes, even in a French game).

There's also being able to hire popular English VA talent to help promote the game.

And remember that localisation is done to make media accessible to its intended audience, not to replicate the origin culture. Most anime is in American accents rather than English speaking Japanese accents because of this. French accents would not be as accessible as British ones to a worldwide audience.

1

u/iknowkungfubtw Apr 28 '25

French accents would not be as accessible as British ones to a worldwide audience.

Sure, but then again, studios like Ubisoft went on and adopted the setting/country's accent for pretty all of their Assassin's Creed titles except for the one set in France. No one complained about Ezio and crew having thick Italian accents, if anything, it added to the immersion.

1

u/Francescok Apr 27 '25

I like that some “putaine” and “merde” didn’t translate from french.

1

u/orbjo Apr 27 '25

That’s how we make Les Miserables movies.

1

u/BaroqueNRoller Apr 28 '25

Seems pretty par for the course as far as English actors go.

1

u/HardCorwen Apr 28 '25

yeah game's a 2/10 because of it

1

u/claybine Apr 28 '25

Tbf like AC Unity, French accents are thick and I don't think I could spend 40 hours listening to that, no offense.

1

u/jadeismybitch Apr 28 '25

Watch it in French. You’re welcome

1

u/kurisu_1974 Apr 28 '25

I set the voices to French just like I would set them to Japanese in a Japanese game, and it's been great.

1

u/porncollecter69 Apr 28 '25

Same. I’m shocked how nostalgic it is. Feels like FF7–10 but for modern adult audiences and souls like play elements.

1

u/Desideratae Apr 28 '25

You can play it in French

1

u/lateubabrigitte Apr 29 '25

I don't understand... it's not doubled with american actors ?

1

u/pastadudde Apr 30 '25

Assassin's Creed : Unity says hi lol

1

u/niconois May 01 '25

I mean that's the principle of dubbing, when we watch american movies in france they speak french with a french accent :D

1

u/ClearGameDev May 01 '25

Why not play with the original VO?

1

u/Threat_Level_Mid May 05 '25

I really like the accents (as a Brit), especially as they use a lot of regional accents (North West/Midlands), similar to Elden Ring and Baldurs Gate. However, having the English roleplay as Frenchies is pretty funny. Putain!

1

u/JesusForTheWin Apr 27 '25

if the original voice was in French I'd love to play it that way.

4

u/ThePorkman Apr 27 '25

If Jennifer English wasn't in the English dub, I would've done the native French

1

u/Realistic_Village184 Apr 27 '25

It is! It has a great original French voice cast.

8

u/Firaxyiam Apr 27 '25

Tbf, even as a french, I can't just pass on having Charlie Cox, Jennifer English, Ben Starr and damn Andy Serkis in my game, no matter how great the french cast is.

Pretty funny to hear Charlie Cox say "Poutaing" tryong to say putain tho, sounds like the heaviest case of Marseilles accent in history

1

u/Realistic_Village184 Apr 27 '25

Same! I speak French (as a second language), and I just love the English voice cast too much to have it any other way.

They really did struggle with putain. There's a behind the scenes clip I saw where the voice actors had to say it so many times to get it right lol

I will go French vocals and written text for NG+ though!

3

u/Prestigious_Low_9802 Apr 27 '25

No the original cant wasnt French but English. As a French I really love the English cast, love when English say « putain » « putain de merde » « mon ami » 😂

2

u/Realistic_Village184 Apr 28 '25

One of us might be confused. There are two original casts - one is French and the other is English. Neither is more "original" than the other.

1

u/Prestigious_Low_9802 Apr 28 '25

The lip sync was recorded in english and the french version was made after the english lip sync. That's make the english version the original and the french the dub. And to be honest you lost so many things if you play in french. And the french actor... as a french we all know them too well, they have dub so many game that's not really interesting anymore to hear a french cast.