Whenever a particularly enticing looking Japanese game is made known to Western audiences, the first question that is generally asked is if it's coming to America. Once that's been answered, to the affirmative, the next one that follows invariably is if any of the Japanese voice acting (provided there is any) is carried over.
Well, in the case of Goichi "Suda51" Suda's latest, The Killer Is Dead, we finally have the answer to the second question. The voice acting is re-done in English. Here's the just released North American launch trailer, courtesy of XSEED:
As you can see, it's pretty much exactly like the Japanese one, at least visually speaking. It's impossible to say if the final game will have any changes, content-wise, but if there are to be any alterations as it pertains to its blood and violence, for example, as it's not extensive enough to warrant any edits to the trailer.
Again, that's not to say that we have any reason to believe that the game will be censored in any way.
Though not many people know that Killer Is Dead's predecessor, No More Heroes (which was the second installment of the "assassin series" that began with Killer 7; this latest will be the third helping), was censored in its home market. At least initially; the original Wii version replaced the red blood with black pixels, which was later brought back for the adult's only PS3 re-release.
Moving on, the biggest change is the audio. The jury is still out on the voice acting, though the actor who is lending his vocal chops to new leading man Mondo Zappa is not leaving the impression that Robin Atkin Downes, who was the voice of No More Heroes' Travis Touchdown, did almost immediately, Then again, both are totally different characters, so perhaps the comparison is unfair.
There is no word yet on whether the original Japanese voice acting will also come included, as an alternate audio track, which has become increasingly common in recent years.
XSEED also passed along the following description of the game. It’s fairly close to what we’ve heard already, though it’s nice to finally have a little bit of flair, which is often lost in Google Translation:
In this all-new trailer, fans are introduced to the game’s protagonist, Mondo Zappa, an “executioner” whose task it is to dispose of dangerous criminals and assassins from around the world. Working for an agency called the “Bryan Execution Firm,” headed by a mysterious information trafficker known as Bryan, Zappa relies on dishing out his own brand of justice with the aid a traditional Japanese sword and a left artificial arm which houses interchangeable weapons.
