If you haven’t been playing One Piece games prior to One Piece Odyssey, you may be wondering if the game has been dubbed in English. Fans of the Funimation dub would understandably be jazzed to hear the English voice actors perform the game’s huge amount of lines, so it’s easy to wonder if you’ll be able to listen to them during your adventures on Waford and in Memoria. This is a Bandai Namco game, after all, and many of their titles do feature English dubs, such as recent games like Tales of Arise and Scarlet Nexus.
One Piece games localized in the West in the last decade haven’t featured dubs, and instead only had the original Japanese voices included. Unfortunately for fans who want a dub, One Piece Odyssey can only be played with Japanese voices. An interview with the series producer and game director dating back to the release of One Piece Burning Blood sheds some light as to why this is the case. When asked about the game only having Japanese voices, they replied, “We are localizing the text for each country, but for the voice, we are only using Japanese voiceover. The reason is because we want to produce the original atmosphere of the One Piece series.”
Is One Piece Odyssey English Dubbed?
This is clearly a bit of a massaged answer. Dubs cost money and Bandai Namco is aware that most One Piece fans prefer the original Japanese cast, so the company clearly doesn’t think it’s economically viable to allocate funds to dub series games. It likely didn’t help that One Piece Odyssey has what is likely the most recorded lines out of any game in the series, so it’s not at all surprising that the game wasn’t dubbed in English. While this is likely disappointing for some, I personally don’t blame them, as I’ll take the Japanese cast any day of the week, regardless of how perfect Brina Palencia’s Chopper is. Make sure to check out our review if you haven’t already.
Published: Jan 13, 2023 07:17 pm