Thu, Mar 24, 2011 | 02:20 GMT

Catherine’s animations to match English voice acting

Atlus is taking steps to eliminate the errant pauses and lightning delivery common to Japanese localisations, by tailoring character animations to match English voice acting performances.

Although voice actors are still required to meet certain timing requirements, voice actor Michelle Ruff told Siliconera Atlus is already manipulating some animations.

“I had to match basic timing on scenes but my Katherine’s mouth was being animated to my performance in some of those scenes,” she said, adding, “In some of them, she was animated already and I had to sync my performance.”

Ruff plays Katherine, steady girlfriend of protagonist Vincent, voiced by Troy Baker. Laura Bailey has taken the role of jealous temptress Catherine.

Catherine, which combines action puzzle gameplay with life-sim style drama, is due to release in the US on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in Northern summer. It topped the charts on release in Japan, but had to be tempered by a difficulty patch.

9 comments

KrazyKraut
24/03/11, 5:56 am

does the us version include japanese voice over?

osric90
24/03/11, 6:10 am

@1 I hope so, I really do… japanese voices with subs would be perfect but there is people that just keeps asking for more and that’s for them I guess.

The_Red
24/03/11, 10:25 am

This is actually great. While with the altered animations, use of original Japanese voices would become problematic, others that want to enjoy the craziness of Catherine in full english can enjoy matching animations.

Ireland Michael
24/03/11, 11:06 am

Pity the gameplay will still completely blow.

Patrick Garratt
24/03/11, 11:28 am

@4 – Is it shit?

mingtons ghost
24/03/11, 1:11 pm

I played the demo and it seemed pretty simplistic (although it was only the first level) its literally just push/pull blocks…climb, against the clock. Apparently the time was pretty punishing and they patched it to make it easier.

The demo had lots of lengthy cutscenes, i think the best way to approuch it is as an interactive story with casual puzzle mini games then a full blown video game

I’m still majorly looking forward to it, i need something different, everything is just boring the fuck out of me these past few months

Gekidami
24/03/11, 1:16 pm

^ From what i’ve heard thats all there is to the whole game…

neon6
24/03/11, 11:03 pm

I never saw this coming.

Ireland Michael
25/03/11, 1:34 am

@5 In my personal opinion, yes.

Unless you have some morbid fascination with block puzzles. Myself, I wouldn’t spend €50 on a puzzle game with pretty cutscenes.