I found Alyx Vance pretty realistic, but maybe that says more about the writing than it does the acting
Best voice-over work in a video game, All-Time.
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Personally I'm partial to Andrew Ryan of Bioshock, but thanks for the chilling reminder of our favorite Reaper.Irridium said:
Gotta go with Jennifer Hale. She has done soooo many different things in Voice Acting, IMDB, I think it would be very hard not find a Game/Character you've loved.
Specifically, I gotta give her some major props for the Fem Shepard in ME2. The guys' acting was just atrocious. It felt so forced and unnatural. Her lines seemed human, like she was there living through it, not just spouting random lines off the page. Her dialog flowed perfectly, no matter what lines you chose for her to say, the guy just was no where near as cohesive.
Specifically, I gotta give her some major props for the Fem Shepard in ME2. The guys' acting was just atrocious. It felt so forced and unnatural. Her lines seemed human, like she was there living through it, not just spouting random lines off the page. Her dialog flowed perfectly, no matter what lines you chose for her to say, the guy just was no where near as cohesive.
Holy shit has she worked a lot. Naomi Campbell and Emma Emmerich from the Metal Gear series. And you are so right in regards to Mass Effect. Female Shephard felt like role-playing. Male Shephard, not so much.merf1350 said:
We can end the thread now.
Yeah, my favorite video game of all time. Also, my first shot at online gaming. Additionally, I place my badass superior super uber leet FPS ability to playing the shit out of this game.
Some may find it interesting that I also made my first dabble at modding with this game.
Yeah, it don't get better than Rogue Spear.
The original Rainbow Six as well as Rogue Spear are what I believe all Rainbow Six games should paradoy. It is a PC based awesome sauce game that is extremely difficult and rewarding. Hell, they didn't even have respawns for mulitplayer. You just had to be the best gun out there.
This game also taught me the usefulness of sidearms and to this day I still use a H&K USP .40 in any game I play because if how much I used it in RS.
Just a superb game all around.
Yeah, my favorite video game of all time. Also, my first shot at online gaming. Additionally, I place my badass superior super uber leet FPS ability to playing the shit out of this game.
Some may find it interesting that I also made my first dabble at modding with this game.
Yeah, it don't get better than Rogue Spear.
The original Rainbow Six as well as Rogue Spear are what I believe all Rainbow Six games should paradoy. It is a PC based awesome sauce game that is extremely difficult and rewarding. Hell, they didn't even have respawns for mulitplayer. You just had to be the best gun out there.
This game also taught me the usefulness of sidearms and to this day I still use a H&K USP .40 in any game I play because if how much I used it in RS.
Just a superb game all around.
Perhaps Aur0ra145 didn't read the subject line or my original post because there is no mention of voice-over work there. The female narrator in that clip did remind me of a great one I forgot however...
Linda Hunt in the God of War games. She may win if I had to pick a winner. One of the great voices of all time and fit the game beautifully.
Linda Hunt in the God of War games. She may win if I had to pick a winner. One of the great voices of all time and fit the game beautifully.
Claudia Black? Really? She only has one voice "vain, snobby, British woman" and that's all that cardboard cut-out Mary Sue Morrigan was. That's like saying Michael Cera is the world's next greatest actor.DarkhoIlow said:
Illusive Man was awesome though.
As lame as it sounds, Nasus from League of Legends has the perfect character/voice matching and everything he says sounds like hot sex. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWr8TAMQXdY
Actually, that isn't true. I don't think she's reached her pinnacle yet, but I have to say, I am really impressed with Claudia Black's work. Not just for being Morrigan, obviously, but the fact that I just realized she's done other characters in games too, but you would NEVER have picked it as being her. Did you know she voiced the asari bartender on Illium and the Rachni Envoy in ME2. I didn't. I had no clue until I looked it up on IMDB.KalosCast said:
Also, she's Australian, not British.
Anyway, OT: I can't think of one great performance specifically. Great voice acting is stuff you don't notice, because they're so good at it you just feel like its a character speaking.
The best voice actor, ever, of all time is Keith David, there I said it, this makes it official or something!
In seriousness, I find Keith David's characters in games to be absolutely brilliant, The Arbiter, Captain Anderson and of course Julius Little are all fantastic, he is one of the few VO actors who "gets it" that you are "acting" with only your "voice" as an acting tool, therefore you must emote with more believability than Keanu Reeves and you must express that entirely with your voice, Keith David does this brilliantly, in fact if extra credits does a proper piece on voice actors I hope they give the guy a mention.
Another example of brilliant VO work is Nathan Fillion as Gunnery Sgt Edward Buck in ODST and Reach, not just for his work in cutscenes, but when you are playing as him, either in Firefight in Reach or during the actual missions in ODST he carries the whole "I really hate the covenant so I REALLY like killing them" thing entirely with his voice work, in the story of Reach, you escort him out of the city during a mission, during that mission, you can see parts of the planet already being Glassed ODST he sees the Covenant initiating their glassing laser, and comments "It's gonna be like like Reach all over again!" A sentiment that is delivered with more believable emotion than you see in other games, the fear is more real than, say, the screams of Marines in the recent AvP game, however on top of his in-story emotive ability, he also shows it off in firefight, being the most vocal character in the game (thank god I love that voice!) he squares off against the much stronger covenant laughing and wisecracking yet it all seems more believable than when seen in an 80's movie or a game like Gears of War (IE Cole) because he gives the impression of being just that damn good! I really hope that Buck gets more screen time in whatever Halo project 343 start work on next, hell if it is the movie that would be twice as cool because we already have the actor in line for him!
Another VO actor that I really like and hope turns up in more games is the fellow who voiced Kane and Lynch 2's lead character, Lynch, Jarion Monroe, mainly because in that game he became more 3 dimensional and opened up a lot more as a character (inb4 a thousand cuts joke) and when talking to Xiu he sounded very different, to the point where I didn't realise it was him talking, this is due to the fact that he assumes an entirely different character to the one Kane knows, what we see of him dealing with everyone else he may as well be one of the guys from deliverance, with a gruff hillbilly voice, perpetually swearing and screaming threats at people, but then hes talking to his girlfriend and this 45 year old redneck psycho is suddenly calm, collected, gentle and kind, something that we never get to see in the first Kane and Lynch, on top of that, when it all goes tits up (spoiler alert) he starts having mini breakdown episodes in the middle of gunfights, and as the game goes on, they get progressively more intense and as he becomes more worn out, he eventually starts whimpering to himself and breaking down terribly, even as he is trying to fight off waves of CSP soldiers, the fact that Jarion Monroe can pull this off, believably so is a testament to good videogame voice acting.
And then we have BAD videogame voice acting.
I don't have time to go through each individual game etc, so I am just going to say:
Every JRPG I have ever played ever.
Devil may Cry 1
Modern Warfare (save for KD)
AND SHEVA F*ING ALOMAR
Seriously, I cannot stand her bloody faux upper class accent, damned "Sudden shock!" when she finds out the bad guys do bad things her godawful self righteousness and f*ing fallen brothers!
Screw that, she RUINED the end of Resi 5 for me, and quite frankly the entire game would be better if she talked as much as Gordon Freeman, who incidentally is my least favourite videogame character because he never speaks, so if your voice work is so bad that it would be better if you didn't speak at all then that is saying something.
In Conclusion, The Arbiter is good, Sheva is bad, Fallen Brothers can fall into a vat of majini virus spores for all I care just stop talking about them!
In seriousness, I find Keith David's characters in games to be absolutely brilliant, The Arbiter, Captain Anderson and of course Julius Little are all fantastic, he is one of the few VO actors who "gets it" that you are "acting" with only your "voice" as an acting tool, therefore you must emote with more believability than Keanu Reeves and you must express that entirely with your voice, Keith David does this brilliantly, in fact if extra credits does a proper piece on voice actors I hope they give the guy a mention.
Another example of brilliant VO work is Nathan Fillion as Gunnery Sgt Edward Buck in ODST and Reach, not just for his work in cutscenes, but when you are playing as him, either in Firefight in Reach or during the actual missions in ODST he carries the whole "I really hate the covenant so I REALLY like killing them" thing entirely with his voice work, in the story of Reach, you escort him out of the city during a mission, during that mission, you can see parts of the planet already being Glassed ODST he sees the Covenant initiating their glassing laser, and comments "It's gonna be like like Reach all over again!" A sentiment that is delivered with more believable emotion than you see in other games, the fear is more real than, say, the screams of Marines in the recent AvP game, however on top of his in-story emotive ability, he also shows it off in firefight, being the most vocal character in the game (thank god I love that voice!) he squares off against the much stronger covenant laughing and wisecracking yet it all seems more believable than when seen in an 80's movie or a game like Gears of War (IE Cole) because he gives the impression of being just that damn good! I really hope that Buck gets more screen time in whatever Halo project 343 start work on next, hell if it is the movie that would be twice as cool because we already have the actor in line for him!
Another VO actor that I really like and hope turns up in more games is the fellow who voiced Kane and Lynch 2's lead character, Lynch, Jarion Monroe, mainly because in that game he became more 3 dimensional and opened up a lot more as a character (inb4 a thousand cuts joke) and when talking to Xiu he sounded very different, to the point where I didn't realise it was him talking, this is due to the fact that he assumes an entirely different character to the one Kane knows, what we see of him dealing with everyone else he may as well be one of the guys from deliverance, with a gruff hillbilly voice, perpetually swearing and screaming threats at people, but then hes talking to his girlfriend and this 45 year old redneck psycho is suddenly calm, collected, gentle and kind, something that we never get to see in the first Kane and Lynch, on top of that, when it all goes tits up (spoiler alert) he starts having mini breakdown episodes in the middle of gunfights, and as the game goes on, they get progressively more intense and as he becomes more worn out, he eventually starts whimpering to himself and breaking down terribly, even as he is trying to fight off waves of CSP soldiers, the fact that Jarion Monroe can pull this off, believably so is a testament to good videogame voice acting.
And then we have BAD videogame voice acting.
I don't have time to go through each individual game etc, so I am just going to say:
Every JRPG I have ever played ever.
Devil may Cry 1
Modern Warfare (save for KD)
AND SHEVA F*ING ALOMAR
Seriously, I cannot stand her bloody faux upper class accent, damned "Sudden shock!" when she finds out the bad guys do bad things her godawful self righteousness and f*ing fallen brothers!
Screw that, she RUINED the end of Resi 5 for me, and quite frankly the entire game would be better if she talked as much as Gordon Freeman, who incidentally is my least favourite videogame character because he never speaks, so if your voice work is so bad that it would be better if you didn't speak at all then that is saying something.
In Conclusion, The Arbiter is good, Sheva is bad, Fallen Brothers can fall into a vat of majini virus spores for all I care just stop talking about them!
Good one! So good I didn't notice it was him the first time I played. Played again after a Robot Chicken binge and wondered "how did I miss that?"Xzi said:
OT: I should thank Seth Green and Robot Chicken for gearing my ears up to Yahtzee's speed. I'm old and I like subtitles.
Agreed on both counts.Wolfenbarg said:
My personal all-time favorite voice-acting in a videogame is Tony Jay as the Elder God in the Legacy of Kain series. Depending on the pitch of his voice he sounded like the best or the worst grandpa a kid could ever have.
Rest in peace, Tony.