Hi Sup Forums. I have a question that I want answered really fucking bad.
Why didn't the Japanese release of DQVIII on PS2 have an orchestrated soundtrack, but the US release did? I can't think of a single possible reason for this to happen unless they went out of their way to re-do the entire soundtrack just for the US release that they knew nobody was going to buy.
Regardless, Dragon Quest thread
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Every Japanese relerase of Dragon Quest comes out with a MIDI or Synth OST because the fanbase considers it a tradition. The only exception to this was Dragon Quest X, the MMO. Which used orchestrated arrangements of past games. And yes, many fans complained about it.
>I can't think of a single possible reason for this to happen unless they went out of their way to re-do the entire soundtrack just for the US release that they knew nobody was going to buy.
And yet 1.5 million people bought the game. So whoops, clearly people did buy it. But this is hardly the first Dragon Quest game to get unique changes in the west. The very first Dragon Quest game had a complete overhaul where they used the game engine of Dragon Quest III to remake Dragon Quest I. As well as UI improvements, adjusted EXP rates and dialect changes. Similar changes have been made to some games over the years. Though this obsession with changes led to crap like DQIV on DS and the removal of orchestrated music on the 3DS remake of Dragon Quest VIII.
Dragon Quest as an institution vexes me. It's like it and it's fans are being as purposely ludite as possible.
>they knew nobody was going to buy.
They packaged it with a demo of FFXII, the got britbongs to do the VA (see how well that worked for XBC), and Hero literally goes super sandman. They new what they were doing when marketing this game, the orchestrated soundtrack was icing on an already western-style honeypot.
Think of it this way. They still use the old NES sounds for coins, mushrooms and fireballs in Mario games, even on the Wii U and Switch. Because they're classic noises everyone loves. Japan feels the same way about the music and sound effects in Dragon Quest. We in the west however mostly started playing the game in the PS2 era, so we don't have all that nostalgia for the old sounds. Well I do since I started with Dragon Warrior on NES, but most don't.
>They new what they were doing when marketing this game
Then promptly ignored marketing the future games. Brilliant job Squeenix!
I've actually always wondered the same thing.
This is 100% plausible. I'm inclined to believe it.
Does this mean that there's a chance that the US release of DQXI on PS4 will be orchestrated? That's really all I want.
And I still find it hard to believe that they orchestrated the entire soundtrack purely for their tiny (in comparison) non-Japan audience, seems asinine. A shitton of work for a feature that's not super marketable.
Don't forget they also remade the entire menu system for the west.
Every DQ game, since the very beginning, eventually has its soundtrack orchestrated at least once. Sugiyama, the series composer, just likes to arrange and conduct his music for the series for orchestra, and he only does so a while after each game's initial release in Japan.
It just so happened that he managed to orchestrate the soundtrack for VIII before or during its localization, and the people behind the localization thought it would be a good idea to use it, especially since it was on PS2 and the original release had sequenced music, similar MIDI.
Considering how radio silent they are being, there are probably doing more than just that.
I can understand sound effects, but the music? Even the Mario series uses orchestrated music now.
oh okay this is the answer I wanted. I didn't know that sugiyama orchestrating every soundtrack after the games' release was a thing. thanks.
Yeah, new menus and voice acting wouldn't surprise me at all. I kinda hope they don't add VA though after VIII's kinda sucked. The acting wasn't horrible, but everyone talked slow as fuck and I never bothered to wait to hear them speak lines I already read on screen.
>Does this mean that there's a chance that the US release of DQXI on PS4 will be orchestrated? That's really all I want.
It's possible. Especially if SquareEnix is actually listening to the fans who post on their website. But considering they've ignored almost everything else the fans ask for, I wouldn't get my hopes up.
>And I still find it hard to believe that they orchestrated the entire soundtrack purely for their tiny (in comparison) non-Japan audience, seems asinine. A shitton of work for a feature that's not super marketable.
Every DQ game gets an orchestrated remix (called the Symphonic Suite). Long before DQVIII came out, every DQ game had one. The games composer is credited with having the first official orchestrated remix of any game OST with the Symphonic Suite of Dragon Quest I+II, done by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, made in the late 80s. And has been redone a few times, this latest one by the composers own orchestra:
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This same composer went on to organize a yearly arrangement of other series getting orchestrated music. He basically pioneered orchestrated renditions of video games.
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When it comes to Dragon Quest XI, it is going to come out way after the Symphonic Suite for DQXI will release in Japan. Which is what happened with Dragon Quest VIII. As for incorporating it into the game, it really isn't that hard. You're literally just swapping sound files, which a decent coder could do in a couple hours. The problem when it came to DQVIII was they also incorporated audio files that weren't in the Japanese game. The Japanese game having no voices. These were coded poorly in the western version of Dragon Quest VIII and caused lag in the game that could lead to 5-10 second delays before cutscenes and battles. Which weren't present in the Japanese version. Hopefully DQXI will skip the voices.
Mario games still usually have throwback levels that use the old music. But yes, they do use more orchestrated music. Dragon Quest is trying to do this more and more with the remakes and the MMO. Japanese fans are complaining, but they still buy the games.
The better option would be to just have an option to switch the music.
It's not event he sound though. Basic quality of life improvements have made over the years are ignore to be as purposely OLD school as possible. Im half surprised you don't have to open the menu to start conversations.
And what kills me the most is, Ive seen other games get called backwards and dated for so much as having turn based combat but DQ because of it's name is praised for being nostalgic?
>Basic quality of life improvements have made over the years are ignore to be as purposely OLD school as possible.
Like what?
>Im half surprised you don't have to open the menu to start conversations.
Yeah, because they changed that with Dragon Quest II on the Famicom. And for good reason. Yuji Horii basically changes stuff when it will improve gameplay. Not just change for the sake of change. Having characters automatically climb stairs was an obvious thing that would improve the flow gameplay.
>And what kills me the most is, Ive seen other games get called backwards and dated for so much as having turn based combat but DQ because of it's name is praised for being nostalgic?
Still using turn based combat is the biggest criticism people have against Dragon Quest after Akira Toriyama's art style. But yet these two things are some of the biggest draws for the games. Think how many Final Fantasy fans are longing for the days of ATB because all the ARPG stuff is getting old. Dragon Quest kept this. Which might be why so many people in Japan (and even the west) come back to the series.
That being said, Dragon Quest has a ton of games without turn based combat. It just does that in the spin offs. Heroes, Slime, Swords and others all did ARPG.
>Like what?
Hmmm.. let me see if anyone in your party needs to be resurrected
Oh no! so and so needs to be resurrected? Would you like me to resurrect X? It will cost Y Gold.
..... so and so is no longer dead.
Do you need anything else?
Yes or no
Hmmmm le me check if anyone is dead
OH NO ANOTHER CHARACTER IS DEAD!
And so on and so forth.
Fuck you can't even check how much XP you need at a glance.
>We in the west however mostly started playing the game in the PS2 era
Just because you're 12 doesn't mean everyone is. Most in the West remember Dragon Warrior.
So your problem is that you cant do things instantly? You have to actually interact with characters and you know...get into the role of the character your playing?
>Fuck you can't even check how much XP you need at a glance.
Pretty sure every game since VIII has had that right on the attribute page. The earlier games, you are correct. But they gave you a skill to check it. This was only really annoying in Dragon Quest VI and VII. But their remakes on DS/3DS added it in.
>They still use the old NES sounds
No, they do not. Get your ears checked, those sounds are all produced obvioiusly differently on each platform, not once have they sampled the NES sound chip.
Helps if you read the whole post. I specifically said I started with Dragon Warrior on NES. This doesn't change that the vast majority of people in the west started with a game on PS2 or later.
>its the exact same sound but reproduced through a new MIDI chip
>wah its technically not an NES sound! Get it right!
Man, people are really looking for any way to prove someone wrong.
I bought it and its one of my favoirite soundtracks. sooooo, up your ass, faggot :D
You ought to be embarressed being so wrong. You're even calling it MIDI.
I'm not talking about unnoticable technicalities here, I'm talking about a mistake you'd need to be as deaf as a post to make.
The composer is a xenophobic cunt, that's why the 3DS release has orchestral in Japan only and everyone else got midi, of course if you hacked your 3DS you can just swap out the music files no problem or download a modded version with the orchestral version included.
How can he be embarrassed when he doesn't know why he's wrong? Also you keep claiming he needs to check his hearing when its obviously a lack of hardware knowledge. It sounds like you're the stupid one here...
I thought it was because the composer was a nationalist and didn't want his orchestral versions distributed outside of Japan.
>The composer is a xenophobic cunt
Looks like its time to prove you wrong for the 20th time. Which you won't reply to.
>writes music based on European composers
>got the London Philharmonic to do his music
>has toured the world multiple times
>wrote music for western media
>The only comment Sugiyama has ever said about any foreign group was about China
So how is he xenophobic? Especially against the west?
>that's why the 3DS release has orchestral in Japan only and everyone else got midi
Sugiyama doesn't have the power to block a games music. He sold the rights to the company already. And if your logic worked, we wouldn't have gotten the orchestrated music for the PS2 over a decade before. It's also bunk because the Japanese localization team admitted to being the ones who made the decision to change the music.
Is it fun being proven wrong? Is that why you post this in every DQ thread?
Then why did DQVIII, Swords and other games have orchestrated music?
>proven wrong
>no source
good going chump
I'm playing though DQ11 and it's pretty grim dark. I don't remember DQ being this dark. It has suicides, kids watching death, a near extinction of a species.
they gave the western release Orchestrated OST and voice acting because they know it's sort of a "requirement" in the west
Japan loves Dragon Quest's video gamey charm and it's one of the things that sets it apart there from other rpgs like Final Fantasy. They even completely remade DQ11 in SNES sprites for the 3ds as an optional artstyle.
Kind of like that guy provided a source? You can just read the wiki page for Sugiyama and get everything I mentioned in my post except about the Japanese localization for DQVIII 3DS. That's more of a source than this guy ever gives.
Dragon Quest gets pretty dark in other games. DQIII has whole towns being killed and an Elf queen who let her daughter die for marrying a human, Dragon Quest V is just one big fucked up chain of events with the only upside being marriage, DQVII has acid rain that turns people to stone and a four sided love story where everyone loses, etc.
Hardware knowledge is irrelevant. It doesn't sound the same. It sounds very obviously different. Not just a little.
The sounds in the Japanese game sound pretty close to the original sounds. That's the point. Are you sure you aren't listening to the western release of a DQ game and comparing it to the NES games? Because the western version of the games from PS2 and on changed a lot of the sounds from the Japanese games.
The dude was originally talking about Mario sounds, but it does equally apply to DQ sounds that I have heard. Admittedly this does not include the Japanese DQ8. I can tell you that the sounds used in the PC version of DQ10 are most certainly not NES-like.
>So your problem is that you cant do things instantly? You have to actually interact with characters and you know...get into the role of the character your playing?
Fuck you. There's a difference between interacting and busy work. You're not ROLE PLAYING by sitting through the same message X amount of times. If you walk into a church carrying three coffins then the asshole of a priest should be able to see me carrying all my dead pals in one go. This is bull shit and only one example of bullshit.
>The earlier games, you are correct. But they gave you a skill to check it
Yeah, you know what every other game gave me? A NOT SHIT STATUS SCREEN!
The image you posted is literally the exact same amount of information the attributes page in any DQ game gives you. Then they give you additional screens for classes, skills and EXP.
>the West
You mean in America. 8 was the first release in Europe.
Thats japan for you. Flip phones are still very popular over there they despise change.
2017 is not over yet, they can still release news.
I was thinking of playing Dragon Quest XI once it comes out in America.
Do these games follow a story from the first game or do all games have their own story like Final Fantasy?
I want to hold hands with Jessica
so who did you marry in DQV, Sup Forums?
I,II and III are linked, same with IV,V,VI but they all have their own story so you can play them in any order. XI is apparently linked to the first three games but I doubt it's going to be a problem.