@incomingdamage and
@LeKill3rFou Thanks for sharing your experience! Details tell me about what I was really curious and it looks like to me that studios responsible for localization understood what they have in their hands. This all really speaks for "best voice acting all the time" because we have more languages and cultures in the world than English and it's huge task to cover cultural differences. Say, long time ago I try to figure out why France didn't get on the Punk culture and via some ques and some effort I translated something they call Chanson and it came obvious that there's no need for new musical style to enable social commentary as it was all already there. These kind of things can create huge issues when something is portrayed through American rocker boy, as game puts it and voice acting / directing doesn't take in account the cultural differences that can be huge. I don't know things change over time, generalizations are slippery slope but I came to listen to some French industrial metal decade or so ago and after translating the lyrics learned their writing was far above the general nonsense. That's one thing but it's as important to note that there was audience in France for that, otherwise production wouldn't had happened.
This is very good to note as it's also relevant to voice directing regarding whatever associates CDPR used for localization and anyone with professional interest can find them via end credits if no other means. It's very good news that experience isn't bottlenecked because of production values regarding voice talent and directing. As someone who has been exposed to English from very early, it makes some things easier, learning the language for example which can be useful but there's also that in the end, understanding other language other culture, subtexts, nuances and like, it often comes from understanding your own language and culture first.
While English is important language, for me back in the day to be able to access research and what was relevant for me I had to piece together from some work done in the US, some in the UK, some in Italy and Netherlands, so of course it was convenient that work done in Italy and Netherlands was also published in English and we have many languages in Europe, we simply can't learn them all. That said, popular culture is also form of accessing things, especially with product like CP 2077 and localized voice work and that it has quality that is up to par with writing. It's important sometimes to hold on to what came first, not everything needs to be "Englishisationized" (Yeah, made up that word, but I hope you understand).
Where your posts go too, it's that there are elements that are difficult to translate because of cultural differences but I share that view that only so much can be done with character and writing because they can't start making things up that's not responsibility of voice cast but localization when translating the writing and there's only so much that can be done on that side too when there's a huge amounts of material, like in CP 2077. Something get's changed, then it's presented in different way in other language and new version doesn't work anymore with context used in translation, if I image doing that for every localization it's not only amount of work that is an issue, but how complicated it gets.
Keanu Reeves is interesting benchmark. How I experienced Silverhand and his work with that character is colored by my own history as there was a time when I needed to have verbal conversations in English with people whom some English was native language and some whom it weren't. Needed to learn a bit of small talk think too. It was way back in verbal English has always been mostly been "use it or lose it" ability to me. But, Keanu's Silverhand has undertones of bitterness, weariness and cynicism of his dialogue is very present in verbal expression of text. I was a bit surprised actually and I tried turning subtitles off and it worked for me and that's quite something for me as I can't do that with many movies out there or I may start nodding because I just can't get genuinely engaged with whatever say, Disney's latest wave of spandex homos (in Freudian sense, not meat to insult anyone) are trying to explain. Reading is faster and not so involving and so.
Then Reeves work is something that splits also native English speaking audience, so I don't know but that for me that it worked and that might be something to do with active verbal English use in the past. Culturally, passionate Silverhand wouldn't work in Northern Europe I think, but that may be just me.
But in the end, it's great to read about how things works in localization. It's been decade I have followed what happens in gaming space and it's great that games that have cultural value aren't held back by voice work in that department. In product like this it's huge enabler to whole content, the story, thoughts that it may sprung, accessing the core of it so to say and CP 2077 is relevant work in the Cyberpunk genre, that just happens to be a video game.
