Atrocious Voice Acting in Games

[sokka14]

Are there games you've played where the voice acting was terrible? Was everyone just awful, or was there one or two that stood out as abysmal? And why were they so bad?

I've recently been playing Sly 2, after purchasing the whole series for the first time recently, and it has got to the point now where I can't listen to Constable Neyla without physically cringing at the voice acting. Her accent meanders between cockney, posh drawl, American and fuck knows what else. How can you put so much time, energy and money into a game and overlook blatantly atrocious voice acting? It beggars belief.

 

[scnj]

Two Worlds.

 

[Trendkill6]

Legend of Dragoon had horrific voice acting, but then again it was a PS1 JRPG so it had alot going against it.

 

[metagaia]

http://www.audioatrocities.com/ has most of them.

Resident Evil will remain my all time favourite though

 

[Chipperz]

Two Worlds.

This. This. This, and this.

In a semblance to trying to have my own voice, I'll add in [Prototype] - great game, but the voice acting was laughable.

 

[Reg5879]

Whoever did the voice of Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II is proof that voice acting can be very bad, everytime he finishes a sentence, he pauses for a bit too long lol.

 

[Mother Yeti]

I remember the voice work in Silent Hill 2 being really, really stilted. Same goes for House of the Dead (though I suppose you could argue that was intentional).

That said, voice work in video games hasn't been around for long, and it's only very recently that anyone has come to expect it to be decent.

 

[brewbeard]

In my experience, most jrpg's have voice acting on a scale that varies wildly between ear-bleeding and mediocre. Several have individual characters who *are* good, but they aren't good enough to make up for all of the characters who are bad. Western games tend to have mediocre voice acting that only slips into awful territory if it's a budget title or developed by non-english speaking countries.

I think the concept that games-with-dialogue-absolutely-NEED-to-have-voice-acting-all-of-the-time is at fault here. The infinity engine CRPG's all had intermittent VA strewn throughout their dialogue trees, and I can't think of a single one that had less than stellar voice acting. Baldur's Gate II, in fact, remains to this day my personal favorite so far as VA goes.

 

[CudaSpawn]

Two Worlds.

this...

 

[DragonsAteMyMarbles]

Shenmue. More specifically, Ryo Hazuki's robotic English voice acting.

Anyone who still has this game, I challenge you to make him buy a drink from a vending machine and keep a straight face as he drinks it.

EDIT: Actually, now I think about it there were only a couple of cases where I believed that a character in those games was voiced by a real person.

 

[ConnorCool]

starfox on gamecube, that god damned frog/toad AAAAAHHHH

but the stone statue and the shopkeeper made it very worthwile, mega lols indeed

 

[Psypherus]

Legend of Dragoon had horrific voice acting, but then again it was a PS1 JRPG so it had alot going against it.

...The entire game had like 2 cutscenes with talking so did it really matter? And there have been much, much worse voice acting in games

 

[Lordmarkus]

I just simply hated the voicework in Call of Duty 2. Though the soldiers were young men but did everyone need to run around with monkey wrenches around their balls?

The british voicework were actually rather good.

 

[TaborMallory]

Oblivion had 14 voice actors in the entire game. Also, it's funny as hell to hear NPCs talk to each other, especially if they have the same voice.

 

[ohgodalex]

I think that this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAtC1SzWSXg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ehalolz%2Ecom%2Fcategory%2Fvideo%2Dclips%2Fpage%2F11%2F&feature=player_embedded] would have to win my vote.

 

[Chaossebba]

I think that this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAtC1SzWSXg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ehalolz%2Ecom%2Fcategory%2Fvideo%2Dclips%2Fpage%2F11%2F&feature=player_embedded] would have to win my vote.

Blast, you beat me to it
This [http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/ooh-innuendo/288112] aint exactly bad but... Well...

 

[GoldenRaz]

Oblivion had 14 voice actors in the entire game. Also, it's funny as hell to hear NPCs talk to each other, especially if they have the same voice.

Don't forget the hilarity in having a conversation starting with an elderly woman, followed by talking to one in her 30's or something and then end the conversation with the elderly woman...

I can't come up with anything else, since Oblivion is the only game I can remember which had bad ACTING, as opposed to a bad script.

 

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

Musashi: Samurai Legend...the main character in particular. He talked like he had a tuba stuck in his throat...