They had the actors delivering their lines and doing motion capture like a real play or TV show. The results speak for themselves. They filmed it all in California, which is why there's no Japanese audio track. It was WAY ahead of its time.
There's a reason for that, this game is one of the first games to ever use motion capture. What they basically did was basically use actual theatre actors and fully act out the scenes in a green screen and those were converted fully into the game. That's why the voice acting is so good, they weren't just recording the lines in a booth they were actually acting out the scenes.
Can't imagine how the director convinced the company to let him do that back then. I have heard about the voice acting of the Resident Evil, which was also develped around that time, Capcom just hired some random exchange students. And also the famous the House of The Dead 2, Sega hired professional voice actors, but they just sent the script to each voice actors and demanded them to finish their record. The voice actors didn't get to know or see others, they even didn't know what game they were working on.
I absolutely adore the natural delivery between the characters, how they can interrupt and talk over each other. It's like a stage play and exceedingly rare to see from games back then, especially a japanese RPG. And it's all elevated through the use of expressive motion capture. Amazing.
Yeah exactly! And the best thing about mocap back then is that a lot of times they had the voice actors be the motion actors as well, so all of it is synced really well.
Yeah, the banter was surprisingly good. In my experience, quality things like characters interuppting each other is missing in many modern games. Makes a big difference compared to individually recorded voicelines
Batman: TAS also used to have the voice actors record together like a play, and it always made it much better. I feel like more games/animations should do that.
I love that even though the game director was a composer, he jammed so much goodness into this game that he only had space for a handful of tracks (which all slap).
Oh man, this era for Hiroki Kikuta was great. There was that one other OST on the PS1 by him, Soukagi I think it was? That one is so, so amazing. The game itself is just mediocre but goddamn the music is peak.
The voice work in this game is so so gorgeous; calling it just ok feels criminal. It has a beautiful quality to it that feels both like watching a stage performance and an older film. There's so much life in it, not only compared to voice work at the time, but even voice work now. It truly stands out.
Yea I literally had to give this video a thumbs down after hearing such a blatant disregard for the voice acting. Few PS1 games if any had better voice acting.
I didn't expect " Oh hey, the nitroglycerin's ready" to be a phrase permanently branded into my brain to mean "let's have some extreme tonal whiplash", but here we are
Shame we never got the Koudelka sequels Kikuta envisioned. And also that I never knew of the original game's existence, even though it was released in the PAL regions. Glad to have you and Majulaar cover it to bring it to my attention. Hopefully you'll cover some other Sacnoth games too, but for now thank you very much for this video and keep up the good work!
Thank you! I also wish we could have seen Kikuta’s other game ideas too. I was trying to dig up more info on them, but what I mentioned in the video was all I could find. I’ll get to Shadow Hearts. I want to start doing more RPGs. They’re actually my favorite genre, and it was fun making this video.
@@dungeonchill I am curious to see you cover Shadow Hearts and more RPGs in general, since they're my favourite genre as well! With Capcom's Breath of Fire 3 making me fall in love with the genre and even forcing a little Risax to learn some English.
I love the performances in this game. They have this sort of theatre-actor naturalism that you don't really get with more recent, professional voiceover actors. I didn't know about the The Name of the Rose connection, that makes me love this game even more.
As a Welshman myself, I've learnt some Welsh shit I didn't know about. But then you'd be surprised how little some Welsh people know about their own country. And when I say some, I mean most. Cool vid for a cool game. Can't wait for the day you cover the Panzer Dragoon games.
He posted a pic of him having all 3 Panzer Dragoon Saturn games along with Racing Lagoon and the hot air balloon game on PS1 about a month ago on twitter talking about his summer is booked…so hopefully those are the next games we get vids for! I think (I hope) Racing Lagoon is next considering he mentioned the next video being about a game in Yokohama. I took that as a hint to Racing Lagoon
A fun fact about Sara: She's the 7th cousin of the late Bill Paxton (they're related through a guy named Samuel Paxton.) Bill was also the great nephew of Mary Paxton Keeley, who was a prominent journalist!
Yeah not really. That isn't to say it doesn't look good, but most later PS1 games are of similar visual quality. Especially like this, when they used pre-rendered backgrounds which left more space for the models to use for polygons. I also really wouldn't compare it to early PS2; the 6th console generation saw the largest technological leap to this day.
Great job conveying the literary aspects and narrative of the game, came through stronger than some other videos I've seen, and thanks for the book recc!
Just need a new Accursed Farms Does Dungeon Chill reside within the game dungeon? Is it on the same floor as Civvie11 or in the asylum wing with Grimbeard? Maybe Majuular knows... _writes expanded universe youtuber fanfiction_
Charlotte the Girl Ghost was voiced by Sara Paxton (to those who grew up watching Aquamarine, or to Horror fans who watched The Last House on the Left [2009]and The Innkeepers or to those who watched chickflicks like: Sleepover or Sydney White. She was also on that Superhero Movie with Drake Bell and recast Marnie on the third Return to Halloween Town).
A late Victorian era Welshwoman, who sounds like she grew up in New York, accompanied by an Englishman and an Irishman with accents originating from somewhere in New England, was certainly a novel premise.
Honestly not surprising. English VA's from the UK were fairly rare at the time, and a lot of the English language localization studios were in the United States.
Same as music. Once was made by artists that gave consumers something they could never expect. Now is made by corporations that just want to convince shareholders they know what consumers want, scamming them out of their money and just releasing generic, uninspired, broken shit.
@@KaijuAKDart has had a very long relationship with greed. There's way more good music than there ever was. There are more independent artists than ever.
Or at all. I can't think of a single "modern audience" game that has elicited any feelings in me besides non-stop laughter. Wait, Returnal. That's one.
I wish there was so lengthy footage somewhere on how the 3d elements of those games where made. It is so difficult to find stuff about that that is not just 5 seconds check the montior here, 2 seconds check out the monitor there...actually, come to think of it, it would be so cool if ANY bigger developer made like a livestream of the creation process of one of their games, with fixed cameras switching regularly throught the office(s), because it would be cool and also so the public can understand how difficult it is. But they just don't want to show the crunch.
You know what’s kind of decent? There’s footage of Takayoshi Sato making the cutscenes for Silent Hill 2. I think there’s also a bit of him doing the SH1 cutscenes too. It’s not a full sit down with him while he’s working, but it shows off more than just a few seconds. Pretty sure it’s on YT somewhere if you look up Silent Hill development or search his name.
@@dungeonchill Thank you so much for that response. What I like to look at it is the demo video for the 3dmax Kinetix software from 1996. It is pretty lengthy and wonderful. I just never want to loose appreciation for the art.
A lot of stuff was made on dedicated hardware like the SGI Indigo then rendered and imported into the game. Just search up 90s 3D modeling and you'll find information
Koudelka deserves a remake and so does the Shadow Hearts franchise. The characters were compelling and believable since they had actual actors voice act the characters. The entire development behind Koudelka is fantastic. It has great atmosphere, very memorable things going for, the only negative thing I can point out is that the gameplay can be rather lackluster and slow.
The problem being: what if they remake those games but don't want to spend too much time or money? Or something even worse happens like with RE3? Remakes are good in theory but they can be a curse as much as a blessing.
@@magnaremora Never heard of it before, judging by the Steam page it looks like a good game but uh... not sure it can really be called a spiritual successor. Unless it's supposed to be like Book of Memories but good. Most comparisons are saying Hades.
@@greenhowie So, it's a bit complicated, but Penny Blood (the main game) is very much a spiritual successor to Shadow Hearts that was funded on Kickstarter. However, while working on the game they released a "spin-off" rougelike starring the main game's villain squad, which is what's on Steam.
I remember watch a specific let’s play of this over and over as a kid. The player was a really fun guy and made the game much more engaging through the long combat and exploration sequences. I hope he’s well.
Speaking of Parasite Eve, I would be thrilled to see you do a video on Third Birthday. I honestly believe it's extremely hated for the wrong reasons and is an actual work of genius.
Just downloaded a PS1 Emulator some days ago, I didn't grow up with one (Born in 2004), but I have always had an obsession with PS1 games and PS2 games. Thank you for showcasing these games to add to my gameplay list!
The combination of mocapped actors also voicing their lines at the same time is so neat. No other game that I know of has done this since. There has been plenty of mocapped games after, (LA Noir for example) but none with the static camera, stage play style. Same deal with Vagrant Story and its facial expressions done entirely with animated textures.
Roger Bacon explains that he's the most powerful of warlocks, which is implied to be how he retained his soul... he just has that kind of power and magic. Which is why he can't do it for anyone else, it's his own innate powers and control that let him do it, not some random incantation or ritual. Incidentally the REAL Roger Bacon did in fact have the reputation of being a powerful sorcerer and warlock... though he was also an early pioneer of scientific naturalism which probably explained how he knew so much compared to a lot of people blindly following traditional teaching by rote.
I watched the video until 12:40 and stopped. I need to play this. I LOVE Koudelka's personality. It is not one you often see in games. And that is why it is special.
I know you say the voice acting is “fine” or “good”, but I think it deserves much more credit than that The voice work and character animations for this game is spectacular for the era it was made in. I believe they did mocap and also recorded voice lines together, which is why you get that “theatre play” feel where the dialogue feels a bit more natural and they interrupt each other naturally instead of the usual back and forth talking we tend to see in gaming even today.
I'm not a big fan of the style but you're 100% right and credit where it's due. Just watching this video was like watching an off-broadway play. The flow was fantastic even if I didn't much like the style. I don't feel like dungeon under-sold it though, even if you both do lol Great vid, great game. Might play it if I can find the iso
Honestly, I wouldn't say that the voice acting is shaky, quite the contrary. It's theatrical and combined with the low poly deliciously motion captured scenes, it's just a delight.
I swear you did this one already, dang. Love the coverage Kodelka has been getting lately, nice to see it being brought up next to Parasite Eve. Also, Robopon 2 is awesome.
I had the exact same feeling! Thought this was a reupload. But it turns out I watched Majuular do his retrospective on this game like two months ago, and they have similar presentation styles. Which is where I think the feeling of Deja vu came from.
This game was supposed to have 2 or 3 sequels of it's own before Shadow Hearts but it's reception got those cancelled. Edit: Saw this comment before he talked about it in the vid
5:25 "it's never remembered" Me, who spent years of my life looking for the name of this game because I was a child and only saw my uncle fight the final boss, but left such an impact on me I couldn't forget for +20 years: yeah...
The Voi e acting in this is actually really good. Almost like an audio book or radio play, or thester show. There were some mid 2000s ganes on the ps2 that had worse voice acting. The cut scenes also look mocapped. The amount of secondary motion in things like resting arms, counter motion looks natural, no repeating idle animation . This is all during cut scenes, however. Not to mention this game was made by former square employees so the quality is pretty good. This feel really underrated and I'd be happy to see a remakester.
"But Charlotte? She's made her peace and 'flit-flit-flit-flit' gone to heaven!" That is so HUMAN. That's the kind of thing that comes out when someone is truly bitter. I dunno if that was part of the script, it almost feels too in the moment to be anything but improvised.
If I had a nickel for every youtuber who has covered Koudelka I'd have about 4 nickels- but I'm not complaining, love having more people know about this series. Just so weird that multiple ppl all decided to cover it in like a few months of each other. Well more to watch!
1:02:55 I think if you miss to take Koudelka's pendant you can encounter enemy called "black cat". It drops item called "cat's eye" which will protect you from being killed in cut scene same as pendant.
Either clever writing or a very human slip of the tongue. James talks in first person about competing for Elaine with Patrick, then says "it's been so hard to distance from *one's* emotional attachment"- he distances himself by referring to HIS emotional attachment in third person, appealing to the listener to share in the sentiment, ironically so.
one thing that always stuck with me is.... how the horses' front leg animation look f'ed up in some scenes ^^; and Koudelka's hair looks a bit like a noodles. joking aside, the game itself is amazing and has the greatest, most unhinged monster designs. not a fan of edgelord Koudelka herself tho, she sounds so annoying lol.
I was confused why you were pronouncing it that way till I looked it up. I think most people pronounced it "koh-delka" because they misinterpreted it as a Japanese work transliterated weirdly into English. But you've it right; "koo-delka".
I really liked the story but there's one thing I don't understand... Why was Koudelka excommunicated as a kid? It's implied that her powers were normal for her people and she didn't kill her father, just predict his death. If anything, wouldn't they have excommunicated Koudelka's mother for trying to kill her own child?
If you dropped the coomer content you'd probably do better. The whole "sex sells" thing is, like sex, shallow - it gets eyes and initial money flowing but without substance no one stays longer than the night. Your content idea is great imo, I'll watch some of your vids and comment again if I change my mind on that. Your thumbnails are good, again besides the coomer nonsense. You get decent views though so obviously you do you. Also, Portugal is cool af. Last colonial power, held on as long as possible lmao, big respect. 🇵🇹 🤝 🇺🇸
Great video on a subject that doesn't get much love, but deserves this length and detail! Having played Koudelka at release, I remember two things. 1.: Thinking it was for more natural dialogue what Legacy of Kain was for shakespearian dialogue four years prior. 2.: Thinking "OMFG, how I hate with a seething fervor these f&%§ing random encounters every three f&%§ing steps!!!" They completely ruined the experience for me. You had these gorgeous graphics (for the time), evocative locations, great ambience - and then the dreaded wooooshing sound effect plays, the picture gets distorted, and strangely upbeat music comes in. (I remember the game having only two battle tracks, and with the sheer number and length of encounters I grew so sick of them that my brain tortured me with those tunes even with the game turned off! I can't believe you're saying you enjoyed them even after the 100th encounter.) Resi-like exploration in a spooky castle and turn-based combat with tiresomely drawn-out animations just don't mix. Like, at all. Thankfully I got the Xploder codes for turning random encounters off. Only then did I realize what a great horror game this could have been. Such a waste. This could've been a great Resi clone. BTW, in my opinion the voice acting is both horrible and great. Horrible because it's written and directed horribly, mostly in the first hour, and great because as the game progresses and the awfully clichéd character introductions are out of the way, the banter gets better and better. Then out of the blue it gets bad again, comes right back to being entertaining and natrual, and so on. I can't shake the feeling that Hiroki Kikuta must have had help with the script, because both writing and direction can be as inept as they can be really good. Especially considering that natural voice acting was pretty much unheard of back then.
I have to disagree with you on the voice acting front, I thought it was amazing, and in a PS1 game too boot. I was mesmerized by the animations and voice acting in every cutscene and positively giddy every time a new cutscene happened, I couldn't wait. I also didn't have any weapon issues, since both James and Koudelka were my magic users, Edward had more then enough weapons to go around, I had to keep throwing old stuff away since I didn't have any room. I will echo the sentiment that if anyone else wants to play this game, emulate it and use speedup in battle. Do that and you'll have a blast.
Dungeon Chill, you should do a piece on all of the original Playstation Resident Evil games, 1 through 3, maybe early 4 before it came out in full form.
I know some people hate using speedups on emulators, but they make this game so much better in combat lol. Otherwise its a good game but yeah, the combat wasn't what the director intended and was pushed by Square. Its best to just speed the game up and skip it as much as you can. TBH it puts the game down like 1-2 notches to have combat THIS repetitive, slow and plodding (its to the point where I remember forgetting the story a bit and needing to rewatch cutscenes due to the amount of encounters) so I can see how Kikuta just literally left the dev team after release.
Dude...I know PS1 era voice acting is a meme but this game is freaking solid! Impressive even! It has a Shakesperean vibe in the line delivery like the guys were theatre actors, very fitting for the time period! Honestly many PS2 games didn't sound as well as this one and not only in dialogue. Shame the original director never got to see his vision realized with sequels, specially on the soundtrack side of things we may have gotten some more all time gaming classics!
Rude of Roger Bacon not to let Koudelka and Edward use his love hotel UFO that's parked like a half mile away in the ending. As much as I'd have loved the original pitch, these three games are so, so interesting and good. If you play Koudelka *ahem* any way you can, it's a very much improved experience, too, because you can make the battles faster. A remaster with that one function would rule so hard.
Something akin to the recent Chrono Cross remaster would be sufficient. They don’t have to go all FFVII remake. I would even love this for Parasite Eve, Legend of Dragoon or even Vagrant Story.
Maybe Charlotte was modeled on the second daughter of Byron, which like her game counterpart, died in a convent, alone, unloved, only wishing for her father to visit her, even not buried properly due to her illegitimacy. Also "zlato" does not mean "treasure", it means gold, I mean gold is a type of treasure, but the direct translation is gold.
Me and my mom played Koudelka and we even played Shadow Hearts, they were interesting games to say the least. I enjoyed their environments and the settings, but really they did feel slow paced and sometimes you would get lost, I always ended up just going back and playing Parasite Eve.
Good direction and translation can be the difference between bad and great voice acting, sometimes (maybe much of the time) with good actors/translators otherwise. I alwaus think of Pokemon and how they gave the translators single words with zero context and told them to translate them. Led to bad translations in some EU countries, even tho the translators did fine with what they were given. So many FMV games from then had "bad acting" but who knows what the actors were given - maybe no ones lines but themselves, translators given no context or just bad translations given to actors, zero direction in general, no material about characters etc. Direction and such is wildly important and voice actors get the brunt of bad dialogue, which is unfortunate given how many other factors can tank otherwise solid actors and their work.
This was one of your best, bro. Truly an interesting gem of a game and you really did it justice! The voice acting and animations are so well done, actually pretty affecting for a PS1 game.
Honestly the voice acting is pretty good, and the voice actors feel like they are acting in a play infront of each other ,because they talk over each other like a real conversation which is something that almost never happens in video games. So I don't understand you criticism of the voice acting. It's pretty good a bit dramatic yes but pretty good overall.
You’ve entered my clean plate club for amazing long form gaming docs. Alongside Majulaar and Accursed farms. Retail work is killing me and its nice being able to unwind with content like this.
Perhaps in response to Penny Blood which is a sort of spiritual successor to Shadow Hearts being backed, it brought more attention to Shadow Hearts which then brought more attention to Koudelka, that's my theory anyway.
Very fond memories of this one. After watching my friend play it after school I remember I kept wishing I had a copy then one day he pulls it from his book bag and handed to me to borrow without me asking. Good times
My partner and I adored playing through this together, albeit using a guide yo understand general mechanics and building. It's extremely atmospheric, with beautiful art and emotional cutscenes. They actually shot the cutscenes in-person with all the actors so it'd feel more natural, and it really shows. Nothing like it :)
Here, let me exert my knowledge of Slavic when it comes to Koudelka's names. -Zlato is a Slavic word (Croatian, Czech, Slovak, Slovene, and Serbian, other Slavic languages differ slightly) and it doesn't even mean treasure, it means gold. Zlato also wouldn't be used as a name because it's neuter, but we have names Zlata (feminine) and Zlatan (masculine) but they are regionally bound to South Slavic. Zlato is a term of endearment (such as darling), though, so if I heard someone call a person "zlato", I would think they are like "babe, come here", it can be meant sweetly but also in a sexist derogatory way, you feel? Makes me have this headcanon that Koudelka's family were really calling her by a pet name and her real name is some secret third thing. -Her nickname Koudelka is also a word of Slavic origin, this time specifically Czech (which is not a South Slavic language, maybe some other Slavic languages share it but I couldn't find any), koudel translates to tow/oakum and -ka transforms the word into a bit of a pet name, it is used to put stress on how small or cute the thing is, it's mostly used in baby talk, or in some cases to make a feminine version of a previously masculine noun. It's a Czech surname, Koudelka was named after the Czech photographer Josef Koudelka. (It really makes me lament they didn't name her Zlatka, which is a colloquial term for a golden coin and it would fit the -ka trend.) -Iasant doesn't really ring any bells with my knowledge of Slavic. Best I can do is Czech jásat or Slovak jasať, which means to jubilate. Nobody would ever have that as a surname, though, so Iasant probably just sounds cool in Japanese, idk.
Thanks for that info! Judging from how, shall we say, "creatively" Japanese game and anime writers use English a lot of the time, I'm sure they weren't all that careful with the Slavic.
