I have a theory regarding the two Tellius Games.

[Pokejedservo]

I do have a theory on the Tellius Games (PoR for the Gamecube, RD for the Wii). For those who know Nintendo didn't really start to use known Animation Voice talent until the early 2010s on the 3DS with games like Kid Icarus Uprising, the Fire Emblem series since Awakening, Project S.T.E.A.M and more. Before aside from a few occasional Pokemon games that would use the voice talent from the Dub of the Anime series if a Nintendo game had any sort of English VA it would be...

A. Done by local Seattle Washington talent (Star Fox)

B. Basically Charles Martinet and maybe some Nintendo Employees (Wario Ware, Mario 64)

Or some sort of mixture of the two. Point is that Nintendo didn't start using more known voice talent in California until the early 2010s. While Awakening and the more recent Fire Emblem games have a nice mix of Anime Dub VA talent (both old & new). While in the mid 2010s Intelligent Systems got a bit more leeway in the English dubs in which Fire Emblem Fates had some VA's known in NA Animation such as Paul Eiding (Col. Roy Campbell from MGS) & EG Daily (Buttercup from PPG). In which in Project S.T.E.A.M they even got known Star Trek TNG alumni Michael Dorn & Wil Wheaton. (Unfortunately S.T.E.A.M was considered to be a flop in which Nintendo did start to lower their budgets for voice talent for better or for worse.)

Anyways while the Tellius games had overly limited releases and had cult fanbases at best in the US. In which both games had fairly minimal dubbing with local Seattle Washington talent (though Lani Minella was in RD). I at times wonder if the Tellius games would've fared better if Nintendo started using known Animation Voice talent a lot sooner than they did. If Path of Radiance had dubbing like Fates and S.T.E.A.M did we might've got certain known folks like say Tim Curry as Ashnard for example. Though rest assured I'm aware that they could've played it safe and use Anime Dub VA talent then which would by no means be a bad thing. Would it have actually helped the Tellius games if they got English dubs like the more recent games did? Who knows... What do you folks think?

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

As cool as it would've been to get A-list actors, or even more widely-known voice talent*, I don't think it would've made any appreciable difference in sales. People weren't not buying the Tellius games because "the voice acting sucks!" They weren't buying Path of Radiance because it came late in the life of an underperforming system. And they weren't buying Radiant Dawn because it was a "hardcore game on a casual system" - oh, and because it was a sequel to a game that sold poorly.

*No disrespect intended to Lani Minella. She has a wide vocal range, that's for sure. Who else can go from Omochao to Micaiah to Pit?

[lenticular]

I pretty much agree with 1st Mate. I'll also say that there just wasn't all that much voice acting in the Tellius games. And the less voice acting is actually there, the less it matters how good, bad or indifferent it is. For modern fully-voiced games, it matters a lot more, but when it's only a few lines in a handful of cutscenes then I don't think that the quality of the voice work is going to move the needle too much unless it's either cataclysmically bad or transcendentally good. It just isn't a big enough part of the game for most people to care about all that much.

[Jotari]

I don't think it would have massively affected sales. Such a small change would have few people coming away recommending others definitely buy the game. You'd have to go full Echoes to get that affect (and even then, I don't think it'd be changing many opinions). Sure, it'd be nice, but it wouldn't really change my overall satisfaction level to a quantifiable degree.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Jotari

[Pokejedservo]

10 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

As cool as it would've been to get A-list actors, or even more widely-known voice talent*, I don't think it would've made any appreciable difference in sales. People weren't not buying the Tellius games because "the voice acting sucks!" They weren't buying Path of Radiance because it came late in the life of an underperforming system. And they weren't buying Radiant Dawn because it was a "hardcore game on a casual system" - oh, and because it was a sequel to a game that sold poorly.

*No disrespect intended to Lani Minella. She has a wide vocal range, that's for sure. Who else can go from Omochao to Micaiah to Pit?

I understand what you mean there, but yes it is true that Path of Radiance was known for being an underperforming game on an underperforming system. Where its been speculated that the only reason why Radiant Dawn didn't become Japan only was due to how the Wii sold far better than the GC did. But my take on this is would this have helped the Tellius games in a Mainstream sense? Well if it did have some bigger names in the voice cast then... maybe. (If anything else it would give Nintendo an excuse to give them more advertising) then otherwise no not really. However it probably would've been great for the niche online fanbases as I'm sure it would've got more people interested in them online even at the time.

But yes it is true that Fire Emblem sold better in handhelds such as GBA and DS so maybe this idea would work a bit better there. (Oh yes and before anyone gets skeptical, GBA games can handle voice acting clips even if its usually in a limited amount.) But I suppose that a better alternative to this theory is what if they did this for Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon on the DS? After all Nintendo did try a bit harder to sell the game back then which IIRC it wasn't an absolute flop but it did underperform in the US.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I would not have been able to identify a single voice actor by name in 2005-2007 and I'd be skeptical of any Gamecube owner saying they could considering the core audience were children like me not thinking about that sort of thing. Maybe I could have heard of Charles Martinet and David Hayter mentioned on a forum back then. There was no BehindtheVoiceActors. I don't recall IGN or game magazines ever publishing interviews with these people by the mid 2000s. Voice actors were lucky to even be credited, let alone have appreciative players reading every name in the credits to notice them or write them down to talk about on the internet. People are still finding out Jennifer Hale provided Samus' grunts (and unused narration) in Metroid Prime. That's got to be the most distinguished voice actor in a nintendo game in the 2000s and they kept her off the credits and reduced her role to hit noises. Didn't even rectify the situation in the remaster - instead they removed the names of ALL of the game's original developers from the credits.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

37 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Didn't even rectify the situation in the remaster - instead they removed the names of ALL of the game's original developers from the credits.

Now now, we can't ask for too mich from Daddy Nintendo. If they'd listed the game's original developers, and credited Jennifer Hale, then they'd need to charge a full $60 for the game. To recoup the losses associated with making the credits slightly longer.

2 hours ago, Pokejedservo said:

(If anything else it would give Nintendo an excuse to give them more advertising)

Advertising is moreso the name of the game here. Doing more of that would've given a decent buff to PoR's chances. Although, I think they'd more likely try to use the gameplay and graphics as a selling point, rather than any voice acting.

3 hours ago, Pokejedservo said:

But yes it is true that Fire Emblem sold better in handhelds such as GBA and DS so maybe this idea would work a bit better there. (Oh yes and before anyone gets skeptical, GBA games can handle voice acting clips even if its usually in a limited amount.) But I suppose that a better alternative to this theory is what if they did this for Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon on the DS? After all Nintendo did try a bit harder to sell the game back then which IIRC it wasn't an absolute flop but it did underperform in the US.

Again, it probably wouldn't hurt, but I don't see it making a big difference. These games just appealed to folks already fans of the series slash genre, and those Melee lovers asking "are Marth and Roy in this game?" And I'm allowed to make fun of the latter group, because I belonged to it.

[Pokejedservo]

2 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

 There was no BehindtheVoiceActors.

Wrong, BTVA was around since 2004, I would know because I used to work for them then and during their 2009 revival until 2014. Though back in the mid-2000s there were a pretty good amount of games that had various known voice actors. Not only from American companies like Activision but also from various Japanese companies like Capcom, Konami & Namco so it was rather commonplace. In fact for a time Nintendo was criticized for being one of the few game companies to only occasionally use voice work in their games until relatively recently.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 hour ago, Pokejedservo said:

Wrong, BTVA was around since 2004, I would know because I used to work for them then and during their 2009 revival until 2014. 

Well I can't find any reference from 2004. The site itself says 2009. And Wikidata corroborates that. Maybe you're thinking of some other website that had its domain swallowed up. That was a common thing in the 2000s, like all the various cheat code websites disappearing and redirecting you to GameFAQs.

[Pokejedservo]

28 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Well I can't find any reference from 2004. The site itself says 2009. And Wikidata corroborates that. Maybe you're thinking of some other website that had its domain swallowed up. That was a common thing in the 2000s, like all the various cheat code websites disappearing and redirecting you to GameFAQs.

Yes the current modern version has been around since 2009. But there was an older version where the pics were smaller it was initially primarily for TV shows and images only but it was on a different domain called adedom that no longer exists at...

behindthevoice.adedom.com

But you would have to go to the Wayback Machine in order to find anything about it there.

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

 - instead they removed the names of ALL of the game's original developers from the credits.

Huh? Is that even legal? They still credited Kaga on the Switch port of Shadow Dragon, and I know they would have very begrudgingly done that. Though I suppose they didn't credit him for Shadows of Valentia, but the Metroid Prime remaster seems a lot closer to Switch Shadow Dragon than Shadows of Valentia.

[Acacia Sgt]

Huh, Prime had that happen too?

I remember some time ago reading up the Pac-Man World remake also didn't credited the original developers... and months later they were finally added after some of the original developers pretty much campaigned over the matter.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

Huh? Is that even legal? They still credited Kaga on the Switch port of Shadow Dragon, and I know they would have very begrudgingly done that. Though I suppose they didn't credit him for Shadows of Valentia, but the Metroid Prime remaster seems a lot closer to Switch Shadow Dragon than Shadows of Valentia.

Well, to be entirely fair, the credits of the remaster offers a blanket statement "based on the work of the original nintendo gamecube and wii version development staff". No names are named, not even Retro Studios gets a mention, though since Retro is also the developer of the remaster they may have decided name dropping their studio again was redundant even if it was generations ago. So to say that they went uncredited could be called a matter of semantics. Developers of the original Metroid Prime have indeed voiced their displeasure at this choice, as would anybody having their name removed. I prefer the approach of other remasters keeping the credits unchanged, and then adding on to it with "Remaster credits". Therefore every person responsible for the game you just finished is given equal billing.

This is veering way off topic, but it bears mention there's not much legality or illegality regarding who gets credited in a video game. Video games in fact do not legally require credits in the first place. Whether you get credited is probably determined in your initial contract, and companies are free to write the rules however they like. Historically, the amount of people that get credited has been more "liberal" here in the west. The industry is also unionizing over the last few years which will probably force further improvements on our end. But Japan has historically been behind for a variety of reasons (defending against developer poaching (see the 'credits' for Castlevania or most NES era games), restrictive patent/IP laws, company policy toward short-term contract workers vs full timers, and hardline stance against unions). Plus with much more restrictive NDAs, developers usually have no legal right to complain about these practices. Western devs can complain on twitter when it happens, but the scale and scope of the issue in Japan is much harder to gauge even before we address the language barrier. It's hard to say if the Credits situation of Metroid Prime Remaster was decided by Nintendo of Japan, Nintendo of America, or Retro Studios themselves. 

Konami has been the most infamous, with its long history of crediting mostly developers that were still employed by the end of development. Leading to a situation where Suikoden director Yoshitaka Muriyama went uncredited for his work directing the third game because his work contract with Konami expired a month before release. I don't know if this is still company policy because Konami has released extremely few games in the last decade, and they certainly made an exception for Hideo Kojima who was in the process of leaving during the release of MGS5 The Phantom Pain. In his case they would have to remove the opening and closing credits of every mission to get his name out. That's over a hundred Kojimas, so it lead fans to speculate that Kojima knew his name would be removed and wanted it to be as technologically tedious as possible. His name and company remain referenced in-game, but were successfully scrubbed from the box art and marketing material. Even now, the Steam store page lists the Developer incorrectly as Konami Digital Entertainment when Kojima Productions still exist as an independent studio. We could debate all day who "deserves credit" from a moral standpoint but stuff like that is straight up misinformation.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Well, to be entirely fair, the credits of the remaster offers a blanket statement "based on the work of the original nintendo gamecube and wii version development staff". No names are named, not even Retro Studios gets a mention, though since Retro is also the developer of the remaster they may have decided name dropping their studio again was redundant even if it was generations ago. So to say that they went uncredited could be called a matter of semantics. Developers of the original Metroid Prime have indeed voiced their displeasure at this choice, as would anybody having their name removed. I prefer the approach of other remasters keeping the credits unchanged, and then adding on to it with "Remaster credits". Therefore every person responsible for the game you just finished is given equal billing.

This is veering way off topic, but it bears mention there's not much legality or illegality regarding who gets credited in a video game. Video games in fact do not legally require credits in the first place. Whether you get credited is probably determined in your initial contract, and companies are free to write the rules however they like. Historically, the amount of people that get credited has been more "liberal" here in the west. The industry is also unionizing over the last few years which will probably force further improvements on our end. But Japan has historically been behind for a variety of reasons (defending against developer poaching (see the 'credits' for Castlevania or most NES era games), restrictive patent/IP laws, company policy toward short-term contract workers vs full timers, and hardline stance against unions). Plus with much more restrictive NDAs, developers usually have no legal right to complain about these practices. Western devs can complain on twitter when it happens, but the scale and scope of the issue in Japan is much harder to gauge even before we address the language barrier. It's hard to say if the Credits situation of Metroid Prime Remaster was decided by Nintendo of Japan, Nintendo of America, or Retro Studios themselves. 

Konami has been the most infamous, with its long history of crediting mostly developers that were still employed by the end of development. Leading to a situation where Suikoden director Yoshitaka Muriyama went uncredited for his work directing the third game because his work contract with Konami expired a month before release. I don't know if this is still company policy because Konami has released extremely few games in the last decade, and they certainly made an exception for Hideo Kojima who was in the process of leaving during the release of MGS5 The Phantom Pain. In his case they would have to remove the opening and closing credits of every mission to get his name out. That's over a hundred Kojimas, so it lead fans to speculate that Kojima knew his name would be removed and wanted it to be as technologically tedious as possible. His name and company remain referenced in-game, but were successfully scrubbed from the box art and marketing material. Even now, the Steam store page lists the Developer incorrectly as Konami Digital Entertainment when Kojima Productions still exist as an independent studio. We could debate all day who "deserves credit" from a moral standpoint but stuff like that is straight up misinformation.

The video game industry does seem like it's in need of proper unionization for a multitude of reasons.