So the English dub of Final Fantasy VII Remake was overall pretty decent. But if you're like me, there are some aspects of Japanese media that are just a little bit irksome. Chiefly among those is the obnoxious grunting and reaction noises that are so prevalent even in EN voice overs. While Remake isn't necessarily the worse offender on this front, there were enough places in the game's cutscenes that it was actively distracting for me while I played through on the PS4 version. So I decided then that if it ever came to PC, I would mod out as much of those annoyances as possible just for whenever I get the itch to replay the game. And so, here we are.



So what does this mod actually do?

Since the game launched on Epic I've been going through each and every one of the game's main cinematics and their associated voice lines for the English dub and, bit by bit, began to edit the audio in as tasteful a way as I could manage. At first, my only real intention was to remove the generally unnecessary "reaction noises" from the game, but since I was already in deep with the audio files, I took the time to address a number of other issues (more like nitpicks if we're being honest) I had with the game's dialogue. I'm now calling this project finished with well over a thousand lines edited from Ch1 all the way through to the final cinematics. And yes, I even made sure to address Yuffie's Intermission DLC. But to go into a little more detail...

1. The Reaction Noises

I don't know why so many Japanese media creators feel that its necessary that every time a character appears on screen or does anything in the scene that there has to be a vocal sound that accompanies it. If you're were ever bothered by the constant "Hmm?" "Tch!" and "Uugh!"s of the game, well that's this mod's bread and butter. I silenced or tweaked the audio wherever I felt it benefited to do so. Obviously some of these noises have lip sync associated to them, so I generally left those alone or adjusted the track to make it less obnoxious. And no I didn't blanket delete all of them. I was sure to keep some sounds where I thought it was appropriate to keep them. Usually if there's a grunt or something that is still there that you thought was unnecessary, I probably had the same thought, but either the lip-sync or general flow of the cutscene felt even weirder without it during my testing so I reverted the change. Better safe than sorry imo.

2. Fake Running Sounds

Look, this may just be a me-thing, but it always bothered me how characters sound when they're running in this game. The character takes three steps towards off-camera and they're already panting like they've been sprinting a mile. I couldn't stand it most of the time so I edited it out most of the time. Obviously if the situation or surrounding dialogue supports the out-of-breath fake panting, I leave it alone, but that's usually just not the case.

3. Audio Swaps

There are a handful of places where I felt the take they used for a particular line didn't quite match the context of the scene but I couldn't cut entirely due to lip sync or something similar. These are predominantly rare changes, but every now and again I did swap a grunt or line for something else (usually using VO I cut from other scenes to avoid repetition). Most of these will be pretty subtle unless you're overly familiar with the dialogue in the game, but I tried to limit my swaps to places where I really felt the delivery was very jarring and swapped it to something that, to me, felt more natural.

An example would be towards the end of the second bombing mission. At the start of the cutscene, just before the battle with the Airbuster, Tifa notices the drones that fly in to project President Shinra's hologram. She does so while saying "huh?" twice back-to-back in almost the exact same way, so to fix that I swapped the second "huh?" for a more fitting gasp to help the scene flow better.

4. Clarity Adjustments

Similar to the audio swaps, these are generally pretty rare as well. Occasionally there were scenes in the game where things characters were saying were drowned out by background noise (or worse, other characters grunting) so I tried to rebalance audio as much as I could to help make it clear what they were saying without needing to strain or turn on subtitles. (Examples being the Shinra reporter during the second bombing mission being difficult to hear over the surrounding mob, or Corneo's lackeys when talking through their gas masks). I only have so much wiggle room with the tools at my disposal, so these particular tweaks certainly aren't as perfect as I'd like them to be, but hopefully they can still be an improvement for you.

And very occasionally I took some creative liberties to better suit my taste. For example: if a character is supposed to be far away but they audio sounds like they're right next to you, I sometimes adjusted the audio a touch to push them back. Another example might be where I added an ethereal reverb onto the apparitions of children during a particular scene involving Aerith in the train graveyard.

I also found a dozen scenes where a character's grunts were actually playing simultaneously to their dialogue (or worse, another grunting track) so I obviously took steps to adjust for that. You'd be surprised just how often this happened. (One of my favorite examples of this is late in the game just before you play through a chapter as Barret, a cutscene plays where the floor gives out from under your party. Barret says, "Of all the times!" simultaneously to his own grunting track popping off as he begins to fall. Hilarious to me that this made it into the retail release.)




While most scenes don't need much doctoring, occasionally I'll have to incorporate all four of the above points into a scene to get it to where I'm happy with it. Be sure to check the mod video to get a feel for the kind of changes I make and see if this mod is suited for you.








So what does this mod not do?

This mod focusses almost entirely on main cinematics. So battle quotes, field dialogue, and conversational dialogue (the lower budget cutscenes like you get when talking to side-quest npcs) have been left untouched. (The only exception to this rule is I edited out Barret and Tifa calling out directly after the plate-fall sequence as I felt the quiet suited the mood better. That and it more smoothly transitioned into the following cutscene where Barret's tone, I felt, shifts abruptly from the field dialogue.)

Let me tell you, as much as some of the field and side-quest dialogue bothers me, the way these particular files are stored in the game folders makes it an extremely tedious task to sort through. They are all dumped into a single folder with seemingly no organization other than a label indicating the speaker (many of which are unnamed or forgettable npcs so these labels mean next to nothing to me). With cutscenes, the files are arranged in order most of the time, making it easy to tweak. I can pull up the cutscene on YT and then when I hear something that irks me I can quickly find the file and adjust it. With field dialogue, I can hear something that annoys me, but it could take an hour of randomly selecting audio files to find that specific line to adjust and that's only for one tweak! I just had to draw the line there as the base mod took days of my free time as is. Field dialogue would probably quadruple that time, or worse.

This mod only affects the English dub of the game and I have no intention of changing the other languages. I also did not change the subtitles to better match my mod as I don't really play with subtitles. Granted, I can't think of many places where my changes actually would affect the subtitles all that much as I mostly focused on grunts, but on rare occasions things might not line up so I wanted to make sure that was pointed out just in case.

I should also point out that the handful of prerendered cinematics have all the voice lines of all the characters on a single track making it too difficult for me to heavily adjust the audio in those particular scenes.



So how do I install?

Simple! This mod, like many, is a simple Pak mod. Just find where you installed your game, then navigate through:

FFVIIRemakeIntergrade\End\Content\Paks\~mods

and drop the .pak file there. You may need to make the ~mods folder yourself if you haven't made one already.



And with all of that said, I'd like to remind everyone that I made this mod first and foremost for myself. As such, I'm subject to my own biases and my own subjective opinions on what feels better and what feels worse. You may not like the changes I made to certain cutscenes or you might find places you think should be tweaked in a different way, but please keep in mind that I made these changes based on my own personal tastes and due to how audio files are structured in-game, that much took long enough. To make more tweaks or to change ones you might disagree with is way too time consuming on my end, so unfortunately this mod comes pretty much as is. If, for example, you thought the abrupt Hojo laugh cut-off at the end of the game was hilarious and needed to stay, you might be right, but for me it pulled me out of the moment so I faded it out. If you want that change or another reverted, you'll have to tweak the mod yourself. That said, If you'd like to use my mod as a base to tweak the dialogue as you see fit, or maybe you want to build upon my changes as a foundation, please feel free! All I ask that is if you decide to share your version, that you please credit my work as the original author. 

And that's pretty much it! Hope you enjoy!