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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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?

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u/Paige_Michalphuk Apr 28 '25

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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u/claybine Apr 28 '25

They could've done French Canadian actors then.

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u/jadeismybitch Apr 28 '25

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

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u/claybine Apr 28 '25

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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...

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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.

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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

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '25

This is how accents work, yup :-)

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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.

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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.

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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)