D3 Publisher continues to surprise by announcing that EDF 6 (Earth Defense Force 6) will be getting a western release in 2024.
Earth Defense Force 6 made its initial debut in Japan on August 25, 2022, releasing for both the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, supposedly developed to accommodate the latest generation of consoles, Sandlot have really expanded upon 2017’s Earth Defense Force 5 with more destructive environments than ever.
Earth Defense Force isn’t particularly a series you’d play to gawk at graphical fidelity, given the simplistic nature of being a third-person shooter that focuses on defending the Earth from various swarms of aliens and monsters, Earth Defense Force offers immense action packed large scale battles filled with an abundance of unique weapons, abilities with the aforementioned destructible environments.
The games story and premise jokes around and doesn’t take itself far too seriously, think Starship Troopers for one example. All of this is exactly why people love the series so much, especially when you throw in the ability of slaughtering warms of aliens and other disgusting creatures in a multiplayer co-op fashion, Earth Defense Force has a very dedicated following.
And now gaijin all over the world will be able to experience the marvels of Earth Defense Force 6 outside of the region of Japan this upcoming Spring, with the game taking place three years after the events of EDF 5, the Earth remains in ruins, and a renewed alien menace emerges.
With the localized release coming in the spring season next year, on Sony PlayStation 4/5 consoles including the PC via the Steam Store initially with an Epic Games Store release coming at a later date.
Needless to say, Earth Defense Force 6 joins the abundance of video games “exclusive” to the PlayStation 5 that aren’t actually exclusive to the PlayStation 5, but considering how the franchise is most certainly Japanese rest assured that even the most diehard of Sony fanboys aren’t even aware of its existence.
The game reintroduces the class system, featuring new equipment and abilities for players. Cooperative gameplay is back, offering both two-player split-screen and four-player online co-op madness.
An announcement trailer has been released to mark the occasion.
The Localization will be handled by a company called “Clouded Leopard Entertainment”, a small firm who mainly handles Nihon Falcom releases.
The depressing thing with this western release is that despite EDF 6 being a direct continuation of the previous installment featuring several in-game characters reprising their roles, the English audio dubbing work will feature a new cast of voice actors with zero effort gone into maintaining consistency with Earth Defense Force 5.
Voice Actors are the lowest of the low, at least when it comes to western properties, they’re immensely entitled and believe that speaking into a can is actually of significant importance and most certainly a real job, they’re a dime a dozen and yet demand more and more pay, more often than not majority of these voice actors are absolutely garbage, the genuinely cannot act.
For example here is a small clip that compares between the original Japanese audio, the English dub for Earth Defense Force 5 and then finally the English dubbing that’ll be present inside of Earth Defense Force 6 and it’s about as horrifying as you’d probably expect it to be.
Localization is a really touchy subject, as someone who cannot understand Japanese moon runes I’m subject to the whims of cancerous Publishers and Developers outsourcing translation jobs to woke infiltrators infecting the media with incessant bullshit “jokes” and “buzzwords” if not outright bastardizing their own translation because the subject of which they want to translate is problematic in their eyes.
People such as Katrina Leonoudakis aught to be put to death for their actions.
Dub work is different, I don’t like dubs and neither do you most likely, it’s one thing to translate text which more often than not is bastardized, now try actually conveying Japanese voice work into English and retain the “soul” and “authenticity”, you can’t. Which is why so many EN releases of older Japanese video games can be found online with an “undub”.
The English audio in Earth Defense Force 5 isn’t terrible, the series isn’t a AAA franchise and it doesn’t sound like it, the EN dubbing inside EDF 5 is not only tolerable but it’s good enough for this particular title, however the English dub work inside of Earth Defense Force 6 is a massive downgrade compared to the previous installment, the new voice cast is terrible all round.
Nothing beats authentic Japanese audio, thankfully you’re able to change the in-game audio to Japanese however a main criticism of previous installments, mainly EDF 5 and EDF 4.1 but as a result you cannot actually use English subtitles, or in the case of Earth Defense Force 5 the English subtitles do work but only in cinematics.
I’m thrilled that EDF 6 is coming to the west next year but with the sheer downgrade in voice work, and the potential of once again being unable to have Japanese voices paired with English subtitles I’ll wait for the game to release before casting final judgement but I would rather spend my money on CUSTOM MECH WARS.
