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?????? (or I know how to speak Cantonese)
When Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars was announced on the PSP, one of the first issues discussed on various gaming podcasts and gaming forums was how the gameplay might transfer from the touch screen controls and dual screen display of the DS to the PSP. And while that’s certainly a concern, an entirely different question entered my head — who will they hire to voice the characters?
See, one of the big problems I had with the DS version was the writing. The story was fine for what it was, but given that it was based around the antics of Hong Kong immigrants, I didn’t expect dialog that was taken straight out of English vernacular. I know it’s nearly impossible to do “accents” or even foreign languages in text, but I just felt it was very unusual for Huang to speak English as if he grew up in Liberty City.
One of the signature elements of Grand Theft Auto 4 was the fact that Niko and Roman were Eastern Europeans with Eastern European accents. They were undeniably immigrants and their story was meant to touch on the fallacy of the American dream. Indeed, the most famous line from the game is most likely Roman’s “Let’s go see beeeeeg American teetees” — a line only memorable because of Roman’s affected and over-the-top accent.
My hope is that with the port to the PSP, they’ll add voiceovers to all the characters and try to reintroduce an element of ethnicity to the game. It’s extremely rare to see Asian characters in Western games — especially as the lead characters — and to rob them of any racial and ethnic authenticity seems like a missed opportunity, especially in light of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and GTA4.
And it’s not like it’s unprecedented. The Chinese characters in GTA4 spoke Cantonese and accented English, so Rockstar had previously went to the trouble of trying to make Liberty City more ethnic than they had to. I just hope that they show the same consideration when thinking about how to improve the presentation for the PSP version. It would just be extremely disappointing if the port ends up featuring a full soundtrack but generic English American voice actors. Rockstar has a chance to make Chinatown Wars as relevant as any other GTA game and I sincerely hope they take it.