Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada has hit out at "whining and complaining" fans who repeatedly call for voice samples from the early games to be used in the upcoming Tekken Tag Tournament 2.
Harada's message reveals not only his evident frustration at those who seemingly have little better to do than spam his Twitter feed with the same thing over and over, but also some of the challenges inherent in making a new game in a series that is almost two decades old.
"I believe that, before whining and complaining about everything, you need practice at taking a step back and analysing things objectively," he writes. "And also at being an adult.
"The voice you were listening to was [recorded] 16 years ago, during the PlayStation period. The current generation of consoles are totally different in how they play back sound, both software-wise, and [their] internal circuitry.
"Are you playing games on the same TV you used 16 years ago? What about your speakers? Headphones? I wonder if it will sound the same as [it did] 16 years ago, even with that data."
To make his point, Harada points out that even when his team at Namco Bandai has used the same sample, fans have complained that it doesn't sound the same. Bryan Fury's laugh uses the same voice sample as in the 16-year-old Tekken 3, for instance, but still fans complain that it sounds different to the original.
Some of the actors used, Harada explains, have since retired, or turn down repeated work because their voice has changed in the intervening years. Harada himself voiced Marshall and Forest Law for 15 years, but can no longer do the same voice; a different actor was therefore used in Tekken 6.
"The Tekken series has continued for 17 years," he writes. "The development environment, as well as the environment in which you all play games, has changed. There are so many characters, and we can't keep using the same voice actors.
"I will continue to sincerely comply with fan requests. However, I can't continue to engage the negative ones that, without knowing what you are talking about, or even thinking about what you are saying, blindly repeat 'bring back, bring back, bring back…'
"After this lengthy explanation, I will be quite surprised if there are still people who don't get it. Thanks for understanding, or not understanding. Whatever."
Harada, then, has had enough - the above comes from a man who clearly feels differently then he did last December when, at an industry event in London to promote Street Fighter X Tekken, he said he had learned how to filter out the noise.
"Since the internet is more prevalent now, we do have a lot more opinions and feedback from everyone worldwide, and it might be easy to kind of get panicked by that," he said. "Most of the opinions we get are very subjective; they're always about something that would bring benefit to that particular person.
"We listen. We hear what they're saying. But we don't really act on it." Until now.
Comments
4I would agree with him. He's the professional and knows when he can't give people what they think they want.
The trouble with fanboys (from fighting games to cars to footbal) is that by and large they're a bunch a tits. The ones old enough to remember Tekken 2 are old enough to know better.
Their ears are different now too.
Good for him.